#(why would it be using the internet during cutscenes tho??)
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theygender ¡ 1 year ago
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I finally got Baldur's Gate 3 but why does my gaming laptop run it like ass 😭
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theghostbeaters ¡ 4 years ago
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my timeline of thoughts during my tlou 2 play through (bad and good and maybe even some silly) just let me vent because i can’t stop thinking about it tbh
- i was away from the internet for months because i didn’t want to be spoiled for anything, so when i started to play i had only the deceitful trailers to go by
- the beginning felt pretty normal for the last of us. they started you in the town and then on patrol for your hour of tutorial basically. i also remember thinking the recap of the first game was so nice because i liked seeing their younger selves in the new graphics
- abby was introduced, and like i said i had no clue what was going on because i had not been spoiled so my mind was going a mile a minute on wtf abby and co. were up to. when they spotted jackson my initial thought was maybe they do want joel and they will be the main antagonists? joel and ellie will have to fight them??? but because of the trailers, death of any sort wasn’t on my mind.
- i also had a very odd and pure hatred for owen’s voice, lol. i don’t know what it was but omg from the moment he spoke till his last breath i would always be like “why is he speaking like that??” in the back of my head.
- that scene happened. i’m a crier i’ll admit, but this was something else. I felt shocked, nauseous, numb. I don’t think I actually even cried till I saw the tombstone i was so taken aback by the way they went about this. I don’t care if they are fictional characters. It has been 7 years since the first game came out and almost 5 years that they released the first trailer for part 2. I did not wait this long, excited to see two of the most important characters to me in such realistic graphics get their fucking head caved in. at the very very least a fade to black and then to the tombstone would have gotten the same reaction you wanted from me, but it would have been done in a way less cruel way.
- i took about a 3 hour break. i could not get that image out of my head and it was really starting to upset me more then any media should. i don’t care or want to hear about any walking dead or apocalypse setting trope. it will never be edgy, deep, or meaningful to kill a favorite character in that manner. I want to state that again. In that manner. If they had killed joel in a more tactful way I could have possibly liked the game more.
-i remember thinking it felt forced. like the creators wanted this narrative so badly they seemed to go through hoops and hurdles to get there. there was a random horde that seemed to disappear as quick as it came, abby just gets lucky and has joel and tommy save her and then they go straight to the lions den? would joel from the first game be so quick to do that? Wait was she 100% sure just from two peoples names this was the guy she wanted? Ellie gets there just in time to see the final blow and then the others only get there just in time to miss everything and not be able to help? Whats going on??? This feels too structured and not genuine?? 
- going into his house was just as painful. i’m sorry but i’m going to bring this back up a lot-  if they would had just killed him in a more tactful manner i would have praised the way these little scenes were done. grabbing his watch, ellie smelling his clothes, seeing the pictures of sara and ellie, looking at his workshop and seeing how well he can carve! I couldn’t appreciate it the way I wanted to because I couldn’t get that image out of my head. i was literally bawling the entire time. 
-REVENGE TIME BEGINS:
+so the first scene was set: ellie wanted to go to seattle for revenge, dina was going to go with her, and tommy had already left. I remember having two thoughts here
  +“please tell me its going to be more then ellie just going on a revenge spree and then at the end she doesn’t kill abby because morals / murder is bad / not everything is black and white kind of tropes.” 
  +and “i have a wild feeling tommys gonna be like the only person that makes it out alive. he did it in the first game somehow hes gonna weasel his way free in this one.”
-ELLIES SEGMENTS:
+the graphics are amazing the sceneries are some of the most beautiful i have seen in a game. and it didn’t stop there. every area was amazing. I think most can agree to this. 
+i was determined, no matter what else the game threw at me i was going to see it through to the end and try very hard to visualize it the way the creators wanted it to be visualized. even if i didn’t agree or didn’t like parts, i figured hey the first game was so good this has to revive itself.
+i really liked the gameplay, it was a finer tuned version of the first game. i also liked the idea of the map and how it actively showed you different locations and crossed them out when you were done. but in the back of my head i was thinking “wow this would have all been so neat in the first game”. I shouldn’t be thinking about the first game. I should be enjoying this one.
+i was getting concerned none of the new characters were getting as much character development and love as some of the characters in the first one. I liked dina a lot, and by the very end of the game she did feel pretty rounded out (i especially liked her in the farm segment)  but the beginning and middle seemed almost more focused on “this is ellies girlfriend” instead of “this is dina”. I felt the same with jesse. I liked him but nothing stood out as much as it could and should have. I got more from tess in the short amount of time she was in the first game.
+there were certain segments that felt way more horror like and scary then in the first game and I loved them a lot. The new enemy (shambler) was cool and the settings where they used red lighting looked amazing. I also really loved the new take on stalkers. They were way harder to find and I found myself on edge to get jumped by one during those sections. They funny enough reminded me of dead space stalkers and i thought they were an improvement from the first games.
+at this point i pretty much understood what the creators were going for plot wise, but i personally just didn’t think it was needed. 1) i’m confident the majority of hardcore last of us fans already understand the concept of how every character can be good and bad and that not everything is black and white. we didn’t need to see one beloved character die horribly and the other be in that much pain and lose herself to understand that. 2) did we not pretty much already cover this concept in the first game? but....better? you remember...the ending?
- ELLIES FLASHBACKS:
+ of course I enjoyed them. its what i needed from a sequel. its what the whole game should have been, at least for me personally. the birthday flashback was the highlight of the entire game. i needed it so badly after the mind numbing, emotionally exhausting, weird out of place plot was putting me through. I was glad to finally see how ellie felt about the ending of the first game. but trying to crunch all that in 4 cutscenes? I just don’t feel like it was enough. you basically gave me one scene per year of joel and ellies relationship and you felt like that was enough to let me digest almost 5 years they spent in jackson?
- ABBYS SECTIONS:
+call me an optimist or maybe just stupid i’m not sure but when it rolled over and said “hey take over and check out the life of joel’s killer” my first thought was okay so i was right they want a “”nothing is black and white”” narrative but maybe doing it this way will be new and fresh? I can get through this and enjoy it? .... Its just not a fully possible reality and how could it be? had it been the first game in the series maybe it would had worked, but of course no matter how hard I tried I just felt disassociated from abby because I was already close to joel and ellie. I understood her reasons. I understood the narrative you were going for. I understood the damn parallels. I’m not an evil person that would just laugh about what happened to her dad, but how can you not understand as writers that a huge majority might be able to understand it, but still won’t be able to enjoy it. It felt so pushed and shoved into my face that I couldn’t enjoy it if i wanted to because the game just kept screaming “LOOK AT THE PARALLELS THO!!!”
+abbys dad seemed forced and out of place too. when abby and co. first killed joel i didn’t even think fireflies tbh. I thought it was something he did before he met ellie, or something he did during the 5 years in jackson. like yeah i got it, its not the worse backstory in the world but when put in context to the first game it just doesn’t make sense to me to use as the narrative you want to portray in the second game. maybe i’m nitpicking here but from all the personal notes and all the tapes you can read and listen to about the fireflies in the first game it makes it hard to believe the majority of fans would care for the second games narrative at all. they already made their decisions. it at the very least just seems like bad salesmanship? but maybe they already knew that and thats why the trailers were all lies? (just my thoughts at the time remember) 
+and oh god was the character development even worse for abbys friends. at least they tried to give abby a rounded character development that mirrored ellies but if you think ellies friends barely got character development, abbys friends got almost zero. I didn’t care about a single one. they felt so flimsy and husk like. “this is the boy she likes” “this is a medic friend” “this guy likes sex alot” “this is dog, so of course you like dog”
+I mean its great everyone was able to be so different. abby is muscular, ellie is a lesbian, there were many poc, dina is jewish, they brought in a trans character....but how can i enjoy any of it when more than half of these characters felt put in just to be there instead of well rounded characters you can appreciate for good or bad?
+the sex scene with her and owen was the scene where i personally felt myself giving up. it felt so much like this game wanted to be an HBO classic instead of just a video game that i felt myself detaching even more. (also whats up with owens voice??? lol)
+GROUND ZERO was a very good chapter. That shit was spooky in all the good ways, it felt a lot like dead space with the plastic everywhere, THE BIG ASS MONSTER HAD ME ON MY KNEES. The chase scene up to the actual boss fight was A+. Here is the one catch though - I forgot I was playing as abby. It felt more like just playing first person. Not a character at all. I don’t think that is how you want your game to be played, and no it wasn’t my intention. 
+I wish yara and lev had gotten more screen time. the game was so focused on the abby vs ellie thing and shoving it down your throat that most the side characters got washed out, these two included. Their story was interesting and it would had been nice to see more of them instead of whatever the weird love triangle abby had going on with her two friends I couldn’t care less about. (i stg chances were given, but as i previously stated they felt more like husks of characters then fully rounded ones.)
+getting hunted by tommy was actually a pretty cool highlight of the game for me. and even for a narrative i didn’t personally like it was a good idea to do! it reminded me of the sniper section (but holy hell tommys a better shot lol) and david’s hide and seek section in the first game which i thought was very well done. 
+this is when i went “oh maybe i was wrong, tommys gonna die. i give him a 20% chance of survival now that abby saw his face
-THEATER TIME
+why in the all out hell would you ever think it would be a good idea to tell the player to go after ellie? no matter what narrative? lmao. I died here the most literally for the soul fact i was scared there might be some kind of choice so i wouldn’t mash QTEs as fast as i normally would. and when i found out no, you just gotta power through it i literally found myself going through this 10 minute segment going “but i don’t want to do this”, “i really dont want to do this”, “do i have to do this?” “why do i gotta do this?” and yes i still understood your narrative but it doesn’t matter. it was just awkward. 
+This is where personally I would have put the cali segment if I really wanted to go with a narrative I still say didn’t need to happen because we already went through it in the first game, and then the happy farm bit at the end. 
-FARM
+i felt the game was going on too long and i was literally screaming at my screen to just end my suffering when i realized there was more after seattle. adding the extra PTSD scene just felt like an added fuck you towards the fans. I said it once, I’ll say it 1000x that scene with joel was seared into my brain already. I didn’t need that literal jumpscare. I already knew what ellie was going through dammit I was going through it with her! Let the girl and me for that matter have a bit of happiness after what you put us through!
+holy hell tommy fucking lived. he fucking lived. that mother fucker. hes the new telltales kenny. 
-SANTA BARBARA
+I said previously this section should have some how been merged into the seattle ending. I couldn’t tell you how honestly, but keeping it dragging like they did was so emotionally draining. it didn’t give me any feeling but more sadness and torment for a favorite character that didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. ellie looked so skinny and sad here. and i feel like it was what the creators were going for? because abby ended up looking just as sad looking. The ending fight was so sad and pathetic. I felt bad for both of them and that is what the creators wanted right? but at what cost? most of your fans, if they even managed to play this far, so emotionally drained and tired that they end up hating the game or not wanting to play it again? 
-ENDING
+so how do i feel now that i finished it? overall there were more cons than pros for me. as i said numerous times before this narrative is not new, this narrative was not needed. this narrative definitely shouldn’t have been lied about through trailers. this narrative was basically done better in the first game anyways. the ending did not give me “sad but hopeful”. it just left me empty and depressed. I don’t see myself playing this game ever again. 
+If anyone was able to enjoy it I’m truly happy you were able to and these were all just my personal thoughts and opinions while playing the game. I don’t hate anyone that liked it, I don’t even hate abby. I just personally hate they wrote a narrative that felt so forced down your throat in all the wrong ways. I hate that I wasn’t ready for that joel scene because it still hurts to think about. I hate thinking about how sad ellie looked and how they were both treated. It just wasn’t healthy for me tbh is the best way I can put it. 
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ikesenlemonadestandstories ¡ 5 years ago
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Level 2
ere we go! Here we go! Guys I don’t think you understand how excited I am for this :) 
Master List here or under the tag Ikesen AFK
Warnings: none
Happy Reading! T~
Level 2
You had started the downloading process earlier this morning before you left for work, in hopes that the file would be close to complete when you arrived back home. Thankfully the gods were smiling on you. After changing out of your scrubs and plugging the system into the TV, you plopped down on your couch and curled into your favorite corner with a water bottle and two sets of controllers, just in case. 
Immediately upon startup, you were thrown into a magnificent CGI cutscene that you hoped would be explained a little better the further into the game you got. After you built your character and typed in your name, another scene began to roll. Your character now found herself falling until she quite literally landed in the middle of town. 
Most people just kept on walking, paying no mind to the perplexed girl in the middle of the square. You had to laugh to yourself a little bit, at least you didn’t get dropped into some random field with tons of monsters like the last game Rose had talked you into joining. This game had that going for it at least. After a few well placed tutorials on movement and interacting, you gave it a go. Starting your exploration of the town. 
There were plenty of shops to check out and enough NPC’s to talk to, but without any particular way to defend yourself, you were stuck picking up delivery quests for an hour until Sasuke was available. Eventually, you were rewarded after finishing a task with a questionable looking lance so you took off looking for a fight. Your item list told you it had been dubbed “training lance,” and you were sure that as far as weapons went, it was garbage. But a pokey stick was better than nothing. Besides, you were happy to see swords weren’t the game’s default, the variation definitely gave it some brownie points. 
You felt your phone vibrate and laughed when Sasuke told you to meet him in the city square near the chicken leg stand. Having failed your assault mission for the fourth time meant you had nothing better to do than head over there and wait. You weren’t waiting long though; in a matter of minutes, an avatar that looked frighteningly like Sasuke wandered over as a speech bubble popped up on the bottom of your screen.
Nin-nin0217 → Hey, I’m alive. Sorry for the wait.
Np! Got some quests done. Found a lance ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → Not bad, have you used said lance yet?
Yes, lol did not go well. I’ve just hit my 5th respawn ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → I see. How about I take you to one of my favorite maps to grind on?
Why do I feel like I’m not at the appropriate level for the map you want to take me to? ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → You’re not, but I’ll be there so you should be able to get some good EXP.
Do I have a choice ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → Of course you do. It’ll just take you forever to get to the Soldier class at this rate. If you’re okay with that than I am too.
No...let’s give your way a try. ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → That’s the spirit! :D 
Before you could manage to formulate a response, an event bubble popped up on your screen. *Nin-nin0217 has requested you join him on a quest. Do you accept?* After a single exasperated breath, you hit your toggle and pressed yes. Let the grinding begin. 
The map itself wasn’t challenging, the terrain was neutral, and there didn’t appear to be any hazards hiding further back near enemy lines. It also helped that you were playing through it with Sasuke. As long as your character stood within a four-space vicinity, it was nearly impossible to take you out. 
After nearly three hours between two maps, your magic and resources were exhausted, and your poor spear was almost broken. 
I think it’s about time to call it quits. Spears about to go, and I’m not equipped for hand to hand. ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → Roger that. Are you good to finish the map? Do we need to end the mission now?
Nope, I can finish ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → Good. We’ll get you a new spear when we get back into town. 
Awesome sauce! ← WildCyt0m3try
With bated breath, you finished with a single strike of your lance to spare. Thank goodness, you had been warned early on that fighting with a broken weapon was the absolute worst. Zero damage dealt, and the lower defense did not sound like your cup of tea. Especially without any healing magic or herbs at your disposal. 
The town was still bustling when you got back from your map, it was nice to see people were online at all hours of the day, er well night. Your avatar followed Sasuke’s towards the market street, and you made a bee-line for the armory, making sure to cash any and all in-game currency that had dropped from the monsters you fought all evening. Your eyes nearly fell out of your head when you saw all the zeros. The shop-keeper was offering to give you how much?
On top of the absurd amount of in-game currency you had just procured, you were shocked by the list that opened up to you. Instead of just the training spear you had been granted earlier, an entirely new selection of weaponry was available. With a triumphant yell you decided to drop most of your coin on a single steel lance, and backed out of the shop to follow Sasuke towards the general merchant shop. 
*Nin-nin0217 has sent you a friend request. Accept?* Laughing, you clicked ‘Yes�� and began typing something witty that was sure to be lost on your friend, when he dropped you an item. *Nin-nin0217 has sent you a gift. Accept?*
What did you just send me? ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → Open it and find out
I’m not about to open the games equivalent to a glitter bomb, am I? ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → Unfortunately, they don’t offer such gifts. This is much better I can assure you.
Fine...thx! ← WildCyt0m3try 
You accepted the gift reluctantly, closing your eyes as you pressed the open command. It only took five seconds for the system to download the present and for a happy chime to play over the speaker. 
*You received a Beginner Seal. Would you like to use this now or stow it in your convoy?* The game prompted you.
Am I supposed to use this now? ← WildCyt0m3try 
Nin-nin0217 → If you’ve got a prompt to use it go for it. The beginner classes are rudimentary, but you should be able to see potential stat growths for each.
As it turned out, seals were used for in-game growth. Assuming you had managed to gain enough experience points you could use one. There were different seals for different levels, and the types of stats you had grown during battle by using specific weapons narrowed down what sort of class you could grow into. You laughed and fired off another message.
I feel like an Eevee, there’s so many options! What do I pick?! How am I supposed to choose? ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → You have 4 options…? Nin-nin0217 → Do you know what type of Master Class you’re aiming for?
Master what now? ← WildCyt0m3try No. Am I supposed to? ← WildCyt0m3try Crap. I guess I’ll just be a soldier. ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → An excellent choice, rationale?
I mean, I just bought a new lance, and it was hella expensive. Probably better to pick a class that can use lances. ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → We don’t have anyone in the group yet that is of suitable stats to become a Falcon Knight. It would add the perfect amount of diversity.
Lol, happy to help. I should probably hit the internet a little bit before I continue tho, I’m gonna log off for the night. ← WildCyt0m3try
Nin-nin0217 → Have a good evening. See you on Monday? 
You too! G’night! Thx for the help! ← WildCyt0m3try
After bidding Sasuke a good night, you saved your progress and quickly logged off. Mentally kicking yourself for staying on until well past midnight. You had to work in the morning. That would be interesting. With a long sigh, you heaved yourself off the couch and put your controller back by the console before turning out all the lights. It was way past your bedtime.
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symbianosgames ¡ 8 years ago
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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include the art behind Thimbleweed Park, the rise of RimWorld, and much, much more.
For anyone counting, this is week 31 of picks, and I'm still managing to keep up the weekly pace - primarily because my regular social media trawls during the week allow me to stack up links to post at the weekend! And this is still without regular RSS feed checking - so there's got to be a bunch more stories I'm missing. Ah well.
So much good stuff out there - and I really enjoyed some of the more esoteric stories in this week's set, including the piece on Tamagotchi collectors and the visually impaired Roguelike players. There are all kinds of unique, wonderful video game nerds under the sun, aren't there? Until next time...
- Simon, curator.]
-------------------
The Stress of Game Development - Tips for Survival (Extra Credits / YouTube) "Making games is hard. You need all kinds of technical and creative skills, but most importantly, you need to know how to manage the many kinds of stress that come with it."
Game Design Deep Dive: Watch Dogs 2's Invasion of Privacy missions (Christopher Dragert / Gamasutra) "In this article, I will describe some of the technical challenges and design decisions that drove development of the Invasion of Privacy feature in Watch Dogs 2. Areas of focus will include managing branching scenarios, motion capture challenges, controlling NPC state, maintaining dialog flow, and NPC coordination."
Video Games Aren’t Addictive (Christopher J Ferguson & Patrick Markey / New York Times) "Is video game addiction a real thing? It’s certainly common to hear parents complain that their children are “addicted” to video games. Some researchers even claim that these games are comparable to illegal drugs in terms of their influence on the brain — that they are “digital heroin” (the neuroscientist Peter C. Whybrow) or “digital pharmakeia” (the neuroscientist Andrew Doan)."
The Job Simulator Postmortem (Alex Schwartz & Devin Reimer / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 postmortem, Owlchemy Labs' Alexander Schwartz and Devin Reimer analyze the challenges of building, sharing, shipping, and sustaining Job Simulator on multiple platforms with examples showing both successful and less-than-successful design prototypes and how iteration led to the final product."
The Underground World of Tamagotchi Collectors (Alyssa Bereznak / The Ringer) "On October 26 of last year, a user named “psychotama” made his first entry in what would become a detailed online diary, otherwise known as a “Tama log.” “I’m not quite sure how to begin,” he wrote in purple Comic Sans. “My journey with Tamagotchi began about 13 years ago.”"
'Make me think, make me move': New Doom's deceptively simple design (Kris Graft / Gamasutra) "Doom is known for its speed and straightforwardness – move fast, shoot demons. It's a seemingly simple combination that, at the franchise’s best, evokes an ultraviolent cognitive flow. But Doom’s apparent simplicity belies a core design that is difficult to achieve."
From 'Zelda' to 'Witcher 3': Why We're Still Talking About 'Skyrim' (Alex Kane / Glixel) "How Bethesda's 2011 masterpiece – and the colossal online culture of fan art, memes, and music surrounding it – forever changed the game for fantasy RPGs."
Precious Moments, Hype and High School: A Conversation with 'Persona 5' Director Katsura Hashino (Sayem Ahmed / Waypoint) "Hashino tells me that seeing the anticipation for the game build, as previously announced street dates passed and more information on the game crept out via the press, was both "encouraging and scary.""
How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons (Noam Scheiber / New York Times) "The company has undertaken an extraordinary experiment in behavioral science to subtly entice an independent work force to maximize its growth. [SIMON'S NOTE: you may have seen this, but thought it particularly interesting that GDC board member Chelsea Howe was also quoted in here re: F2P-style coercive psychology evils.]"
Why games like 'Super Mario 64' had terrible cameras (Mike Rougeau / Mashable) "The camera is the interactive window through which we experience video games; the term describes not just our perspective and view of a digital space, but the freedom of or restrictions on how we as players control that viewpoint."
A Year after Firewatch (Colin Campbell / Polygon) "With sales of more than a million copies, developer Campo Santo is now working on its next project: unannounced as yet. I sat down with writer Sean Vanaman to talk about the direction he wants to go in next, and how he feels about Firewatch one year after its launch."
Kevin Horton Is a Cryogenics Engineer Turned Retro Gaming Savior (Nicholas DeLeon / Motherboard) "By day Horton, 43, is an engineer at a cryogenics company (he's worked at the same company since high school). But online, he's better known online as Kevtris (in reference to a Tetris clone he developed in the mid-1990s), where he is the brains behind a series of critical technological breakthroughs that allow gamers to play classic video games like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid on modern televisions."
Interactive Fiction Appears at the Whitney Biennial (Chris Klimas / Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation) "The 2017 Whitney Biennial has something curious to offer fans of interactive fiction. Among the works shown this year are With Those We Love Alive and howling dogs, Twine works written by Charity Heartscape Porpentine. [SIMON'S NOTE: short article, but great news, & the linked interview is also notable.]"
From Rational to Emotional: Designs that Increase Player Retention (Jim Brown / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 session, Epic's Jim Brown provides specific examples of design techniques that encourage the formation of enduring emotional ties that could enhance both retention and enjoyment for players in game design."
A Brief History Of Speedrunning (Kat Brewster / ReadOnlyMemory) "A good speedrun is hypnotising to watch – this goes for ones showcased at GDQ, or the ones which get circulated around the internet for their insane jumps or cutscene skips or lightning fast movement. They’re a dizzying show of hard won skill and palpable effort. The video of a world record time which knocks an hours-long campaign into minutes can be jaw-dropping."
In Their War With The Wall Street Journal, Top YouTubers Just Played Themselves (Patricia Hernandez / Kotaku) "Over the last couple of weeks, anger has been bubbling on YouTube over the news that major brands pulled advertisements on the platform in an effort to avoid being matched with objectionable content. The reports, which were published by the Wall Street Journal, were met with such skepticism that they sparked scandalous conspiracy theories among YouTube’s top creators."
After tragedy strikes, a dev's friends strive to complete his game (Chris Priestman / Gamasutra) "Former Harmonix programmer Roger Morash had been working on his passion project, a co-op platformer called Shard, for years before he died in January of this year. "
Inside the Shady World of PlayStation Network Account Resellers (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "A few weeks ago, Mic Fok got a weird email. The person writing it claimed they'd been playing Overwatch on a PlayStation Network account for more than six months, but the password had changed recently. But why would Fok know anything about this random dude's account?"
(Not) a Thimbleweed Park review (Matej Jan / Retronator) "Thimbleweed Park started as a spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. “It’s like opening a dusty old desk drawer and finding an undiscovered LucasArts adventure game you’ve never played before.” [SIMON'S NOTE: mainly linking this for the amaaazing vintage Mark Ferrari art linked within, tho the whole thing is cute!]"
Playing roguelikes when you can’t see (Kent Sutherland / RockPaperShotgun) "For most of us, traditional roguelikes are intrinsically inaccessible. They’re notoriously difficult, their design is complicated and often opaque, they can have more hotkeys than there are keys on the keyboard, and their ASCII-based visuals mean that it’s often unclear what’s happening on the screen. It’s these exact qualities, however, that ironically make roguelikes accessible and even appealing to blind or low-sight players."
The Game Beat Weekly: Digital Foundry and Microsoft make it "exclusive" (Kyle Orland / Tinyletter) "That kind of server-melting traffic shows why it would have been somewhat crazy for Eurogamer to turn down Microsoft's invitation to see Scorpio up close at their Redmond headquarters last week. But agreeing to an exclusive of this magnitude also risks coming across as a mere mouthpiece for a company you're supposed to be covering with a kind of detached objectivity."
The Witness - Noclip Documentary (NoClip / YouTube) "What lies at the heart of Jonathan Blow's island of mystery? We talk to the famed indie designer about how one of his earliest design ideas blossomed into The Witness."
A Pioneer Story: How MECC Blazed New Trails (Joe Juba / Game Informer) "Decades ago, as computing migrated from research labs and universities and into the mainstream, one company in Minnesota was instrumental in bringing technology into classrooms. Thanks to its focused mission and talented staff, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) used exceptional software like The Oregon Trail to engage and educate a generation of students – and establish an unforgettable legacy."
Inside 'RimWorld', the Cult Sci-Fi Hit That Just Keeps Growing (Chris Priestman / Glixel) "Since its earliest public release on Steam Early Access in July, RimWorld – a sci-fi space colony sim – has amassed more than 600,000 players, and it's not even a finished project."
-------------------
[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]
0 notes
symbianosgames ¡ 8 years ago
Link
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include the art behind Thimbleweed Park, the rise of RimWorld, and much, much more.
For anyone counting, this is week 31 of picks, and I'm still managing to keep up the weekly pace - primarily because my regular social media trawls during the week allow me to stack up links to post at the weekend! And this is still without regular RSS feed checking - so there's got to be a bunch more stories I'm missing. Ah well.
So much good stuff out there - and I really enjoyed some of the more esoteric stories in this week's set, including the piece on Tamagotchi collectors and the visually impaired Roguelike players. There are all kinds of unique, wonderful video game nerds under the sun, aren't there? Until next time...
- Simon, curator.]
-------------------
The Stress of Game Development - Tips for Survival (Extra Credits / YouTube) "Making games is hard. You need all kinds of technical and creative skills, but most importantly, you need to know how to manage the many kinds of stress that come with it."
Game Design Deep Dive: Watch Dogs 2's Invasion of Privacy missions (Christopher Dragert / Gamasutra) "In this article, I will describe some of the technical challenges and design decisions that drove development of the Invasion of Privacy feature in Watch Dogs 2. Areas of focus will include managing branching scenarios, motion capture challenges, controlling NPC state, maintaining dialog flow, and NPC coordination."
Video Games Aren’t Addictive (Christopher J Ferguson & Patrick Markey / New York Times) "Is video game addiction a real thing? It’s certainly common to hear parents complain that their children are “addicted” to video games. Some researchers even claim that these games are comparable to illegal drugs in terms of their influence on the brain — that they are “digital heroin” (the neuroscientist Peter C. Whybrow) or “digital pharmakeia” (the neuroscientist Andrew Doan)."
The Job Simulator Postmortem (Alex Schwartz & Devin Reimer / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 postmortem, Owlchemy Labs' Alexander Schwartz and Devin Reimer analyze the challenges of building, sharing, shipping, and sustaining Job Simulator on multiple platforms with examples showing both successful and less-than-successful design prototypes and how iteration led to the final product."
The Underground World of Tamagotchi Collectors (Alyssa Bereznak / The Ringer) "On October 26 of last year, a user named “psychotama” made his first entry in what would become a detailed online diary, otherwise known as a “Tama log.” “I’m not quite sure how to begin,” he wrote in purple Comic Sans. “My journey with Tamagotchi began about 13 years ago.”"
'Make me think, make me move': New Doom's deceptively simple design (Kris Graft / Gamasutra) "Doom is known for its speed and straightforwardness – move fast, shoot demons. It's a seemingly simple combination that, at the franchise’s best, evokes an ultraviolent cognitive flow. But Doom’s apparent simplicity belies a core design that is difficult to achieve."
From 'Zelda' to 'Witcher 3': Why We're Still Talking About 'Skyrim' (Alex Kane / Glixel) "How Bethesda's 2011 masterpiece – and the colossal online culture of fan art, memes, and music surrounding it – forever changed the game for fantasy RPGs."
Precious Moments, Hype and High School: A Conversation with 'Persona 5' Director Katsura Hashino (Sayem Ahmed / Waypoint) "Hashino tells me that seeing the anticipation for the game build, as previously announced street dates passed and more information on the game crept out via the press, was both "encouraging and scary.""
How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons (Noam Scheiber / New York Times) "The company has undertaken an extraordinary experiment in behavioral science to subtly entice an independent work force to maximize its growth. [SIMON'S NOTE: you may have seen this, but thought it particularly interesting that GDC board member Chelsea Howe was also quoted in here re: F2P-style coercive psychology evils.]"
Why games like 'Super Mario 64' had terrible cameras (Mike Rougeau / Mashable) "The camera is the interactive window through which we experience video games; the term describes not just our perspective and view of a digital space, but the freedom of or restrictions on how we as players control that viewpoint."
A Year after Firewatch (Colin Campbell / Polygon) "With sales of more than a million copies, developer Campo Santo is now working on its next project: unannounced as yet. I sat down with writer Sean Vanaman to talk about the direction he wants to go in next, and how he feels about Firewatch one year after its launch."
Kevin Horton Is a Cryogenics Engineer Turned Retro Gaming Savior (Nicholas DeLeon / Motherboard) "By day Horton, 43, is an engineer at a cryogenics company (he's worked at the same company since high school). But online, he's better known online as Kevtris (in reference to a Tetris clone he developed in the mid-1990s), where he is the brains behind a series of critical technological breakthroughs that allow gamers to play classic video games like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid on modern televisions."
Interactive Fiction Appears at the Whitney Biennial (Chris Klimas / Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation) "The 2017 Whitney Biennial has something curious to offer fans of interactive fiction. Among the works shown this year are With Those We Love Alive and howling dogs, Twine works written by Charity Heartscape Porpentine. [SIMON'S NOTE: short article, but great news, & the linked interview is also notable.]"
From Rational to Emotional: Designs that Increase Player Retention (Jim Brown / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 session, Epic's Jim Brown provides specific examples of design techniques that encourage the formation of enduring emotional ties that could enhance both retention and enjoyment for players in game design."
A Brief History Of Speedrunning (Kat Brewster / ReadOnlyMemory) "A good speedrun is hypnotising to watch – this goes for ones showcased at GDQ, or the ones which get circulated around the internet for their insane jumps or cutscene skips or lightning fast movement. They’re a dizzying show of hard won skill and palpable effort. The video of a world record time which knocks an hours-long campaign into minutes can be jaw-dropping."
In Their War With The Wall Street Journal, Top YouTubers Just Played Themselves (Patricia Hernandez / Kotaku) "Over the last couple of weeks, anger has been bubbling on YouTube over the news that major brands pulled advertisements on the platform in an effort to avoid being matched with objectionable content. The reports, which were published by the Wall Street Journal, were met with such skepticism that they sparked scandalous conspiracy theories among YouTube’s top creators."
After tragedy strikes, a dev's friends strive to complete his game (Chris Priestman / Gamasutra) "Former Harmonix programmer Roger Morash had been working on his passion project, a co-op platformer called Shard, for years before he died in January of this year. "
Inside the Shady World of PlayStation Network Account Resellers (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "A few weeks ago, Mic Fok got a weird email. The person writing it claimed they'd been playing Overwatch on a PlayStation Network account for more than six months, but the password had changed recently. But why would Fok know anything about this random dude's account?"
(Not) a Thimbleweed Park review (Matej Jan / Retronator) "Thimbleweed Park started as a spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. “It’s like opening a dusty old desk drawer and finding an undiscovered LucasArts adventure game you’ve never played before.” [SIMON'S NOTE: mainly linking this for the amaaazing vintage Mark Ferrari art linked within, tho the whole thing is cute!]"
Playing roguelikes when you can’t see (Kent Sutherland / RockPaperShotgun) "For most of us, traditional roguelikes are intrinsically inaccessible. They’re notoriously difficult, their design is complicated and often opaque, they can have more hotkeys than there are keys on the keyboard, and their ASCII-based visuals mean that it’s often unclear what’s happening on the screen. It’s these exact qualities, however, that ironically make roguelikes accessible and even appealing to blind or low-sight players."
The Game Beat Weekly: Digital Foundry and Microsoft make it "exclusive" (Kyle Orland / Tinyletter) "That kind of server-melting traffic shows why it would have been somewhat crazy for Eurogamer to turn down Microsoft's invitation to see Scorpio up close at their Redmond headquarters last week. But agreeing to an exclusive of this magnitude also risks coming across as a mere mouthpiece for a company you're supposed to be covering with a kind of detached objectivity."
The Witness - Noclip Documentary (NoClip / YouTube) "What lies at the heart of Jonathan Blow's island of mystery? We talk to the famed indie designer about how one of his earliest design ideas blossomed into The Witness."
A Pioneer Story: How MECC Blazed New Trails (Joe Juba / Game Informer) "Decades ago, as computing migrated from research labs and universities and into the mainstream, one company in Minnesota was instrumental in bringing technology into classrooms. Thanks to its focused mission and talented staff, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) used exceptional software like The Oregon Trail to engage and educate a generation of students – and establish an unforgettable legacy."
Inside 'RimWorld', the Cult Sci-Fi Hit That Just Keeps Growing (Chris Priestman / Glixel) "Since its earliest public release on Steam Early Access in July, RimWorld – a sci-fi space colony sim – has amassed more than 600,000 players, and it's not even a finished project."
-------------------
[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]
0 notes
symbianosgames ¡ 8 years ago
Link
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include the art behind Thimbleweed Park, the rise of RimWorld, and much, much more.
For anyone counting, this is week 31 of picks, and I'm still managing to keep up the weekly pace - primarily because my regular social media trawls during the week allow me to stack up links to post at the weekend! And this is still without regular RSS feed checking - so there's got to be a bunch more stories I'm missing. Ah well.
So much good stuff out there - and I really enjoyed some of the more esoteric stories in this week's set, including the piece on Tamagotchi collectors and the visually impaired Roguelike players. There are all kinds of unique, wonderful video game nerds under the sun, aren't there? Until next time...
- Simon, curator.]
-------------------
The Stress of Game Development - Tips for Survival (Extra Credits / YouTube) "Making games is hard. You need all kinds of technical and creative skills, but most importantly, you need to know how to manage the many kinds of stress that come with it."
Game Design Deep Dive: Watch Dogs 2's Invasion of Privacy missions (Christopher Dragert / Gamasutra) "In this article, I will describe some of the technical challenges and design decisions that drove development of the Invasion of Privacy feature in Watch Dogs 2. Areas of focus will include managing branching scenarios, motion capture challenges, controlling NPC state, maintaining dialog flow, and NPC coordination."
Video Games Aren’t Addictive (Christopher J Ferguson & Patrick Markey / New York Times) "Is video game addiction a real thing? It’s certainly common to hear parents complain that their children are “addicted” to video games. Some researchers even claim that these games are comparable to illegal drugs in terms of their influence on the brain — that they are “digital heroin” (the neuroscientist Peter C. Whybrow) or “digital pharmakeia” (the neuroscientist Andrew Doan)."
The Job Simulator Postmortem (Alex Schwartz & Devin Reimer / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 postmortem, Owlchemy Labs' Alexander Schwartz and Devin Reimer analyze the challenges of building, sharing, shipping, and sustaining Job Simulator on multiple platforms with examples showing both successful and less-than-successful design prototypes and how iteration led to the final product."
The Underground World of Tamagotchi Collectors (Alyssa Bereznak / The Ringer) "On October 26 of last year, a user named “psychotama” made his first entry in what would become a detailed online diary, otherwise known as a “Tama log.” “I’m not quite sure how to begin,” he wrote in purple Comic Sans. “My journey with Tamagotchi began about 13 years ago.”"
'Make me think, make me move': New Doom's deceptively simple design (Kris Graft / Gamasutra) "Doom is known for its speed and straightforwardness – move fast, shoot demons. It's a seemingly simple combination that, at the franchise’s best, evokes an ultraviolent cognitive flow. But Doom’s apparent simplicity belies a core design that is difficult to achieve."
From 'Zelda' to 'Witcher 3': Why We're Still Talking About 'Skyrim' (Alex Kane / Glixel) "How Bethesda's 2011 masterpiece – and the colossal online culture of fan art, memes, and music surrounding it – forever changed the game for fantasy RPGs."
Precious Moments, Hype and High School: A Conversation with 'Persona 5' Director Katsura Hashino (Sayem Ahmed / Waypoint) "Hashino tells me that seeing the anticipation for the game build, as previously announced street dates passed and more information on the game crept out via the press, was both "encouraging and scary.""
How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons (Noam Scheiber / New York Times) "The company has undertaken an extraordinary experiment in behavioral science to subtly entice an independent work force to maximize its growth. [SIMON'S NOTE: you may have seen this, but thought it particularly interesting that GDC board member Chelsea Howe was also quoted in here re: F2P-style coercive psychology evils.]"
Why games like 'Super Mario 64' had terrible cameras (Mike Rougeau / Mashable) "The camera is the interactive window through which we experience video games; the term describes not just our perspective and view of a digital space, but the freedom of or restrictions on how we as players control that viewpoint."
A Year after Firewatch (Colin Campbell / Polygon) "With sales of more than a million copies, developer Campo Santo is now working on its next project: unannounced as yet. I sat down with writer Sean Vanaman to talk about the direction he wants to go in next, and how he feels about Firewatch one year after its launch."
Kevin Horton Is a Cryogenics Engineer Turned Retro Gaming Savior (Nicholas DeLeon / Motherboard) "By day Horton, 43, is an engineer at a cryogenics company (he's worked at the same company since high school). But online, he's better known online as Kevtris (in reference to a Tetris clone he developed in the mid-1990s), where he is the brains behind a series of critical technological breakthroughs that allow gamers to play classic video games like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid on modern televisions."
Interactive Fiction Appears at the Whitney Biennial (Chris Klimas / Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation) "The 2017 Whitney Biennial has something curious to offer fans of interactive fiction. Among the works shown this year are With Those We Love Alive and howling dogs, Twine works written by Charity Heartscape Porpentine. [SIMON'S NOTE: short article, but great news, & the linked interview is also notable.]"
From Rational to Emotional: Designs that Increase Player Retention (Jim Brown / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 session, Epic's Jim Brown provides specific examples of design techniques that encourage the formation of enduring emotional ties that could enhance both retention and enjoyment for players in game design."
A Brief History Of Speedrunning (Kat Brewster / ReadOnlyMemory) "A good speedrun is hypnotising to watch – this goes for ones showcased at GDQ, or the ones which get circulated around the internet for their insane jumps or cutscene skips or lightning fast movement. They’re a dizzying show of hard won skill and palpable effort. The video of a world record time which knocks an hours-long campaign into minutes can be jaw-dropping."
In Their War With The Wall Street Journal, Top YouTubers Just Played Themselves (Patricia Hernandez / Kotaku) "Over the last couple of weeks, anger has been bubbling on YouTube over the news that major brands pulled advertisements on the platform in an effort to avoid being matched with objectionable content. The reports, which were published by the Wall Street Journal, were met with such skepticism that they sparked scandalous conspiracy theories among YouTube’s top creators."
After tragedy strikes, a dev's friends strive to complete his game (Chris Priestman / Gamasutra) "Former Harmonix programmer Roger Morash had been working on his passion project, a co-op platformer called Shard, for years before he died in January of this year. "
Inside the Shady World of PlayStation Network Account Resellers (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "A few weeks ago, Mic Fok got a weird email. The person writing it claimed they'd been playing Overwatch on a PlayStation Network account for more than six months, but the password had changed recently. But why would Fok know anything about this random dude's account?"
(Not) a Thimbleweed Park review (Matej Jan / Retronator) "Thimbleweed Park started as a spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. “It’s like opening a dusty old desk drawer and finding an undiscovered LucasArts adventure game you’ve never played before.” [SIMON'S NOTE: mainly linking this for the amaaazing vintage Mark Ferrari art linked within, tho the whole thing is cute!]"
Playing roguelikes when you can’t see (Kent Sutherland / RockPaperShotgun) "For most of us, traditional roguelikes are intrinsically inaccessible. They’re notoriously difficult, their design is complicated and often opaque, they can have more hotkeys than there are keys on the keyboard, and their ASCII-based visuals mean that it’s often unclear what’s happening on the screen. It’s these exact qualities, however, that ironically make roguelikes accessible and even appealing to blind or low-sight players."
The Game Beat Weekly: Digital Foundry and Microsoft make it "exclusive" (Kyle Orland / Tinyletter) "That kind of server-melting traffic shows why it would have been somewhat crazy for Eurogamer to turn down Microsoft's invitation to see Scorpio up close at their Redmond headquarters last week. But agreeing to an exclusive of this magnitude also risks coming across as a mere mouthpiece for a company you're supposed to be covering with a kind of detached objectivity."
The Witness - Noclip Documentary (NoClip / YouTube) "What lies at the heart of Jonathan Blow's island of mystery? We talk to the famed indie designer about how one of his earliest design ideas blossomed into The Witness."
A Pioneer Story: How MECC Blazed New Trails (Joe Juba / Game Informer) "Decades ago, as computing migrated from research labs and universities and into the mainstream, one company in Minnesota was instrumental in bringing technology into classrooms. Thanks to its focused mission and talented staff, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) used exceptional software like The Oregon Trail to engage and educate a generation of students – and establish an unforgettable legacy."
Inside 'RimWorld', the Cult Sci-Fi Hit That Just Keeps Growing (Chris Priestman / Glixel) "Since its earliest public release on Steam Early Access in July, RimWorld – a sci-fi space colony sim – has amassed more than 600,000 players, and it's not even a finished project."
-------------------
[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]
0 notes
symbianosgames ¡ 8 years ago
Link
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include the art behind Thimbleweed Park, the rise of RimWorld, and much, much more.
For anyone counting, this is week 31 of picks, and I'm still managing to keep up the weekly pace - primarily because my regular social media trawls during the week allow me to stack up links to post at the weekend! And this is still without regular RSS feed checking - so there's got to be a bunch more stories I'm missing. Ah well.
So much good stuff out there - and I really enjoyed some of the more esoteric stories in this week's set, including the piece on Tamagotchi collectors and the visually impaired Roguelike players. There are all kinds of unique, wonderful video game nerds under the sun, aren't there? Until next time...
- Simon, curator.]
-------------------
The Stress of Game Development - Tips for Survival (Extra Credits / YouTube) "Making games is hard. You need all kinds of technical and creative skills, but most importantly, you need to know how to manage the many kinds of stress that come with it."
Game Design Deep Dive: Watch Dogs 2's Invasion of Privacy missions (Christopher Dragert / Gamasutra) "In this article, I will describe some of the technical challenges and design decisions that drove development of the Invasion of Privacy feature in Watch Dogs 2. Areas of focus will include managing branching scenarios, motion capture challenges, controlling NPC state, maintaining dialog flow, and NPC coordination."
Video Games Aren’t Addictive (Christopher J Ferguson & Patrick Markey / New York Times) "Is video game addiction a real thing? It’s certainly common to hear parents complain that their children are “addicted” to video games. Some researchers even claim that these games are comparable to illegal drugs in terms of their influence on the brain — that they are “digital heroin” (the neuroscientist Peter C. Whybrow) or “digital pharmakeia” (the neuroscientist Andrew Doan)."
The Job Simulator Postmortem (Alex Schwartz & Devin Reimer / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 postmortem, Owlchemy Labs' Alexander Schwartz and Devin Reimer analyze the challenges of building, sharing, shipping, and sustaining Job Simulator on multiple platforms with examples showing both successful and less-than-successful design prototypes and how iteration led to the final product."
The Underground World of Tamagotchi Collectors (Alyssa Bereznak / The Ringer) "On October 26 of last year, a user named “psychotama” made his first entry in what would become a detailed online diary, otherwise known as a “Tama log.” “I’m not quite sure how to begin,” he wrote in purple Comic Sans. “My journey with Tamagotchi began about 13 years ago.”"
'Make me think, make me move': New Doom's deceptively simple design (Kris Graft / Gamasutra) "Doom is known for its speed and straightforwardness – move fast, shoot demons. It's a seemingly simple combination that, at the franchise’s best, evokes an ultraviolent cognitive flow. But Doom’s apparent simplicity belies a core design that is difficult to achieve."
From 'Zelda' to 'Witcher 3': Why We're Still Talking About 'Skyrim' (Alex Kane / Glixel) "How Bethesda's 2011 masterpiece – and the colossal online culture of fan art, memes, and music surrounding it – forever changed the game for fantasy RPGs."
Precious Moments, Hype and High School: A Conversation with 'Persona 5' Director Katsura Hashino (Sayem Ahmed / Waypoint) "Hashino tells me that seeing the anticipation for the game build, as previously announced street dates passed and more information on the game crept out via the press, was both "encouraging and scary.""
How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons (Noam Scheiber / New York Times) "The company has undertaken an extraordinary experiment in behavioral science to subtly entice an independent work force to maximize its growth. [SIMON'S NOTE: you may have seen this, but thought it particularly interesting that GDC board member Chelsea Howe was also quoted in here re: F2P-style coercive psychology evils.]"
Why games like 'Super Mario 64' had terrible cameras (Mike Rougeau / Mashable) "The camera is the interactive window through which we experience video games; the term describes not just our perspective and view of a digital space, but the freedom of or restrictions on how we as players control that viewpoint."
A Year after Firewatch (Colin Campbell / Polygon) "With sales of more than a million copies, developer Campo Santo is now working on its next project: unannounced as yet. I sat down with writer Sean Vanaman to talk about the direction he wants to go in next, and how he feels about Firewatch one year after its launch."
Kevin Horton Is a Cryogenics Engineer Turned Retro Gaming Savior (Nicholas DeLeon / Motherboard) "By day Horton, 43, is an engineer at a cryogenics company (he's worked at the same company since high school). But online, he's better known online as Kevtris (in reference to a Tetris clone he developed in the mid-1990s), where he is the brains behind a series of critical technological breakthroughs that allow gamers to play classic video games like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid on modern televisions."
Interactive Fiction Appears at the Whitney Biennial (Chris Klimas / Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation) "The 2017 Whitney Biennial has something curious to offer fans of interactive fiction. Among the works shown this year are With Those We Love Alive and howling dogs, Twine works written by Charity Heartscape Porpentine. [SIMON'S NOTE: short article, but great news, & the linked interview is also notable.]"
From Rational to Emotional: Designs that Increase Player Retention (Jim Brown / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 session, Epic's Jim Brown provides specific examples of design techniques that encourage the formation of enduring emotional ties that could enhance both retention and enjoyment for players in game design."
A Brief History Of Speedrunning (Kat Brewster / ReadOnlyMemory) "A good speedrun is hypnotising to watch – this goes for ones showcased at GDQ, or the ones which get circulated around the internet for their insane jumps or cutscene skips or lightning fast movement. They’re a dizzying show of hard won skill and palpable effort. The video of a world record time which knocks an hours-long campaign into minutes can be jaw-dropping."
In Their War With The Wall Street Journal, Top YouTubers Just Played Themselves (Patricia Hernandez / Kotaku) "Over the last couple of weeks, anger has been bubbling on YouTube over the news that major brands pulled advertisements on the platform in an effort to avoid being matched with objectionable content. The reports, which were published by the Wall Street Journal, were met with such skepticism that they sparked scandalous conspiracy theories among YouTube’s top creators."
After tragedy strikes, a dev's friends strive to complete his game (Chris Priestman / Gamasutra) "Former Harmonix programmer Roger Morash had been working on his passion project, a co-op platformer called Shard, for years before he died in January of this year. "
Inside the Shady World of PlayStation Network Account Resellers (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "A few weeks ago, Mic Fok got a weird email. The person writing it claimed they'd been playing Overwatch on a PlayStation Network account for more than six months, but the password had changed recently. But why would Fok know anything about this random dude's account?"
(Not) a Thimbleweed Park review (Matej Jan / Retronator) "Thimbleweed Park started as a spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. “It’s like opening a dusty old desk drawer and finding an undiscovered LucasArts adventure game you’ve never played before.” [SIMON'S NOTE: mainly linking this for the amaaazing vintage Mark Ferrari art linked within, tho the whole thing is cute!]"
Playing roguelikes when you can’t see (Kent Sutherland / RockPaperShotgun) "For most of us, traditional roguelikes are intrinsically inaccessible. They’re notoriously difficult, their design is complicated and often opaque, they can have more hotkeys than there are keys on the keyboard, and their ASCII-based visuals mean that it’s often unclear what’s happening on the screen. It’s these exact qualities, however, that ironically make roguelikes accessible and even appealing to blind or low-sight players."
The Game Beat Weekly: Digital Foundry and Microsoft make it "exclusive" (Kyle Orland / Tinyletter) "That kind of server-melting traffic shows why it would have been somewhat crazy for Eurogamer to turn down Microsoft's invitation to see Scorpio up close at their Redmond headquarters last week. But agreeing to an exclusive of this magnitude also risks coming across as a mere mouthpiece for a company you're supposed to be covering with a kind of detached objectivity."
The Witness - Noclip Documentary (NoClip / YouTube) "What lies at the heart of Jonathan Blow's island of mystery? We talk to the famed indie designer about how one of his earliest design ideas blossomed into The Witness."
A Pioneer Story: How MECC Blazed New Trails (Joe Juba / Game Informer) "Decades ago, as computing migrated from research labs and universities and into the mainstream, one company in Minnesota was instrumental in bringing technology into classrooms. Thanks to its focused mission and talented staff, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) used exceptional software like The Oregon Trail to engage and educate a generation of students – and establish an unforgettable legacy."
Inside 'RimWorld', the Cult Sci-Fi Hit That Just Keeps Growing (Chris Priestman / Glixel) "Since its earliest public release on Steam Early Access in July, RimWorld – a sci-fi space colony sim – has amassed more than 600,000 players, and it's not even a finished project."
-------------------
[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]
0 notes
symbianosgames ¡ 8 years ago
Link
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include the art behind Thimbleweed Park, the rise of RimWorld, and much, much more.
For anyone counting, this is week 31 of picks, and I'm still managing to keep up the weekly pace - primarily because my regular social media trawls during the week allow me to stack up links to post at the weekend! And this is still without regular RSS feed checking - so there's got to be a bunch more stories I'm missing. Ah well.
So much good stuff out there - and I really enjoyed some of the more esoteric stories in this week's set, including the piece on Tamagotchi collectors and the visually impaired Roguelike players. There are all kinds of unique, wonderful video game nerds under the sun, aren't there? Until next time...
- Simon, curator.]
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The Stress of Game Development - Tips for Survival (Extra Credits / YouTube) "Making games is hard. You need all kinds of technical and creative skills, but most importantly, you need to know how to manage the many kinds of stress that come with it."
Game Design Deep Dive: Watch Dogs 2's Invasion of Privacy missions (Christopher Dragert / Gamasutra) "In this article, I will describe some of the technical challenges and design decisions that drove development of the Invasion of Privacy feature in Watch Dogs 2. Areas of focus will include managing branching scenarios, motion capture challenges, controlling NPC state, maintaining dialog flow, and NPC coordination."
Video Games Aren’t Addictive (Christopher J Ferguson & Patrick Markey / New York Times) "Is video game addiction a real thing? It’s certainly common to hear parents complain that their children are “addicted” to video games. Some researchers even claim that these games are comparable to illegal drugs in terms of their influence on the brain — that they are “digital heroin” (the neuroscientist Peter C. Whybrow) or “digital pharmakeia” (the neuroscientist Andrew Doan)."
The Job Simulator Postmortem (Alex Schwartz & Devin Reimer / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 postmortem, Owlchemy Labs' Alexander Schwartz and Devin Reimer analyze the challenges of building, sharing, shipping, and sustaining Job Simulator on multiple platforms with examples showing both successful and less-than-successful design prototypes and how iteration led to the final product."
The Underground World of Tamagotchi Collectors (Alyssa Bereznak / The Ringer) "On October 26 of last year, a user named “psychotama” made his first entry in what would become a detailed online diary, otherwise known as a “Tama log.” “I’m not quite sure how to begin,” he wrote in purple Comic Sans. “My journey with Tamagotchi began about 13 years ago.”"
'Make me think, make me move': New Doom's deceptively simple design (Kris Graft / Gamasutra) "Doom is known for its speed and straightforwardness – move fast, shoot demons. It's a seemingly simple combination that, at the franchise’s best, evokes an ultraviolent cognitive flow. But Doom’s apparent simplicity belies a core design that is difficult to achieve."
From 'Zelda' to 'Witcher 3': Why We're Still Talking About 'Skyrim' (Alex Kane / Glixel) "How Bethesda's 2011 masterpiece – and the colossal online culture of fan art, memes, and music surrounding it – forever changed the game for fantasy RPGs."
Precious Moments, Hype and High School: A Conversation with 'Persona 5' Director Katsura Hashino (Sayem Ahmed / Waypoint) "Hashino tells me that seeing the anticipation for the game build, as previously announced street dates passed and more information on the game crept out via the press, was both "encouraging and scary.""
How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons (Noam Scheiber / New York Times) "The company has undertaken an extraordinary experiment in behavioral science to subtly entice an independent work force to maximize its growth. [SIMON'S NOTE: you may have seen this, but thought it particularly interesting that GDC board member Chelsea Howe was also quoted in here re: F2P-style coercive psychology evils.]"
Why games like 'Super Mario 64' had terrible cameras (Mike Rougeau / Mashable) "The camera is the interactive window through which we experience video games; the term describes not just our perspective and view of a digital space, but the freedom of or restrictions on how we as players control that viewpoint."
A Year after Firewatch (Colin Campbell / Polygon) "With sales of more than a million copies, developer Campo Santo is now working on its next project: unannounced as yet. I sat down with writer Sean Vanaman to talk about the direction he wants to go in next, and how he feels about Firewatch one year after its launch."
Kevin Horton Is a Cryogenics Engineer Turned Retro Gaming Savior (Nicholas DeLeon / Motherboard) "By day Horton, 43, is an engineer at a cryogenics company (he's worked at the same company since high school). But online, he's better known online as Kevtris (in reference to a Tetris clone he developed in the mid-1990s), where he is the brains behind a series of critical technological breakthroughs that allow gamers to play classic video games like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid on modern televisions."
Interactive Fiction Appears at the Whitney Biennial (Chris Klimas / Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation) "The 2017 Whitney Biennial has something curious to offer fans of interactive fiction. Among the works shown this year are With Those We Love Alive and howling dogs, Twine works written by Charity Heartscape Porpentine. [SIMON'S NOTE: short article, but great news, & the linked interview is also notable.]"
From Rational to Emotional: Designs that Increase Player Retention (Jim Brown / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 session, Epic's Jim Brown provides specific examples of design techniques that encourage the formation of enduring emotional ties that could enhance both retention and enjoyment for players in game design."
A Brief History Of Speedrunning (Kat Brewster / ReadOnlyMemory) "A good speedrun is hypnotising to watch – this goes for ones showcased at GDQ, or the ones which get circulated around the internet for their insane jumps or cutscene skips or lightning fast movement. They’re a dizzying show of hard won skill and palpable effort. The video of a world record time which knocks an hours-long campaign into minutes can be jaw-dropping."
In Their War With The Wall Street Journal, Top YouTubers Just Played Themselves (Patricia Hernandez / Kotaku) "Over the last couple of weeks, anger has been bubbling on YouTube over the news that major brands pulled advertisements on the platform in an effort to avoid being matched with objectionable content. The reports, which were published by the Wall Street Journal, were met with such skepticism that they sparked scandalous conspiracy theories among YouTube’s top creators."
After tragedy strikes, a dev's friends strive to complete his game (Chris Priestman / Gamasutra) "Former Harmonix programmer Roger Morash had been working on his passion project, a co-op platformer called Shard, for years before he died in January of this year. "
Inside the Shady World of PlayStation Network Account Resellers (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "A few weeks ago, Mic Fok got a weird email. The person writing it claimed they'd been playing Overwatch on a PlayStation Network account for more than six months, but the password had changed recently. But why would Fok know anything about this random dude's account?"
(Not) a Thimbleweed Park review (Matej Jan / Retronator) "Thimbleweed Park started as a spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. “It’s like opening a dusty old desk drawer and finding an undiscovered LucasArts adventure game you’ve never played before.” [SIMON'S NOTE: mainly linking this for the amaaazing vintage Mark Ferrari art linked within, tho the whole thing is cute!]"
Playing roguelikes when you can’t see (Kent Sutherland / RockPaperShotgun) "For most of us, traditional roguelikes are intrinsically inaccessible. They’re notoriously difficult, their design is complicated and often opaque, they can have more hotkeys than there are keys on the keyboard, and their ASCII-based visuals mean that it’s often unclear what’s happening on the screen. It’s these exact qualities, however, that ironically make roguelikes accessible and even appealing to blind or low-sight players."
The Game Beat Weekly: Digital Foundry and Microsoft make it "exclusive" (Kyle Orland / Tinyletter) "That kind of server-melting traffic shows why it would have been somewhat crazy for Eurogamer to turn down Microsoft's invitation to see Scorpio up close at their Redmond headquarters last week. But agreeing to an exclusive of this magnitude also risks coming across as a mere mouthpiece for a company you're supposed to be covering with a kind of detached objectivity."
The Witness - Noclip Documentary (NoClip / YouTube) "What lies at the heart of Jonathan Blow's island of mystery? We talk to the famed indie designer about how one of his earliest design ideas blossomed into The Witness."
A Pioneer Story: How MECC Blazed New Trails (Joe Juba / Game Informer) "Decades ago, as computing migrated from research labs and universities and into the mainstream, one company in Minnesota was instrumental in bringing technology into classrooms. Thanks to its focused mission and talented staff, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) used exceptional software like The Oregon Trail to engage and educate a generation of students – and establish an unforgettable legacy."
Inside 'RimWorld', the Cult Sci-Fi Hit That Just Keeps Growing (Chris Priestman / Glixel) "Since its earliest public release on Steam Early Access in July, RimWorld – a sci-fi space colony sim – has amassed more than 600,000 players, and it's not even a finished project."
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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]
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