Sunday Reading Roundup | Rock Paper Shotgun

Sundays are for being on holiday, but that doesn’t mean we can’t produce a roundup of some links before we depart.

For The Guardian, Sarah Thwaites spoke to developers of indie game hits about the freedoms of success and the pressure to repeat it.

Bruxner still has game ideas swirling in the back of her head, but she wanted to escape the endless production cycle that has swallowed up many of her peers, regardless of mounting exhaustion or burnout. “It’s not universal advice,” she says, “but if you’re a solo dev or a really small team, I don’t think there’s any shame in leaving it there. Unless you love making games. I’m not sure I love making games. I was quite young when we released the first Frog Detective, so it was like, ‘This is my entire identity for life. I don’t know how to be a separate person from that.”

Tech CEO: Do Not Say To Me That I Was Not Just Assassinated By The Jackal, by Albert Burneko for Defector.

What kind of a fool do you take Deep Prasad for? With his very own eyes he saw the black-ops assassin lift the M72 LAW anti-tank RPG to his shoulder; with his own ears he heard the ffffssssshoooom of launch; with his own nerves he felt the rocket detonate against his flesh, promptly rendering him into a shower of so many charred meat chunks; and you expect him to believe that this was just some heedless teen setting off an M-80 while a nearby tech CEO let out a Wilhelm scream and dove back into his hotel lobby?

BAFTA ran a poll to find the most influential video game of all time. It was a poll of the public, which means it is almost completely without value as an answer to the question, but hey, you can argue about the results if you want. They’re mostly sensible, in fairness, except for Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 at number 7, a game so new it hasn’t yet had the chance to influence anything but bad behaviour on social media.

8. Super Mario 64

Having created the template for side-scrolling games, Nintendo repeated the trick when the medium embraced a third dimension. Super Mario 64 wasn’t the first game to trade sprites for polygons, but its DNA is coded into just about every 3D game released since: in one fell swoop, it established a new standard for movement and camera controls in three dimensions. According to voter Alex Cazin, it remains so intuitive “that even 30 years later anyone can pick up a controller and know instantly how to play.”

The Nintendo Switch 2 was properly revealed this week, with pricing and launch line-up prompting typical debate. (I’ve pre-ordered mine already.) For Eurogamer, Tom Phillips had a play of the thing itself and came away skeptical of its new features but optimistic about its big new games.

It’s in the Joy-Con 2’s required mouse functionality for Drag x Drive that I’m less convinced. A three-versus-three game of essentially wheelchair basketball, this sees you operate both left and right Joy-Con 2 controllers as dual mice, with quick and precise movement – although also some large arcing swipes required of your hands – for competitive play. What I played – and what was shown at the Switch 2 Direct – felt little more than a tech demo, and I have to admit I came away with more questions about the project than answers, as well as a pair of tired arms.

Popular newsletter Deez Links – most regularly a roundup of interesting links from around the web – is running a second season of Hate Read, each entry of which is an essay about something the guest author, always pseudonymous, truly hates. I enjoyed this entertaining spray of bile about “creatives”:

Perhaps the creative begins to produce original content. Surely then he is making something of his own? He starts a band or learns how to DJ. He releases annual screen-printed T-shirts with obscure references. He launches a podcast, then another one. Perhaps he becomes a cooking influencer, who clearly does not consume the austere food he so carefully lays out for the camera. But a shallowness dogs these efforts. You can smell the desperation, the sweaty effort to escape the alienated comfort of their situation. In the end, the creative is not that creative; he is passionless. No matter the side project, it turns back toward the pursuit of more deals and more money.

Right, I’ve got a big boat to catch, so that’ll have to do for this week. Music this week is the sweaty jazz of Summer Goddess by awkwardly named Japanese sextet Soil & “Pimp” Sessions. Those quote marks are their own. There will be no Papers next week, because I’ll be damned if I’m reading the internet while on holiday.