Reading List (July 2018)

Hello everyone! New video will be out before the end of July. But before then, here are 30 videos and articles I think you’ll enjoy this month. Get stuck in, and let me know what you found out.

Top pick

[Watch] Bomb Chicken's Dual Purpose Design - I’ve got to give this one the top spot. Skip The Tutorial saw Dual Purpose design (the sort I talked about in my Downwell video) in Nitrome’s Bomb Chicken. I thought the same, so this saves me doing my own video! Terrific stuff. 

Critical thought

[Watch | CC] How Vampyr’s Cruel Choices Make You A Monster - CritiqueQuest is now doing videos for RockPaperShotgun. Up first, a deep dive into the design of Dontnod’s weirdo Vampyr.

[Read] The Brilliant Use of Fear and Scale in Batman: Arkham Asylum’s Scarecrow Levels - Kotaku breaks down one of the most memorable parts of the Arkham trilogy: those brain-bending Scarecrow bits.

[Watch] RollerCoaster Tycoon: A Timeless Design - Design Doc looks at what made RollerCoaster Tycoon such a classic game. Get RCT Classic on iPad, you won’t be disappointed.

Telling a story

[Read] Fortnite has the most interesting video game story in years - Without recognisable characters or cinematic cutscenes or deep lore dumps, Fortnite’s devs have crafted a riveting story that makes sense online.

[Read] Celeste: Level Design and Difficulty as Storytelling Beats - Celeste’s level design is used to tell a story “that encourages us not to be perfectionists but ourselves”. Here’s how.

[Read] From pen and paper to Dying Light 2 – Chris Avellone wants to flip the RPG script - What is Obsidian RPG vet Chris Avellone doing writing for Dying Light 2? Read this interview.

Balance and economy

[Read] GTA Online Has an Inflation Problem - Video game economies are tricky. Now imagine balancing one in an ever-changing online world. USGamer shows how Rockstar is going awry. 

[Watch | CC] When Card Games Break - Card games are the perfect place to learn about the perils of multiplayer balance. Austin explains how one errant card can cause these games to fall apart.

[Watch | CC] Why Are Games So Hard To Balance? - So why are games so hard to balance? Adam explains all.

Design

[Watch | CC] Ma, The Space Between - Uncluttered Game Design - Extra Credits explores the concept of “Ma”: a Japanese word for white space, simplicity, quiet. How can this fit into hectic video games? Find out. 

[Read] Jon McKellan on Twitter - A good tweet thread about how maps are shown in-game. I’ll probably pinch some of this in the future. 

[Read] How Nyamakop designed Semblance's spongy, deformable terrain - Semblance started because of a bug. This isn’t that rare, actually: the spy in TF2, the aggressive cops in GTA, combos in Street Fighter 2, juggling in Devil May Cry and more all began as programming accidents of some kind.

[Watch] Elastic Victory - A few more examples of negative feedback loops, from Whats With Games.

[Read] Anatomy of a Brutal God of War Boss Fight - Kotaku breaks down one of the most difficult boss battles from the new God of War. That’s a lot of attacks!

[Read] The Anatomy of a Stealth Encounter - There’s a bit more to stealth than this, in my opinion, but a good look at some different set-ups for stealth gameplay.

Art and music

[Watch] The Animation of Wonderboy: The Dragon's Trap - Excellent work from Dan Root, about how Wonderboy’s remake got more expression while working within really limited constraints.

[Read] Mathew Dyason on Twitter - Game Score Fanfare’s Matthew shares a cool musical trick from Octopath Traveller.  

[Read] The Crew 2's America features some very weird stores - Ubisoft used an algorithm to generate thousands of storefronts in the monstrous open world of The Crew 2. It spat out some bizarre results. 

[Watch] Animation is All About The Walk - Not about games, but totally applicable. 

Best of the rest

[Read] The New Vid Economy: Making A Living From Crowdfunded Game Analysis - I was interviewed for this article about being supported on Patreon. I haven’t read it because it’s too weird.

[Read] Chill out: a new wave of relaxing video games shows there's more to them than violence - A topic I desperately want to tackle this year. This is a good starting point.

[Read] Red Dead Redemption 2 and Paper Edits - This guy breaks down video game trailers. Here, the confusing word nonsense of Red Dead Redemption 2’s story trailer.

[Read] Why a Sims game took seven years to add a pregnancy story arc - Interesting. But, at the same time, Put The Original Sims on Steam You Cowards. And Switch. And iOS.

[Read] After I stepped into Yakuza's world, Yakuza's world seeped into mine - Yakuza’s depiction of Japan is quite incredible. For this traveller, though, it hit very close to home.

[Read] Learning from Mistakes: The Moon Hunters Launch - A brave account of the failure - and comeback - of an indie game launch 

Beyond games

[Read] Watching a movie trailer after the film - The trailer guy from above also does movie trailers, natch. This time, seeing how Black Panther’s trailer was built from bits of the film.

[Watch] What Heist Movies Taught Me About Filmmaking - Patrick Willem explains how Soderbergh’s Ocean's 11 helped him make his own heist flick.

[Watch] Endings: The Good, the Bad, and the Insanely Great - A really good look at storytelling. It’s long, but you only need to watch one of the three examples to get it.

[Read] The Never-Ending War on Fake Reviews - I give this Reading List a 10 out of 10.

[Read] Why Incompetent People Don’t Know They’re Incompetent - Harsh, but kinda true.