Here Are Some Links Related to Video Games

Well, well, well! At last, my overtime has come to and end, only to replaced by...temporary unemployment. That's life in the video game business. I don't know yet if that means I'll get back to regularly updating Hot Lavy or if I'll find other ways to busy myself. All I know is that I have a bunch of links.

Andrew Groen - Game|Life
‘Routine’ Game Industry Layoffs Kill Creativity
Hey! Yeah!

Adam Conover - CollegeHumor
Hardly Working: Most Retro Video Game System Ever
The hilarious Adam Conover introduces us to the Skaris One-Bit.

L. Rhodes - Culture Ramp
The Critic
A wonderful interview with my wonderful friend, Jenn Frank, about video game journalism, games as time travel, our generation's "Odyssey Years," and so much more. Brilliant and heartbreaking. Part three in Rhodes' series, "The Ludorenaissance."

Bill Harris - Dubious Quality
"Value"
EA re-released FIFA 12 for Wii this year, but now they're calling it FIFA 13, pretending it's a new game, and charging $50 for it, which is just one example of the wonders of modern video game market. Says Bill Harris, "This is why I've stopped caring whether any of these companies survive. Their incompetence and greed has destroyed the traditional retail ecosystem. Not piracy. Not used games. This is not dinosaurs getting destroyed by an exogenous event. It's strip farming, followed by starvation when the soil is depleted."

Ryan Rigney - Game|Life
Apple’s Favorite Strategy Game Is a Financial Disaster
$300,000 to make; $40,000 in return. This is a fantastic and terrifying look at the luck and economics of iOS and free-to-play games.

Patrick Klepek - Giant Bomb
The Authorship of a Video Game
Patrrick Klepek talks to 5th Cell's Jeremy Slaczka about the collaborative nature of studio game development and the intent behind putting one author's name on a video game.

Jest
50 Attempts At Speech In Early Videogames
You know what I like more than hearing super-compressed speech being force out of video game systems that had no business reproducing human voices? Neither do I. My only problem with this list is that it's too short. No Awesome Possum? No Bubsy? No World Class Leader Board? What a drag.

Jason Tanz - Game|Life
How a Videogame God Inspired a Twitter Doppelgänger — and Resurrected His Career
That would be Peter Molyneux and @PeterMolydeux. The story is actually kind of weirdly heartwarming.

Leigh Alexander - Gamasutra
'As a woman': Misconceptions in the diversity discussion
As a dude, I think diversity is pretty neat.

Jim Sterling - Destructoid
Deadly Premonition: the cult of split-personality
A special edition of Deadly Premonition, the best game on Xbox 360, is coming to PS3. This is good news not only because more people will have an opportunity to play the bizarro not-Twin Peaks adventure, complete with all new bicycle-riding, but because it means this should be the first of many interviews with director SWERY I'll be reading in the coming weeks. One question: When did everyone start calling him Swery65? I thought his name was SWERY, and Swery65 was just the name of the bar in Deadly Premonition. Right? I know some gamemakers have unusual nicknames, but let's not get SWERY mixed up with Suda51.

Alex Navarro - Giant Bomb
Major Round of Layoffs Reportedly Hits Zynga
Yep, life in the video game business.

Ryan Creighton - Untold Entertainment
Men Helping Women Use Computers
Because evidently women can't figure it out on their own.

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw - Extra Punctuation
It's About Characters, Stupid
I got into a conversation with some people at this summer's Penny Arcade Expo about Resident Evil. At one point, I stopped the arguing and asked each person, one by one, if they care about the series' increasingly prominent and convoluted story. A few hemmed and hawed, trying to defend it, but, in the end, not a single person could feign interest. In this article, Yahtzee breaks down why we find it so dull, and reaches a convincing conclusion about entertainment and storytelling in general.

Game Center CX
Game Center CX: Special Feature - Iwata Asks the Chief
Arino talks to Balloon Fight creator and Nintendo president Satoru Iwata on a recent episode of the delightful Japanese TV show Game Center CX. Both guys are just so likeable that it's impossible not to smile through the whole clip.

Please, just call me York. That's what everyone calls me.