Sunday’s documents | Stone paper shotgun
Sundays are for dropping a bag of rice on the ground and contemplating the mess you’ve created for a while. Before we scoop it up, let’s read this week’s best writings on gaming.
For Wired, Ria Teitelbaum wrote about how history and street style converge in The World Ends With You.
Neku and the rest of the players blend in with the Shibuya crowd because they live in a parallel dimension and cannot be seen by reality. But through fashion and by influencing the streets that surround them, they impact and are seen. They are still pushing against the expectations and pressures of society through their well-known and fashionable families.
More by Gamesradar, Leon Hurley they asked the developers why doors are so big in video games.
So what’s going on? Why can’t a video game just use a one-to-one scale and end it? I was curious to know, so I asked a few developers to find out more. One of the main causes? The game’s camera and field of view, which has to balance what looks good on the screen with the actual scale of things. “It’s mostly the camera stuff,” says former Naughty Dog technical designer Asher Einhorn. “If you make the scale realistic, because of the camera, everything looks tiny. At Naughty Dog we modeled one of the meeting rooms once to scale, and we left Drake there and it was huge.”
For Polygon, Nicole Carpenter wrote about How The Founder’s Toxic Culture Shattered Fullbright, The Studio Behind Gone Home.
Development on Open Roads, which was announced in December 2020 and is expected to star Keri Russell (The Americans) and Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart), is overdue. Fifteen employees have left the studio since development of Open Roads began in 2019; about six staff members remain. Speaking to Polygon, 12 former employees said their departure was due at least in part to Gaynor’s behavior towards workers, specifically the women on the team. At least 10 of the employees who left since Open Roads began production were women.
For Vice, Nana Baah wrote about how Werner Herzog inspired Temple Run. I never really got into this as much as other people, but I remember it was a good time. The only mobile game I played a ton of was Pokémon Quest; an underrated gem.
Our previous game [just before Temple Run] It was about a boy defending his little suburban world from the alien invasion. It was a double lever shooter, so you had to control where it walked and control where it shot at the same time. It was very complex and most people didn’t know how to play it. After that, we specifically set out to think about how we can make it simple and straightforward. That’s basically where Temple Run came from.
And for Spoon & Tamago, Johnny wrote about how some of Japan’s most notable architects are redesigning Shibuya’s public baths. Surely one of these deserves UNESCO World Heritage status.
Masamichi Katayama, the principal architect of Wonder Wall, sought to create a contemporary Kawaya that was both an art object and a toilet by randomly placing 15 concrete walls to create an ambiguous space. “The spaces between the walls lead users to three different areas designed for men, women and everyone. The design creates a unique relationship in which users are invited to interact with the installation as if they were playing with a curious game equipment. “
This week’s music is Draper’s Home Is a Dream. As requested, here is the Youtube link and the Spotify one. I feel like I’m sharing a lot of similar, laid-back, danceable tracks right now. But hey, it helps me relax and I hope it helps you do the same.
That’s me. Have a nice Sunday everyone!
