All hail Nintendo's animal overlords | Opinion

Animal Crossing looks set to be one of the year's biggest games -- we might reflect on what it says about the appetite for different kinds of escapism

It’d be easy to dismiss the success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons as an accident of timing, simply the result of releasing just as the COVID-19 pandemic was kicking into gear - certainly it doesn’t hurt that the world needs that kind of gentle escapism now (even if Animal Crossing was never designed to be binge-played). Here, Rob Fahey argues that this is a clearly incorrect reading that dismisses the obvious value of and appetite for variety in gaming experiences beyond what the AAA industry typically offers up.

Tangentially, for what such a misreading looks like in hindsight, see the narratives around Myst. As I wrote before, “[G]aming has always had more subcultures than the social narrative has accounted for and when we refer to gaming as a monolith we distort reality by ignoring the experience and perspective of many, many people.”

Six ways to improve your world building

Kate Edwards gives developers advice and tools to build fully realised game worlds

Kate Edwards gives several tips on how to build well-realized game worlds that feel like part of a larger universe.

What Online Multiplayer Is Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games

Go to https://BuyRaycon.com/razbuten for 15% off your order! Brought to you by Raycon. In this episode of Gaming For A Non-Gamer, I tossed my wife into the w...

Continuing his series in which he watches his non-gamer wife play various games, YouTuber Razbuten now takes a look at how several popular online competitive multiplayer games are experienced by an inexperienced gamer.

Key takeaways include that good tutorials are if anything even more important in these kinds of games, as understanding how to play affects not just one player’s experience but all of them, and a fear of making the game worse for other players can easily drive away exactly the sort of people you’d prefer to interact with online. Yet many games lack tutorials entirely, fail to point new players to them, or just convey the game’s basic mechanics without teaching the player how to actually use their toolkit and be a good teammate.

Additionally, it’s often very difficult to find matches against other players of similar skill levels, which can result in being frustratingly steamrolled while just trying to learn the game. One of the best solutions to both problems is to let players team up against bots - though even this often fails to convey the necessary skills to then play effectively against other humans.

Why culturalisation matters as much as localisation

Kate Edwards discusses how to approach culturalisation, and how to navigate sensitive themes so your game can reach wider markets

Localization presents interesting challenges, but cultural differences run much deeper than language. It’s easy to think of any changes as censorship, but market realities are far more complex than that. Here, Kate Edwards provides a fascinating look at how to handle the trade-offs and pitfalls that can needlessly render games unsaleable in particular countries.

Letting the player have an effect on the environment is a great way to make a game’s world feel alive. Here, Damon Reece examines how Metroid Prime’s world can seem much more real than that of Dragon Age: Inquisition due to the former allowing the player’s actions to change that world.

Overcoming Gamer's Block and the Social Pressure to Play Games the 'Right Way' - Escapist Magazine

When gamer's block strikes, it's hard to start playing and finish all the video games you want to play, and it can cause stress. Here's one solution.

Internalizing that there’s a “right” way to play games can ruin your ability to enjoy them.

In this op-ed, Nick Calandra writes about how adhering to others’ ideas of how several prominent games should be played was ruining the games for him. Once he let himself “set [his] own parameters for how [he] wanted to experience [them]” he was able to play in the ways that made the games fun for him.

Players have different needs and tastes. We should be willing to dismiss authorial intent in crafting our own experiences and we shouldn’t gatekeep others from crafting their own.

Effects of a violent video game depend on whether you’re Superman or the Joker

After Aaron Alexis shot dead 12 people at the Navy Yard in Washington DC in September, media outlets were quick to highlight his reported enjoyment of violent video games. To many, this was just th…

The effects of violent video games have been the subject of debate for decades, but most discussions miss a key factor: the context of the violence. This write-up summaries a 2013 study finding that playing as a villainous character makes players more likely to perceive violence in neutral faces (suggesting an aggressive mindset) and less likely to return a planted lost letter than playing as a heroic character, even when both characters behave violently - and that these differences were magnified when players were prepped with articles on the characters’ backstories that made them more sympathetic.

What we do in games may matter less than why we do it and who we are.

A quick look at what traits make inventory management feel worthwhile, and then examinations of what works about ten example approaches taken by prominent games.

Joost van Dongen of Ronimo Games (Swords & Soldiers, Awesomenauts) shares five useful insights about balance in competitive games. My personal favorite is the point that it’s far worse to have overpowered options than underpowered ones, because players flock to the strongest options. One underpowered option means the rest are still viable; one overpowered option means only that one is viable.

The World Is Saved: Gamer Music Video

The World is Saved is a new epic song and anthem for video game fans. This was a collaborative effort from IGN's Podcast Beyond community. IGN's Ryan Clement...

I don’t know that gamers need an anthem, but if they do, this catchy and uplifting 2011 gem by Danny Wiessner is still my nominee.