Sundays are for leveling up. Don’t be a hero now. Get that basic 60. You’ll need it. Before you hit the motivational high of turning a two-shot into a three-shot, read this week’s best articles on games (and things related to games!)
For Eurogamer, Graeme Mason told the story of Captain Blood, not to be confused with Captain Blood, Captain Blood (2024) or Cap’n Blood (my cat*). This is a strange gem of a 1988 Atari game about tracking your clones across the galaxy and murdering them, with a fascinating communication interface.
“Captain Blood’s mission was to create a universal text-based adventure game that could be played by every player on the planet and that transcended languages,” notes Ulrich. “I liked the icon-based language, like ‘I love you’ and ‘You’re beautiful, you’re strong’. It worked in every language and I realized that by combining a hundred words/icons you could express a real scenario with humor. .” This means of communication, called the Universal Protocol of Communication – UPCOM – became the main gameplay element of Captain Blood. “We simulated intelligence using big data – I wrote hundreds of sentences with icons representing the characters’ knowledge, history, secrets, and of course the rare coordinates of inhabited planets.”
This piece on coolness, scarcity and subculture by Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick resonated with me quite a bit, because what ‘subculture’ actually means in an age where you can acclimate yourself to a scene in a few hours of Googling is something I’ve been thinking about. often. I don’t mean that in a negative way, of course. It’s a beautiful thing that artists, game developers, and the like can reach an audience without having to rely on publisher labels. But I also think that the feeling of being a part of something small, special, and new can create rare experiences with both art and community that may not be replicable when those avenues are removed. I’ve never been much into vinyl—my dad ran a record store, and as Broderick points out, coolness is in short supply—but to give an example, the phrase “online crate digging” always felt like it was missing something essential.
All that said, I think there’s something weird going on in the way we understand subcultures. Of course, these communities still exist. There are punks and metalheads and hippies and queer kids and spiders and ravers and everyone else. And thanks to the internet, there are more sub- and sub-subcultures than ever, with platforms like TikTok generating new ones every day. But also thanks to the Internet, the barrier to entry into these communities has been effectively removed. You can go consume their respective lore on Reddit or YouTube, hop on Amazon or Hot Topic, grab some gear and you’re good to go.
On Futurism, Frank Landymore wrote about a copywriter who found himself in “the last human position” as his team of 60 was slowly being replaced by artificial intelligence. Gloomy.
Months later, management decided to cut people out of the loop almost entirely. In the future, an AI model would generate articles as a whole. There was lousy automation and most writers lost their jobs as a result. Miller has been retained – although his role will be slightly different than before.
Now he was tasked with polishing the AI’s bland prose and, to quote the BBC, “making it sound more human”. If only there was a way to do this with human writers.
Stop Elevating Mediocre Indie Games is a thoughtful and, frankly, pretty exciting video from Pixel A Day, a million miles away from the ill-informed ragebait its title might suggest. No shade, YouTubers gotta eat. I’d recommend just watching the “Why It All Matters” section if you’re strapped for time, and also because then you don’t have to hear nasty things about a nice cat game. I’ll be wondering for a while what the design intent is here to differentiate between “indie” and “AAA in miniature”.
The Earth Has Terrible World Building video is a fun little celebration of the planet’s many oddities. I haven’t finished James Rolfe’s new Folding Ideas I Don’t Know video yet, but you’ll be pleased to know that it can be pretty well done in a slim hour and fifteen. The incredibly dedicated fan who was remaking the entire Final Fantasy 7 in Little Big Planet seems to have finished the project. This week’s music is Cut Your Hair by Pavement because there’s never a bad time to listen to Pavement. Enjoy the weekend!
* It’s not a real cat. I really like the name though.