🔄 Reconnect Recap for w/e 13th October '24

Connecting you to even more great games writing

Oct 13, 2024

Welcome to another edition of the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter for Reconnect.

It’s been a huge week for the site, we’ve gone from about 140 sites, to now 187 sites, offering you more variety of games writing to enjoy.

Like always, i’m going to share some of the articles this week that caught my eye, share something fun, and starting this week, i’m going to start featuring some of the talent that makes this whole system work.

The Recap

This week I’ve been reading about how they use video game controllers to diagnose disease, and how playing video games is good for your mental health. This is the scientific research I needed to validate my life choices.

I’m far too old to play Roblox, but it’s a gaming phenomenon that is hard to ignore. Particularly its interest amongst younger gamers. Pressure has been mounting over the past few years around the companies exploitation of children and the harm that it could be doing to them. This week those pressures mounted after accusations that it lied to investors and that It was a “pedophile hellscape for kids.”

Whilst i’m far too old for Roblox, I am also far too young for retro gaming, but it’s still a topic that I find fascinating. Apparently, no one had found a use for the NES’s expansion slot, until now, and we may soon have a new handheld for playing DS games.

The primary thing that helps power many of these retro emulation devices is a chip called FPGA, which emulate how old gaming systems used to work. They rely on a community of developers to develop ‘cores’ that power certain systems and games. In a recent interview with a prominent core-developer, we would all be shocked to learn that the process is neither easy nor is it very profitable.

And finally, it wouldn’t be another week in 2024 without more Baldurs Gate news, I have three playthoughs of this game, that I keep meaning to return to, and maybe this new real-time combat mod, might be the thing that pushes me over the edge.

Thanks for reading this far, that’s it for the recap this week, keep reading for some fun extras and I’ll speak to you again next time.

Enjoy your week.

Something Extra

Investment and Wealth management may feel like a far cry from the video game content I normally share here, but I promise you, today it’s related.

The Yamauchi No.10 Family Office is the wealth and investment firm behind the Nintendo Family fortune. Whilst many other Family Offices present a professional and demure outlook, Nintendos financial managers have gone in a different direction.

Simply put, go look at their website.

It is a vibrant, interactive, sensory overload, for what i’m assuming, because I can’t read Japanese, is a bunch of words about financial management.

As reported by The Straits Times:

"I wanted to create something 'mind-blowing'," Mr Banjo Yamauchi, family representative of the Yamauchi No. 10 Family Office and descendant of Nintendo founder Fusajiro Yamauchi, said in the investment firm's first-ever media interview.
"It represents our nature of doing something that's not been done before."

Writer Recap

My first feature has to go to Alex Stasenko’s

Gamedev Relay

. Not only is Alex an absolute champion for the community, constantly shouting out new writers and sharing their work, but also pens a regular newsletter diving into the latest news and rumors in the industry, as well as their own experience as a developer, producer, testing, everything person. I highly recommend subscribing to their newsletter.