Seventeen Days In, Here are some Blog Posts I liked Recently!

Photo unrelated, I just like having photos on my blog posts. Took this back in March while the winter was still wintering and never got around to posting it

I think the original spirit of Junited was more of a singular post you keep updating as the month goes on, but given the linear nature of blogs I think to me personally it felt like "hey I have enough for a 'Junited 2' post I should do that" was more the vibe. Here's my original Junited post if you are interested!

Let's take a look at a few things I've read since that last post that have resonated and gave me the urge to share. Please enjoy¹!

1. Using genAI to translate a game is as bad as using it to make assets - Loke is a voice of sanity in an ever-present encroachment of GenAI. I keep seeing these "it's ok for use in this other field, just not mine" that has got to stopppp. (Part of what inspired my Spirit Crossing post yesterday)

2. The now indieweb infamous "I won't buy you a coffee" post - Hakker wrote a pretty inflamatory post about the state of people allowing tips on their blog. To be 100% clear I think he's wrong as hell but I'd be lying if I didn't think about this blog post a lot, and it definitely had an impact on others given how many response blogs it got. And hey - grappling with something you disagree with is important.

3. Town Square - add a super neat interactive area to your blog post to see how many people are reading it at once - I'm underselling it but that Cauê made this work at all, and that it's available for anyone to use via github is bonkers. It's so goddamn cool.

4. I Just Want People to Give A Shit - I said this last time but Kaile Hultner over at No Escape is hands down my favorite working critic in the games space and she perfectly lays out my feelings about the ongoing XBox boycott being ignored by people who by all rights should care. It's so disheartening seeing a simple ask be ignored repeatedly because the video game is more important than the genocide.

5. the girly wellness aesthetic as a white supremacist dog whistle - ava brings it home with a look at how insidious the white girl fitness influencer movement is. Granted it focuses on the more recent post-Covid era, I saw a studio in Santa Monica about fifteen years ago that had a banner on the front: "It's Yoga without all the chanting" as if that was a positive thing and that's stuck with me for a long time.

6. Removing The Scaffolds - all of Nic's design diaries for Amberspire are fantastic, but this one about the actual structural design of the game's development really hit home. I love this game so much and that there's so much available information about its development rules, actually.

7. The games that Mina the Hollower is not - Autumn Wright occupies a similar space to Kaile Hultner for me in terms of incredible voices in games crit right now and they did a fantastic job talking about Mina the Hollower in a way that I feel like others weren't.

8. Ugh but and also - It may feel weird to link to someone's blog post about personal issues they've gone through BUT Megan Carnes is a friend who knows how to fucking write, man - and the framing of each of these scenarios flows so goddamn well.

9. How not to use “AI” (workshop) - Found this one through Bubbles today and it resonated; a nuanced take on doing a PHD seminar on AI use, instead framing how it should not be used and the dangers it holds. Good shit.

That's it for now - I might do an end of June one too because the vibes feel good, but I also gotta make sure I read enough blog posts between now and then.

Here's your end of post cat, her name is Gargoyle. I'll probably be back tomorrow playing catch-up on my never ending quest to spend at most ten minutes each day drawing a pokemon. (As always, hit me up with requests; if it's one I haven't done yet I'm happy to oblige, otherwise it's just whims and RNG)

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