The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for redeeming club card vouchers. Before you save two quid, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

For Roadmap, Gita Jackson asks a bunch of indie devs whether there's an indie games bubble. What makes an indie game indie? And how are they faring in a time of economic challenge? Devs give their take on it all.

“I don’t know how anyone could perceive our current situation as a bubble. It is utterly bleak out there, and it has been for years now,” Snider continues. “68 percent of all titles released on Steam in 2019 earned less than $10 thousand, and 91.5 percent earned less than $250 thousand. That means that most games aren’t making enough to be sustainable. Hell, we landed in that top 8.5 percent, and we still aren't making enough to fund our operations with our games alone.”

Amelia Tait wrote about murder and morality in games for The Guardian. In awe of folks who'll play as a vegan in Zelda or feel bad for disposing of Pikmin. I lopped someone's head off in Cyberpunk the other day.

Tom, who is now 42 years old and lives in Alabama, felt sorrow and disgust when he reached the game’s first boss and realised he would have to sacrifice his newfound friends. So he conscientiously objected and returned the game. Despite this, he can play games where he needs to kill people in self-defence, or where the actions of the protagonist are explicitly presented as immoral. “Pikmin definitely crossed a line for me that other games didn’t,” he says “This was not just killing in defence … It was throwing away the lives of those I’d recruited for my own purpose.”

Jay Castello wrote about Baldur's Gate 3 being a real funny time, for Unwinnable. Castello argues that BG3 might lose some creativity being a videogame version of DnD, but it makes up for it with comedy.

But what Baldur’s Gate 3 loses in creativity by being a simulation, it gains in slapstick. The game revels in the opportunities it gains by using D&D’s mechanics in a space represented visually and dynamically. Push every enemy off ledges, they say. It’ll be funny.

Kathryn Hemmann wrote about a forgotten FromSoft classic. Hemmann rocks up at Elden Ring's Alteus Plateau and is reminded of Evergrace, a blast from FromSoft's past.

The beginning of Evergrace finds your character in an uninhabited world filled with ruins interspersed with trees bearing golden foliage. The sky is a gorgeous color of aqua blue that provides a striking visual contrast to the red earth, and picturesque small streams flow through stone forests of toppled columns. When your character finally encounters another human being, an old man sitting by a locked gate, he warns you away from your quest. In the castle you seem to be trying to reach, he tells you, there is only death.

Music this week is Laura by M83. Here's the Spotify link and YouTube link. Dreamy.

That's it for this week folks, take care of yourselves and see you next week!