Worth Reading: 11/10/2014

I refuse to believe we're nearly halfway through November. Last time I blinked, Giant Bomb was in the middle of E3 preparation, not wondering if we'll run out of time to play everything for GOTY discussions.

When I started playing Sunset Overdrive, I was enjoying the game but it hadn't quite "clicked." The game was quickly sidelined for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, mostly because I was super curious to write about Sledgehammer's debut, and I knew the campaign would be quick.

But, man, it clicked over the weekend, and I know the moment it happened. A few hours into Sunset Overdrive, it grants players the ability to dash in mid-air. Until that point, one of my problems with the game was a growing frustration with navigating the environment exactly the way I wanted. That changed with the dash, as you're able to quickly correct mistakes and basically float through the world forever, if you're being careful about it.

At first, I was annoyed how many collectibles were sprinkled throughout Sunset Overdrive. Now that I'm nearing the end of the game, I'm happy to have more reasons to continue poking around. So good!

You Should Read These

• "Gamergate and the politicization of absolutely everything" by Ezra Klein

Wanna be depressed about the future of discourse? Vox's Ezra Klein has the medicine you need. It's unlikely Gamergate ever truly goes away because it's always existed, it was always under the surface. What changed was the creation of a party, platform, and (muddled) message. But Gamergate's lessons extend far beyond games, as Klein points out how so many of our disagreements are being driven across party lines, and evidence points to this becoming the new norm. Gamergate is indicative of a much larger communication trend. Anyone else need a drink?

"7. This is the context for how #Gamergate has become so massive: we live in a world where politics leads to a 38-point gap on whether a movie about slavery should win an Oscar — an issue, for the record, that neither the Democratic nor Republican parties had any official, or even unofficial, position on. But partisans knew intuitively which side to take. They knew who their friends were, and they knew who their enemies were, and they knew which side would cheer if "12 Years A Slave" won the Oscar. Political identities aren't about tax cuts. They're about tribes.

8. This is the result of the incredible rise in political polarization in recent decades. It used to be that both the Republican and Democratic parties included both liberals and conservatives. Since parties contained ideological multitudes, it was hard for them to be the basis of strong, personal identities. A liberal Democrat in New Jersey didn't have a lot in common with a conservative Democrat in Alabama. But now that's changed. The parties are sharply sorted by ideology. What were once fractious coalitions have become unified tribes."

• "Rogue Legacy and the Line Between Enjoyment and Addiction" by Tom McShea

It's incredibly common to describe a game we're really enjoying as "addictive." Being addictive is considered a positive in games, but the term has decidedly negative connotations in most other contexts. Addictive is shorthand. Tom McShea (formerly of GameSpot!) recently spoke with Rogue Legacy developer Teddy Lee about how gameplay loops that encourage repeated playthroughs are considered. Lee provides some fascinating insight into how a creator responds to obsessive play of their work.

"So you're caught in a continual loop of dying, restarting, and upgrading, without an obvious break in the cycle to make it easy to turn off the game. Still, Lee wasn't expecting people to pour so many hours into Rogue Legacy. 'We never wanted to make a game that people played for a hundred hours,' he says. 'We didn't think it would be that addictive. Some people have put in a lot of hours, way more than the game deserves.'

His deprecating joke may seem like modesty, but Rogue Legacy doesn't support the hundreds of hours that some people have sunk into the game. There's little endgame to speak of, so once you vanquish the bosses and max out the skill tree, it's only your own motivation that's keeping you going. 'We just try to make games fun. We're not trying to make a game that sells 40 million copies,' Lee says."

If You Click It, It Will Play

These Crowdfunding Projects Look Pretty Cool

• HD Retrovision wants to make your old games look better with rad cables,
• Override tasks players with cooperatively controlling mechs, ala Pacific Rim.
• Ingonga hopes to have players fighting for survival in the swamps of New Orleans.
• Aerannis is a rad lookin' stealth game that's only asking for $6,000!

Tweets That Make You Go "Hmmmmmm"

Oh, And This Other Stuff

• Jerry Orbach explains the difference between John Romero and Sandy Peterson levels in DOOM.
• Cara Ellison hangs out with Japanese independent designer Ojiro Fumoto.
• Yong-Hee Cho describes the collaborative process for making Bayonetta 2's costumes.
• Rick Lane examines the lengthy and lasting legacy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
• Mike Williams speaks with players still spending time with EverQuest, Unreal Tournament, others.
• Critical Distance remains an excellent resource for discovering some excellent games writing.
• Steve Peterson tries to understand why license games are suddenly cool.
• Alex Wawro learns how Age of Zombies came back from the dead four years later.
• Noel Murray explores how Last Action Hero explored satire all the way back in 1993.
• Marshall Sandoval speaks with Nina Freeman about games, sex, and religion. (Ooooh!)
• Jason Schreier lists all the way Activision's avoiding telling us how much Destiny's sold.