{"id":73876,"date":"2019-01-07T04:44:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T04:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/333813"},"modified":"2019-01-07T04:44:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T04:44:00","slug":"video-game-deep-cuts-welcome-to-2019-already","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/01\/07\/video-game-deep-cuts-welcome-to-2019-already\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Game Deep Cuts: Welcome To 2019, Already"},"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\u00a0a weekly newsletter<\/a>\u00a0from video game industry ‘watcher’\u00a0Simon Carless<\/a>\u00a0(GDC, Gamasutra co-runner), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.<\/em><\/p>\n

This week’s highlights include a detailed look at what 2019 may bring in terms of business trends & games – as well as a whole host of other leftover 2018 highlights, daily ‘meditations’ on games, a Chinese indie megahit, and lots more.<\/p>\n

Phew, so we’re in that ‘just before it all kicks off’ New Year period, and I hope you’re returning to work with a happy attitude and a relaxed demeanor. Actually, we’re just getting really amped up for Game Developers Conference 2019, as\u00a0all the latest news<\/a>\u00a0shows – hope a bunch of you can make it!<\/p>\n

Until next time…

\n–\u00a0Simon<\/a>, curator.]<\/p>\n

——————<\/p>\n

Opinion: Here’s what 2019 will be like for the game biz<\/a>\u00a0(Joost van Dreunen \/ Gamasutra – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“2019 promises to be a great year in games. Innovation and competition will elevate the industry\u2019s offerings and drive more inclusivity among\u00a0 a broader range of audiences. [SIMON’S NOTE: we yoinked this onto Gamasutra from\u00a0Joost’s excellent newsletter<\/a>, which I would recommend subscribing to.]<\/p>\n

The history of dance emotes in 15 gifs<\/a>\u00a0(Luke Winkie \/ PC Gamer – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“It’s a little funny how much we’ve come to expect dance emotes in modern games. Obviously \/dance doesn’t top our lists of demands like 4K support or unlocked framerates, but it’s honestly hard to imagine an MMO without a diligently programmed jig.”<\/p>\n

My Favorite Game Animation of 2018<\/a>\u00a0(Dan Floyd \/ New Frame Plus \/ YouTube – VIDEO)<\/em>
“Here’s a list of 2018 games with amazing animation! [SIMON’S NOTE: Floyd, ex-Extra Credits, is a really smart video game x animation type, so this is a nice roundup.]”<\/p>\n

The 40 Games We Can’t Wait To Play In 2019<\/a>\u00a0(Andrew Webster \/ The Verge – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“The year is almost over, which means it\u2019s time to start dreaming about all of the great games you\u2019ll be playing in 2019 \u2014 and it sure looks like there will be a lot. Next year is shaping up to be packed with notable releases, from the charming world of\u00a0Animal Crossing\u00a0to the violent action of\u00a0Gears of War.”<\/p>\n

DUSK and the Design of 90s FPS Games<\/a>\u00a0(Chris Franklin \/ Errant Signal \/ YouTube – VIDEO)<\/em>
“DUSK is a game that hearkens back to FPS games from 20 years ago. Is it just a warmed over collection of old hat tropes, or does the game make a case for something like this being made today?”<\/p>\n

*Press A* 2018 ~ The Year\u2019s Best Videogame\u00a0Soundtracks<\/a>\u00a0(Chris Redfearn-Murray \/ A Closer Listen – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“This year the proliferation of unique styles and new approaches to old genres brought videogame soundtracks to what is perhaps a new high in quality and thought. From niche to popular composers, classical traditions to synthwave, everything we celebrate from 2018 bears the mark of being\u00a0distinct\u00a0\u2013 whether a modern spin on old, or just modern.”<\/p>\n

Ducking up the game design of\u00a0Mutant: Year Zero<\/a>\u00a0(Bryant Francis \/ Gamasutra – ARTICLE\/VIDEO)<\/em>
“Thanks in no part to a foul-mouthed talking duck,\u00a0Mutant: Year Zero\u00a0has managed to find an audience and a strong niche in the strategy game\u00a0space, showing how even a stripped-back version of\u00a0XCOM\u00a0can do well with the right tone and sense of polish.”<\/p>\n

The \u201cBandersnatch\u201d Episode of \u201cBlack Mirror\u201d and the Pitfalls of Interactive Fiction<\/a>\u00a0(Simon Parkin \/ New Yorker – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“Interactive fiction, or I.F., is an old and treasured mode of video-game design. Per the veteran designer Sid Meier, a video game is a series of interesting choices; in many ways, the multi-branched story is the purest expression of that idea. \u201cBandersnatch\u201d is a Netflix episode, so it\u2019s by necessity simpler than many I.F. games, but it also demonstrates both the enduring allure of the format and its exasperating limitations.”<\/p>\n

A Breakout Story<\/a>\u00a0(Ethan Johnson \/ The History Of How We Play – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“The early years of Silicon Valley are jam-packed with legends and so many crossing events happening simultaneously. Jobs\u2019 intersection with Atari is very much conjecture with a backdrop of absence that very much complicates the story. Sussing out the facts of the creation of this Breakout prototype is difficult, so let\u2019s go through the process which led to the current conclusion.”<\/p>\n

Birding Like It\u2019s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game<\/a>\u00a0(Nicholas Lund \/ Audubon – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“The first time I see ravens, I flush them out of an alpine meadow carpeted\u00a0with wildflowers. I pause to watch the flock fly off towards the distant, snow-capped peaks, trailed by their echoing croaks, when a man riding by on horseback bumps into me. Irritated, I shoot the man dead, and take his hat. So it goes in “Red Dead Redemption 2.””<\/p>\n

Deorbital Presents: Amr Al-Aaser\u2019s 2018 Games Of the\u00a0Year<\/a>\u00a0(Amr Al-Aaser \/ Deorbital – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“I constantly struggled to both get my hands on everything I wanted to check out. At one point I had over 60 tabs on my phone full of promising titles that I\u2019ve still not got around to. Even as I write this I\u2019m covering new games that threaten to shuffle this list around. [SIMON’S NOTE: I know, enough ‘best games’ already – this one’s fun because it’s distinctly alternative!]”<\/p>\n

The best writing in games in 2018<\/a>\u00a0(Wes Fenlon \/ PC Gamer – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“To celebrate the best words in videogames this year, I decided to turn to the people who write them. I asked a whole bunch of videogame writers to tell me about their favorite story this year, and to also pick out a particular bit of writing to highlight: a singular story moment, or dialogue, or bit of flavor text that suck with them long after the game was over.”<\/p>\n

Telling Stories About A Decaying Small Town With\u00a0Cities: Skylines<\/a>\u00a0(Cameron Kunzelman \/ Kotaku – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“YouTuber TazerHere has created a sleepy Texas town called Berrysville in immaculate detail, but what really makes it unique is that it is chock full of stories created by community members…\u00a0It is an astounding piece of work that clearly required a lot of mods and particular model choices, and the final product is a place that looks (uncannily, I might add) a lot like many small town locations in the American Southwest.”<\/p>\n

The Roots of Compile \u2013 1998 Developer Interview<\/a>\u00a0(Shmuplations \/ All About Compile – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“This compilation of interviews from 1998\u2019s All About Compile book sheds light on the early days of the prolific, now-defunct software house Compile and the origins of several of their most memorable titles, including the comical RPG series Madou Monogatari and its falling-block puzzle game spin-off, the wildly successful Puyo Puyo.”<\/p>\n

TouchArcade 2018 Game of the Year: \u2018Oddmar\u2019<\/a>\u00a0(Eli Hodapp \/ TouchArcade – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“2018 is\u00a0almost\u00a0behind us, and we\u2019ve already listed\u00a0our our 100 favorite games of the year<\/a>\u00a0(which is quite a task, given the amount of great games that had to get cut to get us down to 100), which leaves us two things left to do to fully pack 2018 in and move on to 2019: Reveal our Game of the Year picks, and publish our personal favorites. [SIMON’S NOTE: there’s SO much good stuff on iOS that it’s almost impossible to keep up with – kudos to TouchArcade for trying!]”<\/p>\n

Best mobile game genres of 2018 \u2013 Top Free Games Charts<\/a>\u00a0(Tom Kinniburgh \/ Mobile Free To Play – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“2018 has been a year of change in mobile. There\u2019s been an entirely new genre emerge in the form of Battle Royale, Hypercasual continued to dominate the free charts, and a large number of prominent publishers had titles slip out of the top 50 grossing (Supercell, King, Playrix).”<\/p>\n

I think I like Below the most when I’m not actually playing\u00a0it<\/a>\u00a0(Christian Donlan \/ Eurogamer – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“Below\u00a0blooms\u00a0in the mind when you aren’t playing it. It does for me, at least. The art seems wilder, darker, more filled with promising shadows, the narrative seems more teasing, more richly stuffed with the potential for strange interpretations.”<\/p>\n

Press \u2018A\u2019 to Study Harder<\/a>\u00a0(Rui Zhong \/ Foreign Policy – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“My son is hunched over a table stacked high with books, practice guides, and homework. Dramatic music blares as he studies for the intensely competitive\u00a0gaokao; if he aces it, he\u2019ll earn a place in one of China\u2019s most prestigious colleges. If he doesn\u2019t, he\u2019ll be doomed to mediocrity. Fortunately, I\u2019ve boosted his intelligence score while managing his stress levels and my parental satisfaction\u2014and all of that is tracked by two bars at the top of the screen.”<\/p>\n

Tales of an aging gamer: Why don\u2019t I pick up a controller as often as I used to?<\/a>(Theo Karasavvas \/ Ars Technica – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“Despite\u00a0a wider variety than ever before, video games don\u2019t have the same effect on me as they used to. That might not sound like a problem to some of you, but it is to me. I have played video games from the early days of my childhood, starting somewhere around the late \u201980s. I became heavily addicted to my\u00a0Game Boy\u00a0as a kid, and I can still remember the thrill I felt the day I bought my first\u00a0PlayStation\u00a022 years ago.”<\/p>\n

The Gamers Of The Year, 2018<\/a>\u00a0(Ethan Gach \/ Kotaku – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“At the close of every year,\u00a0Kotaku\u00a0highlights not just video games but\u00a0gamers\u2014people who did noteworthy or influential things in the world of video games. This year, we\u2019ve decided to honor an entire community, one that did its best to group together and recover after a senseless, unthinkable tragedy. [SIMON’S NOTE: this is a great, sad piece.]”<\/p>\n

The PC Pulse: What are the biggest trends facing the market in 2019?<\/a>\u00a0(Alex Calvin \/ PC Games Insider – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“We at PCGamesInsider.biz boast many talents but we cannot predict the future. Shocking, truly shocking, we know. But while we don’t have a crystal ball, we do have a group of incredibly smart industry folks at hand who have the knowledge and insight to predict what the trends that will shape the market in 2019 will be.”<\/p>\n

Part Live-Performance Art, Part Video Game, \u2018Meditations\u2019 Takes 365 Days to Experience<\/a>\u00a0(Brian Crecente \/ Variety – ARTICLE)<\/em>
“\u201cGames and game developers can be anything.\u201d That,\u00a0Rami Ismail\u00a0says, is the message he hopes everyone takes away from the experience come Dec. 31, 2019. \u201cThat\u2019s the hope. For 365 days you have seen 365 completely different things made by 365 different people. The thing they have in common is that they are all game developers and made a game.\u201d [SIMON’S NOTE: some initial confusion over crediting, but ongoing credits are made clear via\u00a0this handy Twitter account<\/a>.]”<\/p>\n

——————<\/p>\n

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at\u00a0tinyletter.com\/vgdeepcuts<\/a>\u00a0– we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/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\u00a0a weekly newsletter\u00a0from video game industry ‘watcher’\u00a0Simon Carless\u00a0(GDC, Gamasutra co-runner), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73876","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\/73876","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=73876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}