The Lie-In

Good morning, videogames. This week's Lie-In is a relatively short one, but several of these links are to long reads that will fill your comfy Sunday morning all the same. Let's dig in.

Earlier this year, before the Microsoft divestment, some staff at Double Fine tried to unionise. Then two weeks later, they retracted their petition. For Kotaku, Rebekah Valentine spoke to current and former staff to find out what happened. This is excellent reporting.

However, over the course of the thread, the tone began to shift, with more openly concerned and even negative voices speaking up. Several self-admittedly ineligible people expressed discomfort with having not been told about the union in advance, suggesting that all employees should have a say in the decision, even ineligible ones. Multiple others, again mostly (but not entirely) ineligible, stated that they supported unions generally, but a few also argued that unionizing wasn't right for Double Fine due to its unusual make-up.

As part of that report, Valentine also conducted a lengthy interview about the situation with Tim Schafer, published here in full. I think Schafer deserves some credit for being willing to sit down and talk about this; most company leaders wouldn't be so candid.

"I mean a lot of people were saying let's damp it down. There were just a lot of heated opinions and a lot of people that were talking about like, let's keep it cool, everybody, but I wasn't in those conversations. But I mean, I don't know. If someone, I don't know, I'm trying to put myself in the position of someone who thinks that someone else in the company is tearing it apart. I mean, I don't know where the right channel is to have the conversation. If it's like, this is the channel that we're here to talk about this, then I don't know, we're pretty frank in our discussions usually."

For the 400th issue of Hit Points, Jank pal (and personal chum) Nathan Brown wrote about the state of western triple-A, and what might be done about it.

To players I will say only this: think about how you can help. We have allowed the internet, in all walks of life but in games in particular, to be overrun by negativity, by hate and outrage — by assholes, basically. Drown them out, by finding a way to advocate for the things you like. Shout about them on socials, and tell your offline friends about them. Send their developers a nice email. Rate and write about them on the platforms you purchased them from! I know from my consulting work that companies are increasingly preoccupied with user reviews, and I dream of a world where a game's pages on Steam and Metacritic play host to useful information and thoughtful criticism, rather than serving as vehicles for hate campaigns or vessels for vapid snark.

I agree that gaming discourse is too often run by assholes, but I don't want to fight against them with positivity. Instead, I want to reclaim negativity from the assholes. I want a better brand of hater. "Thoughtful criticism," as Nathan says, but also a more playful bile.

For Mothership, Zoë Hannah wrote about one of this year's better Stardew-likes, Moonlight Peaks, a game that I've been just on the edge of playing for months now.

And while a lot of the mechanics of the game are familiar — growing crops to process and sell them; becoming friends with townsfolk by way of gift-giving; filling a museum with every unique creature you can catch — Moonlight Peaks finds its footing in its personality, which is unapologetically dramatic.

I haven't thought about One Hour One Life in years, but this story from a recent update is worth your time. Everything great and interesting about creative online communities, and everything terrible about them, all at once. And it includes a game developer calling a player's mother.

She answered right away. I explained that I was a game developer, and asked her if she was Ian's mother. She immediately said, "Oh no, what has he done now?" When I mentioned that I made One Hour One Life, she (of course!) knew all about the game. But she didn't realize Ian had used her money to buy so many accounts, and she didn't understand how much trouble he had been causing with Nazi images and all the rest. She said she was going to talk with him, and she thanked me for calling. She said I could call her any time if he was still causing trouble.

Music this week is Pixels Bleed by Chump, or possibly Chumpp, depending on where you look. Whatever their name, this is some fuzzy guitar fun from north-east Canada. Like it? Consider supporting them on Bandcamp. The whole mini-album, if yr cool i dont fw you, has the same bedroom energy.

Sleep well, videogames.