
The 50 Best Gaming Articles from the Last Year - MaximumMadness
https://airtable.com/shrzJxrXCaJwwJO2T
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egypturnash
This is the worst presentation of a listicle I have ever seen.

There is no introduction to tell me who is selecting these articles and why I
should believe their claim that these are the best articles on this subject.

It’s displayed as a spreadsheet that’s far too big to fit on my screen even if
I rotate the tablet horizontally; I have to scroll all the way to the right to
read the brief summary of what each article is about.

And I cannot scroll vertically. At all. I drag the screen and it just tries to
select the cells, or scrolls whichever column I’m pressing on left and right a
little.

Seriously this is hilariously illegible and unusable on the iPad that I am
looking at this with. Dump this into some other format that actually gets
reflowed properly.

~~~
bl0b
Display issues aside, I personally find this format far superior to a typical
listicle you might find on the ad-revenue-driven web, with banner ads between
every item and a heap of JS running on your page for no reason.

~~~
LanceH
What is the JS doing on those, anyway?

~~~
bozzcl
User tracking, mostly.

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zemo
this is a list almost entirely about how video games make money. There's very
little here of substance about video games as a medium, and very little that
seeks to investigate how video games function as cultural artifacts. This
isn't a list for people who want to make video games or who want to advance
the state of video games as an art form, this is a list that only serves the
capital class, and looks almost exclusively at video games through the lens of
business opportunity.

The first article starts out largely about Animal Crossing, and another Animal
Crossing article appears on the list, but neither even _attempt_ to interpret
the game in any way, or to consider what the game might mean and how it
relates to life as we know it. Compare with this recent Atlantic article:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/animal-
cr...](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/animal-crossing-
isnt-escapist-its-political/610012/) and you'll see what I mean. I find this
incredibly ironic, because Animal Crossing is rich in content about labor,
economics, and consumerism, but these themes are taken at face value and never
critiqued in any meaningful way. While the author has cobbled together a list
of articles about how games make money, the list is bereft of any
interpretation of games in general, _even the game about making money_.
Nothing in this list will improve the reader's literacy when it comes to
interpreting and playing games.

A handful of the articles are just marketing about upcoming games. What makes
this article on of the best articles about games? It is little more than an
advertisement. [https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/2/21155158/valorant-
project-a...](https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/2/21155158/valorant-project-a-
riot-games-shooter)

To simply call these articles the "best gaming articles" is incredibly self-
centered, as the viewpoints expressed in this list have an extremely narrow
focus, and the focus is almost universally on money-making.

~~~
cambalache
I have not read you but I believe you. I crave for good game journalism,
insightful enough but not academic (because regretfully academics try to
optimize different metrics).The closest example I have is some pieces during
the early years of RockPaperShotgun, but that site jumped the shark eons ago.

Do you have any examples or recommendations?

~~~
carelesswhisper
Not articles, but a favourite Youtube channel of mine is Game Maker’s Tookit.
It does informative videos on various game-design topics, like story-telling
through level design, how multi-player games get balanced, deep-dives into
well-made levels from various games and what makes them so good, etc.

Here’s an example (and the channel’s most-viewed video) - How Game Designers
Protect Players From Themselves

[https://youtu.be/7L8vAGGitr8](https://youtu.be/7L8vAGGitr8)

~~~
zemo
yeah, their stuff is good! They had a video about Celeste last year that was
really fantastic:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yorTG9at90g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yorTG9at90g)

That stuff is very in-the-weeds on the mechanics of platformers. If you like
that video, Itay Keren's article on the history of how cameras work in 2d
sidescroller games is one of my favorite pieces on 2d game construction:
[https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ItayKeren/20150511/243083/Sc...](https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ItayKeren/20150511/243083/Scroll_Back_The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Cameras_in_SideScrollers.php)

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mindfulplay
Missing the excellent "The War stories" from Ars Technica. e.g.
[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/war-stories-how-
princ...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/war-stories-how-prince-of-
persia-slew-the-apple-iis-memory-limitations/)

Their PAX West/East reviews and thoughts are also excellent.

~~~
MaximumMadness
I haven't read this one - this is awesome. It's a great series, I love the one
on Crash Bandicoot.

[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/war-stories-how-
crash...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/war-stories-how-crash-
bandicoot-hacked-the-original-playstation/)

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MaximumMadness
Hey everyone - I'm coming up on a year of writing a weekly newsletter about
the video game industry.

I must have read at least a couple hundred articles over the last year, and
there's definitely a few that have stuck out to me. I compiled the ones I
enjoyed the most (or wrote myself) and gathered them in this handy airtable.

Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter if you're so inclined to stay up to
date on more content in the future: www.pausebutton.news

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sumnole
Great list. I'm a video-game enthusiast too and similarly compile news. A few
days ago I made a static site generator that delivers me my latest feeds:
[http://fdg.gg/news](http://fdg.gg/news) It's really early stage but feel free
to use in your own journey.

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Mrtierne
This was a fun trip down memory lane thanks!!

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MrCoffee7
Thank you! This is the best post I have read all year!

~~~
MaximumMadness
No problem - figured after writing about games for a year it was time to
spread the love!

