The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for cramming a 4x4 with your belongings for a house move and hoping that at least some of it survives. Before you set off, let's read this week's best writing about games.

For Vice Yussef Cole wrote about Fortnite's appropriation issue and why it's about ethics, not copyright law.

Though no creative feat is achieved without inspiration, the manner in which Fortnite has transplanted the creative output of these men into its brightly colored marionettes, without permission, credit, or compensation feels particularly egregious. After all, the direction that this creativity travels is from those with less, those who spark viral brilliance from nothing, to those with so much more, absorbing whatever they can, erasing the past in the process.

Over on Defector, Barry Petchesky praised the slowball. I have zero knowledge of baseball, but this has some excellent lines like "I believe that if God could pitch, he'd throw an eephus". Cheers to Alice O for spotting this one.

Holt, the spiritual successor to Bugs Bunny, had the eephus working, retiring Harrison on the next pitch, a relative bolide at 33 mph. But it was that first pitch that belongs in Cooperstown—according to MLB’s Sarah Langs, 31.1 mph is the slowest strike registered during the pitch-tracking era, which dates to 2008.

For NME, Jordan Oloman spoke to Tim Schafer on his game writing philosophy. One for the Psychonauts fans among us, of which there are many.

“Then I was trying to put together a spy game where you would meditate on objects to find clues,” Schafer said. “I was working on it for a while, you were a spy who was very spiritual and could meditate on objects to find clues based on who made the object, and you would go on a journey into your own mind to unravel things.”

For The Guardian, Keith Stuart asks: "Why are people paying for coaches to get better at video games?"

Bored at home, he was browsing Facebook and spotted an advertisement for LegionFarm, an online video-game coaching platform that offered to match pro gamers with clients looking to improve their abilities. As a skilled player of battle royale hit Apex Legends, he applied to become a coach. Four months later, he’s in the site’s top 20 pros, making $3,500 a month from around 80 hours of coaching to supplement his re-emerging drag career.

Over on People Make Games, they investigated how Roblox is exploiting young game developers. Yikes.

For Vice, Edward Ongweso Jr wrote about the startup that wants you to eat all your food in cube form. I don't know about eating them, but I'd like to... wash my hands with them? I don't know, they look like nice bars of soap.

Music this week is Ocean Drive by Lighthouse Family. Here's the Youtube link and the Spotify one. A noughties special this one.

That's me. Have a solid Sunday everyone!