I’m putting together this edition of Worth Reading really late on Friday afternoon, moments after having my soul crushed by the never-dying, machete-wielding Jason Vorhees. You’ll have to forgive me for not having paragraphs of reflection on the past few days, and instead quickly point you to what I’ve gathered this week.
Apologies for not having a game to point you to, though. Rather than suggest a game I didn’t have enough time to vet, I’d rather just cut that section and focus on the material that I can stand behind.
God damn you, Jason. God damn you.
(I will have my revenge on a later episode of Spookin’ With Scoops.)
Hey, You Should Read These
- "What Went Wrong With Silicon Knights' X-Men Destiny?" by Andrew McMillen for Kotaku (this link won't work until Kotaku is back online--the site was knocked offline by Hurricane Sandy)
- "Death March: The long, tortured journey of Homefront" by Rob Zacny for Polygon
Hopefully you had a chance to listen to the podcast this week, in which we spent more than an hour talking about the various issues raised regarding ethics in games journalist in the past few weeks. It’s probably not the last time we’ll have something to say on the subject (and if you have questions, ask!), but rather than delving deeper down that rabbit hole on Worth Reading, I wanted to highlight a few excellent pieces of games journalism filed recently. These are pieces that deserve your clicks, as the only way more of it will be produced is if websites know they can have reporters spending weeks researching material that will only end up in one, big piece. There’s not much of a financial incentive to do that, and we have to support the websites that do engage in that. Bravo to Polygon and Kotaku.
If You Click It, It Will Play
I Don’t Know About This Kickstarter Thing, But These Projects Seem Pretty Cool
- Whatever you think of Gerztron, I wish more Kickstarter games attached prototypes.
- There aren't many god games these days, and Maia proposes being the god of a space colony.
- Sir, You Are Being Hunted should get backed for its name alone. Luckily, it also looks great.
Valve Just Launched Greenlight, So Here’s Some Games That Don’t Look Terrible
- Broforce. Broforce? Broforce! Wait, Broforce. Right. Broforce.
- Heard nothing but great things about Walking Mars for iOS. Maybe I'll just wait and play it here.
- Dino Run is not really a new thing, but if you're into dinosaurs, it's some good, mindless fun.
Oh, And This Other Stuff
- Not everyone wants to have games move them, and that's okay. Journey did that for me, though.
- A colleague, Matt Hughes, passed away of an apparent suicide this past week. Tragic.
- Leave some tablets with Ethiopian kids who've never used a computer, and what do they do? Hack it.
- Someone created a text-based multiplayer shooter. No, I am not shitting you.
- An excellent interview about the state of the industry with Peter Moore.
- Following incidents, GDC has reminded folks about its code of conduct policies. Will PAX be next?
- Whammy Jammy is a game jam about music-based video games, aka my faaaaaaavorite.
- If you haven't played Dust, then play Dust. After that, read this fascinating postmortem.
- It was tragic when games journalism lost Kieron Gillen. His piece on The Cradle is so good.
- Test your video game knowledge in this video.
- A fascinating piece on the so-called "randomness" of XCOM.
- Rami Ismail of Super Crate Box on why Hotline Miami is an important game. Warning: spoilers.