Reading List (January 2024) (Patreon)

Happy new year! It’s probably a bit late to say that - but hey, it’s the first reading list of 2024.

As always, this is a carefully curated list of articles, videos, podcasts, and more - all stuff that I recommend you check out. And it’s exclusively for people who back GMTK and help support me in my mission to make free, high quality game design information.

This month I’ve got stuff on that excellent new Prince of Persia Metroidvania, some leftover articles about last year’s games, plus lots of other random bits and bobs.

Mark

The Design of Games

[Read] Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown Fixes The Worst Thing About Metroidvanias - "The genre’s notorious for making players retrace old paths, but Ubisoft Montpellier’s latest makes the process more bearable".

[Read] ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Writers Break Down the Craft of Video Game Sex and Romance - An interview with Baudelaire Welch, lead designer for the companion character and romance quests in Baldur’s Gate 3

[Watch | 15 mins] LADS - An Analysis Of Difficulty Spikes - Darkfry talks about how difficulty spikes can be used for storytelling purposes.

[Watch | 9 mins] The Origin of VATS - "I talk about the Fallout ‘called shot’ feature, which was renamed VATS from Fallout 3 and onward. I talk about where the feature came from, what we were trying to do with it, and how players could benefit from it."

[Read] Nintendo’s design guru Shigeru Miyamoto: ‘I wanted to make something weird’ - "Few people have influenced global pop culture as much as the creator of Mario and Zelda, widely considered the father of modern gaming. But when you have changed the world, what comes next?"

[Read] The Making of COCOON's Minimalistic, Synth-Filled Universe - "An in-depth conversation with Erwin Kho and Jakob Schmid about making their award-winning game"

[Listen] Using All of Your Tools with Kevin Poupard (Jusant) - I was invited to be a guest co-host on this episode of the Eggplant podcast, to chat about DON’T NOD’s new climbing game.

The Development of Games

[Watch | 35 mins] A Sonic the Hedgehog RPG?! - Ex-Bioware dev Mark Darrah discusses the development of that oddball DS game, The Sonic Chronicle: The Dark Brotherhood.

[Watch | CC | 21 mins] Life After 76: Why this Veteran Bethesda World Designer Went Solo - "We talk to Nate Purkeypile about the reception to Fallout 76, why he left Bethesda after 14 years of crafting worlds there, and what it's like making a solo open world game "The Axis Unseen" using Unreal."

[Read] Mimimi Games revived a genre, pushed it forward, and then shut down - "Mimimi Games didn’t set out to make a trilogy of stealth strategy games. But once the studio shut its doors in December, a trilogy of stealth strategy games is the prevailing legacy it left behind."

The Playing of Games

[Read] ‘Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’ Skillfully Imagines A Persian Fantasy - "While playing in the game’s impressive Farsi dub, I’m increasingly impressed with the amount of detail and ingenuity the developers have implemented".

[Read] Can game design help you beat The Traitors? - Eurogamer chats to a contestant on The Traitors to discuss the social deduction TV show’s design and meta.

[Watch | 1 hour, 30 mins] The Obsession with Bad Games - The history and culture of discussing bad video games.

[Read] The 10 Most Accessible Video Games of 2023, Ranked - "As the year ends, Inverse examines some of the most accessible games of 2023, highlighting exactly what made them great."

[Read] Doorman’s holiday: a security guard’s take on stealth games - "As a bouncer, you might not think that trying to outwit guards would be relaxing for me – but stealth games do make me think about my job a little differently".

The Art of Games

[Watch | CC | 14 mins] 3D Rigging is Beautiful, Here's How It Works! - "Rigging is the key to making a 3D character ready to animate, but everyone finds it so intimidating. Even I was afraid of it at first. But now I find it beautiful, so I want to show you how it works!"

[Watch | 12 mins] What Makes This Sound So Cute? - "I loved the soundtrack to Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and I just had to break down one of the best moments from the game: The Piranha Plants on Parade music."

[Watch | CC | 24 mins] How Games Have Worked for 30 Years to Do Less Work - "We explore the evolution of culling and visibility determination in video games, building on work started over 30 years ago, and evolving with every generation of hardware."

[Watch | No Voice | 4 mins] floating & spinning - "What is it about objects in video games floating and spinning that's so....hypnotic?"

The History of Games

[Read] Papers, Please: 10 Years Later - "Papers, Please, subtitled "A Dystopian Document Thriller," was for some the first time they played a game whose core design ethos challenged their worldviews and understanding."

[Read] Doom at 30: what it means, by the people who made it - "In 1993, a team of five coders released what would become one of the most influential video games ever made. Three decades on, they explain how they did it".

[Watch | CC | 24 mins] The Alan Wake We Never Got: An Open-World Survival Horror Epic - "In this video, we explore the announcements, development and shift in design for the game"

[Watch | 54 mins] The History of Chris Sawyer - "A documentary detailing the complete history of Chris Sawyer and his games: Transport Tycoon, RollerCoaster Tycoon and Chris Sawyer's Locomotion."

Beyond Games

[Watch | 6 mins] How to Detect AI Images (and why it doesn't matter) - Hank Green discusses the difficulty of detecting AI images - and how it’s only going to get harder.

[Watch | CC | 12 mins] The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall of X - A look at X. The letter, not the social network. But also the social network.

[Watch | CC | 15 mins] Why Studio Ghibli Films Feel So Different - "To celebrate the theatrical release of The Boy and The Heron, let's take a look at the differences between Western story structure and the story structure used by Hayao Miyazaki and other anime directors."