TIm! You make me angry, Tim!

 

Timothy Sweenus, master of the house Epic, never seemed to learn how to add two and two together and it drives me nuts. Tim Sweeny has been the CEO of Epic throughout it's greatest triumph, the release of Fortnite, and presently you don't even need to know the history of what actually happened with that game to know that every bit of success they achieved was absolutely accidental on Tim's side. I have no doubt that every bit of insight and direction he fed to that game probably went towards building 'Save the World, the nowhere-dead base of the project with shrivelled up like a prune because nobody cared about for the months leading up- and it was the actual down and dirty developers who came up with the idea of the ancillary battle royale add-on to the game which ended up changing the face of pop culture forever.

I know that sounds strange- shouldn't I be giving the literal CEO of the company his dues for being there? Afterall, he kept the company going for as long as it did in order to make Fortnite, he probably had a hand in assembling the team that ended up striking double-platinum- sure, and just as much praise as a good casting director would get for nailing the perfect actors, I'll afford Tim- but as a leader, a visionary- as a voice of our industry the man is painfully awful. He is the very soul of the blind fool who desperately twists his desperation and fading desire into his minuscule world view. Not in the way a trailblazer starts with before making that vision a reality, but in the way a delusional fool does whilst their world crumbles around them.

Let us not forget the war which was fought by Tim Sweeny over his attempt to create a competitor to Steam, literally the most trust-absorbing and widely beloved platform in the world. (Whether or not that trust or love is duly and fully deserved given some of their policies.) Tim made the tiny leap of logic that competition is good in the market- well done Tim, you've attended a single lesson of community business school and listen for 5 minutes, what a trooper! He then proceeded to rush the output of such a Storefront, so it launched with the aplomb of a competitor but with the functionality of bloatware and then tried for years to win over developers with a more favourable revenue split- only for their failure to generate users seriously undercutting any potential benefits of that revenue split. Nowadays the only way they can get one other on Steam is by the single worst thing the PC platform can endure- store exclusivity- which sucks and ruins their reputation and sales potential everytime Epic does it. But this market is Tim's baby, so he insists.

This is the man running one of the most profitable studios in all the industry and it's galling to think the man considers their success in someway due to his wit and leadership. You can tell how self absorbed he is, it truly is pretty nauseating. Still it shocks me everytime to hear just how off-base the takes he makes are, even with the false confidence he instils behind each utterance- and of course, just like the Winter Soilder hearing those words, his latest dribbles have sent me reeling once more into asshole mode. I'm gonna be an asshole towards him right now. Sorry. (Not really, I could care less how I look in the face of that guy.)

"Generational Change!" cries Tim at Unreal Fest in the face of the modern industry; citing the way that consumers are moving away from the way that development is trending in the industry- which is true! And I thought: 'wow, Tim has his head on straight today!' 'A lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling." For the briefest of moments I recoiled in shock, is Tim himself going to sing the praises of smaller and cheaper projects? Why, what could have possibly happened in his life to offer the man such enlightenment? Surely not from experience- maybe our man has been abducted and instead of getting the probe was treated to a customary brain transplant from a passing extra-terrestrial who felt bad for him? For a major voice to decry over-bloated game budgets- why, that could set some genuine precedent in the world... Yeah, of course that wasn't where he was going...

Fortnite is ever-growing, lucky Epic, and big budget games are missing sales expectations- to put it lightly. So what does this say? "We're seeing... a real trend where players are gravitating toward the really big games where they play with more of their friends." He- what? Value "grows in proportion to the number of friends you can connect to." that is... head-achingly simplistically dumb, is he serious? As Sweeny struggles to hold his hands right on a inky void of stage, with nowhere to hide his insanity, Tim actually said the words, and I'm so sorry you have to hear this uttered in the year of our lord 2024- "Some people will call it the metaverse." Two more angles fell from heaven at that very moment. "It's new" (not really anymore, mate) "it's exciting" (to investors, I'm sure) "and it's something that's never happened at this scale in the history of entertainment." Once again, well done Tim- you've discovered what Market growth is, dude is a savant, I'm telling ya.

Now given that Tim is talking about Big budget flops, lets put his theory in action shall we. What were the biggest flops of this year? 'Concord', some say it's the biggest flop in the entirety of entertainment history- I say wait until the re-release- but currently, yeah it might just be. "Suicide League collapse under the weight of their own medicority", 'nuff said about that one. "Skull and Bones" I'm putting an asterisk around that one, I'm pretty sure whilst it clearly flew short of expectation somehow the game has enough numbers to keep a small community alive- which is confusing, but shouldn't be dismissed unduly. "Foamstars", that was this year? Yikes! "Star Wars Outlaws" I'm not I'd call it an out-and-out flop, but it did hit short of sales numbers. And it's the first non-live Service game on the list! Point one for Tim! And 'Alone in the Dark'- that one was a shame, I was routing for it. Huh, funny that. Most of those games, the biggest losses, were all online Live Service games that threw as many players together as possible in the hopes they would make a community. Almost as though a game's value is not tied to how many people can play together, hmm... but I can't make that assumption without looking at the biggest success' of the year.

'EA Sports College Football', little limited as far as multiplayer connectivity goes. 'Helldivers 2', that's a little more like it. 'Dragon's Dogma 2', UGC but otherwise no online connections whatsoever. 'Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth' as singleplayer as it gets with a tiny amount of UGC tacked on top. 'Persona 3 Reload', singeplayer RPG, little bit of online suggestion content. 'Black Myth: WuKong' a little early to get definitive sales figures but the game certainly has the buzz- and I personally think it's a masterpiece. Warhammer Space Marine 2- multiplayer content is available, but that's not what got people through the door. Do you see what I'm trying to say here? There is no one-size-fits all hack to success in the art/ gaming world, and over-promised Live Service multiplayer cages seizing at your time and wallet leads to failure more often than success- it's only those out-of-touch execs like Sweeny who desperately insist otherwise and listening to them will be our folly. The more we allow voices like this to speak out and guide our industry, the more face-plants like 'Concord' we're going to see.

What it takes to become the best

 Epic

Sweeny Swindles

Drifting away from reality

So what's up with that Metaverse thing? You know- Metaverse? It was that pathetic marketing buzzword purloined from a dystopian sci-fi novel and repurposed into a limp glorification of monopolisation and corporate centralisation under the guise of 'revolutionising the internet'. Basically, some foolish individual treated the marketing boards of big tech companies to a binge of movies like The Matrix, Ready Player One and other dystopias that play around with the idea of interpersonal dissociation brought on by the unstoppable proliferation of socialisation stunting virtual interfaces- and those executives did the predictable thing and said "Let's make our own socialisation stunting virtual interface and make money off of it!" You have to be some absolutely special breed of moron to host giant marketing pushes for a fad literally named off the big bad thing from a novel called 'Snow Crash'.  The actual definition of skimming the cliffnotes before writing the essay.

Of course, the whole idea of the Metaverse was attached to the wave of cryptocurrency revival off the wave of that other nowhere fad, NFTs. (Another easily predictable dud which somehow took the world by semi-storm for a year and a bit.) And again, devote just the slightest iota of thought into it and none of these systems really make sense together. NFTs and Crypto was borne from the idea of decentralisation of digital ownership and money from the central banking institutions and traditional copyrighting platforms respectively- whereas all fully formed conceptualisations of the mythical 'Metaverse' quite literally proposed the linking of all marketplaces, services and social media networks under a one-stop-shop portal/platform/prison. Even NFTs were fancied as some bizarre way of linking together various disparate concepts, like games from different publishers, various distinctly different copyright fields from images to syndicated television and even the idea of gainful employment and gaming. All absolutely antithetical conjunctions to the core ideals of Crypto. (But what does a little thing like sense matter to these people?)

Now it seems the veil has been lifted. After a full year of every desperate company under the sun announcing some form of a metaverse and being mocked for it, and Facebook literally divesting all of it's heart and soul into the idea so much that it changed it's name to 'Meta'- (Although that was probably also to escape easy name-recognition to the many internal crimes they have been pegged for over the years including but in no way limited to flagrant misuse of user data and assisted genocide.) the farm bell has rung but no chickens have returned to roost. They've all flown the coop and taken several billion of research and development funds with them. It's no longer just a joke to announce a metaverse project, it's actively harmful to your bottom line as everyone has come to realise what a pointless waste of effort it all was from the word go.

Generative AI was, of course, the final nail. A hot new trend for these people to chase, and whatsmore this one actually works a little. And again, it feeds into that desire for companies to fall into the exact traps that generations of sci-fi authors have warned against, regarding over reliance on AI over humans. Not that the artificial 'intelligence' we have now has any capability of becoming sentient and taking over the world- but in a much more real way people's jobs are in peril thanks to AI soundly taking the talents of these people and replicating them whole hat. Artists, journalists and actors are suddenly in the crosshairs for unemployment thanks to the sporadic and entirely unregulated proliferation of AI, and that prospective cost cutting alone is immediately more monetary appetising than the Metaverse ever was in it's entire lifespan, if we don't count the false value generated by Mark Zuckerberg with his hairbrained and increadibly expensive dedication to the worst business redirect of all time. (I'm just sad he finally snapped out of it. I wanted to see him sink his entire fortune chasing that rabbit into wonderland.)

But even as we sit on the otherend of the Metaverse world wondering what it was that just blew through us and disappeared in as much of a flurry; there are those still stuck stubbornly in what was, unable to move on and get with the times of today. I think it's a lag that settles in with age, a desire for the clock of progression to slow down just that little bit so you can get used to what is exciting today; that your mind warps your perception to think "This is still a thing, right?" Some people still don't have Facebook figured out, oblivious to the fact it's called 'Meta' now and nobody earnestly uses it as a social media platform who can help it. Youtube Shorts is still a wonder to a generation who stubbornly refuses to engage with Tiktok. (A generation that includes me, by the by.) And CEOs from the techfield who like to think themselves somewhat savvy and with it can't accept that the Metaverse is dead.

I'm sure that if the burning pyre of Twitter wasn't keeping him well and truly hands-full busy, Elon Musk would be weighing in on this matter; but until he's finished roasting alive with his cesspit of a platform, we've got Epic Games head Tim Sweeny ready and willing to make a fool of himself for public entertainment. Because you see, recently the fellows over at Business Insider posted their own, increadibly comprehensive, breakdown on the death of the Metaverse as a sort of open-casket eulogy of the terrible idea killed off in it's infancy. A fine read, but when you think yourself the vanguard of all things tech and revolutionary, such a statement can be interpreted as a shot across the brow. I'm sure Tim Sweeny must have thought "We disrupted Steam with our newness and people made fun of us the same way- I need to rush to my buddy Zuck's defence and ensure I'm on the right side of history for this one!" Image preening makes fools of us all.

"The Metaverse is dead! Let's organize an online wake so that we 600,000,000 monthly active users in Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, PUBG Mobile, Sandbox, and VRChat can mourn its passing together in real-time 3D." Tweeted Tim, presumably whilst smiling and laughing uncomfortably between strangled sobs. In hindsight I know this can kind of read like a biting spit at the corpse of the Metaverse, but let me assure that in the replies he wants to bat for the notion that the Metaverse is still alive. Apparently he conflates the idea of the Metaverse and gaming as a whole into one unholy amalgamation in a warped belief that the 'Metaverse' is the natural successor to gaming because... they both run from computers? I don't... I assume Tim didn't do well in English at school, because that correlation is pathetic to say the least.

To the CEO mindset, admitting defeat is like committing infidelity with a recently sanctified farmyard animal- it's as taboo as taboo gets. So even faced with the definition of exactly what a Metaverse would be, as described endlessly by company after company badly regurgitating the rhetoric of Mark Zuckerberg like a failed game of Chinese Whispers, Sweeny prefers to blind himself to the truth and pretend that any game with an active internet connection is now a 'Metaverse'. Roblox? I guess that is a social platform to some description. Fortnite? That's certainly what it's going for, he would know being the CEO. Minecraft? Umm... not really by design... or even by utility... but I see where he's trying to go. VRChat? There's no functionality to that game but the idea is reminiscent of what a Metaverse wants to become I guess. PUBG Mobile? Just what? Why only the Mobile version of PUBG? Is he feeling okay? Oh, and Sandbox- can't forget my favourite game- Sandbox. Let this be an example why we, as a rule, need to go get our CEO's spayed before they spout stupid stuff on the Internet. It's simply better for everyone this way.

What is up with Fortnite?

 Even the giants must quiver

In full honesty I have never been too much of a Fortnite head myself, just as I've never quite gravitated towards online ecosystems in general. I never Prestiged at a single COD game (Although I got very close in COD 4 for Wii) I never hit the active level cap in an MMO (Although again, very close in ESO) and I've never stuck with a Battle Royale for more than a month. I don't know what it is. Maybe I just can't stand the idea of playing the same map over and over trying to squeeze new experiences out of the same basic building blocks. Does that make me a reductionist? Perhaps. And of course it means that I haven't felt the regular cycle of Fortnite content bouncing around the already jumbled mess of my subconscious. Although that hasn't made me a total clueless dunce as to its going ons. Indeed, I could hardly have my finger on the trigger of the industry without feeling the rumblings of that lumbering titan as it moves. Which is why I can speak from an informed position when I say that Fortnite isn't making the waves it once did, I want to examine why that is and speculate if there is anything the game can do to shoot up its profile once more. 

First off it's a given; Fortnite ain't the headline grabbing apocalyptic event stealer it once was. Former Zodiac killer Senator Ted Cruise even aimed at video games in a recent unfocused rant about the causes of gun violence, and didn't even think to mention its name! Do you think that would have happened three or four years back? Hell no, the news networks of America and Britain would have been flooded with special segments about the dangers of the ultra violent cartoon shooter game. I know because three years ago those were the sorts of specials floating around. But today Fortnite has fallen so far from the public zeitgeist as the laymen's singular point-of-reference for all things gaming that it's no longer the go-to badguy in the cultural war against fictional violence! What have the alarmists and fear mongers to villainize now? Elden Ring? They don't even know what that is!

But we can be more numerical about this, by using that most typical of general interest gauging tools; Google Trends. Popular cultural items get googled often and so we can assess the active popularity of Fortnite by checking it's graph, seeing it had the most search traffic around October 2019, and see how the subsequent spikes in popularity, usually occurring around big events in Fortnite history, are shrinking in their size. The last spike at the end of 2021 was exactly half the size of the all time peak, which isn't exactly a death knell to hear but it does indicate a trend downwards in popularity that hasn't yet steadied itself out. The decline is very gradual given the sheer weight of the franchise we're talking about here, but it's consistent; Fortnite can't score the headlines like it used to. (I should note, however, that the baseline of searches outside of big events has remained remarkably stagnant. The game isn't heading to dropping off the face of the earth anytime soon.)

And it's not as though Fortnite hasn't had it's share of huge events in the time since it's heyday. There were the live concerts with huge stars, the movie premiers and even several big season and chapter end moments. In fact, have you figured out what big event caused the biggest surge in Fortnite search traffic in October 2019? I give you a clue, it's really obvious when you stop and think about it. It was the big Chapter 1 end when the game shut it's self off for a couple of days and scared kids were left scouring the Internet wondering if Fortnite had died before their very eyes. A funny time to be sure, but is that really the highlight of their publicity stunts they want to go down in history most for? Not hiring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson to star as one of their characters, not having a Ariana Grande concert play in their game? Not having a cameo crossover with the biggest and highest grossing film ever made, at the time? Nope, trolling the kids takes the podium position apparently.

What has happened since within the game itself? Irrelevant of gaffes and stunts, how has the gameplay of Fortnite remained competitive? By keeping competitive within their own studio, as far as I can tell. Epic Games constantly rewrites the very foundational blocks of the Fortnite core game loop in order to keep the cycle fresh and somewhat exciting for those who stick with it, the perfect development cycle that a live service demands. (Which we see so many wannabe pretenders totally fail at; Halo Infinite!) Mech suits get swapped out for fishing gameplay, large sections of the established map get reworked or removed altogether, new gimmicks are shoved into the mix; playing Fortnite is like delving into the active mind of an utterly indecisive perfectionist, and that rollercoaster ride is difficult to get tired off entirely. And yet somehow people still do, but I think there's still some methods and avenues left for the development team to explore in order to properly confront and combat that Fortnite lethargy.

For one, and I know how this sounds but bear with me, I think Fortnite should pull back a little on all of the crossover promotions. I know, I know; those are the stamps of premium exclusivity that single out Fortnite from the crowd! But there's nothing to prove anymore from the Epic Games team. Fortnite has crossed over with every major fictional brand on the Earth and become truly mainstream, there's no need to establish nor maintain appearances; and nowadays it feels like the bulk of Fortnite's online coverage is dominated by an exhausting and unexhaustive parade of crossover deals. It's obnoxious. And whatsmore, it takes away effort from development into real content that might spruce up the experience in a substantial way that will make those who have long since put down the controller turn around and go "Oh, what's going on there then?" 

So what sort of crazy proclamation can I throw out and declare is Fortnite's singular path to success? Well nothing concrete, I can't claim to be the industry whisperer by any stretch of the imagination, but I wonder at what a total seismic shift to the playstyle of Fortnite might achieve. What if, through significant map reworks and content redesigns, Fortnite was to host, if not a whole chapter than at least a single season, itself in first person? Seems drastic, but it's something different and would change the flow of the game substantially. They might throw in a more casual death match style gamemode, if that concept doesn't sound too trite for their tastes; or maybe, and I like this idea the most, a large scale warfare battle royale gamemode. I'm talking single life, huge teams of up to twenty, battle for supremacy at the centre of the map. They just need something drastic to draw in headlines and transformative to lure in readers.

I don't think the sun has set on the Fortnite empire, not yet and not even nearly. Games like Fortnite have a tendency to linger well past their prime and fester into sores on the industry if left unloved, and I don't want to see the Industry's darling Battle Royale turn into a Blizzard-level stain on the medium. They've stumbled, but they haven't fallen off yet and I think Epic Games have exactly what they need to weather the knife's edge for a few years more before they do. At least ride the storm until you've got a sufficient Fortnite successor, Epic, you owe Generation Z that much! And to Apex Legends, and all the other Battle Royales that circle the Fortnite supremacy like starving vultures, I encourage the competition knowing that only through bitter contest can the finest warrior be minted. Let's forge the best Battle Royale the industry can muster

The Matrix Awakens

 Woah.

Just as with most around my unspecified age, I grew up with The Matrix and got the chance to see first hand how it was simultaneously one of the most ground-breaking and worst things to happen to cinema. On one hand it pioneered so many cool techniques that would go onto be developed into some of the most visually impressive CGI effects we have today, the technological proficiency of the best studios in the world owe one notch of their journey to the success of The Matrix. However in a much less grand-scale consequence, every movie tried to be The Matrix to oftentimes nauseating results. Every action movie wanted to emulate it, every TV show wanted to 'pay homage' to it, and every 2 bit weirdo on the street wanted to dress like it. I genuinely credit this trilogy alone for giving rise to and then killing off the leather fashion industry. They speedran that.

As for how the movies were to me: I liked them just fine, I guess. I watched all of them when I was too young to really get what they were about, and by the time I could appreciate that story I just wasn't invested anymore and this property was already old-hat. But aside from lacking the core of the plot, I did think the movies were enjoyable to watch and even though I've literally only watched the original movie about three times in my entire life, (All during an age where I didn't really understand the plot) I'm sure I'd enjoy a rewatch one day if I can ever tie myself to a sofa long enough to watch another movie again. (I get antsy after 20 minutes on a seat not in front of a computer, it's gotten bad.) I know that had these movies hit me when I was a little bit older I would have been all about them. Oh yeah; I would have been collecting the merchandise, stencilling my room, legally changing my name, the whole shebang. But opportunity passes us by like pollen on the spring wind, and it's just not possible to seize at the scattered remnants of our paths not lived.

It's an actual shame, because looking back what The Matrix was trying to do was really cool and something I wish more entertainment franchises had the balls to try. Cinematic universe are all well and cool, but back in the day The Matrix was trying to pull off an inter-platform universe with movies, animated shorts, comics, ARGs and a couple of video games all contributing to the main narrative. It wasn't particularly deftly weaved, but it was ambitious; and that trumps out perfection in my book. No one has tried anything of that scale today, but I often think on about that and wonder what sort of entertainment worlds we'd have were this concept as well adopted as the movies' many gaudy fashion choices. It almost feels like a misstep in cultural evolution. With a little bit more of a push, Matrix could have been spoken about in the same breadth as The X Files for TV, or Metal Gear Solid for games; as a true landmark moment that changed the very face of entertainment. But even more important than those examples, because they wanted to change the whole entrainment industry at once.

The new Matrix movie on the horizon has run the gambit of emotions for me so far. First I was dead against it, thinking the idea to be hackneyed and played out, and reasoning how, the many franchises that have ruined their legacies by coming back when they really didn't need to, was proof that The Matrix was better off in the past. Then we saw the first trailer and I became cautiously interested in the whole concept, put off by the familiarity but drawn in by the knowing wink and a nudge resting just behind it. Then as the idea blossomed I became fascinated, almost to the point of actually wanting to see the movie. And then we got so many trailers that it felt like I'd seen too much and I pretty much ended up wanting nothing to do with it. I'm hovering right now, I want it to be good, but I'm not taking that risk in theatre. No way. So here's hoping it's the exception to the reboot/sequel rule that Hollywood seems to be establishing for itself.

But movies are pish and posh, stains on the public zeitgeist that fly past a dozen a week. I wanna know about games, which is why when I heard about the Matrix game coming to the next gen I peaked some interest despite myself. Yes, the thing was said to be an 'experience' that showed off the power of the Unreal Engine 5 software, but maybe there would be something more to it than a simple tech demo of simulated floorboards like what Blue Box Studio famously did. This seemed to be somewhat confirmed itself when people heard that it would be activated in the middle of the Game Awards, and lo and behold it's activation during the event was heralded by the real life leads of The Matrix hijacking the Game Awards for a chat. (It's a good thing Geoff and the team are so rigorous with the schedule, else that carefully knitted aura of mysterious omnipotencey would have been utterly unravelled.)

So now that everyone has had the chance to play the experience (or rather, the elite sector of the public who managed to snag a Next Gen console before they became rarer than Lonsdaleite) what exactly is this Matrix-connected experience? Well, true to the movies it exists to be more than itself, and it's something of a statement. The thesis behind this seems to be 'How further are we to the point where the line between the virtual and real blurs irreversibly'? The writers are kind enough to leave this as a pondering query, rather than a doomsday prediction of the apocalyptic technological singularity, but given the overt themes behind the Matrix franchise, it's hard to divorce that grim context from what we're being shown. Speaking of, wow does the Unreal Engine render good.

Of course, this was something that everyone already knew thanks to the actual Unreal tech demo that Epic distributed on their Youtube some months back, but seeing that tech utilised with purpose drills all that home so much more. In this Matrix experience, subtitled Awaken, we see literal uncanny valley renders of Keanu and Carrie-Anne Moss running in real time with next gen hardware. Whatsmore, as you can find many videos of online, the team actually tied a whole cinematic car chase gun battle with rudimentary controls for you to play around with and it looks incredible. We're talking Hollywood movie level CGI being rendered by the Unreal Engine in real time, directly in front of us. Seeing cars crash into themselves on the highway, realistic deforming steel, shooting sparks, and exploding in a fireball, has never looked this good on any other game. There has never been gameplay with this level of fidelity, period.

But that it just the cherry ontop of the cake. The real meat of the experience comes after the gunfight when the player it thrown into a simulation of the city. And I mean, The City. The whole place, rendered in this experience, with unmatched fidelity oozing off of it. Millions, if not billions, if not trillions (maybe not trillions) of vertices on screen at once, a rudimentary but functioning simulation of city life. The team have essentially created The Matrix and given it players to look about and take screenshots of for the next few months. It is mindblowing. Human faces still need work, as does the water, but everything else is indistinguishable from real life. And Epic even go so far as to attest it was a relatively small team who made this in a very reasonable time frame. It's been said before and I add literally nothing by repeating the refrain, but there is little better summary for this whole Matrix showcase: This is the next generation, manifest. So well done to the Matrix, for making a splash in the video game industry that may even be larger than the upcoming movie, depending on how that turns out. Proving once again how transcendental The Matrix could be. (And, I guess, well done to Epic for doing the heavy lifting.)

MLK and Fortnite

 Your worst enemy is the man in the mirror.

Yeah I- I saw it. I saw Rick Sanchez and the Xenomorph ascend the stairs of victory and stand there, truly absorbing Martin Luthor King's iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech, and I thought: "Truly, we are all lost." Someone call Charlie and tell her to make 7 billion reservations at the Hazbin, because we're all going to hell for letting this happen. 'Fortnite celebrates Martin Luthor King'- what where we thinking? The second anyone heard that the news should have shot right up the top of leadership so that the appropriate measures, the switching off of the world's internet, could be taken. But instead we all just sat back and let it happen, like the morbidly curious monsters we all are, as Fortnite butchered their way through a serious history lesson and turned the American civil right movement into a joke. Well done Epic Games. No seriously, way to screw up in a way few other companies even so much as put themselves in danger of; truly you guys are the burning dumpster role models.

So for those who have remained blissfully unawares up until now, Martin Luther King's big celebration teaching day dropped for Fortnite a few days ago, nearly half a year after the annually scheduled Martin Luther King Day. (Maybe if they waited until 2022, it would have given the team time to reflect and realise how stupid of an idea this was) Obviously, even the only moderately cynical could see this was yet another step on Epic's road to total proliferation of the Fortnite brand. If they could get the public to regard Fortnite as a platform, not just for entertainment but for serious events of historical significance, then they could use that as a springboard to further mainstream appeal and maybe even finally turning Fortnite into a virtual social media platform, like they want. It's a move towards what people are labelling 'the Metaverse'; a combination of social interaction platform and simulated living space which takes up so much of your daily interaction that you almost never need to leave it. (So the Oasis from Ready Player One, basically.)

The problem should be fairly clear; Fortnite just isn't that universal enough to touch everyone and everything; it's a video game for goodness sake! Fortnite is about shooting things, first zombies, but more famously each other until literally no one else is alive; no matter what sort of event you hold in that world, that background will hover over everything. Epic have been trying, very hard, to try and change Fortnite into something more, and they've made greater strides than I think they have any right to, but they aren't there just yet. Do I mean to imply that with time Fortnite could become the one-stop shop for everything? I- really don't know. Maybe. I've mentioned it elsewhere recently, but we're already getting popular artists hosting concerts on Fortnite, director(s) hosting big movie premiers, an American presidential candidate made a custom map to campaign in Fortnite, and there's the big crossover they did with the biggest entertainment franchise of the past 10 years, Marvel. So they've got entertainment twisted around their little finger right now. Yet as recent events have shown, that doesn't mean they've got everything in the bag.

The first big problem was the idea itself existing, the next was how to do it respectfully in the knowledge that all the world would be watching. The event would simply play out as a tour across a virtual museum that would display all the key accomplishments of the civil rights movement, which players would explore together before ending with watching a broadcast of the 'I have a dream' speech whilst standing in a virtual version of the place where it happened. On paper it sounds fine. Respectful almost. But 'on paper' never translates 1:1, as anyone should have known from the get-go. Putting people in this situation was just begging them to find ways of screwing everything up, and so Epic were fighting against the unquenchable human thirst to just be terrible for the sake of being terrible. They weren't going to win!

To start with they needed to axe emotes, given the fact that previous events of music festivals were often fraught with disruptive emotes such as throwing tomatoes. (That would be a bad look) And so they disabled a few emotes. Then they disabled practically all emotes after discovering that pretty much every animatic they'd ever designed was a bad look for this supposedly serious event. All apart from the 8 designed for the event, which the team left accessible through the emote wheel. Unfortunately, that left a really rather simple exploit open where people could overwrite the contents of the Emote wheel and do whatever they wanted anyway. (But it's the thought that counts, right?) Even more hilariously (in a deeply dark way) Epic had made a deal with DC to implement some superhero themed emotes a while back, and the terms of the deal mean that they couldn't be deactivated. A big shame, considering Catwoman's emote was literally just the player summoning and cracking a black whip, complete with sound effects. (You can't make this stuff up.)

Of course, then there's just the general fact that all of this feels icky. I'm not sure about you, but I don't feel the 'goodwill' and 'desire to teach' emanating from Fortnite as they cover this event; I sense more just the rubbing of hands by Epic execs convinced that this one was going to be idea to score them all the good press points. The exact opposite happened, however, because of course it did; what where they thinking? Now Fortnite has provided it's own fuel to the fire of why their Metaverse idea is bad; because when you try to be everything, tonal dissonance ensues. And that's not even to mention the fact that this was a transparent attempt to commodify Martin Luthor King's legacy in order to springboard themselves higher, and in doing Epic really shone a light on the rather messy split between the owners of MLK's estate, his children. So they also managed to expose more ways in which greed has ruined and corrupted the wider world. Wow, Epic actually ruined my day as well. (They are prolific!)

Now I'm going to surprise no one by saying; I ain't no big fan of this whole "Metaverse" idea. At it's heart the very thing represents a monopoly and those are bad for creativity, but the idea is just so all-consuming that those who pursue it just lose all their personality and heart along the way. Take this PR disaster, which would be enough to make any company with an ounce of humility still left in it's rafters stop to reflect on how stupid their recent path has been. A backlash like this should have been the last we heard of Fortnite in the newspace for at least a month, whilst the team work on how to be better and ensure they're not stepping on any rakes going forward. But not Fortnite, no, they're too big to slow down! And immediately following this they stepped into another controversy with their 'Imposter mode' announcement; a rip-off of Among Us (a game made by an indie studio) with nothing added to the formula and even a map that is functionally identical to the base Among Us Spaceship. (I'm not sure if Epic is just shameless or clueless at this point.)

The term 'too big to fail' is an interesting one. It implies a point at which you're so horrendously huge that even the worst blunder of all time can't stop your hulking victories for that's simply the wake of your step, whilst simultaneously invoking the image of a venture so bloated, with so many people counting on you, that you simply cannot fail, the consequence would be too dire. Total invulnerability and utter vulnerability, married to the same side of the coin. It Epic want Fortnite to be their unstoppable titan, they need to acknowledge that nothing comes with impunity and everything falls. I plain don't think they had an inkling of the infrastructure to establish themselves like they want to, and they'll need to totally devote themselves as a company to Fortnite, if they want to avoid clear embarrassments like this in the future. Either that, or settle with just being the world's most popular video game pastime. But why settle for most of the world, when you can choke to death trying to swallow all of it?

Fortnite is unrecognisable

 Take a good hard look at your future Front Page

I imagine that at some point in your life, someday, you have played Fortnite, haven't you? It's okay to admit that, we've all been there; heck, the game didn't become the biggest in the world by being a gaming anomaly, and a high-quality free-game is hard to resist before the sweaty crowd descends upon it. (I mostly just assumed that crowd were always part of 'Call of Duty: Warzone' which is why I never played that) I'd even go so far as to say I had some fun playing that game in the thirty or forty games of it that I played before I grew bored with the formula, and the constant disappointment of losing, and moved back to more familiar pastures. So maybe I just didn't have what it takes to be a great Battle Royale player, I didn't have the perseverance and desire to prove myself. Typically, with games of this genre, I'd just work my way towards one victory and consider myself done with that Battle Royale entirely, and do it early in the game's lifecycle too so that it isn't too hard of a victory to win. (Yeah, I'm a bit of a coward) But we've all come to, and probably left Fortnite, for one reason or the other over the years; but I'm here to ask you, have you ever considered going back?

I say that because if you bit the bullet and hit that 'reinstall' button, you might be greeted to a longer download time than you suspected, which may just have piqued your curiosity to know exactly what has changed in the game of the youth. Firstly, I'm sure you're aware that games of this calibre live and die on their commitment to constant forward momentum, always adding updates and skins and things that keep players coming back and spending money. That is their life force and without it these games squander and are put-out-to-pasture. So as the kings of this genre, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Fortnite is hit with so many updates that even if you first played Fortnite one year ago or two, the face of what the game looks like now is probably nothing like what you had in memory. But even then, even understanding how this is a genre prone to constant unerring change, I posit that the Fortnite of today is utterly unrecognisable to the layman; and why that's amazing.

The first time I took a look back at this game was actually fairly recently, it was in response to that Ariana Grande digital concert which as far as I am aware is the second concert of it's type to touch this platform. (With the Travis Scott concert being the first) And of course in the light of the fact this has a predecessor it makes sense, but then when you expand a little beyond that you realise that nothing actually makes sense whatsoever. This is a Battle Royale game (or the Battle Royale addendum onto a base game which no one plays) where the heart of the gameplay loop is murdering everyone else in the map until you are the only one left standing, right? I mean, that's the very heart and soul of this genre and what it represents. So where does a concert fit into that vision? An audio-visual experience where you follow a 'Shadow of the Colossus' style rendering of Ariana Grande as she sings her way through psychedelic popping clouds and dream-like pink castles- what happened to the Battle Royale?

In truth it's pretty bare-faced; the Battle Royale element of this game has been swept away as the main focus of the studio. Not to say that isn't what their game still ostensibly is, that's something Epic have been unable to get away from, but it isn't the endgoal that Epic Games are shooting for. They've let it been known before, in investor calls, but it should be apparent from all of these special events anyway; Fortnite is a multimedia social world being built to be the future face of the internet. You know when you look upon the Matrix or 'The Oasis' and you wonder what a new digital world for humanity would look like in the real world? Fortnite is the answer, or so the Epic games imaginaries would have you believe. They want to make themselves a platform which combines all aspects of media smashed into one and they're doing it ingeniously by putting all the most popular iterations of popular media together and watching their dominance grow from that.

It started with the Marvel crossovers, okay that's not actually how it started, but Epic really set it's plan in motion through that crossover. The hugely successful team-up with the biggest movie franchise in the world that extended so far that Fortnite actually scored a cameo in Endgame. (I still can't believe that happened, what a trip) But even further than that, Fortnite stepped up to the plate in a time where the hugely successful Marvel franchise had no face on the video-game industry and created a limited-time mode for fans to come and play as Thanos, or beat him up as the Avengers. Talk about a brand boost! Piggybacking off 10 years of Disney franchise building to set yourself up as the official tie-in game, and you can bet that was sure to turn the heads of other huge entertainment properties who wanted that level of notoriety. They turned themselves from the underdog into the topcat with one simple collaboration; were only we all so lucky.

But what about the Fortnite of today? What does it look like in the years since? Well honestly the game feels nothing like a Battle Royale should, or at least a focused one. Firstly, there's a giant UFO floating over the map now, there are NPCs all across the map that fire at everyone and are usually tied to challenge modes. There are challenge instruments chucked haphazardly across the environment, with the most recent being phone boxes that people with the Clark Kent skin can use to turn into Superman. And most importantly there are skins from just about every franchise imaginable intersecting in a manner that would never have been even conceivable ten years ago. Batman and Captain America; the Mandalorian and Kratos; Deadpool and- Free Guy? The new Ryan Reynolds movie where he's just a guy in a blue suit? That made it into the game as a skin? Well actually they added the shirtless buff version of Ryan Reynolds from that movie, but it's still an example of how Fortnite has managed to cement itself as a staple of higher level marketing methods; an incredibly privileged position to sit within.

Nowadays playing a game of Fortnite can be about winning the match, but it can just as easily be about doing your own challenge hunting against NPCs in your own corner of the map whilst everything else happens around you. It can be about logging into the playground mode in order to mess around with custom maps that almost seem like they're trying to emulate the free creativity of Minecraft, Roblox or Dreams. It can be about watching the premier of a new movie at the ingame drive-in theatre. It can basically be about socialising and treating this space as an interactive social media metaspace; except one in which you happen to be stuck in a death arena with a bubble that shrinks forever on you. Does that makes sense to you? Because I'm still struggling to get to terms with it, but considering the vast proliferation of Fortnite that might just be another symptom of me getting old and losing that finger on the pulse of the popular. (If I ever had that finger to being with. I've always been pretty square in truth)

Many years ago I remember dreaming of, what in my mind, would be the greatest fighting game of all time. It would be a collaboration of all the properties imaginable, a free-for-all frenzy across a 3D map space with Street Fighter versus the cast of DC comics versus Dragonball versus Mortal Kombat versus Marvel versus Ubisoft properties. Just everything and everyone ripping into each other with wanton abandon. It was obviously a juvenile dream and even then I was stuck between picking how balancing could possible work when someone like Ezio Auditore went up against Marvel's Jack of Hearts and Goku. But even on a base level the idea would never work because licence holders would never play ball like that. Except I was wrong, because Fortnite has managed to become the exception to that rule and raked in the bucks because of it. (Now if only we had the world's most insane fighting game developers on the Epic Games staff my dream might have actually had a fighting chance.) Fortnite, for better or worse, has the potential to change the media landscape irrevocably, and I think we're just on the cusp of that potential. We're still in those early stages of the chess match as Epic position their key pieces on the board. The only thing I'm still trying to figure out is whether their ultimate plan will be a step up from the apocalyptic pissing match which makes our current social media spectrum, or something inconceivably more depraved. (Knowing our luck, I'm leaning towards the latter.)

Apple Vs Epic Vs 13 yr olds

Do us a favour and wipe out tomato town

Once you've finished listening to your fourteenth rendition of 'Chug Jug' you might send one up in prayer for the myriad of folk over in the fanbase for Fortnite, because a good many of them don't know what's going to happen to their favourite game. I mean, nothing's going to happen to it, so to speak; it's still the biggest game in the world and thus is hardly at the mercy of a slap fight like this, but certainly some of it's accessibility hangs in the balance. In fact, it doesn't really hang; it's been severed, and we're just waiting to hear whether or not it'll ever get patched up. This has really started to enter that fever pitch now that the actual trial has begun and we'll get to hear the possibly historic ruling on what Apple is allowed to do with their domination over their end of the mobile marketplace. Or, indeed, if that is even a domination at all. Legally speaking.

Of course, if everything I'm saying is fanciful nonsense to you, then here's a quick recap; Epic games have started a fight with Apple over the fact that Apple funnels developers into selling their apps soely through the Apple store and thus forces them to capitulate to, by Epic's definition, exploitative stipulations. A big cut of proceeds fly out of the pocket of developers and independent shops are strictly against TOS, every inapp purchase must go through Apple. Now for mobile developers this isn't too far from the ordinary, but console developers at least can start up a fuss about that cut, it's pretty bad compared to what's happening over on the rest of the industry. If Epic can prove what Apple is running is a monopoly, they could be looking at forcing the hand of Apple to change rules and improve the lives of App developers the world over, so Epic really is fighting on behalf of the little man here. (Even if it's not exactly for them) 

Unfortunately, with the state of the world right now, we won't be seeing these stuffy money vampires dragged out of their hovels and into suits for an in-person trial, which is a shame because I personally dislike both sides of this little debate and would love to see them sweat it out a bit.  (It's always funny watching these automatons try so hard to convince us they're still human and thus worthy of some sort of sympathy) In fact we're not even getting video interviews so can put a face to the vultures. Instead it's all just a telephoned-in conference with static voices in a dark abyss. How draconian. What is this: the nineteenfifties? I was specifically told that Video has committed some form of homicide against Radio; surely audio entertainment should be a dead art. Yet hear we are listening to poorly captured audio excerpts from journalists who called in keep track of deliberations, and to everyone involved's credit; it really was very entertaining.

For you see, instead of being treated to the mechanical fumbles of the court as they desperately tried to figure out how to get a three-way conference working, (software which has been in general circulation for over a decade now, but still people find ways to fudge it) we got the somewhat greater gift of courts who don't know how to run a listen-in call line. (In their defence, neither do I.) One reporter recalled being asked, through an automated system, upon calling in whether or not they wanted to join as a listener or an host. Just straight up, like that. And though they claimed to have chosen the righteous path from this choose-your-own-adventure minigame, it would appear there were a great many others far too tempted with the allure of unadulterated trolling. That's how a boring preliminary trail got interesting.

Steps like these are the basic of the basic, the formalities that make official what has already been discussed and disseminated at length through and from documents. Although they don't remain quite so standard and formal when you have voices from the random public chiming in to say things like, and I quote, "I would suck all of you to get back Fortnite mobile back". (Thank you, PCGamer, for making my day with that little gem) But that interruption wasn't an exception. People chimed in to scream things like "Bring back Fortnite on mobile please, Judge", "Free Fortnite" and, a wild card in the bunch, "Don't bring back Fortnite." Others just played Travis Scott songs, and one uninvited guest, during a moment of silence when the main lines went down and this lone fellow was suddenly struck with an almost divine moment of clarity, commented "I'm going to hell for this". Maybe; but you can tell Beelzebub how it was all worth it for this fleeting satisfaction!

Try as they might though, the hoards of thirteen year olds couldn't prematurely end this trial with an early win for Epic, and instead the court settled on the battlegrounds for what will shape up as a war of definitions. This here is going to be the Courts deciding if what Apple exerts over developers is monopolistic (and thus anti-competitive) or if they're operating well within their rights as the owner and creator of the infrastructure. (In order to remain consistent, Epic have filed a similar case against Google which will probably also get decided by this definition battle.) By Apple's reasoning what they do on this platform is no different from what Console developers do, and if Epic don't like it they are well within their capabilities to sell their game on another platform, thus proving Apple doesn't hold a monopoly. For the courts the key comes in deciding if they consider all platforms part of a single market, or if the definition of a market is narrower than that, thus trapping Apple. Quiet the genuine conundrum that I'm actually fascinated to follow, where would I fall on this from a purely legal approach? I truly do wonder.

Apple have something of an easier job in all this, they just have to make Epic look like incompetent bullies trying to strongarm their way into getting what they want. Which is... actually somewhat on the money. But that's still kind of the pot calling the kettle black, now ain't it? Epic may have founded it's store on trying to buy their way into gamer's hearts, but Apple have aggressively stamped out competition for years and remain one of the few still in the mobile business because of it. And yet, Apple wanted to use some negotiation between Epic and Sony over cross compatibility in Fortnite as their 'prime example'. In the correspondence, Sony threw a fit over the concept and wouldn't budge as Epic kept coming back with more and more concessions, showing, in Apple's eyes, how the guys won't take no for an answer and keep pushing until they hear what they want. Again, that's true; but it was Epic trying to push a stubborn mule to break ground which proved beneficial to the entire game's industry, so I really loathe this being weaponised against them. This is one of the few Epic stories I can unreservedly respect. (But how the courts will see it, I don't know)

There's ever this separation between the world of law and the world of... well, everyone else- and it makes legal entanglements like this delectably unpredictable. You never know which way the wind could be turning, and who's going to be stuck with egg on their face on the other end of this; because whilst I'm morally on the side of Epic here, they were the instigators and an offensive stance is inherently harder to win an argument on. At the end of the day, however, (and I know I come back to this often) this is two tech titans arguing over who can make the better pittance and neither really deserves their windfall; so though I await each development with a curious ear, I do so rooting for the indie devs out there. Let them get their cut for their hardwork, dammit, Apple you vampires!

Growing pains over at Epic?

 I'll make a profit one day, mark my words. Or my name isn't J.R.Steamrip-off

Here we are again. Pawing over the legal hang-ups of Apple versus Epic; a grudge match where no one's the underdog and everyone is a loser. In one corner you have the Apple-lites who are ever eager to maintain their stifling dominance over the phone economy and on the other hand you have Epic who are eager to go to bat for the sake of making more money whilst pretending they care about making everyone else a big buck too. Honestly, I have to say that I was surprised at Epic for picking a fight with Apple, a subjectively bigger entity, wondering what could possibly be the incentive. They wanted a bigger cut? I mean that tracks but there has to be a deeper reason why that bigger cut was so important to them. Why now? Was it just because they were starting to get big now and wanted to flex their spending muscles? Maybe- or maybe it had something to do with the figures that Apple has recently splayed all the Internet about how, after 2 years of life, the Epic game store is still operating at a loss. (That discovery act- it'll get ya everytime!)

Yes, the Epic Store which has been Epic's pass into pre-eminency hasn't been without its costs and tribulations. Say what you will about Steam, but it has served as a pretty huge deterrent for any small-time PC game retailer to get a foothold in the market, because why would anyone favour what you have to offer over what Steam can. After their flash success with Fortnite, Epic knew that the gravy train couldn't last forever and that their best bet would be to leverage the Fortnite success into something even more sustainable, thus I think it makes absolute sense for them to sink that runaway hit's fortunes into launching the Epic Store. The only problem being that with the loyalty of Steam customers and GOG customers, bigger plays than usual would be required to stick that foothold into the slamming door of the industry. Thus came the exclusives, the advertising and the plethora of free games shoved down everyone's throat, desperate to gain an audience. And you know what, it's working. Plenty of start-ups try the 'sink-money-in-and-it'll-eventually-work' stratagem to pathetic returns. (Just look at Quibi) But to think that Epic have managed to get themselves on everyone's lips in the space of two years is impressive; and yet in the eyes of Apple, who probably mostly care about making Epic look desperate, the opinion seems to be 'close but no cigar' and that's what they want everyone to think too.

To be clear, I'm no fan of Epic. In fact I hate their practises. Exclusivity culture is the death of accessibility and, as Playstation have handily proved with their recent death-sentence for legacy infrastructure, game preservation. But I hate Apple just as much, so anything they try to feed me is instantly going to cause suspicion out of me. And, although this is to a much lesser extent, some part of likes the fact that Steam has not just an alternative, but a direct competitor coming for their throat with policies that seem designed to be direct digs at Valve's old guard baby. Higher cuts go to developers who publish on the Epic Store, exclusivity deals are designed to cover any potential development losses and soften release risks for smaller studios, and Epic specifically go out of the way to flaunt the fact that their store front actually has a moderation system so that trash waste doesn't accidentally end up on their shelves. (Steam is pretty much 90% 'floating junk-town' at this point) But none of that is going to be enough to make Epic profitable, and until they go to work on the fundamentals there's literally no way they'll make it to the heights Steam is at. (And you just know that's what they're aiming for)

Right off the bat there are the quality of life features in order to bring this service up to some sort of parity to Steam, which after two whole years is still lacking! I know the excuse off by heart now: "But Steam had years to get where it is today, yada yada iteration, yada yada give us time". It's all just deflections and smokescreens. Steam had no major competitors at launch (barring, I guess, Battle.net) so it had time to learn the sorts of ideas and tools that people want out of a launcher, they learnt alongside the console platforms and thus their development went somewhat in tandem. Epic is coming after that great learning journey, but that don't mean they have to start at square one! "Only a fool learns from his own mistakes- I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others", listen to Von Bismarck; my dude Otto had his head on straight! Or does Epic want us to believe that we should just wait 20 years for the Epic store front to be where Steam is at now? (Meanwhile Steam is 20 years onwards in improvements.) At least they've finally put in some achievements. That's a step. (But it ain't nearly the whole cake)

Then there are the missing community features, and this is the stuff I don't really count as 'quality of life' because at heart they are distinct from what's needed to run a successful launcher. Having customer reviews adorn titles so that people can read the voice of others to inform their decisions, a trusted-reviewer section; things of that nature. If Epic are serious they need to start getting on this so that their platform can go beyond just being a place where people game and become a place that people return to in order to hang out, or share mods. In that vein, what about an integrated forum with the launcher so such activities can occur without having to tab off onto other windows? I don't think I'm asking for the world here but it would go a long way to transforming what's on offer.

Also, and this is a big personal one; Epic need to make it easier to buy games from them. The system they have right now is the bare minimum basic, but again; no prizes for hitting the bare quota. Right now you can buy games by entering your credit card info onto Epic, fair enough; but literally every other major online retailer has alternatives. Vouchers, codes, just anything else to let more people in. (Not everyone has the ability to throw around credit card details on frivolous gaming expenses.) And I know this isn't a matter of Epic lacking the scale to accommodate for such a system, because you can literally buy Fortnite V-bucks codes off of any store corner. Literally just do that but for your storefront. That way people won't turn around and go "Yeah, but it's less of a hassle to buy off of Steam."

And whilst we're out here making suggestions, I might as well go and say something that I'll hate myself for saying; but the free games and all- I think they should probably tune that down a little. Don't get me wrong, I love free things and the selection of games that Epic Games has offered is insane; (I've taken advantage of almost everyone) but this is one of their biggest source of costs for the platform. Now I'm not saying be rid of the program; it's a great way to establish the superiority of your content over Steam's (Again; thank you basic content moderation principals) but I've got to wonder how many people aren't even sticking around to actually buy something because of the genuinely great products that are being handed out like candy. In fact, some of the times they don't even do the bare minimum and ensure the game they're offering has unincluded DLC so they don't lose out totally. That's something Xbox and Playstation figured out years ago, man, get with the age!

But finally and most importantly, I have a plea that stems from the financial and the moral argument; STOP with the exclusives! My god, it's sickening to see the single way they win over interest is by spending millions on exclusives instead of, I don't know, making a decent platform? And again, I'm not saying that they shouldn't have exclusivity for games that they fund, I think it's a disservice to do so but in that case it's their game, they can do what they want. But nicking games out of the mouths of other platforms purely so that you can lure customers your way like some creepy white van stalker? That's a bad look, Epic. It makes people not want to root for you, or see the good beneath your flaws, because you're so insistent on becoming some toxic slug on the community rather than a pillar of it. And, calling back to those figures Apple flaunted, it sure is straining on the ol' coffers, ain't it? 

Despite everything we say and what Apple says, I'm sure Epic will keep doing exactly what they're doing and getting the best they can out of it. Epic are positive that they're experiencing the growing pains that any new entity has in the tech world; years of unprofitability. (Remember Twitter only turned a profit in 2018) And maybe they're right, who knows what sort of figures that Epic is holding behind those walls, but maybe they're blowing smoke out their rear ends and pretending everything is fine while the office burns down. (It sure wouldn't be the first time in this industry) All I can is regardless of marking black in the ledgers; Epic will never become the Steam disruptor it wants to be without rising to that task in a bigger way then they're doing right now, and waiting to do it a decade down the line isn't exactly going to cut it with me. (Early impressions tend to stick- you know) I want to like Epic, I just wrote a blog about a classic game of theirs that I truly adore, but the guys have got to meet me, and the rest of the gaming public, half way at the absolute least.

Edit: Scrap all of that; Epic just got a group investment of a billion dollars. They'll be fine.

Why does Gears of War still hold up?

 "Wha- are you kidding? You are the support!"

You're trudging across the war-torn streets of a fallen world, trading mud covered lead with monstrous bullet sponges, lost irrevocably in the haze of sweaty action, and then you stop and think: it's 2021, why am I still playing the original Gears of War? So many times I've come back to Gears of War from 2006 and everytime I treat is as my personal time-capsule moment; a chance for me to take a nostalgic look back at a game which once ruled my days and nights. Of course, I'm only looking for a single night- and then before you know it a week has passed and I've beaten the campaign again. I'm being serious, it's a legitimate problem of mine, so many other games I can appreciate for a quick play session but never Gears. It gets me wrapped up under its spell, and it's not even as though it's a particular personal favourite game of mine or anything, in fact it's not even in my top 10. And when I look at it objectively, every aspect of the game should repel me from it given the many advances the 3rd person shooter genre has gone through which should all render this game moot. And yet somehow, against all odds, Gears of War still holds up; and I'm itching to know why.

Gears of War isn't just a third person shooter action game, mind you, it's the third person shooter action game; the one which was so influential to the genre that many of it's quirks and features became staples of the genre that still get replicated by the few third person shooter games that are still made today. (However, it's so difficult to nail a good feeling third person shooter that there's not actually that many modern examples to contrast against.) So many features owe their direct genesis to Gears that even a lot of the now redundant aspects (or just abandoned ones) of the genre came from here, a fact which should inherently make this a ridiculously dated game. But it stands out despite all of that. Cover based shooting, vaulting, swapping between cover; we're talking fundamentals here that would not be possible without the hard work of the folks over at Epic Games, and despite over a decade of reiteration and improvement there's something special about the way the original Gears handled it. Something earthy and primordial that may have been improved upon here and there, but never whole-sale supplanted. 

Exploring Gears again has made me realise that there's actually a plethora of features and ideas in this game that don't work in the modern landscape, and yet they kind of do here. One being a trademark not so much of the future but the upgrade in technology for the time as a consequence of the new Console age. People never can get enough of playing with the shiny new toy and they, gods willing, never will. So forever will we see games that throw in something that doesn't really help the gameplay or benefit the aesthetic, just because they can today and they couldn't yesterday. Point-in-case; motion blur. A stand-out of the age that has become so disparaged in the years to the point where it's genuinely bewildering when you play a game that has is turned on as default. Why? Because it's just ugly, hides the graphics of what you're playing, makes the frames look like they're chugging, and is just stupid. 

And yet Gears pretty much pioneered motion blur during gameplay back in the day. Every time you went to do the iconic Gears ground-sprint; the camera would zoom in and blur the surroundings as you hoofed it; but for some reason it works. I think it comes back to the in-your-face attitude of the Gears world and the way they try to bring you as close to the mud and dirt of the battlefield short of making it first person. (No idea why the series never went First person as an offshoot for this franchise, I think it'd really work.) The blur is supposed to bring you into the moment, and it truly does. Of course, mechanically I think it also works because the sprint brings the camera so close and into the butt of Marcus that you literally cannot see the world around you, thus you can't dwell on how ugly everything looks. Sprinting in Gears is never really what you do when you want to cover a distance (definitely not with the tanky handling) but more when you're closing in for the kill; so visual information doesn't need to be imparted all that much and the developers focused more on heightening the intensity of the moment. A sublime idea, that quickly got lost in the plethora of imitators. (Did The Nintendo Wii's 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' need motion blur for sprinting around the Hogwarts Campus? No. It didn't.)

Here's another aspect of the game that's been criticised into the ground and back again: The visual stylings of brown and grey. Back in the day there was a perception that as video games were approaching the visual complexity to look 'realistic' that meant they had to embrace muted colour palettes in order to match that aesthetic. This of course aged badly as a concept so that even other developers would point and laugh about the fact anyone actually thought this way. Uncharted 2 famously featured a 'Next Gen' filter which just desaturated the screen in mocking homage to this period. Gears sort of spearheaded this movement once again except, again, it actually kind of works for Gears' world. Remember that Sera is a world living in the aftermath of an almost total fallout-event, it's a fallen dead world. So a visual that lacks the colours of life we're so used to seeing; (blue, green, etc) matches the story of the world that's being explored. Does this make the screen less appealing to look at? Yes. But is it uncalled for? No, I think it's rather fitting. Just a shame so many other games of the time decided to copy it. (Even Gears started to adopt more colour as the games went on, realising that otherwise the games would look dull.)

Level structure and gimmicks is something else that has moved on vastly since the first Gears game, and as such we don't really see many action-game story beats like the mine-cart level. And there's a good reason for that being phased out; sitting in a box and having to shoot enemies as they come to you is never fun. Movement is important to action adventure video games for reasons so fundamental it isn't even really worth listing them. Sticking them in any sort of forced turret section is already iffy, Gears 2 just about get away with a limited movement section right at the beginning only because the whole set piece is so cool. But getting thrown into a minecart and carted around is dated and feels like it only really exists as everyone's attempt to homage 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'. Here's one I actually cannot defend, I do not like the minecart level, but it doesn't bring down the entire game and it functionally serves as a bridge between a rather slow-paced ambush-centric part of the game to an upcoming more heavy action event. So I can say it's purpose is at least functional, if nothing else.

And then there's some features that most of the industry have left behind altogether, realising how bad of a turn the developers did them. Such as half-hearted squad command features like Gears has. You know what I'm talking about; games wherein your AI teammates need to be commanded around the battlefield like dolls, although the heart of the game clearly isn't in it so the commands you have are ludicrously limited or prohibitive. (I'm talking: 'Stand here' 'Go there' 'Wait' 'Follow me') Yet again, Gears did it to begin with, and in fact Gears is still doing it to this day. Whilst other games have acknowledged that such systems work better in the hands of tactical developers, Gears still insists on rudimentary squad commands so that they turn around, stick out their tongues, and insist they have tactical cohesion in their game. Honestly, these systems can be forgotten about in all but the most trying times, so I don't find them too annoying. It's just endearing, really, to see this slightly mismatched mechanic in a game that doesn't really need it, but the attempt is earnest at trying to enrich the gameplay. I like that.

My respect for Gears of War in today's day and age is more than a little nostalgia seeped, and I'm not sure if I would even recommend anyone try it out if they've never played the series before and are curious. But I'll be damned if I'll throw that game under the bus, file away my happy memories and label it a bygone relic. Much of what Gears represents is a time of gaming where the art of some of the most homogenised genres was still being written, and ideas that are now so very tired were once fresh and celebrated. That alone imbues this vitality into a game that shouldn't rightly have any left, as though you can feel the sense of "We're doing something special here" that the developers baked into the foundations of this product so very long ago, like the spirit of a time capsule. It may be inexplicable, it might be illogical, and you may not have understood a single opinion I expressed today, but despite everything I affirm that Gears of War 1 is one of the most enduring games of it's kin for the modern age. And that's a respectable accomplishment in my book.

 

Fortnite and Disney; The summer love story that just won't end

 Coming to a theatre near you!

So we haven't spoken about Fortnite for a hot minute, and that's because nothing has really come out of the "Biggest game in the world"(or, formerly, I guess, now that the age of 'Among Us' is here) since the advent of Chapter 2. Oh who am I kidding, tons has happened in Fortnite but it's all just been so far afield of the game that I used to casually play that it seems just wrong for me to try and immerse myself in this title that has been pushed so far outside my demographic. What started as a fun Battle Royale title has morphed into the early stages of this virtual social platform/ jack of all trades/ official Disney Marketing blimp which, on my more neurotic days, just shimmers with an air of 'Soulless machine' more than anything else. I mean, if Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about trying to save oneself from a world built and paid for by the cynical profit margins of shady megacorporations, than Fortnite is perhaps the exact opposite of surrendering yourself to them happily and engaging in their most intimate spaces. When you see all those mindless automatons in their 'happy state' with the VR pods, imagine Fortnite within their headset world and see how well the image fits.

But the good fortunes of the Fortnite creators mustn't be forgotten or diminished, because they have reached that golden level of pop-culture relevancy where their very name carries universal definition. Just like Minecraft, GTA or Call of Duty, no one is ever under any delusions about what you mean when Fortnite is bought into the conversation, and if the longevity of those other titles is anything to go by, I guess that means Fortnite is around to stay. (If you ever had any doubts about that.) One of the most transparent ways through which this fact has become obvious is in the way that the old guards of Entertainment have found themselves coming around to it's shores, like the music industry through Travis Scott and Marshmello. But perhaps the oldest of the giants who has settled themselves firmly with the Fortnite Kingdom is no longer than the sleeping beast of Disney, and that is a relationship that just fascinates me.

I hardly need to tell you, with it happening in one of the biggest movies of all time, but perhaps the first time there was any indication this fancy wasn't just passing and it would hold, it would have to be the scene in Avengers Endgame which featured Fortnite. How incredible, for a non-stock-composite game to feature in the highest grossing movie of all time; I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during that conference call. (Which windowless room full of stuffy executives erupted with more excitement over the prospect? I genuinely can't decide.) And as if that wasn't enough, Fortnite themselves held Avengers themed events over the release of the two movies which was a close enough marketing tie to actually warrant the use of Thanos in their game, even when Thanos was at the height of the storytelling! (Note how remarkable this is because old school marketing heads generally hate having their characters portrayed anywhere else simultaneously because they're all so far out of touch it isn't even funny.)

However, since those crazy times the Marvel Cinematic Universal has wound itself down for a while in order to give everyone a sufficient enough break not to become too sick with Marvel movies and you'd be forgiven for expecting Fortnite's collaboration with Disney properties to do the same, except nope. Fortnite manged to team up with Disney again for a 'Star Wars The Last Jedi' celebration, proving that theirs is a love written in the stars. If things progress like this it won't be long before all these big clueless companies begin looking about Fortnite as the 'front page' of gaming (provided that they don't already) and flood the game with their offers. Of course, in such a situation I'd imagine the buck would fall with Disney and how they feel about the prospect of open relationships, but I'm sure Fortnite will always find room for everyone else somewhere in their vacuous maw.

What really drove me to make this blog was actually something that happened really recently with Fortnite, in relation to the sort of events they were conducting in the here and now. Right in the middle of this new Galactus themed Fortnite story arc (yet again, Marvel is more active in Fortnite than in the movie world right now) they launched an initiative involving 'Hunters' and a collection of really enticing looking skins and such. At the head of all these, however, is a face that should be familair to anyone who's had interest in Disney of late, because it's the actual Mandalorian. That's right! The Mandolarian, or Din 'no one cares we're calling him Mando anyway' Djarin, and Baby Yoda, or I-refuse-to-call-him-that, have come to the world of Fortnite and it's their Season 2 iterations to top it off. (You can tell by the Mudhorn emblazoned on Mando's shoulder) And I for one am struggling to put my indignation into words.

"'Indignation', you say?" Why yes I do, because bare in mind, dear reader, that these are the single most popular characters to come to the Star Wars world since... Well, Ashoka Tano. These are literal super stars in the Star Wars landscape, and yet their first (and so far only) foray into the world of gaming hasn't been through a tie-in to an official Star Wars game, but through a Fortnite brand deal! Their first game! I honestly thought that Battlefront would get in on the action back when the first series was still around, but at that stage the team were busy wrapping things up in terms of new content so they couldn't quite manage it. Instead the golden goose of Fortnite gets to lay the golden egg and have Mando themed content installed, and I'm starting to worry that this might be a prelude to the sort of direction that Disney is heading in when it comes to the licencing of their ludicrously valuable properties.

Most in gaming remember how Disney squeezed themselves out of the gaming market after their own inhouse studios couldn't manage to score a decent hit, and since then they've had to make do with licencing out their games. Most contentious of which was the decision to licence exclusively to EA for what feels like ever, but their other titles have been around the place. Square Enix, through Kingdom Hearts, still has access to Disney original content, but that may be starting to change all because of a little game called Avengers. Now bear in mind that this is just my personal interpretation of Disney's actions, but I think I've got a decent grip of things. So Disney, recognising the great relationship they share with Square, probably thought it safe now to start diversifying their marketing through the game industry and thus authorised a persistent platform for Marvel marketing through 'Avengers', a game that was destined to do well because of the attached name. Yet now that things have gone the other way and Square's Avengers has not only failed to cement itself in pop culture but also hasn't managed to generate a profit yet; (as of the making of this blog) that is seriously going to shake Disney's confidence. My suspicion is that their relationship with the tried and true Epic games is only going to grow as Disney leans on them more and more, and in doing so we'll start to see ever less of our favourite, now Disney owned, franchises in the gaming world. The name is just too big to risk failure now.

Maybe just seeing the Mandalorian pimped out in this unceremonious attempt to sell battle passes is what's standing out to me here. There seems to be a lot of dignity imbued in him that's hard to play out on the stage of Fortnite, and that might be my own bias speaking but I believe it none the less. As a lifelong Star Wars fan it's no surprise that all I really want is a space to live out my Scoundrel fantasies, and Fortnite just doesn't really pull that off me, so I guess fans like me are SOL for this new phase of Disney property management. Only Spiderman is really safe to still make it to imaginative and risk-taking game fronts because that's lucky enough to have Sony backing, who's to say what the future holds for Star Wars. I'd imagine, however, that given the strength of their partnership, Fortnite's going to be taking a lot of Disney's gaming firsts for the forseeable future.