The Lie-In

Good morning, videogames. The World Cup is now underway, which means I can spend the next several days complaining that England's opening game is on at a comfortable 9pm BST while Scotland's opening game was on at 2am. Bloody typical, isn't it. No wonder I need a lie-in today, so let's quickly gather some articles about videogames worth reading.

I love Spore, a grand and ambitious everything-game that doesn't quite work, but which is fascinating to play and to read about. For Design Room, Jay Castello interviewed Will Wright and and seven other members of its development team to put together an oral history.

"He was like, I want to do a game about all the things that had to happen for humans to exist, improbability upon improbability upon improbability," says Trottier. "I want people to have an innate, marvelous sense of how amazing it is that we ever happened in the first place. And they'll do it by experiencing one failure after another after another."

For Manifesto Jam 2026, Mike Cook writes what a lot of people need to hear.

1. THE DREAM OF SELLING GAMES IS KILLING THE DREAM OF MAKING GAMES
2. WE MUST STOP MAKING GAMES WE THINK PEOPLE WILL BUY
3. WE MUST STOP TREATING EVERYTHING WE MAKE AS A POTENTIAL PRODUCT
4. MOST ADVICE ABOUT MAKING GAMES IS ACTUALLY ABOUT SELLING GAMES

It continues for five further bullet points and then some optional expansion on each one. Read whatever parts of it are relevant to you.

The Guardian's Keza MacDonald and Keith Stuart put together their list of the best games of the year so far. Brief but with a couple of surprises.

Also in The Guardian, Matthew Castle interviewed videogame Bond himself, Patrick Gibson. It must be tough having the internet critique a "character design" that is just your actual face.

The key to pushing through that – listen up all you would-be 007s – was to lean into the pressure. “I think the enormity of the idea helped me. It felt so impossible as a dream that I was like, sure, may as well throw my hat in here,” he explains. Once he saw how IOI’s team had shaped the character, it only solidified his resolve. “It felt so quintessentially Bond, that it was almost carrying me along. I went from wanting to portray a character I’d known, to suddenly feeling like I was actually becoming it a little more.”

The best piece of journalism from the week: Rebekah Valentine's list of weird little guys from Ocarina Of Time that she can't wait to see in the remake.

Who is he? No idea. But he sits under a tree in Kakariko Village and complains about how disgusting everyone else is. Looked in the mirror lately, bub?

For Aftermath, Joshua Rivera spoke to the developers of Forbidden Solitaire about their surprise at having made a hit after years of eking out a modest living from indie game development.

Here is the irony of sustainable game design the Grey Alien way: For the no-hit wonders of the games industry, a hit can derail you almost as much as a flop. While they've not shared specific numbers, Forbidden Solitaire has been a big enough hit to make both its development studios very happy, and immediately consider a sequel, which once again exacerbates the indie developer's plight of choosing between artistic fulfillment and commercial viability.

"There's never been an easier time to boycott Microsoft", argues Edwin Evans-Thirlwell for Rock Paper Shotgun. I will take a brief respite from playfully shit-talking RPS by linking to this.

If this is a dry year, Microsoft are in the business of dry years. They epitomise the blockbuster publisher mentality that what sells is a flavourful variation on the same, preferably smooshed out into a live service of some kind. They are the Pepsi Vanilla of shooters, car games, and RPGs.

Joe Morse takes the New York Times' coverage of AI slop creators to task. I am linking this mostly for the useful phrase "content maxxing".

There were no mobile games at Summer Game Fest this year, down from the typical 'hardly any'. Neil Long explains why. It's for the reasons you'd guess, but I enjoyed this all the same.

Actually, let’s look at it the opposite way: maybe it’s the PC and console business that needs to sit down and think a little harder about how effective its marketing spend is. This week I have heard tales about money spent by Xbox, IO and Amazon that would get your average mobile game executive fired on the spot.

I enjoyed this nearly five-hour long video ranking Ringo Starr's solo albums from worst to best, while placing each album in the context of his post-Beatles life and career. Then I enjoyed this 23-minute YouTube video about how most video essays are bad and too long.

Music this week is Jamaica Resting by The Pool, which will be familiar to any fan of LCD Soundsystem.

Sleep well, videogames.