🔄 Reconnect Recap for w/e 27th October '24
Connecting you to even more great games writing
Welcome to the Reconnect Recap, the Pepsi Max of Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform.
It’s spooky season, and unfortunately it’s not for me, normal everyday life gets my adrenaline levels up, I don’t need to be watching or playing something scary to send me into a fit. But’s that not to say the rest of you aren’t welcome to indulge in a scary game or two (That’s a silent hill reference - see i’m hip).
Like always the recap is going to share some of best articles to feature on Reconnect in the past week, plus some bonus extras you might like to check out.
So let’s get going.
The Recap
This week was overflowing with really insightful think-pieces.
From breaking down how the concept of a remake is unique to our industry (Flynn Hams) to how visual design invokes emotion in games (GameWisdom), to how diversity in games is still not where it needs to be (The Punk Writer), and finally, a systematic breakdown of why so many games have fishing mini games in them (Niki).
Switching over to some deep industry insight, we have details into the game’s industry’s performance for September (Dmitriy Byshonkov) and what the next generation of gamers are playing (A16Z GAMES).
Going deeper, we have an interview with the creator of Balatro about the games souring success and their views on whether children should play it (Crossplay), and Player2.au had a chat with Andrew Frederiksen, Lead Producer at Firaxis, about the upcoming Civilization game and it’s day-and-date launch on consoles for the first time.
Swinging back around to actual video games, SuperJump Magazine gives their thoughts on the popular Animal Well, and the tedium of its gameplay.
Some genius / madman has made a Fable remake for the Gameboy (RetroDodo), Jackbox has yet another fun party game on the way, this time it involves surveys (GamingOnLinux), and someone has discovered a lost English translation of the PS2 game Kaena that was never released (Time Extension).
Honestly, I could go on, but these newsletters have a word limit and so does our attention spans. If you want to find more fun writings, head over to Reconnect, and keep reading, as I have some extra cool things below.
Enjoy the week ahead!
Something Extra
Keeping in the theme of games writing in books (last week we featured 32bit library) I wanted to share another cool thing i’ve read.
Ask Iwata was suggested to me as a book I might like about game development, but to be honest, its not really a games development book in the way I imagined, instead its better. It’s really a bunch of tales about Iwata’s life at Nintendo, and if anything it’s a leadership book, one I might start suggesting to people who want to read more about leadership. Management aside, it’s a really great insight to how Nintendo was run during his time and offers some great insight.
Writer Recap
Reconnect has nearly two hundred blogs that are posting articles every week. This week, one writer got not one, not two, but three articles into the trending page of the site. The Punk Writer started their blog early October and is pumping out quality articles all focussed around narrative design and similar topics. If that’s your jam, which given the popularity of the articles, i’m guessing it might be, give them a follow.
A nice recap of good game coverage! And I'm gonna get a copy of Ask Iwata.