Jack Moore on Mo’Ne Davis and Emma March:

The narrative of the gimmick girl in sports is doubly damaging. Not only does it foster a lower expectation of women’s abilities — in both genders — it also creates an assumption that women aren’t earning their spots when in reality they are almost certainly facing even higher standards than the men they compete against.If the sports world is truly going to house gender equality, we need to give girls the freedom to choose their sports. We need to stop pressuring them to take the path of least gender resistance. And we need to stop holding them to a higher standard when everything else is already working against them.

Great read on gender equality in sports. Bring me right back to the Finnish Hearthstone Tournament and gender segregation in chess. A very interesting conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drPBIiuSWso

Anthony Carboni:

We blame everything when we suck at games: lag, the controller, bad framerates- but here’s a fun fact: your brain is built to be terrible at video games and everything is usually your own fault.

A must read that hits close to home. Ben Kuchera, Polygon:

If I had to make a T-shirt for myself in the same theme as the silly one from E3 — and we’ve joked about this around the office — it would say something like “15 Percent Gamer.” That sounds about right. I play games for work, and I write about them and talk to the people who make them. I love them, but they’re one thing in a group of things I love. Not the biggest thing.

I sit on calls about financial results and have long conversations with people in the industry about what’s going on and why. When I close my laptop at the end of the day, I get to help take care of my five kids, and we do homework, watch movies, go out, make food. I may fly something, I may spend time with my wife, I may read a book. Most nights I don’t play video games for fun, but when I do I love it.

Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.:

I know of one gaming company in Los Angeles that had a stated goal of turning over 15 percent of its workforce every year. The reasoning behind such a policy was that productivity shoots up when you hire smart, hungry kids fresh out of school and work them to death. Attrition was inevitable under such conditions, but that was okay, because the company’s needs outweighed those of the worker. Did it work? Sure, maybe. To a point. But if you ask me, that kind of thinking is not just misguided, it is immoral. At Pixar, I have made it known that we must always have the flexibility to recognize and support the need for balance in all of our employees’ lives. While all of us believed in that principle—and had from the beginning—Toy Story 2 helped me see how those beliefs could get pushed aside in the face of immediate pressures.

Colin Campbell, Polygon:

Already, just playing a few minutes of Journey on PlayStation 4, I’m reminded that the moment-to-moment playing of the game is not as mystical as the memory of it as a complete thing. That the first time I meet another player in the game is never going to match the joyous original. The nice feeling of the wind is just an echo of that last section of the game, that wraps it all up so satisfactorily.

I often tell myself that I will take another trip through the work of art that is Journey. After all, the experience only lasts roughly one-and-a-half hours. However, every time I sit down to try, I’m unable to launch the game for the same reasons Campbell discusses. I do listen to Austin Wintory’s fantastic, Grammy-nominated soundtrack frequently and I think it is enough for me to relive the majesty and memory of Journey.