Reading List (December 2023) (Patreon)

Hello! I’m winding down for Christmas and New Year celebrations. And what better way to kick back and relax than with a hand-picked collection of excellent articles and videos?

Thanks for your support in 2023. If you’ve been subscribed all year, then you have been recommended over 350 articles and videos! Here’s another 35 to peruse - and here’s to another year of excellent writing on game design, development, history, and culture.

Mark

The Design of Games

[Read] Regarding Cozy Games - "Cozy Games seem to keep, understandably, annoying people".

[Read] Doom At 30: The evolution of Doom through its first levels - "The ways it's tried to reinvent itself over the years paints a captivating portrait of a series trying to move with the times."

[Watch | 9 mins] How this game blew up with only voice chat - "Let's see how Lethal Company, a coop indie horror game, rose to Steam's top charts in only one month through their proximity chat and sound design."

[Read] Aonuma And Fujibayashi Talk Tears Of The Kingdom's Reception And Their Approach To The Timeline - "In some ways, it's a matter of vitality! When I look at Mr. Miyamoto, it's actually kind of frightening".

[Read] In praise of labyrinthine game design - "What I'm trying to do with this post isn't call for more mazes and labyrinths in games, but frame and advocate for a certain, secretive architectural sensibility".

[Watch | 28 mins] Puzzles with Soul: The Works of Tetsuya Mizuguchi - "Tetsuya Mizuguchi's games have a lot on their minds. Let's get into all of them and what Mizuguchi wants to communicate to the player."

[Watch | CC | 48 mins] Lies of P Critique - Joseph Anderson turns his attention to this year’s best Soulslike.

The Business of Games

[Read] How The Day Before went from Steam darling to disaster - "After spending months at the top of the platform’s most wishlisted list, the game’s release on Dec. 7 quickly led to a wave of immense blowback, tens of thousands of players seeking refunds, and the closure of the studio behind it."

[Read] The New Games Journalism, Same As The Old Games Journalism - "These are all cyclical discourses in video games, an industry with lots of history but no real desire to preserve it or look backwards."

[Read] Here we go... Stephen Totilo’s "thoughts on going independent to cover the video game scene."

[Read] The Game Awards Winner Speeches We Didn't Get to Hear - "We reached out to a number of the developers who hadn't gotten a chance to give their speeches for whatever reason, and offered them the chance to do so here on IGN".

[Read] Mostly Harmless - "Why would the games industry need to say anything about Palestine?"

The Development of Games

[Watch | 9 mins] How Mark Brown inspired me to spend 2 years making an RTS+RPG - My game dev series Developing is starting to influence other game makers. Here’s an example!

[Watch | CC | 31 mins] How a Game About Death Brought an Indie Studio to Life - "The documentary explores all the design decisions that Playdead made and shows how Arnt and Dino struggled to develop Limbo by themselves."

[Watch | CC | 11 mins] I Vanished for Months to Make this Game - aarthificial pressed pause on the game Astortion for a palette-cleansing side project.

[Watch | 7 mins] The Secret behind THAT Uncharted Animation - "In this break down of Nathan Drake's environment interactions, we'll learn how we can recreate these animations ourselves".

[Watch | 6 mins] Steam Dev Cheat Sheet - "The Steam Dev Cheat Sheet is a dense collection of best practices, magic formulas, and Steam knowledge."

The Playing of Games

[Read] The Best RPG of the Year Takes 80 Hours to Hit Its Stride - "I wasn’t in love with Octopath Traveler II when I reviewed it back in February. It was long, didn’t respect my time, and failed to make enough meaningful improvements upon its predecessor".

[Watch | CC | 57 mins] How I Finished My Gaming Backlog (One Year Later) - "A year ago, I made you all a promise. I told you that in one year’s time, for better or for worse, I was going to have given my absolute best effort on finishing my backlog".

[Read] The best games of 2023, picked by the NPR staff - "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom broke sales records, alongside blockbusters like Baldur's Gate 3, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder".

[Watch | 58 mins] Racism in Gaming - "It's not forced diversity or pandering, it's just the real world you live in finally being reflected in the fictional worlds we escape to".

The Art of Games

[Read] The Curious Possibilities of The Evil Within and Star Fox 64 - "It’s about the representation of giant, pulsing, violent brains that float in their own dimensions of space and time."

[Read] Becoming Hailey: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 actress Natasha Ofili and Insomniac on Deaf representation and more - "Hailey is strong, she is funny, she is kind and she is a supportive friend to Miles. She is also Deaf. "

[Watch | 44 mins] Perusing Pentiment's Boisterous Bibliography - Super Bunnyhop looks at the books that inspired Pentiment, by going through Obsidian’s in-game bibliography.

[Watch | 20 mins] The Vibes of Zelda: Twilight Princess - "The atmosphere and vibes of this game are like no other entry in the series."

[Watch | 13 mins] This 90s Sega Game Soundtrack Is CRAZY - Charles Cornell breaks down the music of Streets of Rage.

[Read] This year’s most poignant and powerful narratives were in video games - "In 2023 the most mature, poignant and thoughtful narratives I experienced were the interactive ones".

The History of Games

[Watch | 25 mins] Eclipse - The Demo That Sold 3D To Nintendo - "How a 17-year-old in the UK set the course for Nintendo’s future."

[Watch | 12 mins] History Of Rockstar Games - "Not content with just releasing some of the best rated and best-selling games ever made, Rockstar Games has influenced and permeated pop culture like few before it."

[Watch | CC | 16 mins] Mario Origins: How A Popeye Game Became Donkey Kong - "Before he was known as Super Mario, he was Little Mario, protagonist of Donkey Kong. But originally the game was going to star Popeye The Sailor".

[Watch | CC | 52 mins] Nintendo DS Retrospective - "A cozy look back at my favourite handheld family of systems."

[Watch | 5 mins] How the Nintendo Zapper worked in Slow Motion - "Gav cranks up the fastest phantom to show the simple yet fascinating approach to shooting ducks on your telly in the mid 80s."

Beyond Games

[Watch | CC | 11 mins] You'll never guess the most popular internet country code - "Have you ever stopped to think why the two-letter country codes in the world's websites are what they are? We have, and it turns out it's a fascinating tale with a lovely detailed map to stare at."

[Read] From The Last of Us to The Bear: Why are the best TV episodes always the ones without the main characters? - "These episodes could easily be described as "filler" if they weren’t so utterly excellent. So, why take the risk?"