Reading List - September 2016 (Patreon)

Grab a cup of your favourite beverage, turn off all distractions, settle down, and enjoy some awesome video game analysis from around the web.

Fans, success, and Undertale

Perverted Sentimentality: An Analysis of Undertale - hbomberguy shows how Undertale's narrative is about being a fan, but not losing sight of why you loved something in the first place.

Retrospective on Undertale's popularity - that message didn't really get through - the game's got one of the most manic fan bases since Sonic the Hedgehog. Toby Fox talks about the sudden surge of Undertale's popularity in this heartfelt blog.

Like a thunderclap to a small dog, all of this attention stressed me out. At times, I wished I had a way to quell the attention. I felt a strange powerlessness. (And guilt, for feeling stressed when the success of the game SHOULD be something I’m nothing but ecstatic about.)

Inside the Making of BioShock Series With Creator Ken Levine - Rolling Stone conducted a brutally honest interview with Ken Levine, who also talks about the psychological pain of making popular stuff.

If I could still get paid, I would make games and never ship them. I don't enjoy shipping games. I think it's kind of dreadful. You're exposing yourself in a very real way. You're saying, "This is what I worked on, now go make a judgment about me and my work." That's not always fun. The real, warm experience is being with the team and making it.

And all that reminded me of Davey Wreden's blog / comic on the success of Stanley Parable. How the intense attention made him anxious and stressed.

I've found this to be A Thing™, too. We imagine that being successful and popular would be infinitely awesome but it's not without its own struggles and anxieties. Imposter syndrome, magnifying that one negative comment in a sea of positive ones, expectations for the next one, etc.

I remember when the dude who made Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyen, pulled the game off the App Store. He said the attention "is extremely uncomfortable", and he wanted his life to return to normal.

At the time, people online scoffed that a person would kill off the game that was making them incredibly rich. But, hey, fame and success isn't all that it seems.

YouTube heroes

Why Hammer Bros. are THE WORST - A funny blue puppet breaks down exactly why this one enemy from the Mario games gives everyone so much trouble. A nice piece how enemies are designed to combat Mario's abilities (watch this space).

Errant Signal - Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - Chris goes deep into exactly why Deus Ex's politics are so messy and weird. The thing about the Icarus motif making, essentially, zero sense is very good.

Does Metroid: Other M Still SUCK? - We all know Metroid: Other M's story is balls. Turning fearless bounty hunter Samus into a whimpering little girl was just the worst. But Charlie puts that aside to look directly at the gameplay. How does it hold up?

Also, check out Charlie's analysis of the fan game AM2R. Which I still haven't played. Shame on me.

Devil May Cry 4 - Designing a Great Boss Fight - Turbo Button offers up his usual mix of in-depth analysis and silly nonsense, when dissecting a single boss fight from DMC 4. Also, some good comparisons with DmC's bigger, puzzle-driven boss battles.

Why Abzu Might Be the Most Important Game for Kids in Years - Writing on Games talks about Abzu's strengths as a game for young children. Good stuff, but introducing a child to gaming without Nintendo is tantamount to child abuse, Hamish.

A closer look at The Harvest in Deus Ex - this is definitely one of the more interesting side quests in Mankind Divided. It made me want a full cyberpunk spin on LA Noire. Heather Alexandra breaks it down in this video for Kotaku.

The creation of the ESRB - The creation of the ESRB in America was an important step in the history of video game content and controversy. Good knowledge to have.

Creating time for atmosphere - Game Array talks about the important role of down time in games. I mentioned this before when I praised Life is Strange's quiet sections, and his point about sailing around in Assassin's Creed 4 is on point. Gave me stuff to think about in regards to my Prague video…

Words and pictures

Design details in virtual environments - This article was one of the things that inspired my episode on Prague. It shows just how much detail and design goes into the smallest aspects of games like Grand Theft Auto - and how I never really noticed any of this stuff. If you feel the same, make up for it now by flicking through this gorgeous gallery of virtual junk.

Deus Ex Gets Air Vents All Wrong, According To An Architect - Deus Ex games are filled with four-foot wide vents that weave through banks, enemy compounds, and Interpol offices. They're also completely fictional, says an architect. I love this sort of article.

DOOM (2016) - Graphics Study - This is just too much for my tiny golf ball-sized brain. How a game can do this much stuff, 60 times a second, is beyond me. It's magic.

Adrian Courrèges did the same thing for Grand Theft Auto V.

Battlefield 1 and Modern Memory - Zam's John Brindleg explains why making a game out of World War 1 feels quite different to the other conflicts we've seen in games.

What a dinosaur's mating scream sounds like - A lot has been said, written about, and criticised about how No Man's Sky makes stuff look different - this article is about how Hello Games made stuff sound different. Interesting.

Scroll Back: The Theory and Practice of Cameras in Side-Scrollers - the developer of Mushroom 11 (a really cool game - looking forward to the iPad version in 2017!) goes crazy in-depth on how cameras work in 2D games. So many GIFs!

Oil It or Spoil It - we all know about juice: the extra feedback and effects that makes games feel more fun and responsive. Fortress of Doors proposes a new term, oil, to refer to little things that file the annoying corners off of games.

That thing where you can jump off a platform, even if you're a few pixels off the edge? That's oil.

A Game Player's Manifesto - Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield tears free to play games to pieces in his manifesto - and then offers some suggestions on how these games can improve.

How BioShock 2: Minerva's Den Helped Shape Walking Simulator Games - Walking sims were a thing before Minerva's den, but sneaking one (sorta) into a big mainstream game like Bioshock 2 was a big deal, and is an important part of Gone Home's lineage.

Facebook, Intel come out on top at AI-only Doom deathmatch battle royale - the idea of massive firms fighting each other by building Doom bots is just… delicious. What a weird universe we live in.

Wait, that's not a video game!

1 Brilliant Moment of Tension - The movie Sicario is like watching an elastic band stretch and stretch and stretch. In this video, CineFix breaks down one defining moment of painful tension in the film.

The Marvel Symphonic Universe - You've probably seen Every Frame a Painting's video on Marvel's unremarkable music. But you might not have see Dan Golding's equally interesting response video, A Theory of Film Music.

Alien - H. R. Giger's Beautiful Monster - More goodies from Kaptainkristian. All game nerds owe it to themselves to see Alien and Aliens - this series is hilariously influential on video games.

Die Hard Editing Concepts - What we can learn about movie editing from a weird editing workshop bonus feature on a Die Hard DVD.