The next Concord

 

Following the smash hit that was Concord- game of the decade- many are wondering what will come next in Jim Ryan's great plan to introduce Live Services' into the conversation when talking about Playstation's commitment to quality. Because yes- whenever a new one of these are announced the marketing statement makes sure to dust off that old gimmick about how these are yet more experiences that can- only be played on Playstation. (And PC, of course- because they'll never say no to a bit of extra money.) We've already seen the mandate for a dozen Live Services straight up get rejected by Naughty Dog, an internal studio big enough to get away with publicly spitting at the hand that feeds them without being ripped apart in retaliation, so we know that the right hand ain't always clapping with the left over at team Playstation- but that doesn't mean the mandate is going to stop.

Afterall we have 'Marathon' coming at some point. The franchise resurrection of an old Bungie title that is said to be the progenitor to the original Halo- a legendary studio to those who's gaming days go back to 1994. (I wonder how many such people still remain at Bungie in the current age?) I'd call that probably the most intriguing of these mandate given the pedigree of the studio involved as well as the prospect of bringing such an antiquated brand back from the dead. But in the meanwhile there are likely to be a few more... Concords to wade through. You know- riffs on other popular brands that feel like they were cobbled together less because someone on the team was struck with a great idea but rather because Sony are footing the bill and that's the kind of cheque you do not turn down. (Oh, and Concord doesn't have that excuse, by the way- they were making that game long before Sony rolled around.)

Jim Ryan doesn't strike me as the kind of executive who is lock-step with his community, but rather the kind of hardhead that has done the numbers and knows that if he sacrifices a dozen studios at a nowhere project that will sacrifice jobs and investor dollars on nowhere ventures- all he needs is one success to cover all the failures. Like a gambler he just can't help but dump quarters in the one-arm bandit because "Next pull baby, that'll be the one! The wife has left me and several different criminal organisations are waiting outside the casino haggling ownership over my various organs- but when I hit it big everything will be solved!" Yeah, how did work out for Adam Sandler in 'Uncut Gems' again? I forget...

Well wouldn't you know it we actually have the next Live Service game lined up and ready to go because it turns out that Sony were already overlapping these projects atop of each other as early as last showcase! That's right- who remembers the competitive heisting game from ex Ubisoft devs? No one because it was revealed with a bloody CGI trailer which is already questionable for a single player game but turns into straight useless for a multiplayer one! It gives us a rough approximation of the art-style and some suppositions on how the team hope the game will play with the tools they provide- I ain't engaging my faculties to analyse someone else's hope-ium!  

Fairgame$ as far as anyone can tell is a punky millennial-coded wet dream of young adults waging audacious heists on the ultra rich whilst... shooting other crews attempting the same heists? (There's a bit of cohesion problem amidst the disenfranchised, it would seem.) To this end these trendy hipster-types are adorned with lightly sci-fi colourful tech like heavy duty ziplines, purple paint loaded carpet sprays and laser refracting shield walls- admittedly decently cool looking tech- slightly hampered by nose-wrinklingly try-hard 'Anonymous'-lite imagery. Kind of like a less pathetic iteration of Watch_Dogs' Dedsec. Same wannabe style- but these guys actually walk the walk.

It's... confused from a messaging angle. Kind of lightly New Saints Row coded with a sliver of originality some might construe as hope, but I would remind them that the original CG trailer for Saints Row didn't look totally awful- we had to wait until gameplay before the real concern started to settle in. This could be a similar case. Also, I don't know what angel swooped down to prevent the script writer for the trailer from penning the dreaded cliche line of "Student Loan debts" but I fear even Metatron itself would struggle to stay their cursed hand for the entire development cycle. I can just smell the 'this is what the young people yearn for!' dripping from the deranged mouths of the scenario writers and it pains me to see these ex-Ubisoft devs carrying the 'uncool' out the door with them.

And the masses seem equally non-plussed. I actually think there's a lot less outward hostility then Concord received, largely because there's clearly a bit more of an original identity to this idea that some are interested to see play out- but I still wouldn't call the general consensus 'positive'. In fact, I'd say people might have just laid off this game because they were preparing to gorge on the carcass of poor Concord- and now that meal is done they very well might turn Fairgame$'s direction with ravenous abandon. The heavily commercial anti-corporate live service game does invite the same sort of mockery in it's conception afterall.

My prediction is that this game will do a lot better than Concord did- simply because there's more of an idea with this game- but it's still under the purview of Sony and Ryan so there's a good chance that any momentum this game might have earned will be crushed under the weight of a 40$ price tag. Unless the game is really unique- that ain't gonna cut it in the modern landscape and seeing as we have yet another giant Live Service style game brewing over the corpse of Concord- Valve's 'Deadlock' with it's 100,000 concurrent players during the unannounced playtest- the amount of room this industry still has for more competitors is squeezing ever-so tighter. I wonder if there's room anymore for anything less than exceptional?

The early access debacle

 

I think if there is one sensation that consuming gamers are most sensitive to, a feeling which we react the strongest against, it would be the inkling that at some point a decision to be lazy was made with the products that we pay money to access. And I think it bears emphasising the monetary investment that gamers commit into these relationships before continuing, just in case the knee-jerk cry of 'entitlement' is made. (Never could understand how that term entered the Game Journalist lexicon so long ago.) And this comes to blows greatly with publishers who long to half-ass everything about the game creation and marketing process to the best of their collective abilities. It's a great game of checks and balances for which both sides are guilty of letting the ball drop every now and then.

One of the more recent slip-ups that I can think of on behalf of us has been the way we've fully allowed the 'Early Access' meta to take hold. Essentially we're talking about situations where brand new games that are entirely finished have their release date held off by a couple of days so that those fresh thirty six hours can be bundled on top of a special edition and sold out. Now that sounds hugely cynical and weak- except for the fact that these publishers know very well how to exploit the audience to get what they want. Maybe you have an audience that would very much like to play this game during the weekend, but you delay the global launch to Wednesday? See the arm twist, watch the ants scramble to their wallets. It's the way of this twisted world.

But it's lazy to try and squeeze extra money out of people like this. Even more lazy than the typical Ubisoft method of cutting out a couple of missions, throwing together a random skin and calling that thirty extra dollars worth of content. You're literally trying to package time away from people. How utterly pathetic. Still, at least it's relatively harmless. I mean- you really have to posses no control over your faculties to really be pushed into spending 1.5 times the price you are usually willing to over a three-day head start for a single player game. And as for the developers themselves this is totally easy money that they would have to be utterly gibbering morons to screw up. Wait... oh, how long until Ubisoft screw this up? Wait- they did already. Didn't they?

That's right! Remember how the formula is supposed to work? You sell the illusion of early access by a few days or even a week to people by really delaying the global launch and letting people pay to access the real launch day. That's how you handle this if you're not a dangerously incompetent buffoon. But what if I told you that Ubisoft- the butt of evolution themselves- actually gave people access to the early unfinished build of Star Wars Outlaw and watched it sincerely bite them in the ass? How could a company be that unbelievably stupid? And what kind of light in this going to end up shining in what I honestly consider to be the industries least destructive modern grift- monetising time?

First off you should know that giving out early access to games ain't anything new. Reviewers are never given completed builds of games but rather get the gold version before the final finishing touches that are stapled onto release via a day one patch. Might not be the ideal 'completionists' way to finish a project but it's the way that modern game design has worked for at least the last ten to fifteen years by now. This period of time between gold and release is a haven for bugs, crashes, optimisation issues and all the other things that journalist have to choose whether or not to include in their reviews as the studio promises all will be right by launch day. This is what you don't let the consumers see. It's less than finished- this isn't viewing ready.

You see where I'm going with this- Ubisoft let customers into this period of time with their expensive early access bundle and in doing so subjected their heaviest spending customers to a litany of bugs and mismatched polish to sour their experience. Ontop of that, they managed to defeat the entire purpose of a 'headstart' by publishing a day one patch so transformative that anyone who did play the game in that window would be required to totally erase that save and start from scratch or else face fatal progression bugs that could and would leave them incapable of finishing the game. Taking back the time that they sold without compensation. Totally ruining the deal. Ubisoft just pulled off a scam of incompetence. How very like them.

Now steps have been made to 'make things right' in the loosest sense of those words. Ubisoft first just handed out a 'sorry' message, before having their arm twisted by the backlash into actually doing something tangible about what was essentially a grift. Now they offer- 100 dollars worth of within ecosystem currency- which is utterly hilarious. Essentially Ubisoft have offered literally nothing up, currency that can only be spent within their digital environment, and are calling that a boon. A mercy. Instead of giving people, oh I don't know, a differential refund? That extra thirty I spent to waste my time would definately look better in my bank account- but oh no- Ubisoft would prefer you spend that on digital cosmetics please! What a total disgrace.

I can only imagine the distrust this will engender towards early access schemes which may even see them shrivel and become less common- which sucks because I honestly don't think this is anywhere near the worst grift trend that the industry has pulled. Taking advantage of the impatient to play a game two days early for twice the price of admission is meaningless to the everyday person and a great way to reel in whales with more money than sense- it takes nothing of value out of the game itself and keeps the ghouls in charge still feeling like their stealing from their customers: which is all they strive for out of life. Leave it up to the utter wases of sentience at Ubisoft to screw it all up by being unfathomably  useless cosmic jokes on humanity.

Mafia, is it?

 

You know, I figured it was weirdly out of the blue that Xbox decided now of all times to throw up the remake of the original Mafia game on Gamepass entirely by it's lonesome. At least do the set, right? But following the Gamescon event and the reveal of the impending new Mafia game on our doorsteps I suppose that was what we call a strategic move. And arguably the first sensible strategic move that Xbox has made all year whilst it swirls around the drain waiting to be sucked down it all. But enough about Xbox, that's not what this is about- I want to talk for a little bit about the underrated franchise known as Mafia- and why it might have actually deserved it's underrated reputation at times whilst absolutely not at others. Sound confusing? We're going in.

So I first came to Mafia the same way that a lot of people my age did- by seeing the free demo for Mafia 2 on the Xbox and playing it to death. This was back when these styles of crime games were all informed by Grand Theft Auto so most of us that were unfamiliar with Mafia 1 just assumed that was exactly what was in store with this game. Open world shenanigans only themed in the 1950's which sounded absolutely awesome to my ears. Couple that with the (for the time) insane graphics that pulled off such craziness as destructible cover! (In a third person game? That was insane!) And we all thought someone was rising to the opportunity to fill the vast void since the last decent Grand Theft Auto. Of course we were naïve, that wasn't what Mafia was and many found it to be disappointing within my age group. I didn't.

I found Mafia 2 to be a compelling narrative based story through the life of an endearing mafioso and his trusty friend as they basically lived out the entirety of that prologue section from Cyberpunk that they shrunk down into a montage right at the beginning- you know, the one where all your friendship with Jackie was presumably supposed to blossom and flourish? In hindsight the game kind of feels like an unofficial adaptation of Goodfellas in parts- but that is no indictment- Goodfellas is a stellar movie! And it takes a lot of gal for a game released at any point to take the pace the narrative needs. It's not afraid to be slow- even boring when it wants to- there's a tale of an entire life of choices and criminality and consequence being explored here. Mafia 2 pulled off a core narrative that really put a lot of contemporaries to shame and I'd argue is an emotional match to some of the best of today. I'd put it just a single rung below the heavy hitters. Maybe a couple more rungs if we take into account the fiddly combat.

It's Mafia 2's example which I think the majority of the fanbase for this franchise leans on, given that Mafia 3 decided to harpoon a lot of that style in favour of going Ubisoft open world. Sacrificing the tightly woven, impeccably based narrative into formulaic objective-based checklisting through which poignant narrative set-pieces desperately struggled to shine. What Mafia 3 achieved in narrative is commendable only for it's existence in an environment seemingly tailer-built to stifle it. Still, it must be some testament to the quality of Mafia 2 that I still held out some hope that something good would come out the franchise.

As for Mafia's Definitive Edition remake- I'm trying to get through it but it hasn't aged all that well in really any regard. It's graphically rather out-of-step, the gameplay is pretty mediocre and the characters are so forgettable I genuinely can't even remember their names let alone tell one apart in a conversation without subtitle indicators. (I think one of them is called 'Paulie', but that's as much stereotyping as it is genuine staying power in the writer.)  Mafia 2 really is the shining beacon of what this franchise could represent in the gaming space- high quality narrative driven faux-historical epics- if they'll only capitalise on that. Except- I guess they can't given that Mafia 3 pretty much took place in the tail end of the age of the Mafia. Even Yakuza had to eventually move on from the Yakuza- but Mafia doesn't really have that staying power...

Oh, but what do you do when you've run out of room to tell your historical fiction franchise? You go backwards of course! Thus is the philosophy that is spawning 'The Old Country' which goes in a somewhat unprecedented direction of taking gamers to Sicily for the first time in any Mafia-starring video game ever. Okay, almost ever- Mafia 2 begins during World War 2 in Sicily- but you get what I'm saying: we've never gotten to experience this culture despite how important it ostensibly is to the veneer of organised crime. Taking us here is indication enough that we're going to do something distinctly different, which is what made Mafia so very interesting before 3 bungled that up by going trend chasing. (The bane of all franchises, it would seem.)

Of course the game has already had it's first controversy where someone trolled the Steam languages and found no listing for Italian and kicked up a stink about it. Hanger 13 have thus clarified that the game will actually feature Sicilian voice acting because- duh. Also apparently there is going to be Italian localisation- but that wasn't what people were upset about. Trust me, the Internet doesn't start kicking up a fuss because an underrepresented portion of the player base won't be getting dubbing. Hopefully this means the English version of the game will have linguistically authentic performances and I won't be stuck with an 'Infinite Wealth' situation of missing all the celebrity voice actors and genuine English speakers speaking English lines because I like the Japanese voices.  

But the point is that Hanger 13 seems to have gotten the message. By all accounts they really want to go back to what makes Mafia special and not what makes Ubisoft money, because they'd never win in that battle anyway. Which might mean we get that proper follow up that Mafia 2 has been waiting oh so long for and I'll be honest in my genuine excitement. There's something I haven't seen before wrapped up in a package I haven't seen enough of- for me that's the perfect formula for reviving a franchise I wasn't sure was going to get another outing.

I find InZOI suspicious

 

The Sims is a tyrant lording itself over the simulation space with frivolous glee. Building itself up and up with countless dozens of DLC that make it downright impossible for anyone to just jump aboard and have a bit of fun nowadays given the several thousand dollar entry fee- unless you start with the base version of the game which is devoid of even the most basic aspects of what made previous Sims games so playable. It is really bloody telling when, upon looking up the price of all DLC in the Sims 4, the first two options are sites freely telling me how to pirate the DLC. Which, considering the game is currently available free-to-play, is essentially a step-by-step guide on how to rob EA. But when the alternative is paying a small fortune to play a complete feeling game- I mean, can I really blame them?

There was apparently something of an ironic stint on the original Sims when it released- finding a way to gameify not the exciting fantasies of the power hungry, but the banal life functions of the basic. They were supposed to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it is told. Any of that disappeared when the concept ended up being a surprise smash hit scoring dozens of sequels and capturing that all-important 'captive audience' that everyone is eager to get when they make new genre types. Now I see the appeal, don't get me wrong. Playing god with the lives of others is always a little thrilling, as is simply guiding a digital avatar to seek a life better than anything you could ever have. Why do you think I'm play Persona? But I think most of us have really seen the Sims lose it's way particularly in 4 which even now feels like an overall step back from three. And it's been actively developed for 10 years! They still ain't caught up!

Three offered a full city simulation where you could simply zoom out of the household and follow some random on the street for several minutes to see what they're up to- loading screens be damned. Sims 4 wanted to pursue this faux-complex conversation and emotion system, however, which made it so that having too many NPCs loaded was simply unfeasible for the engine to handle. Of course, two console generations later that seems like a moot consideration- but given that EA have settled on this being 'the forever Sims' it seems we've lost the scale for good. And in it's place is an increasingly stuffy feeling 'ecosystem'. Yeah, it's not a 'game' anymore. It's an 'ecosystem' from which the team, obviously, can peddle content at your face with abandon.

Which is probably why even though this genre has been enfranchised with The Sims for so long, customers have absolutely no loyalty to EA and welcome all these coming new competitors with open arms. 'Life by You' got round-the-clock coverage for a time, despite looking like an unfinished Unity Asset hog in most of it's marketing, before that game got itself scarified on the chopping block for whatever insular reason which is going to look silly a year from now. And now we have Krafton published InZOI riding up and promising a level of fidelity and customisation that one could only ever dream of under The Sims, all powered under Unreal Engine 5's Metahuman character system that creates near true-to-life models. And it is... suspicious.

See, Sims-style games don't have any competition for a very important reason- they can get absurdly expensive to develop for. Remember that these games don't just scale upwards but outwards too. Every time an new system is developed introducing some kind of gameplay vertical that needs to be designed to work flawlessly with all the other systems already in place, and without in the case of selective DLC picking. It's kind of like the Minecraft problem except at Minecraft they chose the 'solution' of making everything increasingly more complicated to engage with thus ensuring less people would choose to do so. Which is a choice, to be sure. Sims just kind of has to role with the punches and do universal updates every now and then just to keep the ecosystem in tandem.

Krafton is the kind of publisher you need to stand up to them because, well, they have a crap-ton of resources. They are the publishers behind PUBG, afterall, so they can sink a stupid amount of support into digging into the market- even if that in itself does raise my first suspicions. Because afterall- when the barrier to entry is this thick then what exactly does the company hope to recoup from breaching it? Korean games do have a reputation for being absurdly heavy on the monetisation angle to a degree that many Westerners find honestly distasteful and when I see the hyper slick graphics and eye-wateringly ambitious scale I can't help but get Black Desert vibes. And that's not really the kind of comparison you want to be drawing.

I suppose what gets my suspicions up the most is the fact that the game looks like one of those 'too good to be true' situations. The characters are too lifelike looking, the full city simulation is too close to exactly what Sims fans have been asking for over the past 10 years, the ability to apparently scan files off your computer and transmute them into 3D objects in the world is just- heck I don't think I've ever seen a program work that seamlessly. I don't believe it's genuine. I suspect at the very least that NPC interactions are going to be basic and unsatisfying to play about with, the city simulation will in some way compromise on the full-freedom promise offered and the 2D to 3D scanning system will just break down and be a mess. Those are my predictions. We'll tallying up my marks when I get them all right.

But to be honest- I really do hope I'm wrong because damn- I'd really love to play a Sims style game that hooks me as fully as the Sims 3 back in the day. Just as much as I'd love to see a black eye dealt to EA for everything they're putting us through- not least of all the abominable EA launcher which manages to be an utterly cumbersome edition to my computer every year. Though every rational fibre in my body tells me to watch out- the believer in me wants to believe that the perfect Sims competitor is out there and InZOI looks the cleanest of them. But even if that dream does end up falling apart- there is a whole army of other takers swinging for that Sims crown. Here's praying one strikes home!

Deadpool was good

 

I love to be fashionably late to events, it's like my biggest desire as a resident psychopath to be the guy strolling in after the party is over and tasting all the left-over snacks that nobody has even touched because this is a party and people don't eat at parties. (Seriously- no one ever touches the snacks! What's up with that?) Hence was one of the reasons why I waited several weeks before finally going to see Deadpool and Wolverine- second was my belief that Deadpool was an 18 because I heard it got an R Rating- but apparently in England 'R' translates to a 15 which... I'm only just learning now. Guess that says a little something about the way we and America view violence and the effect it has on growing minds, huh? But enough about me, what about the movie? It was good.

I'm sure by now you've experienced some vast exposé on all members of the cast given that in the information age the very second a movie comes out that spoiler embargo expires. Supercuts of the 'best moments' and 'best cameos' have flooded the Internet, memes have spawned, compilations are complied- all before the film has even officially released on home digital. (I wonder if those little scanner things they use in Theatres even work or if it's just a scare tactic at this point- seriously!) Which is why I'm not going to play it coy like I would if this were a brand new game. Plus who cares about spoiling a movie, seriously? They're meant to be spoiled- that's like the entire point! (Why? I don't know but I'm said that now so I guess I have to stick with it.)

I think the Deadpool franchise was on a bit of shaky grounds ever since the second movie didn't quite hit as acutely as the first. That original movie was scrappy to it's very core and that made it absolutely charming beyond belief. Ryan's Pool was a violent, irreverent, mass murderer with the ability to turn literally anything into a joke- making him like this minus-hero, not even an anti-hero, that drove a war of gloriously irreverent immorality that stood out so vastly admits the sea of increasingly homogenous and vapid superhero projects that all espoused the same virtues, portray the same journey and, crucially, had the same sense of humour. Deadpool was a movie that had to struggle to live and be made- which was represented perfectly on screen.

Deadpool 2, on the otherhand, is a strange case. It was visually much more ambitious, they clearly had an insanely bigger budget to work with and spent that building up a powerhouse of a cast. But maybe somewhere within that safety an edge was lost, at the heart of the film. I think it shows best in Deadpool's attitude which for the first time ever comes across at predominately altruistic, rather than begrudgingly or accidentally. He wants to save a kid from becoming a serial killing monster in the future because for some reason he connects with the aussie, whereas in any other instance Deadpool would definitely have just killed the kid. Whilst cracking a joke. There was a horrendously prototypical message about the importance of family that clung to every half second of the film and that just wasn't what Deadpool was about. Deadpool is more about what Deadpool 3 is about. 

Yeah, there's some slight hook about 'family' in order to light a fire under Deadpool's ass within the magic box- but the movie is very upfront from the get-go: this is about the excitement of Deadpool finally getting to join the real continuity of Marvel Movies wherein the things he does can actually 'matter'. In typical Deadpool fashion they are very up front about that- just like the ol' 'Pinky, Elmyria and the Brain' opening lyric "It's what the network wants- so why bother complain!" In that way Deadpool's choice to hang around in order to try and save his dysfunctional family is more allegorical of Ryan Reynold's attempts to try and get the FOX era of Marvel movies to be considered valuable and real and maybe even be tack-ons to that old MCU Machine we're all growing sick and tired of.

A common complaint of modern Marvel which makes no sense to me is people's fatigue with Multiverses, for which this movie relies on heavily. I am confused because no one seems able to voice a genuine critique as to why they are objectively bad as a storytelling framework. The go-to is 'well there's no stakes because you can do anything to someone from one universe and they'll come back as a different version of themselves." My challenge is this- literally when has that ever actually happened in a film? It's a common problem with the comics, but the only film that has attempted anything remotely close to that would be Guardians of the Galaxy 3 wherein the resurrection of Gomora is a chief talking point. The only real critique I've seen is that they are overdone to a poor degree- to which I find Deadpool to be rather decent salve to.

Getting to experience all the oodles of cameos tucked away in this movie fresh was a fantastic showcase of the potential of these kinds of stories done right. Of course, assisted somewhat by the meta-leaning of this movie that allowed a lot of leeway in exactly what they could pull and why there are doing it- which for me is really the crux of a Deadpool film. When you get stuck too staunchly on the meat of the movie and the grounded terrestrial stakes of film, those secondary aspects of the film, then you'd be forgiven in not having as good of a time- but that takes a wanton rejection of the very heart of the film in order to achieve. Judge the film for everything it isn't and all you'll see are the mistakes- the clumsy story, the hand-waving plot points, the bizarre interactions- let yourself go with the film and I'd consider this one of the best Marvel movies in their entire line-up.

So it's safe to say that I like Deadpool and Wolverine and as a cap-off for the franchise I think they did a mighty good job settling everything down in a way that I don't think the FOX universe was capable of or even deserved in a lot of respects.  But it's always nice to see someone who holds the utmost respect for something demonstrate the admiration even if you don't full comprehend it yourself. And that's what the movie was, a love letter to a long-departed ex who left your goldfish without food before going off on holiday. Which is to say that I thought the movie was downright marvellous. Such a shame about the next one being Venom 3. Thanks for that, Sony.

The Virtual Halt

 

Within the vast of world of art mediums gaming is still relatively new in consideration. Interactive media lacks the long centuries of growth and maturity and thus remains decently volatile in the way it evolves and adapts- couple that with the hyper connected age of the 2000's where styles adapt and change rapidly and it can feel like entire ages of art shift overnight were once they would last at least a couple generations of human life. It can make what would otherwise be a failed moment in the evolution of art into a mere flash in a quickly forgotten pan. And it was only really recently when I was reminded of once such promising branch which has, once again, found itself largely overshadowed in the modern world of grasping innovation- Virtual Reality.

When first we touched on this concept there was no doubt that the world was in no way ready for the promise of what VR could provide- just from a technological level the Red Scan-lines of the Virtual Boy were better for little more than a tech demo than really creating a unique interactable world space. The 'Virtual Boy' better realised the promise of 3d animation than actual full-immersive play. But throughout the years there have been several pokes at trying to get VR off the ground once again as technology has progressed and honestly I thought the latest one might have been it, what with the actual promise finally reaching fruition, but still some nagging hang-ups slip in the way between mass adoption and mass development.

With the announcement of a VR version of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas I- well to be honest I did absolutely nothing because I don't remember hearing about that at all. The first I heard was when the thing was put on indefinite hold just a few days ago- (officially, I'm sure it was internally on the back bench for a while before IGN came poking.) which was when I really started to realise what a back foot the VR world is somehow back on again. I mean sure- "why would you want a VR version of a blocky 2004 world anyway- sounds like 'motion sickness the game!'" but on the otherhand why not just make the VR version of one of the most legendary entries to the biggest game franchise on the world? Isn't that a licence to print money? Unless... unless it isn't.

Because even in this enlightened age of ours- VR just really isn't a player within the space like it wants to be. Certainly doesn't help that the world underwent a financial downturn at the start of this new VR age, which considerably lowered public tolerance for trying out expensive new technological toys they may or may not like. But whatever the overall cause the result is that we are once again in the exact same holding pattern. People aren't buying up these headsets like they should be meaning developers aren't dedicating themselves to as bustling an audience as they want which means they need to be significantly more picky about where they sink their development funds. Is the public really going to flock to a VR version of San Andreas just 'for the nostalgia'? 

And whilst we're on 'costs'- VR games aren't getting any cheaper to make now are they? Well, on that point I don't suppose any game is going down in costs as we approach the new age- but there seems to be something excessively pricey about VR endeavours. Remember the ill-fated Metaverse project that Facebook was on for a while? A crappy social meeting space that ended up going nowhere because they were developing it for an audience that didn't exist? Yeah- that cost Facebook literally into the billions before they were forced to pull back on it. Billions that resulted in totally forgettable crap over-stuffed with sponsorship nonsense that pales in comparison to what Fortnite managed to pull off within a shorter time frame. And that's not exactly uncommon.

Well the 'billion dollar' development price tag might be uncommon- but ballooned budgets for VR games are just a headache. Whether it's because of how finicky this technology is, or how relatively new it is to the world requiring total invention to mimic relatively simple non-VR game styles, or maybe just the lack of accessible tools for the aspiring developer- whatever the case you won't see an indie rocking up to this space anytime soon and that should be pretty telling. Right now VR is practically ruled by a handful of studios who have pretty much primed themselves to deliver only VR related stuff for the foreseeable future and whilst that gives them pretty much the run of the audience, it's also a damning condemnation of the viability of this sector of the market.

San Andreas VR is an actual project that got officially halted- but how many others died in the pitch room because of the simple costs involved and the lack of prospective return at the end of it all? There really doesn't feel like a serious contingent of VR centric purists out there- honestly even the Stadia stans were more outspoken during their brief foray into utmost delusion. Virtual Reality might just have hit the ceiling once again and this time I couldn't really say what the problem is. Perhaps standardisation of the technology is key, putting it in as many households as possible, getting cheaper alternatives on the market- then developing killer apps can be seen as a worthwhile pursuit for teams out there. But how really realistic is that?

I like the idea of VR. I think it's a promising field especially for gaming, what with the way we can revolutionise experiencing immersion within such a field. Half Life managed to create an awesome little adventure using all of that- and I don't think they were using the absolute limits of what was possible to do so. But until a little bit of a reality check is visited on this studio- and someone enters the market with more an interest in VR on a hardware front, we're going to see the gap widen between ordinary gamers and the tiny VR niche. Maybe we need another manufacture to enter the ring and shake things up. Hey, I hear Xbox might need a new gig after they're done screwing up their console market!

The Dying Light condundrum

 

You know, I think that Zombie games get a bad wrap. I know, that's quite the left-field take coming from me- guy who has played so many Zombie games he pen the write up for a fresh cast in his sleep. A year ago I was sick to death of a genre I thought had absolutely nowhere to go which had totally dried up all goodwill across it's lifetime. And whilst I still don't know how I feel about the entirety of the genre given that a lot of it is very derivative and uninspired- since then I've played Dead Island 2 and was reminded what made this concept fun. Squashing zombies can be a blast when wrapped up in a game that allows you to get creative with it. That was what made the Dead Rising games such a hit back in the day, afterall. I suppose in that light, there's still something in these here games.

Of course if you ask genre aficionados they aren't going to mention 'Dead Island', at least not at first. (I'm actually not sure how they largely feel about 2- I suspect they like it, it was a decent enough game.) They're going to tell you the name of the cult hit that has an almost 'New Vegas' style reputation amidst their ranks. You know, the kind of "Yeah, those other games are great but you should really play 'X'"- you know the type. Dying Light is the 'Game X' of this example and through that title which combined free running with zombies in a largely non-comedic setting people found themselves totally enraptured with the zombie experience all over again. Largely because of how the game managed to recontextualise player's relationships with zombies.

Before zombies were kind of like playthings you'd find on a children's playground. Malleable, unthreatening and easily disposable. Even Dead Island and Left 4 Dead had to get creative to insist on taking these monsters serious once and a while- and in doing so created the exact same dozen architypes  that every Zombie game has copied for the rest of time. Dead Island brough a very new kind of creature with the Volatile- a monster that would hunt you- and built the entire reputation of the game around the dangerous threat they posed as agile nocturnal predators that would pull up off rooftops and rip you to shreds. And it worked- people found zombies scary again and credited Dying Light for that revelation which is where the undying love started.

But just as with New Vegas- when you hit that level which fans consider a 'Masterpiece' you better bet they're going to compare everything that follows with a fine-comb of critical analysis. See where I'm going with this? Dying Light 2 does not share the same glowing praise that the first game received. In fact- it's kind of seen as a disgrace to the name. Why? Lots of reasons both big and small. Some are annoyed about the teased gun that never made it the full game, (guns were introduced much later during the extended post-release support that Techland have become renowned for) some found the story and characters to be a pale shadow of the original game's, (Can't speak to that myself, I'm still trucking through the first game myself) and lastly- they took all the danger out of the zombies. Even the volatiles. (Yeah, I can see why that would piss some people off.)

So Dying Light is a franchise of two contradicting halves. One of rampant hero worship and rapid dogging from both sides of the series and I'm fascinated which beast will take hold in the upcoming title that seems to be a full follow-up game? Only they're calling it a 'stand alone' which makes it sound like spun-off DLC for Dying Light 2? I don't really know what they're driving at, it's a confusing conundrum. But at the very least a big piece of nostalgia bait was thrown the way of Dying Light by ensuring this new game would star non other than Roger Craig Smith himself- I mean 'Kyle Crane'. Same guy in my head.

As the story goes per Techland's Gameindustry.biz interview- all of this did exist in the past as a DLC that was coming to Dying Light 2. In fact this was going to be the second DLC pack for the game all the way up until a heavy leak basically spilled all the details about it out to the fans. (Just goes to show how many data breaches we've had in recent years- I didn't even hear about this one!) Techland decided to rework what they had and commit to something they consider to be not Dying Light 3 or a DLC- but a smaller standalone title. (I just wonder if the price will reflect that approach given that these games are typically years long support projects for Technland...)

Curiously Techland took this as a moment to talk about their philopshy for Game Design a little bit- and given how intimately in step with their fandom that company is- their thoughts are always actually worth listening to above typical corporate drivel. The franchise director verbalised genuine concerns about how the industry standard is mired in "inertia" with lusting after retention time and "play hours". To his mind, the future of the industry lies in smaller titles. And I... actually really do vibe with that sentiment. I mean don't get me wrong- the occasional blockbuster rocker is a must- but you can't make every studio a non-stop blockbuster producer and I think we're really starting to see why in recent years.

These big games that take the better part of a decade to make always end up rocking to the party after everyone has gone home, missing the point and the trend in their way. Sorry Fallout 76, Survival Games went out of fashion three years ago. Too bad, Suicide Squad- Live Services' are cringe now. Uh oh, Concord- we've seen enough hero shooters to last a life time. And those others were free-to-play. Dying Light is choosing the direction of quicker turn around shooter games that can easier stay at the pulse of the industry and I have to be honest- that makes a lot of sense. Maybe trendsetting should be left to the trendsetters?

Indiana Jones and the console wars

 

So with the rapid coming of the new Indiana Jones game, we have a lot of uncomfortable confrontations to... well... confront given the very apparent nature of what the game represents and how Xbox studios are choosing to handle it. All that without even mentioning my trepidations about the game itself and how actually good it will be considering the absolute rafters that Machine Games are known to usually be shooting for- I want it to be good, but I'm not getting those sparks of wonderous excitement. I have a feeling that next years Indiana Jones is going to end up as yet another Xbox first party studio that is smothered so far under controversy that the wider and more pertinent conversations are lost until the next age wherein we look back unburdened by the politics of the time. Can't wait for the "Starfield was actually pretty good" video essays in a couple of years- like clockwork.

Firstly, I don't think Indiana Jones looks like a bad game. This isn't a Ubisoft scenario where we're observing the team struggle against their own innate mediocrity to make something that isn't total bloated hogwash- Machine Games are respectable developer with an impressive cattle in their yard. Farm yard? (Stop letting me use metaphors, I'm terrible at them.) The modern Wolfenstein games propelled that boomer shooter into one of the most fun alternative history dramatic bullet-rain games on the market- and though they're made some curious steps in that franchise recently- ('New Blood' was a choice to be sure) no one dares doubt their pedigree. Plus, rumour has it they've had plenty of time to make the game so we're not going to stumble upon a Cyberpunk at launch debacle. Hopefully.

But it's hard to shake the feeling that this Indiana Jones game isn't quiet seizing an identity all of it's own- at least from the previews. When we heard that Jones would be getting the Machines Games treatment there was off-hand joke about "Oh what, are they going to turn the game into a first person shooter with a fedora on top". and whilst that might have been conceived as facetious... umm... yeah, that really does seem to be what they're doing. Only this looks slower and clunkier than Wolfenstein, with bizarre leaps between first and third person so that you can watch Indie swing with his whip or climb down a ladder? Nah, that hybrid stuff doesn't work. Pick one of or the other, it looks goofy otherwise!

Add to that initial unease that fact that Machine Games appear deeply insecure about the choice to go first person for one of the most iconic characters in movie history and keep trying to justify it whenever they open their mouths. They even had Troy Baker insist how immersive and quintessential it was in the latest trailer- how about letting the game talk for itself? (Ya'll ain't scared of that, are ya?) I'm just not sure if this game is going to sit right in the hands of the players- which is a shame in a studio that were once so very good at gamefeel. Maybe that's what makes them so conscious of it in the public limelight? We'll have to see. Besides, arguably the more substantive story here relates to the publishing plans for this highly marketed Microsoft first party title.

It's coming to Playstation. Tucked away to no fanfare at the end of this trailer was the realisation that this game would be launching on all platforms seemingly without even so much as an exclusivity date. Which means that in this console war of ours, within which Hardware specifications have grown so insular that only exclusives count for anything anymore, Xbox has fully dropped the ball on exclusivity without gaining literally anything in return- essentially murdering the last reason anyone has to own an Xbox over a Playstation. At the very least they could have held this release over Sony's head to try and twist their arm into an exclusive port of something. The Final Fantasy VII Remake, God of War, Horizion Zero Dawn- literally anything. Instead- they've given all the rest of the ground that they have.

Xbox is hurting right now, but only in the sense that exists in the punishment rooms of perverted executives. Microsoft is not on-the-dole, they aren't struggling to pay their staff, they aren't even worrying about being able to afford their next mutli-billion acquisition- they are Microsoft. But just like separate law enforcement agencies in a cop drama- that all around strength is not shared with every branch of Microsoft. Sure Xbox exists under them but if Xbox has had a few shaky years, like they have, then Microsoft have no trouble treating them like a particularly disobedient plague-dog who peed on the carpet. And like a self fulfilling prophecy this flagellation of a company that had the sheer gall to exist during an international global financial downturn is now feeding into terribly regressive practices that further stunt the studio.

Sony, on the otherhand, are growing fat and careless on the failures of their biggest competitor- to the point where they don't even consider Xbox to be their chief competitor anymore and are now setting sights on- I dunno, the entire PC market? (Certainly feels that way.) It truly is horrific when Xbox lack faith enough in the size of their own userbase that they're pimping out a first party game to Playstation in order to make a profit- seemingly ratifying the odious Sony sentiment that they are 'The best place to play.' What's next? Are we going to see a Starfield port to Playstation as many have already speculated? Is the next Halo going to go limping over to the blue-side with their DMR between their legs? Are Xbox going to retire as a console company altogether? (They better bloody not!)

Downplay it though they might Indiana Jones is shaping up to be a battlegrounds that is surely going to overshadow the efforts of the team and it's because Microsoft can't get their damned self-competitive crap in check. Although that is the nature of the corporate world, is it not? Bite down and gorge on your own tail until you reach the point of hurting yourself, and then keep going into you go up like a raging inferno of stupid choices. And while we're at it, screw Xbox for getting themselves in this position to begin with, and screw Sony for goading on the collapse of the console market as though losing Xbox wouldn't shudder the ground beneath them too. God, I hate this industry sometimes.

Deciphering Amazon's indecipherable

 

So when I woke up I found myself assailed by a quote that is probably going to haunt me for at least the next week as I try to make sense of it- a new bizarre comment made for the SAG-AFTRA strikes. Let me do a little bring-up-to-speed for us all. With the rise of very simplified AI models that are able to clone and mimic many arts, albeit poorly, the wavering axe over the head of actual artists livelihoods have sent many alarm bells ringing. I mean sure- it'll be a long while before AI starts gunning for script-writer positions- but we've already seen multimillion dollar Disney productions employ AI art under deeply questionable reasonings. And when we go to AI mimicking voices of other actors- that is scarily accurate from the sound font at least. And stupidly accessible for anyone. Which is of extreme concern particularly in the world of voice actors.

Already Voice Acting is not really a profession you go into in order to become a millionaire. It's gruelling gig-work where you'll likely subsist hand-to-mouth with a second job just to keep the lights on- these are people in it for the passion of the craft. The threat of AI is two fold in that regard. On one hand it would be all too easy, should these practices become accepted, for a studio to bring in an actor for a single session and then clone their voice to throw over the rest of the game. Sure, that performance is going to lack soul, personality and drive- but some companies don't care about that. Some companies are looking for that. (Embark Studios will never not make me confused with that stance.) And on the otherhand- even should we reach a place were actors will be paid the price of all their prospective sessions just for the privilege of the initial clone: why would they- these guys are in the job so that they can act. They want to act. This takes the fun out of the job even in the best case scenario. It's just literally water on oil- they don't mix!

The Screen Actors Guild are therefore striking in order to hopefully establish protections in place that will keep voice actors in games safe- which is certainly required given the sheer amount of actual desiccated corporate ghouls that loom about the industry huffing copium about every hairbrained money making scam that wafts under their nose. Actual promising technology that works (as opposed to the hilarious NFT rabbit hole that some are still falling down) is wont to make them forget how to act. That is- how to act like genuine living morsels and not refuse feasting crustaceous barnacles latched to the rotted hulls of otherwise soaring creative ventures. Garbage munching minuscule cretins that gorge far more than they could ever clean. Loathsome Dungeaters. Yeah, I like that last one.

Now we're up to date lets get back to this quote that has just been doing somersaults around my head like a pinball wrecking up a machine. For pinballs. Just listen. So the Boss of Amazon Game Studios had himself a little interview- and typically when quotes from an Interview are making it into the headline- that's a bad thing. You want people to not find your quotes so crazy they market it to bring in readers. Ideally. Now our Amazon Game Studios is still fledgling in the grand scheme of the industry and I'm trying desperately to colour his comments through that lens- even though I'm pretty sure the entire studio is built on the backs of otherwise veterans- there's a veneer of newness I'm pretending to coat my eyes with for their benefit- but it's difficult to keep up.

You see, things were already going downhill when the SAG strikes were brought up to begin with because Amazon have a hilariously contentious history with unions and their action- to the point where I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Jeff Bezos is trying to revive the modern day Pinkertons- the absolute creep. When you find yourself in the position of a Boss role for a giant subsidiary of an even bigger company that deals with Unions it really behoves you to have a stronger acid reflex then 'Woah buddy, don't really know about all that!' And yet in the face of SAG's strike that is was our Boss man pretty much said. (Not exactly said, this is a summation- keep up.) "I've got to be careful" he says, "I don't really want to get in the middle of it." Says the boss of a game studio in a conversation about game actors striking. (There is a quote about Power and Responsibility somewhere out there, I just know it!)

Now the offending line that lives in my psyche? "When we talk about AI, first of all, hopefully it will help us to have new gameplay ideas, which has nothing to do with taking work away from anyone." Typical non-committal positivity with a little bit of pushback against the naysayers- unambitious. "And especially for games, we don't really have acting." Umm... yeah, that's what you call an oopsie. Essentially what we have hear is the man extolling the virtues of AI because he thinks it will only speed up the development process- which actually has nothing to do with the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) strikes, which was literally the lead-in to this response, but go easy on the man: with an IQ like that I'm assuming he's struggling to breath and talk at the same time- this is really impressive for him! But then he waves away the strikers because. "For games, we don't really have acting."

Now true to themselves, most Games Journalists have immediately gone bad faith with this by assuming he's discrediting all video game acting as non-existent and are thus pushing back by noting all the incredible acting performances from modern games. I'm not kicking down- I recognise that he's clearly talking about Amazon Game Studios specifically- but here's the thing: the comment doesn't make sense there either! Their biggest current game, the MMO New World, does have voice acting: the game even bent itself over backwards to make sure the entire starting area is voiced- which is rare for any MMO. But the way Boss-man is talking he seems to doubt the relevance of voice work in a largely online game as inconsequential because why? It's not a story driven linear game? Every angle of art that goes into making a blockbuster, no matter the genre or focus, has to be executed to incredible standards in order to feel natural and melt into the pot of the whole product. A simple observer should never even think of the voice acting, or the music, because it should fit naturally to their ears and feel real. But someone involved in the creation process- heck the studio head- it's the height of incompetence to not know that!

So the single most charitable take away I can make from these comments is that Boss man got the company mandate to try and discredit the strikes when appropriate, and that order got mangled in the half-chewed cage he lamentably calls a brain and dribbled out as this eye-roll of a statement. A beacon for the Strikers to point at- ammunition towards how little the industry bottom-munchers respect their work and how willing they are to welcome in the AI workflow to cut them out of the equation. Great job, nitwit, you've played yourself! Sometimes I truly do wonder about the world, and if these are the kinds of people who crawl to the top of the pack- what does that say about the rest of us? What does that say about the pack as it is? God, I didn't expect some lickspittle from Amazon Game Studios to hit with a damn existential crisis...

Will GTA VI dissapoint?

 

With a recent leak it would seem that Grand Theft Auto VI might, if we are to believe what is an unverified espousing of finances which I would take with an extreme grain of salt given the popularity of the brand in question and it's penchant for drumming up fake attention, have cost 2 billion to develop. Now I question that figure merely because I heard something in the ball-park of 3 billion. But the point is, we're looking at one of the most expensively developed pieces of art in history- actually, upon saying that I'm reflecting on whether I need to be so conservative about that statement. And considering the most expensive movie to make doesn't even cross the budget of the original Destiny game, I actually think that GTA VI might be the single most expensive product ever produced in the world of art- wow, that is quite the legacy to live to, is it not? I wonder how they'll fair.

Rockstar really is that studio at the end of the day. The people who's job it is to stab at the rump of the industry when its getting a little complacent in order to jar it forward. They don't always drag the industry forward by dragging the bar further than it has ever been on all accounts, sometimes there are games that are prettier or play sharper, but Rockstar always set the floor. Their general rising of the tide means that whatever their games achieve generally becomes the limited-barrier to entry that every single proceeding AAA game is expected to hit- Which itself can be a jarring shift for those around them. And thus, as vangaurds of expectation, Grand Theft Auto is expected to change the world and stun the audience just a little bit with every new game. Especially when that game has taken more than a decade to come into fruition!

After all, that has been the single longest stretch of time that any previous Rockstar game has taken- to such a degree that even the producers have acknowledged that issue and the general need to cut down on development time for future games. (Which opens the door for AI development taking the place of actual development jobs but that's a whole other kettle of fish right now.) But what is really the reason for games that have bigger budgets and bigger studios taking longer and becoming more expensive? Well that's actually a complex mixture of factors. There's the general rule that the scaling of teams makes development slower as every avenue of development needs to be taking into account, the rising of the tide which pushes expectations for the trend-setters to be the best they can possibly be at all times. And, of course, the bottlenecking of improvement. 

Back in the day, when you needed to up the quality of  a game's visuals the goal was very clear- to reach ever closer to fidelity. Make a game look more realistic, create more convincing faces that can emote better, separate fingers so they can be used in cutscenes, match skin tones better, achieve more realistic lighting and reflections. But we've been scratching at the ceiling of that particular pursuit for a couple of generations right now. There isn't much further to go and revelations that do happen don't feel as stark as they used to. The same goes for gameplay innovations. We've pretty much figured out how to make an action adventure game feel good. How to make shooting feel responsive. Rockstar alone have a decent formula on how to make open worlds pop off and feel alive. What else is there to really innovate upon?

It's within that train of thought we find ourselves locked in the recent thought experiment of "will people be disappointed by Grand Theft Auto VI". To which the answer is yes, there are always idiots who expect the game to be exactly like their ill-formed wet dreams of a perfect game and whine when it isn't, comparing the product to a half-digested orgasmic fantasy they assume they are entitled to for whatever reason- that has been a thing since the dawn of ego. What I'm really asking is if real people, with functioning frontal cortex's, find the offering enough of a step forward to justify this extended development window- can those ten years truly show on the face of the product once we get it? Or at the former developers right on the money?

In particular the former studio developer in question, Obbe Vermeji, seems to believe that there's a good chance GTA VI will feel similar enough to GTA V not to illicit that feeling of overwhelming 'newness' that people are searching for and- yeah, I can definitely see that. Red Dead Redemption 2 did benefit from a very different way of playing to previous Rockstar games but was due to a rather drastic shift in design philosophy that not everyone was a fan of when it was all said and done. I'll always prefer a game that tries something new and different rather than a sequel that attempts to hit all the same beats as the last game- but some people just want that same meal they already enjoyed again. Only this time wrapped up in a different package- and that ultimately leads to a conflict wherein you won't make everyone happy. It's just a matter of what will make the most people happy.

The further question I've seen brought up is whether or not the recent news about the budget of the game is proof that Grand Theft Auto is too big to experiment. Remember that many of gaming's biggest properties are shackled by their budget which precludes the promotion of anything that isn't proven to be a success- is that what will effect GTA? Although I think that particular possibility disregards the reality of Grand Theft Auto as a brand. Rockstar don't follow brand trends. Rockstar have never needed to follow Brand Trends. They are the trend. Whatever they make people will flock too- their experiments become the industry standard simply for having been made. For Rockstar alone, I don't think they need to worry about daring to be different. If they want to have a yoga minigame, but god they'll put one in!

Whatever happens, Grand Theft Auto VI is going to a cultural touchstone- that's already set in stone. Rockstar could sink the entire GDP of a small nation into developing this game (and according to these leaks- they actually have already trounced eighteen of the smallest worldwide GDP's already) and it would still cause a profit. At this point they just need to maintain their position at the top of the pack- and I just hope it's proven they can still do that with traditional sales and not by whoring out the online service. In that light, such transient properties as 'disappointment' and 'revolution on the brand' are meaningless in the face of a capitalistic machine that simply cannot be stopped. As cheery and happy as that sounds.

The commodificaiton of Baldur's Gate

 

I've got a bit of controversial one for ya- I like Baldur's Gate 3. I know, wild one. And the thing is- so do a lot of people across the world who have found themselves brought closer to the ludicrously giant brand of Dungeons and Dragons through it's rampant and raging success. Larian took the licence for the property, through a hefty fee, and went off practically on their own to create what would come to be known as a studio defining masterpiece, as a follow-up to their last studio defining masterpiece. Baldur's Gate 3 shouldn't have happened, by the natural laws of reality, and though I'm glad it did I think we all await for the elastic band to snap back into place and return reality to the masses. That band being the fact that the owners of Dnd are currently a bunch of weird little gremlins that delight in squeezing as much blood out of property as humanely possible- and Larian handily just gave them the keys to the Baldur's Gate engine.

Besides the perfect gameplay and gorgeously expansive story with layer upon layer creating opportunity for players to craft such personal stories that until a few weeks ago one of the origin companion specific player endings had been viewed a grand total of thirteen times- (That is insanely rare, good god!)- what makes Baldur's Gate is really it's cast. Iconic characters all, those faces and personalities seem to wiggle perfectly into the hearts and minds of players through the way they grow close or further apart in step with the adventure in a manner that feels truly authentic and not in rhythm to the comparatively lethargic Bioware shuffle which I very much suspect we're going to get an example of in the coming months through Inquisition. (A chance to see just how great of a job Baldur's Gate did. Prepare for the unfavourable comparisons.) 

So how do those two facts coincide? Simple. If you are the owners of DnD and you're looking to create an easily manipulated mascot for the current new life of Dnd- what do you use? That used to be Drizzt and his gang of ever-suffering friends; but they've kind of grown ridiculously over-exposed across the years. What we need are some newer, fresher, faces that still kick with an 'oomph' factor that those old hats don't. More modern, more metrosexual, more appealing. Maybe take characters that were left in the hands of community and just, you know, pluck them back out of those 'uncouth' hands to dance a bit more for their newer, less artistically inclined, masters? All for the delight of an audience only very slowly coming to terms with how the characters they love are slowly being turned into commodities. 

But what is a commodity and how does that differ from the characters we know? Well, I suppose it's this kind of vapid image of brand engagement wherein people are drawn in by the faces they are extrapolated as interest within the containing brand and thus those images are utilised as fly traps to draw attention where it best suits the broader company interests. Need people to be more interested in you DnD edition coming out? Why not print of the image of the Baldur's Gate team on the front cover and make believe there's any real connection there? Need to pump up the existence of your printing label? Baldur's Gate 3 comic series, on the way! Animated shorts? Never say never! But within all of that the spark that made them special will slowly, inevitably, diminish.

Characters are driven by inexorable purpose and drive. We follow people who are on a journey that changes and moulds them, which made the Baldur's Gate 3 cast so an interesting group to manipulate and watch reshape across an entire playthrough. But icons, which are what DnD main are looking far, can't really be dynamic, can they? You can't really make adventures about Ascended Astarion the tyrannical vampire dictator trapped in a corrupted cycle of fruitless vengeance, or burned-out Karlach, or recently-suicided Lae'zel. Nah, they need those characters captured perpetually within their perceived primes! Trapped within a glass jar to be viewed like a model on a museum plinth. Pretty. Complacent. Non-living.

For the time being it is fun to see these characters persist past Baldur's Gate 3 and live in the hearts of the actors who helped bring them to life. Neil Newbon in particular seems protective over Astarion for the amount of his heart and soul he imbued into that story and as long as they are combined together at the hip I have some belief the character won't be bastardized. But that's kind of the thing, isn't it? These characters won't be joined with their actors forever- not when the cast start to move on to newer roles. And then what? Larian have given them to Wizards- no one with respect to how these characters are and what they represent will be left safegaurding them and they'll be free to be turned into marketing machines from that point onwards.

What really scares me is what they're going to do with the property next in terms of a follow-up, because there is a non-zero chance that Dnd are currently receiving a plethora of offers to work on a new Baldur's Gate game and I'm no so certain they're going to be turning away unsatisfying attempts. BG3 had to be earned by Larian, but right now Wizards have themselves a deficit of player trust with is being bridged by a successful movie and an even more successful game- I'm pretty sure standards within in the face of hard reality. Will we get a follow-up game utilising this same cast of characters outside the control of Larian? And will such a sequel go the extra mile to take into account the branching web of possibility that makes up Baldur's Gate 3?

Honestly I do want there to be a Baldur's Gate 4- and I think there's enough left over story for it to follow this same cast of characters. And in that light, given that Larian aren't going to be the one's on the helm, I can kinda justify the proliferation of these characters in order to keep them in the hearts and minds of the community. Better that then to let them fade entirely from the zeitgeist. But only if it's going somewhere significant and these aren't just desperate corporate marketing plans to try and robotocize the very living and breathing hearts of the Baldur's Gate 3 game. I just want a bit of respect on the game that brought Baldur's Gate back to the forefront of gaming- pretty please?

The day Paul died.

 

Peter Parker. What a trainwreck. I mean honestly- just an L of a human. My man get's all the powers he could ever want- I'm talking unbelievable, reality shaping, abilities. I'm not even on his super strength or the ability to stick to walls- I just mean that Spider-Sense stuff. That is literally the power of precognition derived form a horrendously shaky assumption on how arachnids avoid getting squished. Man can sense the actual future before it happens and the sense can even, on occasion, reason out potential harmful outcomes of seemingly mundane activities and ward Peter off it. That is a god tear ability. And still my man can't balance his check book, can't keep a relationship straight and can't be anything more than a disappointment to Aunt May. I mean seriously.

I'm not saying that Peter has to go around robbing banks, but maybe browse the stock market a bit? I'm pretty sure Spidey Sense can figure out stock options. Maybe with a bit more sustainability around his life the man would be able to keep a single romantic partner down whether that be Gwen Stacy, (who he accidentally killed) Felica Hardy, (who's dialogue options he regularly flubs) Kitty Pryde (Can't believe they ever were together, literally have no idea what that relationship was about) Kamala Khan (Okay that was Miles, I'm cheating now.) Michelle Jones (He annoyed a wizard until he erased his existence from her mind) And of course Mary Jane. Although I think what happened to Mary Jane might have been the absolute worst flub Spidey ever did. 

You probably know the story if you know literally the first thing about modern Spiderman, but I love to tell a story so bare with me. Imagine this- the Devil pops up and asks you for a deal. Why? Because your ancient aunt was shot by a bullet that was meant for you and was going to die. Spiderman, who apparently was not coming to terms with the fact that even sans-bullet the old girl was probably going to sunset in a winter or so anyway, decides screw it and erases his marriage with Mary Jane from existence including their unborn child who I can only assume was going to Spidergirl, Mayday Parker. Why? Because one conservative-ass Spiderman writer was getting scared at the prospect of having to come up with new situations for a sixty year old character and just wanted to hit the old reset switch and go back to the good old days where Peter was a bachelor struggling to pay rent out of his two-bit apartment. I dunno, maybe that's more relatable. Sure.

But here's the thing- that's stupid. And though the Marvel comics team at the time were very adamant that this hilarious regressive stab at Spiderman's comic line was absolutely not going to be walked-back: come on. Didn't the Marvel Comics team insist the exact same when they took one of their most famous brands, a character created by two Jewish artists, Captain America- and made him a racist Nazi canonically, no alternate universe, no brainwash, absolutely zero cap? Only to then go "actually it was brainwashing" hardly a few issues later? They didn't need to stick with their guns on the whole 'erased Marriage' thing. That was never going to go anywhere good. But they did and what resulted is one of the funniest eras of fictional storytelling I've ever witnessed from a distance.

So I haven't been up to date with Spiderman comics since I was a kid, too expensive, too little time. But when I hear someone tell me that Spiderman hasn't been good ever since they turned Peter into a cuck- you can bet I'm going to start doing a little research. As it turns out that is kind of exactly what happened thanks to another story designed directly to take a shot at Spiderman which saw the webhead whisked away to an alternative dimension from Mary Jane for a couple of years only to come back and find her married with kids to perhaps the most annoying human of all time. I truly do think that Paul's design is part of what ticks people off- he seems like a genuine background sketch character that has been promoted to the main cast in a manner that boggles the mind to compute.

Pencil strap beard, thin moustache, glasses- there's something aggressively specific yet generic about Paul- he feels like a conjuration of some exact personage despite that person's apparent plain-ness. To be fair his original appearance, in the midst of some sort of apocalyptic scenario as I vaguely recall, is more predictable for a newer Marvel character- muscles, man bun, the like. The follow up comic series is where the character was 'sanitised' into this odd OC amalgamation of the very stereotype of millennialism. I'd call him a Self Insert but unlike with some other recent controversial characters that doesn't appear to be the case. He just appears to be designed to be as annoying as possible, even from a design level. And I respect that in a way- they knew what they were doing.

What gets Spiderman fans riled up, I think, is simply the way that Paul feels inserted specifically to heighten the 'torture of spiderman' that Marvel seems to delight in. Even as life returned to normal Paul was kept around as a barrier between Mary Jane and Peter's potential rebudding relationship. Not as a hurdle to be overcome like in a Romcom- but a permanent fixture barring the two. And note- I'm not a Mary Jane purist myself. I always thought that Spiderman always had much more in common with Felcia Hardy and no writer was brave enough to develop their relationship towards what would be a much more compatible finale. But I'll take MJ over this misery party that the Spiderman writers seem to be forever throwing over Peter and his personal life. I mean, damn!

Still- nothing lasts forever. And that counts double for Paul. Despite haunting the latest run of Spiderman with his stink, Paul and his controversial run has come to an end following months of first irate, then increasingly disinterest fandom from the already niche comic reading crowd. Zeb Wells' contentious reign is reaching it's conclusion and what follows next will likely be a spring in the exact opposite direction to a universe where Peter Parker isn't being nearly killed by the Vulture whilst Norman Osbourne berates him over the phone. Maybe they'll even go the high road and give him his relationship with MJ back. (But Felicia would be better.)

Tango has been saved?

 

Earlier this year we heard what was actually a very familiar concept within Britain when it came to the way that Xbox were handling the growth of their company. In response to a slowing of economic growth and the realisation of an over-investment within an optimistic age- Xbox opted for 'austerity'. Not utter such a phrase to as Brit and simply watch as the 'Winter Solider' style conditioning kicks in and they relieve all the most traumatic moments of the past ten years. Suddenly they'll no longer be seeing you because their vision will be clouded with visions of a thumb headed necro-Pig-romancer. (I swear that makes sense if you're a native.) We know very well that 'austerity' is a continent lie to prelude the following- us with the haves are going to take from the have nots until our balance sheets are looking steady again. And then we're going to keep taking until we're literally stopped. Cheers.

It's that kind of philosophy which is seeing the Game Pass package get cheapened and it's prices rise within the very same announcement. It's that kind of philosophy which is going to see the further degradation of the Xbox brand when key Xbox exclusive titles are shipped off to Playstation later this year and next year in desperate search of customers. It's that kind of philosophy that made Liz Truss lose to a head of lettuce. And it was that very breed of austerity politics that had Xbox unceremoniously shut down an award winning studio simply because cuts needed to be made somewhere and the only other alternative was the executives going without that extra shot of whipped cream from atop their golden-flake lattes. Sorry Tango Gameworks, guess you should have made a successful Live Service instead! 

Since then their hit game, which was the talk of the town when it came out to a surprise release, 'Hi Fi Rush' has seen something of a eulogy among it's community of loving players who seriously flocked to a unique game concept conceived in such a novel way. I even got around to playing the game and I have to say- I have absolutely no rhythm. I struggled through the entire first act trying desperately to hook on to a rhythm that the game was telling me was there simply wasn't. I did half-decently on the first level and every other level after that was me struggling against the core mechanic of the game to just have a normal hack-n-slash brawl. Dunno what's wrong with me. The game looks cool though.

It also won a few awards, and became a breath of fresh air that people needed after Xbox struggled bitterly to prove itself a worthwhile console to invest in, which is still struggles with. Now to be fair, Tango has had trouble getting it's audience over the years with a horror franchise that didn't seem to hit home despite a couple of outings, but what that enough of an axe over the studio's head to axe them the second they did get their hit? I suppose that's the kind of equation that can only be worked out in the alien-like mind of the Xbox executives as they play games with the livelihoods of those supposedly under their stable of games. All I can say for certain was that the decision to punish the successful cast an unshakable shadow over an already beleaguered developer for how healthy they truly are in the face of stiff competition. Even despite unabashedly superior spending power.

As the story goes, the creator of the Tango Gameworks, one of the legends of the horror industry, left the studio not that long ago and that alone was enough to shake faith in the entity. As though the entire worth of the studio and everything they achieved was tired entirely to one man and without him the studio is utterly worthless. Doesn't matter that those developers worked literally alongside him, that he helped to shape that studio to make those games, presumably in the hopes that they could go on themselves without his guidance- Xbox were relying solely on vapid star power to develop entire games for them. Because 'hero worship' is always supremely strong ground upon which to build a game development studio, right?

But we can hold off on the funeral for one day, at the very least- because despite the very definitive statements declaring that Tango gameworks had been wiped off the face of the earth, it seems a Valkyrie has swooped down to save them in the form of PUBG South Korean publisher Krafton. Out of absolutely nowhere the company has been acquired and now will no longer be shutdown- saving the award winning studio and bringing them out of the shadow of what appears to be a crumbling empire in the same fell swoop- what a story! Not that I really know all that much about Krafton and their style of management, mind you- but you'd have to be pretty bad in order to come off worse than the callous studio murderers Microsoft proved themselves to be.

They may be best known for owning PUBG but Krafton have themselves quite the portfolio under their belt to cement them as serious publishers who seem capable of taking advantage of the potential that Microsoft have stupidly squandered. They own Tera under their brand for one, including a bevy of mobile games with actually recognisable names- which is a huge achievement in an industry stuffed with a more oversaturated mobile market than your average English field is stuffed with weeds. They also, and this is news to me, are apparently the publishers of Subnautica- proving that this isn't a studio perpetually married to the online live service grift like so many of their South Korean contemporaries. They might be buying this single player developer to actually produce single player games! (Imagine that: Warner Bros!)

Tango Gameworks does not strike me a studio that is used up by any stretch of the imagination. They are not devoid of ideas, rough for innovation or totally trapped in the abyss. And now Microsoft are going to see them flare back to life and wince at every success they may see in the future. And you know what? Good. Seems to me that if Microsoft valued the company so very little that without one single celebrity involved they found the remains to be worthless- then they deserve the disgrace of seeing everything they cruelly threw away. And I pray Tango use this as a stepping stone to greatness because by god- this team deserves a break after all they've been through.

The face of evil

The House of Mouse has always been something of a contentious topic for me based on a couple of lingering nagging factoids. Chief of which being the fact that they pulled out of the video game market because they didn't understand us and in doing so ripped out the possibility of Star Wars games remaining as diverse and varied as they had been- any Disney games outside of the Kingdom Hearts deals- and a sequel to Alien Isolation like we all prayed for. Disney just deprived themselves and us of entire prospective worlds of engagement and I will never forgive them for that. But that's baby stuff, I'll admit. Just my own personal gripes with one of the biggest Entertainment companies in the world- and there are many out there with much more legitimate reasons to despise one of the most buttoned-up and despicable companies on god's green earth.

Losing a loved one is forever going to be one of the most harrowing experiences that all are expected to go through at least once in love. Ideally at least twice, but these are just expectations. Worse if the loss comes in a manner perceived 'premature' thanks to malpractice or maleficence or any of the other ways one might expire. (Am I talking about this weird? I don't typically mention actual death on this blog. Not really sure what kind of gloves to wear.) It can feel like all the world has sealed back off around you and that font of light and possibility has dried up and will run out eventually. Thus is the reality of facing the incomprehensible. The constraints of mortality. (Where am I going with this?) I guess what I'm trying to say is it takes a special kind of scum bag to try and take advantage of the recently bereaved. Thank god Mickey sent his best, then!

You may have heard of it. A woman with allergies visits a Disney park and apparently (should I say 'allegedly'? This is England- we have pretty regressive defamation laws. I'm going slap a big 'alleged' over this entire story, to be clear.) conveyed those allergies to the restaurant upon which she was eating. So kind of oversight allegedly occurred and the woman ended up facing some kind of reaction which ultimately had a hand in her death. A tragedy to be sure. But then if you've heard of this it's probably because you've also heard how the Husband is coming up against a request to dismiss the lawsuit he is filling against the big D due to, seriously, the terms and conditions of a Disney Plus trial he signed up to on his console during 2020. (See, I worked gaming in there somehow!)

Now- at first I'll admit to feeling a bit stranded upon hearing that. The gulf between 'my partner died of avoidable allergies at an eatery' (enough to make me terrified of eating out with anyone with any similar dietary restriction) and 'you signed up for a free trial to a subscription service' seems to wide to reconcile. I mean, maybe if her death had something directly to do with the service I could see it. Like, maybe she dropped a few too many expensive Disney Plus shows mid season and the streaming service grew sentience, hacked into her home ventilation and slowly poisoned to death- then there'd be a correlation  there! But somehow I don't think we're at that point with our technology yet. Give it a couple more decades.

So I'm sure your curiosity has read the headlines and maybe you are wondering if Disney Plus' Terms and Conditions really does hide a little nugget that absolves them of committing manslaughter against anyone you might know. Well... no, it doesn't. Instead they have a clause in which the party agrees not to engage in any dispute outside of individual arbitration- basically restricting a public jury who will surely side against Mickey's Clubhouse. It is, in the kindest possible terms, an act of sheer and complete desperation from a lawyer who, to be honest, probably just lost their job by even arguing this. They put it all on the line by conceiving of this absolute hairbrained dumpster shoot, and absolutely dropped the ball by allowing the story to turn into a public circus thus costing Disney more than they ever would have to loose by just paying this man off. Which they should have done to begin with.

But wow, doesn't that just come across as the perfect Disney-ass headline? 'Disney wants to kill your love one's and you stupidly signed off to let them get away with it?' This was literally an episode of South Park years ago where people learned that blindly signing the Apple Terms and Conditions gives them the legal right to pull a Human Centipede on you. Now I'm no lawyer, but I do know that conditional clauses do not rewrite laws by their very existence. Just as how a liability waiver does not protect a company from wilful negligence and an NDA does not cover illegal acts, I suspect a terms and conditions for a streaming service, or heck even for the park itself, could interfere with an accidental death case. That would be insane.

And yet doesn't that just fit the very brand of Disney? Litigious to the point of tyranny, Disney rules their image through fear and subjugation. Be happy your aren't a rodent or errant strolling wildlife- because Disney are more than happy to exterminate on their grounds for the goal of 'maintaining the dream'. They've hunted down tiny 'mom and pop' shops for having similar sounding names to some of their IPs, they'll reign hellfire on IP infringements. If there is any company out there with an ever more vicious approach to engaging with the public, be they fans or not, than Disney themselves it would have to be Nintendo- and that's only because Nintendo slapped a generational fine on a dude- I'm sure Disney will take the chance to surpass the pettiness once given the chance.

Disney have always been the rosey-looking company that wears the label and tuxedo whilst their bouncers break the legs of the undesirables around the back. They'll drape themselves with the kid-friendly allure because children are the easiest to squeeze fandom and money out of, and bring up the wrath of hell on anyone who gives them the wrong end of business. We might laugh at the sheer absurdity of this situation but make no mistake this isn't an example of a rogue entity, but a slip up of the mask. These behaviours are learnt within a machine that encourages dehumanisation. And remember what they say- lean a little closer- roses smell like crap.