Reading List (March 2018)

Hello everybody! Hope you're having a wonderful March. Here's a whole bunch of articles to read and videos to watch.

In the trenches

[Read] How One Man Made the Indie Video Game Sensation Stardew Valley - Eric Barone opens up about the obsessive work that went into his charming farming sim.

[Read] Toxic Management cost an award-winning game studio its best developers - The Verge chronicles the slow downfall of Telltale games, and what went wrong at the top.

Making games

[Watch | CC] The Road To War | The AI of Shogun: Total War - Tommy Thompson has been working on a monstrous multi-part project to talk about how the AI in Sega’s strategy game works.

[Watch] Level Design Workshop: Designing Celeste - Celeste’s developers reveal all on making levels for Celeste.

[Read] Designing for problem solvers - SpellTower dev Zach Gage talks about how to improve tutorials by letting players solve problems themselves.

[Read] On Incoherent Game Systems - Over on Gamasutra, James Margaris gives examples of games where different game systems fail to mesh together.

[Read] OlliOlli's 'press x to land' and why the team decided to make it more forgiving - A tiny taste of the millions of minute decisions that go into making a great game like OlliOlli.

[Read] Practical guide on FPS level design - Lots of good tips and best practices. 

Analyse this

[Watch] Three Short Arguments on The Secret of Monkey Island - There’s lots to like about Ian’s love letter to Monkey Island 1.

[Watch] Why Dragon Quest Builders is a better building game than Minecraft - “Build” has become a key verb in a bunch of games. This YouTube video explains why Dragon Quest does it best.

[Watch] The Design Of Arbiter's Grounds - Still not sick of Zelda dungeon design? Here’s another take on one of Twilight Princess’s levels.

[Watch] Breaking Down Level Design in Celeste - Not from the dev, this time. Just a player, with some smart stuff to say about how Celeste works.

[Watch | CC] How Celeste Teaches You Its Mechanics - Good Game Design - Likewise, Snoman wants to show you how Celeste introduces new mechanics.

[Watch | CC] A Tale of Tarrey Town (How Breath of the Wild Builds a Better Future) - A lovely little video about Breath of the Wild’s most brilliant side quest. 

[Read] Ranking the Metal Gear games - These ranking lists are always fun for a laugh, a moan, and an argument.

[Watch] How Limbo & Inside Use Tone to Create Space - Dan Root breaks down the monochrome worlds of Playdead’s debut games. Like, literally breaks them down. Some cool visual effects in here.

Culture club

[Read] The Video Game Soda Machine Project - This blog catalogues screenshots of soda machines in video games. Because why not? 

[Watch] The Great Kinect Art Heist - Here's A Thing - A bizarre story about Kinect, art, history, colonialism, and more. Wonderfully told.

[Read] Campo Santo Blog - I love this! One of the main characters in Campo Santo’s next game is a black woman with natural hair. The devs talk about the cultural and technical challenges of showing this in the game.

Breaching the subject

[Read] Reimagining failure in strategy game design in Into the Breach - One of the best games this month was Subset’s new tactics game. Let’s start with a piece about how the devs flipped the script on strategy design.

[Watch | CC] Does Into The Breach Really Have Perfect Information? Why RNG Matters. - Then Adam explores deterministic games, perfect information, and RNG. I was gonna do something on this myself, but Adam beat me to it! So just go watch this.

[Read] Into the Breach: User Interface design - And here’s a great in-depth look at something most players never think much about: the interface. The game’s UI actually influenced and limited the design in interesting ways.

Get political

[Read] Call for Submissions — Underrepresented Puzzle Game Creators! - Jonathan Blow and pals are giving oodles of money to minority developers. Take a look, and maybe share this to someone relevant?

[Read] There's a huge problem with fighting the anti-video game debate with a #notallgames mentality - The White House took aim at games with guns. The industry fought back. IGN’s got an opinion on this response. 

[Read] How to create computer games for women - Important stuff. Read it.

[Watch] Age Ratings Across the World - Super Bunnyhop takes a look at how age ratings work in different countries. Fascinating stuff.

Beyond games

[Watch] Stalking for Love - Pop Culture Detective looks at a particularly grim trope, of stalkers getting their girl.

[Watch | CC] Ink Cartridges Are A Scam - You’ll never look at a printer in the same way.

[Watch] Blade Runner 2049: How Denis Villeneuve Created the Most Complicated Sex Scene of All Time - One of the most interesting parts of the new Blade Runner, broken down.

[Read] I Watched All 629 Episodes of The Simpsons in a Month. Here’s What I Learned. - I don’t 100% agree with this (I feel like Golden Age Simpsons had plenty of emotionally-driven episodes) but the stuff about Lisa is on point and slightly heartbreaking.

[Read] How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love - Wow, this is slightly nuts.

[Read] The Star Wars video that baffled YouTube's copyright cops - Online copyright is only going to get more complicated.