by Lucy Ungaro
Welcome back to the Roundup! After this blisteringly hot weekend, relax with a glass of lemonade and read about worlds with much more tolerable weather patterns.
Last week, I shared Jeremy Voss’s glowing thoughts on Uncharted 4. This week, his opinions have changed. As time passes, the glamour of Nathan Drake’s latest adventure diminishes, while Doom becomes more and more appealing, it seems. Read why here.
In order to really gauge whether the new Doom is successful, we have to know what it was about the original that made it so important. In Matt Gerardi’s “Keyboard Geniuses“, readers discuss Doom and why they kept going back to it–do you agree? And does this new installment capture the same essence?
Game devs, there is now a game-specific domain called “.game” that was released on May 24th, and you can get your own. Samit Sarkar provides details on the domain as well as on the game companies that have already jumped on it.
There’s even more good news for game developers–the Unreal Engine is coming to Google’s Daydream VR, which means that you’ll be able to port your Unreal games over to Daydream. Read about how it’ll work and whether Daydream VR is worth getting in Chelsea Stark’s article.
Michelle Ehrhardt sleuthed-out the secrets of Tangiers, an upcoming avant-garde game that has apparently not been heard from in a while. Find out more about the game and when it’s expected to come out here.
If you like writing about games, or at least have lots of opinions about them, and want to get your voice out there, Sara Clemens is hosting a “guest residency” wherein aspiring writers will be selected to write 1 to 4 articles for Videodame. Check it out and get writing!
And now for news outside of the Circle…
Overwatch is a wonderful anomaly birthed from the desire to make a shooter that families could play together, without the usual “vitriol” that players shout at each other in shooters, or the skimpy outfits, or the lack of representation. And, maybe surprisingly, it worked. I know from personal experience, since my family and I are playing together. Read about the game’s journey here.
According to this article, female game developers are on the rise, which shows a resilience and passion that persisted even after Gamergate. We’re getting there!
There were many reasons that Gus Mastrapa left game journalism, and GamerGate was but one of them. In this lengthy, thoughtful conversation at No Don’t Die, the former Wired and Hustler writer explains what bugged Mastrapa about games after years of writing about them.
Retired Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor is really cool. She’s designing an educational game to teach students civics, a dry subject to a lot of students (again, personal experience) that has the potential to be made much more interesting and memorable through games. Read about it here.
That’s it for this week; see you soon!
