Sundays are for questioning why most of the finest showcases from the Geoff Awards have been within the pre-show. Let’s learn a few of the week’s finest writing about video games and game-related issues.
For Polygon, Matt Leone wrote about when the makers of Pokémon Go and Sleep No Extra tried to reinvent theater. Studying this, you may’t assist however really feel it was a bit doomed from the beginning, however props to them for giving it a crack. Not solely was security a difficulty, however their lack of ability to manage the actual world which is… unpredictable. An excellent anecdote later within the piece does job of illustrating this.
“I bear in mind testing part of the sport in Los Angeles,” wrote Barrett in an e mail interview with Polygon. “I needed to hand over a covert bundle to a stranger — a type of traditional spy story trope. It was occurring in the actual world with a soundtrack taking part in in my ears. I used to be pushed to this stranger by the app and the sport engine. I had by no means met the particular person — and instantly, I arrived at a location and made the handover whereas the soundtrack acquired ever extra dramatic. The euphoria I felt was unimaginable.”
I am keen on a battle royale sport, so right here I’m sharing a chunk by Simon Parkin for The New Yorker on battle royale’s takeover of video video games. Certain it would not precisely current something new or revelatory, however there’s some attention-grabbing tidbits from devs on shoving BR modes into their video games and their worries doing so.
The group additionally performed with the established template. “We felt that battle royale was a bit too punishing,” Kelly stated. “The actual fact you may randomly get shot within the head encourages gamers to cover till the herd is culled. That brutality promotes conservatism over motion.” Impressed by a preferred in-house mode, Kelly instructed that they introduce a type of purgatory: eradicated gamers can be despatched to a “gulag,” the place they might participate in a one-on-one match in opposition to one other loser, with the victor returning to motion. This, too, was contentious. “We heard, ‘This isn’t battle royale—that is horrible,’ ” Kelly stated.
Now to level in direction of video games that are not about sniping somebody within the head, Kyle Labriola wrote about cozy video games and the discourse surrounding them. The piece has positively made me think about ‘cozy’ another way, and as a style that is allowed to evolve like shooters or motion video games.
Whereas the current avalanche of “cozy video games” which have flooded the market between 2016 and now most likely appears overwhelming and eyeroll-worthy should you’re knee-deep within the video games trade, to the typical particular person they’re nonetheless tremendously outnumbered by the action-oriented and combat-oriented video games that make up a majority of huge releases.
For Aftermatch, Gita Jackson wrote about cyclical discourses in video games. Jackson contemplates the newest anthology of online game essays by Machado and Lennon, and is infuriated.
Loads of my favourite video games writing is simply gone — disappeared from an web that each “by no means forgets” and is as transient as a passing breeze.
And eventually, for RPS, Ollie (and the broader Hive who stayed up actually late to cowl all of it) put collectively a round-up of all of the trailers and bulletins from The Sport Awards 2023. Standouts for me: Pony Island 2 and Metaphor Refantazio, what are yours?
Music this week is “display turns blue” by dialE. Here is the YouTube hyperlink and Spotify hyperlink. I found dialE on – strive to not shudder – TikTok, however I am so glad I did. His album “expensive dialE” is a mix of hip-hop, lo-fi, RnB, and jazz, whereas additionally being beautiful and compact. I feel “display turns blue” does a pleasant job of showcasing his expertise.
In a bit.
