Reading List (February 2022) (Patreon)

Hello! Welcome back to the reading list. This month I’ve got two special categories for you: one filled with articles about Deathloop, to coincide with my new GMTK video. And another with some must-read stuff about NFTs.

Speak soon!

The Design of Games

[Read] Four veteran combat designers on how to make a battle system memorable - “Devil May Cry 5, Nier Automata, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and Jedi: Fallen Order devs reveal the tricks of the trade”

Break the Loop

[Read] Clear goals and organic paths: The Arkane guide to player agency - “Arkane Lyon's campaign director Dana Nightingale discusses how to empower players and earn their trust”

[Read] A restorative reading of Deathloop - My video glanced over Deathloop’s many positives to explore what I see as design flaws. This article goes the other way.

[Read] Deathloop Redefines Blackness In Video Games - “Good Black characters in gaming are rare, and extraordinary Black characters are even more so.”

[Read] Time loop games are evolving, and challenging a fantasy of perfection - “The time loop concept has been growing increasingly popular in games for a while now. Yet some of this year’s examples have helped refresh the format, by diving into its psychological and philosophical repercussions.”

The Business of Games

[Read] These are the video game studios leading the charge for a four-day workweek - “Crows Crows Crows, alongside a growing number of independent studios — Die Gute Fabrik, Young Horses, Kitfox Games, Armor Games, Ko_Op Mode — plus, Eidos-Montreal, are pushing back against such ingrained approaches to work.”

[Read] Wordle and IP law: What happens when a hot game gets cloned - Written before Wordle got bought by the New York Times, this Ars Technica piece wades into the murky legal waters of video game clones.

[Read] What the Activision Blizzard deal means for game devs and platforms - Since we last did a reading list, Microsoft took out its cheque book and dropped a cool 80 bil’ on Activision. Here’s some more details.

The Development of Games

[Watch | 13 mins] I Made 10,000,000,000 Games! - Jonas Tyroller gets a world record by using procedural generation to make 10 billion games. I like the comment, “so THAT’S how mobile games are made…”

[Read] Budgeting to Build Your Community - Smarty pants Victoria Tran, of Among Us fame, talks about paying for community and marketing.

[Read] Four Years of Celeste - Maddy Thorson reflects on the last four years, living in a post-Celeste world.

[Watch | 13 mins] Tomb Raider on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance is incredible - A seemingly impossible port of Tomb Raider 1 has appeared on the GBA. Modern Vintage Gamer uncovers how it was made and how it works.

The Playing of Games

[Read] Animal Crossing: The polite battleground for gaming's soul - “Games, I've often worried, do not always trust us very much. They don't trust us to enjoy them without buzzers going off and pop-ins erupting and points going up.”

The Art of Games

[Read] Black Hair in Video Games Is Terrible. These 3D Artists Are Changing That - “When Black gamers booted up Outriders last April, only four of the 24 hairstyle options for characters could conceivably be considered a Black hairstyle. Even worse, all of them fell under the tired tropes of minifros and dreads.”

[Watch | 18 mins] How to Animate a Basic Walk Cycle - Dan Root talks you through the basic, ahem, steps, to animating a walk. Good for games, as well as other types of animation.

[Read] Animal Crossing Furniture’s Surprising Designer Origins - This cute article tracks down the real-world inspiration for Animal Crossing’s tables and chairs.

[Watch | No Voice | 5 mins] What 24 Consoles Would Look Like if They Rendered Themselves - I kinda love this? Consoles “rendered within the limits of their colour palette, processing power, and hardware.”

The History of Games

[Read] Streets of Rage 2 Design Docs - These popped up on my radar. “These documents gave a deep insight into the game’s inner workings, technical aspects, designs and even some cut content.”

[Read] The eject button held all the power on the original Xbox - A simple, but interesting point, about the relative size of buttons on consoles.

Beyond Games

[Read] Fossils Reveal When Animals Started Making Noise - “Fossils reveal when the major types of sound-production—and sound-detection—structures appeared in the forerunners of today’s invertebrate and vertebrate creatures.”

[Watch | CC | 13 mins] When Hollywood Speaks Chinese, I Cringe - “Here is a problem rarely discussed, but should be relatable to anyone who speaks a language beyond English: Hollywood just doesn't seem to understand how non-English languages work.”

[Watch | 19 mins] Inside MKBHD's $1,000,000 Studio - This blows my mind a bit. Up your pledges people! I want a robot arm! It will help with GMTK. Promise.

No Friggin’ Thanks

[Watch | 23 mins] What the hell are NFT's? - I feel like this is the most clear and digestible explanation of this absurd fad. Watch if you’re still confused about bored apes and ugly lions.

[Read] NFT Fantasy: Why Items-as-NFTs Does Not Enable Transfer Of Assets Between Games - And what about using NFTs to transfer armour and swords between games? Beyond absurd, according to this article (and also basic logic).

[Read] Mapping the celebrity NFT complex - Did you see that clip of Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon talking about their bored apes? That cringey clip is just the tip of the iceberg…

[Watch | CC | 2 hours, 18 mins] Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs - You’ve probably seen this crop up on YouTube already, but it felt wrong not to include it. Dan Olsen goes really in-depth on Web3.