Reading List (October 2023) (Patreon)

Yo, yo, yo. Mark here with your reading list for October.

I’ve got stuff on this month’s big games: Spider-Man 2, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and Super Mario Wonder. (We’ll have to wait a bit for Alan Wake 2 critiques). But also videos and articles about all sorts of design and development topics I think you’ll dig.

Enjoy!

Oh yeah - Patreon now has a handy "Collections" system, so you can find every Reading List - going all the way back to 2016 - in one handy place.

Spider-Assassin Wonder

[Read] Insomniac Has Cracked the Code to Spider-Man, But Will Marvel Listen? - "After decades of comics, TV shows and movies, the PlayStation Games offer something not even the well-received films have managed."

[Read] Spider-Man 2 is style over substance (and I love it) - "With this game, I think I may have figured out why the studio attracts so many ardent fans around the world."

[Read] Going Back to Basics, Assassin's Creed Mirage Loses the Essentials - "In the run-up to Mirage’s release, I kept hearing through official and unofficial channels that it would be a game that took us "back to basics." I spent months wondering what that meant".

[Read] Assassin’s Creed Mirage Looks Backwards When It Should Leap Forward - "Rather than embrace modern stealth design and make a sneaky Assassin’s Creed for the current day, developer Ubisoft Bordeaux has crafted a throwback to the earliest days of the series."

[Read] An exploration of the original Assassin's Creed, an overture rooted in method acting - "Going back now to the 2007 game that started it all, there's almost no part that hasn't been replaced in the years since."

[Read] Ask the Developer Vol. 11, Super Mario Bros. Wonder - The latest Ask the Dev goes deep into the design and development of Mario Wonder.

[Watch | French CC | 3 mins] Pourquoi le saut de Mario est bien plus complexe que vous ne le pensez ? Comprendre en trois minutes - I was interviewed for Le Monde about the evolution of Mario’s jump, from Donkey Kong to Wonder. Sorry - French readers only on this one! 

The Design of Games

[Read] The (miniature) making of Cocoon: how to make a complex puzzle game feel easy - "Somehow, I find myself flowing through Cocoon like I'm being poured out of a bottle"

[Read] George Fan, creator of Plants vs Zombies, on design and his new game about the greatest fact in the world - Eurogamer chats to George Fan, the super smart designer behind PvZ.

[Read] Cassette Beasts - Design & Expectations - The designers behind this Poke-like discuss how game devs set, meet, and exceed player expectations.

[Read] If Anthem is the "anti-BioWare game", then James Ohlen is correcting the balance - "The hugely influential design director talks Baldur’s Gate, his next RPG, and the abandonment of the BioWare model."

[Watch | CC | 9 mins] Playable Villains | How Games Make YOU the Bad Guy - "Vividly venturing into a vile void as I cover a few versions of villainous playable avatars in video games. Villains. But you can play as them."

[Read] Open-World Storytelling (Struggles) - "Typically in these newsletters I try to share what wisdom I’ve accrued from experience… but this time I’d like to be a little more candid and share aspects of this game that are still ongoing challenges for us."

[Read] Get Good: How to Write a Roguelike Without Losing Your Mind - "Their procedurally-generated looping structure is a fantastic mechanism for storytelling, but can also pose a real challenge when it comes to designing and implementing a narrative"

[Listen | 1 hour, 25 mins] Clint Hocking, creative director - I’ve been enjoying Simon Parkin’s "My Perfect Console" podcast, where he interviews people through the lens of five favourite games. This one with Far Cry 2 designer Clint Hocking is a good entry.

The Business of Games

[Read] The new worst gaming trend: killing our favorite games to replace them with sequels - "The biggest games of the last decade are being wiped off the internet for no good reason."

[Read] Is there an indie games bubble? - "The issue of discoverability—the chance to get your game in front of the eyes of a player who might want to play it—still persists in indie games."

[Read] "They don’t care": Inside the triumphs and failures of accessible gaming hardware - "How custom and adaptive controllers serve players with disabilities – and how steep costs and bad attitudes threaten the good they can do".

[Read] Why Final Fantasy XIV failed, and how it recovered - "Everybody knows some version of the story around Final Fantasy XIV: it came out, it wasn’t very good, it was remade as A Realm Reborn, and now it’s beloved".

The Development of Games

[Read] On Evaluating Godot - Slay the Spire developer Mega Grit did an internal game jam to see if Godot could replace Unity. Here’s what they learned.

[Watch | 5 mins] Finding Strangers To Playtest Our Game - I loved this video about playtesting the platformer TetherGeist (a GMTK Game Jam alum!) at a farmer’s market. Genius way to get completely fresh playtesters.

[Watch | 34 mins] Training AI to Play Pokemon with Reinforcement Learning - A super detailed, well-edited video about a mad AI project.

[Watch | CC | mins] OpenAI’s ChatGPT Makes A Game For $1 - ChatGPT alone can’t make a good game. But what if you have an army of ChatGPTs, each dedicated to a small part of game development, all working together?

[Read | Long Read] How To Make Good Small Games - 12 thoughts on how and why to make tiny games.

[Watch | CC | 38 mins] The Making of the Burger King Games - What should be a silly documentary on some stupid games is actually an interesting look at the world of for-hire game development.

The Playing of Games

[Read] Cyberpunk’s Critical Reevaluation Feels Rushed - "I’m enjoying myself in Cyberpunk 2077, and that bothers me."

[Watch | CC | 20 mins] The Beauty of Games With Dead Worlds - "Calling a world ‘dead’ usually isn’t a compliment. But maybe it should be. A meditation on games with stunning and creative worlds that have, in their own way, died."

[Read] ‘I can’t kill a wolf but will happily watch a Sim drown’: murder and morality in video games - "From being unable to harvest ‘little sister’ characters but happy to kill others freely, to playing the Legend of Zelda as a vegan – gaming ethics are complex and highly personal".

[Watch | 37 mins] How System Shock's Reboot Wrestles With Adapting Its Legacy - Errant Signal looks at this year’s System Shock remake, and the 1994 original.

[Watch | CC | 20 mins] How Game Reviews Actually Affect You - "Video game reviews and opinions are practically inescapable these days and frankly, they have become a massive part of the overall experience, to me. But what exactly does that do to our perception of games and is it a bad thing?"

The Art of Games

[Read] Keeping World Consistency - "The "sacred rule" of pixel art dictates that you shouldn’t mix resolutions. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, not quite."

[Watch | CC | 24 mins] SAMPLING in Video Game Music - "Delving into the methods that game composers used to make sound, how they sourced their samples, and how they were implemented from the NES, SNES, etc onwards".

[Read] Bringing Art into the Fold - Peter Molyneux is the latest game developer to start documenting his process and past. He’s doing it as a written blog, rather than a video series though. There’s a few posts to check out - this one’s about using art as inspiration.

The History of Games

[Watch | 12 hours] Video Game Time Capsule: The Complete History of Gaming - Yes, you read that time stamp correctly. There’s actually an even longer version (12 hours is YouTube’s maximum, it turns out) with even more info on the history of games. I’ll admit I haven’t watched the whole thing… and I’m not sure when I’ll ever watch this. One day!

[Read | Long Read] A deep dive into the production of Criterion’s Black, and its cancelled sequel - For Burnout developer "Criterion’s first foray into first person action, […] they sought to do for shooters what they’d brought to racing games".

[Read] Metal Gear Solid at 25: ‘It played a big part in making games grow up’ - "Game developers, musicians and artists reflect on Hideo Kojima’s landmark political stealth-thriller on its 25th anniversary"

[Read] How Call of Duty Reinvented The First-Person Shooter - "What began as an attempt to beat Medal of Honor at its own game turned into a monolithic franchise with over 400 million sales across 30 different games"

[Read] Looking back at the legacy of Remedy's Max Payne 2 - "Far from being tarnished by time, the intricacies of Max Payne 2 still continue to inspire developers across genres today."

[Read] Inside Nintendo in the 1990s: Star Fox, late nights and making the N64 - Eurogamer talks to Western developers who worked with the big N.

[Read] Evergrace, A Forgotten FromSoft Classic - "I experienced a strange moment of déjà vu when I first set foot on the Altus Plateau in Elden Ring…"

Beyond Games

[Read] Weird A.I. Yankovic, a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning - "What if every Weird Al song was the original, and every other artist was covering his songs instead? With recent advances in A.I. voice cloning, I realized that I could bring this monstrous alternate reality to life."

[Listen / Read] Whomst Among Us Let the Dogs Out AGAIN - The absurd story of iteration and inspiration behind Who Let The Dogs Out.