Apparently Sundays are for walking 10,000 steps. I'm bringing this up specifically because I haven't been exercising well lately and I need you, RPS readers, to shame me into doing it even more, just like you did when I admitted on the podcast that I rarely wear sunscreen. I'm counting on you, everyone.
Instead, here are some good articles, mostly about games, from the last week or so.
Kyle Orland of Ars Technica advocates the return of cheat codes. I'm not sure their intention was to allow players to “customize their gameplay”, at least at first – didn't they start out as tools to skip developers who were left behind by mistake? – but it's true that the built-in God modes and menu-driven difficulty modifiers don't have the same naughty magic.
In the past, players typically found cheat codes from sources outside the game itself, spreading arcane knowledge through online forums, print magazines, or school rumors. This outside source made it clear that while these codes were obviously part of the game in some sense, they were also somehow separate from the main gameplay. Even the term “cheat code” implies that you are getting away with something by evading the built-in rules of the game.
For Well doneJosephine Hook explores Melbourne's game development communities and discovers that they are fueled by the power of 'showing up'.
Every developer I talked to mentioned their appearance in some form or another, whether it was just a physical body in space or how we've come to use this phrase to describe how someone can seriously and seriously invest in something. Being the last one at a party, sitting around with nothing to do, or as Leura described, the phenomenon where someone sees your face so often that they eventually feel the need to say hello. Terry describes it as “very much like a protest… just being there makes a huge contribution to the cause.”
InFlux developer Joe Wintergreen retells narrative advice he receivedmany moons ago, from Valve boss David Speyrer. There are probably some words of wisdom here for aspiring developers and an interesting perspective on the craft for all of us.
The state of InFlux at the time was that it was a simple sequence of puzzle rooms, and some people thought it should stay that way, but I was seeing puzzle fatigue (a term I learned from Valve developer comments) that I added to the low-activity “overworld” sections as a solution. It felt like it had to go somewhere, have some kind of narrative, and I didn't have one. However, it was enough in the world that players were inventing narrative elements that I hadn't thought to offer that I began to respond to this by throwing in evidence to support people's interpretations.
Kelsey McKinney from “Defector” review of Taylor Swift's new album. Not gaming related, unless Tay Tay is secretly planning a leveraged buyout of Ubisoft, but Life of a Showgirl's dizzying arsenal of special editions is uncomfortably reminiscent of some game publisher tactics.
As with her previous releases, Swift's business acumen was on full display in promoting the film A Dancer's Life. After announcing the album, Swift put vinyl up for pre-order on her website, and then more and more. Even before the album was released, she promoted and sold on her website eight exclusive vinyl editions in different colors with different titles (“Sweat And Vanilla Perfume Edition”, “Baby, That's Show Business Edition”, etc.), as well as eight CDs and one sweater that Comes with CD. Vinyl costs $34. Discs cost $20. The sweater and CD cost $70. And one of them was a Target exclusive edition! Don't forget about the goal! The marketing for each of these releases (which came one after the other) was sparse. They'll sell out! You will never have another opportunity! Hurry! Show your love and devotion!
Through the prism of A. Yakuza Kiwami 3 character's face, examined by Moises Taveras Endless mode which games will lose from remakes.
Frankly, I despise this attitude towards games, and it becomes more and more systematized with every remake released in this field. This is a belief in which older games are often presented as amateur drafts that only saw the light of day because a product release required it. And even if it is, it's art, dude! A painting on an easel is a collection of brushstrokes, some more elegant than others. The composition sometimes consists of pleasant And dissonant tones make something seem more harmonious. To remake a game or remake an image, song, movie, show, book, or anything else is to break something into pieces and combine it into something else, even if it looks and sounds similar enough. And there is something to be appreciated in the nuances between these different forms, just as there is something to mourn—something that is lost—in transformation.
As for music, I took the plunge into Mongolian throat singing, initially because my wife—descended from some pretty prolific steppe conquerors—was in control of the car stereo at the time. Just recently, because it turns out I like it. Job Windows Tshan Zam this is a good place to start.
