Sundays are about getting the energy up. Don’t be the hero now. Get to baseline 60. You’re going to need it. Before you get that motivational boost to turn a two-pointer into a three-pointer, check out this week’s best articles about gaming (and gaming-related things!)
For Eurogamer, Graeme Mason has told the story of Captain Blood, not to be confused with Captain Blood, Captain Blood (2024) or Cap’n Blood (my cat*). This is a strange gem of an Atari game from 1988 about tracking down and murdering your clones across the galaxy, with an intriguing communications interface.
“Captain Blood’s goal was to create a universal text adventure that could be played by any player on the planet and transcend languages,” Ulrich notes. “I liked the icon-based language, like ‘I love you’ and ‘You are beautiful, you are strong’. It worked in any language and I realized that by combining a hundred words/symbols you could express a real-life scenario with humor.” This means of communication, called the Universal Protocol of Communication (UPCOM), became the main gameplay element of Captain Blood. “We simulated intelligence using big data – I wrote hundreds of sentences with symbols representing the characters’ knowledge, history, secrets and of course the valuable coordinates of inhabited planets.”
This article on cool, scarcity, and subculture by Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick really spoke to me, because what “subculture” actually means in an age when you can get used to a scene in a few hours of Googling is something I think about a lot. Of course, I don’t mean that in a purely negative way. It’s a beautiful thing when artists, game developers, and the like can reach audiences without relying on labels or publishers. But I also think that feeling part of something small, special, and new can create valuable experiences of art and community that may not be replicable if those avenues are removed. I was never particularly into vinyl—my dad had a record store, and as Broderick points out, cool is scarcity—but to give an example, the phrase “online crate-rummaging” always seemed to me to be missing something fundamental.
Still, I think there’s something weird going on with our understanding of subcultures. Those communities still exist, of course. There are punks and metalheads and hippies and queer kids and weebs and ravers and all the rest. And thanks to the internet, there are more sub- and sub-subcultures than ever before, and platforms like TikTok are spawning new ones every day. But thanks to the internet, the barrier to entry to those communities has also been virtually eliminated. You can consume their respective stories on Reddit or YouTube, pop into Amazon or Hot Topic, grab some stuff, and off you go.
At Futurism, Frank Landymore wrote about the copywriter who was “the last human left standing” as his team of 60 was gradually replaced by AI. Cruel.
Months later, management decided to almost completely eliminate humans from the process. In the future, the AI model would create all articles itself. The automation was inadequate and most authors lost their jobs. Miller kept his – even if his role would now be slightly different than before.
Now he’s been tasked with polishing up the AI’s lackluster prose and, to quote the BBC, “making it sound more human.” If only there was a way to do that with, er, human writers.
“Stop Elevating Mediocre Indie Games” is a thoughtful and, frankly, quite engaging video from Pixel A Day that is miles away from the ill-informed ragebait the title might suggest. No need to be name-calling, YouTubers need to eat. I’d recommend just watching the “Why this all matters” section if you’re short on time, and also because then you won’t have to listen to mean things about the cute cat game. I’ll be thinking about the distinction of design intent made here between “indie” and “miniature AAA” for a while.
The “Earth has Terrible Worldbuilding” video is a fun little tribute to the planet’s many idiosyncrasies. I haven’t finished the new Folding Ideas video “I Don’t Know James Rolfe” yet, but you’ll be pleased to hear that it’s quite doable at a slim hour and fifteen minutes. The incredibly dedicated fan who recreated Final Fantasy 7 in its entirety in Little Big Planet seems to have completed the project. This week’s music is “Cut Your Hair” by Pavement, because it’s never a bad time to listen to Pavement. Have a great weekend!
* Not a real cat. But I really like the name.