Reading List (January 2023)

The first reading list of the year is live! This feels like a particularly good crop this time around. We have a few other, deeper looks at Signalis, a phenomenal series of articles by Polygon that squarely hits our interests, and an ongoing discussion about what's worthy of coverage and why. All that and much more in today's reading list!

Second Opinions

How the Silent Hill-Inspired ‘SIGNALIS’ Tried to Forge Its Own Identity by Patrick Klepek: Klepek interviewed the Signalis devs about the game’s influences, ambiguity, and multiple endings.

How Signalis Changed Sci-Fi Horror by eurothug4000: Eurothug talked through themes and personal theories on what’s real, what’s a dream, and what the heck is actually going on in Signalis.

Training Mode: A Polygon Series

Polygon did another themed week of articles, and these hit square in the middle of our interests. Training Mode is a series of articles (which you can find in full here) discussing the “crossover between health and gaming,” which in most articles’ cases, translated to “the urge to get gud at video games vs. everything else going on in your life.” The resulting series is something any First Five fan will absolutely love and should absolutely read. But here are a few highlights:

Video Games Hurt My Hands — And Helped Rehabilitate Them by Isobel Frost: Frost talks about their experiences with a rare and debilitating condition and their efforts to get back to enjoying their favorite hobby in the face of it.

Motherhood Doesn’t Mean Giving Up On Gaming by Kathryn De Shields-Moon: Shields-Moon talked about the (likely familiar) growing pains of suddenly trying to fit your life around a newborn, including the hobby of gaming.

Gaming Anecdotes

Everybody loves a good story, and this month saw several fascinating anecdotes about games, both of players acting in the wild free of design constraints and of little anecdotes from developers themselves.

An Enclave-Themed Group in Fallout 76 Roleplayed the Villains So Hard It Turned Everyone Against Them by Ted Litchfield: Litchfield chronicled a wild video game anecdote about a group of roleplayers in Fallout 76 that attempted to police their entire server with outmoded and controlling rules.

Prince of Packaging: A Tale of 1990s Box Art by Jordan Mechner: In another entertaining gaming anecdote, Mechner, the head developer behind the original Prince of Persia, discussed how he fought for the game’s original box art — only for the game to flop on release (arguably) because of that very cover! People, of course, know that Prince of Persia recovered and eventually became a success, but the tale from Mechner’s perspective highlights just how unlikely that success was and how much this central element of marketing for the game influenced the game’s fortunes.

That Other Kind Of Game — Story Generators by BuffaLou: BuffaLou expounded on the joys of emergent narratives in simulation games and took viewers through exactly how they naturally spin personal anecdotes into existence through one of their own.

What’s Worth Reviewing?

IGN has started a rare column discussing the how and why behind their company practices, which has of course led to others wanting to pitch in their two cents about how we review games and what’s important or worth coverage.

“Another 7, IGN?” Why So Many Games Score 7 and Above by Dan Stapleton: IGN’s head editor did a quick explainer discussing why the website never seems to review truly atrocious games. The short answer? You can spot a 4 before you ever have to touch it and know to stay well away.

Time is Money: A Response to ‘Review Code’ by Kaile Hultner: Hultner responded to Stapleton’s article in a bid to define what exactly we consider criticism and debate what’s worthy of a critical lens.

Everything Else

Where Does Dwarf Fortress Stand After a Decade Defined By Its Own Successors? by Sin Vega: Dwarf Fortress has been back in the news the past few months after its Steam release. Vega discusses the immense influence Dwarf Fortress has had on the video game industry, as well as how even after a decade of imitators-turned-competitors, nobody else has managed to capture the same magic Dwarf Fortress has.

The Company Intro Cinematic Universe is Bad by Errant Signal: Errant Signal tackles the widely proliferating trend of the company portfolio movie intro — and how the trend is starting to also creep into games.

And Then The Seagulls Found Me by Deep Hell: Deep Hell draws together many parallel threads, connected by the theme of deterioration — deterioration of an aging MMO, deterioration of our own world’s supply chains, and deterioration of the games journalism industry.

The Best Game Animation of 2022 by New Frame Plus: As it says on the tin, Dan over at New Frame Plus did his yearly tour of the best animation of 2022, including the hows and whys they’re so dang impressive.

Working at Valve: ‘A Fearless Adventure’ or ‘Lord of the Flies’? By People Make Games: PMG followed up on their video covering gambling in CounterStrike with a wider look at Valve’s libertarian company structure, tackling everything from the company’s hiring practices to its gridlocked inability to make large decisions about its most profitable product: Steam.

Darktide’s Gory Animations Are Smarter Than You Think by Patrick Gill: Gill dives deep into Darktide’s death animations, talking not just about how they were made, but also the many ways they were designed to provide feedback and useful information to a player as they go hilariously ragdolling across the screen.

Pentiment: Thirteen Ways to Look at a Murder by Francisco Dominguez: Dominguez compared Pentiment to the literary modernist works of the 1900s and how both mediums play with subjectivity.

I Created A $1,000 Hitman Challenge. The Results Brokes The Game by Atrioc: Atrioc created a custom speedrunning challenge in the wonderful murder ‘em up, Hitman, then made a video explaining every trick, glitch, and galaxy brain plan the community’s speedrunners came up with to demolish it.

I Played 8 Mobile Games With Awful Ads To See WTF Is Going On by Sisi Jiang: If you’ve spent any time around the internet, you’ve probably seen a truly inexplicable ad for RAID: Shadow Legends or the many bizarre “get to the treasure!” ads that dangle lava about some digital character’s head. Jiang went and took an hour to play the games behind those inscrutable ad campaigns so you don’t have to.

Stealth Is Everywhere in Games, but the Innovations of Thief Have Been Forgotten by Jeremy Peel: Peel recounted the many quirks of granddaddy stealth game Thief’s various systems and frames them as a forgotten and mostly abandoned branch of the stealth genre.

Station Eleven & Outer Wilds: Emotional Magic at the End of the World by Cody Szaro: Szaro draws a thematic parallel between Outer Wilds and the TV show Station Eleven, framing both through the flamenco concept of duende, a word that attempts to capture a somewhat abstract vibe that’s a combination of melancholy and profundity.