6 ms·

The 50 Best Gaming Articles from the Last Year

47 points by MaximumMadness 6y ago

MrCoffee7 6y ago
Thank you! This is the best post I have read all year!
- MaximumMadness 6y ago
  No problem - figured after writing about games for a year it was time to spread the love!
Mrtierne 6y ago
This was a fun trip down memory lane thanks!!
mindfulplay 6y ago
Missing the excellent "The War stories" from Ars Technica. e.g. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/war-stories-how-prince-of-persia-slew-the-apple-iis-memory-limitations/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/war-stories-how-princ... Their PAX West/East reviews and thoughts are also excellent.
- MaximumMadness 6y ago
  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-bandicoot-hacked-the-original-playstation/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/war-stories-how-crash...
MaximumMadness 6y ago
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
egypturnash 6y ago
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.
- MaximumMadness 6y ago
  Appreciate the feedback - I use Airtable to organize a lot of my own information, so I figured it'd be useful for sharing articles as well. Unfortunately, it's not the best medium for mobile.
- jccalhoun 6y ago
  I'm on a windows laptop and didn't even realize that there were links listed on the right side until I started writing this link and went back to check that it was a pain to find the link. So it isn't the best medium for laptop either.
- bl0b 6y ago
  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.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - LanceH 6y ago
    What is the JS doing on those, anyway?
sumnole 6y ago
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.
zemo 6y ago
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-crossing-isnt-escapist-its-political/610012/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/animal-cr... 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-riot-games-shooter https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/2/21155158/valorant-project-a... 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 6y ago
  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?
  - Peckingjay 6y ago

MrCoffee7 6y ago

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

MaximumMadness 6y ago
No problem - figured after writing about games for a year it was time to spread the love!

Mrtierne 6y ago

This was a fun trip down memory lane thanks!!

mindfulplay 6y ago

Missing the excellent "The War stories" from Ars Technica. e.g. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/war-stories-how-prince-of-persia-slew-the-apple-iis-memory-limitations/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/war-stories-how-princ... Their PAX West/East reviews and thoughts are also excellent.

MaximumMadness 6y ago
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-bandicoot-hacked-the-original-playstation/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/war-stories-how-crash...

MaximumMadness 6y ago

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

egypturnash 6y ago

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.

MaximumMadness 6y ago
Appreciate the feedback - I use Airtable to organize a lot of my own information, so I figured it'd be useful for sharing articles as well. Unfortunately, it's not the best medium for mobile.
jccalhoun 6y ago
I'm on a windows laptop and didn't even realize that there were links listed on the right side until I started writing this link and went back to check that it was a pain to find the link. So it isn't the best medium for laptop either.
bl0b 6y ago
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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- LanceH 6y ago
  What is the JS doing on those, anyway?

sumnole 6y ago

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.

zemo 6y ago

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-crossing-isnt-escapist-its-political/610012/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/animal-cr... 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-riot-games-shooter https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/2/21155158/valorant-project-a... 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 6y ago
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?
- Peckingjay 6y ago