The Sunday Papers

Read more

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

Sundays are for testing the limits of the hunger for street furniture in your community.

Since moving into the new flat, we've been taking things left behind by the previous owner down to the street one-by-one. A lamp here, a side table there, a splash of shelving. So far, everything has been taken by neighbours and passersby. But, after a week of rain where we couldn't take anything out without it getting drenched (and losing any chance of being taken), we've a glut of things to put out. With my sister coming to stay on Monday, it all has to go in one. Will my neighbors be left unable to choose between an office chair, a wobbly step ladder, and yet more shelving? Time will tell.

Still, while I sit beside the living room window, watching to see if anyone carries off the loose kitchen cabinet unit, I'll need something to read…

In a report for DroneXL, Haye Kesteloo explores how video data collected by Pokémon Go players could be used to train military drones to seek out targets even after their signals are jammed. Niantic denies this is happening, by the way, so read Kesteloo's article purely as a thought experiment…

The pipeline runs from a mobile game to the battlefield in three steps. Players scanned the physical world. Niantic Spatial turned those scans into a 3D map that lets a machine locate itself by sight when satellite signals fail. And in December 2025, Niantic Spatial announced a partnership with Vantor, the defense and intelligence firm formerly known as Maxar Intelligence, to fuse that ground-level system with Vantor’s aerial navigation software for use in GPS-denied operations.

Over on 'I'm telling you, lad, it's genuine RPS. It's just the ink's faded', Brendan's talked to game developers about how they make worlds willed with wonderful discovery.

"The best thing a game can do to create a sense of discovery is let you feel lost," says Derek Yu, creator of the Spelunky games. "That's the prerequisite for discovery, in my opinion. The more you know going in, the less there is to discover. Feeling lost leads to wonder, and wonder leads to discovery."
"The environments that I most want to explore feel like they're just 'there' and I'm a stranger to them. As the player, I'm not the focus of the world. They're exciting and dangerous to me and the dangers aren't telegraphed for my benefit. I have to genuinely engage with the world to understand how it works."

Zynga's former head of AI, Luke Dicken, has spoken at length to GameIndustry's Alex Calvin about the impact of generative AI. It's not only that it's raising moral and ethical issues for this company, but he's worried it will "poison the well" for all kind of tech that falls under the AI banner

"The problem is that because the hype people come in, overblow what it is, try to eke out all the funding they possibly can, but it doesn't deliver on the hype," Dicken says. He's concerned that if the generative AI bubble pops, it will leave a bad taste in the mouth of everyone in the industry. Rather than realising that more traditional AI techniques can help with development, people might just want shot of the technology as a whole.
"My worry is that generative AI is poisoning the well," he says. "I don't think there is enough sophistication and nuance to retain the traditional stuff. For LLMs, we have already stumbled into the trough of disillusionment."

Now, normally I link to the London Review of Books writing about anything but games, but this week David Runciman's review of C. Thi Nguyen's The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game is all about gamification and data collection. I'd read it for that, but I do enjoy that Runciman and I share the same magical thinking around morning puzzles.

Like many millions of people, I usually begin my morning doing a few gentle word puzzles on newspaper websites: Connections and Strands in the New York Times, Polygon and Codeword in the Times, plus a couple of others. I do it strictly by the clock so it doesn’t take more than fifteen minutes, and I don’t take it very seriously – I have till now resisted the endless offers to pay for a subscription that would allow me to track my scores, share my results and compare my performance with that of others. Nonetheless, and though I would swear I am not a superstitious person, I am conscious of a gut feeling when I do well (all the words, all the connections, no hints!) that the day is going to be a good one and an even stronger sense when I mess up that it’s a sign of more bad things to come. Do I believe this nonsense in order to motivate me to try harder or do I try harder because I believe this nonsense? I have no idea. But it works for me, especially since it makes me feel that by the time I get to the news in the newspapers the important stuff has already happened, which makes the news easier to digest.

Runciman doesn't go on to say that if he kicks off his underwear and catches it then it will be a good day, but I imagine we're the same in that regard, too.

https://www.designroom.site/spore-an-oral-history/

For Design Room, Jay Castello has put together an oral history of Spore. There's a lot to enjoy in this oral history but what I love in any form that has talking heads, is moments of disagreement.

Chris Hecker (design and lead engineer, procedural generation): The technology was super fun to work on. It was really challenging, but it was also a delight to make a computer do things that people hadn't seen before, and make it intuitive and easy for the player.
Chaim Gingold (designer): [Animator John Cimino] was basically giving me his expert practice as an artist, and I was like, Right, we need to get people to be able to do that without necessarily teaching them how to do all of that. And that's where the idea [came from to make it] more like Mr. Potato Head. But talking about Mr. Potato Head kind of pissed a lot of people off because they were like, We're not making Mr. Potato Head. That's too simple and dumb. […] I think I mostly pissed off Chris Hecker, but other people too. I probably upset Ocean.
Chris Hecker: I don't remember it bothering me.
[Quigley says he came to the same conclusion of it resembling Mr. Potato Head on his own while looking at a topiary sculpture of a dinosaur at an art gallery.]

I chosoe to read this as Chris and Ocean absolutely being annoyed by the Mr. Potato Head comparison.

Last, but not least, a link to the LRB blog that has nothing to do with (video) games. I'm not much of a sports fan, but I do like any piece that opens up a window on a sport, especially one that involves thousands of people booing Trump – as is the case in Arvin Alaigh write up on the Knicks' basketball success.

Trump’s grinning face was shown on the jumbotron during the national anthem before the game, but ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ provided little refuge for the president, whose appearance on screen provoked a chorus of boos so loud that they drowned out the singing – far worse than the jeers directed at the visiting Spurs. Trump didn’t seem too burdened by it all: once play was underway, he was caught on video apparently dozing off.

I went to see Lykke Li earlier this week, a fine maker of tear-stained pop that I've been listening to for 15 years or so now but never had the chance to see live. I had to leave before the end and so missed what I would guess she ended on – I Follow Rivers – but I did catch her surprisingly upbeat new single, Lucky Again.