The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for squishing nids. I...was at least 35% wrong about Space Marine II. The new patch and a trick I learned to deal with Zoanthropes means I can play on Veteran now, and a lot of the issues I had with feeling overpowered have been sorted. I still think the guard are more interesting, but it's a very fun bit of smashy. Before I continue to never be wrong about a videogame every again, let’s read some writing that I personally found interesting about games (and game related things!)

For his blog, I Wanna be the Guy’s Michael “Kayin” O’Reilly wrote about ‘Toyification’

Toys, as they were, for thousands years. Concept, reduced down into a caricature representing their most important traits. A policeman distilled down to a hat, a firefighter distilled down to the color red. Vague shapes without limbs. A wooden toy knight, cherished by a medieval child.

A toy isn't trying to be the thing it's representing. It's a symbol. A toy is an streamlined proxy. An idealized Memory. A fantasy.

Compare this to models. A model train is desperately trying to be a real train. It wants to contain all the details, all the nuances. Great models and kits border on educational. It will never succeed in truly being what it represents, but it aims for a level of verisimilitude that a toy does not concern itself with. Where toys are subtractive, models are additive, starting with nothing and trying to build back up to reality.

Now, a model is no nobler than the toy. Despite it's attempts to be real, it never will be. A model feigns realism, deceitful by its very nature.

But toys aren't exactly honest either. You look at that village, with its helpful cop and its selfless, competent social services. You look at the handsome and strong toy soldier, the impossibly proportioned Barbie doll. You look at toy guns that are disarmingly harmless, and bears that only want to snuggle.

This is beautiful - if bleak - piece of writing, nominally about the recent US internet crash, by Sarah Kendzior

In March, I went West and was shocked by my inability to pay with cash and access basic services without apps. I had a traumatic experience attempting to order Dunkin’ Donuts from a peopleless purveyor near Pahrump, Nevada.

I wanted to raise Pahrump hometown hero Art Bell from the dead and tell him he was right. Humans had been replaced with robots and a faceless tech cabal monitored my glaze consumption.

“Traumatic” is perhaps overstating my Dystopia Donuts quest. But there is an uncanniness to having a site of happy childhood memories overtaken by your most absurd childhood fears. Et tu, Dunkaccino? Then fall!

There are folks who, if they could go back in time and give their younger selves advice, would tell them to buy Apple stock. And there are others who would tell their younger self to burn down Silicon Valley before it burns down the world.

Final Fantasy's sales crisis is also an identity crisis, writes Ron Fahey for GI.biz. I’m obviously wary of espousing any opinion about game development that begins with the word “just”, but speaking as a fan: just keep making new, good stories with FF7 Remake’s combat system, and I will buy them all. Hell, make a live service Destiny-style skinner box with FF7R’s combat, and I will play it until I’m dead.

At one time, this was the premier JRPG brand; for much of the world, it was about the only JRPG brand many consumers knew. There was a very clear sense of what you'd be getting if you bought one of these games – each iteration brought significant reinvention, but these were always identifiably similar in key ways, ranging from story themes and structures to overarching concepts in the gameplay.

Now, though, I'm honestly not sure what Final Fantasy means as a brand – I don't know what it's supposed to mean to me, as someone who's played these games for nearly 30 years, and I certainly don't know what Square Enix thinks the Final Fantasy brand represents to consumers more broadly.

This is funny if you like laughing at cops. Declassified UK obtained some documents that you might find interesting. Here’s an in-depth piece about music licensing in games from Keith Stuart at the Guardian, following the Heaven 17/GTA 6 kerfuffle. Here’s a fun poetry project that Edwin sent me. I'm going to start using the papers to shout out more independent games blogs and newsletters. Fear Zine looks at horror games old and new. Startmenu are an independent games writing site offering mentoring and edits to burgeoning writers, and they’ve just launched a Patreon. Let me know if you've any favourite hidden gems. Music this week is Richard Cheese doing a Limp Bizkit medley whynot. Have a great weekend!