Friday, August 28, 2015

News & Views
8/22/15-8/28/15

Phew, another huge week of video game news has gone by. There’s certainly plenty more on the horizon as PAX Prime is taking place this weekend! We’ve already gotten a bunch of cool news from the event. A new character for SFV, a Borderlands feature film, and a release window for one of my most anticipated games: Hyper Light Drifter!

As always, I’ve also found great written pieces from around the web. This week, I have articles about how the F.B.I. implemented the ‘winners don’t use drugs’ slogan, how working on gore-filled games can affect your psyche, transhumanism in Deus Ex, and a history of the baffling and awful Virtual Boy.

And of course you can check out the brand new episode of The Impact Factor podcast that was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if you prefer other methods, check out our SoundCloud. We’re on YouTube too!

Spotlight
Alex Wawro, Gamasutra

Worth Reading
Sean Hutchinson, Inverse

Ben Kuchera, Polygon

Benj Edwards, Fast Company

Ed Smith, KillScreen

Vincent Bariuan, KillScreen

With Comments
Chris Kohler, Wired
Super Mario Maker is a game I’m still skeptical about, but man does it ever deliver on some great pieces. Constructing 2D platforming levels that work well & are fun and interesting is a huge challenge players [journalists] are facing. Turns out game design is hard, who knew. I’ll be following Super Mario Maker in the months to come to see the levels that come out of hard work and good design sense. Should be a good time.

Tim Ww, Gamasutra
‘Edutainment’ games were my first foray into the world of gaming. I played a whole lot of Carmen SanDiego, Freddi Fish, Oregon Trail and Math Rabbit. For the most part, though, they’ve totally fallen by the wayside. And, often when developers try to make an educational game they fail to create an experience that’s actually fun. Anne Tham looks to bring back some of that old school goodness with her studio’s new RPG that teaches chemistry. Cool.

Patrick Klepek, Kotaku
I don’t like VR stories at all, but this one really got to me. It’s a profound and humbling experience to see someone react so viscerally to the Apollo 11 VR experience. It shows the powerful potential of VR games on the horizon, devoid of ingrained ‘gamer’ skepticism. I’m still a huge VR skeptic but above all else, I’m glad people have already found joy from this new technology.

Blake Hester, Polygon
Box art is so important. Good box art can boost sales, and bad box art and leave a new release dead in the water. Hester compiles insights from a bunch of box art artists about how they approach conceptualizing and implementing a good cover art. Fascinating stuff.

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