This week’s roundup includes a look at some great community events – from the fighting game scene’s Combo Breaker to Japanese indie dev scene’s BitSum
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.
This week’s roundup includes a look at some great community events – from the fighting game scene’s Combo Breaker to Japanese indie dev scene’s BitSummit, as well as a peek at the first ever E3 Expo, kids apps, D&D in 2019, Devolver, DOOM on the SNES, and much, much more.
Incidentally, this week the Game Developers Conference YouTube channel hit 250,000 subscribers (and over 27 million total views!) As one of the folks who set it up, I’m proud that so much excellent insight and education from GDC speakers is beamed directly to a worldwide audience – many of whom might not be able to attend the physical GDC events.
Until next time…
– Simon, curator.]
——————Preservationists Are Racing to Save Ouya’s Games Before They Disappear (Nicole Carpenter / VICE – ARTICLE)
« Self-described amateur video game historian VojtÄ›ch Straka of the Czech Republic, who runs a preservation effort called Game History Association, is leading the efforts to preserve Ouya’s games before the system shuts off. “It’s a perfect example—a cautionary tale—about the modern gaming landscape and how ephemeral it is,” Straka said. »
Celeste’s Movement (Mix & Jam / YouTube – VIDEO)
« [SIMON’S NOTE: another one of the clever YouTube channel’s projects to replicate a certain gameplay mechanic from a notable game, from scratch, and document it in a video. This requires a lot of skill!] »
Q&A: Dissecting the development of Dwarf Fortress with creator Tarn Adams (John Harris / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
« One of the best uses of a high-powered processor out there for entertainment purposes has long been Dwarf Fortress, the game that makes an entire world out of ASCII characters, and will happily consume a gigabyte of your RAM and a good chunk of your processor cycles to bring it to life. »Anti-loot box bill poses a real threat to sports video games (Owen S. Good / Polygon – ARTICLE)
« If passed in anything close to its proposed form, Sen. Josh Hawley’s anti-microtransaction legislation will punish, if not obliterate, a staple genre of video gaming for offenses it never really committed. That may be fine with you. You may not like sports or their games, you may hate Electronic Arts because everyone else does. »Clark Tank: Epic Store in China, Steam Top 50, & Islanders! (Brace Yourself Games / YouTube – VIDEO)
« This week, we take a look at why Islanders is doing so well, take a look at why Epic is now open in China, how Valve deals with positive review bombing, the Steam Top 50, and we play and analyze Islanders! »The Kids App Market – A Strategic Overview (Bjorn Jeffery / BjornJeffery.com – ARTICLE)
« How do you take on a market where the user isn’t your customer? A market that overlaps and competes with four major industries, but doesn’t belong to any of them? These are questions I have been working with for the past nine years. [SIMON’S NOTE: co-founder of Toca Boca – which my kid is a big fan of – on why the kids app game market just hasn’t really ever taken off properly, at least not revenue-wise compared to F2P.
