Telltale Tell-All: How Toxic Work Culture Drives Away Best Devs

Description: "Telltale Games Will Remember That"

Writing for The Verge, Megan Farokhmanesh, does a deep dive into the arduous working condition in the video game industry in general, and one award winning studio in particular. As she explains:

These conditions almost always hit one group the hardest: developers, or the people who actually make the games. Layoffs are a pervasive fact of life, even at successful studios where developers are often hired en masse to help hit tight deadlines and then fired to cut costs after the game ships or is canceled. With the next deadline, the cycle begins anew. Overwork, job insecurity, and profound burnout are omnipresent concerns; more than three-quarters of developers report working under “crunch” conditions, which can mean working up to 20 hours a day and more than 100 hours a week. These practices can have a significant and debilitating cost to employees, one that often feels baked into video game development culture.

And how does Telltale Games, the studio that done everything from The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones to Batman and Sam and Max episodic games factor into this? Farokhmanesh elaborates:

The story of Telltale — its rise, decline, and potential reformation — is not just the story of the missteps of one studio. It’s a shocking window into the $36 billion video game industry (which is now so large and lucrative that it rivals the film industry), and how its worst practices can grind down and burn out even the most devoted and valuable employees.

The entire article is important for anyone interested in the human cost of the video games they enjoy, and what is currently being done, and can be done about working conditions in the future.Read the whole thing.

Mass' Effect: Why Are Fat People Vilified In Video Games?

Description: Screenshot from Silent Hill 2. A fat, white man
with blond hair wearing a backwards baseball cap & striped shirt
points a finger towards the camera, with the subtitle "You've been
laughin' at me all along, haven't you?" displayed at the bottom.

As a fat guy, I've gotten a lot of strangers commenting on my right to exist in public space over the years (and I have it easier than a fat woman or person of color). The way fat people are pilloried as character in the virtual space of video games is pretty gross, too. Producer and essayist Anshuman Iddamsetty looks at the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry that is video gaming contributes to this in "How Video Games Demonize Fat People" for The Outline. Idamsetty's essay goes into a deep dive in speaking with professors, motion-capture actors, game players, game developers and others connected to the industry to take a long look at both the root causes and the effects, intended or otherwise, of demonizing fat bodies.

Here's an excerpt:

if the fear of alienating a player is so great that lazy tropes are somehow safer, this alone doesn’t account for their frequency — if a fat body appears at all.
Sunset Overdrive was released in 2014 by Insomniac Games. Part zombie shooter, part Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, the Xbox One exclusive boasted a robust customization system that let you be whatever you wanted — except fat. “We wanted to put our time into wild outfits instead of technology to bloat up people or bloat them down,” Sunset Overdrive director Drew Murray told Kotaku. (“Bloat” — what a word to describe my body. )
Later in the piece, a shape emerges. “You have so much other complexity in all the things you can wear, the hair, the animations,” said Insomniac CEO Ted Price. “We had to pick our battles, and that was kind of where we chose to draw the line.”

The essay is a bracing but necessary look at not just the history of video games as technical development, but also as popular entertainment, and how certain story telling and design decisions in video games as a medium seem baked into the process from the beginning. Please, give the whole essay a read.

I'm also interested in hearing from other gamers-- have any of these examples ever made you feel a certain way? Do you have any to add yourself? Sound off in the comments.

Video Game Subtitles: The Good & The Bad

Nowadays, most video games, from the tiniest independent title to the AAA blockbusters have subtitles. Subtitles are important not just for the Deaf and hard of hearing-- players with audio processing disorders need them too, as well as player who need the voices or sound lowered for whatever reason. Max Deryagin, an expert consultant on subtitles whose work has appeared in hundreds of videos, is also an avid video game player. His thoughst on what video game with subtitles often fail to do correctly is a well-thought-out article with plenty of examples from last year about what not do to. Here's an example of an irritating problem I ran into way too often: crappy contrast between the subtitle text and the actual game environment...

if the game is highly dynamic, you don't have much time to focus on the subs, so it can be really hard to keep up with them when the contrast is low. Let me demonstrate that in the video clip below. Try to pay attention both to the image and the text. (The clips are muted to imitate not hearing the dialogue well, when you'd want to enable subtitles.)

Subtitles in Star Wars Battlefront II from Max Deryagin on Vimeo.


Ridiculous, isn't it? I can't even read the text in time, let alone enjoy the scenery or concentrate on the action.

Max's post includes a lot more common subtitling implementation mistakes from last year, so whether you're a game player or a game developer, it's essential reading.

As with previous posts I've made on accessibility, these issues don't just affect gamers with disabilities. Making games-- or whatever content you're distributing-- accessible makes them available to a wider audience, and if just a little thought and consideration goes into these measures at the beginning, they can be both super easy and super cheap to include from the get-go.

Leveling the Playing Field: Video Games & Accessibility

Description: Close up of a pair of hands holding a Playstation
4 controller. The controller is a deep blue, and a light on the front
of the controller glows brightly.

Accessibility in video games is more than just creating specialized controllers. It's an issue that doesn't even have to be particularly time-consuming or expensive, as long as you make sure to think of it at the beginning instead of bolting it on at the end. So why are ways to make video games accessible still so sparsely implemented? Why does change keep happening so incrementally, if at all? How can this be fixed? Why is the video game industry so slow to adopt techniques that have made entertainment media accessible in other domains? In "How Games Can Better Accommodate Disabled Players", Waypoint's Mike Diver interviews Ian Hamilton, an game development consultant and advocate for increasing video game accessibility for game players with disabilities. An excerpt:

"Awareness, though, can be hard to come by directly—the circumstances in which games are made are not the same as those in which games are played. Console games are not played on a 27-inch monitor, 18 inches from your face; but that's often the environment in which day-to-day UI decisions are made... There's no reason why the system can't be designed and implemented before the content it's going to display is finalized. That's something I'd dearly love to see addressed at an engine level, as there's really no need for developers to keep reinventing the wheel every time—especially when it's so often reinvented as a square. Again, as with a great deal in accessibility, this isn't rocket science to solve, at all. It's just about actually getting it done."

The discussion of subtitles in video games was of particular interest to me. I always play with subtitles on, as I have an auditory processing disorder and there are times that I just can't focus on the dialogue any other way. Hamilton also talks about controller remapping, colorblind mode and more. The entire article's a great read, so do read the whole thing.

Being An Indie Game Developer While Keeping Your Sanity

Debates about the legality and how necessary "crunch time"--  extreme periods of work in order to meet milestones or game launch deadlines where 80 hour work-weeks are the norm-- have been a hotly-contested topic for close to half a decade. I talked about how AAA studios like Blizzard exploit workers' passion and camaraderie to cover up the effects of crunch time 3 years ago. As the perennial debate over crunch time and overwork in video games has heated up once again, I wanted to turn to an area that is often overlooked: the pressure and strain of single-person indie game development.

Writing for gamesindustry.biz earlier this year, Oliver Milne penned "The dangers of passion projects: Staying sane in indie development". He spoke with Josh Parnell, the single person behind the long-anticipated space sim Limit Theory that was successfully crowdfunded in 2012. Parnell worked on nothing but the ambitious space-sim for 3 years straight, handling programming and debugging and reworking all the code himself. In 2015, his regular public updates stopped cold. Parnell seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. Six months later, he resurfaced, citing overwhelming stress and the need to retreat for half a year for his mental health.

Crowdfunded or not, you might think that control over your own schedule, milestones and owning what you make might make long hours and the pressure of crunch very unlikely. As Milne and Parnell point out, it's more likely than you'd think:

Being in control of their own hours and intellectual property might, on the face of it, seem like it would reduce those problems for indie developers, but Parnell says the indie lifestyle comes with its own risks: "On the one hand, what makes you so great as an indie dev is your passion. It's that you're doing what you love. On the other hand, that's exactly the danger of it, because the minute it becomes work, or the minute you let your life get consumed by it, everything changes. It's hard to see that coming when all you're thinking about is 'Oh, I'm just going to be doing what I love, it's going to be great!'

The entire article does a great deep dive on Parnell's case in particular and what all game devs could learn from what happened, so I'd recommend reading the whole thing.

Black Is Beautiful, So Why Do Video Games Lag Behind?

Yusef Cole and Tanya DePass, writing for Vice Waypoint, talk about the challenges black gamers and other gamers of color have in finding characters that look like them being rendered as well as their white counterparts-- if they're rendered at all. In looking at the challenges of bringing black player characters to the small screen they found the problem's roots in the silver screen in "Black Skin Is Still A Radical Concept In Video Games":

As we begin to see more characters in games who resemble us and more developers taking the time to think about us, a question worth asking is: How well do games visually represent black people and others with darker skin tones? The clues to begin answering this are situated in the history of film, a medium to which games owe much of their visual aesthetic.

Stretching back to the earliest instances of film photography, capturing darker skin tones has rarely been prioritized or even much considered... To this day, many black actors are underlit, even on big-budget movies and TV shows.

The film industry did not-- and still fails to-- prioritize taking care in rendering and lighting and considering how darker skin will look like in different scenes and environments. Video game development has a similar story, especially when it comes to 3-D rendering. But are technology limitations really to blame?

"I don't think technology is holding us back at all," [Shareef Jackson] posits. "We accomplish things with each generation. You can have hair and clothes flapping in the wind if you want. So if companies wanted to get it right, they prioritize it. Unless they have people on the team willing to call them out on it as well, it won't change." 

For Robert Yang, a game designer and professor at NYU Game Center, this prioritization is a natural outcome of the unchecked biases that lie behind the 3D technology that powers modern gaming. "When 3D artists test their new skin shaders, they often use a 3D head scan of a white guy named Lee Perry-Smith," he notes. "What does it mean if we're all judging the quality of our skin shader solutions by seeing who can make the best rendered white guy?" 

...Mainstream games with well-lit black protagonists like Mafia 3 and Watch Dogs 2 are proof that the technology necessary for lighting black skin is already there. Meanwhile, indie developers of color are forging their own path forward when it comes to depicting black characters of all shades in games. "People that are not black don't think about the different shades of blackness or browness," says Allen, "That's a problem."

Cole and DePass also spotlight game developers of color working to broaden video games' palette both literally and figurative and doesn't shy away from issues like colorism and developer forethought, either. It's a fascinating read, go go check out the whole thing.

Knowledge Check: D&D Unsung Heroes Were These Women

Writing for Kotaku, Cecillia D'Anastasio has a great longform article on how the early history of Dungeons & Dragons and some of the setting's most iconic features were all thanks to the major contributions from many women, and most of the time the women contributed despite the atmosphere surrounding them:

The countless histories documenting Dungeons & Dragons’ 40-year ascent to the cultural mainstream tend to gloss over the women who made the fantasy role-playing game what it is today. The early D&D heroes we hear about are always big-gutted men with gray beards, who in their basements and at conventions in their name, cultivated the younger men who would carve the game’s legacy in their image. But that’s the lore of D&D, not its story. From the earliest days of D&D, women were shaping its look, its narrative, its affect and its fandom.

This may come as a surprise since, in those nascent years, most women around D&D were tolerant wives and mothers. That’s not because D&D didn’t appeal to women; it had simply inherited the deeply masculine culture of its predecessor—wargaming.

It is a great read and talks with many key TSR employees from Dungeons and Dragons' past. Check it out!

2017 Game Devs of Color Expo in NYC This Week

After a successful inaugural event last year, the Games Devs of Color Expo returns to New York City this year on June 24th. Createdby developer and industry vet Catt Small, the Game Devs of Color Expo lets people of color in the games industry network with each other, present their work in a professional space, and get feedback directly from consumers. The GDoCExpo will take place at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a historic venue that can hold up to 700 people. To keep the expo accessible, student and low-income attendee tickets are $5 while general tickets are $20.

In addition to game demos and exhibitions, GDoC Expo is hosting five educational talks about game development and four panels about various parts of the game development process. In a win for accessibility, all talks and panels will be live-captioned, and the entire event event is wheelchair-accessible. There are 31 free to play games and game demos at the Expo, as well as several "micro talk" 10 minute presentations, industry development panels, and an evening after party at Babycastles gallery.

Listen Up: Fresh Out of Tokens

Fresh Out of Tokens is a bi-weekly podcast that recently celebrated its 2 year anniversary. Hosted by David & Tanya, the podcast focuses on addressing issues of diversity, inclusion, intersectionality and feminism in video games. Tanya and David are lifelong video game enthusiasts, and this podcast is obviously a labor of love. They bring their combined experience and insight to a podcast that has already featured some intense discussions and amazing guest interviews. They're not afraid to ask difficult questions of interview subject or do deep dives into the culture surrounding video game development and video game fandom and culture.

You can follow along via the Fresh out of Tokens  simplcast site, or on iTunes via iOS. 

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Localization Editor Withdraws Name Rather Than Give Up "KKK" Joke

Akiba's Beat Game Over Screen

On XSEED's official forum, localization editor Tom Lipschultz posted a list of changes made in the English version of game Akiba's Beat. In addition to things like changing names of characters to reflect puns in the original Japanese, there was one joke that Lipschultz was changed that he felt was a bridge too far-- changing a background sign that read "KKK Witches" in the original Japanese version :

The original was a parody of "NKK switches," a Japanese light switch manufacturer based out of Akihabara. I personally felt "KKK witches" was pretty funny for its shock value, but when I mentioned it to my coworkers, they... were not as amused. 

Yeah, I can't imagine why a white guy going "LOL it says KKK roflcopter" would be a bad look or anything. Instead of pausing for a moment of self-reflection as to why the name of a domestic terrorist group was funny to him, or why a background joke might be worth changing, Lipschultz decided to double down.

 ...[XSEED was] insistent upon the name being changed. And of course, I fought this as best as I could, since I saw the forceful change of this as an act of censorship...

Yes, according to Lipschultz, changing a joke to avoid name-dropping the Ku Klux Klan is exactly the same thing as actively suppressing art! He was the lone brave white guy sticking up for the original intent. Like, what if the original Japanese developer really wanted to make the minor background company sign joke as some sort of statement about the USA right-wing hate group responsible for lynching about 3,500 black men over the course of its existence, right? Lipschultz continues:

In the end, however, it was Acquire themselves who voluntarily changed it to "ACQ witches"... [XSEED emailed the original Japanese developers] to let them know that the KKK is a well-known abbreviation for a hate group in America, and asking them if the name "KKK witches" had any specific meaning in Akiba's Beat... Acquire simply changed the sign text and sent us a new build. 

Oh. So since the original developers of the game made the change, this must mean they were cool with it. If the intent was to make some sort of political statement, they would have kept it. Censorship implies there's some sort of involuntary act, and Lipschultz himself said the original developers made this decision themselves. So that's why Lipschultz... asked for his name to be removed from the credits? Yep, he confirms it himself.

It is due to this change, and specifically due to my initial misconception that we'd directly asked the devs to change it, that I asked to have my name removed from the credits of Akiba's Beat... I feel it's a good symbolic gesture on my part, showing my commitment to my principles on this matter... I'm perfectly fine with being the "ninja localizer" of XSEED, fighting the good anti-censorship fight from the shadows. 

Yes, this is the hill Lipschultz chose to die on. This also means that per XSEED company policy, he will no longer be credited on any future work he does for the company, and he took this stand being fully aware of this company policy.

It turns out that Lipschultz has many misconceptions, from what censorship is, to what it means to be funny to what it means for something to be "very Japan". Not content to dig a hole for himself on the forums of the company he works for, Lipschultz took to the comments section of a Kotaku article about his decision in what I'm sure he thought was a noble and well-reasoned attempt to defend himself. Here, let's watch him go and dig himself deeper:

[The KKK acronym] doesn’t make me chuckle on its own, but in the context of appearing on a sign in a busy part of Tokyo, where the business in question obviously had NO IDEA what it meant? That’s pretty funny, if you’ve ever been to Japan. “Engrish” exists as a concept for a reason, and a sign that says “KKK witches” is so out there, so WRONG, that it appearing on a sign is definitely worthy of at LEAST a chuckle, for the absurdity alone. 

I guess the idea is, I believe it would be funny to the game’s target audience, those being Japanophiles. Because it really is very “Japan.”

You see, a KKK reference is funny because... racism! Non-native speakers being ridiculed for not understanding a language is funny because, um... also racism? People that like Japanese pop culture think racism is funny too? I guess?

Honestly, I'm surprised Lipschultz still has a job considering he seems to have no grasp of optics, humor, or what localization is supposed to be. Posting on the Neogaf boards, Lipschultz once had this to say in his defense of anime boobs and fan-service:

Even if you consider content in a game to be perverted and classless... let the classless perverts have it! They deserve to enjoy their games just as much as the rest of us. And to say that it "taints" the game for the rest of us is no different than saying having someone of a different race, or sexual orientation, taints the neighborhood.

Yes, just like his withdrawing his name from the credits of Akiba's Beat and all future XSEED games he works on was his attempted to channel Evelyn Beatrice Hall (no, REALLY, he said so right here), standing up for sexualized female characters created by men, for men, is like speaking out against discrimination of marginalized people. That's totally not gross at all!

I think the best way to explain translation vs transliteration is by using a musical analogy. When a violin repeats what a piano just has played, it can't make the exact same sounds. It can only approximate the same chords.The violin can, however, recognizably make the same "music" as a piano, but only when it's faithful to the logic and limitations of the violin as it is to the logic and limitations of the piano.

Languages are like that, too. Each has their own "sound" and their own logic.The process of rendering ideas from language to language is really more like a transposition than a translation-- translation implies that there are word-for-word equivalents that exist from one language boundary to another. That's like saying piano sounds exactly like the violin!

And the idea of word-for-word equivalents of a story, of a language's underlying feeling strikes me as false to the nature of story telling.The best a translator can do is hope for is to come close as possible not to the text's literal meaning-- it's nearly impossible to drag a sentence's meaning across one language barrier to another completely 100 percent intact. What is more important in preserving, intent... even at the expense of making four strings do the same notes as 88 keys (i.e.English from Japanese). A translator should work to preserve a story's essence, the total feeling of the complexities.Literal translations, as outlined in today's earlier piece on Persona 5, are stilted, awkward and can seem more like transcribing than translation,

When the original game developer of Akiba's Beat was contacted about what the KKK initials of the "off brand" light switch maker sign meant for a US audience, they changed the joke because they intended to just make a silly company name reference, not name-drop a US domestic terrorist group.

Basically, what Lipschultz has done is mixed up the right of people to not be suppressed by the government or societal coercion with the tension that is part and parcel of the act of translation. Instead of pausing and reflecting on why a minor joke with unintentional racist overtones was something he saw as so essential he'd be willing to throw away credit for his work, Lipschultz decided that not keeping "KKK witches" was the molehill to die on.

Persona 5 Puts the LOL in "Localization"

The latest game in Atlus' long-running Persona RPG series, Persona 5, was released recently. Plenty of reviews mention the stylish graphics, the eye-catching presentation and the entertaining in-game battles. What not many reviews mention is that the actual English dialogue in the game is, to put it politely, a hot mess.

An actual line from p5's first hour:
"A public transit bus was driven down an opposing lane with its customers still in it!"

— Anthony Burch, sorry (@_anthonyburch) April 4, 2017

This is especially surprising considering how much acclaim the localization and dialogue for Persona 4 received. Persona 5 boast 8 editors and 6 translators listed in the game's credits. So why is the dialogue so bad? Writing for Polygon, translator and Persona fan Molly Lee gives her best estimate:

Chances are high this localization was a rush job; a lot of the more egregiously bad lines read like an unedited first draft. It’s possible the localizers were doing everything in their power just to finish the scripts on time, and chewing on phrases and wording to make the script sound natural for English speakers takes time, and it’s possible they just didn’t have any.

The end result is that the localization ends up being worse than just bad... it's robotic. Nonsensical. Boring. As Lee explains, when it comes to localization, too many cooks spoil the soup:

The really good lines are overshadowed by the memory of the worst ones, and in a way, that actually makes it worse. The purpose of localization is to provide the best experience possible while maintaining a reasonably close approximation of the game the Japanese players enjoyed. But Persona 5’s localization is not that. Instead, it's amateurish, mechanical, and if it wasn't for the voice acting, it'd be almost entirely devoid of character voice. 

In fact, let's try a thought experiment. I'll provide some dialogue from the English version of the game, and you try to guess which main party members said them. Sound good? Okay, here we go: 

• "He healed himself...? Is it because he ate those inside there?" 

• "What kind of stupid phantom thief would use their real name!? I'm not down for that!" 

• "Why do I—the one who was just watching—know more about it than you two!?" 

• "I hope that she doesn't torment herself over this. When it comes down to it, women don't hesitate." 

• "Uhh ... Anyway, it can't be helped if that's the case. Time for you to go to hell." 

• "What nonsense that you used a mousetrap on me!"

Ready for the answers? 

All of those lines were said by Morgana.
From a story perspective, dialogue is supposed to clue the reader in as to each character's personality. So what kind of personality does Morgana have, exactly? Is Morgana relaxed enough to use curse words like "hell" and slang like "down for that"? Or is Morgana a bit of a tight-ass who uses stiff, dismissive language like "nonsense?”

If Atlus is going to ask us to invest $60 and dozens of hours of our time, then I think that they should at least take some pride in their releases.  Especially for a game that is so extremely dialog-heavy. Because really, who talks like this:

"At this rate, it's be pointless how much I contribute to this school."

The Last Game I Make Before I Die: Crashland Dev's Amazing Talk

This video is the full GDC 2017 talk given by Sam Coston of game studio Butterscotch Shenanigans. It details the story of Crashlands, the large-scale 2D action-RPG crafting game that Sam worked on with his brothers and talks about his struggles in dealing with developing the game and his own cancer diagnosis. The talk doesn't just touch on Sam's deeply personal story but also offers a very insightful look at the game development process.

Video: Diversity Makes Cooler Games For Everyone

Youtuber MrBtoungue took a break from his usual fare to expound upon the biggest complaint had had about gaming in 2015: it wasn't diverse enough. How did that affect him, a dude who described himself as "a comfortable cis white male with a lump of coal where my heart should be"?

Part of the reason is that two of his favorite games of the year, the Witcher 3 and Bloodbourne, could only have happened as unique products of their respective developer's times and culture. As he puts it, diversity is an asset:

I see something like an undiscovered country's worth of talent. Right here, within our own borders, a country full of people who want to make and play games-- and would be making and playing games in greater numbers if we didn't keep throwing obstacles in their path. I always wonder over the years how many From-Soft's-worth of talent we've driven off by us constantly asking to see their tits. How many projects' worth of creativity have we driven off with behavior that's racist or homophobic and transphobic or just generally abusive?
The cost of unequal representation and games is not only unfairness but wastedpotential.

You can watch the entire video below:

Make Cool & Weird Game Stuff With No Prior Experience

So you have been inspired to want to make your own video game, You saw something artistic or cool or weird, or maybe you want to try a new way to make art... but you're feeling intimidated. Or maybe you've been making art but want to incorporate that into a game with no idea how.

Well, today is your lucky day. Bronson Zgeb and G.P. Lackey of the artist-run gaming studio KO-OP have created a step by step guide with easy to follow and understand instructions. As they explain in the introduction:

This tutorial is about empowering people who feel constrained by their lack of experience. For example, programmers who feel like they need artists to make cool things, or artists who think they need programmers to make cool things, or even people who are neither of those who want to make cool things. 

The tutorial is written for folks who have no experience with Unity or 3D modelling.

So what are you waiting for? Go check it out! Maybe make something cool, or weird, or meaningful!

Jonathan Blow (Maybe) Peed In A Jug To Make A Point?

(or: Jon Blow, You Know Nothing)

(or: Jonathan Blow? MORE LIKE JONATHAN PEE AM I RIGHT GUYS)

So, noted indie game developer Jonathan Blow (whom you may know from the game Braid, from the movie about indie games ) took to twitter today and posted a picture that thanks to Blogger's Terms of Serivces I can't re-post but I can describe. With the tweet "Here is another thing I helped make, to help finish The Witness" he attached a picture of a clear jug with a tube attached at the top that was either his actual pee, or something faked to look like he'd peed in a jug. Twitter collectively reeled in shock.

Why would he do this? Was it making a point about how dedicated he was to finishing The Witness (even though he's just a consultant)? No, apparently it was to make a point that we are all shocked when a grown professional adult posts a picture of maybe-a-jug-of-his-own-urine instead of being shocked at the plight of indie game studios.

No, really.

Description: screenshot of a series of tweets. The first two, from Jonathan Blow, read: "Wow this tweet seemed to upset people. I meant it as a joke, but...it is also kinda true, you know? If y'all were as interested in new indie games as yo seem to in that picture I just posted, more indie developers would survive!" The 3rd post, re-tweeted by Blow from the user bombsfall reads "But once you recognize the secret reason for the pee bottle, you will be ashamed for your words and deeds".

Now bombsfall was referencing another tweet by a famous developer responding to criticism: Hideo Kojima responding to criticism of sniper the Quiet's male-gazey design. All kidding aside, does Mssr. Blow maybe have a point?

No, not really.

Friend of the blog Daphny (full disclosure: she's also linked on my sidebar, contributes to my patreon, sent me homemade muffins and is my friend) addressed this in a great blog entry titled
"IF JON BLOW WAS INTERESTED IN HELPING PEOPLE SURVIVE WE WOULDNT HAVE TO JOKE ABOUT HIS PISS" and while I'm tempted to let that mic drop and call it a day, you should really read the whole thing. Some choice excerpts:

[Jonathan Blow has] said on twitter if you dont have 100 dollars to spend on greenlight your game isnt worth being on greenlight, and in an interview with kotaku australia said that its *~*~HARD FOR HIM TO THINK*~*~* ABOUT SOMEONE HAVING A HARD TIME COMING UP WITH 100 DOLLARS which displays his lack of awareness of what its like to not have 100 dollars to INVEST because all of your money is going to IMMEDIATE survival needs (food, shelter, bills)...
his indie fund is such an insular money making scheme, indie fund pours TONS OF MONEY into huge boring investments instead of paying smaller projects for actual ambitious and unique creative work. of course this isnt ALWAYS TRUE but they gauge what they fund on GUARANTEED SUCCESS not ARTISTIC POTENTIAL. its not a fund for people who are breaking out, its a fund for those who want to GET RICH. thats a fine goal to have, but the lack of transparency with indie fund should really set off any outsiders red flags
AAA indie indeed. but GOTTA SUPPORT THE ‘COMMUNITY

Seriously, go read the entire thing. It's short, devastating, hilarious, and has two Vines.

Gotta Go Fast: How Speedruns Unlock Awe

Description: Altered screenshot from NES game Ninja
Gaiden: close-up on the eyes of a man in ninja mask
saying "Holy crap!"

Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game to completion as fast as possible. Born in the late '90s during the era of first person shooters like Doom and Quake, speedrunning has given rise to enthusiast communities across the globe, wikis, you tube channels. twitch subscriber channels, and long-running charity events. The most prominent example of charity benefit speedrun events is the twice-yearly Games Done Quick week-long marathon; GDQ has collectively raised a little over six million dollars for charity over six years.

While the question "What interests you in speedrunning" is likely to have as many different answers as there are people answering the question, author Carolyn Petit has a pretty interesting take on why she watches speedruns-- they have given "the soul of the game" back to her. She explains:

Speedrunning reveals to me just how little I know and understand about the games that I thought I knew and understood so well, games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Speedrunning reveals to me that almost every game is full of secrets; not the kinds of secrets that designers place in games for players to find, but secrets that the designers don’t even know about or intend, secrets that are the game’s own, things borne out of the process of its creation.

She has a great example of what is quite possibly a word-record-breaking Super Mario Bros speedrun in her essay, too, so give it a look.

True Tales From The Video Game Writers' Bullpen!

from left: Clank, Ratchet. Not pictured: boxing glove.

As the adage goes, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard" and while that was coined to describe the challenge of comedy on the big screen, it's especially true when writing for the small screen, including video games. As TJ Fixon, a writer on Ratchet and Clank details to Gamasutra:

“I wrote this joke, where Ratchet and Clank are in a ship together and the designers wanted them to fall asleep so they could wake up in a new environment,“ he explained. "So this gas comes out, Ratchet goes, ‘ah cryosleep gas, I’m not gonna fall asleep!’ And of course he falls asleep. And Clank says 'oh it’s good that gas doesn’t work on robots!’ and a boxing glove pops out and knocks him out.” 

“They just started peppering me with, 'Why is this funny? What Is the joke? Where does this fall in the hero’s journey? Is this the save the cat moment?’ I’m wide-eyed and going ‘I thought, I thought it was funny I’m so sorry.’ That’s what I realized, as a game writer, you think you have this freedom, but you don’t. There are so many constraints and so many moving pieces, and from then on out I was hyper-aware that any time you write anything in a script, that changes the game for 20 different departments.” 

What dialogue do the writers interviewed say they dreaded having to write the most? Believe it or not, it was ambient dialogue:

Druckmann, seeing Krawczyk’s putting a finger gun to her head at the mention of ambient dialogue, asked all three to share the most difficult part of their writing process, and for all three, the biggest nightmare was bark dialogue, (ambient dialogue enemies shout to alert players to gameplay clues), and expository directives (characters muttering to themselves something like “I need to go through that door!”)

The entire article is an entertaining and illuminating read, so I encourage you to check it out!

What Designers Really Need To Learn From Metroid

Metroid for the NES and Super Metroid for the Super NES are two of the most influential video games ever made.

The games' non-linear progression, solo exploration and action based gameplay have, along with Konami's Castlevania series, influenced so many action-platformer games that therm term "Metroidvania" was coined in video game reviews to describe the genre. The Internet is chock-a-block with all sorts of indie game plaftformers that display their Metroid influence proudly. But, as Maddy Meyers explain, just because you can count Metroid as an influence doesn't mean your game is automatically as good:

Take Shadow Complex, for example, a “metroidvania” that is obsessively similar to Super Metroid in terms of play-style—except that it’s 2.5D instead of 2D, so the world feels a bit more layered and packed out with compelling new surfaces to scale. That said, for a game that supposedly takes its influence from Metroid, Shadow Complex falls wildly short in terms of aesthetics, narrative and nuance. The plot follows Jason, a bland-as-a-plain-bagel man whose girlfriend gets kidnapped right out of the gate by shadowy soldiers. The game’s artists gave Jason a far more boring existence than Samus Aran’s, overall. Instead of beautifully designed, vibrant, unique armor and towering, glorious alien architecture, Jason gets black-and-gray suits and bland warehouse crates and hallways. (He doesn’t even strip down to a bright red swimsuit at the end of the game, either.)

So what makes Metroid stand out? Why is it so important as a game?

The reason why Metroid and Super Metroid work, at least in part, is because they evoke a fearful feeling of exploring and surviving, as well as a sensation of not-belonging, of being lost, and of rebuilding oneself piece by piece. Samus fights a cyclical, endless war on familiar battlegrounds; she goes on unglamorous, personal quests, often with little institutional support (in contrast to heroes like Master Chief or Marcus Fenix, who spend their campaigns being loudly lauded and supported.) Metroid is dark, and not in a cheesy way—in a mournful, slow, deliberate way. 

The fact that Samus is a woman matters, and it has always mattered, but that’s not the only element missing from contemporary Metroid imitators. The other missing pieces are even sadder: the lack of emotional nuance and depth, the shying away from the grit of loneliness, the dark existential depth of outer space, and the murky waters of motherhood (incidentally, videogames already do dads plenty—but only Metroid and Portal have even come close to tackling “mommy issues”.)

Meyers also goes into a very insightful breakdown of the movies Alien, Aliens, and Terminator 2 and how Metroid is the video game that comes closest to capturing the sci-fi feel of these movies.

Have you played a game that lives up to the Metroid legacy? Is it even possible? Sound off below.

Every "Ask Iwata" Satoru Iwata Translated Interview In One Place

The late Satoru Iwata

Via tumblr user shenya-sterling, a list of pretty much every translated interview with the late Satoru Iwata, excluding untranslated interviews and musings on games only released in Japan, organized by system.

DS
DSi Hardware
DSi Internal Software
DSi Browser
Asking Iwata about DSi
WarioWare: Snapped!
Brain Age Express
Flipnote Studio
Rhythm Heaven
Style Savvy
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
DSi XL
WarioWare D.I.Y.
Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver
Pokemon Black / White
Pokemon Black 2 / White 2
Jam With The Band
Dragon Quest 9
Walk With Me!


WII

The Wii Hardware
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Special Edition Interview with Iwata
Wii Sports
Wii Channels
Wii Remote
WarioWare: Smooth Moves
Super Mario Galaxy
Link’s Crossbow Training
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Mario Kart Wii
Wii Fit
Wii Music
Animal Crossing: City Folk
Punch-Out!!
Wii Sports Resort
Wii MotionPlus
Wii Fit Plus
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Monster Hunter Tri
Sin & Punishment: Star Successor
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Metroid Other M
Wii Party
Super Mario 25th Anniversary
Kirby’s Epic Yarn
Super Mario All-Stars
Donkey Kong Country Returns
Wii Play: Motion
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Kirby’s Return to Dreamland
Go Vacation
Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games
Xenoblade Chronicles
Rhythm Heaven Fever
Pandora’s Tower
Project Zero 2: Wii Edition
The Last Story

3DS

Proffesor Layton and the Miracle Mask
Samurai Warriors Chronicles
Pro Evolution Soccer 2011
Ridge Racer 3D
Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition
Dead or Alive Dimensions
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D / Revelations
Tales of the Abyss
Resident Evil Revelations
Tekken 3D: Prime Edition
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
“And That’s How The 3DS Was Made”
3DS Hardware Concept
3DS Exterior and Mechanical Design
Nintendogs + Cats
Asking Miyamoto Right Before Release
3DS Built-In Software
Steel Diver
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - Sound
Nintendo eShop
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Original Development Staff, part 1
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Original Development Staff, part 2
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - Development Staff
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - Shigeru Miyamoto
Star Fox 64 3D
Pokedex 3D
Pokemon Rumble Blast
Super Mario 3D Land
Freakyforms
Mario Kart 7
Swapnote
Kid Icarus Uprising
Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir
3DS XL
New Super Mario Bros. 2
Art Academy: Lessons for Everyone!
Style Savvy: Trendsetters
Paper Mario: Sticker Star
Brain Age: Concentration Training
Fire Emblem Awakening
Harmoknight
Luigi’s Mansion 2
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity
Mario and Luigi: Dream Tea
Streetpass Relay Points
Pokemon X / Y
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Nintendo 3DS Guides: Louvre
Nintendo Pocket Football Club
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D
Xenoblade Chronicles 3D
Fire Emblem Fates

WII U

E3 2011: Wii U
Wii U: The Console
Wii U: The Gamepad
Wii U Miiverse: The Producers
Wii U Miiverse: The Developers
Wii U: Internet Browser
Wii U: Chat
New Super Mario Bros. U
Zombi U
Nintendo Land
Wii Street U powered by Google
Game & Wario
New Super Luigi U
The Wonderful 101
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
Wii Sports Club
Super Mario 3D World
Fit Meter
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Splatoon


MISCELLANEOUS/FAN TRANSLATIONS/ETC

Game & Watch
Yoichi Kotabe
Platinum Games
In Conversation with Takahashi & Sakaguchi
Yoshio Sakamoto & Hironobu Sakaguchi
Fire Emblem 12 (fan translation)
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (fan translation)
Etrian Odyssey 4 (fan translation)
Sakurai Asks: Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon