RE:BIND have published Skeleton’s take on the Final Fantasy 7 remake. And there are few things I care less about than the Final Fantasy 7 remake, which is why you should listen to me when I say Skeleton’s piece is worth reading anyway. PC Gamer have republished Luke Winkie’s interview with the designers of Facade, a game about convincing two AIs not to break up. It’s an intriguing and apparently surprisingly robust concept. Tommy Thompson made a neat video about it, too. Here’s to measuring up to fake childhood heroes two decades later. Fiction makes it so easy for people with no experience to steal from places they think they can. I’m not the only one who’s guilty (thankfully long outgrown) of thinking that kind of stoic aloofness could stand in for either a personality or life experience. For Eurogamer, Christian Donlan foiled my plans to stop linking so much to their “Someone Should Make A Game About” series by writing a lovely ode to marbled paper. For The Washington Post, Elise Favis spoke to teachers about shoving their students into educational videogames. Ubisoft are letting people into Assassin’s Creed’s Discovery mode for free, while educational Minecraft is also still very much a thing. For The Verge, Megan Farokhmanesh spoke to big-name developers about how they’re coping with the pandemic. There’s nothing revelatory here, but sometimes it’s nice to read about people who have all the same problems you do. “I have also created a series of challenges around covid-19 where students are creating timelines of the pandemic or reimagining hospital design,” Leitner said. “The one thing I love about Minecraft is, when it comes to education, it’s a tool that has almost an endless learning curve from the very simple to the extraordinarily complex.” For Kotaku, Chingy Nea went on a quest to remove “Incel Hamtaro” from her Animal Crossing island. Here’s Noclip’s documentary on the development of The Outer Worlds. There are some interesting thoughts towards the end about designing games with accessibility in mind, and just how different that approach is to how it was in the olden days.
Finally, this Twitter thread of museums competing to see who has the creepiest object is very good. Music this week is Cerebrawl, a Plants Vs Zombies cover by DSC.
