Those who don't find themselves breathless at the thought of a new Zelda, instead only seeing the series as hopelessly anachronistic and repetitive, maybe ought to read Michael Abbott's sharply concise love letter to the series. It captures much of its wonder; its blend of goofiness and melancholy that can raise both laughs and lumps in the throat, sometimes at the same time, its rooting in Japanese tradition and universal themes of growing into adulthood.
It also highlights Zelda's fantastic writing - unbelievers might see hoary textboxes that need clicking through, but they're missing some real delights. Abbott's first example:
"Ahh, do you not feel the grand romance of the wide open skies? The roaring invitation of the wind? The soft call of the clouds? You are a boring, boring creature." - Willi the Bird-Man in Wind Waker.
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WARNING: this will sap your entire afternoon away. TIGSource user Daid has created a tool that lists all the images on TIGSource's vast show-and-tell forum threads. Arranged into pixel art, concept art, mockups and 3D renders, the tool shows off the breadth of what TIGSource's community is creating.
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Sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling spoke at GDC in 1991, telling attending developers:
"Don't aim to be civilized. Don't hope that straight people will keep you on as some kind of pet. To hell with them; they put you here. You should fully realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge." (via Steve "Fullbright" Gaynor's Tumblr)
Today GDC is a vast event, its showfloor rich with investor cash, its halls filled with hundreds of talks. Social gaming has dominated the past two conferences, a gaming form successfully engineered to break out from gaming communities and into the wide world. 21 years later, have developers exacted revenge on society for disdaining them? Perhaps the answer depends on your opinion of social games. But it does seem the nerds are inheriting Earth.
Sterling's full talk, called The Wonderful Power of Storytelling, is great, by the way.
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"A technique can set you off on the path, but at some point, if you want to go somewhere where there's no one else, or that place that only you can get to, you have to stray off onto the little, dark, overgrown path and see where it goes. Much tougher. A bit intimidating. But the point is - it's only you - so you'll end up in wonderful places no one else has ever been. Don't forget some sandwiches; it might be a long journey."
Fantasy artist Paul Bonner hasn't done an awful lot of work for videogames (as far as we can work out, he may have contributed some illustrations for Space Hulk's manual), but his post on his method is fantastically illuminating. It traces the creation of the above painting of a frost giant and his dwarf friends, being simultaneously charmingly self-critical, technically lucid and thoroughly inspiring.