The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for going to the dump to shift all my junk. Before you sling bin bags over your shoulder, let's read this week's best writing about games.

Eurogamer's Pride Week has been a lovely source of LGBT+ articles. Jay Castello kicked things off with their piece on Queer play being everywhere.

And it's only getting more interesting, influenced by changes and growth in online queer culture at large. I've been in the Ace Attorney fandom for 15 years and there have always been a good number of popular same-gender relationships. They're not canon, but they are integral to this extended creative play within the fandom. But across that decade and a half, more diverse interpretations have been growing in popularity.

For Input, Aimee Hart wrote about voice AI being scary good nowawadays, and why video game actors hate it.

Naturally, these sorts of advances make video game voice actors nervous. “There’s the kneejerk concern of ‘It’s going to take our jobs,’ and I do believe, in some cases, that will happen,” Natalie Winter, a voice actor in games such as Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, tells me via DM. With ever-improving technology and affordable internet, there’s been a boom in voice acting that can be done from home, and, as Winter tells me, competition is pretty fierce. “It is sad to think that if AI voices become good enough to be widely used,” she says, “then those opportunities will decrease again.”

Over on Into The Spine, Aditya Felix wrote about virtue in mundanity. Yep, this is one of the reasons why I look back on Red Dead Redemption 2 so fondly.

There is also a meditative effect to these tasks. Here’s also where I take time to bathe, clean my horse, eat with my friends, drink at the bar, and play some poker. Such routines give me a semblance of order, as I complete one small task after another. It might seem wasteful; I’m not progressing through the main campaign, nor clearing sidequests. I don’t even go for achievements or seek easter eggs. Instead, this time spent doing day-to-day work gives me time and space to recharge myself, especially during moments when I’m particularly drained from real-world fatigue.

For Mashable, Matt Binder looks inside the shady world of influencers promoting cryptocurrency.

"Let's be clear, these things are absolutely worthless bullshit," David Gerard, author of Libra Shrugged: How Facebook Tried to Take Over the Money and Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, explained to me in a phone conversation. "You only ever hear from the people who won and never from the people who lost." he continued. "If you buy the coin, your money is gone, and maybe you can get it back if you sell the magic beans to someone else, which is basically the story of crypto in general."

I spotted this Tweet the other day and thought it was pretty cool. This might be one of my favourite Kanye albums, so this very much came as a surprise.

Music this week is Tyler The Creator's latest album, Call Me If You Get Lost. It's a no-skip affair, and the production is ridiculous. A contender for my album of the year already.

That's me. Have a solid Sunday everyone!