I don’t know what Sundays are for, or indeed any other moment of spare time. Listlessly re-watching YouTube videos and refreshing BlueSky then feeling bad that I’m wasting my time rather than playing the games I want to play or reading the books I want to read? Probably. At least this way I stumble across some articles worth reading.
For 404 Media, Nicole Carpenter – former Polygon reporter – wrote about how videogame sex scenes are made.
The actors are wearing stretchy black one piece bodysuits designed for motion capture scenes—something not dissimilar from a diving wetsuit—adorned with velcro markers strategically placed all over their bodies. Sometimes, when the velcro bits touch, you can hear the riiiiip of the actors getting stuck—and unstuck—from each other as they climb back-and-forth between seats and each other.
Noclip, they of videogame making-of documentaries, are branching out to produce videos helping people discover new games. Danny O’Dwyer made a video about why and they’ve posted their first Quick Look.
I enjoyed Adam Mastroianni’s “28 slightly rude notes on writing”, which I think contains a lot of fodder for people who want to write on any subject.
Writing is a costly signal of caring about something. Good writing, in fact, might be a sign of pathological caring.
Videogame websites focused on writing are struggling, and those that are surviving are doing so by, in part, focusing upon functional work targeted towards search queries. Is YouTube, with its hours-long video essays and great many ‘game discovery’ channels, the future of “pathological caring”? Lest you think anything so optimistic, here’s Carla Lalli Music, American chef and now former YouTuber, on the true cost of producing good work for the video platform.
One of my most popular videos is for a mushroom pasta (excellent, by the way): 312,260 views. I’ve brought in a total of $3665 for that one, or jussssst enough to cover the production expenses. Put it another way: I didn’t earn a penny. Is not losing the same as winning? I’ve spent a lot of time on that question.
An admirably descritpive website name: Big Box Collection.
Music this week has been a lotta stuff, because there’s a festival in town this weekend and although I’m not going, I can sure crawl through lists of the people performing and listen to their work online. And yet, here’s, uh, the theme tune from Ridge Racer 4. Have I included videogame music in the Sunday Papers so far? The playlist of selections suggests not, but I return to the Ridge Racer 4 soundtrack over and over. Lest you think I’m some sort of nerd, here’s two other picks: Strobe, the new song by Australian indie band Armlock; and Ferry Lady, a recent release by Animal Collective’s Panda Bear, which is a great song with a depressingly shit AI video.
