The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for cat. I’m currently in the process of acquiring a gorgeous white and ginger kitten for the local shelter. I have seen four seconds of footage and I’m already smitten, kitten. Before I spend the weekend getting very excited about big stretches, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)

Jessica Conditt of Engagdet spoke to the Outlast folks about the CIA brainwashing experiments that influenced their games.

The Sleep Room in The Outlast Trials is named after a real-life space at McGill University’s Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, where from 1957 to 1964, doctors conducted mind-control experiments on patients as part of the CIA’s MK-Ultra initiative. Led by Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, these tests included electroshock therapy, sensory deprivation and heavy doses of psychedelic drugs. One patient, Linda MacDonald, went to McGill seeking help for symptoms of postpartum depression after giving birth to her fifth child. She was placed in a drug-induced coma for 86 days in the Sleep Room, and records show she was treated with 109 rounds of shock therapy. MacDonald lost her identity, memories and motor skills; she had to be toilet trained all over again.

The old McGill hospital is just two miles away from the Red Barrels offices, where the Outlast games are made.

For Polygon, Juno Stump wrote about how the technical limitations of Crash Bandicoot and Silent Hill (the duality of man) made for more interesting games.

Fans’ efforts have confirmed that many of the game’s assets — including the rooftops of houses and businesses — are completely unfinished and missing entirely, but they’re hidden under the town’s trademark fog. Compromises are an inevitable part of wrestling with technology for a means to an end, and this was especially true during the first PlayStation generation, when 3D development brought new problems and creative solutions.

Sometimes the solutions to these problems were elegant and creative, leading to programmers accidentally stumbling into integral parts of a game’s identity: Crash Bandicoot smashing through crates; or Silent Hill developers covering the world in a scary fog, reusing the locations from Kindergarten Cop as a template for what a typical American small town could look like, and using virtually unchanged logos for iconic American brands like Pepsi and 7-Eleven. Because what might look like missing rooftops and recycled malls from Hollywood movies could actually be a small, Lynchian American town lost in itself, like a collapsing fever dream melting around the player trying to find a way out.

Eurogamer’s Robert Purchese chatted with Larian about creating Baldur’s Gate 3’s dark urge playthrough. I’ve seen the take that durge is sort of the canon player story, if the game can be said to be have such a thing. At the very least, it’s the tale that most openly follows on from Bioware’s originals. Either way, it's my favourite way to play.

Welch also came up with another crucially important vessel for telling the Dark Urge's story: the butler. Part way through the first act, you're visited in the night by a goblin-like character hailing you as their master. He wears a top-hat and tails and radiates malice, though in a ridiculous, pantomime kind of way. And he's full of encouragement for your dastardly deeds. The role he plays is twofold: along with the thoughts in your head, he provides the encouragement you need to actually do the evil things in the first place, as Welch believes "players aren't going to ever play an evil character unless they're actually having fun with it - unless they feel a real reason to be encouraged to do it".

Secondly, the butler tries to desensitise you to what you're doing, making it all seem harmless and silly. It's an idea inspired by Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange novel. "I was really inspired by Clockwork Orange specifically because there's an unreliable narrator in [it] who encourages the reader to just think that what's happening is a bit of 'naughty fun'," Welch says. "And that's what the butler character is inspired by, that this is just meant to be a bit of naughty fun going on."

Here’s a website full of charts showing spurious correlations, in case you wanted to learn how the popularity of the ‘we live in a society’ meme corresponds to wind power generated in Nambia. Speaking of memes, it turns out your camera roll might be destroying the planet, though I tend to treat anything that places the blame for climate collapse on individuals rather that companies with a sizeable grain of bollock. Here's a streamer struggling through GTA IV with traffic speed set to max. Music this week is Konami by Pearl & The Oysters. It’s not about hurrying up with my damn Suikoden remasters but it’s still very nice. Have a great weekend!