Worth Reading: 01/18/13

In an ideal world, I’d spend more time on Thursdays to prepare Worth Reading, since we’re starting this Unprofessional Fridays feature for premium members. The idea of Worth Reading going up earlier got in my head when Double Fine’s Brad Muir stopped by the office a few months back, and pointed out how he would often by in the midst of his Friday evening activities by the time it went live, and then managed to forget it by the time Saturday rolled around.

Just a brief update on something mentioned a few weeks back: I’ve found a way to speed up my transcription process with an outside service, which means more written features should be appearing on the site. It’s pretty easy for me to connect with a designer on Skype for 30 minutes, it’s finding four or five hours to write up our conversation that gets in the way of everything. Knowing that, if there are some feature ideas you’d like me to tackle, feel free to suggest away.

Getting these transcriptions back reminded me of an aspect of my job that’s really bothersome, too. A feature I’m running next week will be based on an email interview with a prominent developer, a game from last year I really loved. I didn’t want to conduct the interview over email, but the publisher insisted, despite my repeated requests for the opposite. It’s a foreign studio, so there are language resource reasons why the publisher was so insistent. The reason I almost never agree to email interviews has less to do with being worried a publisher will secretly edit anything out and more to do with my experience of knowing people say less interesting things inside a written format.

I still think I can salvage an interesting feature from the interview, email or not, but I was tempted to trash the thing outright. It wouldn’t be the first time, and I doubt it’ll end up being the last, either.

Hey, You Should Play This

• Insult Swordfighting (Browser, Free) by Karza Games/LucasArts -- www.int33h.com/test/mi/

LucasArts’ inability to figure itself out the last few years has been an absolute tragedy. When the company started focusing on retooling its classics with updated visuals, it seemed like it LucasArts was on the right path. (Guess we’ll never get that updated TIE Fighter game, huh?) The update for The Secret of Monkey Island was terrific, and marked the first time I’d played it. It holds up super well! A programmer at Karza Games used the source code for the game and put the insult swordfighting sections from the game online, which means you can play them in your browser.

And You Should Read This, Too

• "Why do I like violent games so much?" by Maddy Myers for Metroidpolitan

It’s healthy to examine why you like the things you like, and the underlying reasons behind that attraction. If you play video games on a regular basis, it’s impossible to avoid violence. There’s no shame in asking, then, what drives us to enjoy such violence. With games, it’s a little different. There are mechanics represented by violence that can be enjoyable for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with the violence depicted on the screen. You can extract joy from being skillful at the task in front of you, and that just so happens to involve blowing up people a bunch.

• "For Amusement Only" by Laura June for The Verge

Wait, pinball machines were banned from New York until 1976? Color me surprised at that revelation, just one of many that came while reading through this wonderful account of the arcade scene’s emergence and eventual decline in the modern era. Laura June has culled together an an exhaustive account of the arcade at its height, and concludes with a look at today’s heroes working to preserve machines that are moving into the rear-view mirror.

If You Click It, It Will Play