The Lie-In

Good morning, videogames. I am still, somehow, on holiday, but once again I have prepared an article for you to read in advance. How have I collected a collection of articles worth reading this week when I haven't been at my desk? Well, no one ever said all the articles had to be new.

Many remember Kieron Gillen's New Games Journalism manifesto. No one remembers what I'd consider its sibling, written months earlier by then-PC Gamer editor Mark Donald. Donald had just redesigned the UK version of the magazine to focus more on games post-release and to support the kind of in-game cultural reporting Gillen later referenced, and he posted an open letter looking for contributions. It's more of a pragmatic appeal for pitches than Kieron's call to arms, but I think it's nevertheless an inspiring mission statement. It was what prompted me to pitch to PC Gamer the following year, after which Mark handed me my first paid commission and, a few months later, a full-time job.

I'm trying to create a magazine that communicates the incredible experiences gamers have. A magazine that reports on the amazing transformations that dedicated communities have wrought upon the games they love. I think such a magazine would print articles about the destruction of Kerafyrm The Sleeper in Everquest. It would report on the morphing of games like Grand Prix Legends and Interstate 82. It could relate the tale of a dramatic duel in Jedi Knight 2 or cover the phenomenon of swoop bike races in Star Wars Galaxies. Anything at all. Single-player gaming, multi-player gaming, modding, MUDs, indy games. The building of the Space Station in There, the development of unique in-game body language. A well-argued opinion piece on the state of videogame interfaces. Crazy antics on stunt servers or a simple essay on how a game stirred an individual's emotions. Anything which says something fascinating about game culture.

There is a lot more culture writing about videogames than there used to be, but it's still difficult for websites to commit resources to it, and there's still less of it than the medium deserves. This is surely self-serving, but I think Brendy's Ridealong series is the exemplar par excellence of a certain version of the form, and The Last King Of Wurm Online is that series' peak. (Read it on the Web Archive to see it with the screenshots intact.)

The man arrives, riding a white horse and clad in splendid armour. When I hover my mouse over the man, his username is accompanied by the title “Dragonslayer”. But his rare title and treasured armour is misleading. This shining knight lives on a tiny farm in the countryside. The horse he is riding is described by the game’s text as “fat” and “old”. And it isn’t even his horse. He has “borrowed” it from the village next to his farm, along with another fat foal and an old bull, which follow along behind him on a lead. Some might say Wossoo is a sorry sight, for a man who used to be King.

No one said all the articles need to be ancient, either. You probably know Christian Donlan from his writing about videogames at Eurogamer, but the man has range. For the New York Review Of Books, he wrote about a collection of books at Cambridge's Corpus Christi college that has been audited annually for over 450 years (paywalled).

I could not get the audit out of my mind. It seemed such an unusual arrangement, and yet so perfectly in tune with my impression of the period as a time of conspiracy, inequality, and blossoming self-involvement. Old ideas no longer seem stable. A thudding fear of foreigners is enlivened by foolish war-making, and everyone is kept busy suing everyone else. Of course people would have to think creatively in order to preserve something as delicate as a library through an era like this.

Chisel is a new twice-yearly premium magazine co-founded by former Edge writer and Tune & Fairweather book publisher Jason Killingsworth. They're posting articles online (via Substack, alas) and, relevant to our interests, their remit includes videogames. As one of their launch articles, Simon Parkin wrote about Summoning Salt, a YouTuber that charts the evolution of speedrunning world records.

An idea formed in his mind. What if he took this concept of charting the history of a world-beating attempt, but condensed the story down to 15 minutes or so, something more accessible to online viewers? So, he opened a new YouTube channel. When it came to giving his new venture a name, he remembered an old online video he’d watched in which the presenter opened a 30-year-old tin of spaghetti. While reading aloud the list of ingredients, the man misread “seasoning salt” as “summoning salt.”

I had not heard of Stop Caring until last week, but I like its whole vibe. It's a reader-supported and entirely free website "focused on the ways [videogames] evoke unique cultural conversations." Back in December, Khee Hoon Chan wrote for the site about Untitled Paper RPG, an unfinished game released by the creator of A Short Hike.

But there’s a thrill and intimacy in experiencing the deliberately incomplete Untitled Paper RPG. What the game does, triumphantly, is point to Robinson-Yu’s uncompromising ethos as a developer, while offering an opportunity to see beneath the polish of a complete game: partially crafted landscapes, barely fulfilled concepts, and fragmentary scenes. In its detritus, we see half-baked ideas that Robinson-Yu might have intended to flesh out. An abandoned train station sits in front of a blocked train track, suggesting that inter-town travel was perhaps in the works. A lone campfire lights up an empty park in the midst of sunset—a quiet, meditative spot away from the rumpus of adventuring. Locked gates and fenced-off spaces suggest a larger and loftier vision for the overworld.

Japanese band Dadaray released a new single last week and I find the chorus almost obnoxiously catchy. Although he isn't a member of the group, Dadaray is another project by Enon Kawatani, better known as the singer-songwriter behind Indigo la End, Gesu no Kiwami Otome and Genie High, and the production and hooks all bear the trademarks of his work.

Sleep well, videogames.