The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for dropping a bag of rice on the floor and staring at the mess you've created for a while. Before you form a hand-scoop, let's read this week's best writing about games.

For Wired, Ria Teitelbaum wrote about how story and street style converge in The World Ends With You.

Neku and the rest of the Players blend into the crowd of Shibuya because they’re living in a parallel dimension and reality can’t see them. But through fashion and by influencing the streets around them, they have an impact and are seen. They’re still pushing up against societal expectations and pressures through their found, fashionable families.

Over Gamesradar, Leon Hurley asked devs why doors are so big in videogames.

So what's going on? Why can't a video game just use a one to one scale and be done with it? I was curious to know, so I asked a few developers to find out more. One of the main causes? The in-game camera and FOV, or field of view, which has to balance what looks good on screen with the actual scale of things. "It’s the camera stuff mostly," says former Naughty Dog technical designer Asher Einhorn. "If you make the scale realistic, because of the camera, everything looks tiny. At Naughty Dog we modelled one of the meeting rooms once to scale, and dropped Drake in there and he was huge."

For Polygon, Nicole Carpenter wrote about how the founder's toxic culture tore apart Fullbright, the studio behind Gone Home.

Development on Open Roads, which was announced in December 2020 and expected to star Keri Russell (The Americans) and Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart), is behind schedule. Fifteen employees have left the studio since development on Open Roads began in 2019; around six staff members remain. Speaking with Polygon, 12 former employees said their departure was at least in part due to Gaynor’s behavior toward workers, specifically women on the team. At least 10 of the employees who left since Open Roads production began were women.

For Vice, Nana Baah wrote about how Werner Herzog inspired Temple Run. I never really got into this as much as other people, but I remember it being a good time. The only mobile game I played a tonne was Pokémon Quest; an underrated gem.

Our previous game [just before Temple Run] was about a little kid defending his little suburban world from alien invasion. It was a dual stick shooter, so you had to control where he was walking and control where he was shooting at the same time. It was very complex, and most people didn’t get how to play it. After that, we specifically set out thinking about how can we make it simple and straightforward. That's basically where Temple Run came from.

And for Spoon & Tamago, Johnny wrote about how some of Japan's most notable architects are redesigning Shibuya's public restrooms. Surely one of these deserves UNESCO World Heritage status.

Masamichi Katayama, the lead architect of Wonder Wall, sought to create a contemporary Kawaya that was both art object and toilet through randomly positioning 15 concrete walls to creates an ambiguous space. “The spaces between the walls lead users into three different areas designed for men, women, and everyone. The design creates a unique relationship in which users are invited to interact with the facility as if they are playing with a curious piece of playground equipment.”

Music this week is Home Is a Dream by Draper. As requested, here's the Youtube link and the Spotify one. I feel like I'm sharing a lot of similar chill, dancey tracks at the moment. But hey, it helps me unwind and I hope it helps you do the same.

That's me. Have a solid Sunday everyone!