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 sitting in a chair, I hope. Beyond that I dare not to dream.

Folks continue to sing the praises of Arco, this year's selected overlooked gem of overlooked gems. The latest is Matt Patches over at Polygon:

Arco, by all accounts, has not found an audience. At least one dev blames the game’s ingenuity — being a mashup of ideas and flavors isn’t the easiest sell. Probably true. But I hope there’s something to be gained from putting a stunning work of game art, and an exhilarating example of tactical combat, into the world. Because for all its eclectic influences, Arco coalesces into a story most of us need to hear.

I liked this brief poke at the narrative concept behind Disney's Dreamlight Valley by Deirdre Coyle at Unwinnable. It's a game I'd wager not many have given much thought as they grind through its quests.

During the game’s opening act, you hear rumors and catch glimpses of a “Dark Entity” (Donald Duck’s words). This entity, it turns out, is a personification of your abandoned inner child – a part of you that felt forsaken and splintered off when you stopped returning to Dreamlight Valley. An apt metaphor.
This is suburban horror: the daily grind of forgetting oneself, losing oneself.

Is this new? I do not know. Is it all merely marketing for Alan Sugar's career? Possibly. But I still appreciated a trip down memory lane of Amstrad Computers. The first computer I ever used was an Amstrad CPC464, although we had the GT64 monitor that could only show shades of green.

What’s more, in order to use other home computers of the time (eg. Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Micro) one had to commandeer the family TV to use as a monitor, then attach a portable cassette player to use as a software loader – all in all, not a good user-experience. And so, drawing on the same principles that served him so well with audio Tower Systems, Alan Sugar brought his ‘plug in and play’ ethos to the world of personal computers. Everything you needed was in the box – the system unit had the keyboard and cassette deck built-in, and it came with its own monitor.

I've been revisiting a lot of writing recently about work and purpose and creativity, mostly by accident - or at least, without conscious intent. My browsing habits just keep taking me there. Here's an old David Graeber piece, which spawned an underwhelming book but remains, I think, worth considering. On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs.

This is a profound psychological violence here. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.

Bad writing is delicious, and the best kind of bad writing involves mixed metaphors. Defector fed me well with this vicious teardown of a Vanity Fair piece about Augusta Britt, who inspired many characters in Cormac McCarthy's fiction - among other things.

Simply do not do this. Do not make this sentence; if you have made this sentence, do not ever publish it. What in the hell is the relationship between the various nouns of this sentence? I feel like I am having a stroke.

Edwin shared this in Slack this week, a classic of Garry's Mod animation. Are people still making work this good, or is it now Skibidi all the way down?

Tapir!'s debut album The Pilgrim, Their God And The King Of My Decrepit Mountain is warm and mythical, and the song Untitled is the most welcoming of the collection. I love midwestern indie rock, and the Chris Walla-produced Elvis In The Freezer by Ratboys sounds like a lazy Sunday while its lyrics are a heartbreaking ode to a cat. Finally, Hannah Sun by Lomelda, which builds and builds until I'm gone, somewhere else.