{"id":109795,"date":"2020-03-01T21:10:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T21:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/358973"},"modified":"2020-03-01T21:10:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-01T21:10:00","slug":"video-game-deep-cuts-speedrunning-cyberpunk-2077s-shadow-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/03\/01\/video-game-deep-cuts-speedrunning-cyberpunk-2077s-shadow-dust\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Game Deep Cuts: Speedrunning Cyberpunk 2077’s Shadow Dust"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u0092s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. <\/small><\/i><\/strong> <\/p>\n

\n

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter<\/a> from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless<\/a> (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner, No More Robots advisor), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.<\/em><\/p>\n

The latest highlights include a crazy Dark Souls speedrunning exploit, Cyberpunk 2077 from a couple of different angles, and the lovely looking new title Luna The Shadow Dust, among a whole heap of other links. And it’s nice to have some great writing to concentrate on in weeks like this, right? Hope you’re all taking care out there.<\/p>\n

Until next time…
– Simon<\/a>, curator.]<\/em><\/p>\n

——————<\/p>\n

Beautiful visuals and dreamy puzzles make \u2018Luna The Shadow Dust\u2019 an unusually enchanting game<\/a> (Christopher Byrd \/ The Washington Post – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“Developed by a small team of four people, \u201cLuna The Shadow Dust\u201d is an enchanting point-and click adventure that reminded me of the old \u201clet me just get to the next screen\u201d impulse. From the start, its beautiful hand-drawn visuals, dreamlike puzzles, and mysterious story line \u2014 which unfolds without a word of dialogue \u2014 drew me in and held my interest until the credits.”<\/p>\n

Myst (or, The Drawbacks to Success)<\/a> (Jimmy Maher \/ The Digital Antiquarian – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“So would it be forevermore. Myst would prove to be one of the most polarizing games in history, loved and hated in equal measure. Even today, everyone seems to have a strong opinion about it, whether they\u2019ve actually played it or not. [SIMON’S NOTE: Ars Technica posted the full 2 hour Rand Miller video interview<\/a> recently, too!]”<\/p>\n

Happiness, Creativity and No Man’s Sky … with Sean Murray<\/a> (Keza MacDonald \/ Spawnpoint – PODCAST)<\/em>
“Spawnpoint is back with a great guest: Hello Games’ Sean Murray, who talks about the pain and glory of running an independent games studio (and raising children). Making a game is hard enough – imagine trying to do it whilst also having three kids! I talked to Sean about No Man’s Sky and the maddening peaks and troughs that come with both creative endeavour and child-rearing. [SIMON’S NOTE: other formats – Apple, Spotify – linked here<\/a>.]”<\/p>\n

Harmonix’s Fuser bets on user creativity as the future of music gaming<\/a> (Emma Kent \/ Eurogamer – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“”A lot of our traditional games… are very different in that those games are either a recreation of, or performance to, an existing song,” Harmonix exec Dan Walsh told me during a preview session. “Fuser is a music-mixing game where you are creating things as opposed to recreating things.” [SIMON’S NOTE: don’t normally cover game announce\/interviews here, but I’m hella down for alll Harmonix music games, forever. And this is no exception.]”<\/p>\n

Game Designers: The Next Generation<\/a> (Shmuplations \/ Famicom Tsuushin – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“These six developer interviews first appeared in the 5\/93 edition of Famicom Tsuushin, in a special feature focused on new up-and-coming game designers (the original tagline was \u201cMove over Horii, Sakaguchi, and Miyamoto! It\u2019s our time now!\u201d). Famicon Tsuushin also adorned each short interview with a photo of the developers at their desks, which I\u2019ve included as well. [SIMON’S NOTE: I accidentally made a super-viral Tweet<\/a> using the portraits in this article this week, haha!]”<\/p>\n

How Dark Souls speedrunners exploited death to create the perfect skip<\/a> (Lauren Morton \/ PC Gamer – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“An emaciated Chosen Undead sprints down an ancient, ivy-covered staircase with a red-eyed attacker in pursuit. They’ve got a shield in one hand and nothing in the other, which isn’t that surprising, given the other odd ways that speedrunners play games for very specific reasons. This is Dark Souls\u2014the original\u2014controlled by someone who understands the game much better than I ever will.”<\/p>\n

Can’t Decide What To Play In Dreams<\/em>? Try These<\/a> (Ari Notis \/ Kotaku – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“So, partly as a showcase of some truly terrific user-created dreams, partly as a waystone in helping you choose what to play, here are five extremely cool games you can currently play in Dreams. Though some creators have made buzzy creations based on popular franchises, including Sonic the Hedgehog and Fallout, all of the following are original works.”<\/p>\n

‘Cyberpunk 2077’ And How We All Got Conned into Endlessly Rebuying Games<\/a> (Patrick Klepek \/ VICE – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“The darkly funny part is how such an offering can even be pitched as radical, because we have become so conditioned to expect\u2014nay, demand\u2014a chance to rebuy games we\u2019ve already paid for. I, the person wishing Nintendo would put Super Mario 3D World and Super Mario Galaxy on Switch, am as guilty of it as anybody else.”<\/p>\n

The Coronation of Meghna Jayanth<\/a> (Samuel Horti \/ EGM Now – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“Between numerous cups of coffee\u2014half regular, half decaf\u2014she slips out to her small balcony for cigarettes but carries on answering questions through the open glass door, blowing her smoke sideways into the cold London air while smiling and joking. She seems like a woman who\u2019s more optimistic about her work, and perhaps her life, than she\u2019s ever been. And with good reason.”<\/p>\n

Dying in World of Warcraft is complicated, and it\u2019s only getting worse<\/a> (Cass Marshall \/ Polygon – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“World of Warcraft boasts an epic fantasy setting, where orcish grunts and human knights head to the battlefield to settle a multi-generational conflict that reaches across space itself. In these battles with elves, dwarves, and demons, it\u2019s no surprise that people die a lot in the Warcraft setting. But surely, that\u2019s where the story ends for these heroes and villains, right? Death and taxes and all that?”<\/p>\n

Still fighting: meet the developers of Hong Kong protest games<\/a> (Khee Hoon Chan \/ Eurogamer – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“In light of the protests sparked by the unpopular extradition bill in the country, more games like Liberate Hong Kong have emerged. These are often rudimentary and unpolished, due to many being developed and published within a short time-frame – Liberate Hong Kong, for instance, was made in just two weeks – but they are still powerfully evocative.”<\/p>\n

How to Make Games Funny: Three Designers Discuss Comedy Games<\/a> (Holly Green \/ Paste – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“Three recent titles demonstrate how comedy can be cultivated within the confines of a subjective interactive experience. The Elizabethan spoof Astrologaster is a dramatic irony comedy, where the audience has an omniscient understanding of the events, and finds humor in the failures of the characters. What The Golf, a goofy physics game, is a subversion comedy, using a break in the player\u2019s expectations to make them laugh. And Untitled Goose Game is straight-forward slapstick, relying on comic mischief and situational humor.”<\/p>\n

War Stories: How Crash Bandicoot<\/em> hacked the original PlayStation<\/a> (Kyle Orland \/ Ars Technica – ARTICLE\/VIDEO)<\/em>
“When you hear the name Crash Bandicoot, you probably think of it as Sony’s platformy, mascoty answer to Mario and Sonic. Before getting the full Sony marketing treatment, though, the game was developer Naughty Dog’s first attempt at programming a 3D platform game for Sony’s brand-new PlayStation. And developing the game in 1994 and 1995\u2014well before the release of Super Mario 64\u2014involved some real technical and game design challenges.”<\/p>\n

How Generation Zero was fixed<\/a> (Alex Wiltshire \/ RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“\u201cWe felt really good,\u201d product owner Paul Keslin tells me. But that feeling soon changed. The game was beset by crash bugs and complaints of repetitive play, and its Steam review scores tumbled. For its small development team, the reception was a shock \u2013 \u201cImmediately, the feeling was not a good one\u201d. The post-launch plan was thrown in the bin, and so began the long job of turning the game around in the eyes of its players.”<\/p>\n

Push-button warfare: How artists use games to capture drone strike horror<\/a> (Hart Fowler \/ Ars Technica – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“The use of video games as a platform for \u201chigh art\u201d is as much in its infancy as the use of drones in warfare. And games are illuminating the horror of this new kind of warfare in a unique and modern way. Joseph Delappe\u2019s Killbox (2015) and Palao Pedrici\u2019s Unmanned (2012) both use the interactive format to give players a new appreciation of the issues surrounding drone warfare.”<\/p>\n

Steam sales case study: ‘Academia: School Simulator’<\/a> (Simon Carless \/ Game Discoverability Now! \/ Substack – ARTICLE\/NEWSLETTER)<\/em>
“We\u2019re back with a behind-the-scenes analysis of another Steam game\u2019s sales. After previous analyses looked at Golf Peaks<\/a> and the games of Bad Logic Studios<\/a>, many thanks to Ryan Sumo for allowing us to check out lifetime revenues for Squeaky Wheel\u2019s Academia: School Simulator on Steam since its late 2017 launch (up to mid-December 2019). [SIMON’S NOTE: this game grossed $1 million, & now you can see when and how.]”<\/p>\n

Fallout 76 players are spending months getting their characters sick<\/a> (Patricia Hernandez \/ Polygon – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“Perhaps the most elusive disease that players have chased is called The Whoopsies, a hazardous condition that decreases your character\u2019s Luck stat by 2 points. One player reportedly spent over 676 hours \u2014 about a month of real-world time \u2014 trying to harness the disease, likely in pursuit of a challenge.”<\/p>\n

\u2018Making Cyberpunk Red almost killed us\u2019: Mike Pondsmith on the return of the tabletop RPG, catching up with 2020\u2019s future and Cyberpunk 2077<\/a> (Peter Ray Allison \/ Dicebreaker – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“\u201cMost cyberpunk, including my much beloved Blade Runner, is pretty depressing because one of the elements of it is that the people involved are not the heroes,\u201d observes Pondsmith. \u201cCyberpunks don’t save the world; they save themselves. If saving the world comes out of that, then that’s great.\u201d”<\/p>\n

In My Waking Life<\/a> (Jacob Farmer \/ EGM NOW – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“There are many encounters like this in Red Dead Redemption 2. Encounters that are easy to miss. That can be missed. Designed as choices, these moments become decisions to be triaged. Do you finish the mission or investigate that haunting voice in the woods calling for help? Walk by the crowded campfire on your way into Saint Denis and you\u2019ll miss that heart-rending story about Lenny\u2019s father, born into slavery.”
 <\/p>\n

——————<\/p>\n

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com\/vgdeepcuts<\/a> – we crosspost to Gamasutra later, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]<\/span><\/a>. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u0092s community.The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. [Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner, No More Robots advisor), rounding up the best longread & […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}