Subnautica: A game without guns, combat or killing

How Subnautica Succeeded Without Weapons

Ars Technica: Charlie Cleveland, design director for Subnautica, goes behind the scenes of the game’s development and explains how they crafted an exciting and dangerous experience without allowing the player to fight back. Charlie shows some early prototypes for Subnautica, and describes why they decided to create a game with primarily non-violent gameplay.

War Stories is a great series from Ars in which different game developers discuss what some of their biggest challenges were.

• Paul Neurath: How Thief’s Stealth System Almost Didn’t Work
• Glen Schofield: How Dead Space’s Scariest Scene Almost Killed the Game
• Casey Yano and Anthony Giovannetti: How Slay the Spire’s Original Interface Almost Killed the Game

See also: Other posts tagged ‘games’

How Wes Anderson’s style evolved after his animation work

How Wes Anderson’s Style Changed After Animation

Luís Azevedo: In this video essay we look at how Wes Anderson’s style has changed since making his first animation feature The Fantastic Mr Fox. Featuring films such as Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Isle of Dogs.

See also: The Art of Storytelling: Free online course from Pixar and Khan Academy

My Dad, the Facebook Addict

Laughing Squid: Filmmaker Dylan LeVine hilariously documented his birthday candle-phobic father Vincent‘s obsession with Facebook and in particular, his overwhelming need to build an arsenal of memes, just in case. The elder LeVine shared how he researched and alphabetized every meme to ensure a full state of readiness should an argument ensue, until it became all he could think about. His family expressed repeated concern about the amount of time Vincent was spending online, but it was only after he was put on a three-day Facebook ban that he realized how much time and energy he was wasting in front of the computer.

See also: What is Facebook doing to our politics?

Grawlixes: How these @*#%!$ things became a symbol for cursing

What the #$@!% are these?

Vox: Known as the “grawlix” — a term invented by Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker — this string of symbols is almost as old as comics, extending back to the early 1900s. Comics like The Katzenjammer Kids and Lady Bountiful were truly inventing the art form and, in the process, had to figure out a way to show obscenities to kids. Enter #*@!$ like this. The grawlix performs a censorship function while, at the same time, revealing that something naughty is going on.

See also

• Vox: Where the “comic book font” came from
• Blambot’s comic lettering tips
• Untranslatable words — Fourteen detailed illustrations that convey moments and ideas which no single English word can describe.

How aircraft carriers work

Cities at Sea: How Aircraft Carriers Work

Wendover Productions on the logistics of these huge military cities at sea.

The story behind the game Divinity: Original Sin

Divinity: Original Sin Documentary

Gameumentary: Explore the very beginnings of Larian Studios and the Divinity franchise in our feature-length documentary. Discover the struggles the studio faced on their journey to becoming an independent studio, and how each game in the Divinity franchise laid the foundation for what would become, Original Sin.

See also

• The Making of Divinity: Original Sin 2 — A follow-up documentary exploring the making of the sequel.
• A history of the design of Magic: The Gathering cards
• Nintendo’s design documents from The Legend of Zelda

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

Just Add Water: The Dark Past of Sea Monkeys

The Dark Past of Sea Monkeys

Great Big Story: This is the story of how a tiny, magical creature was transformed into a cultural phenomenon by inventor, marketing genius and complicated eccentric Harold von Braunhut. Full of fun facts (both charming and disturbing), Just Add Water is a colorful short film about a half-century of marketing directly to children, the force of nostalgia in pop culture, and an unlikely meeting of flim-flam and hard science. A film by Penny Lane.

How movie trailers manipulate you

Vice News: These promos are “that one form of advertising that you actually want more of,” explains Jon Penn, CEO of the National Research Group. And thanks to an increase in online availability, they’re also easier to find, watch, rewatch, analyze and share theories about.

This trailer boom has lead to an increase in the number of trailers being cut and a robust job market for professional trailer makers. More work can mean more competition, too, as a studio will often hire several vendors to work on the same trailer, picking their favorite as the face of their film’s campaign. That means trailer makers are constantly one-upping each other to be the most eye-catching and innovative of the bunch.

See also: How to make a blockbuster movie trailer and other posts tagged ‘trailers’.

The Alt-Right Playbook

What are the rhetorical strategies the alt-right uses to legitimise itself and gain power? How do these strategies work? Why do they work? How do we keep from falling for them? And how do we catch ourselves when we start using them, too?

Ian Danskin (aka Innuendo Studios) creates video essays about games, art, politics, and culture. This is the first video in an ongoing series about how the Alt-Right operates.

Ian goes on to talk about how the Alt-Right controls the conversation, why they never play defence, the ‘mainstreaming’ of fringe groups, ‘The Ship of Theseus’ and most recently the death of a euphemism.

If you want to win, you have to understand why you’ve been losing.

See also

• The psychology of liberals and conservatives — Three theories of how liberals and conservatives think, compiled by Nicky Case.
• Umberto Eco on fascism — The key features of fascism, old and new.
• The divided states of America: A cartogram of the 2016 election results

A history of the design of Magic: The Gathering cards

Framing 25 Years of Magic

Rhystic Studies, a YouTube channel that explores the art, history, and culture of Magic: The Gathering, takes a detailed look at the design of Magic’s card frames.

See also

• Twenty lessons learned over twenty years of designing Magic: The Gathering — Magic’s head designer Mark Rosewater shares twenty lessons learned over twenty years of designing one of the world’s most popular collectible card games.
• The Mystical Universe of Magic: The Gathering — A Vice video primer.
• Architectural playing cards — Architectural playing card designs by Italian architect Federico Babina.

Behind the scenes with iFixit tearing down the new iPhone X on launch day

How iFixit Became the World’s Best iPhone Teardown Team

Motherboard: Every year there’s a race to become the first to tear down the phone, with teams from around the world flying to Australia—where it’s first released—to compete to be the first to look inside the world’s most coveted new phone. Motherboard embedded with iFixit, a California-based company whose primary mission is to make it easier for the average person to disassemble and repair their electronics, for its iPhone X teardown.

We went inside iFixit’s office, the “headquarters of the global repair movement, which features a tool laboratory and a parts library with thousands of electronics parts and disassembly tools. Then we went to Sydney, Australia, as iFixit tried to become the first team to tear down the iPhone X.

“Historically the only things that were close to the precision of what you see in an iPhone was in something like a Swiss watch.”

See also

• iFixit’s iPhone X teardown
• Phones for the people — What changes when you stop designing phones for companies and start designing them for people?
• Tractor Hacking: The Farmers Breaking Big Tech’s Repair Monopoly

What makes a ‘high concept’ movie idea?

What Is High Concept? Different Thoughts On Big Movie Ideas

Film Courage: What is a high concept movie idea? It’s something that has been brought up a handful of times in our interviews. We know it can be an elusive topic. Here is the best of what we have, hope you find it helpful.

See also

• Why every Hollywood movie feels the same — Peter Suderman writing for Slate on the 2005 screenwriting book that’s taken over Hollywood—and made every movie feel the same.
• Every story is the same — Will Schoder explains Dan Harmon’s story circle.
• Editing as Punctuation in Film — A video essay by Max Tohline.

The Story of Tetris

Gaming Historian: In 1984, during the Cold War, a Russian programmer named Alexey Pajitnov created something special: A puzzle game called Tetris. It soon gained a cult following within the Soviet Union. A battle for the rights to publish Tetris erupted when the game crossed the Iron Curtain. Tetris not only took the video game industry by storm, it helped break the boundaries between the United States and the Soviet Union.

See also

• Tetris: The Games People Play — A graphic novel by Box Brown telling Alexey Pajitnov’s story.
• Complete History Of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris — A fun music video.
• PC gaming history: Quake & Doom

Tractor Hacking: The farmers breaking big tech’s repair monopoly

Motherboard: When it comes to repair, farmers have always been self reliant. But the modernization of tractors and other farm equipment over the past few decades has left most farmers in the dust thanks to diagnostic software that large manufacturers hold a monopoly over.

In this episode of State of Repair, Motherboard goes to Nebraska to talk to the farmers and mechanics who are fighting large manufacturers like John Deere for the right to access the diagnostic software they need to repair their tractors.

See also

• ZeroPhone: a $50 Raspberry Pi smartphone — A Pi Zero-based open-source mobile phone that you can assemble for $50 in parts.
• PirateBox is a DIY anonymous offline file-sharing and communications system built with free software and inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware.
• US government framework for handling cyberattacks

The stories maps tell

Entertain the Elk talks about the history of real world maps and the design of the fantasy maps for Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia and Game of Thrones.

Throughout history, maps have always communicated ideas and stories to its audience, but what about maps of fictional worlds? In this video, I examine the maps of Middle Earth (Lord of the Rings), Narnia (The Chronicles of Narnia), and The Known World (Game of Thrones) in order to find the tiny details the mapmakers chose to include that point to their larger stories.

See also

• J.R.R. Tolkien’s annotated map of Middle-earth discovered
  & See the sketches Tolkien used to build Middle-Earth
• Concept art for the Game of Thrones opening title sequence
• Urbano Monte’s remarkable 430-year-old map of the world
  

Ten letters we dropped from þe alphabet

10 Letters We Dropped From The Alphabet

Austin McConnell: Think you know the English language? Here are 10 letters folks used to use, but didn’t quite stand the test of time. Elemenopee, my homies.

See also

• To be or not to be… original — Shakespeare’s language not as original as dictionaries think.
• Merriam-Webster: How a word gets into the dictionary — An infographic.
• Lessons about language from a Turkish typewriter — by Marcin Wichary, Design lead & typographer at Medium

Douglas Trumbull: Lighting the Starship Enterprise

Douglas Trumbull painstakingly crafted the visual effects for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Faced with an impossible timeline, him and his team completed more composites in six months than both Star Wars & Close Encounters of the Third Kind combined.

The first Star Trek film is often jokingly referred to as ‘The Slow Motion Picture’, and this sequence revealing the refitted Enterprise for the first time is by any reasonable standards hugely overlong. But honestly… I love it!

See also: Other posts tagged ‘Star Trek’

The Collection: Letterpress plates for print film advertisments

The Collection

The Collection is a short documentary about two friends, DJ Ginsberg and Marilyn Wagner, and their discovery of an astonishing and unique collection of movie memorabilia, comprised of over 40,000 printer blocks and 20,000 printer plates used to create the original newspaper advertisements for virtually every movie released in the United States from the silent period through 1984, when newspapers stopped using the letterpress format.

The collection, which spans nearly the entire history of the film industry from the silent era to 1984, was recently appraised at ~$10 million and is available for acquisition. (via Kottke)

What appeals to me about this story is less the collection itself, and more the opportunity to enjoy a project like this! To unpack all of these plates, clean them, print them, catalog them… Fun! One day I hope I make a similar discovery.

See also

• The man who made some of cinema’s most iconic movie titles — Title designer Dan Perri explains how he designed movie titles for films such as “Star Wars,” “The Exorcist,” and “Raging Bull.”
• The Great 78 Project — The Internet Archive will soon be home to hundreds of thousands of audio recordings that would otherwise be lost forever.
• Movie posters in motion — Wonderful animated movie posters by Pablo Fernández Eyre.

DIY animator’s stopwatch with Arduino

Mateusz Urbanowicz:

Just me making another DIY solution for my work. This time a stopwatch that counts time not in seconds and milliseconds but seconds and frames.

See also: Mateusz Urbanowicz’s incredible watercolour paintings of Tokyo storefronts

The Smash Brothers: How it became a competitive phenomenon, a documentary

The Smash Brothers documentary series

The Smash Brothers is a 9-part documentary series about seven of the greatest “smashers” of all time. Through years-long rivalries spanning coasts and countries, discover the passion for a game which started as a casual experience only to become a heart-pounding competitive lifestyle.

• Watch the YouTube playlist
• A history of ‘Doom’ & ‘Quake’.
• The Death & Rebirth of Final Fantasy XIV — A Noclip documentary series.

Why an elbow is one of Time magazine’s people of 2017

Why this elbow is a Time Person of the Year

Vox: That elbow in the lower right-hand corner is attached to a young hospital worker from Texas, who anonymously reported her harassment for fear of the negative impact it could have on her and her family. It represents a much larger contingent than the women on the cover: the silence keepers.

The Story Behind the Woman You Don’t See…

Time: The worker, who made a sexual harassment complaint anonymously, told TIME she remembers vivid details about what happened to her, and she couldn’t stop wondering whether she could have prevented the encounter. She said: “I thought, What just happened? Why didn’t I react? I kept thinking, Did I do something, did I say something, did I look a certain way to make him think that was O.K.?”

See also: Other posts tagged ‘equality’.

The Great 78 Project

The Outline: The Great 78 Project is preserving our sonic past

The Internet Archive will soon be home to hundreds of thousands of audio recordings that would otherwise be lost forever.

George Blood’s four-armed turntable

Zoë Beery: So, the original set of records that started this project off came from the Internet Archive itself. Since they’re known for hosting so much old stuff, the guy who founded it, Brewster Kahle, has just slowly accumulated 78s over the years, from museums, libraries, collectors, anybody who has it and is like, “Oh, they like old stuff. Maybe I’ll give it to him!”

• The Great 78 Project — a partnership with New York’s Archive of Contemporary Music and the Internet Archive.
• What is the function of music? — “I feel like I should have a really good answer for this, but somehow I also feel that the question is wrong.”
• Extended score for Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan… new on vinyl!

How Star Wars was saved in the edit

A video essay exploring how Star Wars’ editors recut and rearranged Star Wars: A New Hope to create the cinematic classic it became.

This RocketJump video essay has been doing the rounds, but it’s well worth watching if you haven’t seen it. It is full of examples that demonstrate the power of editing and includes some quality Star Wars trivia and fascinating deleted scene footage.

• Samuel R. Delany’s 1977 review of the original Star Wars — “This film is going to do very well, if not phenomenally so…”
• The Plinkett Test: How to sort characters from cut-outs — Game critic and writer Andy Kelly uses a clever test to identify if characters in video games he plays actually qualify as characters.
• ILM’s concept art for ‘The Force Awakens’ — “Out of our brainstorming sessions emerged visual imagery of where we might want to go and what it would look like when we got there.”

Goodbye uncanny valley

Alan Warburton: It’s 2017 and computer graphics have conquered the Uncanny Valley, that strange place where things are almost real… but not quite. After decades of innovation, we’re at the point where we can conjure just about anything with software. The battle for photoreal CGI has been won, so the question is… what happens now?

The future of visual effects

The Daily Conversation:

The future of visual effects in films, TV, and VR; from crossing the uncanny valley in human animation, to light-field camera technology that will change the way moving images are captured.

Scoring DOOM: Mick Gordon on his amazing 2016 game soundtrack

DOOM: Behind the Music

GDC: In this 2017 session, Doom composer Mick Gordon provides a detailed look into the compositional process, production techniques and creative philosophies behind the hell-raising soundtrack to the 4th installment of the seminal first-person shooter franchise, Doom.

This is one of the best talks I’ve seen on the GDC YouTube channel! In addition to the new Doom game, Mick Gordon has composed music for the new Wolfenstein games and Prey. In his talk Gordon covers a lot of ground, including how he approached the brief, making satisfying bass come across on unsatisfactory equipment, hiding subliminal messages and courage vs. confidence.

See also

• A history of Doom — If you had a PC — you had to have Doom.
• The art of Firewatch — A recreation of Jane Ng’s talk from Game Developers Conference 2015.
• Black MIDI — Have you ever been listening to a normal song and thought, “I really wish this normal song had 280 million notes and took up 1.1 terabytes of data and was literally unplayable on any computer?”

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.

How to make a blockbuster movie trailer

Auralnauts: We provide you with the winning formula that turns any trailer into the blockbuster smash hit of the season it was meant to be.

See also

• Five ways movie trailers are all the same
• How to make a movie trailer (a song)
• The history of the movie trailer
• Other posts tagged ‘trailers’