Kruggsmash Plays Dwarf Fortress

Whether you’ve heard of Dwarf Fortress or not, i’m here to take you on adventures within it’s infinite worlds! I hope you’re ready to see exotic locations, battle DEADLY beasts and hunt down long forgotten treasures, because all that and MUCH more awaits here, in the world of DWARF FORTRESS!

Kruggsmash is a YouTuber who plays the graphically simple but highly complex sim Dwarf Fortress and illustrates his world and the stories that unfold.

I’ve never played Dwarf Fortress myself, but I admire the scope of the game and I’m a huge fan of creative gamers like Kruggsmash here.

See also: Your First Fortress: A Dwarf Fortress Crash Course by Kruggsmash

The Death & Rebirth of Final Fantasy XIV

The Death & Rebirth of FINAL FANTASY XIV Part #1 – “One Point O”

Noclip: In the first video in our three-part series, we tell the story of how the 1.0 version of FINAL FANTASY 14 came to be. How FINAL FANTASY 11 inspired its design, the ways in which the game fell short and how Square-Enix and the development team reacted to its failure.

See also: Other posts tagged ‘games’.

How Andrew Saladino makes his video essays

Push Process

The Royal Ocean Film Society: I’ve been asked a lot what the process of making these essays is like, but rather than just droll on about recording voiceover, late night editing sessions, and falling into despair upon seeing the first cut, I want to take these few minutes to talk about how that working process has evolved creatively over the past year, and about where I’m trying to take these essays in the future.

See also

• Cutting on sound: David Lean’s scene transitions — Despite whatever presets there are in Premiere, scene transitions are not limited to wipes, fades, or dissolves.
• Explore the ‘filmmaking’ tag or my new ‘video essay’ tag for lots more like this.

Time for Sushi

Directed by David Lewandowski. Previously: going to the store and late for meeting.

Stick around until the end of this video for some ads for the incredible goods on offer in the official store of Lewandowski’s channel: goingtothe.store.

The future of independent, artisanal, high-effort nonsense on YouTube is uncertain. I appreciate your choice to support this work with the purchase of my unusual merch.

Deluxe Dakimakura Body Pillow

Enjoy the intersection of luxury and comfort in this Japanese-style body pillow. The 160 x 50cm pillowcase is made from durable, silky 2-way tricot material.

The incredible $90,000 Premium Edition Chess Set

Remember that time you watched that YouTube video? Why not commemorate the experience with a premium chess set carved in ethically sourced arctic mammoth ivory and rare meteorite alloy. Handcrafted by artisans specializing in these elements for a combined 38 years, this product reflects a dedication to premium YouTube memorabilia.

There are other more modest items too, like towels and pillow cases.

See also

• History of Japan — By Bill Wurtz.
• The Chickening — An insane remix of The Shining.
• Still File: Real recreations of computer renderings
• The business of GIFs: Then and now
• Master Works: Beautiful and unusual chess sets

How Tommy Wiseau blocks a scene

This Guy Edits: “The Room” by Tommy Wiseau is one of the best movie experiences you’ll ever have. I’m nerding out on Wiseau’s blocking, but there’s so much more to his genius. I truly am a big fan.

MKBHD tours Casey Neistat’s studio

Casey Neistat Studio Tour!

Famous tech vlogger Marques Brownlee recently toured the studio of famous vlogger personality Casey Neistat. I’m fascinated by this space.

You can see Casey’s video featuring Marques too…

If by some miracle you’ve never watched one of Casey’s vlogs, it just so happens that this recent episode is one of his most entertaining. He’s taken a bit of a break from YouTube in recent months, but seems to be uploading fairly regularly again now.

See also

• I posted a previous tour of the Neistat studio three years ago: Casey Neistat’s amazing workplace of which I am not at all jealous — The space has actually been renovated since then, but it was equally cool before.
• Casey Neistat: What You Don’t See — A profile of neistat by The Nerdwriter.

(It shouldn’t bother me, but I hate that the misspelled word ‘propellar’ features prominently in the video!)

How Shovel Knight gets nostalgia right

Shovel Knight and Nailing Nostalgia

Mark Brown: Some games are all about nostalgia – a reminder of how games used to be. No game nails this sensation quite like Shovel Knight, which expertly picks and chooses the right bits to emulate from old games. Here’s how Yacht Club Games pulled it off.

See also

• A history of ‘Doom’ & ‘Quake’.
• The best Logos from the Commodore Amiga Scene
• Pixel artist renounces pixel art

How does YouTube actually work?

Nat and Lo: After making (and uploading) videos to YouTube for about a year, we finally decided to go behind the scenes of YouTube and ask the YouTube engineers how YouTube actually works.

What does YouTube do to your video after you upload it?

What actually happens when you watch a YouTube video?

See also

• YouTube compression — Brandon from RocketJump shares the settings he uses to get the best quality and the smallest file-size video possible before uploading to YouTube.
• YouTube: The Medium Is The Message — The largest ingredient of online video is the awareness that every consumer is a possible creator.
• YouTube Poop — The so-called ‘subversive remix’ is not a new phenomenon.

Casey Neistat: What You Don’t See

The Nerdwriter on uber-vlogger Casey Neistat.

“Though there are plenty of imitators, I think it’s pretty much impossible to duplicate the style of Casey Neistat.”

If you’ve never watched a Neistat video before, I recommend this recent installment.

It’s a fairly typical episode with an unexpected turn and the subtitles made me laugh out loud.

See also

• Casey Neistat’s amazing workplace of which I am not at all jealous
• …and other posts on this blog about Casey Neistat.

A Song About Rockets

…to the tune of “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General”.

Anime Baseball

Corridor Digital: ANIME Baseball

What happens when you take something normal and turn it into anime? This!

Behind the scenes

See also

• 5 great science fiction anime you (probably) haven’t seen
• ‘Akira’ fan made live-action trailer

How to speak on the Internet

How To Speak On The Internet (MMM™)

Satchell Drakes: After spending quite a few years on Twitter, I’ve had my fair share of getting pulled into toxic moments. I’ve also made some of my closest friends on there. I wanted to put together a resource that might help people share their worldview in a manner that is effective and conscious of their context. Mike McHargue of The Liturgists Podcast essentially did all of the work and tackled this issue the best with a matrix of four questions to help with just that. Here’s essentially an overdramatic Retweet of that matrix.

See also

• That emoji does not mean what you think it means — Since emoji are designed differently across platforms, sometimes your text messages might get lost in translation.
• Why Are You So Angry? — A six-part series on the male gamer’s relationship to feminism.
• This Video Will Make You Angry — How ideas spread as ‘thought germs’ over the internet.

Pixar: What makes a story relatable?

A quick look at Pixar’s approach to storytelling and character development.

See also

• Don’t be afraid of the blank sheets — Pixar production designer Ricky Nierva talking at TEDxAthens about the creative process.
• The Toy Story 3 you never saw — The plot for Circle 7’s abandoned film was radically different to the Toy Story 3 that eventually hit cinemas in 2010.
• Pixar’s Merida ‘sexualised’ for induction into The Disney Princess Collection — Merida’s creator Brenda Chapman: “I think it’s atrocious what they have done to Merida.”
• Pixar in a box! Animation lessons from the masters — A collaboration between Pixar Animation Studios and Khan Academy, sponsored by Disney.
• Jon Negroni’s The Pixar Theory & the true identity of Andy’s mom in Toy Story

Scott Pilgrim vs. World

Movies with Mikey is a YouTube series by Mikey Neumann which deconstructs some of my favourite films, including:

Mikey presents: an underrated Edgar Wright classic, Scott Pilgrim. Bask in the editing insanity that Mikey puts into a Youtube show that practically no one watches.

Hugo

Mikey dives deep on not only one of the greatest films of the last five years, but also the birth of cinema as an art form. This is probably important. Or maybe it isn’t? Who really knows?

Fury Road

American cinema’s white supremacy problem

City Absurdia: A video essay on how American cinema uses the hero–villain–damsel dynamic as a propaganda tool since The Birth of a Nation.

“To look at the Vietnam war through the lens of American cinema, you would have to believe that the war was one inflicted upon young white men by older white men, not one inflicted on a poor nation of farmers by a militarised superpower.”

Other City Absurdia video essays

• Arnold Schwarzenegger: The Greatest Film Actor of All Time?
• The Phantom Menace: the Most Influential Film of the Nineties?

(Side note: The City Absurdia channel had 69 subscribers when I discovered it. Now it has 70. I predict it will get a lot more very quickly!)

See also: Why every Hollywood movie feels the same & How Jurassic Park’s digital dinosaurs changed the movies.

Primitive Technology: Making a bow and arrow

Primitive Technology: Bow and Arrow

I made a bow and arrows in the wild using only natural materials and primitive tools I’d made previously from scratch (as usual). The tools used were a celt stone hatchet, a stone chisel, various stone blades and fire sticks.

Filmed in the wilds of Far North Queensland, Australia, our silent craftsman ventures out into the bush to camp and make these videos. Self taught from books, the internet and trial and error, this is a hobby and not a way of life: “I live in a modern house and eat modern food. I just like to see how people in ancient times built and made things.”

“Primitive technology is a hobby where you make things in the wild completely from scratch using no modern tools or materials. This is the strict rule. If you want a fire- use fire sticks, an axe- pick up a stone and shape it, a hut- build one from trees, mud, rocks etc. The challenge is seeing how far you can go without modern technology. If this hobby interests you then this blog might be what you are looking for.”

See also

• Primitive Technology blog & support Primitive Technology on Patreon.
• How to make a clock from scratch
• Mummy Brown and other historical colours

Creative Spaces TV: Becky Simpson, illustrator & author

Creative Spaces TV: Becky Simpson

A series by Sara Dietschy, a YouTuber who I became aware of after she was featured on Casey Neistat’s vlog and her subscriber count shot up from 4,000 to 40,000 (and at the time of writing she is close to 10k subs!).

See also: Casey Neistat’s amazing workplace of which I am not at all jealous other posts tagged ‘YouTube’ and ‘workspaces’.

Rave Beans

Connor Kerrigan’s YouTube channel Who Cares Again? deserves more subscribers.

History of Japan

By Bill Wurtz.

See also

• A Complete History Of The Soviet Union Through The Eyes Of A Humble Worker, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris — “The food on your plate; now belongs to the state”
• World War I: The Seminal Tragedy — “The world hinges on small things”
• 4,000 years of human history in one chart — This “Histomap,” created by John B. Sparks, was first printed by Rand McNally in 1931.

YouTube Poop

YouTube Poops… is there more than meets the eye?

PBS Idea Channel: The so-called ‘subversive remix’ is not a new phenomenon. Artists from all mediums have been destroying established cultural symbols for the sake of making a statement for decades. So does YTP also qualify as a “statement” of sorts? Is it a way to reclaim these pop culture symbols and create something that is truly our own? Or are they just the annoying byproduct of having video editing software and too much time on your hands?

See also

• Wikipedia: YouTube Poop (often called YTP for short) is a type of absurdist video mashup, created by editing pre-existing media sources for the purposes of humor, entertainment, shock, and/or confusion.
• YouTube: The Medium Is The Message — The largest ingredient of online video is the awareness that every consumer is a possible creator.
• How to make a supercut — Co.Create interviews Nick Douglas about his supercuts videos.

Snowboarding in NYC

Snowboarding with the NYPD

Casey Neistat doing what Casey Neistat does.

Behind the scenes

See also

• Casey Neistat’s amazing workplace of which I am not at all jealous
• Watch Casey Neistat customise / vandalise the Apple Watch
• The Dark Side of the iPhone 5S Lines, by Casey Neistat

Tip Jar

Rocket Jump made this amazing 15 minute short film in the style of an old silent movie. It’s all great, but the choreography of the fight at the end is particularly well done.

Nuclear Fruit

Nuclear Fruit, Part One: Mechanical Minds

Stuart Brown’s five part exploration of the Cold War’s effect on video games.

YouTube: The Medium Is The Message

It’s no surprise that the great triumph of television is the triumph of advertising. What could possibly be more attuned to the medium of television than commercials?

The largest ingredient of online video is the awareness that every consumer is a possible creator.

Kurzgesagt: Making educational videos entertaining

Kurzgesagt (German for “in a nutshell”) make entertaining educational videos, like this one:

See also: 3 Reasons Why Nuclear Energy Is Terrible! & Nuclear Energy Explained.

Philipp Dettmer and Stephan Rether gave a talk at UX Munich 2015 about how (and why) they make their videos.

The Kurzgesagt team is comprised of 8 people: Philipp handles script and design, Stephan does the animation and there are two other designers, a German and English voice actor, a translator and a musician who does a bespoke score for each video!

There are lots of great educational YouTube channels, but this is one of my favourites.

See also

• How to script and record narration for video
• This Video Will Make You Angry
• …and other posts tagged ‘YouTube’ and ‘explainers’.

Exploration in games

Exploration in Games – Four Ways Players Discover Joy

Extra Credits: Exploration appeals to basic human instincts, and the basic joy we get from discovery makes exploration a key element for many games. While the geographic discovery of finding new levels or zones is a great example of exploration in games, it’s not the only type of exploration that exists. Among others, games can provide mechanical discovery, where players try new build paths or skill combos to increase their mastery of the game; content discovery, where players seek to unlock secrets or rush to open new packs to find out what they carry; and narrative discovery, where instead of being walked through a story the player must piece together backstory and lore from evidence they find around the world. This joy of discovery comes as much from the hunt as from the finding, but the designer must reward the player’s successful exploration with new tools or insights to show that the game recognizes their efforts.

See also: Making your first game

Grand Theft Auto in the real world

Real GTA

Perfect use of location. The camera work is spot on too. See how they did it all in the fun behind the scenes video…

Real GTA: Behind the Scenes

See also: GTA 5 Review: So Realistic It’s Boring, a hilarious College Humor video.

Louis Vuitton Apple Watch

Casey Neistat has a somewhat, erm, guerrilla approach to technology. So far he’s adapted two Apple Watches to suit his personal tastes. Look away Apple fans!

Plus how (not) to etch your name into your expensive new Apple gadget.

How to Turn Your Apple Watch Gold

A bit of spray paint turns a $399 apple watch into a $12,000 ‘edition’!

The Making of a Viral Video

Casey explains how and why he made his ‘How to Turn Your Apple Watch Gold’ video.

See also

• Casey Neistat’s amazing workplace of which I am not at all jealous
• The Dark Side of the iPhone 5S Lines, a film by Casey Neistat
• Other posts tagged ‘YouTube’

See also

Iconic Arms is a series by Stuart Brown on YouTube about legendary weapons in FPS history.

“In games, your gun is player agency made manifest.”

Iconic Arms looks at the history of famous weapons like the double-barreled shotgun, AK-47, M16, the Magnum, their place in popular culture and how their performance characteristics and functionality have been tweaked – sometimes radically – for more balanced gameplay.

Though I’m no fan of guns, I particularly love the graphics in this series with their flat colourful silhouette shapes, bold uber-tightly kerned Helvetica and fast diagonal wipes.

• Open World Origins, also by Stuart Brown: What was the first truly open world game? What other titles set the standard along the way? And what makes them so popular today?
• How to script and record narration for video, also by Stuart Brown.
• The Best Amendment, a game about gun control.
• Other Places, a series celebrating beautiful video game worlds.
• Tropes vs Women in Video Games: The second episode of Anita Sarkeesian’s series exploring the Women as Background Decoration trope in video games.
• This is Phil Fish, a case study in internet celebrity.
• The History of Helvetica, A fascinating history of the creation and adoption of this ubiquitous Swiss font.

You are not a “content creator”

Jonathan Mann on the objectionable term ‘content creator’.