Reading List (October 2021) (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here’s a chunky reading list, filled with fascinating things to watch and read. Have a fabulous weekend.

The Design of Games

[Read] Can Games Stop Using Insane As A Difficulty Description Already? - “If you take a look through the difficulty options in many games there’s a good chance you’ll see it somewhere. It’s so prevalent that it’s clear many people just don’t see the problem”.

[Read] Object Oriented #04: Masks - “The mask disguises your identity, but it is not invisible. Everyone can see that you are concealing something. It draws your attention instead of averting it, but to what, exactly, we can't quite be sure.”

[Watch | CC | 41 mins] The Making of Death's Door - Noclip talks to Titan Souls dev Acid Nerve, to see how they came up with this excellent Zelda-like adventure.

[Watch | CC | 28 mins] The Inside Story of Mass Effect 3's Endings, Finally Told - “Almost a decade on from the release of Mass Effect 3, we talk to those who worked on it about the gigantic backlash prompted by the game's endings.”

[Watch | CC | 21 mins] How Don’t Starve Was Made and Why The Devs Had Many Heated Discussions - “Discover more about developer Klei Entertainment and how a prototype from one of their yearly company game jams was the starting point for Don’t Starve.”

[Watch | CC | 29 mins] How Chivalry's Designers Fought to Make Video Game Swords Fun - “We explore the design of sprawling Medieval maps, the importance of screaming, and how Torn Banner found solutions to making swordplay fun.”

[Read] Video game culture owes a lot to hidden object games - “Hidden object games focus singularly on this one idea — the gameplay of searching — to create compelling environments, to tell stories, and to build out worlds.”

The Business of Games

[Read] The Case for Videogame Piracy - "Somewhere, somehow, someone is mad that you’re having fun for free.”

The Development of Games

[Watch | CC | 15 mins] Game Making Journey - Flammable Freddy - I enjoyed this 5 part devlog for a clever game jam entry.

[Watch | 17 mins] The Fall and Rise of No Man's Sky - “A passion project that snowballed into an industry-wide phenomenon, No Man’s Sky’s very premise as a space-exploration game vowed to deliver so much more than the moon.”

[Read] Indie Game Dev: Getting Feedback - “During the course of making and releasing a game, you'll receive feedback from various sources and it's not always clear what to do with that information. In this article, I'll offer a framework for thinking about feedback and some suggestions on what to do with it.”

[Read] 5 ways to draw an outline - A very technical look at five different techniques that can be used to make outlines, whether thats for aesthetic or gameplay reasons.

[Read] Pompom Dev Discusses 'Freeing' Sensation of Idea Generation with Game Jams - “After building Walkie Tori in 48 hours, Rosenthal said he wasn't able to get the idea out of his head. “

The Playing of Games

[Read] Key Component of Gameplay Discovered Most of the Way Through Playthrough - “‘Oh wow, there is a map you can pull up if you click in the left thumbstick,’ said Ross, playing the game he’d been struggling with for weeks.”

[Watch | 15 mins] The Two Types of Gamers - Core-A Gaming talks Honers vs. Innovators.

[Read] Clash Rules Everything Around Me - “The true cost of Clash of Clans isn’t virtual gold but wasted time. Good riddance”

[Read] What does gaming's all-digital future mean for the climate crisis? - “And just because you cannot see it leave your house and travel along the pipes to a data centre somewhere, doesn't mean it comes without an associated cost. And the cost, in this case, is power.”

The Art of Games

[Watch | 18 mins] How does ray tracing produce hyper realistic graphics? - “What's the next step beyond rasterization? How does ray- and pathtracing create these hyper realistic graphics? We'll look into the inner workings of ray tracing as well as some of the challenges associated with it.”

[Read] Generative art & tools (on the intersection of toys, tools, and games…) - “One thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is the intersection between tools and games. When you take something functional (utilitarian) and place it into a playful context (toy, or game).”

[Read] The Rendering of Mafia: Definitive Edition - I’m always fascinated by these articles, which show you what goes into rendering a single frame of a game. Great, now do it 59 more times this second.

[Watch | CC | 10 mins] How the Animation in Mario Kart 8 Works - “I decided to waste some time I'll never get back talking about the animation in this game.”

[Watch | 24 mins] The Wii's Biggest, Weirdest Legacy Is Its Music - “ The Wii Shop music, Mii Channel Theme and more have taken on a life of their own as memes, remixes, covers - they might even be affecting the wider music world as a whole”

The History of Games

[Watch | 9 mins] Before MMOs, There Were MUDs - “In the first episode of Forgotten Worlds, we look at the history and ongoing appeal of text-based online games.”

[Watch | 40 mins] Game Development in Eight Bits - “This talk will explore how NES developers created more with less, looking at techniques used in professionally-developed NES games to handle physics, collision detection, randomness, data compression, and more.”

[Read | Long Read] I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream - “To the person who [is] contemplating buying this game, what would I say? I would say take your money and give it to the homeless, you’ll do more good.”

Beyond Games

[Watch | 9 mins] Why 4:3 Looks So Good - Karsten Runquist on the artistry of (almost) square movie making.

[Read] How museums are stepping up exhibition design - “A wave of innovative exhibition design has graced our museums in recent years. What are the keys to holding the viewer’s gaze?”

[Read] FILE NOT FOUND - A generation that grew up with Google is forcing professors to rethink their lesson plans

[Thread] Trung Phan on Twitter - A fascinating Twitter thread on how Netflix makes its artwork.