Reading List (September 2022) (Patreon)

Hello! Thank you for your well wishes earlier - I'm still not feeling very well, this one's a lingerer! Might have to do another 'rona test. But I'm resting up with games and movies and looking forward to returning to work properly next week.

In the mean time... articles! And videos! About games! Here's a jam-packed reading list with everything from loot boxes to jam games to bad jumps.

The Design of Games

[Read] Harvey Smith is in uncharted territory - "The Director of Arkane Studios talks about his career in games and lifelong obsession with immersive sims".

[Read] The creation of Tunic’s invaluable in-game manual - "I built a real-world version of the manual and then proceeded to destroy it. Folded it, ripped it, taped it, and stained it."

[Watch | 13 mins] Are Modern Games Designed to Waste Our Lives? - Certainly feels like it, at times!

[Watch | CC | 30 mins] Resident Evil 4's Design - Charlie continues his Resi revisit "Road to the Rocket Launcher", with my personal favourite game of the lot.

[Watch | 23 mins] The Jam Game I Learned The Most From - Vimlark looks back at one of his first ever game jam games, to see what you can learn from failure.

[Watch | 17 mins] Examining The Introductions Of Nemesis - Ben Plays Games compares the intros of Resident Evil 3's big ugly bloke - from the PS1 original and the recent remake.

[Watch | CC | 23 mins] The Problem With Mini-Maps - Razbuten's back on the open world train, with a rant about the little dotted line.

[Read] How I Was a Teenage Exocolonist built a better content warning system - More indie games are putting in trigger warnings. Here's one of the most in-depth.

[Read] The Door Problem of Combat Design - "Things go wrong. Instead of fighting in the arena, my friend steps back into the hall and fights from the doorway as the enemies funnel in."

The Business of Games

[Watch | 12 mins] A Casino For Kids - Is It Time To Ban Loot Boxes? - "Are loot boxes gambling, and do they carry the same potential for harm as gambling does?" Gamespot investigates.

[Read] Game trailers: breaking down a key discovery mistake - "Derek Lieu helps us deconstruct things you don't want to do on Steam."

[Read] The hidden pressure behind PowerWash Simulator - "FuturLab founder and CEO James Marsden discusses the game's origins, stepping out of Sony's shadow, and the trials of finding a publisher"

The Development of Games

[Watch | No Voice | 4 mins] CONTROL - Early Production Footage - Developers have been showing solidarity with the GTA 6 leak, by showing how their games looked during development. Here's Control in greybox environments and unfinished rooms.

[Watch | 16 mins] We Made 1,018 Games About AI to Prove a Point - Jonas shows off the best games from his Wowie Jam, where the theme was "collaborate with AI".

[Watch | 5 mins] Making of "Eyes Up" - Better late than never! Jelle Vermandere shows how he built a GMTK Game Jam entry, and this dev log has more style than most movies.

[Read] The making of Wildermyth - "We love the stories that are generated [in XCOM]. But we wanted a lot more detail about the soldiers"

[Watch | CC | 14 mins] The Bad Jump Design and 30 FPS Gravity of TMNT - Displaced Gamers cuts up the code to NES bomb Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to figure out why that jump was soooo bad.

The Playing of Games

[Watch | 17 mins] The History of Blind Gaming - A look at games made specifically for those without sight. Great accessibility coverage.

[Read] Ranking the 9 best stealth games - "The list is a compilation of games that skew toward the 'pure' side of the stealth genre, but it also includes phenomenal examples that allow for open-ended solutions".

[Watch | CC | 2 hours] Super Mario 64 - More Than a Game - "This videos examines the game's legacy through its outstanding gameplay, speedrunning, content creation, and obsession over the little secrets we once dreamt were real."

The Art of Games

[Watch | CC | 6 mins] The Procedural Animation of Gibbon: Beyond the Trees - Using maths to manipulate monkeys.

[Watch | CC | 3 mins] Make It "Pop" - Smash's Sakurai explains how to overlay different visuals for killer special effects

[Watch | 31 mins] Horizon is Ugly and Here's Why - It's a (long) hot take, but there's something to this idea that Horizon's mish mash of colours is visually unpleasant.

The History of Games

[Read] The legacy of shareware is everywhere - From Eurogamer, a brief history of gaming's try-before-you-buy business model

[Read] The Collectors Who Save Video-Game History from Oblivion - "The oldest video games are now about seventy years old, and their stories are disappearing".

[Watch | 38 mins] Franchise & Lows: Pitfall! - Atari's oddball platformer spawned a whole franchise of games about bouncing over crocs. Here's a look at the best and worst of them.

Beyond Games

[Watch | 26 mins] How Real is The Rehearsal? - Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal is one of the best shows I've seen in a long time. Watch it first, then check out this excellent break down.