Reading List (September 2023) (Patreon)

Hey all!

September was the month of exploring space (turns out it's mostly just procedurally generated deserts), getting mad at Unity, and seeing how many remakes Nintendo could fit into a single announcement.

Here's a bunch of articles and videos I enjoyed this month.

It's Full of Stars

[Watch | CC | 9 mins] The Bethesda Intro Problem Is Getting Worse With Starfield - "It's typical now that the slow, restrictive intros to Bethesda RPGs fail to convey the spirit of grand, open-ended adventure inherent to their massive worlds. With Starfield, it would seem this intro problem is getting worse, not better".

[Read] Starfield makes space travel feel way too safe - "The best sci-fi stories about space exploration emphasize those stakes — how even in societies where space exploration has become accessible and even normalized, it’s still extraordinarily dangerous."

[Read] Starfield is the death of videogames as we know them - "Starfield is a sweeping, exploration-filled RPG from Bethesda, true to the Skyrim and Fallout model, but there’s nowhere else to go with this kind of videogame."

[Read] The True Joy of Sandbox Games Is Breaking Them - "Starfield could be an unrivaled space game—if the developers let players violate the natural laws of the game world".

[Watch | CC | 12 mins] Starfield - The World's Edge - 2kliksphilip pushes at the boundaries of Starfield, so see what happens when you go beyond Bethesda's limits.

[Read] How realistic is Starfield? We ask the European Space Agency - "Our conversation revolved around two key points - What does entertainment media get right about space? And, more interestingly, what does it get wrong?"

[Read] My review of a warehouse I found on Earth’s Moon in the video game Starfield - A real-life warehouse worker checks out the OSHA violations of the future.

The Design of Games

[Read] The influences and surprising origins of Hypnospace Outlaw - "The authentic replica of the world wide web circa 1999 was originally designed to be little more than ornate level select screens in a stylish endless runner-style game".

[Read] Indie gaming is on the verge of an immersive sim eruption - "Games like Shadows Of Doubt, Fallen Aces and Gloomwood are merely the steam rising from the bubbling magma chamber that is indie immersive sim development".

[Watch | CC | 22 mins] Games that Break all the Rules - "Typically, fictional worlds strive for immersion. But there’s another kind of fictional world, the kind that shatters the confines of the status quo."

[Watch | 2 mins] The Origin of "Where's My Water?" - How do you end up with a game about a bathing crocodile? Form follows function...

[Watch | 13 mins] Developing South Park: The Stick Of Truth - Tim Cain tells stories about making the gross-out RPG at Obsidian.

[Read] The Unlikely Development Of The First Splinter Cell - Game Informer talks to the developers behind Ubisoft's original sneak 'em up.

The Development of Games

[Read] The missing middle in game development - "I want to explore why new indie game developers plunge themselves into much longer game development cycles."

[Read | Long Read] 40 years and I'm still here - Warren Spector (Deus Ex, Epic Mickey) looks back on "a long and fortunate career in game development"."

[Read] What the Creator of The Settlers Did Next After Leaving Ubisoft’s Disastrous Reboot - "The Settlers: New Allies is one of the most expensive games ever made in Germany. But sales, inevitably, were poor and now, half a year after launch, it looks like Ubisoft would rather forget the game ever happened".

[Read] Make and release lots of small games before making a big one - "The only piece of eternally relevant gamedev advice". And the advice I've sorely neglected in my game dev career... so far.

[Read] Chinese video games are on the rise, but I wish they got more respect - "China is the world’s biggest gaming market, where a culture of creativity has flourished – so please do not conflate companies and players with a repressive regime that cracks down on individual expression".

[Watch | CC | 15 mins] A Plague Tale: How The Rats Work - "The Plague Tale games are known for the swathes of rats that infest the lands, and do their best to kill the player and everyone else. We dig into detail on how the rats actually work, and how it ties back to the Micro Machines games of the early 1990s."

The Playing of Games

[Read] Why the ‘industrial revolution’ never came to Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - "Although the developers of Tears of the Kingdom afforded freedom in ways previously unimaginable in Zelda, and scarcely seen in video games as a medium, Tears of the Kingdoms does have its limits; and they tell us a lot about the developers’ priorities."

[Read] 14 upcoming video games you probably haven’t heard of - "Sick of space, shooting and samey franchises? Find something to grab you in our critics’ selection of the strangest, most interesting forthcoming video games we played at this year’s Gamescom".

[Watch | CC | 21 mins] The Future of Platformers at SAGE 2023 - The Sonic Amateur Games Expo has become a breeding ground for innovative new indie platformers. Hot Cyder checks out the line-up from this year's event.

The Art of Games

[Read] Johnny Cage can never die - "Scorpion and Sub-Zero may be the faces of the franchise, and Liu Kang its hero, but Johnny is critical to Mortal Kombat’s genesis."

[Watch | CC | 4 mins] The Perils of Interpolation - "The poses look great, and the timing is perfect! And yet, the animations look slow..." Smash Bros maker Sakurai explains all.

[Watch | CC | 12 mins] Top 10 Animations in Splatoon 3 - Dan Root looks at how Nintendo's paint-splattered shooter provides feedback through animation.

[Read] How Hollywood (Finally) Figured Out Video Game Adaptations - "With the success of ‘The Last of Us,’ ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie,’ and Peacock’s ‘Twisted Metal,’ Hollywood has raised the ceiling and the floor for video game adaptations".

The History of Games

[Read] 30 Years Ago Myst Introduced Us to an Unforgettable Abandoned World - "Playing through the original release only a little while ago, I realized that these worlds are the reason that I, and many others, have returned to this game so often over 30 years."

[Watch | 14 mins] Examining Assassin's Creed's Roots in Prince of Persia - "After the release of Sands of Time, Ubisoft Montreal headed up by Patrice Desilets and Jade Raymond developed a tech demo for a new Prince of Persia title, codenamed Prince of Persia Assassins"

[Read] The quest for Sky Skipper, the rarest Nintendo arcade machine in the world - "How a dedicated collector rallied an international team to track down the long-forgotten 1981 title and painstakingly recreate the original cabinet".

[Watch | CC | 19 mins] The Physics Nightmare and Bizarre Jumping of Strider - Behind the Code finds out exactly why it's so damn hard to do the triangle jump in Capcom's NES game.

Beyond Games

[Watch | CC | 11 mins] Remember When 3D Animation Looked Like This? - A look at that weird time in Hollywood where CGI Smurfs had ultra realistic pores and eyelashes. The dark days.