Does Digital Table Top games Make sense?

 Menyr says it does.

Table Top RPGs have seen an explosion in popularity over recent years, eventually becoming the predominate force of power in the growing markets of the games industry. Somehow TTRPGs are becoming more well known and popular than bloody VR! Can you believe that? Folks have been spending millions trying to get VR to work for years and TTRPG's resurrect themselves out of nowhere to eclipse them. That's gotta smart some people. (VR is building a little something, just increadibly slowly, I believe it'll get there someday.) But if there's one problem that gets in the way of the growth of RPGs, it's the fact that they have to, by their very nature, be played in person. I mean sure, you can sign up to Dnd Beyond for an expensive little subscription and hold your campaign there, but for one: that only works with Dnd, for two: Beyond's services are impressively taxing on bad bandwidths (I don't even know why, it's pretty upsetting) and for three:1 Dnd Beyond is kind of just like a more specialised version of Table Top Simulator.

Table Top Simulator is an old steam game that does exactly what it says on the tin. It simulates Table Tops so that you can play any number of table-top based games online with your friends. If you know what you're doing and get the right kind of assets, you can honestly turn around and play any sort of game you want to through that app, even Dungeons and Dragons. (I can attest to that because I've literally seen people do it.) All Beyond offers you on top of that is the in-game connectivity to the Dnd database so that you can look up spells instantly, which is something that good old Google is pretty decent for. What I'm trying to say is that for an official Dnd playing experience, Beyond gets the job done, but it's decently lacklustre in the grand scheme. They could have gone so much further to do something special with it's concept. And for my money, Menyr is that special something.

Dozens upon hundreds of projects are born, built and killed on the boards of kickstarter, where any one with a dream and internet connection can beg for money on ideas they may or may not have the skills to actually produce. The flurry is so intense that most people don't ever hear about the success stories, or care about them either because a lot of the big funded ideas are mindless self-destructive spirals that couldn't have possibly worked in the first place. But amid that whirlwind of narcissism and silliness, sometimes truly inspired ideas born from hands that appear accomplished enough to achieve them pop up and attract crowd funding like drip enthusiast to Air Jordans. Menyr is one such project over the past few days that has become a member of that club for the chosen few; the few with ideas that get overfunded to a silly degree. And why? Because Table Top games really need a better alternative for remote play.

Firstly, Menyr asked for 48,000 dollars and is sitting just above 300,000 with 8 more days left in their campaign; so it's safe to say that the team are going to have pressure on them to finish this project to a satisfactory degree going forward. You can't get overvalued like that without the shackles of expectations wrapping around your extremities. But it may be worth such a valuation for people out there as Menyr proposes to bring remote Table Top play something it's been sorely lacking for years now: Style. Essentially it's an engine through which players will be able to create a fully realised 3d render of their fantasy worlds that looks fit to bear the Unreal Engine 5 tag when it comes to fidelity, all customisable to the whims of a Dungeon Master to immerse their players fully. Oh, and the product is going to be free to play. That's pretty hype.

What we're looking at here is a proposition to create a new standard for digital roleplaying going forth, a standard wherein high quality digital graphics are just as important for telling the story as the storytelling ability of the Dungeon Master. (Or, alternatively, maybe some rookie DMs can use that as a crutch whilst they shore-up their storytelling tools.) Of course this style of game isn't going to automatically fit every TTRPG out there, I mean Pathfinder, D&D and probably Warhammer at some point, will find themselves at home but The World of Darkness series? Maybe not. I've recently see other tabtletops like Blades in the Dark get a really cool personalised online format mode, but I suppose Menyr wants to be the catch all for all the TTRPGs that lack the resources to go that full-throttle adaptation route.

What I find really promising, at least in concept, is the idea of a marketplace for assets that seems to be almost entirely fan controlled. Essentially they're making it so that modellers can create assets for fans to port into their own games either for free or through a fee at the discretion of the asset author. As you can imagine, this is the sort of open framework that some of the most sacred corners of the Internet still stick by such as game modding. However a system like this is really situational and temperamental in equal measure. It might take off with great gusto; and it might totally fall flat in front of everyone never really sparking up any internet. I suppose it all really depends on the success of the Menyr and the accessibility of it's marketplace.

Of course, the question comes whether turning an activity that is supposed to be played physically and face to face into a digital format isn't kind of missing the point; and I do understand that angle. Dungeons and Dragons is a social game in the sort of manner that can't be displayed over discord channels and a digital play board; but then there are some people out there that don't have the opportunity to make those trips. Heck, some people out there don't do well in public settings and would enjoy Dnd much more over a computer screen; I know because I just happen to be one of those people. Menyr's approach is an inclusivity tool that cannot and should not replace what Dnd currently does, but might just be a vector for TTRPGs to reach a bigger audience than it already is.

That is all assuming that the product which has been promised can be made. We've seen plenty of Kickstarters over the years fissile up in the atmosphere after learning many truths, often how the requested funds were not enough to complete the project and that they end up running out of investor money after a while. Menyr doesn't seem to be a big and overly complicated idea that would require millions upon millions to make, one would assume, but we'll have to wait and see now they're sitting on nearly 10 times what they asked for. I really like everything I'm seeing and have heard about the project and really hope that the team pull it all together like they say that they can. TTRPGs could be on the verge of a new dawn if they can.

Twitch is going through it right now

 Do you need someone to talk to, Twitch?

Queen Elizabeth II is dead. I don't think I've discussed that before, she died a couple of weeks ago I think but I just didn't really have any cause to bring it up, honestly. And why am I bringing it up now? Because I never knew that it was the Queen who was keeping Twitch together with her constant presence. It seems that behind the scenes old Liz was casting her sorcerer abilities over the powers that be at Amazon's only successful gaming foray to try and keep everyone sane, and it worked for the most part. I mean sure, there's been rumblings and grumblings and the odd crazy spark of abject lunacy, but the general health of the platform has remained solid. People have let their masks of sanity slip once at a time, and not too often, so everyone has a chance to heal. After the passing of the old Queen, however; all of that changed. Every single fibre of the great plant that is Twitch has withered into nothingness before the crowd as the powers that be have decided not to play with fire, but swallow in whole in a flagrant act of self immolation.

I think in the great discussion of the game's industry, streaming is a huge part of what makes modern gaming so widespread and accepted as an aspect of society. When it comes to really assessing the cultural impact that a video game has had, the number of Twitch viewers it draws in is a pretty decent litmus test for quantifying the unquantifiable. A certain breed of gamers out there like flocking to streaming sites in order to watch their games be played by a personality they like, I used to enjoy that somewhat myself back when I could stomach spending that sort of time. Thus when a game isn't doing so well on Steam chart numbers, chances are it won't be making streaming numbers either. There are other uses of Twitch too, community building or some such, but I'm really just here for the data analysis, I don't care much one way or the other when it comes to communities of gamers birthing out of the earth.

Of course, we tend to look at Streaming and Twitch as interchangeable, even when alternatives have and will continue to exist. Twitch hold no patent on the concept of streaming, even with all that Amazon money sitting in their piggy bank; which means when questionable choices are made that have a negative effective on every streamer currently working with and any that might arise in the future, the first thing the world does is turn to their competitors to see if they're going to jump on this free opportunity to seize a chunk of the market share. One such competitor is no small beast in their own right, being Youtube.com the second most visited site on the Internet. (Twitch is the 28th) Which is why if Twitch wants to do anything silly, at the very least it needs to keep it's head above whatever Youtube has going on.

Now on an individual creator level these past two weeks have been pretty insane with one moderately known streamer turning out be a gambling addict who had scammed upwards of $300,000 out of fellow streamers and viewers to feed their habit. A sad story there. Oh, and then there was a huge upset with various member of OTK, who I believe to be the biggest cluster of streaming friends although I may be wrong on that, haven been outed for taking part in a cover-up of a sexual assault case conducted by a friend of the group. A disturbing tale. Oh, and the recent Chess Drama with one of the best players in the world being beaten by a middle weight whom he subtly implied cheated someone spilled onto streaming when the two of them hosted a rematch only for the champ to leave after two moves. There has just been a rollercoaster of madness kicking about this particular sector of the Multiverse, what could Twitch possibly do to muscle in and somehow still make themselves the most spit on party in all of this? What they always do, of course; screw up the platform.

The first way Twitch made headlines was through, presumably in response to the gambling addict situation even though I'm fairly certain he wasn't actually gambling on Twitch, banning a vast majority of the gambling streams that were prevalent on the platform. Mostly slots streams but expanding onto gambling services that aren't licenced in the US. A big shake-up to a lot of Streamers and a volatile issue for simply how much money some people have made off streams like that. Heck, even Drake logged onto Twitch one day to do some gambling, and lost a simply obscene amount of money in doing so. Still, stripping away the nuance and 'perspectives' on the story, allows us to see this as a single positive headline that Twitch put up against the armies of negativity that would drown it out after their next correspondence.

And that's because Twitch decided to hit their Streamers where it's going to hurt; their split of revenue. Streamers have two direct methods of receiving payment for their work, one is getting subscription money and donations and the other is ad revenue. Ads make for something of a raw deal, however, given the fact that Twitch hasn't discovered how to set up a 'skip ad' button and forcibly bombards new views with several consecutive adverts whenever they click on a stream. (Really kicking discoverability in the ass as new viewers don't have the patience to sit through that, as I'm sure you've noticed if you've ever gone Twitch channel surfing.) Of course, I'd imagine that Twitch's reticence towards skippings goes quite some way to making Twitch ads more valuable for the platform, but the monkey paw deal makes it one of the most annoying ways to run your Twitch channel. No, for most people it's all about subs.

Which is why it's so galling for Twitch that they offer the worst rates in the list of major Streamer platforms today. 50/50. Outdone by Youtube and Onlyfans. (Yes, even Onlyfans offers a better deal.) Still, there is a special 70/30 cut that Twitch offers to the top of the top, which brings the going rate in line with the rest of the industry. A special deal that for many is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that keeps them burning that midnight oil in the hopes that one day senpai Twitch will notice the- oh, and they just got rid of it. Yep, no more 70/30; now it's 50/50 forever and for everyone. A move that Twitch could only ever justify to itself by arguing that they're the biggest streaming platform and so can get away with offering a worse deal than everyone else because hey, where else are our streamers going to go? Youtube? Their chat functions are trash! Yes, Twitch are using their size to try and strongarm their users into accepting a crappy fund split. That is how you murder a budding good PR buzz!

Of course Twitch has an olive branch; they've upped the share revenue of Ads just in case you actively hate having a growing viewer count and want to chase off potential newcomers. Gee, Twitch, ain't you nice? But these are the steps they have to take because, as they pointed out themselves as a way to try and shift blame, running Twitch with high quality video streaming is just so very expensive. Amazon Web Services have them bent over a barrel with their streaming rates... oh wait... isn't Twitch owned by Amazon? You're telling me that an Amazon owned company, that is one of most visited sites on the Internet, can't knock next door to ask for more favourable rates? Amazon is charging Amazon too much money so the creator's have to foot the bill? No one was ever going to buy figures like that and Twitch are dreaming if they think their sheer size is going to be enough to brag all this hate off.

Big streamers are already talking about their feelings of switching to Youtube, and whilst we're talking about drama addicts here who'll say anything for the limelight; at least some of them have to be serious. Twitch themselves shared how 1% of the top streamers just barely subsidies the entire platform, and if those people start leaving, Twitch is going to become more and more of a chore to run. Smaller streamers aren't going to get that overwash, those viewers will follow their Streamer of choice, and if Youtube makes the bare minimum change to their streaming services, it might as well be a death knell for Twitch. And in business, the one thing you never want to do is place the tools of your own destruction in the hands of a competitor. Because that's stupid. So watch the skies of the industry over 2023, I have a feeling that skyscrapers are about to go tumbling.

GTA 6 Wishlist

Thinking about the future

So Grand Theft Auto Six is very real at this point in time. As much as I love to contend the facts, there's not really much I can do there after I've sat back and watched an hour of the thing in it's development state. And as the game is apparently less than two years away, with Rockstar rather empathetically affirming that the recent leaks haven't hurt the development process, (I don't believe that in the slightest; but pop-off R*) now is the time to start wondering about what this game might actually contain now that we know for certain they haven't suddenly switched gears to make this a series about an Alien invasion or something. You might think that's a bit of a strange assumption to make, but the Saints Row Reboot proved that anything can happen to our beloved franchises if we lose sight of them for more than a second.

When it comes to really asking what it is that a Grand Theft Auto game can do for you, there can be something of a natural difficulty which arises when you ask those sorts  questions; thanks to the plain fact that Grand Theft Auto is often the golden boy example of the game's industry. The shining beacon. The star on the horizon. What I'm trying to say is, that which Grand Theft Auto Six launches with will become the standard for what open world games need to be in order to not be considered 'dated' from that point onwards. (Something with the Saints Row developers clearly didn't get the memo on.) So GTA 6's many upcoming features are going to be above and beyond my scope to imagine what an open world game can be, and if it doesn't manage that it's going to fail to live up to Rockstar's own legacy. I have to believe they'd only make this game if they were confident they would surpass their last one. Rockstar doesn't spin wheels, they're not Ubisoft. Still, there are a few areas I would like for them to focus in even if I can't possibly imagine the extent to which that focus will expand.

The first is RPG elements running in the back of the game. Now this is actually something of a strange ask coming from me because I typically despise 'RPG light' elements being sprinkled over action adventure games so they can pretend they cater to the role playing crowd. (Looking at you Assassin's Creed!) But ever since San Andreas I've been unable to imagine my open world crime adventurers without the reinforcement of background stats being improved as I play and grow throughout the game. San Andreas had a few different types of stats; some that would indicate your familiarity with certain weaponry and cars and thus unlock special ways of using them (including dual wielding at mastery level) and other stats that were designed to fluctuate through the days and weeks like the players fat levels and muscle definition. Red Dead Redemption 2 improved on this greatly as it fit into their more grounded and slower paced style of open world gameplay, and even GTA V touched on these stats in more of a surface level sort of way.

What I want is for these stats to be a bit more meaningful and noticeable for the player, in a manner similar to what Cyberpunk was purposing back when they were still in the business of weaving dreams. I would love a system wherein simple repetitive animations such as reloading and drawing your weapon, improved in their efficiency and professionalism with the more you grow in that particular skill. I believe the modern CODs actually do something like that with their quick reload perks. Rather than speed up the animation, they have the player take an experienced gun handler's shortcut by manually unlocking the barrel of an emptied pistol. That type of 'detail-in-the-minute' is a lot easier to justify in a first-person locked war game than it is for a third person open world one; but we've already seen the amount of incredible detail that the Rockstar people are putting into the interiors of cars so maybe we can swing a little of that intricate love into the second most commonly partaken in GTA activity. (Do we drive more often than shoot? I don't know about that in hindsight...)

I also would like to see something of an improvement to the side activities available to the player. GTA V didn't really have a great deal of stuff in the way of races (at least not in offline) and the businesses were a total afterthought of development. It's strange because the 3D era of GTA nailed businesses so well with how they were handled in Vice City and San Andreas. (Apart from the way that they are essential to progression in Vice City; that shouldn't have been the case.) In particular my single favourite business mode in any GTA game, which was shockingly absent from GTA V, is the car dealer missions wherein you have to track down cars of a certain make and model in your own time and bring them back to a certain location for cash prizes and special unique cars. I love it because it encourages you to really learn the different districts and what sort of vehicles spawn in certain sectors of the city so that you can appreciate the amount of detail the world builders but into the socio-economic make-up of their game worlds.

Vice City had some mini-mission threads tied into their businesses too, which might have been where a few of them crossed that line from 'fun side activity' into a bit of a chore; so if GTA VI could find a balance that would be ideal. Although by that same merit I wonder if the concept of setting roots and investing in businesses makes any sense with this Bonnie and Clyde dynamic? Honestly at face value this seems more akin to the Red Dead style of narrative set-up where you're in this character driven cage, dragged across a personal story in which the enrichment of the player isn't glorified as some end state victory position, because really all you're doing is spinning wheels waiting for the inevitable karmic justice that is heading your way. I wouldn't be surprised (although I would be slightly annoyed) if GTA VI is structured somewhat similarly to Red Dead Redemption 2; wherein you get shepherded across the map as stick-ups go bad and you're forced into a corner you can't get of without some grand ultimatum. I don't know how 'businesses meta games' slot into that gameplay set-up.

And finally I would like for some of that 'evolving world' goodness that GTA Online has enjoyed for so very long to touch upon the single player game. I'm not asking for any expansive content packs because I know there's literally nothing in it for Rockstar to supply an un-monetised offline mode with new content, all I'm asking for is literal table scraps. All I want is for the many new vehicles and guns that are inevitably going to be added into the online mode to also find their way integrated in vehicle and weapon spawn lists of the base game. That's hardly asking for much of anything at all and it would really go a long way to making the base GTA experience feel fresher for longer as the streets begin to change over the years. I know why they might be discouraged from doing something like that, because they're worried people might not want to pursue their shiny new cars if they can simply just pick one up on offline, but I Reverse Uno Card that by saying those who don't know if they want a new car in the online space can test it out in the single player and be more inclined to hunt after it by grinding in the online mode! This really would be the solve all for making everyone happy!

When I refer to all of this as my 'wishlist' I'm being very literal with that. These aren't requests, but wishes I throw into the air in the hopes they come true. Not just because I'm a literal nobody on the Internet that no body would listen to, but because as we've discovered the game is already hot in development and no company with head on straight like Rockstar is going to be adding features at this point. (Who do you think they are? Cloud Imperium Games?) Still, I think logic might just lead the creative heads at Rockstar to come to similar ideas as me between their truly revolutionary sparks of genius, and I just they could wiggle in enough room in their development schedules to satisfy these smaller elements of the GTA package alongside the industry changing gimmick that's going to win them all the awards. I mean heck, this entire setting was spawned from fan service; can't we ask for a side of fan fulfilment ontop of that? 

Racist space DND

 huh.

Dungeons and Dragons is one of the most wide spread table-top role playing engines that exists within the world today, and it remains so relevant today through the way that the game manages to constantly empower the imagination and creativity of players. When the stories are created in your own heads tied only to set of rules that are as malleable as you need them to be, there really is no limit to the number of stories one can feasibly tell using hardly more than the base veneer of Dungeons and Dragons; which is why so many role playing and tabletop games over the years have sought to either adapt the DnD ruleset or specialise their offerings of rules to hone in on a specific type of experience that Dungeons doesn't cover. Dnd is kind of like the baseline. But when you have so many personalities and ideas adding to the tabletop roleplaying world, as with anything that becomes a collaborative effort, you open yourself up to... influences. Not always the best kind, either.

One of the oldest Table Top roleplaying games from all the way back in the eighties (if you're curious, Dnd dates back to 74) was on Star Frontiers, which took the renewed interest in high-flung Science Fantasy bubblegum to launch a system that was... moderately received. It doesn't sound like people really liked it all that much, which is probably why you've never heard of it whilst Warhammer and the like are niche, but have a following even to this day. If anything, it serves as a slice of retrofuturism for those that find the quaint charm in that subsector of sci-fi; and though it's splash in the annals of history may be slight, it still matters to some people even to this day which is the most anyone can ask for; isn't it? Huh? It's coming back? But... but why? (Actually there was another revival but I can find next to no information on it despite an apparent recent launch so I can assume it didn't do exceptionally.)

The original Star Frontiers was actually published by TSR, the original publishers of Dnd, which makes it a special kind of symmetry that this new edition of the game, entitled New Genesis, should be targeted today by Dnd's new caretakers; Wizards of the Coast. This new 'edition' of the game is published by TSR LLC, who apparently aren't the TSR who made the original because they were bought and then allowed to go defunct by Wizards. This is a new TSR who uses the name after Wizards allowed the old one's name to run out on Copyright and this is all very confusing and I don't know why I spent half an hour reading up on it all. Except for I guess it helps us draw lines of distinction between the players in this little party. TSR proposed to make this new edition, Wizards bought the rights to Star Frontiers back when they bought the original TSR, so this was already heading for a bit of a kerfuffle; but a recent public filing against TSR to block the publishing of this game has unveiled a few extra herbs and spices in this particular story.

You see, TSR's current custodians have a very questionable grasp over the copyright they claim ownership over. In fact, the entire history of the people who have assumed the name TSR and then been scared of it to start their own companies is sizable. Now the current CEO is a guy called Justin LaNasa, and all I can find about his version of TSR up until now is the fact that they published a game called 'Tales & Tots' which appears to be some sort of 'my first roleplaying game' system aimed at 2 year olds. I have no idea what is in said system, but considering the sort of stuff that Justin is into, I wouldn't recommending picking up that system for you Toddler. It might start giving it very strange ideas about the concept of race equality. (Ah, but I'm getting far ahead of myself.)

LaNasa, seemingly blatantly flaunting in the face of basic copyright law, recently released a playtest of his new version of Star Frontiers, which then was promptly leaked onto the Web for all to see and it is a doozy... When I heard tell of Wizard targeting this version of the game for 'racist ovetones' I scoffed a little bit. Wizards have grown embarrassingly oversensitive about appearing 'racist' after a few unfortunate parallels were drawn between snippets of lore in their game, which has now blossomed into such a paranoia that they're hastening to rewrite Dnd to ensure that no races can have anything remotely 'evil' or 'bad' in their past which could be interpreted as a racial bias. Which means Dark Elves lose a lot of that evil edge what made them cool (you could have just renamed them to Deep Elves or something) and they've even gone some distance to soften up on the lore of Beholders. Yes, the giant eyeballs with tentacles that turn people to stone. I'm not going to lie... there is literally nothing you could conjure up in your script-brain storming sessions that is going to make people not see a giant floating death eye as anything less than an evil monster from hell. It is a floating eye. Come on. What I'm trying to say is; Wizards are prone to exploding over nothing these days, so I took these allegations of racism in a competitor's product as little more than legal spin to strengthen their case; then I read the points of contention.

It's all in that spineless tongue-in-cheek approach to racism where literally everyone in the world can read between the hilariously thin veil and read the obvious subtext, but the writer maintains the vague whisper of plausible deniability to throw his hands up in the air and say he's being framed. Not least of all for his race of, naturally unintelligent but decently physically strong, rage of dark skinned aliens he just happened to name after the Spanish word for black as if the basic connotations aren't obvious. Using the double connotation of the word 'sub race' so he can example Asian, African and Mexican people as 'sub human' whilst hiding behind the excuse that he's 'just discussing systems'. Explaining for the 'looks' attribute that  a 0 is 'unbearably ugly' with providing examples such as 'large noses or narrow noses, large or thin lips or oval eyes. Be creative.' And then literally just throwing caution to wind and asks if you are a "SJW warrior pushing your values onto others." My man wrote this in a book full of sad dog whistles desperately trying to code his personal ideology into a table top play system in the hope it spreads to others; how's that for irony?

And if you're curious about the kind of man who would bother to try and make a Dnd System just to try and 'stick it to the libs', I'm decently sure he's an ex republican mayoral candidate who left his own party because, in so many words, they weren't 'Right enough' for him. So that's the kind of guy you've got trying to muscle his way into the Table top space recycling names that don't appear to belong to him. I do wonder how a man who ran for public office can't seem to grasp basic copyright law, which the only reason I have to doubt that little snippet of lore, but the images from the news corresponds with his Twitter so I can only assume that is a fact. This genius thinks he can brag his way through copyright law whilst virtue signalling about how overbearing the 'libs' are compared to himself. And you though table tops were all fantasy no drama!

Wizards have had a lot of scrutiny dunked on them over the past few years for perceived racial bias in a fantasy world, and they've folded under that pressure time and time again in a bid to try and prove they're not weaving some deeply racist tabletop conspiracy. And maybe after this lawsuit those same people who rant at every piece of Dnd lore that isn't entirely fangless will be able to contrast an actual racially charged nutjob with a the stuff Dnd is doing and realise; "huh, maybe I'm shouting at phantoms?" At the very least I can probably say that this kerfuffle is the single biggest jump in exposure that Star Frontiers has ever had as a franchise. (If only the original creators could see their baby now.)

Steam and Advertising

 The big man cracks down.

A few weeks ago Steam made a pretty interesting change to the way they allowed advertising to be shown on their platform, which I found a curious sentiment, but decided not to cover on the off chance that this would be one of those rules that Steam speaks about and then never enforces.  If you're curious, there's actually quite a lot of those rules floating around the ether ever waiting for their long-proposed time in the sun. (Such as that 'no NFT games' rule; which is more: "No hosting NFT's on our infrastructure but you very publicly link elsewhere and we don't care from there") I wanted to wait until a few Steam sales went by to see if this is a standard that is going to be held up, and it so far looks like it is. Whether due to actual crackdowns or merely the threat of crackdowns, Steam games are posting store artwork as bland and boring as ever with no eye-popping flavour text, just as papa Steam intended it.

As part of a move to "make it as straightforward as possible" for Steam users to sink their life savings into video games, Steam has turned around and declared it against their rules to stray too far from core artwork when it comes to advertising on their storefront. Which is to say, no more ancillary bubble-gum text plastered over the art declaring a percentage off on a sale, or celebrating some vague award win from a publication that no one has ever heard of before in the "Most likely to probably win some awards at a more legitimate outlet" category. No more writing about a big new update, no more slapping half covered breasts on the front of- oh wait... no, actually I think that's accepted, depending on the type of audience you're trying to facilitate. (But no nipples! They'll nuke you from orbit if they see a protrusion of any sort!)

Now I'm all for advertising standards and restrictions where they're needed. Those gaudy lawyer billboards that the American's allow to go up is just one example of what happens when advertising standards are left to slip out of control, and without Nasa's joint 'ownership' of space it would be a literally matter of time before Amazon built itself drones to carve out Jeff Bezos' face on our Moon. Advertising standards stop children's shows from taking advantage of children's underdeveloped brains to sell toys to them during the running of a show. Advertising standards are the bulwark that helps keep ordinary people sane in a world cut up and sold off by executives and ads companies. (Which is one of the reasons I can never take the 'hard work ad executive' trope in animated/real life movies seriously.) But at the same time, I don't really feel there's anything inherently upsettingly wrong with the Steam banner ads sales techniques.

Back in the day you'd get games proudly displaying it anytime a publication so much as looked their way in award season, games that were just super excited to knock off huge bits of their prices that they couldn't wait for you to look down in the by-line to see the adjusted price, (not when you can see it in bright red letters on a yellow background!) and games that just wanted to let you know how excited they were that the game has just gotten an update. In fact, it was the bright shiny letters announcing the Sorcerer update to the Baldur's Gate beta which talked me into buying that game and I'm so very glad that I did. Has that ever also swung me around into buying a game I regret? Not necessarily, but I have been struggling to justify my purchase of Kynseed every time I load it up and get bored after less than an hour in game. (I'm sure the inherent magic of the game will strike me eventually. I've just got to stick with it.)

But yeah, I'd be lying if I didn't say that the text advertisements aren't distracting to a possibly unfair level. Why should everyone else have to rely on the boring same palette of colours printed atop Steam Blue whenever it comes to a summer sale when the eye is drawn much easier by contrasting colours slapped ontop one another? It's eye catching, it's heart racing, and it is a tad exploitative to the eye's attention. Where I an outside regulator I would certainly consider the psychological tactics being put in play to squeeze one out over competitors as a worrying trend. But as someone actually imbedded in the community, I know that the trend is laughable next to the whole 'loot box industry' which literally employs the help of psychologists to tickle the right dopamine triggers in the players head to trigger addiction. Why bother with a firm stance on anything when you just ignore that whole situation?

Well Steam have actually tried to justify their decision, beyond the nebulous assertion that all these graphical packets are just so 'confusing' to the tiny pea brains of their customers. They said that the graphics have become so important to advertisers that game names can be shoved into obscure corners so that players end up not even knowing what the game itself is called! (You know, unless they read the plain text steam title next to, or under, every game on the storefront. But again, remember; pea brains!) They say that some graphics present review scores that are out of date at the time they are seen. (Which is why people have to see the store page, with the real time user reviews, but again. Pea. Brains.) And in addition graphics packages tend to only be in English, which alienates speakers of other languages. I don't have a pithy retort to that one, but I think the alienation of other language speakers on steam runs a bit deeper than a few graphics boards. But I digress.

New rules dictate that review scores, award names, discount bumpers and graphics promoting other games or sequels (wait, were people actually doing that? how is there even that much space on a tiny game billboard window?) must be banished to the shadow realm never to return. Developers are still allowed to celebrate seasonal events, however, which means that Baldur's Gate 3 can get away with their cool new class themed banners with each updates. (Great, I can't wait for the Dragonborn banner!) They've also dictated that the text can only pertain to new content which... uh oh, there we are getting vague again, Valve! What exactly does new mean? New on a cosmic scale? Because I hate to break this to you; in comparison to the big bang that started the universe, 13.8 billion years ago, everything on Steam is brand spanking new, buddy! (>Tutt< >Tutt< >Tutt<, will Gabe Newell never learn?)

As of September the 1st these new rules have been in effect, and if you check out any of the recent steam sales, you'll notice it's a bland ghost town out there. Tumbleweed is just blowing past all these dry banner ads totally lacking in all Pizazz and Pazow, and not a single hint of Kachigga, anywhere to be seen! So if this is the future that you wanted for your storefront Steam, sterile and bland, then I congratulate you in your rousing victory. You must be so very proud of yourselves. I, on the otherhand, will rue the day that ugly and garish banner adds were expunged from the accounts of scrappy indie games anywhere that were just so excited to slap up how they received the 'most likely to not get so much as an honourable mention at any award show ever' award in their meagre product lifespan. If you want to step on the necks of the little man, Steam, go right ahead! Like most Americans, we are self made people. We put ourselves through development hell. Working on Itch.IO as talentless script kiddies, we provide games for those with no money to buy real games with. We believe in entertainment, it's what we build our careers on. But we also have our dreams, a dream that many of us have, a dream to run our own viral marketing campaign for our games. Well we... we scrimp and we save and we finally save up enough to buy a slot on the Steam store, a tiny foray into advertising for our fledgling games companies. We always get told that America is the land of opportunity and, we believed it... until... this... On September 1st Steam cracked down on our marketing, we were confusing their customers and hurting their brand. They're rich, powerful, and we're just indie devs. So who do you think the journalists sided with? So now, our little billboards, come down. But let me tell you something, if they want a fight... well there is none because they've already won... bugger...  

Sonic Frontiers... is inevitable...

 This... is... dull looking!

Sonic Frontiers is ever lumbering after us ready to rock our unprepared arses for the crime of looking at the game frankly for the 'meh' it's shaping up as. That original reveal of gameplay has to be one of the most powerful releases of hype ever recorded in marketing, only that release was an exhale of bated breath as most level-headed people went "Wow, this looks rough as heck." Just close your eyes for a minute and try to remember that mess for me. Try to remember the floating railings, the unmatched movement and animation timing, (In a game about movement) the emptiness of the world, the lack of any visual identity... did you remember it all? I hope so because I wanted to do an update on what it is Frontiers has prepared for us now it's so close we can smell it's rot on the very near horizon. Maybe we'll see that the Internet has undersold this game and the believers are the one's who are being vindicated.

A lot of new footage has debuted in the recent months and weeks and of it all I can say this much; I like the new designs of the robots more than then I have in recent Sonic games. Although bare in mind I'm thinking about Forces and their laughably generic enemy robots that weren't worth a iota of brain space to create. These new robots have this cool sleek-metal design that specialises in round shapes instead of sharp edges to create this very monolithic, alien vibe to them. Their grey-black colouring works wonders in catching the light of Sonic Frontier's new engine and emphasising either their size or their shape in a way which feels distinct from other Sonic enemies. The really big creatures even have a vague sense of that 'Shadow of the Colossus' scaling going on, where they sell the disparity between the player and the enemy dynamically and vividly through clever use of a automatically adjusting camera matched with the actual enemy asset itself. 

And unfortunately that remains the only indisputable praise I can throw this game's way because everything else remains fundamentally boring! The world that they've insisted on showing off repeatedly as this point, Kronos Island, is impressively barren looking with it's dull green stretch of nothingness off-set by haphazardly placed grind rails and springs literally floating in the air. Still the game looks like this team just grabbed a generic world map and tried to build their Sonic game ontop of it all without removing that generic beginning asset and replacing it with something that has an identity and soul in the later stages of development. Ah, but now we have a new area in Ares  Island which is... just a bunch of generic brown badlands with grind rails and springs stuck everywhere... it is impressive how this game squanders it's chances at establishing a visual identity, truly.

But some part of Sonic Team must have realised how bland everything felt in their open world and so sought to maintain some sort of balance between old and new, via the brand new Cyberspace sections that are essentially little challenge levels where the old 3D Sonic design philosophy can take over for a brief gameplay section. Unfortunately, when I say 'old' I mean 'new old'. Which is to say, these Cyberspace sections are literally just Sonic Forces style 'run in a straight line and jump a few times, style gameplay levels that are wrapped up in a manner of less than two minutes. Yes, we get to see worlds that look more interesting and evocative of an identity in the Cyberspace worlds, but when they're just back-drops for a lifeless sprint-n-jump; what's even the point? And why hasn't the developers learned anything from people looking at Forces level design and going "Wow, this barely constitutes as a level at all!"

I don't mean to do the 'in my day' kind of rhetoric, but Frontiers just really invites the comparison with it's very rustic approach creating an 'open world'. I heard the affirmation recently that 'open worlds' are just linear games with more space to explore, and I think of that as a gross oversimplification designed as a weak gotcha... except when we're talking about games like Sonic Frontiers. Open World games have to be designed to maintain that sense of immersion and personality both in the heat of the main narrative and the chill of the areas in-between. It has to strike a balance of identify and gameplay across a space that can be explored from any angle and from any direction because the player is not on rails. (At least not to their express knowledge. Clever open worlds know how to subtly guide the path of even the open player with their sheer design.) And to understand the problem with Sonic Team and how they got this wrong, let's look at those Cyberspace levels.

Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were the very first 3d Sonic games and in many peoples eyes, the best of their kind. Now Sonic Adventure missions bought a few of the main mechanisms that inform modern Sonic design, such as sections designed to make you feel fast and easy kill enemies that you can launch off of; but do you know what else those missions had? They had challenges. Platforming, spike pits, bottomless drops; situations where you couldn't just blindly sprint forward else you would end up losing a life. Now the 2d Sonic games focused a lot on sections that could be sped through with sufficient enough knowledge of the map layout, but there was some peril and sections that changed up the speed of the gameplay here and there. Basic variety is the key is level design on a core level and that is something that modern Sonic has been steadily losing sight of.

Sonic Forces was the worst for it, where you could literally speed through a level without really bothering with any of the mechanics and finish every mission in sub two minutes. There was no sense of peril or variety until the boss missions, and none of them were particularly inspired either. I've only seen two Cyberspace levels so far, and I'm sure there's a great stretch of variety through them (at least visually) but of the two entire levels we've seen neither had anything to them but sprint, bounce and lock-on jump. These are linear slices of gameplay levels, there's no reason they can't be grand and challenging and last more than 1 minute thirty! And just seeing that this is the standard the team are reaching has me worrying about what Forces believes a good gameplay loop is; which isn't something I'd worry about with any other game developer in the world, but this isn't any other developer- Sonic Team have proven that they need the scrutiny!

Frontiers looks visually decent. I like the character models, I like the lighting, I like the style of Super Sonic; but artistically and practically the game has yet to impress me still. I want to like Sonic and I want to play the heck out of his games but without the special spark of purpose to his game design I can't see a future where Sonic fits in with the major modern pantheon of games. And the thing is; I know what you'd have to do to make a good 3d open-world Sonic game, I can see the gameplay loop in my head, but Sonic Team are so staunchly stuck in their ways I don't know if they're ever going to match and certainly not exceed what seems like such a simple vision. We need newer and fresher developers with newer and inspired ideas to breath life into Sonic. And if Frontiers does well enough, maybe that's what we'll get! There's something to look forward to I guess...

Overwatch 2 is making some... questionable decisions.

 We're pretty late in the game for surprise reveal now...

There was a time when Overwatch could count itself as one of the biggest and most recognisable brands on God's green earth. That was also around about the time when people where fed years worth of teases for the new brand of shooter game that was going to revolutionise the genre and finally succeed Team Fortress 2, as that one cartoony shooter that people play forever. Blizzard still had their reputation as dedicated and passionate developers who always put the player first, and the general sweep of multiplayer shooter games had become so dominated by Call of Duty and half hearted Call of Duty clones that all the world was eager to see something new, and colourful. And when it delivered it was a whirlwind of activity and love and... appreciation of another kind... (Some would argue that the Rule 34 presence of Overwatch is just as much a meter of it's success as the play numbers themselves; and I certainly would agree in at least when it comes to recognisability. Blizzard knew how to make characters that people wanted to bang.)

Then came the dark period. The cluster of several years after Overwatch fell out of the public eye, and Jeff Kaplan left the studio, where it feels like Overwatch just sort of rested on the backburner. Not only were people not paying attention to it anymore, but the developers weren't really making content for the game. Only the competitive scene retained any form of life to it as the crowds just lost interest. And that might have been because underneath it all; Overwatch just lacked in world building depth. Sure, they had this whole great cast of fantastically designed characters, but the characters didn't mean anything. They played with great variety, but they had no purpose. Their backstory and lore did exist, but in piece meal animations once a year and the odd random release dump. That's no where near enough to get fuel lore channels on Youtube and Reddit speculators; and if people aren't thinking about the game after they put down the controls, then one day their attention is going to drift to a game that knows how to spar the imagination better.

To be fair to Overwatch, the hero shooter genre that it ushered into being proved a pretty tough act to follow. Some games managed to carve out a bit of a name for themselves, whilst others flared and vanished within the blink of an eye. The only game which I think really managed to nail what it was that Overwatch introduced and expand upon it (or rather, games) would be COD and Apex Legends. They both took the idea of a Hero Shooter and applied it atop the Battle Royale model, moving the concept forward in a manner that turned out to be quite synergistic. One might say that they moved the genre beyond the simple death matches/ escort missions that Overwatch founded it over, and that if an upcoming game were going to try and bring it back to that, it would feel like a step back in innovation. But then I guess that's what modern Blizzard excel in, isn't it? Backwards innovation.

At least, to their slight credit, Blizzard has recognised that with this great do-over for the Overwatch brand, the game is going to need something a little more special to stand out as it did last time. There's lots more competition, afterall. And for this Blizzard has made the choice to match what every other well adopted online-competitive game is doing nowadays and give itself a blank price tag. Now typically this is advertised as going 'free to play' but I prefer to characterise is as a 'blank tag' because of the intention behind it. They hope to lower the barriers to entry entirely by allowing anyone to pick up and play the game, using that lack of a buy-in to justify scandalous behind-the-storefront offers and prices that wouldn't fly in a sixty dollar game because "Hey, we've got to keep the lights on!" So whilst the game may seem inexpensive at first, their end goal is to get you invested enough in the game to spend much more than the sixty would have been worth throughout the life-time of the game. As though Overwatch 1 didn't already popularise lootboxes.

But then I'm going to take that credit immediately away because if a recent story on Blizzard is to be believed, the Overwatch 2 model is perhaps one of the most insanely dumb they could have possibly envisioned. Overwatch 2... is locking away their rooster behind unlock conditions that you have to grind painfully for or buy the Battle Pass. I can't... verbalise how much of a major misstep that is. Overwatch came to life because of it's colourful cast of characters that you can switch between at a whim to find who you want. From the second you put in that disk for the old game, you could shop around all the different personalities and playstyles to get the character who suited how you liked to play. And if you weren't feeling like playing that character tonight; no biggie, you can try out someone you haven't gotten bored of yet. ("Oh, there's a new character drop? I'm going to play them tonight!")

Overwatch was accessible and accommodating to all players, which is why it caught fire so quickly. Now Blizzard wants to replace that with freemium players grinding as... I'm going to assume Tracer, Winston and D.VA, in order to unlock any different character who might play differently so they try playing a different way. Robbing the accessibility away from the player and putting a price tag in front of it. Also, these characters are tied to a season pass? Those swap around, right? Does that mean Heroes are going to be unbuyable for certain seasons as they get swapped out? Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? This is how casuals get bored out of playing a game; because they can't be bothered to spend the time grinding to unlock a character they then realise they're not really that good with them online! I think it's a painful system in Multiversus and other games of that calibre, but in Overwatch... that's an identity breaker! 

Now I've made it sound like Freemium players are going to be locked out of certain heroes, and that's because I guarantee that will happen down the line with a set-up designed to be exploited like this. (Don't take Blizzard at their sworn word that they'd never do that; Diablo Immortal is proof they have no moral fibre.) For launch, however, heroes will be listed on the free track and unlocked at an agonising pace. (How much do you want to bet that buying the pass gives you an exp boost so that you can unlock the tiers of the battle pass quicker?) With this choice, Overwatch has literally decimated their casual audience, which is a huge part of what made Overwatch one such of an internet phenomena in it's early days. Heck, I loved Overwatch and even I'm not sure I really want to mess with 2 after this. Now I'm just wondering about those single player missions they promised us and how screwed they are with monetisation.

It's pretty telling how contentious of an issue this is that Blizzard waited for the weeks just before launch to tell us all about this. (Almost as though they foresaw the masses of backlashes; fancy that...) But when we reach the point where Blizzard is as at right now, good and bad publicity doesn't mean a thing to them: this is a numbers game. It's slowly becoming clear that the actual heart and soul of Blizzard is absent from the modern games they're making and the decisions behind them, and their ambition is going squandered thanks to that emptiness. A company built of community is slipping off chasing numbers that they aren't equipped to face, and Overwatch 2 isn't going to win the respect the first game did with a copy-cat business model. It sucks to have to write off Overwatch 2, at least for the immediate, but what else can we do?

Babylon Fell

 And it won't to get up.

The world loves itself an underdog story about a scrappy little something-who-could who defied the odds, spat in the fact of those who stood dubious and went on to secure itself as one of the true greats of history. It's a invigorating archetype for a story, isn't it? A moral tale of struggle and triumph that teaches us all that it doesn't matter how overwhelming the odds against us, how unbelievable our chances in the face of insurmountable adversity, at the end of the day hard work and grit will always win the day. Because we want to believe that, don't we? That hardwork is the cure-all for all the troubles of the world. But reality isn't ever quite like the morality stories, now is it? It's unfair, it's ruthless, it's belittling, and the at the end of the day it's utterly meaningless. No grand morality lesson to be taught, no overarching force of 'destiny' guiding us towards the path that 'works out in the end'. That is why this is not an underdog story; this is a reality story. It's the story of a game called 'Babylon's Fall'.

Babylon's Fall spawned out of a development studio renowned for it's incredible highs and pitiable lows. One day Platinum Games would but out a modern masterpiece with the near peerless 'Nier' games, and then they'd throw up a 'Legend of Korra' game into their barf bucket before rolling back over and trying to sleep through the hang over. I don't think I could name another company with the range of ultimate good and ultimate trash on either end of a single scale. That's some true 'Anime protagonist' levels of moral imbalance. Such that when the director of 'Metal Gear Rising: Revengence', one of those studio masterpieces I alluded to, is pursing his next lead project after years in the background, no one could predict whether this would be another slam dunk or a total gutterball. (I'm mixing my metaphors, but in a way that's what Platinum Games is; a confused metaphor.)

I have no doubt that, given total autonomy, Babylon's Fall could have been another weird and wild success story from Platinum games; but autonomy is a rare prize. Instead, Square Enix, Platinum's pay masters, were desperate to try and secure that Live Service that could be their cash cow just as Epic Games' Fortnite was for them and Activision's Destiny and COD Warzone was for them, and so on and so forth. So for some inane reason, Platinum, a company known for developing stellar single player action games, was recruited to slap up a state-of-the-art multiplayer cooperative Live Service that would rope players into an endless loop of buying cosmetics to chase expensive gear forever in that loop of power creep which is poisoning modern game design. Something which even the greats and practised in this genre type have trouble nailing a lot of time. Square wanted Platinum to just summon that, out of thin air. And we wonder why Square Enix is failing lately...

What resulted was a game that slipped quickly out of everyone's mind the second it was revealed, each time it was revealed. Every industry show people came away with the exact same impressions. "Well that looked boring, Oh Platinum Games is making it? Well it might be good then." Hardly singing endorsements. But then the game dropped and everything sort of shifted. People who thought this was going to be an inoffensive and forgettable slasher were treated to an exceptionally forgettable and all-around boring action game. One with a hilariously ugly art style, dull world, pathetically thin gameplay loop, surprisingly floaty combat, non-existent level design and terrible voice work. The inconsistent and unpredictable phantom of Platinum Games had struck again; Babylon's Fall was a undeniable downright disaster. 

And unlike some of the other big disasters of recent memory, your Diablo Immortals and Saints Row Reboots, this one didn't have a recognisable brand name for clueless fans to desperately latch onto under the lie that the game is really good and everyone else in the world hates it for it's genius. The game had no fans, it was making no fans, and thus it's slip into obscurity was all but guaranteed. What seemed absolutely insane was the amount of effort that Square and Platinum Games were dedicating to the project despite knowing how poorly the thing initially performed in sales. The game was averaging less than 10 players on Steam and for one period barely a month after launch had only 1 confirmed player on Steam. And this is an online game, remember; people couldn't play the thing without being connected to the internet and thus logging their activity on Steam charts. It was just that unpopular. 

Yet still the company came out to promise they would update the thing, and even launched a cosmetic cross-over event with Nier Automata of all properties! To think that masterpiece of a franchise shared the same screen-space as Babylon's Fall is... unconscionable. But the appeal seems to have been short lived, as now here we are, in the same year that the game released in, receiving the news that Square Enix are preparing to pull the plug on the service before it reaches it's third 'season'. Yes, after killing off all their western studios and declaring they have no idea how to make a profit for a western audience, Square are also killing off their Japanese Live Services and just hoping investors don't take the small leap to realising this means Square just simply don't know how to make profitable franchises full stop. Babylon's Fall is another predictable failure in a string of failures for a company that has lost touch with their consumers.

Babylon's Fall is still going to pick itself up for a final tour before being put out to pasture, the team are going to extend Season 2 and then pretty much just redo Season 2 again but call it 'The Final Season'; all whilst delivering your typical "We did everything we wanted to do" statement that makes consumers so tired of the dishonest line of communication between developers and players. They'll never admit when things are falling apart, which means they'll never be able to receive that key developer-player feedback to learn how to adapt in ways that might make their supposedly community-dependant game work well within the community. Of course, on the other side of that sword; had they actually listened to the consensus of the committee, this idea would have been struck down in it's infancy and replaced with a sequel to MGR or something...

Babylon's Fall is a lesson in failing to read the room and delivering on a promise that nobody wanted. Even if this game hadn't been total garbage to play, the sheer fact that it was a Live Service aimed at an audience who were reared on single player action games meant that this game was never going to hit the numbers it needed to be a success. Perhaps it will also be a lesson to Square Enix that they really need to go back to funding the sorts of games that their players go back to buy entry after entry, rather than desperately trying to remix everything into a Live Service mega franchise so they can secure their immortal meal ticket for the next ten years. Its a sad and transparent gambit from them that has sunk game after game and will continue to do so unless someone slaps Square Enix in the face and teaches them that they can't be the Activision foil they're so desperate to be. The failure of Avengers wasn't total enough to do that to them, but perhaps the annihilation of Babylon's Fall is that wake-up call they've been waiting for... and dreading.

Stadia is decomposing.

 And you're laughing!

You know who I haven't mercilessly picked o- I mean followed up on in a while? Google Stadia, that's who! And there's actually be a fairly decently existential reason for that, because I've found myself regularly confronting what exactly it is about the service that I just cannot stand on that deeply visceral level. 'Why am I such a hater?' 'Why can't I learn to love the gift that keeps on giving?' And then a piece of news forces me to confront Stadia and I'm reminded exactly why I can't stand the thing; because it was an anti-consumerist proposition that threatened to overthrow much more pro-consumer standards through sheer merit of being bigger than them. When Stadia first came around I remember bringing it up to my Uncle-in-law, who floats around these sorts of industries, and he just causally let slip that Microsoft would become the real players in this field in short order. Fast forward to today and, lo-and-behold, Microsoft's cloud service wipes the floor with Stadia in most sensible terms and Stadia fans are just starting to wake up and taste the disappointment we all felt when Google first announced the terms of the hostage situation it was attempting to impart upon the gaming world.

I first started hearing about Stadia again before the figurative faeces hit the tumble dryer; for this was a rather innocuous article of another agent within the cloud gaming space conducting an interview wherein they discussed their theory about where Stadia went wrong. From their reckoning, it was all in the business model that prospective buyers didn't see the value in. You know, the model wherein you would pay full price to access games that you then need to pay a subscription service in order to play. Like Netflix if you also had to buy all the movies and shows that you watch at retail. Whereas Xbox's cloud service can leverage the Xbox library for it's cloud streaming and Nvidia's GeForce Now service can piggy-back off of Steam; Google apparently never so much as considered reaching out to partner up with any of these services to leverage their position. No, they wanted to start something from the ground up that would convert non-gamers into subscribing to their bad offer; and to their credit, for the few that did take the plunge the gambit worked... those sorry saps on r/Stadia are as brainwashed as it gets. (That Sunk Cost Fallacy is a kicker.)

But then a simple headline came out and the rest of the world started talking about Stadia, which encouraged me to look in a little bit about what they're saying and... surprise, surprise; the service that killed off it's major in-house development studio over half a year ago isn't doing so hot! The inciting piece of news in question? That Assassin's Creed Mirage would not be coming to Stadia. They ripped that bandage off real early, didn't they? Ubisoft can't even be bothered to put a gameplay snippet together and are currently in the middle of batting off, apparently false, allegations of real world gambling in their upcoming game. But even amidst all of that the team found time to definitively say they won't even entertain the idea of a Stadia port. No 'will they, won't they' no 'silence that blossoms into nothingness'; just a flat refusal. Cold turkey. Really doesn't make it look like Stadia is on the wave of the future, does it?

That's what got me to look at Stadia; and then I ended up on the Reddit for Stadia wherein dissenters have to pre-label their threads 'constructive criticism' for fear of accidentally upsetting the paper-thin egos of Stadia enjoyers. That was how I learnt about the Stadia promise. A promise I already knew but forgot. The promise where Stadia would provide 100 new games on their service every year. Which is absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of gaming, but they wanted to do the 'Epic Games' thing and curate only the best 100 games so their service would be a hit. And those two full years of service went well enough with Stadia just managing to clear the bar of new games year in and year out. But we're nearly all the way done through year 3, and Stadia haven't hit 50 new games this year, and the missing games are all heavy hitters. They're going to break their promise and it wasn't even a massive one to begin with. 100 games a year should have been the beginning; not the waist high war they flop trying to jump!

Problems extend even further into games that have launched on Stadia and have trouble getting support after that fact. Some have bugs that go unfixed, others never see DLC that land on other platforms, and some are parts in series' that just go without any sort of follow-up. Tiny Tina's Wonderland has been out for months without hint of  a Stadia release, Elden Ring skipped right past Stadia, Final Fantasy VII finally got ported to PC but not Stadia (Although that might be a bit of blessing in disguise given how many issues that PC version of FF7R had which Stadia users would have been powerless to fix themselves) And Gotham Knights and Hogwarts Legacy both haven't announced any official Stadia capacity despite evidence of the 'Stadia' brand being found on their website. Indicating a situation of companies rethinking their porting strategy, probably after assessing the amount of money required for porting compared to the potential return from customers.

This years' 'Quarry' from Supermassive Games was originally slated as a Stadia exclusive before they shut down their development studios, meaning that Stadia missed out on a decently well received narrative slasher that lived up to it's Until Dawn heritage. They did however, get Rainbow Six Extraction, which I honestly didn't know launched. But there are a whole 9 people watching it be played on Twitch right now, so I'm sure that game is totally alive and healthy. They're also getting this year's Fifa, which makes sense I guess. Those Devs get paid all year to literally sit around and maybe change the digit after the 'two' on all the assets they can be bothered to look up, actually making them port the thing to Stadia is the least EA can ask of them. Oh, and they also got... Saints Row Reboot? Oh... my condolences.

The writing appears to very much be on the wall. Everyone outside of the Stadia world wrote the service off for dead once the in-house studios were folded, but the inner cult remained adamant that 'This is all according to plan, just you wait and see!' We've waited, and what we've seen is more companies figuring that Stadia is no longer worth their time for bug fixes, let alone future ports; the service doesn't appear to have any legs. Google, predictably, didn't want to sink any funds into giving it a fighting chance, and now it's shrunk so much that none of the content developers that Stadia relies on sees a profit to be made off them. This is the point where growth starts heading the other direction and the rest of the world soundly leaves the Stadia ecosystem to rot. Just like everyone said would happen because Google are a predictably non-committal company.

I'm not even all that sad for it, to be honest. I know there are a lot of outlets out there who cry about the lost potential of the service, and I can understand the vector they're coming from, but Stadia ultimately proposed a bad deal for the consumer. What we really need is for Xbox and Nvidia to start opening up their services more, and then there'll literally be no reason for Stadia to exist; because for all their tech backing them up, Google just couldn't figure out how to cut a decent deal for the buyer. If anyone is to blame for this death, it's the Google management who believed themselves too big to be fair to their customers and suffered for their expectation of instant heavy adoption and sustained success; a proposed victory story without any significant monetary sacrifice. A stupid and doomed dream that dragged a decently promising concept off a cliff and ruined yet another side-hustle for the big G. Great job, Google; you blew it, again.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

 The legend of Hyrule is the legend of Calamity Ganon... again... 

Finally it has come. After years of waiting around for anything to come out, rumours upon guesses, suppositions upon assertations, we finally have that one announcement that we've all been waiting for; the name for the Breath of the Wild sequel game. No longer do we need to call her 'Breath of the Wild 2: This time's it's wilder'. We can genuinely put one our calendar the name of 'The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom'; finally unveiling the naming convention that this new breed of Zelda games is running with. It's 'of the' season, apparently. And for one I can say that is a name I wasn't exactly expecting from a thematic sense, it sounds more poetically tragic than I was feeling with all the trailer snippets we've had of Link soaring through chunks of skyward bound land, but I suppose the poetry-style metaphor language forms an identifiable basis from which to affirm this subseries' identity. Any other titles with a name like this might invite derision at the apparent pretentious allusions of such a interpretive name, but anyone who experienced Breath of the Wild can readily acknowledge that with this franchise, the games are good for cashing marketing's cheques. 

It's just a shame that this title reveal, and the eye-watering belayed release date that's going to have us waiting more than half a year from this point, is all we have to go on because our Zelda Developers don't want us to see a square inch of this game for too long. In a way it makes me excited; because this team have already shown what they can do before and if they don't want to spoil some grand surprise they've had cooking up for the past few years that is absolutely grounds for hype; but I just wish we had some fundamental realties about the game revealed to us. For example; is this really a direct sequel? After 'Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity' unveiled a new timeline where the Guardian menace was stopped before it could destroy the kingdom, the possibility has opened up of this being an alternate timeline version of 'Breath of the Wild'; and the fact I've been asking that question for the past few years is slowly chipping away at my sanity.

The evidence seems confusing. For one the initial reveal trailer for 'Tears of the Kingdom' clearly showed off the corpse of Ganon which was nowhere to be seen during 'Breath of the Wild', presumably because in that Timeline Ganon had transcended the need for a physical form and instead involved into some miasma portent of evil. Calamity Ganon was roundly destroyed at the end of BOTW, so I can't imagine he left behind a corpse to be resurrect in timely fashion. Additionally, the title trailer which revealed the new name showed off a wall-scrawled relief history lesson just like BOTW had; only there was no image depicting the Guardian war at all. (But then that in itself is confusing, as the Guardians did still go out of control in the new timeline, they were just stopped. I'd still call that a historical event worth depicting.) And then just as another curve ball, the official cover art for Tears of the Kingdom just dropped, and we can see the swirling evil of Calamity Ganon wrapped around what appears to be Hyrule castle in the background. Just like what we can see in the background of the 'Breath of the Wild' box art, implying these games are retellings of one another.

In one sense this makes me a little sad because I really wanted to see the next part of the story after the destruction of Ganon and the resurrection of the Kingdom. Also, I wanted to move on from the concept of Calamity Ganon which we already explored throughout Breath of the Wild rather conclusively. We saw what he was, the extent of his abilities and the heavenly manifestation of the Goddess that ultimately destroyed him. What more is there really to cover? I wanted there to be a new threat of some unknowable evil, like the darkness of the 'Usurper King', or the mystery of 'Majora'. With all the similarities that 'Tears of the Kingdom' is going to have to it's predecessor, in terms of setting, visual style and gameplay mechanics, it really feels a step too comfortable to literally retell the story of 'Breath of the Wild' but in a different timeline. It would also totally invalidate the events of 'Age of Calamity' to just say "Yeah, but he resurrected and took over the Kingdom anyway; thanks for fighting though!"

But from a raw sense I am interested to see the ways in which 'Tears of the Kingdom' is going to remix the Hyrule that we know in ways we never would have imagined before. Bringing the action into the sky is building upon an already stellar grasp of verticality that 'Breath of the Wild' had to perhaps make air-combat into a key component of the gameplay. We've also seen a much sturdier looking glider for Link to travel the skies atop of, reinforcing this idea of being just at home exploring the floating islands as we are on the ground.  Speaking of which; the ground is apparently still very much within the game for 'Tears of the Kingdom'; and I'm quite curious to see how the landscape is affected by having giant chunks of earth ripped out of the ground and thrown into the sky. And more importantly- I wonder at what might be awoken from the underground by that disturbance...

This time around I really hope that they'll be more life to the Kingdom of Hyrule, now that (assuming the alternate timeline assumption is correct) the Kingdom hasn't had to endure a century of decay and ruin chipping away at society.  Given the longevity of the species of Hyrule, it's fully plausible that all the Champions would be around in person to assist Link on his journey, even if Zelda isn't because she's locked in yet another metaphysical duel with Ganon for the entirety of the game. (That's another reason I wanted a sequel. Playable Zelda would have been so cool...) The main narrative cutscenes of 'Breath of the Wild' all being memory flashbacks created such a barrier between character motivation and player drive that I often didn't even want to uncover the next memory because the story content within would never adequate contextualise the current events I was embarking on. (There were a few modernly-set cutscenes at each Kingdom, and they were much more engaging. I hope for an entire game full of cutscenes like that this time around.)

There's also a new and so far entirely unexplored angle to 'Tears of the Kingdom' in Link's cursed glowing robotic arm. I suspect that from a very mechanical perspective it's merely supposed to act as a substitute for the Sheikah slate from 'Breath of the Wild'; because that slate was originally Zelda's passed onto Link, and if this is an alternate timeline then she never had the chance to pass it to him before she fell into Ganon's death pit, as we saw in the reveal trailer. But I'm curious about the ways the Shiekah arm will empower Link in ways that the Slate didn't. Much of what that Slate could do was taking advantage of the tools of the Switch, (or the Wii U if you were cursed enough to own that version of the game) and now that we're far enough into the Switch's life cycle for the team to divorce themselves from that gimmicky clutch; there's a real opportunity to get creative this time around. Such that I honestly can't figure out the little snippets of power that we're seeing. I think there's a gravitational shift move in the latest trailer; it's hard to pinpoint.

May 2023 is the definitive release date this time around, and Nintendo have agonised so much over getting this date out that I can only assume they have so much confidence in themselves that no more delays are imminent. Of course, that also leaves little room for an information blow out regarding what 'Tears of the Kingdom' has in store, barring the possibility of a huge Zelda-focused Nintendo direct in the early months of 2023. But who can really say when the next Direct is going to show it's face? Those things are rarer than White Whales and just as tricky to predict. Maybe they'll just cold turkey us all so as to save all secrets until release day; current Zelda is probably big enough that they could safely do that. For my sake all I know is thus; this game is getting in my Switch one way or another, I have my money ready, I just need a Nintendo address to throw it at.

Playstation being whiny again

 Sad days... sad days...

It is excessively difficult to feel bad for a company. You know, on account of them being a faceless monolith representative of hundreds to thousands of similarly faceless people in joyless identical suits that sit at desks and do slightly similar vectors of one overall job that they don't quite understand, because no one left in employment really does remember how it all fits together, but we do know that as long as everyone hits 'send' at the end of the day the company appears to stay solvent? (>phew< that was a mouthful!) But I find it even harder to feel bad for a company when the company in question just happens to be Sony, the makers of PlayStation, because how can you feel bad for people who vacuum up as much money money out of the backs of people as they do? Just recently I summarised that they are the secret architects of their own dwindling respect, and now I want to touch on the really elaborate play through which Sony are attempting to try and place themselves as the underdogs in a race they are winning.

First I was to elaborate; PlayStation is the best selling console... of this generation. Of course the Nintendo Switch has been around for much longer, is much cheaper and can actually be found in stores, so that console currently runs dusty rings around PlayStation and Xbox combined; but if we limit ourselves to the current generation then Sony is ahead of Microsoft by actual millions of consoles, it really is no competition. And that is because Sony have dedicated themselves to building a reputation of quality and exclusivity that has benefitted them extensively for years. A successful reputation, mind you. Not like when Ubisoft tries to convince us that they're a 'triple A' company by re-releasing that one game they made ten years ago with another paint job the team spent the past year making all shiny; PlayStation are the lions of the pride when it comes to console gaming. So when they try to play the scrappy small player in the big boy pool, it comes off a tad sanctimonious.

Which is kind of funny because, in a way, they actually are the small boys in this equation. Sony are one of the biggest companies in the world, no doubt; but Microsoft are titans. If Microsoft main ever cared enough to actually devote themselves to it, they could probably systematically destroy Sony simply through financial means. But then they'd up against anti-competition lawsuits and they'd have to pay those fines and that just about makes that unprofitable for the moment. That is literally all that is keeping the Microsoft dogs at bay, a line on a theoretical strategy spreadsheet that currently adds up in the red instead of the black. I figure if I was living under a sharp paw like that, maybe I'd get a little loopy from all the anxiety too. Who can say for sure what they'd say or do until they get trussed up like and presented to their predators like that?

I can tell you what Sony would do. They would whine. Incessantly. We've seen that first hand when it comes to Xbox's purchase of Activision which, whilst it's another big consolidation move in this wide industry of ours, when considering how evil the company of Activision regularly is, I think most normal people  are receptive to the idea of those executives getting some executive oversight of their own. But whereas everyone from the small consumers of the world, to the fellow companies who might be affected by this seismic shift to the landscape of gaming seem content with this movement, Sony are the sole dissenters who stand by their disdain. They complained about it before through the official channels when it came to ratifying the purchase for the various trade commissions of the world, and now they're whining about it in interviews.

Do you know how embarrassing that is? Filing an official complaint is it's own level of demeaning that can at least be justified by the fact that it's an official and painfully dry legal rebuttal document that they could have just safely assumed no one would ever read and a calculated business move when we really break it down. If they can help break up this deal, that'll be a solid win for Sony who can't possibly afford a purchase nearly as big to match the Activision buy out. What you can't beat in the light, can be undermined in the dark. But an interview is made with the expectation that this information is going to be spread, and you have to put out an actual human to pout and stamp their feet over the most inane and eye-rolling topics imaginable as though all their life revolves around maintaining the relationship that PlayStation has had with COD.

For those that don't know, Sony have been freaking out since the Activision purchase that Microsoft would take away COD from other consoles because, you know; that's exactly the kind of scummy move that Sony would have done in an instant if they were in this position. But COD is already licenced to offer PlayStation ports for the next few years, and after that Microsoft have revealed no exclusivity plans whatsoever. Not making COD exclusive would be very much in line with how Microsoft had handled these big genre defining games before, such as with Minecraft. Everybody can still play Minecraft; Microsoft would be the ones taking a financial hit if that were to ever change. But Sony are fearmongering for the worst possible ending because that gives them fuel to argue that this is all 'unconstitutional' or whatever their bloody problem is.

Playstation CEO Jim Ryan revealed that the company had actually conducted talks with Microsoft regarding the expanding future of COD and had actually received an offer, which Microsoft absolutely would not be required to do being the sole owners of Activision. Without going into specifics, Jim then went on to lambast Xbox calling the proposition "Inadequate on so many levels" like a literal entitled valley girl. So let's read between the lines a little here. 'A deal' implies that Microsoft are not, as we suspected, looking to cut off Sony completely from Call of Duty games in the future. And either they're blackmailing them for it's appearance, which sounds very unlikely given the heavy illegal ramifications that would incur if it were to ever come out into the light, or Microsoft are offering some sort of future where Xbox gets first dibs on maps, modes and maybe an exclusive feature here and there, but Playstation still gets its port. I think this is pretty likely, given how this is the exact relationship that Sony maintained with COD for the years before this deal!

That's the bit which gets to me, and the others in the online peanut gallery; Sony would have been ruthless in Microsoft's place at every step of the way. They would have cut off every other console completely cold turkey were it their decision, and they would have squeezed every bit of life out of Microsoft in order to make any sort of crossplay deal, but then they want to turn around and act like the aggrieved party when it suits them? They held their console exclusives back from the PC for years! The aggressively pushed for a ten dollar mark up to current generation games, and they tried to grift a pretty remaster as a full-blown remake under that same scandalous price tag. Everything about the way Sony has gone about business in the past two years has been 'inadequate on so many levels' and they have gall the size of Galactus' testes to try and turn around and say that they're getting raw-dogged simply because Microsoft wants to exercise some mild benefits over a franchise developed by a company they currently own. Get over yourself, Sony. You're making yourself into a mockery.

GTA 6 Leaked... really...

This sucks...

Well screw me. I did not expect to wake up yesterday and learn that the single biggest leak in video game history had occurred just hours before I opened my eyes. I reach back and try to compare this with leaks in the past and all I can think of for comparison is Fallout 4, for which a whole number of small bit clips leaked, but this is something else entirely. Grand Theft Auto is a monolith, and a secretive one, to the point where even when we're told that GTA 6 is in active development, we all fully expected to wait several more years before getting so much as a trailer. Now we've have so much more literally shoved atop of us to the detriment of every fan out there. I say detriment because the size of this leak is huge. Apocalyptically big. I'm talking 90+ videos of in-engine footage alongside, allegedly, the source code. Whenever we get a sizeable leak there's an immediate question about whether or not this is going to effect the development process. Let me tell your right now; this leak already had destroyed GTA 6's. The hacker in question might be trying to make a deal with Rockstar to return his ill gotten gains, but the damage is done- development will be set back by months if we're increadibly lucky. If that Source Code gets sold off like he's threatening; that's going to be years.

So I guess this means we can officially kiss Grand Theft Auto Six goodbye as it's probably not coming until the tailend of this generation all because some hacker thought they'd make a quick buck off the team's hard work. Thank you for nothing, unnamed hacker man. Of course this leak is going to be devastating to the Rockstar team and all that, but if you've been around here long enough you'll likely have picked up on the fact that I'm pretty terminally apathetic. I recognise that I should feel bad for them, and compel myself to act like I do, but my real frustration is with how this is going to effect me. I genuinely imagined playing GTA 6 sometime before 2025, now that's looking like a pipe dream and I am fuming. But you want to know what makes me even more pissed; the fact that the leaks have confirmed this game is everything I hoped it wouldn't be.

Yo; spoilers ahead: dip from this entire blog if you don't want to know anything about Grand Theft Auto 6. So first off I, insanely, need to preface this by saying I'm not looking at the quality of the graphics and bemoaning their ruggedness, because this is clearly early test footage. I was actually fairly surprised about how many decent looking textures the game had before remembering that a lot of them were recycled placeholders from GTA V and that Rockstar is a big enough company where they can be texturing and system building simultaneously. (Hence why the protagonists have faces.) I shouldn't need to say that, but apparently there's some utter geniuses there out on the Internet who are upset about the graphical fidelity of a snippet of leaked test footage. Which is just... I don't even know if professional help can stitch your brain back together if you're that far gone...

So what are my issues? Namely that those leaks from a few months back (the 'rumours' I discussed) were all entirely accurate. And yes, that does mean that some of my disgruntlement is informed by the fact that I rather vehemently denounced and 'debunked' those rumours with what I assumed to be very sound logic at the time. I may have even thrown out a "I'll eat my shoes!" which is going to be quite a feat because my boots are steel-capped. (Yet still surprisingly comfy.) But the other half of my ire comes from the fact I didn't want any of these leaks to be true, because they pointed to probably the most boring sounding direction a new Grand Theft Auto could possibly have gone in! Actually, no the most boring direction would have been if this was set in Liberty City again. At least they didn't do that. That might have killed me off.

Miami. It's set in bloody Miami. Whereas the original Vice City worked so well because Miami was the cocaine capital of America during that 80's time period, I struggle to see what purpose that city's return serves aside from fan service; for those fans who don't quite understand the significance of a Grand Theft Auto setting. Every game is set exactly where it needs to be to exemplify the many satirical stances that game intends to take on the social climate of time period they're riffing. The Gangster-rap dominance of the 1990's bought GTA to their own version of LA, San Andreas, the financial crisis fed on by Wall Street bought GTA back to Liberty City for GTA IV, and the silicon-dream Hollywood glitz of LA bought GTA to Los Santos for GTA V. What are they exploring this time? The bizarre reputation of the deep south alongside the increasingly volatile politicisation of everything in America? Fine targets, if they are, but why do they need to be Miami specific? Honestly; I just wanted to see somewhere wholly new from GTA.

Oh, and the stick-up Bonnie and Clyde couple? They're canon too. Somehow, after two straight games focused on protagonists who specialise in stealing stuff, Rockstar decided that third time is the charm with this new game. Haven't we tired this theme out already? To be fair, these seem to be the single lowest stakes protagonists out of the Van Der Linde Gang and the Townley Terrors (That's what I'm calling the GTA V crew; I think it's got a ring to it.) So we are evolving; only backwards. Oh and the couple protags? Been there, done that. I wonder if the game is going to pit the two of them against each other so that they have to fight to the death at the end? (A Way Out/Splinter Cell: Conviction Co-oP) Or maybe they'll just be emotionally split due to a moral clash that has the two of them at odds until they're forced to come together in order to worm their way out from under the boot of some overarching villain. (Literally the Michael/Trevor dynamic from GTA V!) All of these concepts just seemed to pedestrian, and I expected so much more out of Rockstar. Maybe I expected too much, that's fair. But damn if this set-up fails to get me excited on paper; the marketing team are going to have to put together one blinder of a trailer to turn me around. (If we ever get a trailer after those leaks.)

Rockstar have reacted in typical fashion to bring down the leaks, but either by bad providence or design, the leak itself happened on a Sunday when nobody was working, meaning the leaks had an entire day to spread around the Internet. At this point people are going to be picking through and analysing these leaks no matter what Rockstar want to do about it from a legal standpoint unless they intend to access Arsenal Gear to rewrite the internet's flow of data; they're screwed. And I understand how pissed this is all probably making them. No one wants to show off their unfinished work. Although on the otherhand, personally I find it really interesting to see a huge production mega game like this in such an early stage of production and testing just because we can get a glimpse of the process which these types of big budget games go through. Whenever you get a development documentary you always see the games when they're looking polished with already finished textures plastered over late-test animations, but this is raw; so much so that there's loads of placeholder assets such as Trevor Phillip voice lines over some NPCs (Upon further inspection; I think that's actually the VO of the new male protagonist. He sounds a lot like Trevor when he gets angry).  It's a glimpse into the design process we wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Still, I would have preferred to actually see the game itself pop up in front of me so I can play the damn thing, but this is going to fly in the face of that and screw it up for everyone; so thanks very much mister hacker man. or hacker boy, if the alleged facts about this case hold up any merits. The worst part about this whole thing? We didn't even learn anything that revolutionary about the game. I mean, we know the main character's names now, and where the game is going to be set, but we don't know what Rockstar is going to bring to the table to revolutionise this entry, where the story is going to go, or how this is going to push forward the open world genre. We have a few stolen clips of video that are nowhere near worth the extra 12 months they're going to put onto development, so all-in-all; what a crappy gift to wake up to. It must be Christmas in Britain all over again.