rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

Quinto Martin sounds like quite the character.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/10/education-gamification

Lots of interesting stuff here, for example:

"You might assume SimCity isn’t a deliberate political project, just one that happens to be built on the particular presumptions and expectations held by the sort of white-collar designers employed by Maxis and later EA. However, in the case of SimCity, the ideological roots go much deeper to the spotty sociology of the anti-Great Society polemic Urban Dynamics, written by MIT computer scientist Jay Forrester. Urban Dynamics outlines an argument against taxation and social services, claiming that governments could better address poverty by catering to the needs of business. Forrester made these arguments in 1969, supporting them with then-state-of-the-art computer models. Will Wright, the original designer of SimCity, was inspired by Urban Dynamics and used parts of it to build his game. This isn’t something the game tells players. Players cannot adjust these inbuilt assumptions; they cannot interact with the model itself. They can only play in the margins of the inputs and outputs while the black box remains inaccessible. "

Been watching Movie Bob's channel and seen this comment, entirely new info to me

Back in 2012 The Escapist fired a whole bunch of content creators all at once, where once they had new content spaced out for everyday of the week they were reduced to Zero Punctuation only. The people who had bought out the Escapist and been replacing it's overseer staff were all very, very Rumsfieldian levels of conservatives. So folks like Bob, James Portnow, Lisa Foiles, Jim Sterling, Wisecrack were all told they could either support Gamergate or get out. Even those with semi-conservative politics did not like the ultimatum and there was a mass-"Letting go" except for Yahtzee, who the site bent over backwards to keep. They replaced the other days with pod-casts about how much the PCs were ruining everything.

This video, was one of many years Bob had put out for old movies before he left, which he had no access to. Go back to Bob's content post 2012 and you will see he just mentions he was on other websites and could not even mention it by name, let alone reference his own videos, same thing with Extra-Credits, and Jimquisition. It seems the new staff of the Escapists, which is to say the old staff who bought out the site from the previous crew, has allowed Bob to post the videos on his own channel, illegally tying it to him if for any reason he gets kicked out again.

first paragraph i understand - second paragraph, what? if the videos were work-for-hire doesn't "Escapist" own his videos regardless?

that is incomprehensible

That's some really proactive conservatism, considering Gamergate started in 2014.

the creators quitting/being fired happened in late 2014 and it was indeed due to the site supporting gamergate. one of the site's owners published an article pretending to be an unbiased look at what game developers thought of gamergate, but he had solicited the opinions from a toxic 4chan board and got predictable results.

btw, yahtzee said a few vague things about being against censorship but never addressed gamergate directly.

https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/3kxed3/the-ambitious-future-of-dead-cells-is-ditching-co-ops-for-capitalism

btw, yahtzee said a few vague things about being against censorship but never addressed gamergate directly.

― wasdnuos (abanana), Monday, October 28, 2019 6:10 AM

I remember him saying something, either in a video or column. Something silly about him not seeing how sexism effected the creation of games (the gaming community itself has always been the much bigger problem), but mostly it seemed like he just didn't want to get involved in the discussion.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4aggzm/civilization-and-strategy-games-progress-delusion

sorry 4 vice but this explores some thoughts of value

ooh this looks good, been thinking about this since that unfortunate jimmy maher series totally failed to interrogate any of these concepts.

also every holiday i join my family's board game mania for a dozen or so titles and as the years go by am more and more startled by the unquestioned ubiquity of european-colonialist-themed games that abstract away violence, slavery, exploitation of all kinds... wonder if that's being debated in some corners of that scene.

i've definitely been thinking for a long time about the normalization of Whig History in 4X games, and gameplay mechanics only gets you so far as an excuse

Very good article, thank you for sharing NV

the linked le guin piece is a cracking read too.

the last time i played diplomacy, i tried to convince as many countries to a ceasefire and to unite in defense against aggressors. i didnt get much support.

"then whats the point of the game?" thats for you and your clergy, therapist, or close friends to discuss, asshole.

Need to come up with a game called Nomadology now

mb it sounds like you need to do a better job of defining these aggressors. Russians or Islamists for example. Maybe Chinese tech giants.

https://www.themanequest.com/

The ILG equivalent of a white canvas painting or 4'33"?

I tried to paste a link from my phone and forgot to stick text between the url tags. I can't even remember what the article was.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/15/21067001/gamestop-earnings-revenue-death-retail

presented as yet unread:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/06/playing-metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain

https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/21/21070333/life-is-strange-2-episode-5-border-wall-interview-immigration-michel-koch-raoul-barbet
Could've used a little more editing but overall a good read.

Woah the New Yorker Metal Gear thing was riveting

yeah, i read after posting and yikes

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/02/05/rockstar-co-founder-and-head-writer-dan-houser-is-leaving/

Should be a standard press release-type deal about Dan Houser leaving Rockstar, but the writer couldn't resist snark, which I appreciated, especially that comment about Heat.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/04/23/who-made-fy_iceworld-a-forensic-investigation/

I'm not even a fan of Counter-Strike, but for reason found this article fascinating.

podcast, not reading, but The Life and Times of Video Games is fun listening for digging in deep on small things - the "Boss Button," color cycling in pixel art, the birth of digitized samples, etc.

tyvm!

Polygon has been doing similar things - really enjoyed this recent video on the evolution of video game babble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYZMWkmXX3k√

i enjoyed this on delay and roll back mechanism in online fighting games

good read, thx Fizzles

https://acoup.blog/2019/11/22/collections-why-are-there-no-empires-in-age-of-empires/

Pretty good unless you know all this already
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJiwn8iXqOI

i knew most of that but it was well organized and presented!

it's kind of like that mini-doc about the amen break, in that way

listening rather than reading but... (it wasn't really fame-related lols)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nv36

"Playing With The Dead

Jordan Erica Webber explores how video games allow us to play with people after they have died."

(about the memorialisation of people in games)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e6xOBCAVvA

that youtuber is a sex pest iirc if you care about such things

what? shit.

https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/gamer-disgusted-to-discover-they-just-watched-nick-robinson-video/

I am honestly not sure what I think about The Hard Times having a gaming section.

Be funny if it was just about speed runs.

they're consistently funnier/more tuned in than the onion's gaming section

at least based on the ones that make it to my Feeds i dont read it actively

One of my best friends constantly texts me links from The Hard Times. I hate him for this.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/shigeru-miyamoto-wants-to-create-a-kinder-world

LOL I opened that in Dark Mode and got a creepy negativ-Miyamoto surrounded by black clouds. Good interview. Miyamoto, for all his beatific demeanor, sounds like a guy it kinda sucks to work for.