Things Roundup Feb 22 2025
Jim Rossignol has a long piece on more or less just not vibing with Mothership. I love Mothership, but I know exactly what he means, and have written such a piece myself for Apocalypse World. It's fine to appreciate but not like a game!
V Buckenham on creating desire in games. This is one I'll be thinking about for a while because it threads through so much of game design, from gambling to motivation to feedback. A lot of my early design thinking with Amberspire was trying to construct a system of dice rolling that incentivizes and punishes the player in just the right amounts, each in small ways, and leading the player forward into the design.
Grapefruit Games' manifesto for sportlike games, an idea I am well into instead of actual sports games. Racing is my sport of choice, and I have had a good time with Motorsport Manager and an extremely bad time with F1 Manager, so I'll note my interest in a racing sportslike game.
Laney Norman on consent, kink, and agency in porn games:
Playing games like Ladykiller in a Bind gave me fictionalized examples of these kinds of conversations necessary for a healthier approach to BDSM. I was able to see situations where consent and safety were established in these kinds of sexual situations without breaking the immersion of a fictional video game.
Nicky Flowers has taken some neat photos of Yakuza 0. In this vein, my friend Arc runs a feed of street photography in Cyberpunk 2077.