Reading List (June 2022) (Patreon)

Hello!

Apologies for the one-day-delay on this one. I was just in Berlin and ended up utterly exhausting myself by walking around the city for about six hours straight. But I am awake now! And ready for a hand-picked selection of articles and videos on the games biz.

The Design of Games

[Watch | 17 mins] Unpacking Developers Break Down the Complex Systems Behind this Simple Game - Noclip talks to Witch Beam about the technical and artistic challenges of creating a game about unpacking boxes.

[Watch | CC | 9 mins] The Game That Teaches You How to Speedrun - HeavyEyed breaks down the design of the new first-person parkour gem, Neon White.

[Watch | CC |  41 mins] What Returning to Dark Souls Taught Me About Elden Ring - “While both games share obvious visual and mechanical DNA, they could not feel more different from one another—a revelation that has further complicated my views on both an old favourite, and a new classic.”

[Watch | CC | 17 mins] How Games Make "Boring" Movement Seem Interesting - “In this video, I explore some of the things that distract players while they walk, and discuss what works well, what could work better, and if any of this even matters.”

The Business of Games

[Read] Goodbye Zachtronics, Developers Of Very Cool Video Games - “Last Call BBS … will be the last new game Zachtronics will ever release. We spoke to founder Zach Barth to find out why.”

[Read] How to Make the Video Game Industry Greener - Wired looks at “a new book by researcher Ben Abraham [which] charts gaming’s path to carbon neutrality.”

[Read] Call of Duty Devs Tell Us What It’s Like to Make a Game in the Wake of a Mass Shooting - “We know video games don't cause real-world violence, but that hasn't stopped some game developers from feeling guilt about their work.”

[Watch | CC | 22 mins] The Ukrainian game devs trying to survive Russia’s invasion - “We meet some of the Ukrainian game developers living through the invasion of their home, from a refugee who escaped into Western Europe, to a fresh recruit in the Territorial Defence.”

[Watch | CC | 3 mins] S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Dev Diaries: Game Development During the War - It’s kind of bonkers that this is a video on the Xbox channel, in between loads of trailers and whatnot.

The Development of Games

[Watch | 17 mins] Making Lots of Levels for my Indie Game - I discovered this enjoyable dev diary about a physics-based boxing game. This new episode shows the power of using creativity to get around your limitations.

[Read] Platformer Toolkit: Behind The Code - I wrote a blog post about the code that drives my new interactive video essay, Platformer Toolkit.

[Watch | CC | 22 mins] Death Stranding's Biggest Problem - “How do you teach the AI to walk in a game that breaks so many conventions of how you move around the world?”

[Watch | 3 mins] 3 ways to make grass in 3 minutes - I promise you, “the history of how grass is made in games” is actually interesting.

[Read] Creating games for everyone: Introducing Unity Learn’s new accessibility course - Unity has produced an official course on game accessibility, which is Very Cool.

The Playing of Games

[Watch | CC | 38 mins] Can You Beat All Dark Souls Bosses In Alphabetical Order? - A fun video about a silly challenge with loads of glitches and skips.

The Art of Games

[Watch | CC | 9 mins] Why is Dragon Roost Island such a Bop? - 8-bit Music Theory says a lot of complicated words about this excellent Zelda tune.

[Read] Final Fantasy Is about Towns - “Towns don’t just serve a mechanical purpose by providing the party with goods and services; they tell the story of the world.”

The History of Games

[Watch | CC | 13 mins] The Accident that saved Nintendo - The story of the Game & Watch, told with great cartoon visuals.

[Watch | CC | 23 mins] Lost Video Games That Were Found - “Every now and then a little gaming miracle happens; lost video games are found and preserved for all to enjoy.”

[Read] The making of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory - “As the series' return sneaks up on us, we debrief Sam Fisher's finest outing with its creators.”

Beyond Games

[Watch | CC | 14 mins] The AI that creates any picture you want, explained - I now sort of almost kind of know how DALL-E (and others) works.

[Read] Playing Zork with DALL-E - A short Twitter thread about turning Zork’s text prompts into visuals using AI artwork. Neat!