Stuff I’ve Read This Week
Many blogs seem to post a weekly round-up of things that were good to read. It seems a good way to organise my thoughts, and a reminder of what was stimulating. So, here…
One of the most talked-about bits of journalism of the last week seems to be this article from the New York Times by Joshuah Bearman, which acts as a very useful primer on some of the more progressive minds operating within game design. Not a whole lot of useful conclusions in here, but a few chunks of wisdom from people that I really respect, and in a mainstream newspaper as well. Will wonders ever cease…
Poring over the minutai of a game’s menu system isn’t usually my idea of a good 7500-word essay, but this set of posts by Krystian Majewski absolutely changed my mind. It’s an examination of the many shortcomings of Mass Effect’s menu system, and really exposes a multitude of mistakes and lessons to learn. It made me realise quite why I felt both entertained and intensely frustrated by that Bioware game. It also has prompted me to take more notice of similar (though less extreme) problems in Dragon Age: Origins.
A translation of a conversation between the creative minds between Pixeljunk: Eden and Noby Noby Boy really piqued my interest. Keita Takahashi, the brains behind Katamari Damacy as well as Noby comes across as a slightly petulant, forlorn, artistically bankrupt individual, but in a good way (if that were possible). Reading the article certainly got me loading up Noby Noby Boy again just to search for his promised ending (no luck!).
And tt was fascinating to chance upon Eric Chahi’s background on the creation of Another World (Out Of This World) from 1991. I think it’s a key game from that period of gaming, but what I didn’t realise was the technological breakthrough that brought about its conception. The very idea of trying to create a game in montage is one that hasn’t been sufficiently explored in any era of gaming, and it’s a bit frustrating to think how little has been done with the ideas in the game since.
Happy reading.
