The Lie-In

Good morning, videogames. Jonty and I have both been away this past week on separate work trips, leaving Brendy to operate the cranks, winches and pulleys of Jank alone. And didn't he do well? Jonty handled the summary in yesterday's Jank Mail, so I'll just add my thanks to Brendy's newborn for leaving his father with just enough mental capacity to play a multiplayer game. Astonishing. Let's round up some games writing from across the past week.

I remember when the "gamer bill of rights" was a serious proposition from a handful of developers and digital storefronts. Mothership asked a group of people to pitch ideas for what such a document might contain, tongue closer to cheek.

The right not to play a game

Just because "everyone" loves a game or it wins a bunch of awards or someone tells you that you "have" to play it does not mean you do in fact have to play it. You are no less of a "real gamer" just because you have not played a certain game. There are thousands of games that have been released over decades on a variety of platforms, which come with many costs, language, access, cultural, ability, and technological needs; you cannot play them all, and that is okay. You are allowed to choose what games not to play, just as much as you are allowed to choose which games to play.

Personally I believe that gamers shouldn't have any rights. 

Meanwhile, Lewis Gordon spoke to four developers who worked on an attempted sequel to Mirror's Edge for Design Room. This was before Catalyst finally got the greenlight.

As it turns out, the core group behind the original attempted to get a direct sequel off the ground years earlier. Those attempts took different forms, with plans for a nighttime setting, a heavier emphasis on combat, and even an episodic structure.

I came back from a week away and this tab was open on my computer. The Wikipedia page for Clotworthy Skeffington.

Christian Donlan appeared on Chris Plante's podcast Post Game to talk about game reviews, criticism, and their purpose.

To help folks better appreciate games, to help y’all to really suck the marrow from their bones, I like to hand the microphone to great critics. Earlier this year, Harper Jay talked about why games criticism is a kindness, explaining how critics and designers influence one another with their work. But today, we’re focusing on how criticism helps us better understand our relationship with games, our friends and family, the world, and even our own unpredictable, always-aging bodies.

Grand Theft Auto 6 had its 26-minute Netflix broadcast this week, which revealed that even this close to release nobody at Rockstar had the spare time to edit together a proper video. Let's stick with Donlan, who managed to make the presentation halfway interesting by examining the details for Eurogamer:

I watched the teaser with a notebook, and as I read what I wrote down now I see a fascination with very, very specific quiet details that reminds me of the kinds of things my dad really needed to talk about when he got concussion: "the top of peoples' heads," I have written, and certainly, the way the hairs spiral outwards from the crown is something to be seen. "Water droplets on Land Rover doors," I have written. I was particularly taken with the way that the condo-dwelling drug makers have hacked realistically ragged holes in the drywall to get their space the way they like it.

Elsewhere, people were wringing hands about Grand Theft Auto 6's supposed lurch towards realism, and the discomfort that creates, or could create, when it comes to committing violence within its world. As Paul Tassi writes for Forbes:

I think no game better exemplifies this than Grand Theft Auto 5, and subsequently, Grand Theft Auto Online. It presents a disparity between a developer desperately wanting to create the most involved, detailed video game world in existence, while still maintaining the sort of unreality that makes games enjoyable.

Oh wait, that article was about GTA5 in 2013. My bad.

Music this week is the latest from Polyphia, who continue to wear the finest sweaters in rock music.

Sleep well, videogames.