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Sundays are for more Gene Wolfe. I just finished Shadow Of The Torturer and I think Claw Of The Conciliator could be even better now? Before we get any more enthralled by Severian’s self-mythologizing madness, let’s read this week’s best articles about gaming (and gaming-related stuff!).

This is an old piece, but relevant now that the ridiculous “strongmen/hard times” meme has been making a comeback. Historian Bret Devereaux dissects it in A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry .

The opposite of Fremenism is almost always called 'decadence'. This is the fallback of this reductive view of history: not only do harsh conditions create superior people, but 'soft' conditions associated with complex societies, wealth and book-reading cowards (read: literacy) create morally inferior people who are worse at fighting as a result. Because we all know that moral purity makes you better at fighting, right?

The relativity of 'Fremeness' is actually one of the reasons I use the term Fremen instead of tradition or the more common terms you'll see: 'uncivilized people' 'barbarians' or 'savages'. Of course, it allows me to neatly sidestep the offensive components of those terms, but more importantly, it creates a term to describe the myth without creating a term that pretends to describe the truth. So I can tell when a society is perceived as Fremen without labeling them as 'barbarian' or 'savage', because those terms have all the intellectual utility of a raincoat in the desert. The popular idea of ​​who counts as Fremen and who doesn't – or the opposite, 'degenerate' – is such an absurdly variable target that it's practically meaningless (there are a few constants, but only a few), and some societies oscillate so rapidly between the two that it makes my head spin.

Mike Rose of No More Robots, publishers of Not Tonight and Hypnospace Outlaw, spoke with Game Developer about the current challenges for indie publishers. There are some interesting Steam insights here that I hadn't thought of before. For the more optimistic follower, here's a thread from the founder of Raw Fury.

For starters, he says it’s time for platform owners to accept that they no longer serve the interests of smaller publishers. “The problem with the new situation is that everything I did when No More Robots started—namely, being arrogant—is [Xbox Game Pass] “It's no longer possible to get into the Deals and Stream homepage,” he says. “None of that stuff exists anymore. When the Steam Summer Sale happens, all the people paying for those slots are absolutely triple-A. The Summer Sale used to give us a year's worth of burn rate, and now we've got a nice little bump.”

Rose says that indies have been pushed to the sidelines on Steam, with Microsoft, Sony, EA, and other major players opting to bring games that might have previously been console exclusives to PC. “Steam makes more money,” he says, “but about 50 percent of that revenue is generated by 1 percent of games.”

Aftermath has given recent and former Game Informer employees a place to pay proper tribute to the site — something they were denied when the magazine and website were shut down last week. Laying off so many people with little warning is bad enough, but hell has a special ball pit full of snakes and lego feet for the sweaty robot who decided to nuke all their work.

I got the text about Game Informer’s abrupt closure on Friday morning, and it took me most of the weekend to really process my thoughts. It ended the way we always knew it would — with its incompetent parent company GameStop coldly, impersonally, and unceremoniously pulling the plug — but it’s still hard to imagine a games media landscape without Game Informer.

Last week’s Critical Distance roundup covered the demise of Game Informer, then listed a great roundup of indie game writing sites. To that I’d add that Critical Distance itself is a vital publication run by incredibly hard-working people. Like all of these sites, it’s run with a genuine interest in highlighting compelling work. As CD says, they’re all passing the same $20 bill back and forth.

Here's a nice Half Life meme. Read James's foray into Asda Tech peripherals, it's brilliant. Then read Edwin's review of Crush House, even if you don't care about Crush House. I can't believe I'm working with such good writers. It's strange and very special. I actually started reading Gene Wolfe because he was in the comments about the FromSoft style of storytelling, and this old Waypoint article is a great companion piece. Music this week is 86Sentra from NxWorries. Have a great weekend!

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