Reading List (February 2020)

Hello! Sorry for the radio silence for much of this month. It’s been a busy one.

I took a brief Valentine’s holiday, spent a couple days at a studio to consult on an upcoming game I can’t name, and hopped the train to London to be a judge for a prestigious award that I, uh, also can’t name! 

That was all happily in planned into the schedule.

What I couldn’t plan for was a member of my family suddenly becoming gravely ill, requiring multiple trips to various hospitals, and needing to look after other family members. Just yesterday I spent 12 hours straight in hospitals, so I’m pretty exhausted this morning. 

I appreciate your patience in this time. I’ve been working on a big video in every spare moment and I really hope to get it out before the end of the month. For now though, some juicy links.

Top Pick

[Read] King Knight’s Mobility - Yacht Club breaks down the mobility design of its final Shovel Knight hero, King Knight. This is a really fascinating read because it shows just how much iteration, problem solving, and change was required to get this character to work.

Designer Notes

[Watch | 17 mins] The Feature That Almost Sank Disco Elysium - Gamespot’s Audio Logs series is a great bunch of videos. This one gets ZA/UM’s lead designer to talk about the troublesome Thought Cabinet mechanic in last year’s bonkers RPG.

[Read] Luigi's Mansion 3 Developers On Money, Moral Choices And Luigi's Approach To Heroism - Kotaku asked the developers behind Luigi’s Mansion 3 some very thoughtful questions, and received some very interesting answers. Bonus Link to the Past development history from Nintendo, too.

[Watch | 15 mins] The Making of Titanfall 2’s Effect and Cause - GameBrain talks to Respawn Entertainment’s senior designer about the tech and design of Titanfall 2’s famously fun time travel level. 

Critical Hit

[Watch | CC | 18 mins] Examining CD Projekt Red's Overlooked Witcher Game - Hamish looks at that one Witcher game no one actually played, and gives it a deserving critical appraisal. 

[Watch | 16 mins] The Smash Bros. Game That Changed Everything - While Smash Brawl is sometimes seen as the black sheep of the franchise, Alax gives a pretty compelling argument for why it was the most important and impactful entry.

(Note: There are allegations that RelaxAlax is an abuser and racist. I might stop including him in the reading list. Lemme know what you think)

Culture Club

[Watch | CC | 15 mins] Meeting Blitzchung, the Hearthstone pro banned for his politics - People Make Games travelled to Hong Kong to chat to a player who got in trouble for speaking out. Impressive journalism right here.

[Watch | CC | 23 mins] Emulation, the Law, and You: Where the Hobby Ends and Crime Begins - Is it really true that if you have the original cartridge, you can download ROMs legally? That myth and more, broken down.

[Read] Meet the musicians who compose in Mario Paint - Forget Dreams, this here is the real user-generated powerhouse.

[Read] A new wave of indies are using games to explore climate change - Looking at games like Beyond Blue, Bee Simulator, and Temtem. There’s no bigger topic for games to tackle right now.

[Watch | CC | 6 mins] The truth behind "My Body is Ready" - Here’s the full story behind Reggie’s meme-icilous remark from E3.

History Corner

[Watch | CC | 17 mins] King's Questrospective - How Roberta Williams Designed A Game Changer - Worth it for the pun title alone. But also stellar knowledge from Sierra expert PushingUpRoses.

[Read | Long Read] Making Crash Bandicoot - This massive 13-part series of blog posts from ex-Naughty Dog Andy Gavin goes deep into the game’s creation, the problem of “Sonic’s Ass”, localising the game, tech troubles, and more. 

[Read] How Westwood's Long-Lost Blade Runner Adventure Game Landed on GOG - "For years everyone, including us, thought it was impossible to release due to scattered rights, technical issues, and lost source code”. Things change. 

[Read] A history of Simlish, the language that defined The Sims - For a long time I just thought they were speaking Swedish.

Business Lunch

[Read] What Does It Really Mean to Be an Indie Game? - A look at Jesper Juul’s new book, which aims to break down what independent games really are, and looks into their “quest for authenticity”.

[Read] Britain's Game Workers Are Largely White, Middle Class, and Depressed - Oh dear. The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment’s survey of game devs paints a pretty grim picture. But the Guardian has a slightly brighter outlook. 

[Read] I Had to Abandon My Game After 4 Years And It Nearly Broke Me - The perils of solo indie development. Painful stuff, but important reading for anyone planning to make a game.

Art and Audio

[Watch | CC | 15 mins] The Animation of Phoenix Wright - Wait, what animation? Phoenix Wright is like a slideshow! That’s why Dan’s new video is so good.

[Watch | 19 mins] How The Wind Waker Defined Cel Shading - If you liked last month’s video about Super Mario Galaxy 2’s water textures, you’ll dig this.

[Watch | CC | 7 mins] Luigi’s Mansion’s Ghost Capture - Mix n Jam turns his Poltergust towards Luigi’s Mansion, to make a staggeringly accurate Unity recreation. 

[Read] How Stanley Kubrick’s hexagonal carpet pattern is invading video games - The joy of hex

Beyond Bytes

[Watch | CC | 10 mins] The Visual Architecture of Parasite - The Oscar winning movie is all about verticality. This video explains it all.

[Watch | CC | 19 mins] The Tesla Stretch: How Branding Works - Tesla is like the new Apple in terms of cultish devotion and killer advertising. 

[Watch | 37 mins] The Sad Story of Robert Zemeckis & His Wonderful Toys - Robert Zemeckis went from Back to the Future to Forrest Gump to The Polar Express and so on. Patrick tracks his wild career rollercoaster.

[Watch | 14 mins] Is Joker Cinema? - An interesting twist on the video essay, worth watching if only as a formalist experiment. Basically, it’s all told through careful layering of interview footage, not the essayist’s own voice. 

[Watch | CC | 4 mins] How to make a movie look like one long shot - 1917 obviously isn’t shot in one long take (or even two). Here’s how the magic happens.

[Watch | 20 mins] Hollywood called me last year. Here’s how it fell apart - I found this very interesting, and as someone who has to figure out how to juggle YouTube and other projects, I can relate.