The Sunday Papers

Sundays are a day that arrives at the end of the week. Sometimes those weeks bring joy, and sometimes they bring uncertainity. That's fine. There's another one tommorow. Before that new week begins, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

For Jacobin, Cody Cava expanded on the wonderfully punchy title "Video Game Execs Are Ruining Video Games"

Despite the industry being immensely profitable, video game executives have lost any compunction when it comes to imposing astounding layoffs on their workforces, wielding tens of thousands of firings as a blunt instrument to appease shareholders and boost short-term profits. The mere announcement of mass layoffs can cause a significant jump in a company’s share prices, creating the perverse incentive to fire as many people as possible.

Tech companies often lay people off not because they are losing money but because they are simply growing at a slower rate than before. In 2019, Activision Blizzard fired eight hundred people after posting “record-setting” revenue. Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company, fired ten thousand in 2023 even though the company was still profitable and growing, just not as fast as the shareholders wanted.

Another week, another savagely brilliant and deeply bewildering 404 Media headline. This time, it's "Google Is Paying Reddit $60 Million for Fucksmith to Tell Its Users to Eat Glue"

The complete destruction of Google Search via forced AI adoption and the carnage it is wreaking on the internet is deeply depressing, but there are bright spots. For example, as the prophecy foretold, we are learning exactly what Google is paying Reddit $60 million annually for. And that is to confidently serve its customers ideas like, to make cheese stick on a pizza, “you can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue” to pizza sauce, which comes directly from the mind of a Reddit user who calls themselves “Fucksmith” and posted about putting glue on pizza 11 years ago.

"Indie Game: The Movie is only 12 years old, but it feels like a relic," writes Oli Welsh for Polygon.

At the time, I was frustrated by Indie Game: The Movie’s casting. The filmmakers chose to focus on stars in the making whose success was either already established or seemed guaranteed, whatever the drama that might surround it. What about the majority who don’t sell a million copies, or bag the promotional deal with Microsoft, or pay off their parents’ mortgage? That’s still a serious omission in the film’s portraiture, although it’s given a strange, poignant twist when you consider what happened to these four men next.

Music this week is Tiresome by Drug Church. Have a great weekend.