Joe Martin – Product Marketing for Startups

Last year I collected a list of the good things I had read. I made a folder and bookmarked everything I thought was moving, important, brave or insightful. These are the things that, had I written them, I’d have been proud of writing. I posted the list as ‘The Angry Best‘.

I’m not really sure why I started doing it, but a handful of friends bookmarked the post and returned to it for weeks to come as a list of interesting things to read over lunch. So, I decided to do the same this year too. I read a lot, so the list is naturally quite long, but I’ve emboldened the ones that are really essential and separated ones about games for convenience.

I’m always interested in reading more good things, regardless of whether it gets on this list or not – if you spot something good then please send it to me.

• SimCity vs Suburban Sprawl – Tested, Norman Chan
• It Takes Planning To Avoid Being ‘It’ – Wall Street Journal, Russell Adams
• What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan – New York Times, Stephen Rodrick
• Django Unchained, Djack Whitehall and Djames Delingpole – The Guardian, Charlie Brooker
• Esquire’s Interview With Megan Fox Is The Worst Thing Ever Written – Vice, Jamie Taete
• This Man Saved Six Children, Is Now Harassed For It – Salon, Alex Seitz-Wald
• Password Security in Deus Ex – Qntm
• Quentin Tarantino Interview – C4 News, Krishnan Guru-Murthy
• Whatever It Takes – The New Yorker, Jane Mayer
• Cargo Cult Science – Richard Feynman

• Steve Coogan at Guardian Open Weekend – The Guardian
• Fox shamelessly steals Still Alive composer’s song for Glee – Eurogamer, Jeffrey Matulef
• Burma’s Oil Rush: ‘Nothing Gives You Money Like This’ – The Guardian, Kate Hodal
• Eastleigh reveals the depth of our disillusionment – The Guardian, John Harris
• The Homemade Weapons of Syrian Rebels – The Atlantic
• The Science of Addictive Junk Food – The New York Times, Michael Moss
• Straw Feminists In The Closet – Hark! A Vagrant
• Oppression by Omission – Brain Pickings, Maria Popova
• Who Ate All The Pies? – The Guardian, Sue Hobbs
• The Next Microsoft – Minimally Minimal

• The Puzzle of Motivation – TED, Dan Pink (Video)
• Our Loss of Wisdom – TED, Barry Schwartz (Video)
• Why I Hacked Donkey Kong for my Daughter – Wired, Mike Mika
• Kenyan Farmer: ‘You’re lucky not to have lions in the UK’ – BBC World (Video)
• What Big Agriculture Doesn’t Want You To See – Mother Jones, Tom Philpott
• Popular Science Blog is Run By A Woman – The Guardian, Amanda Holpuch
• Just For You: A Stormy Lesson In Influence – Influence At Work, Steve Martin
• A Dongle Joke That Spiraled Out of Control – Techcrunch, Kim-mai Cutler
• Benefit Cuts: Monday Will Define This Government – The Guardian, Polly Toynbee
• Pricing: The Key To Not Destroying Everyone’s Career – Steven Bonner

• When You Wring a Washcloth in Space – iO9, NASA
• Tips for Passing Gun Control Legislation – The Onion
• Pigfucking, Alcholholic, Incompetent, Racist – Gawker, Tom Scocca
• The Facts in the case of Dr Andrew Wakefield – Darryl Cunningham
• Jobseekers Made To Carry Out Bogus Tests – The Guardian, Shiv Malik
• My First Rifle: The Gun a 5 Year Old Used to Shoot His Sister – Slate, Justin Peters
• From The BBC: How Not To Eat Healthily For £1 A Day – Aethelread
• Split-Screen In The Same Parking Lot – The Atlantic Wire, Dashiell Bennet and Philip Bump
• Student Lectures Teacher on Engagement – Mashable, Anita Li
• The Man Who Whittles Spoons – BBC News Magazine, John Galliver (Video)

• Criminal Flash Mob drains $45m from ATMs in Hours – The Seattle Times, Colleen Long
• Brave Director Criticises Sexualised Redesign – Guardian, Ben Child
• I’m Still Here: Back After A Year Without The Internet – The Verge, Paul Miller
• Billboard That Creates Drinking Water – The Drum, Ishbel Macleod
• When Heineken Bottles Were Square – The Smithsonian, K. Annabelle Smith
• Genghis Khan Wouldn’t Tolerate Your Friends – Joel Snape
• Muslim Man Is First To Ever Commit Murder – New Age Man Magazine
• Me-First Parents Do Us An Injustice – The Guardian, Zoe Williams
• Angelina Jolie’s Ticking Time-bomb – Rosalarian

• This Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact – The Smithsonian, Mike Dash
• Mali and the destruction of historic manuscripts – The Independant, Dan Howden
• How Crazy is Too Crazy to Be Executed? – Mother Jones, Marc Bookman
• When A Kid’s Bedroom Isn’t a Room – Mother Jones, James Mollison
• A Most Peculiar Test Drive – Tesla, Elon Musk
• Read This: And Prepare to Fight for the NHS – The Telegraph, Max Pemberton
• A Day In The Life of a Freelance Journalist – Nate Thayer
• A Day In The Life of a Digital Editor – The Atlantic, Alexis C. Madrigal
• Casualty was right to take on female genital mutilation – The Guardian, Eva Wiseman
• Stewart Lee and Top Gear –  Stewart Lee (Video)

• Heard, Once – The Memory Palace (Podcast)
• Distance – The Memory Palace (Podcast)
• Are You Sure? – Radiolab (Podcast)
• Exhibit C: The Paedophile – A Barrister’s Wife
• Trends With Benefits – This American Life (Podcast)
• The Untold Story of the Antwerp Diamond Heist – Wired, Joshua David
• Sex, Children and The Mail Online – New Statesman, Martin Robbins
• Report on ‘Promising Future’ of Steubenville Rapists – Gawker, Mallory Ortberg
• The Man Who Keeps Falling In Love With His Wife – The Telegraph, Deborah Wearing
• Private Firms Already Run Frontline NHS Services – The Mirror, Ros Wynne-Jones
• The 6 Best Dresses At The Golden Globes – The Onion

The majority of people who read this blog do it not to see my wider reading habits, but out of an interest specifically in games and games journalism. So, I’ve separated out the articles on those topics below. I don’t actually read a lot of games journalism anymore though, because like many what I’m interested in is investigative writing that explores niches or new viewpoints.

• ‘I’m a victim of gun violence and I’m a game developer’ – Slate, Carla Fisher
• BioShock Infinite Is A Metacommentary on the Nature of Storytelling – Kevin Wong
• Former THQ President Reveals Metro Dev’s Terrible Conditions – Eurogamer, Jeffrey Matulef
• Hawken Publisher Pranked Into Learning About Sexism – Gameranx, Jordan Webber
• The High Cost of High Standards – Eurogamer, Richard Cobbett
• Dead Island: Riptide with Terrible Tweens – PCGamesN, Rob Zacny
• The 2013 Game Developer Gender Wage Gap – Border House, Tami Baribeau
• Exploring Game Design Through Technology – Wolfire, David Rosen
• Randy Smith’s Valence Theory of Level Design – Robert Yang
• Entitled Gamers, Corrupt Press, Greedy Publishers – GI.Biz, Brendan Sinclair

• Is The Games Industry Really Dying? – PA Report, Dan Teasdale
• Say hello to The Old Republic’s gay planet – PCGamesN, Steve Hogarty
• Dishonored Dev on Violence in Games – RPS, Joe Houston
• Clone Wars: Five Cases Every Developer Should Know – Gamasutra, Stephen McArthur
• GlitchHiker: The Game Programmed to Die – PCGamesN, Jeremy Peel
• The Long, Tortured Journey of Homefront – Polygon, Rob Zacny
• Welcome To The Club – Old Game Magazines
• Fuck Videogames – Tiny Subversions, Darius Kazemi
• 51 Things Every Game Student Should Know – Kaye Elling
• Diagnosing Liberty City’s crime problem with SimCity – Gamasutra, Mike Rose

• Hotline Miami – Errant Signal (Video)
• Photorealism – Errant Signal (Video)
• BioShock Infinite – Errant Signal (Video)
• Where Realtime Worlds Went Wrong – Luke Halliwell
• Gabe Newell: Reflections of a Game Maker – The LBJ School (Video)
• Shooters: How Games Fund Arms Manufacturers – Eurogamer, Simon Parkin
• The Ethics of Selling Children – Electron Dance, Joel Harbour

I also want to throw in a link to something I wrote which I think isn’t totally shit. That limits me to either Unlimited Hyperbole’s third season or this Gamasutra article about computational creativity.

Finally, if this list is too long for you then the essential reads are: This, This, This, This and This.