News & Views
10/17/15-10/23/15
Another
Friday closer to Halloween and another heaping helping of great video game
writing from around the web! If you haven’t already, please give the second
episode of Snuggle
& Scream a listen: my fiancée and I talk about The Guest!
In this
week’s News & Views I found stories about one player’s quest to achieve the
(nearly) impossible, surrealist humor in Undertale,
and how a first-person shooter helped someone to discover their sexuality.
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
Jason Schreier, Kotaku
Worth Reading
Nico W.,
The Mary Sue
Leigh
Alexander, Offworld
Patrick
Klepek, Kotaku
David
Bennett, Kill Screen
With Comments
Eric Van
Allen, Paste
For Hearthstone addicts like myself, this week was pretty huge. One of the most
dominant cards in one of the most dominant decks was made substantially less
powerful. It’s a change I understand, but done in a way that still upsets me.
Blizzard has a strange way of weakening cards, one that almost always makes
them so bad they come unplayable. Still, the Warsong Commander change will be
ultimately good for the future design space of the game. A new meta awaits.
Askel
Junkilla, Polygon
This piece is worth reading if only
for the stir it caused online following its publication. While Junkilla raises
some fair points about the state of mobile development and the mobile games
market, his bitterness (and ignorance) takes center stage. Many of his
complaints seem to boil down to blaming consumers for his misreading of the
market. I feel for the struggling developer, I really do, but his mindset isn’t
a great one to have moving forward.
Jeffrey
Matulef, Eurogamer
I included this article as well
because of controversy. Skullgirls developer Lab Zero is
trying to crowdfund their new RPG, Indivisible. There was some anger online about how much money the developers asked
for ($1.5mil). The anger is demonstrative of ‘gamer’ ignorance about what it
costs to develop games, though. I’m sick a tired of seeing Kickstarter games
asking for a meager sum and pretending that it will be enough to make the next Skyrim. It’s BS. Mike Z in his interview with
Eurogamer breaks down the ‘big ask’ and attempts to demystify game budgets. I’ve
always respected Mike Z and the team at Lab Zero games, but it’s always great
to have my trust re-confirmed. Tell the folks like it is, Mike.
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