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July Link Roundup
Jul. 18th, 2021 07:57 pmThis month's link roundup is likely to be smaller, as I spent much of this month with severe neck pain that left me incapable of dawdling on the internet. So it goes.
I'll add links to this list until the end of the month, as usual.
Insider Insights With Meguey and Vincent Baker
I create this montly column for articles that someone might read when one is boring, so it is not my usual cup of tea to recommend a podcast that runs over two hours. This is an endorsement of how brilliant this episode was. Just back to back, brilliant stories about the Bakers. I'm a little bitch for Apocalypse World - someone in a RPG group once said I was like a Jehovah Witness, because I never shut up about the apocalypse - but even if I wasn't, this cute couple that has created one of the most influential games of indie RPGs while raising three children would be a story I'm endlessly interested in. Add to this: insights on how poverty and parenthood shaped their design, a charming meet-cute story involving a mutual friend who later turns out to be Legendary Game Designer Emily Care Boss, and the stark reveal that AW was invented after Baker designed the Brainer playbook ex nihilo, and it's a nonstop shower of brilliance.
IF50: Fifty Years of Text Games
"The earliest version of The Oregon Trail—made long before the green-tinged ports known by subsequent generations from their school computer labs—was first played by students in a Minnesota classroom on December 3, 1971." Aaron A. Reed takes this to mean this year, 2021, marks the 50th anniversary of the text-based game, and he takes us on a journey, spotlighting one influential text game per each year of their existence (minus a two-week pause, that took place last month). I've already posted two articles from this series on this roundup, which just happened to be the ones I'd run into, so now I gave up and I'm now reading the entire thing from the beginning, and if you have any interest on the cultural scene of games, you should to. Reed is an excellent guide to this journey, always taking the time to highlight the human, social and cultural element surrounding the games he's chosen; but he's also a True Nerd, and will sometimes talk at lenght about the source code of a certain game, but never to the point of geeky wankery, only as a reflection of the people that made them. It's a brilliant series and I find myself getting ready to buy the book it'll become at the end of the year, and people who know me know I'm usually too darn stingy to spend money on something I already read for free.
I'm reading from the beginning and taking my time, especially reading some of the other articles Reed suggests at the end of each spotlight. Of note so far has been this walkthrough for 1982's The Hobbit, which (much like his pice on Silverwolf, that I mentioned on my last roundup) feels like a guide for a fictitious game.
I'm not going to include any more of his articles on my roundup, since otherwise it'd be The Aaron Reed Appreciation Post, but I'd like to take a moment to point out this paragraph from 1973: Hunt the Wumpus:
This article by legendary interactive fiction writer Emily Short shows the intersection of two subjects very near to my heart: the use of tarot cards and AI-generated text as prompts for stories. AIs are capable of generating new text based on prompts, but their lack of understanding of where the boundaries for a given prompt should like can cause them to blunder into the uncanny or the marvellous, by, in this case, creating cards in nonexistant suits for a tarot set.
Deadgames and Alivegames
I am a huge fan of the Analgesic series, and Melos Han-Tani, one of its creators, is on-point here about the creation of media. I don't agree entirely with his points - while it's true that the more people work on a project, the less it can be a vessel for true expression, I don't think there's as much as a direct line as he believes. The key point, after all, is that capitalism exerts a pressure on creative works, which would not exist on a socialist utopia regardless of the amount of people working on a piece; but, at the same time, a single person working on a game can ground oneself down in order to maximize profits while even a group of people can take it easy and focus on artistic expression - think a big indie like John Blow vs. a cooperative like Sokpop. Still, I find that most of his concepts are right on track, and this article is well worth a read.
Spencer Yan's monthly updates for My Work is Not Yet Done
Yan's upcoming game of weird jungle exploration in the context of theocracy is looking better for each day that passes, and I'm glad to have backed it, but you don't need to have backed to look at his brilliant monthly reports, that give a suprisingly candid look at solo game development. Frankly, these alone would have been worth the money. Updates as of late had been more sparse as Yan focused on the nitty gritty of game making, but the earlier ones are meaty and interesting, and this month's has been particularly heavy.
Music this month is Drunk, by The Living Tombstone. A band better known for songs that are videogamey and slightly memey (or, on at least one occasion, VERY memey) but that for this song delivered a powerful piece on substance abuse - and one that is a jam to listen to.
I'll add links to this list until the end of the month, as usual.
Insider Insights With Meguey and Vincent Baker
I create this montly column for articles that someone might read when one is boring, so it is not my usual cup of tea to recommend a podcast that runs over two hours. This is an endorsement of how brilliant this episode was. Just back to back, brilliant stories about the Bakers. I'm a little bitch for Apocalypse World - someone in a RPG group once said I was like a Jehovah Witness, because I never shut up about the apocalypse - but even if I wasn't, this cute couple that has created one of the most influential games of indie RPGs while raising three children would be a story I'm endlessly interested in. Add to this: insights on how poverty and parenthood shaped their design, a charming meet-cute story involving a mutual friend who later turns out to be Legendary Game Designer Emily Care Boss, and the stark reveal that AW was invented after Baker designed the Brainer playbook ex nihilo, and it's a nonstop shower of brilliance.
IF50: Fifty Years of Text Games
"The earliest version of The Oregon Trail—made long before the green-tinged ports known by subsequent generations from their school computer labs—was first played by students in a Minnesota classroom on December 3, 1971." Aaron A. Reed takes this to mean this year, 2021, marks the 50th anniversary of the text-based game, and he takes us on a journey, spotlighting one influential text game per each year of their existence (minus a two-week pause, that took place last month). I've already posted two articles from this series on this roundup, which just happened to be the ones I'd run into, so now I gave up and I'm now reading the entire thing from the beginning, and if you have any interest on the cultural scene of games, you should to. Reed is an excellent guide to this journey, always taking the time to highlight the human, social and cultural element surrounding the games he's chosen; but he's also a True Nerd, and will sometimes talk at lenght about the source code of a certain game, but never to the point of geeky wankery, only as a reflection of the people that made them. It's a brilliant series and I find myself getting ready to buy the book it'll become at the end of the year, and people who know me know I'm usually too darn stingy to spend money on something I already read for free.
I'm reading from the beginning and taking my time, especially reading some of the other articles Reed suggests at the end of each spotlight. Of note so far has been this walkthrough for 1982's The Hobbit, which (much like his pice on Silverwolf, that I mentioned on my last roundup) feels like a guide for a fictitious game.
I'm not going to include any more of his articles on my roundup, since otherwise it'd be The Aaron Reed Appreciation Post, but I'd like to take a moment to point out this paragraph from 1973: Hunt the Wumpus:
Albrecht and a few other like-minded thinkers spun off the People’s Computer Company from Portola, launching both a newsletter and a community meeting space, the People’s Computer Center: in practice, both were known as just “the PCC.” The idea of the Center was simple: the PCC would convince big companies like DEC and HP to donate hardware, then set it up and make it accessible to members of the public, who could stop by to play computer games, “rap about computers,” or attend drop-in classes on BASIC (or folk guitar). Open computer time to do anything you liked was available for a few dollars an hour, or less: “the younger you are the less you pay.”
A bunch of nerds trying to get MORE people to use computers. Gatecrashing instead of gatekeeping. Can you imagine it?
The Uncanny Deck: Co-Authoring with GPT-2This article by legendary interactive fiction writer Emily Short shows the intersection of two subjects very near to my heart: the use of tarot cards and AI-generated text as prompts for stories. AIs are capable of generating new text based on prompts, but their lack of understanding of where the boundaries for a given prompt should like can cause them to blunder into the uncanny or the marvellous, by, in this case, creating cards in nonexistant suits for a tarot set.
Deadgames and Alivegames
I am a huge fan of the Analgesic series, and Melos Han-Tani, one of its creators, is on-point here about the creation of media. I don't agree entirely with his points - while it's true that the more people work on a project, the less it can be a vessel for true expression, I don't think there's as much as a direct line as he believes. The key point, after all, is that capitalism exerts a pressure on creative works, which would not exist on a socialist utopia regardless of the amount of people working on a piece; but, at the same time, a single person working on a game can ground oneself down in order to maximize profits while even a group of people can take it easy and focus on artistic expression - think a big indie like John Blow vs. a cooperative like Sokpop. Still, I find that most of his concepts are right on track, and this article is well worth a read.
Spencer Yan's monthly updates for My Work is Not Yet Done
Yan's upcoming game of weird jungle exploration in the context of theocracy is looking better for each day that passes, and I'm glad to have backed it, but you don't need to have backed to look at his brilliant monthly reports, that give a suprisingly candid look at solo game development. Frankly, these alone would have been worth the money. Updates as of late had been more sparse as Yan focused on the nitty gritty of game making, but the earlier ones are meaty and interesting, and this month's has been particularly heavy.
Music this month is Drunk, by The Living Tombstone. A band better known for songs that are videogamey and slightly memey (or, on at least one occasion, VERY memey) but that for this song delivered a powerful piece on substance abuse - and one that is a jam to listen to.
