Reading List (March 2021) (Patreon)

Hello! 

This month, the UK marked the one-year anniversary of its Covid-19 lockdown (I almost wrote "celebrated"). But hope is on the horizon, light is at the end of the tunnel, and other metaphors about good things being visible. 

Until then, here's a handful of things to watch and read, handpicked by yours truly. 

Designer Notes

[Read] Doom Eternal director says the Marauder is good, actually - Hugo Martin defends Eternal's polarising Souls-esque mini boss. "All he does is steer you into the fun zone."

[Read] Opinion: When choice becomes a metric, narrative design suffers - Interesting Gamasutra piece on the design of branching path games.

[Read] Life after permadeath - the brutal, beloved mechanic - Wireframe talks to the devs behind FTL, Rogue Legacy, and more to chat permadeath.

[Watch | CC | 8 mins] Why Hitman’s throwing feels so darn good - Polygon talks to IO about the design of Agent 47's most powerful weapon: his baseball pitcher's throw.

[Read] How the future of video game AI will change the way that we play - GamesRadar talks to various devs about upcoming advancements in AI.

[Watch | CC | 20 mins] How Your Personality Affects What You Play Psych of Play asks "is there some underlying connection between our personalities and our gaming preferences?"

[Read] Valuing Players’ Time - An oldie but a goodie, Yacht Club talks about all the ways they respect their players across the Shovel Knight games.

Culture Club

[Read] The year we spent in Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Polygon charts 365 days of events in and out of Nintendo's Switch mega hit.

[Read] Neopets is reckoning with black market pet trading - I love stories about the weird and highly specific culture of online communities.

[Read] Charm Your Communities - Innersloth (Among Us) community director Victoria Tran shares some tips for growing a playerbase through playfulness, delight, and positivity.

Critical Hit

[Watch | CC | 14 mins] Was Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War Really That Bad? - Writing on Games returns to last year's COD entry - "by far the most tightly-paced, varied and fun CoD campaign I've ever played".

Code Monkeys

[Watch | 8 mins] Splatoon's Ink System - Mechanic recreation expert Mix and Jam turns his attention to Splatoon's splatter gun. Unity shaders are complicated.

[Read] Outriders developers explain why a tiny cutscene plays every time you open a door - Twitter joked about these momentum-killing moments in Outriders. The devs explain the technical reason for their inclusion.

Indie Nation

[Read] How Loop Hero's impossible mishmash of ideas came to exist - RPS speaks to Loop Hero designer to discuss its design and development. "We were just talking about the idea of zero-player games as a genre".

[Read] What Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery means to CAPY devs - On its 10th anniversary, Capy's devs reminisce about their evocative iPad indie gem.

[Read] Indie Game Dev: Indie Archetypes - Spelunky 2 designer Derek Yu shares some archetypes to help you finish games. Are you the Daydreamer? The Wanderer? The Burrower?

Business Lunch

[Watch | 19 mins] Someone Else's Problem: How Game Publishers Buy Crunch Overseas - Where was Cyberpunk made? If you answered "Poland", you're only part right.

[Read] Yakuza's Creator On His Life, Career, And Why Sega Should've Fired Him In The '90s - Toshihiro Nagoshi charts his career, from Virtua Racing to Shenmue to Yakuza.

Scenes, Sound, Story

[Watch | 26 mins] What if Princess Mononoke were a GameBoy Advance game? - Loved this narrated time lapse of Brandon Greer making a Castlevania-inspired Ghibli homage in pixel art.

[Watch | CC | 36 mins] Untangling God Of War - Good Blood shows what two years of editing a YouTube video looks like.

[Watch | CC | 1 hour, 45 mins] The Animation of Sonic Games - New Frame Plus dropped a monster documentary on the changing animation of Sonic.

[Watch | 10 mins] Why Sound Design in Stealth Games is so Important - Game Audio Analysis looks at the importance of audio in the genre's that's all about being whisper quiet.

[Watch | CC | 10 mins] The Psychology of Loss Aversion in Portal - Story Mode looks at how Portal uses loss aversion and the endowment effect in its Companion Cube.

Beyond Bytes

[Watch | CC | 24 mins] The Fastest Way to Learn a New Language: The Video Game Map Theory - Ex-Vox reporter Johnny Harris has a YouTube channel worth following. This video shares a quick-fire way to learn languages.

[Watch | 11 mins] The Brilliant Sound of Sound of Metal - Sound of Metal is one of the most affecting movies I've seen in a while. And a big part of that is its empathetic and immersive sound design.