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Top 25 Gaming Articles on Substack

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May 13

Nintendo, Microsoft, Square welcome us to the era of fewer big video games

Data shows that Nintendo was ahead of the curve on this one.
Like big-budget video games? Hope you like waiting for them. (And hope there are enough developers left in this industry to make them.) There are abundant signs that we have entered an era that will see fewer major new video games from big game publishers.
Stephen Totilo ∙ 34 LIKES

A Conversation with an Anarcho-Communist

He answers the burning question: will we have video games in the commune??
Welcome to the CHH Conversations series- I’m aiming to do one a week, detailing a person (or people) who belong to an interesting group which is either part of the current zeitgeist, typically unheard, or just something I find super interesting. Note that my interviewing someone doesn’t mean I agree with them or approve of what they say—in fact, I may s…
Cartoons Hate Her ∙ 7 LIKES
Vlad the Inhaler
This made me LOL:
"Landlords would be groundskeepers for tenant unions, their job would be maintaining the homes the flow of money could stay the same but it would be a more level field between the tenants and those that would like to maintain homes for others."
Ah, yes, that well-known type of person who just enjoys "maintaining homes for others." One of the fundamental problems that any utopian, non-hierarchical society would face is: who's going to take out the trash? Who's going to clean the toilets? Who's going to dedicate their lives to technically demanding, difficult and periodically dangerous, but not necessarily intellectually or emotionally fulfilling jobs like electrical work, plumbing or any of a number of skilled trades? Who will choose to do road repair or maintenance when it's 90 degrees out? How do we get people to do the jobs that society needs to get done, but no one really WANTS to do?
The capitalist answer is: you require people to have money, and you pay them that money only when they do useful things. The communist answer is basically the same, but with the significant addition of central party control of the jobs and coercion of the workers. And the anarchist answer is... "don't worry, man, it'll all be cool!"
John Hennigan
A "hotel front desk worker" enabling the system he purports to oppose.

IGN buys Gamer Network, 23/05/2024

Consolidation isn’t just for games businesses; it’s for games media too!
IGN snaps up Gamer Network’s entire media portfolio from ReedPop Keywords Studios subject of multi-billion dollar bid from private equity business Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga becomes the biggest game release in quite a while
George Osborn ∙ 5 LIKES
James Francis
I think traditional gaming media is dying. The fact that all these titles sold for a paltry $20 million and nobody calls that a fire sale just shows how dismal that business model has become. The consolidation and layoffs shouldn't be a surprise.
Newsletters such as yours, Youtube streamers, and dedicated outfits like Second Wind are the status quo and future of game coverage.

Welcome to Read Rodge!

After a long journey, it's time for me to start writing stuff again. Here's where I'm gonna write it.
To explain why I’m starting a Substack, let me tell you about the two things I can’t stop doing. The first is watching sports. Some people are interested in particular sports. Not me. I’m pansportsual. If there are sports on, I’m probably watching them. I am literally years behind on television and movies and video games, forcing me to nod my head and f…
Rodger Sherman ∙ 15 LIKES
Gregg Saunders
as my good friend shea says, support people who do cool shit so they can keep doing cool shit. looking forward to your posts about arcane olympic sports that i'll immediately fall in love with.
Josh
Thanks for doing this. I'm looking forward to seeing how Read Rodge develops, in large part because I've missed reading you at The Ringer. And just to second a comment below: for me, your writing is the thing; I'm not a podcast person.
I also wanted to say that I appreciate the clear statement about both why you're making the content free and why you need financial support. And so, to be clear in my turn, I don't subscribe to many paid Substacks/newsletters (TPM for politics; for sports: Joe Posnanski, Mike Tanier, and Holly Anderson's Channel 6, which sent me your way via a recent link) because so many of them fizzle out. But I really do enjoy your writing, and so ... I'm very open to moving up to a paid tier of support, but I want to see how things develop for a bit.
I hope you both enjoy this new project and are able to make it a success.

How Gaming Helped The Ink Spots Gain 1 Million New Listeners [Game Music Digest May 24]

The sync success stories from Amazon's Fallout TV series and Bethesda's video games
Game Music Digest is a wrap-up of the most interesting stories at the intersection of video games and music, brought to you by MusicEXP. This newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers can leave questions/comments and suggest topics they’d li…
MusicEXP ∙ 1 LIKES

2024: what the ****'s going on? (In PC games?)

A general market musing, plus Team17 financials and lots of news.
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.] Welcome back, folks, and it’s another week on the
Simon Carless ∙ 22 LIKES
James Francis
Thanks for bringing up that indie games are not necessarily the counterpoint to AAA woes (a topic you've covered and illustrated well in the past).
I'm seeing a lot of gaming commentators, especially on YouTube, try to build a narrative about the indie market as the shining light to gaming industry woes. But none of them point out, as you have in the past, that the majority of indie games fail because it's a very crowded and demanding market right now. I look at a lot of demos - the quality out there is astounding. But getting people to notice your game is so hard. These days, if you can manage getting 300 reviews on Steam, that's a big deal!
There is this narrative that indie is the new saviour of gaming. But I think it's primarily encouraged by people who don't have a lot of exposure to the absolutely saturated market - and that's just Steam. Let's not talk about getting noticed on something like Itch!
Eliza Crichton-Stuart
💚🔥🌟

The Youth Rebellion Is Growing

Seven Gen Z Leaders Working to Reduce the Harms Caused by the Phone-Based Childhood
Intro from Zach Rausch and Jon Haidt: The most common argument among the critics of our work is that we are fomenting a groundless moral panic that is no different from earlier panics—from radio and television to comic books and violent video games. It’s a reasonable starting hypothesis, but you can’t cling to it as evidence mounts that
Zach Rausch and Jon Haidt ∙ 195 LIKES
Ruth Gaskovski
What a breath of fresh air to read of these Gen Z leaders pushing back. In our writings on how to navigate life in a digital age, my husband Peco and I noted that in addition to practical advice, people are in search of inspiring personal accounts that model a different relationship with technology. As such we have been planning a post for the end of May calling for submissions of stories that offer insight into how some young people, especially teens, choose to live life differently in a digital age. We will curate a collection of these stories that readers can freely access to gain encouragement for change and inspiration to apply to their own unique circumstances. We hope that this will add momentum to turning the tide.
Anne Lutz Fernandez
Ben's interview speaks volumes to me as a high school English teacher. I keep banging the drum that the problem is not just phones, it's overuse of tech more broadly in schools.
I wrote a bit about my experience this year, which has been to make paper, not machines, the default in my classroom. Ben's attic discovery can happen in schools.

We're All Hitlerists now

The New American Religion
Follow me on Twitter: @FromKulak People don't get me when I say Esoteric Hitlerism is the most important religion in the world today. I'm not saying "This is the future religion of America" I'm saying "This is ALREADY the majority religion of America"
Kulak ∙ 120 LIKES
Forward Nebraska
If Covid 19 taught us anything, it’s that Hitler didn’t need magic to propagate his reign of terror, he just needed to own the press. The people who wanted to kill the unvaccinated would have happily run the gas chambers. The people who are still wearing masks 4 years later would have happily walked into them.
Mary Harrington
A compelling argument. The best treatment of this phenomenon I’ve seen from a European perspective is Renaud Camus’ essay The Second Career of Adolf Hitler. Camus doesn’t address the theological aspect as directly as you, but its contours are clearly visible

They're going to pay the players

Here's what to know about the House v. NCAA settlement. There are still battles to be fought, but the war is over.
It can be tough to keep track of all the changes in college sports—realignment news, adjustments to NIL laws and enforcements, news about revived video games and returned Heisman Trophies, etc.—so maybe you’re unsure how to weigh the news about the proposed settlement in House v. NCAA.
Rodger Sherman ∙ 9 LIKES

Why Some U.S. Border Agents Are Contemplating Suicide. Plus. . .

The ‘Butcher of Tehran’ is dead. A backlash in Portland. Harvard capitulates to the student intifada. Harrison Butker’s commencement speech. And much more.
On today’s Front Page from The Free Press: The Butcher of Tehran is dead; Francesca Block r…
Oliver Wiseman ∙ 504 LIKES
Running Burning Man
The only thing offensive about the Butker speech was the parade of outrage by idiot leftists. Lead of course by the once again dunce of the year NFL “DEI” official who denounced Butker.
WTF does the NFL have a DEI official for? To try to get more white players into the league?
PSW
I’m sure if Butker had been named Mohammed and given a speech about Sharia law and the subservience of women and the evils of homosexuality, the MSM would be cheering him on, right?

Cologne Boy and HIFI Obsessions

addicted to cheese
Watch Sabrina Carpenter make her musical debut on Saturday Night Live; Kai Cenat’s latest blockbuster stream is a 156-hour ‘Elden Ring’ marathon; Iris Law is the new face of Guess Jeans; and Baby Coppolas are taking over Cannes. WHEN DID TEEN BOYS GET A NOSE FOR $300 COLOGNE?
Casey Lewis ∙ 27 LIKES

What I'm Reading

May 24: Five reads that piqued my interest this week
Modi’s God complex This astonishing story tops my list this week, because it has been largely missed by Western media, and provides a great insight into concerns held about India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I have written before that Modi’s carefully cultivated image in India is one of a messiah. But…
Latika M Bourke ∙ 7 LIKES
Amy Ward
Keir Starmer is set to win but the Labour leader is about as motivating as swiping right on a guy who begins with ‘hey.’
Love it!
martin.english@gmail.com
I'm curious as to why Modi's revelation only came AFTER his Mum died. Was it because he was scared of getting the Indian equivalent of the "I bought you into this world, and I can take you out" talk ?

Extra! Extra! 5/26 👯‍♀️

All the good news that's fit to print!
Hi, all, and happy Sunday! Here’s your roundup of everything great that happened this week while we were busy focusing on the crazy headlines. It’s good to stop and remind ourselves that, while plenty of bad stuff is happening, there’s a parallel track where victorie…
Jessica Craven ∙ 114 LIKES
Mary Russell
Your scope in reporting positive developments on the political front cannot be overvalued. Thanks, Jessica Craven!
Katharine Hill
So glad I plowed through to the end. Randy Rainbow gave me the levity I needed! You’re a national treasure yourself, Jessica, for pulling so many threads together. Power to the People.

"You're doing this all wrong" - Amazon SVP

How to get promotion advocacy
Welcome to this week’s free article of Level Up: Your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans. If you’d like to become a paid member, see the benefits here, and feel free to use this expense template
Ethan Evans and Jason Yoong ∙ 10 LIKES

How Rabbit & Steel raided its way to 125k+ sales in two weeks

Also: how to get out of 'coverage limbo', and news, news, news.
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.] Ye gods, is it time to write to you again? We’ve been slaving over candlelight on this latest newsletter, using our quill to painstakingly scratch o…
Simon Carless ∙ 13 LIKES
Meng Li
Thanks for sharing, this article is Essential for developers aiming to understand market dynamics and enhance their game's visibility and sales.

Your Guide to May’s Family Friendly Video Games

Switch 2 might be months off, but Nintendo's still releasing interesting games, with summer right around the corner.
Is summer almost here? Based on what I often see outside of my window in the Chicago suburbs, the answer is no, but I’m being told that May is right before June? We’re entering a fascinating point with the Switch, where Nintendo is still releasing games—two of them this month, actually, both promising—and most, if not all, indie games continue to target …
Patrick Klepek ∙ 12 LIKES
Reyza Amri
Your take on the enduring charm of the Switch amidst the arrival of Steam Deck in your life resonates with me—I'm also juggling between the two. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has a special place in my game library, excited to see how it translates with the latest Switch technology. Thanks for keeping us in the loop with your thorough reviews and updates!
Walker Adamson
I wouldn’t mind seeing each game’s FGDB Skill Level in these roundups, since I usually find myself doing a lookup over there anyways!

May 24

Kids, Routines, And Unexpected Delights

Ash "The Gamer Educator" Brandin on how to deal with surprising your child, only to find out it's not enough. It never is, and there's good reason for it.
Patrick’s Note: Chime in with topics you’d like Ash to cover in the future. And if you’d like to pitch on something to be published on Crossplay, I’m open to it. For now, back to Ash… During my child’s first visit to an amusement park, they took a break from screaming in joy while we were on a roller coaster to shout at …
Ash Brandin ∙ 10 LIKES
Alex
This is really useful for me to think about. I realize my wife and I often try to keep details of a big plan under wraps—largely a lesson learned from the few times something in a plan went wrong and disappointed our kids! As they get older and can process those emotions more capably, having a rough plan could help them focus on where they are, AND for what comes afterward.
Jeff P
I appreciate this post, especially as we get closer to the end of school year and upcoming trips.
Thanks Ash!

The Lost Art of Ambition: How Churches Can Inspire Young Men to Greatness (Part 3)

I recently had coffee with an entrepreneur friend (Nate), and we realized that many churches lack cultures for cultivating, forming, and inspiring ambition in teens and young men. After all, ambition is a positive virtue, right? At times, when a young man shows ambition, it's often labeled as idolatry, pride, or arrogance. Alternatively, his ambition of…
Anthony B. Bradley ∙ 15 LIKES
Pete Williamson
Dr. Bradley, are there some resources that you recommend about the nuts-and-bolts of mentoring someone?
B Brian Smith
A great and practical overview of the situation and options!
I have for a few years done a study of Proverbs with teens/young men. It's 31 weeks so it's a commitment. We also do projects- I had one replace the deck on my house. Another one and I share the hobby of astrophotography- so there's many good late night conversations. We share some ministry work together in standing athwart some local Woke activities too- young men want a chance to show valor in our Negative World.
I've got the range to do this in my season of life as a recent empty-nester dad of two sons and widowed. Mentorship/discipleship usually occurs on 3 vectors: your Sex (piety is gendered), your Station (what are you now doing worth passing on), and your Season.

Forging Lions, Not Lambs:

A Blood-Soaked Battle Plan for Raising Godly Men
The world wants your sons weak. Soft. Addicted to screens, their minds rotted by porn and their spines bent under the weight of a thousand emasculating lies. It wants them to be "nice," to "follow their feelings," to trade their birthright of strength and courage for a bowl of soulless conformity.
Biblical Man ∙ 45 LIKES
Chuck Blackwell
Good stuff

Am I Trans for the Right Reasons? Does it Matter?

Self-doubt, denial, and the existential trans horror of I Saw the TV Glow.
I received this question in my Tumblr ask box the other day, and it got me thinking about the years I spent delaying transition, the damaging rhetoric of detransitioned TERFs that motivated me to do so, and Jane Schoenbrun’s excellent new film about trans longing and self-denial,
Devon ∙ 124 LIKES
Kleo Brix
I've heard a fair few people talk about that movie, praising it, but knowing myself it's not something I can deal with watching.
One funny thing I experienced myself, and I know others have as well, is realizing just how much dysphoria you were dealing with once you've been transitioning a while. Before it was an all-pervasive miasma of indescribable feelings. Transitioning made it clear that the before times was not a neutral period. I'd been led to believe that dysphoria consisted of very concrete things, like anatomy, but the mental aspects are just as much a part of it. Being numbed by the constant presence of unquantifiable ~wrongness~ makes that hard to realized. (Very possibly exacerbated by a society that was extremely intolerant of existing outside a very narrowly circumscribed gender role.) Until I took the plunge that is, and was like "holy fuck". The miasma lifted. The internal signals of wrongness quietened. It sure as fuck didn't solve all my problems, but I'd be in a hell of a lot worse situation if I hadn't. Sadly the only way to find out yourself is to take the plunge so you don't die wondering.
Chelsey Flood
Thanks Devon, I loved reading this. I don't identify as trans but always casually wanted to be a boy until my early 20s (in the 00s) and have had many interpretations of my gender dysphoria or desire to be male or desperation to be neutral/escape misogyny (inc my own) over the years. I also related the way you couldnt say why it feels better after knowing you are trans to my knowing (finally) I'm autistic. Nothing really improved but the self knowledge changed everything.
Thanks for your writing, I get a lot from reading your work.
Chelsey

The summer reset

Avoiding the summer slump with your boy
Every year as summer approaches, I work with more and more parents of teenagers whose anxiety rises. I am bombarded with questions from them as their kids finish up a school year: Will they be laying around the house all summer? Will they work? Will they help out around the house? What’s the right tone to set? What are my expectations? Will they be depr…
Dr. John Duffy ∙ 2 LIKES
Dr. John Duffy
Thank you, Chris. That truly means the world.

I <3 Nantes

Behold! I have had a thought.
Hello! Hi! I have two very different recommendations for you this week. Number one: this long and really brilliant essay on…living in a body? I think that’s probably the best way to put it. It’s about living in a body, and swimming in the sea, and exercise, and chronic illness. I don’t think I’m selling this very well actually but I don’t really know what…
Marie Le Conte ∙ 33 LIKES
John
It was nice to read about Nantes, which I've always thought of as a very cool, sophisticated place since a language exchange I went on 30 years ago. My Nantais counterpart was better dressed than anyone I knew, his mum had a glass of red wine for lunch everyday and when we went to visit his grandmaman in La Boule lunch took 3 hours and I ate proper shellfish for the first time in my life. It was great.
Martin
This post has single-handedly made me want to visit Nantes!

White Bedding

Alcohol roulette & a sentencing.
The cliches are many: Till death due us part. Come hell or high water. In sickness and in health. For richer, for poorer. In house arrest or come and go as you please. I was naive to the Justice system. I knew of one Justice system for twenty-six years: one cult leader, assistant pastor (my “Dad”), three elders, and seven deacons. On multiple occasions, …
Breanna Brown ∙ 5 LIKES
Stephanie Wolfe
Jayzuz Bre !! What did the sicko do? And how is it the “cult” supported him through this? Did they give him punishment too? Or was being a man’s of god good enough? Damn you have lived through some shit! I’m so proud of you.

Johansson's beef with OpenAI points to unclear laws on voice cloning

No one is sure if it's legal to reproduce a celebrity's voice without permission.
Last September, users gained the ability to speak to ChatGPT using one of five voices dubbed Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper, and Sky. Then earlier this month, OpenAI announced a new model, GPT-4o, that could understand the user’s tone of voice and vary its own tone in response. Due out in the coming weeks, this feature should enable more lifelike conversa…
Timothy B Lee ∙ 24 LIKES
Carter Williams
The F/A-18 Mission computer incorporated speech in 1980. Digitized from a real voice. With audio cues like "Pull Up" when too close to the ground. Years later, pilots who had been saved by the gentle female voice wanted to know the name of the woman behind the voice. We tried to figure it out, but Gene Adams, the inventor, had passed away by then. Not sure we ever did get to the bottom of it.
Malcolm Sharpe
On the specific case of OpenAI and Johansson, it's worth listening to back-to-back comparisons to judge for yourself whether Sky actually sounds like Johansson. Here are two examples:
To my ear, they sound distinctly different.

What is your child reading in school?

Or, how STEM has squashed the humanities.
Friends, I have a question: If you are a parent, I am curious what your child is reading in school. Please write to me. I am mostly interested in junior high and high school students, but if you have thoughts on what your younger child is reading in school, I will take those.
Mark Oppenheimer ∙ 3 LIKES