rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

Back it up bro, Mr Do had a weapon

Berzerk didn't have two joysticks, that was Robotron

i was a little bit confused with this article at first, then quickly realized that it was because i always keep my idle hand close to the gaming hand when playing a one joystick game. wouldn't feel right to have it up on the side of the machine.

TIL that.. I have always confused Robotron with Berzerk!

classic blunder

xp oh yeah wow you're right, I'd completely forgotten he could throw his ball thingy

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-simcity-inspired-urban-planners-20190305-story.html

jesus fucking christ

A report by the Washington Post found Activision Blizzard has been incentivising employees to give their data to Ovia Health - an organisation that offers a range of family planning and pregnancy tracking services. Companies can pay Ovia Health to access the aggregate data of their workers, which according to The Washington Post runs from "trying-to-conceive months to early motherhood".

The information that can be accessed includes how many workers have faced high-risk pregnancies, have given birth prematurely, the medical questions they researched, and the planned length of their maternity leave.

For each day of use, employees reportedly receive a $1 (£0.76) gift card from Activision Blizzard, and the company in turn gets to view the combined anonymous statistics.

Although Activision Blizzard stresses the program is voluntary, the financial incentive has clearly convinced many soon-to-be mothers to share their data, with one employee explaining the bonus helped provide "diaper and formula money". Activision Blizzard claims the scheme is popular and has saved the company roughly $1200 (£917) per employee in annual medical costs.

Speaking to the Washington Post, Activision Blizzard's lead android vice president of global benefits said the program is part of an attitude shift towards sharing private information with the company. Employees initially raised concerns over privacy when the company introduced Fitbit tracking in 2014, but since then the company has also offered financial incentives for tracking mental health, sleep, diet, autism and cancer - and Ezzard says workers are now more comfortable with sharing their data.

"People's sensitivity has gone from, 'Hey, Activision Blizzard is Big Brother,' to, 'Hey, Activision Blizzard really is bringing me tools that can help me out'," Ezzard said.

His other statements, however, point to the true nature of the program as a cost-saving exercise.

"I want them to have a healthy baby because it's great for our business experience.

"Rather than having a baby who's in the neonatal ICU, where she's not able to focus much on work," he felt the need to add.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-04-11-activision-blizzard-pays-employees-to-share-their-pregnancy-data

Super Bunnyhop did a really good video on unionization in the industry, 43 minutes. Some very unusual games at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TSB5YQqDiY

Activision is so evil

https://kotaku.com/over-150-riot-employees-walk-out-to-protest-forced-arbi-1834566198

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/03/14/if-video-games-are-todays-rock-and-roll-music-videogamedunkey-might-be-its-lester-bangs/

In which a columnist at the WaPo likens Video Game Dunkey to ... Lester Bangs? Comparison maybe needs to be fleshed out a bit, but sure, why not.

Lester Bangs = Tim Rogers, obviously.

According to SocialBlade, which analyzes social media metrics, the 28-year-old Videogamedunkey might be making up to $1.7 million a year.

some copper-bottomed reporting right there

He does mention Tim Rogers in the piece!

Dude has had over 2 billion views, total, so while I have no idea what he makes each year, he's probably done very well for himself. Just like Lester Bangs.

(Context clues helped, but I had to look up "copper-bottomed.")

dunkey as lester bangs is the most fucked up comparison

I don't even think of dunkey as primarily a critic. He's a comedian.

Every once in a while - and it's been a while, I want to say - he goes critic. But he's usually just funny, even if him being funny sometimes comes off as criticism. Like, his recent ranking of youtube celebrities, it's pretty entertaining, but I haven't really thought too much about his point, though I do sort of suspect there *is* a point.

Was curious about him ranking JonTron so high. Wasn't it only months ago he was against him for his racist turn? Surely JonTron didn't make a swift recovery from bigotry?

Tangentially game related, but I thought there were some interesting points made in this:

https://film.avclub.com/the-dead-eyed-new-lion-king-painfully-illustrates-the-d-1836338813

The crux I think being that in the eyes of many the success of many AAA video games hinges on their specs, how close it looks or plays like "real life," like you've been entertainingly immersed into this convincing or captivating world, even when the game activity itself is relatively mundane (like sweeping or shaving). But how the new "Lion King" essentially underscores that the somewhat related field of computer animation poses a paradox, in that often the "better" it is and the closer it comes to real life the *less* successful it is. Not least because film already documents things that are "real" and the rigorous composition of perfectly rendered CG lions mostly proves fruitless, since the results mimic something we can already see in movies/TV/docs, etc (real lions) while losing the artistry and expressiveness of what something like the original "Lion King" had to offer, despite traditional pen-and-ink (or equivalent) animation being more "primitive."

That's not really what they're describing there, though - the CGI lions are good and convincing as real lions, but because of that, they're bad at musical singing.

The major point being made is “ultra-realism in a game where you are exerting control over/directly influencing the environment enhances the experience; that same ultra-realism in a passive experience that, by its definition, limits the vocabulary needed to generate emotional investment in the experience detracts from the experience.”

Odds are an all-CGI rendering of The Lion King Broadway Muiscal would have much more emotional impact because you would be rendering human faces capable of conveying the emotional beats of the story. As it is, it looks like Fisney put out a tech demo with less soul and heft than Avatar.

IOW it isn’t ultra-realism as much as it is how they chose to use it

ultra realism sucks in games too because you end up with responsive control being held hostage by character animations and the like. you have to find a balance

Ultrarealism also focuses attention on what is not ultrareal, like your weirdass interactions with other characters

I (and everyone) remain curious about Last of Us 2, because that tiny snippet they showed months ago sort of blew everybody's mind in the leaping over the uncanny valley sense. It wasn't so much that it looked "real," it's that they made something that looks "real" also seem relatively playable, per Dan's note about interactivity vs. passively watching something (including cut-scenes). There are other aspects of realism in games (and movies) that go beyond how things look, though. Like the illusion of gravity and the imposition of physics on what is in essence fancy digital drawings.

i don't think games have reached the uncanny valley

No, room to grow! But there are aspects of that Last of Us 2 clip that are pretty uncanny nonetheless.

rad (racer)! ZS alert here:

Experimenting with 'upscaling' old video games with @nvidia's #GauGAN pic.twitter.com/SleyareqFp

— Jonathan Fly 👾 (@jonathanfly) June 28, 2019

wow that thread is amazing

yeah, this is great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCltDbOvr8Y

whoa

i wonder how long it takes for people and beings in that world to stop constantly throwing up. probably not long! then after that they're all just trippin' perpetually

that weird moment when you've stopped throwing up and hear the ocarina over your shoulder

Did he try any top-down shmups? I feel like those would do well

his work with depth mapping is equally interesting

Depth Mapping M. C. Escher pic.twitter.com/tFi8wbYqwU

— Jonathan Fly 👾 (@jonathanfly) July 22, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBqk7I5-0I0

*taps 'reading' in thread title, also hastily printed-and-taped 'particularly dunkey'*

blog of a hackathon centred on michael brough’s work.

http://startingoverinraccooncity.blogspot.com/2019/08/7-day-broughlike.html

i think this is good. he identifies glitches and parity as two crucial concepts in brough games, which leads to this observation:

On a deeper level, Brough's corpus evinces a perspicacious balancing act between rigorous, obsessive symmetry (evenness) and tossed-off—or equally obstinate—asymmetry (oddness). His lapidary designs illuminate some of the profoundest mysteries of mathematics, yet they come to us in the rags of fever dreams recalling the harsh, protozoic digital death mazes of the early to mid-1980's.

i’d probably dial the language down a bit, but i think the observation is right. I thought Corrypt’s glitch mechanic really was great - while trying to solve the puzzles you got dragged into a situation where you realised you were destroying the environment. that you were in fact the enemy of the characters who lived in the cavern - they were not your enemies. and obv anyone who’s played any of his grid-based games will be very aware of parity as the tightrope difference between winning and losing and the ability to manipulate parity as being a significant power.

thanks for this link, fizzles!

i have really been enjoying his new one P1 Select. i had low expectations because he made it quickly, during a game jam (or something), it has kept me playing constantly for weeks now. i still haven't managed to get 20 points in a single game.

btw, for those who are reading this and may have seen broughlike games in the coint and plick countdowns and stuff, this is as good a summary of a michael brough game as any:

Though an emerging and flexible sub-genre, certain recurring stresses are characteristic of Brough's approach:

• Small, square boards & small integers
• Orthogonal 4-way movement
• Parity & zugzwang (or "compulsion to move," i.e. inability to freely "pass" a turn)
• Streamlined controls, e.g. attacking with the same input as movement
• Roguelike mechanics like procedural level generation, permadeath, teleport, polymorph, etc.
• Numerology, i.e. conspicuously consistent integers
• "Glitch" mechanics / aesthetics
• Identification & decryption
• Positional tactics: pushing, pulling, choke points & egress
• Differentiated resource binaries, e.g. credits & energy, blood & mana, etc.
• Unconventional scoring systems
• Idiosyncratic art & audio
• Topologies, synchronies, overlapping matrices

how can one not appreciate the "brough approach"

P1 Select. i had low expectations because he made it quickly, during a game jam (or something),

oh shit, he made it for the same jam that fizzles' link is about! that's really fucking cool. brough seriously is a genius

There's a nifty split screenshot at the bottom that shows what ray tracing can do:
https://www.polygon.com/reviews/2019/8/26/20829631/control-review-pc-ps4-xbox-one-ray-tracing

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/aug/27/click-whir-ping-lost-sounds-of-loading-video-games#comment-132378173

the article itself is fun but throwaway, the comments are awash with quality nostalgia too

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/stephen-sexton-for-me-death-and-super-mario-have-always-been-connected-1.3991940

a poetry book based on super mario (unfortunately no examples)

he talks about and reads a couple here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0007x5w

no discussion of the guardian list of top 51 games of C21?

oh no they di'nt

ok that's about as much use as their other lists, just let me know together a poll with 15 CoD's and a fictional Gaz Coombes walking sim