The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for sorting the tangle of busted pipes under my sink out so I don’t have to change my socks twice a day after forgetting to wear my designated Kitchen Crocs. Before I remember this time and instantly become a style icon, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game-related things!)

The History Of How We Play wrote about ‘How We Learnt To Play With Our Fingers’, tracing the evolution of game controllers from early cabinets to PlayStation pads. I’d have loved to see this charted alongside actual design priorities - the piece does look into this briefly - since I reckon the two are interlinked in some interesting ways, but it’s a cool piece nontheless.

“Zooming in on the transition of input devices from military to gameplay applications is an interesting exercise to look at the influence of video games through. It shows both the diverse influences and the many paths that were tried and rejected on the way to modern design. The chaotic nature, dead-ends, and parallel evolutions of digital technology puts into sharp focus why the things that won ultimately did. Was it inevitability or just the best thing that we settled on? How early is anything that catches on evident to those who are paying attention?”

For Kotaku, Willa Rowe recklessly unleashed the following headline into existence: “The Tortured Poets Department Is The Dark Souls Of Taylor Swift Albums.” I’m compelled by some bizarre sense of feigned coolness and odd masculinity to point out that I don’t listen to Swift, although I do find her presence as a somewhat apocalyptic cultural force interesting. Either way, fun writing is fun writing.

“To return to the Souls metaphor, audiences often don’t know how to deal with art that demands to be met on its own terms when those terms mean being abrasive to the audience itself. While the Souls games have flourished since Demon Souls was first released in 2009, they have a reputation for chewing up players who aren’t willing to “git gud.” If you’ve only played games that are about fulfilling player gratification and meeting your every need, Dark Souls will lay your ass out. It’s a lesson in being humble. So is The Tortured Poets Department. It’s an album that asks fans to consider that their parasocial relationship with Swift may not be for her benefit.”

I’m also compelled to point out that you can’t enthusiastically billionaire off your parasocial relationship cake and then eat it, but that’s another feature.

Over at Eurogamer, Christian Donlan figured he’d fuck around and drop a 7000 word interview with the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society about video game clouds. You know, as a treat. I'd say it's great, but it's Donlan, so that'd be superflous.

“A few months ago I re-read The Cloudspotter's Guide, which was originally published in 2006, and I decided to become more attentive to the clouds. I went for long, meaningful walks and imagined myself tiny under the sky. I would break off mid-sentence, often while talking about where to go to lunch, to set my cold eyes on the horizon line where I would watch the slow, noble passage of Stratocumulus as if I was watching old friends go off to war. This annoyed almost everyone, but I didn't mind. I was hooked, hooked on clouds, hooked on the cloud word horde, which is rich and deep: Cirrus, Nimbostratus, Cumulonimbus. And since I play a lot of games, I started to look up more from those virtual playgrounds to see what someone had laid out in the sky above me.”

Some Nextdoor users mistook a Team Rocket screenshot from Pokémon Go for an actual map of active neighborhood crimes.

Music this week is LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER playing Blur on the most ridiculous modular synth you’ve ever seen, unless you’re someone who regularly seeks out ridiculous modular synths, of course. Thanks, objectively unpronounceable modular synth inventor Bob Moog, and thank you, reader. Have a great weekend!