Saturday Supplemental - A New Weekly Feature

You know who writes about video games on the Internet? A bunch of people. Here's are some highlights from the week:

Peter Molyneux Says Controllers Are So Over
If you follow video games, this isn't news to you. Ol' Pete has been ranting about the agony of having touch an icky plastic device since the prenatal days of Kinect. I'm pointing to this article less because I think it's necessary to drive ourselves into a tizzy every time Peter Molyneux makes a bold proclamation, and more because this quote marked a personal turning point. I read this, and it finally clicked that Molyneux is some new form of nudist. "How can you even touch a controller!? It's so constricting and unnatural!"

Yasuhiro Wada Recounts the Making of Harvest Moon
This year's GDC provided plenty of stellar post-mortems on games new and old, and I think this was the best of all, though I may be biased my my love of Harvest Moon. It's a tale of deeply personal gamemaking, struggling against a poorly run business, and fun facts. Who would have guessed that farming was added so late in development?

Jason VandenBerghe Gave a Presentation at GDC
And I'm happy for him. He's a developer who doesn't have the huge following of a Molyneux or a Wada, but every time he opens his mouth it's clear that he loves video games in a way few others can match. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford to make it to GDC, so I didn't hear the presentation, but the conclusion presented in this recap is the perfect argument against every misguided and unfounded statement my instructors made in game design school.

SimCity Has Nothing to Hide
1UP has taken a new direction in the past few months, and the site is absolutely killing it. Almost every article is worth reading, but I'm tipping my cap the above coverage of the SimCity, as well as this second article, because in describing two different sides of the same game, they've gotten me excited for SimCity for the first time in well over a decade.