Discover more from The Zeitgeist Distilled
In this issue: Your Chief Zeitgeist Distiller is at the beach trying to keep his head out of current events. We are going to have a special, gaming focused edition this week. We’ve got a few current events options in the industry and share some titles worth playing on your PC. Back to a more typical format next week.
The Spirit of Games
👎 Gamergate at 10 ()
Gamergate was an ugly chapter in recent history that was an unfortunate portend for the weird 2010s and beyond. It is worth understanding and Catlin gives a great history of the ugly event. Wired’s version is also worth a look.
🎮 ()
I have loved Stephen’s work since he was at Axios. After Axios Games collapsed he moved to his own substack and we are all richer for it. He focuses on the gaming business while letting his love of games shine through in personal reviews at times. Worth watching.
🤖 ( )
AI and Games is pretty eponymous, but the title does not do the publication justice. Tommy does a great job of diving into how AI has been used in games and where it is going in the modern era. F.E.A.R. - The Retrospective hit near and dear to my heart as well as being an excellent documentary about an interesting time.
Games to Play
Here are a few games that I have really enjoyed over the last few months. Everything is a PC game available on Steam because that is what I use.
🏗 Captain of Industry
There are a lot of management sims out there, but Captain of Industry does something special. It lets you dig holes. And fill in holes. And dump rocks to make new land. You can move mountains if that is your thing. If you have ever fantasized about digging your own strip mine this title is for you. Trains are coming in the next update, dive in now to get your island ready for locomotives.
💥Gunner, Heat PC!
Ever wanted to drive an East German T72M into a US Armored Cavalry screen in the Fulda Gap in 1985? GHPC brings that experience home — complete with German tank crew speech and extremely realistic gunnery. The game is very, very deep — you can drive most things the US, East Germans and Soviets deployed at this point. Vehicles feel very, very lifelike. Updates are roughly monthly; the game has improved a lot since some pretty rough early days. If you like realistic military simulations this one is for you.
🔥 Helldivers 2
Have you ever called in artillery on friends? Clusterbombed a little too close to a colleague? Experience that and defend Managed Democracy in Helldivers 2. It is a really fun third-person-view co-op shooter where you can call in danger-close fire missions on insects or robots. It is flexible enough you can go on single-player stealth runs too. Features cross-play between the PlayStation and PC platforms so you can bring your friends along. Worth the investment if you have people to play with, but pubbing is not great. Managed Democracy needs you.
🧟♀️ Infection Free Zone
Have you ever looked around your neighborhood and wondered how you could build a fort and fend off wave after wave of plague-infected zombies? If so IFZ is for you! It is a well-designed base defense game that uses real maps and satellite pictures to build off of real locations. You can defend your home, your school or the White House from the infected. This title is pretty early access at this point but is showing a lot of promise.
The Look
As I look forward to spending the bulk of the next week at the east coast’s best Bloody Mary bar I’m being reminded that attitudes towards alcohol are evolving:
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