Oh, I tell you stuff that you already know too much on this blog? Well here's a doozy then; the world's on lockdown! (Wait, you knew that too? damn...)The Covid-19 outbreak, which I can now officially refer as an epidemic (Thanks: whoever is in charge of how spooked everyone is!) has resulted in a ludicrous amount of delays and concessions across the whole world. Folk all over are now practising the noble art of social distancing (Nice luck getting as good as me, guys. I've had years of practice) and people are finding themselves being ordered to stay inside in order to keep safe. Those who are forced to leave the sanctity of self isolation early, usually come to stock up on supplies like this is some end of world scenario, and come kitted out with face masks as though this is an airborne contagion which, by-the-by, I'm fairly certain it isn't. The only thing that mask will save you from is if someone infected literally coughs in your face and even then it's still going to get in your eyes. (I'm sorry, I'm just sick of seeing those damn masks everywhere... What is this, Japan?)
As people spend more and more time on the indoors they are forced to partake less in outdoor activities and more with the indoor ones. That means no more going to the movies in order to sit in a dark room with a bevy of potentially infected strangers, (Leading to the delay of several movies and the bombing of every movie who refused to budge) no more huge city-wide events and gatherings like parades and the like (Unless you live in Germany, because apparently they know something we don't) and a lot more video calls into your company whilst you receive some work-from-home time. (Unless they can't facilitate that, in which case you can bet they'll still drag you in, Covid or no.) And just to make matters worse, it seems that even our immortal celebrities aren't immune to the hand of the virus any longer. Tom Hanks was diagnosed with the virus not so long back and England's own Idris Elba received a similar diagnosis. (Good lord. I guess this is real serious now!) In such dark and desperate times I feel it behooves us to just forget about everything else and do what god intended, stay up late and play videogames.
I mean, why not? If you've got the games and the time, now is the perfect time to catch up on all those titles you missed out on back in the day. And because of the constant worldwide production shutdowns that are occurring, next year will be the perfect year to catch up on all those TV shows that you've missed out on over the years (because there's going to be literally nothing on to watch.) Today's collective quarantine may be bad news for the movie going world (and the movie news world, as all the news is just about cancellations) but this is nectar for the gaming world and I'm sure many company's are rubbing their hand together thinking of the record sales days to come. (Except for Obsidian, who have delayed their Switch launch of Outer Worlds for some reason.) 'DOOM Eternal' is likely going to do gang busters when it lands tomorrow and next month's Resident Evil 3 and Final Fantasy 7 practically have themselves a shoe in for healthy sales. (Good thing too. All those games deserve it.)
There have been some instances, however, where the opportunity to swoop in and take advantage of this surprise free-time abundance has been a little too overwhelming to fully exploit. At least, that's the only excuse I can think of to explain the mind-mindbogglingly dumb situation that has affected the NBA 2K20 world. For those who haven't heard, the real-life National Basketball Association has decided to halt it's season early amid cries from uppity players who 'refuse to play in empty stadiums.' (Not that I blame them, I just think it's funny that's where they draw the line. Risk of getting Corona? No that's fine. But empty stadiums? Imma throw a tantrum right here!) Such a situation would encourage basketball fans to take their Basketball time to the digital world instead, maybe even make use of that game's simulated mode to imitate the results that they might have seen if the matches had gone ahead. But that would have been a mistake.
You see, as soon as booting up the simulated match mode, which traditionally reads the stats and match-ups that are planned in the real world, the API apparently enters an infinite loop because whatever third party information source it relies on is currently reading blank. What results is a bunch of buffering, not much loading, and eventually a CTD for the user. (Outstanding programming guys!) Now, immediately this has drawn parallels to WWE 2K20 which famously broke down on January 1st because the developers apparently didn't think to code their game to account for the change in decade, prompting the game's new nickname; Y2K20. There are, to be fair, some key differences here. Namely, that WWE's bug was caused by plain unadulterated incompetence whilst this one is due to a unforeseeable world event, but this does betray how fragile these systems are, doesn't it? Sports games certainly aren't built to last these days.
Since then the bug has been fixed and everything is back to business as usual. 2K have patched the system to work purely off of planned matches going forward until those run out; then, who knows. The majority of the industry, however, are currently thriving in this activity vacuum and I do find that rather encouraging for my favourite pastime. Nioh 2, for example, seems to be tracking pretty well for it's first few days, even though it released as a Playstation timed exclusive again (Sony are really starting to become one-trick ponies these days, huh.) and Ori and the Will of the Wisps in enjoying some attention. Not to say that these titles wouldn't have done well under normal circumstances, but a little more success than usual is never something to scoff at.
I do fear for what this will mean in the near future, however, once all the big titles that have been announced drop and we're left with all the games that should have been announced this year but didn't get their stage. I've mentioned it before, but literally every gaming press event has been cancelled in the last couple of weeks and that's completely shot the marketing cycle for a lot of games. I mean, don't get me wrong, the big hitters will be fine. Sony have their own live show, Microsoft is following suit and Bethesda will probably piggyback off of that since the rumour is that this year will be the big info drop on the long awaited Starfield. (I don't care about Ubisoft.) But the smaller guys haven't really got a recourse, and that saddens me a little. (Don't tell me Soulstorm is going to be delayed! I've waited so long...)
So this is the state of a world in lockdown, general disarray everywhere but a temporary boost to the videogame market. The months to come are surely going to prove trying for everyone as we scrounge to the ends of the earth to find those precious last rolls of toilet paper, but at least we'll have a steady stream of exciting titles to keep us busy in the meanwhile. until then it's important to remember the basics like, don't panic, practise proper basic hygiene, and stop buying 2K products, seriously what the hell is wrong with you people? Here's hoping that everything clears up in the months to come and people stop callously hoarding for no reason. And I'm serious about that, there is literally no reason. What are you hoarding for? Do you really believe this is Armageddon? Because if it is, then don't you think you need a bit more to survive than toilet paper? If the world is literally about to end then here's an idea, just die! If you don't have what it takes to survive in a post apocalyptic hellscape then what's the point of hoarding supplies? To prolong your life just that little bit longer, whilst making yourself a target for folk to come and take it from you? Seriously, what is the endgame for you people? I just feel like no one ever thinks a potential apocalypse through whilst that's literally all that goes through my head everyday. Hmm... I'm rambling? Oh right, I should probably just stop writing now...
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