The Lie-In

Good morning, videogames. My elbows hurt, as they often do in the mornings of late. This has now crossed the rubicon from "oh I slept weird again" to "oh this is some sort of new repetitive strain injury, isn't it." Let's look on the bright side: I now know the word "cubital" and it's a delight to say aloud. Try it. I run my cuticles along by cubital in my cubicle at work. Let's look for other new words by perusing some fine writing about videogames (and beyond) from across the week.

Almost every paragraph of Sam Henri Gold's post about the MacBook Neo is deliciously quotable. I had no interest in the device itself, but this is about what it feels like to be young and finding yourself through a computer.

Yes, you will hit the limits of this machine. 8GB of RAM and a phone chip will see to that. But the limits you hit on the Neo are resource limits — memory is finite, silicon has a clock speed, processes cost something. You are learning physics. A Chromebook doesn’t teach you that. A Chromebook’s ceiling is made of web browser, and the things you run into

Good morning, videogames. I've been frantically laying track in front of a moving train for too long, and today is the day that changes. Today is the day I plan ahead, get things in order, and build myself a less hectic week. That or I spend too long in bed reading and then spend the rest of the day playing videogames. Hm.

Nicole Carpenter spoke to the creators of Hidden Folks for The Verge and considered the microgenre of "searching" games (their term) that have followed in its wake, including the gorgeous Lost And Found Co. which released this week.

What makes a good hidden object game, both de Jongh and Lee agree, is playtesting. You can have a great art style, clever sounds, and a nice story, but if the game doesn’t work well, it won’t click with players. “It took us years, and it was just trial and error,” Lee said. “Someone who makes a level has a very hard time understanding how difficult or easy it might be for someone else. You just have to keep workshopping and testing.” Playtesting is what made Hidden Folks so satisfying to play. De Jongh said it’s core

Good morning, videogames. I have been bone tired all week in a way that I couldn't shake until Friday morning, when I employed the best remedy for such a feeling: I got a haircut. Properly restored, I've been on top of everything ever since. Let's celebrate with some words worth reading this Sunday morning.

I've complained many times that business analysis, or some amateur impression of it, too often replaces arts and culture conversations around videogames among both journalists and the game-playing public. Mikhail Klimentov therefore gets the top spot this week for writing a thing I already agree with on that theme. Not everything is Concord:

A year and a half after its collapse, the prominence of Concord as a cautionary example represents a retreat from talking about games in favor of talking about business and marketing — a sort of rot in the culture. Has a developer successfully sold me on XYZ new game? Did the trailer rollout make sense? What’s the view count on somesuch marketing material? And how will all this redound on player counts and units moved? These aren’t my favorite subjects, and I look a bit askance at people who really care about

Good morning, videogames. As Football Manager is to Championship Manager, so The Lie-In is to its predecessor. Which is to say, sure, we no longer own the rights to the name, but the database and engine are still right here. Let's gather up some links worth reading from across the past week of t'internet.

Mothership is a new reader-supported website aiming to be something like "Teen Vogue, but for games". It's queer and women-owned, independent, aims to create an inclusive community, and will publish "writing and perspectives that specifically focus on gender and identity as they relate to games." You should read it and subscribe if you can. To highlight a specific article, I enjoyed Nicole Carpenter on why Gunpla is for the girls:

Gunpla, like lots of other stay-at-home hobbies, saw an international boost during the COVID-19 pandemic's lockdown restrictions. Not only were more people — including women — building models, but they were also livestreaming their processes and watching others do the same. That new group of enthusiasts continued to grow with the 2022 release of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, which included the main series' first female, queer protagonist.

The Bathysphere, the wonderful newsletter from Christian Donlan,