The Sunday Papers

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The Sunday Papers is our weekly roundup of great writing about (mostly) videogames from across the web.

Sundays are for realising that you aren't who you thought you were. You thought you were Jonathan Frakes. You thought you'd starred in both Star Trek: The Next Generation and 1995 video game Multimedia Celebrity Poker. You thought you'd played an unnamed dug dealer in a 1982 Hill Street Blues episode named 'Of Mouse and Man'. You thought you'd directed an episode of Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce called 'Rule No. 155: Go with the Magician'. You thought a man named Trim Jinca had used your face as a profile picture a time or two. You were wrong on all counts.

You are Jonathan Frakes. But not that Jonathan Frakes. You don't ask the questions here. You answer them. And so I ask: who are you?

You grasp around for the answer. All you can come up with off the bat is a review of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream by Giant Bomb's Dan Ryckert. That's from last week, I warn you. Since it's all you've got, I permit it. But consider it strike one against you.

Life on Kayfabe Island is simple but never boring. My father has failed at his quest to court Monica Bellucci, who has opted to move in with Sarah Connor and Dracula. My sister recently married Stone Cold Steve Austin and they’re playfully splashing each other on the beach. Heihachi and the thunder god Raiden live happily together in the Kombat Kasa. James Brown just finished construction on his new house, a pyramid made of cocaine. Geoff Keighley’s new pet – a sentient piece of pizza – has been biting people, which greatly concerns Morpheus.

You swear you'll try harder. I wait with bated breath. You dig around in your noggin, dislodging flakes of Frakes with non-corporeal fingers. An image comes into focus. It's Hadrian's Wall in the north of England. You think of walking the length of this wall, a remarkable feat of ancient Roman engineering which spans from coast to coast, as TheGamer's Ben Sledge recently almost managed.

So I verbalised something I’d been pondering for a little while, an idea that had been percolating in my mind and baking under the midday sun. A two-player board game, where one player takes control of the invading Romans and attempts to build Hadrian’s Wall starting from Wallsend in the east and ending in Bowness-on-Sea in the west, and the other player controls the Britons desperately trying to stop this attempt to colonise and divide their country.
It’s a simple idea, but we worked through the early stages of prototyping entirely in our minds. We figured out how the Romans would build the wall (units can choose to Defend or Build on each turn), how many turns it would take to build each section of wall (one unit three turns, but three units one turn, etc.), and how the native Britons could disrupt it (attacking wall sections to destroy and disrupt them).

You're no closer to figuring out your true identity. So, you reach for the stars. I call you a fool, declaring that this will only get you closer to notorious star-dweller Frakes. You say I'm wrong. You point to it conjuring up visions of a businessy conversation between Game Developer's Bryant Francis and Bernd Lehahn, founder of X4: Foundations developers Egosoft.

"[X4] has the advantage that we can have the same feeling [as an MMO] and we can have a much steeper progression curve," he said, alluding to how players starting with just a spaceship and a dream can quickly assemble whole armadas, spaceships, and empires in a matter of days. MMOs, in one way or another, slow down player progression through grinding in order to drive retention and monetization.
Lehahn said the idea of an online X game is tempting, but he's "glad" they never committed to one for fear of tying the gameplay experience too closely to the monetization requirements needed to keep an online game running. "We would have lost the core of what makes our game good," he said. "Fast progression is part of making a fun game.
"

Don't you get all businessy on me, I shout, slapping your face. Your jaw, its shape still reminding you of Frakes, aches. You narrow your eyes. Time to unleash the big guns. You whip out an article from Defector's Ben Dowsett. You set up to swat me with it, not unlike LeBron James did to a basketball at a key moment in the 2016 NBA finals.

LeBron had just a little help, in fairness. Smith was maybe more well known for his various escapades than anything he did on the floor, especially on defense, but he came up big here: The extra effort to turn and contest the shot made Iguodala double-pump on his layup, delaying it by 0.15 seconds, according to Sports Science.
"[That] difference enabled James to get that extra step to be able to make the play," Breen said, before comparing the sequence to another legendary LeBron moment. "It's like the Ray Allen shot in Miami. There had to be six things happening on that play for Ray Allen to be open to hit that three-pointer. And all six happened."

It's there. A spark of something. Suddenly, you've got me on my back foot. FAKE FRAKES, FAKE FRAKES, FAKE FRAKES, FRAKE FAKES, I scream, desperate to prevent my imminent failure. Titanium Court review by Zack Kotzer for Kotaku dot com, you say through a sick and twisted smile.

I haven’t kept up with esports since my short stint as a Major League Gaming VJ, but I try to check out the annual Candy Crush finals. Where most professional gamers are stickered up with brands like a Dole banana under the arena lights, Crush’s top competitors, streamed remotely, wear no such NASCAR racer garb and instead often look like nurses who ducked into a supply closet during a shift.

You peel back your Frakece. You see reflected in my bald head the shape the patchwork of veins and bones which lie underneath it makes. The real you stirs and wakes. I stand stock still and utterly powerless.

You tell me that I'm the real fake. I tell you that you're the real Frake. It's a desperate final attempt at vengeance. You're too strong to fall for it. You tell me I'm not that Adrian Edmondson. I spiral into an anonymous void, as Madonna's Hung Up begins to tick away.

Then, you come to. What feels like years has been five minutes. "Come on, call or fold," Joe Piscopo urges from somewhere to your left.