The Sunday Papers

In the latest edition of The Sunday Papers #820, Rock Paper Shotgun writer Edwin Evans-Thirlwell curated a selection of long-form reading, game retrospectives, and cultural analysis from around the internet.

Alongside personal notes on picking up the strategic game Troubleshooter—noting early highlights including its "masteries" ability-and-modifier system and the "Short Break" music track—the column highlighted several essays, threads, and community events spanning game design, tech criticism, and literature.

Tech Tropes and Industry Retrospectives

Among the featured essays was a piece by Ali Rıza Taşkale for Aeon, which examines how technology industry leaders employ science fiction and fantasy tropes from franchises and novels like Neuromancer, Foundation, and Star Trek to shape political and corporate priorities.

"It is the triumph of the speculative sci-fi scenario over human solidarity: why fix the world we inhabit when we can spend billions preventing a robot uprising that exists only in the imagination?" Taşkale wrote. "By trying to steer policy debates toward distant catastrophic scenarios – killer robots, rogue AI, existential risk – the industry diverts attention from regulating the systems already causing harm: algorithmic bias in hiring, facial recognition's racial disparities, platform amplification of extremism."

From the games industry side, former Rock Paper Shotgun writer Jim Rossignol reflected on the development history of Sir, You Are Being Hunted in a thread on Bluesky, analyzing why the title succeeded at its specific moment in time.

"So here we had a confluence of events that is unrepeatable in spacetime," Rossignol wrote. "Kickstarter was a viable way to raise good amounts for a videogame project, Early Access was a novelty that everyone wants to check out, Steam was still curated, people were fascinated in the idea of procedural generation."

Art History, Literature, and Game Jams

The roundup also featured writing outside of traditional games reporting:

• Gender and Identity: An anonymous essay published by Stop Caring examined themes of gender dysphoria through the lens of Stellar Blade and Brush Burial: Gutter World.
• Scottish Literature: Jenny Turner wrote for the London Review of Books about novelist Lewis Grassic Gibbon (James Leslie Mitchell), noting his technique "to mould the English language into the rhythms and cadences of Scots spoken speech."
• Aesthetics and Art History: A 2021 essay by Lizzie Marx explored the presence of dead whales and the sensory role of smell in 17th-century Dutch art, referencing painter Rembrandt van Rijn.
• Indie Coverage and Community Events: The column highlighted writing by Nic Reuben on Jank.cool covering the game Sol Cesto, as well as "Pervert Jam 2026," an ongoing game jam focused on creating works intended without a public audience, featuring the optional theme "A Pound of Flesh."

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