The endgame of Mobile games

 Suffering from success

So 'Diablo Immortal' is a pretty obvious smokescreen as far as shady gaming schemes go. A game designed to be a total social pariah, ruin the respectability of every face involved with it, be the reviled monster poisoning the industry specifically so that Diablo 4 can drop doing considerably less scummy things than it, and look like a grand resurgence for the companies quality standards. Hell, they'll probably still make it a pay-to-win cesspit, but it just won't be as pay-to-win as Diablo Immortal was, which is an improvement, I guess. But inbetween now and then, we have to deal with this ugly exercise into the absolute extremes of video game greed and the societal excrement who support and reward Blizzard for going around mugging their consumer base and calling it a solid marketing move. One such extreme from this development became frightening clear; the whale amongst whales.

Whale is a term used to describe the sorts of individuals who spend their exorbitant wads of money into Free-to-Play games in order to jump ahead of everyone else. They are referred as whales, because the size of their purchases pretty much cements them as single sources of heavy revenue that makes them more valuable players than others the petty 'plankton' who drop a dollar or two once a month. So essentially paying money makes you a player that the developers want to cater their content more towards in order to curry more favour and attention. Just like real life, the richer you are, the more bottom-feeders you ascertain; in this instance it's the developers. Games like Diablo Immortal thrive off the existence of Whales by creating heavy money sinks that players can drop their money into in a play against the odds to get the best stats. Pay-to-Win, as it's most commonly known. (Although pay-to-not-play, is a common refrain; considering most of this stuff revolves around paying to skip the process of earning the accolades.)

Of course, when you invest heavily in pay-to-win it's going to upset the balance of the game as players with larger wallets can invest more money to surpass the efforts of players who can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars rolling a virtual die. They push far above the free-to-play players, and then you get into a virtual arms-race of who can spend the most money to get atop those other spenders in what should ideally be a never ending cycle of idiots falling for the most obvious cash-grab scheme in the world. But this has usually been where interest from the common audience drops off, because no one really cares who ultimately tops the pile. But as curiosity would be served, recently we've had an account of exactly that scenario presented by a content creator who managed to push themselves to that precipice and had their game time suffer because of it.  

Yes, we're talking about a man who, by his own words, spent around about $100,000 all on trying to get the optimal character in Diablo immortal so that his clan could rule the meta game as the 'Immortals' of his server. It's a pretty old-school method of content creation where the draw of the creator is their skill rather than their Charisma; but listening to this man speak for any amount of time will demonstrate that he has a lack of both, which is probably why he likes pay-to-win games so much. (I'm being deliberately venomous. I'm sure the guy has some skill with these sorts of games to be able to utilise the spending as he has. Does that make him a good person? No. A smart one. No. But one worthy of even the slightest modicum of respect? Still no.) But reaching the top of the pile inexplicably ended up putting his current favourite pastime in jeopardy.

You see, putting himself in the Pay-To-Win category allowed him to play the PVP battlegrounds modes for Diablo Immortal over and over again to rack up over 300 straight wins and less than 10 losses. He could just steamroll over everyone with less powerful gear than him. He could be the big fish in the tiny pond, soaking up all the water and making sure the stats of his character outshone anyone else in the world. Until it got to the point where the game's matchmaker realised that this player is too good for even the best players in the game and bracketed him off in a custom made pool of players which seems to consist of only him. Meaning that our man couldn't que for more Battlegrounds because the game couldn't find enough players of a equal win/loss ratio to pit him against. Cutting him off from what he himself considers his 'favourite activity' in the game. Bummer.

Even worse than that, a bug within the structure of the gameplay made him unable to que his clan into a contest to defend their position, or maybe they were already queued? The system was really unclear on that matter, and that's kind of the problem. Being the biggest clan on their server, not knowing what they're doing to defend their position is kind of emasculating for a breed of player which is obviously driven by the vapid desire to enforce their archaic concepts of masculine supremacy on others. Basically, I'm saying that Blizzard's distinct lack of comprehensive design decisions (because they were too busy hyper-focusing on running the gem market) wasn't serving their most important customers; the numbskulls with more money than brain wrinkles. Which is just typical, isn't it? Blizzard are such a mess of a company that they can't serve their established fanbase or the rich rubes they're trying to replace them with. Just a trainwreck of customer support.

Of course, the person we're talking about here did put over a hundred thousand into the game, meaning that when he made a big stink about it online, Blizzard did get around to promising him a personalised fix in the next few days; but that was only after passing him around fang-less customer support reps for weeks on end. Turn out all the money in the world only translates into respect when you make a public statement which might ward off other whales. Of course, Blizzard could give less of a crap if you aren't a wealthy player, that makes you less than scum to wipe off their shoes. Because that's who Blizzard are nowadays. Nakedly and unabashedly twisted to serve the biggest potential returners and step on all those desperate to support a company they used to trust years ago. Big Blizzard are, no surprise, not your friend. 

But this has really laid out the very extremes of Mobile Gaming that we never really think of. How does the service have to mould to cater to the top of the pile? The king of the kings; the Immortal of this ecosystem? And what does it mean to win in a pay-to-win environment? Is it being better than everyone else? Because our guy here apparently is driven by a desire to just crush people poorer than him all day, without any real challenge or danger to his own position due to the exorbitant amounts of money that he's spent, which might spell out more regarding his own personality than I think even he has considered. If the endgame is supposed to be a mad crawl to the top that is feasibly never supposed to end; how do you reconcile devising a social interaction game where the chief goal it to isolate yourself from your peers atop a pile of money? And how is a studio supposed to work to benefit the king's experience alongside trying to encourage their just as wealthy opponents to forever topple them? Are you the protagonist at that point, or the antagonist in the grand tapestry of this online world? And at the end of the day, is there any difference?

History was broken

 But, you know: Gaming History

Some points in time are unshakable, unchangeable moments that stand straighter than the mountains and more frozen than the ice caps. Unbreaking truths that cannot be revised no matter how strongly we rage against the very substance of their claims. Gravity pulls us ever to the centre of our floating space rock, the burning skyball will always blind us for half of the day and Halo 2 will never be completed deathless LASO. For what being could possibly task themselves with attending the impossible task of completing the hardest Halo game on Legendary difficulty with all skulls on (except Envy) because that is what LASO stands for if you didn't know. 'Legendary All Skulls On'. Which does not mean that the challenge has never be attempted; oh it's been a trial ever since the launch of Halo 2 and the discovery of the easter egg skulls in each level that each drastically altered the state of the game. But... no one actually completed the thing, because that was impossible. Literally.

You have to remember that straight away, HALO 2 on Legendary is a tough game where a single concentrated barrage of fire will kill you straight away. Then throw in the Skulls and you'll find that each one makes the game significantly harder. Like the one that makes all enemies permanently cloaked (You can still see their shimmering outline, Predator style, but that slight second of confusion will be more than enough to get you if you're unprepared. Or somewhere dark.) Or the skull that makes enemies shoot faster, which is about as bad as it sounds. Then there's the skull which disables the auto regen on your shields so that you can only get them back by meleeing enemies. And the one which disables all HUD so you can't tell your health or ammo without listening to the audio cues. (And the audio cues only kick in when either you shields are dead or your ammo is gone.) AI enemies drop half  the ammo they usually do. You're only allowed to board vehicles they enemy AI is driving. (I have no idea how the heck you're meant to do the Tank mission at the beginning of Halo 2.) And the only skull you're not allowed to use is Envy; which replaces your flashlight with an camo cloak, literally the only skull which is beneficial.

Playing each level with these stipulations is pretty much legal torture, and to ask someone to endure the whole campaign with those rules and not die is just about the only thing worse than a war crime. And yet that is exactly the challenge issued by MoistCritikal just a few weeks ago, who upon learning that literally no one over the years had completed the challenge with proof reasoned that the only obstacle to success was a lack of proper incentive. As such Charlie offered up a $5000 bounty which he then upped to a $20,000 dollar bounty, all in the hopes of seeing one of gaming's greatest challenges finally wrapped up. That last pimple on the arse-end of history popped out of existence; all at his personal behest. Making him yet another in a long line of men happy to send others to their damnation whilst they watch from the sidelines. (Okay, he did give a few tiny attempts himself but he stopped before the experience could scar him too heavily.)

Some of the big problems for entry are the fact that a lot of people didn't even have the tools to attempt this challenge, given that the remake version of the game in the Master Chief collection makes this challenge impossible. Not only do enemies fire even faster due to the refresh rate but a few of the level skip options are patched out. So players have to rely on the originals, which are hard to get ahold of, and they have to finagle their way around the annoying skull collection system which unloads all collected skulls the second you turn off the console. Meaning that those serious about the challenge need to traverse every level and create save profiles as close they could to each skull so they could do a quick collection run before starting each proper LASO run. Wonderful. At least the impossible version of this challenge on the remade version of Halo 2 completely nullified that issue with skulls in the options menu and a playlist with all of them pre-turned on. But even that is a bit weird when you think about it. 343 just offers up a mission playlist of a near-impossible to complete challenge for the average player to accidently stumble upon? Talk about a landmine.

But note how I said 'near impossible', because lo-and-behold, just this past week history was shattered and reality scarred, when a Twitch streamer who had himself a few priors in attempting this hell put his mental stability on the line once again in pursuit of cold hard cash. As one of the very few applicants who actually managed to make it past the opening level, Jervalin managed to push himself through some of the hardest Halo levels ever created to become the first person in history to complete a deathless LASO run. And it was not a trial that came without errors, without heartache, without suffering; but the man was always one of the favourites to win and just like a hero from a Shonen Anime he just kept up bashing his bleeding head against the brick wall until the material caved in.

To call his victory miraculous is to do the art of the craft a misjustice. Because this achievement was cold hard tactical precision mastered over the course of years and distilled into a few concentrated weeks of runs. By Charlie's own words, Jervalin dedicated 40 days straight of runs to getting this challenge down, racking up countless deaths and countless killed runs in that time frame. Of course, it was all just a set-up for the inevitable moment of victory when he finally managed to convince Johnson's AI to shoot down Tartarus' shield so that he could finish that brute, and this run, for good. I can only imagine that also marks the very last time Jervalin will ever load up Halo 2, because who in their right mind would want to be reminded of all that chaos and pain?

And if you think you're 'pretty good' as Halo, I recommend you look up his record of the VOD on Youtube and have humility served straight to your eyeballs from the simply god-like gameplay Jervalin demonstrated in this challenge. It is no exaggeration to say that Jervalin probably knows the ins and outs of every aspect of that game better than the developers do at this point, and has mastered them more than any of those artists could ever dream to do. He one-lifed an impossible challenge and proved that 343's LASO playlist isn't an impossible feat served directly up to players. Except I just lied, he didn't do that; because 343's LASO playlist is only on the Master Chief Collection with the remake of Halo 2 wherein many of the strats and gameplay that Jervalin used wouldn't have worked or been enough. Yes, even perfection can't overcome every problem.

Still this is a time for celebration as one of the biggest seals of gaming challenge has been snapped and we're one step further to the awakening of the Dreamer and the dissolution of reality to his tentacled embrace. Because that's how big of an accomplishment this is; reality threatening! All of the runners who pushed themselves past the first level all proved themselves to be shining symbols of Halo players too, and I can only imagine what sort of hijinks this community will get up to now that they've all discovered their fellow demi-gods from such a challenge. It's like Charlie was the Nick Fury assembling the Avengers of challenge runs; they should form a international collective of challenge gamers and go around breaking records across the industry. And you know what; that's the head-canon I'm going to maintain about the legacy of this beaten Halo run. Drink well this sensation, reader; for you're taking in the end of an era. Isn't it beautiful?

The game's not made for everyone

 Made for someone

Given that the development of video games are such a huge and expensive production, it's both beneficial to the growth of a genre and the potential profitability of each product that every game be designed to be 'made for everybody'. It's a wonderful sentiment, encouraging interconnectivity and propagation of one's loves towards the masses, as well as the corporate desire to permeate absolutely everywhere but in the effort of positivity I'm going to choose to ignore that angle to all this. Games are meant to be celebrated and shared which it's why it's great for them to become as inclusive as possible with all of the accessibility options which are slowly becoming more commonplace. (Very slowly, mind, but some progress is better than none.) Because entertainment should be laid out as everyone's feet for them to enjoy and all that smiles and happiness talk which we all love so very much. Now here's the counter.

Not every game is made for everyone. Obviously. Or the concept of genres wouldn't exist. But even more specifically than that, sometimes games aren't made for new comers and genre experts to enjoy in equal measure, largely because such a balance always comes with drawbacks. You can't make such a game too in-depth and systems heavy for fear of alienating new comers (Trust me, I've been trying, and failing, to force myself into learning Homeworld for more than a year at this point) and you can't make it too basic and bare bones for risk of being boring to genre fans. The in-the-middle balance is typically recognised as the ideal game balance; but not every game is suited to fit that. Sometimes you'll have games that strive off in the direction of alienation driven to explore one extreme or the other, and I wanted to consider a collection of games that I believe, in some sense, were designed specifically not to foster genre new comers. (Or at least; games that significantly leaned towards the learned and experienced.)

Pathfinder: Kingmaker was perhaps one of the biggest wake-up slaps in the face I had leaning towards this realisation. Because any CRPG fan can enjoy the plethora of great genre titles out there in this impromptu resurgence of this unique game style, but not everyone can role up to Pathfinder: Kingmaker with that same carefree attitude. Just as how Baldur's Gate 2 is fundamentally designed not to be played out of order with 1, even if you ignore the story, the gameplay is set-up to be literally next step in terms of difficulty; Pathfinder wants you to know exactly how to play this style of game from the get-go. You are encouraged to build effectively, to the point where the game itself will actually take over the levelling unless you know exactly what sort of character you want to be at endgame. No, this isn't the blind autolevelling system you can expect out of Mass Effect or those sorts of RPGs; Pathfinder picks your life path for you.

And it is for good reason. Pathfinder: Kingmaker adapts a module designed to see players through an entire campaign, and wants you to bitterly earn every scrap of progress you make in fire and blood. Even from the early game you're facing the sorts of bosses that will drain every last spare item you have to take them down, and end game mega-bosses who will simply eat you up and spit you out. At normal difficulty levels (I always play in levels that most accurately match the scaling of the table-tops) Kingmaker is easily one of the most difficult CRPGs on the market right now, but by that same merit also one of the most exhilarating. In the same way that Dark Souls (Yes, forgive the reference, it's pertinent.) forces players to climb a mountain so they feel the weight of their trials on the otherside; Kingmaker drags you through hell so that you earn your kingdom and every moment of peace. That sort of challenge just isn't possible to present in a game designed to coddle newcomers and can only really be presented from a title that expects you to be familiar and will punish you raw anyway.

Another game I want to highlight is 'Stellaris', although to be fair to this assessment could broaden out to most every single 4x game on the market. Most of them. Because 4X as a genre has gotten to the point where those who love it recognise it, and those you don't can't really be persuaded into it. Some games like Stellaris, therefore, tend to lean towards the more intensive crowd with systems and interfaces piled ontop of one another and only really offers a perfunctory sort of tutorial to explain it all. It's hard when looking at these sorts of game to differentiate between titles that genuinely don't try to bridge the gap beteeen newbies and experienced genre lovers, and games that just have a really vapid and weak tutorial (like I would say Kenshi does. And yes, I think Kenshi just about counts as a 4X/RTS/ survival hybrid game) but I think Stellaris and similar games can recognise the divide and choose to go the other way.

Which does not mean that every game of this genre does, however; and though they are the rare exception I do recall some 4X strategy titles that are built specifically to cater for new crowds. I think Civilisation as a series has always kept itself accessible enough for just about anyone to find it's charms if they want to, and Humankind is said to be welcoming. I consider this to be the ideal balance; great games to introduce people to the genre, just as good games for them to enjoy once they're inducted into the fold. The best of both worlds. Although I'm sure there's got to be some game I don't know about from this genre which pushes even that to it's pure elitist extremes. (No, I'm not claiming that game to be Homeworld; I wish I could withstand it long enough to be able to make that determination.)

Which brings me to the general state of platformers and how they currently are; because pretty much no platformer made today is taking into account a newcomer to the genre. One might argue that there is no feasible reason for them to, given that Platformers are so intrinsically tied to gaming that they are somewhat second nature to any gamer, but that is a wad of hand-wavey logic when you break it down. Modern platformers can actually be pretty challenging to people who aren't intuned with that style of play which can result in them being a little hard to penetrate. Hollow Knight, for example, requires tough reaction times, pinpoint dodges and complex movements. (Although HK is kind enough to introduce these elements carefully as the game progresses.) I think that it's actually difficult to make a newcomer's platformer without it feeling hopelessly outdated or simplistic; which is why we just let Platformers carry on their evolution to become more specialised and tough.

So not every game is made for everybody, and is that a good thing? I'd argue; yes. Some of my favourite games out there are the one's designed to batter you down and destroy every once of confidence you believed you had, so that you can slowly build it back up in a pantheon of challenge and strife. To me that is a fun time. And does that make me a weirdo? Yes, to a good number of people out there who like totally different experiences. Just as we all hold different thresholds for entertainment, does it make sense for there to be differently catering entertainment products. Some made for the consumption of everybody, and some made for the consumption of the genre lovers. That's how you nail into a niche, afterall.

Indonesia Steam ban

Circling the drain

Who would have thought that as the modern age rolls around free and equitable access to video games would become less and less spread across the countries of the world? Like a backwards progression of availability as all of humanity slowly reverts into it's base most form, first China pulls back on the gaming market so hard that Steam might as well not exist in that country, than Russia is heavily restricted for reasons that should be fairly obvious, and now Indonesia has followed suit for reasons not quite nearly as obvious. One might feel warranted in donning the hat of speculation and wondering where exactly all this is going to stop! In this age of conflict and strife, how cruel does one have to be to try and deprive enjoyment from their few citizens who have the time to game? At least China has a, intellectually bankrupt, reason for their banning's; but considering China kinda has a history for making sweeping polices that are utterly uniformed and obviously disastrous, maybe that isn't the model you want to be emulating.

But indeed, over the past week we've seen bans rather suddenly descend upon the likes of Steam, Epic Games, Paypal, Battle.Net, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Origin and Yahoo. (Oh god; not Yahoo! Who will I consult for answers now? I jest, of course; that service is long dead...) At least, it was all rather sudden for the consumers who had no real warning to start backing up their games, or... honestly I don't really know what you do about losing Paypal. (That's more than a kick to the balls, that's a knife to the testes.) For the Indonesian Government this was probably a very drawn out and frustrating affair with a clear deadline laid out ages ago that a big portion of huge online companies just simply ignored. And the companies themselves, well they must have had some inkling that services would be revoked and yet refrained to tell their consumers until the date was upon them. What I'm saying is that this was a communal week of bad choices all around.

As gaming sites are reporting it (I'm referring to PCgamer for their succinct summary of the situation) this comes as the consequence of a law passed two years ago that requires online platforms to summit user data to the government and comply with Indonesian take down requests for unlawful content. Which seems... utterly misguided and shortsighted but at least their heart is in the right pl- oh wait, and content that "disturbs public order"? Yeah, that's some straight dystopian talk right there, no wonder people didn't want to comply. This actually reminds me of a certain law that passed down here in England at one of the many heights of public distress against our government, when an overnight law was passed to prevent 'loud protest' outside the House of Commons. 'Disturbing public order' so easily leads into 'silencing dissenters' that the mere performative action of referring to it as such is a sheer insult. I don't care how 'well intentioned' and 'morally strong' someone claims these orders to be, if the current administration doesn't exploit it, a following one will. It's a game of when, not if; and the only way to win is to not give them the playing pieces.

And this is absolutely a hill worth dying on, when it comes to discourse, at least. (This should never have gone as far as outright bans. Paypal was banned so abruptly that the government had to temporarily unban it to let people get their money out. Clear evidence how horrible of an idea this is.) If there's one thing that co-existing with the terminally greedy has taught me, it's that if you give an inch you'll lose the country side. The second that Indonesia gets away with juggling user data at will and banning 'objectionable content', everyone is going to want in on that band wagon. Which is to say nothing about the very idea of handing out User Data, which is not only a huge personal violation, but also just not in the best sound interests of the companies who manage them.

I have to be honest, I know nothing about Indonesia and how they run their government, nor would I make any suppositions even if I did; this isn't a blog for that sort of stuff; but I know a fair bit about optics, albeit through the eyes of the entertainment industry, and this ain't good. The Indonesian public are already taking to Twitter to voice their utmost displeasure, as so they should having so many liberties wrest from them in a cynical power move by government officials. But the disgrace spreads even further. To the outside world looking in, this sounds like the beginnings of a twist towards nanny state regulating; and being from England trust me when I say we know all about over regulation. It's a constant struggle to defang overzealous regulators most of the time over here.

But whereas you might think this was some sort of grand standing kick-back statement by these companies, a conclusion I even tried to lead you towards with my own carefully placed rhetoric. (What do you mean I misunderstand the definition of 'careful'? Why I oughta...) I have some sobering news for everyone. Much as I suspected when I first read the details behind this, in truth the problem is that none of the companies got the memo that this was happening, not that they objected to the increadibly questionable stance of these laws and the provisions they force upon website providers. I can say this with confidence because Steam, not too long after their ban, turned around and signed up for the program without kicking up a fuss. As did Paypal and, thank god, Yahoo.

You see, when it's all said and done none of these companies wants to accept any more responsibility than they absolutely have to; and if that means ratifying and justifying increadibly suspect terms just so that they continue business they'll bite each other's arms off for that opportunity. Yes, there's no such thing as moral upstanding; unless you literally declare war because that's just plain bad for business. Fiduciary duties cut above all else. It's just funny to acknowledge the fact that Indonesia published this little questionable snippet into their law books and it would have gone pretty much entirely unnoticed by most people if it hadn't been for this abrupt kerfuffle. One might even suppose that maybe some of these companies intentionally bungled the dates they had to sign up to this law in order to draw attention to it's contents. That's bunk, though; they were just lazy.

There's no such thing as mister good guy business who's there for you and has your back, and there's no shades of grey in this morality tale. It's all muddy brown for the faeces stains the represent all the crap we have passed off onto us because everyone with the wealth and size to do something and make a stand don't give a damn to. Steam is back and functional, which means that will be the end of this conversation in the eyes of the many, and Steam will pretend it never had anything concerning grace their desks and reap all the free publicity. Just like when they 'banned' NFT games but really just banned integration with their API; not caring even slightly for Steam games that use NFTs outside of their API. No one's on your side, that's just the truth of it.

The day ROBLOX Died

 The king is dead

Even those of us who have abstained from the Internet's favourite passtime has heard the stories of the ROBLOX supremacy. A online infrastructure that appears to have existed forever and, indeed, even surpasses Minecraft in it's legacy. I think it's fair to say that no one really knows where the game came from, but practically all have heard of it today, as the defacto raising tool for most children to teach them that the world is full of opportunities for their hard work to be exploited by lazier and smarter adults. I can't even say I recall the time in history when ROBLOX levelled up from being a game and into an empire, it slipped under my nose before I could even see it happening, one day it just became a fact of life that we all just laughed about and pretended we always knew it was there. And I, amazingly, never actually played the thing myself when I was a kid. I didn't know it existed. Thank god too; with the amount of 'free game' scouring I did all over the Internet back in my youth, ROBLOX would have swallowed me up and spit away the key.

ROBLOX began life all the way back in 2006, or 2005 for the beta, or 2004 for the founding of the company. It began with the name DYNABLOX, probably in reverence to the 'dynamic game engine' that the game was philosophically founded upon. And, to my utmost surprise, the original beta for the game looked utterly primitive compared to the game today. I mean visually. Yes, that visual palette which looks like it originated from the early 2000's is actually an updated look for the game over the years as it became what it is today! I know many long-running games get visual overhauls, but usually they endeavour to improve the palette of the game to make it more modern or chic, but I guess ROBLOX always valued it's ability to run on every chunk of hardware more than how it looked, and even in it's later years they never wanted to lose that avid ZX Spectrum fanbase. The game changed many development hands, got picked up by a few visionary corporations who sought a monopoly over the kids market and the rest is history.

Which is to say, the rest has been a history of fraught and questionable relationships between ROBLOX proper and the child labour it relies on to make it's user base happy. Because ROBLOX is very much an engine for minigame creation using their proprietary interactive game engine. Hop on the ingame tools and you can build anything into a game for others to form a community around. I would say "Anything within reason", but due to the utterly non-existent moderation by the ROBLOX owners, as well as the questionability of letting kids make anything without oversight, most of ROBLOX is decidedly unreasonable. I knew this all the way back in 2013 when my investigations uncovered an entire community dedicated to roleplaying key positions within British Parliament in their own facsimile of central London. Why? I can't say. But it was real. And, of course, if you searched deep enough there were less wholesome games too.

I can't pretend to know enough about ROBLOX to know the details about their seedier elements, all I can recount are anecdotal tales I've heard of NSFW themed games, which boggles the mind knowing the palate that creatives are working with on ROBLOX; but I guess that's the power of imagination, right? (Who am I kidding; there's some increadibly popular NSFW games nowadays that are totally text based browser games; I shouldn't be shocked.) These have caused some scandal over the years and even a few PR disasters when the ROBLOX main office have turned blind eyes to the sorts of environments frequented almost entirely by children. Seems they wanted the audience without the responsibilities. But no scandal has stuck with them enough to hurt the giant. But if there is one slap across the face that not even ROBLOX will withstand, it's the murder of their most iconic element; The 'Oof' sound.

Arguably even more famous than ROBLOX itself, the 'Oof' sound affect holds it's origins in the genesis of mankind. Ashurbanipal, king of the Neo-Assyrian empire in the 660's BC is recounted as having delivered the first Oof when locked in mortal hand-to-hand combat with a deathly lion. Of course, Ashurbanipal is also noticed as one of the very first recorded sources of propaganda, so it's very possible that such an 'Oof' may in reality have been uttered by someone else entirely, or mayhaps even the lion itself. Certain translations of the ancient Hebrew texts that make up the commonly recognised 'old testament' accredit such a sound, or something similar, being spoken by a dying Abel as Cain bashed his melon in with a rock. But studying the work of Milton's Paradise Lost has presented a recanonisation of the sound to an even earlier mythical event, as the sound made by Satan when he hit the ground after getting yeeted out of heaven. Perhaps the true origins will forever remain mysterious.

If you ask the plebs around the 'normal spheres' you'll be told that the noise actually originates from a former composer for the game, Tommy Tallarico, and that ROBLOX has run into issues with Tommy for years over the use of that sound byte. Apparently there was a kerfuffle quite some years back which rendered the sound a premium commodity that ROBLOX creators had to pay a little fee in order to licence use in their games. Such a fee was only a temporary solution, it would seem, because after all this time ROBLOX proper have come and pulled the plug entirely on that classic noise in order to replace it with the sound of a man sneezing caught on laughable bad audio equipment. At least that's my best guess on this replacement, it's almost terrible enough to become iconic all on it's own, to be honest.

And to think that this all happened because the ludicrously profitable people over at ROBLOX simply refused to pay the fee to buy the sounds rights; which were reportedly no more than $10,000. That's- criminally underpriced given how famous the sound byte in question is; and it really speaks to how desperately petty the ROBLOX team is that they didn't want to part from literally pocket change over this issue. They'd rather take the substantial hit to public perception than settle an infinitesimal amount over this. At this point it's pretty clear that it wouldn't matter to them if this was $1000, or $100, or 10 cents; they just didn't want to give anyone else the satisfaction of winning; because when you make a children's game for so very long I suppose the target demographic can start to rub off on you.

Oof is hardly the most serious scandal that ROBLOX has faced over the years. Afterall, they're well known for exploiting the talents of their children player base for profit and totally wiping their hands of the safe guarding jobs required to keep that player base safe from dubious and harmful entitles. They just can't be bothered to trouble themselves with literally anything that makes them look like a somewhat standup company; but they've been doing this for so long that they could literally be sacrificing their children audience to the devil and still be making a mint doing it. In the world of Ubisoft's and Call of Duty's; ROBLOX is the one demon titan even bigger than all that to be utterly scandal proof; except, of course, for the elimination of their very soul, just recently, when Oof died. They may carry on, and probably will; but the beating heart of the franchise is gone; and it's only a matter of time before the body starts to fester and rot. Poor sad, ROBLOX; doomed to moult and wither all alone in the world. Do not cry for them. DO NOT CRY!

Square Enix thinks we're idiots

 Lie me a river

So we all remember the day of absolute apocalypse where Square thought it totally within their rights to turn around and just kill off all of their Western Studios in a mad bid to 'purify' their company of any studio that was non-Japanese. A contingent that took the studio decades to amass, shed in a single transfer for a tragically undervalued price to an organisation that sounds like the mad anti-humanist cult trying to get everyone to look up at SCP 001 (When Day Breaks) so that we may all be 'embraced' for eternity. Embracer Group has talked big about their plans since then, in vague and non committal terms. Deus Ex is being worked on, it might be coming back! There's a new Tomb Raider where Lara has a female love interest (I swear to GOD if it isn't Sam I'm going to riot.) All these new studios will be perfectly balanced against the dozens that are already held under Embracer's banner; although looking at the amount of the studios under the Embracer banner I can't help but wonder if this isn't just going to be exactly the same as being independently owned in terms of support, only with the requirement of kick back a sizable chunk of income to publishing management.

I'm just saying; I don't think Deus Ex is coming back. Not least of all because the latest thing in the news is a desire from the active team that they want to: "Do what Cyberpunk 2077 couldn't!" Excuse me? CDPR couldn't do what they promised because it was bigger than their team could possibly create, and they were a bigger studio than Eidos has ever been. (Why can't Deus Ex just stick to what it's good at!) So we're looking at a long nuclear winter of hubristic failures probably heading our way, and whom do we have to thank for this holocaust? Square. The lunatics at Square. What could possibly have been going through their heads to cut so many loose like that? I can't imagine what calculations must have been firing through the think tank neurons in order to conclude that the future was isolationism for Enix, and I'm bugged that this is the direction they choose to go in. Can we get some clarification?

Oh we can? Great, thank you, Investor call; what is the word from Square proper on this situation, then? Well for one they let it be know that they are looking to sell their Stakes in the remaining studios that survived the sudden purge being put very much on the market to be pawned off. But when it came to explanation time of the big sale, Square has turned around and informed the world that their reasoning is that they believed their Western studios to be cannibalising the sales of their Japanese games; which feels like a dire simplification of a much varied issue, probably knowingly so because they didn't want to have to air the complexities of their issues, but lacking that in with the Square Enix management we have to take their word as gospel. Did Western games cannibalise Japanese games? Yes and no. Depending on how you look at it.

So the traditional definition of 'cannibalisation' within the industry refers to two games with the same target demographic being unceremoniously pitted against one another by the same careless publisher. Perhaps the most famous example of this being Titanfall 2 which was released hardly a week before the much bigger multiplayer shooter Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. That meant that despite the low that Titanfall had received as a franchise up until that point, the player base was sucked dry by the bigger title which left a game described as one of the best shooters ever made to fester into nothingness. Of course, such situations can also occur with games not published by the same studio, but we don't classify those as 'cannibalisation'. Such as when both Horizon games came out next to huge industry changing games that overshadowed them, or Mad Max went up against 'Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain'. But this isn't the sort of cannibalisation that Square means.

It wouldn't make sense even if it was. Because Square's various studios actually covered quite a diverse collection of franchises that not only tended to slot around each other come release time, but didn't always share the same target demographic. Obviously there's always going to be adaptive audience that shift from game to game regardless of genre and are drawn to love for the franchise or just a desire for the new big release, but the core groups of who loves JRPGs and those who love Deus Ex as an RPG is not a flat circle. (There's a Venn there for sure, but it's not a perfect cross-over) In fact, it wasn't until Square decided to elaborate on their plans for the future that we really got a light shone on what exactly was meant by the 'cannibalisation' comment.

Square Enix, in their infinite wisdom, are looking to shift their remaining western fiduciary duties so that the remaining of their funds can be dedicated to the development of Japanese games who they claim were suffering from the upkeep to their western studios. Rising development costs are becoming such a problem, they say, that it has become necessary to "diversify the studio capital structure" by way of killing off companion studios in a blaze of ignominy. A very corporate and jargon-filled answer no doubt, but one that does slightly run up against critical analysis. Because afterall, if their problem was a lack of disposal development resources, why not drop a single big studio instead of all of them? And if this is a money issue, then why sell them off for a fraction of their estimated value? And if this is going to touch on 'rising development costs' then back off before I pop off.

"Rising development costs" is the bogey man of the AAA world, gaming's own ManBearPig; only this inconvenient truth is a very convenient lie. Not a lie that development costs are rising, they sure are; but a lie that the revenue these games are making aren't rising to meet those costs. Because hello; all of these triple A project now come packed with some sort of extra grift to funnel hundreds of millions from their consumers. If we're to believe Square that development costs is the big bad in this situation, offset by the expulsion of the west; then wouldn't it be fair to assume that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is going to release for $60 instead of $70? Afterall, they solved the development cost problem, so that painful price hike doesn't need to be passed onto the consumer anymore, right? That was their initial excuse, afterall? Heck, guess there's no need to push Live Services anymore too, right? And the NFT train they've being desperate to kick out the station; guess that's on it's way to be decommissioned; isn't it? Because the development cost leeches have been banished, the books are balanced, the valley of profits is saved! Right? But that isn't going to happen, is it? Because these games still make a stinking amount of profit, and the 'rising development costs' angle is a glaring red herring.

The actual reason is the exact same thing that was being said when the sale happened, the real reason that Square have been trying to smother over with their 'cannibalisation' smoke screen. They at Square have failed time and time again to push the right projects that resonate with the target audience and so are just retreating to the Japanese audience they're better in-tune with. Years of pushing Live Services fell flat for them and because Square Management are too dense to learn from their mistakes they preferred to just throw away their toes and start from scratch; and now they're too embarrassed to admit their rank incompetence and are hiding behind flimsy paper-thin excuses. We see you, Square; everyone does. No amount of false mirrors and shifted blame is going to cover up what you really at the tailend of all these deceptions; quitters

Do we deserve another Tomb Raider movie seires?

 Turning over in their Tomb

Have we been bad? Did some archaeologist somewhere knock over some ancient totem to a long forgotten god, invoking the wrath of ceaseless bad adaptations until the end of time? Because that alone is the only way I can rationalise the sheer amount of news we've had covering video game franchises that just can't be happy staying as video games. Resident Evil? Awful, scrap it. Halo? Even worse, burn that show with a bloody fire. Last of Us? These shows are getting on the last of my nerves. As least the Tomb Raider ganes have a history in movies, for some reason. In fact, it's actually been quite some time since the last time we got one of those movies. Isn't Alicia Vikander supposed to pop up in a sequel around about this... oh, seems the DC bug has been catching and now the series has been prematurely cancelled. So we're looking at another potential reboot? Just. Stop!

I know that the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider Movies hold a very special place in some people's heart as the very first video games movies that weren't total ass. In fact, her Tomb Raider really ended up giving more personality to the decently blank slate of Lara Croft which ended up rubbing off on her video game character. It wasn't whole heaps of diverse characterisations, don't get me wrong; but it was suitably fitting for what a video game protagonist should be around that time. Sassy, adventurous and over the top. In many ways Angelina Jolie's movies are some of the most faithful video game adaptations ever made. Does that mean they're good movies? Lord no, I can't stand the things. They're a total bizarre mishmash of smashed together plot points offset by action setpeices that linger just that tiny bit too long and the obligatory terrible effect shot near the climax. Forgettable garbage.

But then, I am saying that as someone who played the original Tomb Raider franchise first when he was too young to really like it and later when he was too old to take it seriously. Honestly, when I was a kid playing that original with my dad we spent a whole week trying to find a missing cog to fit a wheel only to discover it was laying on the ground in the same texture as the floor. (A story my dad never fails to bring up whenever I mention Tomb Raider) And when I was an adult playing the game I couldn't help but marvel at all the unexplainable oddities, like how Lara is donning her iconic short shorts from the very opening moments of the game, despite the fact that those opening moments take place at the top of a snowy Himalayan mountain. That's how you lose your legs to frostbite, Lara, maybe try on some proper trousers next time.

However little respect I had for Lara before her reboot was totally offset once that reboot happened and I ended up being faced with an adventure series I was really drawn to. The remade Lara had a vulnerability to her that I found relatable and a self-discovery journey that I seriously enjoyed following her on. Not to mention the gameplay was great and the environments were excellent. The series seemed to just get better with the sequel and the end of the origin trilogy, whilst plodding, is one of the most beautiful games of it's generation. That was a great example of a Lara updated to fit in the modern age pantheon of characters, both respecting her origins and updating her. And so when the idea came to reboot the movie franchise, I actually think it made a lot of sense to lean towards those games' vision of Lara.

And that is exactly what they did. Way too much. Alicia Vikander's reboot Tomb Raider pretty much just piece-meals together a narrative from the two currently released Square Enix games at the time in order to try and speed-run both their stories with about a fraction of the personal investment, stakes and narrative awareness. Sure, maybe Trinity could have been introduced earlier in the game's narratives, but they weren't because Crystal Dynamic's games knew how to hyper-focus themselves in the necessary narrative beats they needed to tell so that they could do them justice. The first game was about becoming the survivor Lara, the second was about revealing the big bad in Trinity, and the third was about facing down Trinity and becoming that legendary hero character from the old games. (As clumsy as the third's beats were.) I don't think the movie, on the otherhand, had any real idea what it wanted to do or where it was going.

Which is not to say that the movie suffered from every angle of it's production. I think the performances were fine and cast was alright. Alicia did her job and she got paid, which is about as much as I can say about that. But these were supposed to be shakey baby steps that are foundational towards the future. Some necessary stumbles in the now so that tomorrow you can proudly bound forth with purpose. Except that MGM bungled it. They had the figurative golden goose of a franchise that has already once proved it's silver screen viability and profitability, and they just forgot to make a sequel. They ummed and ahhed and twisted their hair on a potential follow up for so damn long that the rights ended up defaulting not long after Square sold off the franchise, meaning that the movie rights now lay in the hands of some amorphous conglomerate known as Embracer Group; and who can say what a distopian-ly named business like that is going to do with it?

One thing is for certain; this means that Alicia's Lara Croft tenure is prematurely up, which is a bit of a shame because she really did seem invested in the role. At least a little bit. And this really could have been her action vehicle to stardom as it was for AJ; at least partially. (I can't actually say how Mrs Jolie became famous. It's like she just appeared out of a worm-hole, pre-famous.) I do feel a bit bad for her that everything has gone down the drain through no fault of her own, it's really epitomic of the chaos that is modern Hollywood; so desperate to nail that unshakable god-project that they end up totally losing sight of what they have before them in the moment. Like a potentially blockbuster series if only they put in the effort. I know the first movie wasn't as big of a success as they wanted; but giving up after you yourself never really tried to begin with is hardly good form, now is it?

But on turns the wheel and the mill churns ever more, because the profitability potential of this franchise mandates we see a new Lara take the reigns at some point. Yet another actress will don the iconic tank top only this time without the guiding hand of a fresh new reboot franchise to steal ideas from, which will either be a recipe for disaster or the opportunity for creative genius depending on which way the wind is blowing. I just pray that Embracer doesn't go the route of violence and pimp off the rights to Netflix; the last thing Tomb Raider needs is for it's resting place to be pillaged by a embarrassing philandering of it's freshly laid corpse stretched over a 9-part season arc with a new Lara who never leaves her estate and instead spends all day drawing Helluva Boss lewds of Loona x Moxxie. (If you don't know what that means, bask in your innocence and don't sully yourself.)   

Even in early access; Baldur's Gate 3's winding narrative boggles the mind

 Branches like an oak tree

As we currently sit around feeling the creek in our bones grow steeper and musk in our throats swell fouler, the release date for Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't seem to be getting any closer to us than it currently is in this very moment. Like the door at the end of the dream corridor that seems to run from us as we run toward it, I'm starting to lose hope that we'll ever see the city of Balduran bought to life in the modern day. But Larian Studios has yet to let anyone down yet! (Unless you were excited for 'Divinity: Fallen Heroes' before that got shelved in favour of BG3) But in a way I can totally understand their reticence to release. Baldur's Gate is one of the ancestors of CRPG and much of Larian's long career in development has led them to this one magnum opus moment. I can understand them not wanting to get this wrong in the slightest by going over everything with a fine tooth comb and putting more effort into everything than they've ever done before, even with their most ambitious titles. And for those that have grown tired, maybe I could recommend trying that Early Access run through a couple more times, because I'm done it somewhere near five times now and everytime I encounter something new.

Now to be fair I haven't exactly been exhaustive in all of my runs, but there have been a couple wherein I've tried to do everything that I can and absorb all the game currently has to offer. Only to play again later and realise that I missed an entire cave somewhere, or a mini quest, or a character interaction, or another quest route. The quest routes are the one's that get me because there are so many permutations leading this way and that trying to make sure the game accounts for just about every possible choice the player could feasible make. And of course there's a push in modern gaming to try and account for player choice in very surface levels driven by some false idea that choosing left or right at a stereotypical crossroads counts as immersive engaging play. The modern perception that 'linear narrative equals bad' has spread from the general public towards game development and is skewering what player choice even means. (It's gotten so bad that even companies that typically excel in choice have become disillusioned about what it even means. Yes, I'm talking about CDPR again, I can't stop myself.)

Portal is a game that won various acclaim throughout it's life cycle for numerous very worthy achievements, but perhaps one of it's most lasting legacies is the belief that despite how robust and functional the game is; Valve thought of everything. That trick you used to sneak yourself out of the test chamber in such a way that made it impossible to progress? Valve knew you could do that and not only planted a contingency but also a voice line to confirm you're not as clever as you think you are. Every shortcut, every twisting path, every choice you try to make has been considered and accounted for. It makes you feel less like a player rebelling at the intricate designs of the developers (at least eventually) and begins to really immerse you into the role of the lab rat stuck by the designs of an all-seeing AI mother who endures your attempts at independence with a veneer of clinical distance and a tincture of withering contempt. (Huh, sounds like my actual mother when I put it like that...)

The reason I mention that is because I very much believe that Larian has borrowed that philosophy and somehow ported it to a full blown RPG adventure in a way that should be totally impossible given the scale of such a project. The kind of twisting branching story thread that, try as you might, there's no way you can lose and which sticks itself to you naturally enough not to break the agency of this player-led narrative. Take, for example, Shadowheart's oh-so-important little black box, probably the Nightsong, which the player absolutely must have with them in order for the events of BG3 to play out. (However they will end up playing out. We're clueless as to the extent of the Box's involvement for the moment.) Gamespot recently uploaded an interview with medieval cosplayer and Larian founder Swen Vincke where he agonised over the amount of permutations that had to be accounted for in order to place that box in the player's party, take a look.

And the Nightsong is not the exception. No, for the breath of choice that effects even the beginning conflict between the Tieflings, Druids and Goblins can branch out enough to fill an entire game's worth of decisions for another decently branching RPG; yet here it covers a single main quest line. (One which is, I believe, entirely skippable if you're looking to speedrun.) The most obvious path to follow is to see the Tieflings, led by Zevlor, on the verge of being kicked out of their safety in the Druid's Grove, meet the current Druid leader Kagha and commit to killing the goblin leaders so that the Tieflings can get off of Druid land safely, and then kill the three leaders, rescue Halsin and bring him back to chastise Kagha about being such a terrible host. The permutations branch from there. Firstly, you can choose to assassinate Kagha within her room at Zevlor's dubious request so that the Tieflings can stay. Or you can investigate Kagha, learn she's a member of the Shadow Druids, and then talk her into a redemption arc so she willingly stops the ritual to kick out the Tieflings. You can also meet with Mithra, tell her the location of the Druid's Grove, retreat back to the Druid's Grove and warn Zevlor and have a massive battle at the gate of the Grove against the brunt of the Goblin Army's forces. Those are just the big branches you can take, and all choices leading towards the 'help the Teflings' endings, and you can bet that there's innumerable branches for 'help the Goblins' and 'help the Druids' laid out for you too. (However, killing Zevlor for Kagha is a bit of a deadend currently, but that's the only limp note in this orchestra brimming with choice.)

There's also significant recurring consequnce choices that you can feasibly walk past entirely. There is quite literally no critical quest path whatsoever pointing early game players to enter the crypt that houses the camp mainstay 'Withers', otherwise known as 'Big Easter Egg of previous module'. We know how integral he is going to be to the narrative, however as of so far he can be totally avoided. Unless they plan to do another 'Shadowheart's box situation where he just pops out of nowhere, and the way Swen was talking it kind of sounds like they never want to go down that path again; that's an huge path of the plot which can just be ignored by the whim of the player, potentially containing drastic changes down the line. And speaking of 'down the line'.

There are numerous instances of encounters in ACT 1 that end with characters on their way to Baldur's Gate whilst leaving their calling card to the player, implying that many of the side quests of ACT 1 will breed a recurring cast of characters that will pop in an out throughout the length of the story. You have the Children Thieves of the Tiefling Camp, the merchant couple in the Myconid Colony, the Deep Gnomes, Mayrina; pretty much everyone you bump into leaves a narrative story hook. All of which hints at the consequences the later game will hold, and given what the team have already allowed for ACT 1, who knows how far reaching these could get? One example I've seen in my latest playthrough was that of Omeluum, the only friendly Mindflayer in the game. If you do his fetch quest he offers you his ring of protection which, it is heavily implied, is the only thing preventing his location from being sensed by any nearby Elder Brains, all in a bid to try and smother your affliction. Who's to say that in the late game, when the MindFlayer's start to really invade Faerun and Elder Brains become numerous, that Omeluum without his ring becomes forcibly dragged back into the fold to return as a late game boss fight? The possibilities are staggering.

As with many out there who are always swapping concerns and speculation on the Larian forums, I am totally clueless about how Larian plans to stretch this extensive reactivity over the entire game and am more than a little bit worried it's going to fall off spectacularly the second the Early Access areas are left. Who remembers when CDPR did that exact same thing with the opening section of Cyberpunk? Teasing all the choices and consequences and then dropping that entirely after the demo locations were finished and explored? Larian have a huge mountain to climb in making this game a true macrocosm of the demo we currently have our hands on, and that almost goes to justify the painfully long time it's taking to get made. Or at least it would, if I was at all a reasonable man. Baldur's Gate 3 has the potential to totally revolutionise the standards of western RPGs forever more and I think Larian have the talent to pull it off. I just wish that maybe, I dunno, they could bring it out before I die. That'd be nice.

META's Metaverse is a mess-iverse

 That's the thing with life; no one makes it out alive.

Throw the body in the pit, it's useless to us now in the future that is METAVERSE. When we all transcend our frail physical bodies and it's limp limitations so that we can spend our waking lives hooked up to daddy Zuck's Mean Dream Machine and have our lifeblood slowly be drained out of the brain jar that makes up our new evolved forms. In the metaverse there's a place for all of us. A place as- powerless peon under Mark's boot, indentured servitude cleaning Mark's virtual mansion, or the premium toilet plunge cleaner at Zuckerberg's communal seminal sewers. Finally we all become functional members of Mark's society just like humanity was born to be. Aren't you excited to toss behind your fleshbags for Mark's dream vision? You better be, because it's coming at you whether or not you like it! ALL HAIL OUR META OVERLORDS!

But seriously, Facebook's whole Metaverse project has been an utter failure of marketing from the word go, and it's actually somewhat humbling to know that someone with the apparent monopoly on siphoning personal data out of you (with the exception of TikTok, I guess) can't put together a decent presentation selling their biggest life-line business scheme to outlive their Facebook platform which isn't going to last past it's current generation of users. You'd think people like that would have the hardwired exclusive access to our frontal lobes with perfect advertising to trick the whole world, but unless Mark Zuckerberg has a humiliation fetish, and with him who knows, this whole project of theirs has been a disaster. Their meaningless 'Metaverse' buzzword has been stolen by every company under the sun, the very idea of what a Metaverse even is supposed to be has been lambasted daily by anyone who grants it even the laziest critical eye and their own fledging work to start their Metaverse is such a mystery that one of the top searched Google suggestions in reference to Facebook is "What's Facebook's Metaverse called?"

Horizon Worlds, is the answer to that. Which yes, means that if Google recognises you as a gamer than the second you try to type in the name of that online you're going to have the Horizon games starring Aloy shoved in your face. (-5 points to brand recognition) But what if you do manage to find the thing and source the relevant equipment in order to play it? What can you expect? Well Horizon worlds is currently attempting to be a social hub for life-less looking avatar's to enjoy a lazy neon sunset themed world with nothing of substance or value to it. That's right, all those game developer's that were coming out trying to tell Facebook that the whole 'online social hub' thing was essentially just the MMO worlds they'd been creating for the past twenty years; Facebook has proved you all wrong by releasing its  social space as an MMO without the game. Groovy.

Okay so there are actually games spread about here and there but almost all of them totally suck ass. They're embarrassingly amateur programs that wouldn't even cut it as an inconsequential minigame in a Watch_Dogs game; that's how lazy they are. All while the actual talented developers trying their hands at Horizon Worlds are scratching their heads wondering how in the hell they're supposed to get all these systems to sing for them so they can construct anything worthwhile to do in here. Of course, those developers also have to contend with the lack of interest around Horizon Worlds, so that any effort they do put in is likely to have some waste when no one is around to actually play it. Try balancing the problems with developing VR games beneath the misbalancing factor of it having to run on a program that actively repels most able-minded players to even look at due to the Facebook connections. Really makes one consider their current contracts and allegiances.

All of which is to say that META's platform is undergoing some pretty rough growing pains for the express moment, which it makes it so very laughable that Mark, and at this point it's important to divorce the machinations of Facebook and the personal directives of it's pale-skinned dictator, drove up the price of the Oculus Quest VR headset specifically because of their Horizon Worlds project. As if he suddenly just realised that the incredible added value of his lifeless and empty platform warranted a flat retail increase for a console that is years old at this point. What is Mark, a Nintendo sleeper agent or something? And it's no twenty dollar jump like when Bethesda decided that it's Fallout 4 offerings needed to be overpriced to account for the total dogs dinner of DLC they wanted to put out between their two expansions. This is a big $100 dollar hike, across the board of headsets. Everything is just that large leap more expensive, and it's a trainwreck worth watching.

Think about the degree of unshakable delusion that has to have been running through the heads of everyone involved in that decision. First, they had to have been looking at the unimpressive adoption rate of Horizon Worlds, and realised how their current growth strategy was failing their overriding ambition. Then they must have totally ignored the value proposition of that software, and why that might turn people off from trying it out and straying, and instead tricked themselves into believing that the people just weren't taking the headset seriously enough and decided to hike the price. Or, even more damning, they saw the lack of revenue generation and thought that gouging their own console price was the way to supplement for it. Which is just... so wrong. What ever the case, Zucks might actually being doing the world a favour by grinding any feasible chance his ecosystem had of getting a grip in the market down by way of pricing his own hardware away from public interest.

As if VR needed another barrier to entry. It's already a criminally underserved and underadopted form of gaming that optimists are failing with their naïve belief that just because the tech is finally sound the product itself is going to just magically catch on. Sure, it's slowly getting more popular. Agonisingly slowly, however. Anyone looking to make a genuine living out of being a solely VR developer needs to either be one of the slam dunk mega hit games, like Beat Saber, or have a truckload of outside investing ready to keep the company afloat. There's just not the numbers to support an ecosystem. And the way to supplement those numbers, funnily enough, is not to raise the price of the damn thing in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis! (Does anyone in the tech industry ever look outside the bubble they live in to try and get a feel of their market? I'm thinking not.)

But if you're a late comer to VR and rush to quickly get a headset you have a scant few weeks before the hike gets into effect. And if you miss it don't worry; the new version of the headset comes with $30 VR hit Beat saber. (Good luck trying to dig up the other $70 of that value somewhere) Oh, and that offer is only temporary. After six months of the new price the headset will come alone. As much as it pains me to see an increadibly dumb pricing choice, it is ingratiating to acknowledge it's Facebook that are going to suffer the brunt of the bad decision. Maybe that will be enough to grind this vaccous concept of the 'Metaverse' down to an ignoble and deserved halt. At least until Amazon gets on developing their own, because these companies are like hydra; cut one head and three more take it's place.

The world is over: Knights of the Old Republic Remake has been delayed

 I'm typing up my epitaph now

That's it boys, I'm on the way out. There's no recovering from a blow this devastating and I might as well lay myself down to rest right now because I ain't making it to the new year. How could one be so cruel, so abjectly vindictive, to tease one of the single most glorious morels of meat ever cooked in the lapping flames of Hephaestus' open-flame grill, only to snatch it away and chuck it to the dogs? What gives you the right, to toss around the name of divinity like that; you think yourself some sort of god? Well even the gods suffer from shunning; and right now I can't even look as Aspyr Entertainment after they've all but effectively cancelled (Delayed indefinitely, to be precise) The Knights of the Old Republic Remake. Literally the one shining gem in the coming Star Wars Line-up; set ablaze and burnt to ash before our very eyes without so much as a public acknowledgement. (They could've told us something about the vastly shifting state of this immensely exciting game's developmental status, jeez.)

I, like many basement dwelling freaks out there, lost every last sensible neuron in my head casing when the KOTOR Remake was announced. Yes, it was a PlayStation exclusive, the single most annoying phrase that dogs me these days, but to know that someone out there realised the potential for reviving one of the most incredible Star Wars stories of all time, and the reverence of that original game did not just exist within my head like it sometimes feels, was vindicating. It was liberating. And when you looked to that shining subtitle, 'Remake', it was easy to see flashes of 'Final Fantasy VII', Resident Evil 2, or The Last of- no wait, that remake is kind of just a disguised remaster. And a bit of a cash grab. (If it wasn't true, why would the devs get so worked up about it instead of waiting for the product to speak for itself? Because they don't want to be looked on as grifting street artists!) But perhaps it was the very ambition behind the studio, and the expectation of the audience, which doomed the last thing worth enduring this twisted, hellish, thing we call 'existence' for.

Though details have been kept obscenely close to oblivion ever since announcing, Jason Schrier recently descended upon this project with his investigating talons and you know what that means. A. That the reporting is very likely to be extremely accurate and B. it's going to be sucky news. I don't think I've ever seen Jason's name in the byline of a story that made me pumped and excited for the future of gaming, he's like the cloaked Reaper of hope; not the unstoppable force of nature that causes the misfortune but the grim portent of sorrow that bears it's message. And the other day that message was of the various developmental woes, and now somewhat lack of development altogether, that has struck one of gaming's most anticipated projects. It's one of those articles that strikes at the throat, quickens the breath, turns the leg to jelly; it's the bell's first toll.

As the story goes, by the time we had the pleasure of enjoying that reveal trailer, this game hadn't just left the pitching office like is the case with a lot of these sparse fan-appeal projects nowadays. In fact it had apparently been worked on for near to three years before that point, and who knows how much of that was actual active development. (And we do have some ancillary evidence for that from at least one developer who was told his own pitch for a KOTOR project was turned down previously to that announcement because this was in development at the time.) What new sources are saying, however, is that the prospective release of this game was originally slated to be Christmas 2022; and it wasn't until an early demo built for showcase that caused Aspyr's internal teams to realise that was absolutely not going to happen and they'd bitten off far more than they can chew.

Though Lucasfilm and the other interested parties were reportedly impressed with the demo, internally there was some threating about how far along, or rather how not-so far, the demo was. There's little point speculating about the contents as with every vapourware project we merely need to wait a tenyear and the damn thing will be leaked out to the public, but personally I'm guessing it was flashy but substance light. At a guess. Either way, not long after their positive outside opinions, senior staff starting rolling down the chopping block with more than a little off the top. The art director and design director are just gone, without a second word; and Aspyr are currently eyeing up other contracts it can accept in order to keep itself busy in the meantime between now and KOTOR being anything near ready. Which sort of paints a dire picture, does it not?

Estimations, and as far as I can tell these are incidental estimations not some sort of official assessment of ability and workload, is that KOTOR is more likely to arrive come 2025. Which is... gah! What in the bloody hells are they even making over there, huh? Is this a remake or have they gone Tetsuya Nomura and decided to turn one game into a trilogy that loosely follows the cliffnotes of the original but is really veering off to tell their own story? We already know they were going 'action game' with it, but this is making me think that they haven't done the FF7R route and tried to translate the gameplay of the original into a new genre with references and move-set windows, but they've literally started from utter scratch and determined themselves to making something far beyond their studio scope. I mean, isn't this the first game they've made entirely from scratch? With everything else being ports? Maybe this whole idea was a bad one from the offshoot.

Which leaves us in a damnable stalemate. KOTOR is suffering a six year development cycle if it's lucky, which is the absolute calling card of disaster projects the world over, FF7R is a rare exception. Aspyr are struggling for other contracts to keep this main one going, which will in turn slow down the development of that remake. The triumphant return of The Old Republic to official Star Wars canon has been kicked back another few years. Everything is pretty much just completely terrible and the stars weep black gunk to wash this land in a sea of awful. I wish I could tell you that this was heartbreaking, but I honestly can't feel enough of my own emotions to be able to tell if I'm affected by this news. Almost as though I knew something was going to go wrong ages ago and subconsciously mourned for it until there was nothing left but bitter sardony. Either that or I'm having a stroke. Hopefully the latter.

So is KOTOR cancelled? No, it's not cancelled. But it is delayed indefinitely which is the signature move of the 'troubled product' uppercut. You may call me a doom and gloomer to write off the project so quickly the second we learn anything at all is not going to plan; but an 'indefinite delayal' is just some week of lost work. That's a total restructuring of an intricately designed development schedule to say "Actually, we have no idea how we're going to put this together and may be totally out of our skill range here." Why do you think dev teams stomp their feet down about even the most tiny delay? A whole working machine of moving parts requires everyone to chase to clock and hit their marks. Missing it by a little is a nuisance. Throwing in the script and saying "I give up on deadlines altogether" would be enough to shake anyone's confidence in the integrity of this project. Seems like Vampire The Masqeurade: Bloodlines 2 is going to need to shift over to make some room down in development hell.

Gollum is now fashionably late

 A real maverick, that one.

I am fascinated by the idea of the new upcoming Gollum game, just as I am with this coming slate of Lord of the Rings that appears to be quietly trying to have it's cake and eat it at the same time. To be clear, I'm actually not a huge LoTR head who can rattle off dates and deep lore and characters from the top of my brain jar like some sort of flesh-bound Silmarillion; I'm just some clueless rube who happens to think the story of those books are damn near peerless, the Peter Jackson movies are exceptionally incredible adaptations and that Amazon doesn't quite know how much they're chewing when it comes to their reboot of the franchise. And to be clear, they are very much leaning towards rebooting the whole Lord of the Rings franchise, as much as they're desperately trying to hide that fact by taking the cowards route up to the big events. They're trying to paint their own ancillary stories that nervously skirt around the important book-covered storylines and place a few recognisable names here and there, allowing them to flirt with the world without placing themselves in direct competition with Jackson's work, all to try and get people used to the idea of their remakes before the remakes are made.

I do think it's pretty spineless to approach the whole development process of this remake series as 'LoTR: The Rings of Power' has. Kind of like if Tetsuya Nomura had been too scared to touch the classics he revered in his youth and so made a management sim Final Fantasy game where you played as the investment brokers trying to come together as a conglomerate called 'Shinra' hoping to exploit the bubbling power concerns of the, still mid-construction, city of Midgar. They want the audience to think "Yeah, I guess I can close my eyes and pretend this is an addendum to Peter Jackson's work" before they then come around and try to redo the story of those movies as was their original attention before the fan's scoff-back made them all reconsider. And to be honest, I can kind of see where they're coming from. The Lord of the Rings movies expertly cut through the material to draw not only the most salient, but also the most photogenic and engaging, moments of the book to truncate the immense Lord of the Rings narrative without compromising the heart of the story; that's one tough act to follow.

And this Gollum game has been another tool in that misinformation campaign, and one I've recognised as being particularly egregious in how it's attempted to brook it's independence from the Jackson films. Right from the get go the team have affirmed that Gollum is its own project that bows only to the books as its master, and though I don't know if they've ever played up their relationship to the Amazon TV show, they had planned to release the game alongside the debut of that show so it's pretty clear the two are linked. Yet this messaging conflicts pretty heavily with the visuals we're seeing out of this game from a base level, because lo-and-behold; that is just Andy Serkis' version of Gollum that they're making a game out of. Claiming to be a totally new take on the character, yet actually just nabbing the visual design and even a bit of Andy Serkis' performance. (Yes, reading the same sort of line means there'll be a bit of cross-over no matter who's giving the performance. As such I can overlook those similarities somewhat.)

You might read that and think; "But that's just Gollum, isn't it? They're just bringing Gollum to life, he's obviously going to look like that." but as with many of the visualisations of Lord of The Ring before the Jackson movies will show you; that is nowhere near the case. Gollum is actually described with a lot of room for interpretation in the books, he's slimy and skinny and has huge black eyes. He's ethnically from Hobbiton, but as with perhaps the biggest theme of the story, his corruptive influence, lustful greed has twisted and warped his appearance to be hardly recognisable even by his own kin. If you were to honestly try and make a Gollum without trying to leverage the pre-built movie fanbase to try and play both sides, as it were, there would be any number of potential final looks that your character might have. Just look at the Ralph Bakshi Gollum.

But of course, trying something new is scary when the last guys did such a good job, and it's much easier to just climb on their back and try to build from there. No shade, that's literally something I would do, I just think it would less underhanded if you didn't try to play up the 'considerable' effort that went into designing their unique Gollum who looks identical to the Peter Jackson one with just a few more rogue strands of hair. Be that as it may, I'm pretty sure we're all excited to get a glimpse at whatever nonsense everyone's favourite magpie was up to whilst the forces of evil were shoring up to try and wipe clean the land of man. I'm expecting a sort of 'Thief' style storyline where the narrative is happening around you whilst you're on a selfish trip to get money and interacting with the grander world in a perfunctory fashion almost despite your own wishes. Unfortunately, it's not going to be that simple.

You see, whilst the gods of brand synergy decree that games and movies must come out within a hair's breadth of one-another, sometimes accidents happen. Strike while the franchise is hot only works if the hilariously dissimilar arts of TV show creation and game production line up perfectly and that... well, that's just not likely to happen all too often. What should come as a surprise to no one is the realisation  that Gollum is going to need a few more months in the oven and thus is going to miss the, already determinedly controversial, launch of 'The Rings of Power'. I'm sure that made some executive out there just weeps to know that, although I'm going to take it as a positive because it means the developers aren't chopping off the game's knees in order to score a few cheap recognition bucks, or to literally try and profit off someone else's marketing.

In many ways this is actually perfect for them whatever way the show goes. If it's a great reboot for the series than that's going to push traffic towards their game in the months after enjoying the full show, and if it turns out to be another god awful adaptation like the many we've seen recently, then the visual similarities to the Jackson movies will attract fans nostalgic to the days before the franchise was murdered. Poke as I will at Daedelic Entertainment, they really have masterfully manoeuvred their way into a seemingly infallible position. Then again... Marvel's Avengers did teach us that even with a sure thing that couldn't possible be corrupted, bad corporate decisions can corrupt the incorruptible. Still, unless Gollum starts randomly introducing buyable skins and lootboxes I can't see how they'd mess it up. And if they did, I'd honestly be impressed to see how many skins they could manage to print of Gollum's posing pouch. (I guess they could sell a Tiger print and Zebra stripe variant; but where do you go from there? Lacey silk?)

Now to be fair, after laying down all that shade; I think that in the right hands a very focused narrative following a single character across a lore-rich universe at the edge of a lit tinder box has the potential to be an amazing experience piece in the same vein as 'Brothers: A tale of Two Sons' or The Last Guardian. I don't know whether this team are the right hands, but maybe they will be. I just think there's a air of dishonesty surrounding this which, in fairness, probably did not start at all in their offices but rather from their Amazon brand partners. I just pray at the end of the day that none of this gets in the way of the third 'Shadow of' game which we were all promised, given how that game is now balancing between the Peter Jackson visual style and this stealthy reboot. (Shadow of Middle Earth? I'm spitballing here.)

Ubisoft: professional time and money wasters

Why are these guys still considered AAA again?

To languish in the power-seat of a company like Ubisoft takes a tremendous amount of tact and intelligence as you deftly navigate between everything you can do to stay in that position and all that you should. With the livelihoods of hundreds to thousands relying on your word and the eyes of millions judging your output, there's a pressure few could even dream of personally facing that needs to overcome in order to perform with the manner of wit and skill that belies the hard talents of everyone working under you. Or at least that is the impression. Yet Ubisoft, with all of it's size and responsibility, prides itself in making the most pathetically pastiche decisions and wasting it's money on the same tired ideas that were dead before they left the pitch room, bloated development windows for underdelivered games, or just milked-out core franchises that meet increasingly diminishing interest. They believe they can rely on their core few series' to sustain them by just squeezing a little harder with each entry, but very soon they're going to learn that there's only so much air left in their money bags.

It starts with games that Ubisoft have had dancing in development hell for upwards of ten years, and yes I said games. Plural. Most studios have about one of those projects at any given time, but Ubisoft juggles about 2 in the public eye and who knows how many behind closed doors like they're shooting for the world record or something. We had the Black Flag spin-off which I've covered a little before and will touch on again later, but then there's 'Beyond Good and Evil 2'. Do you remember when that game was still exciting? When the proposition was this vast open world (unfortunately live service) space pirate game with all of these sprawling urban world spaces and stretched wide plains, all covering the surface of an in-game solar system? And then No Man's Sky came out with a game that rendered an entire gaggle of galaxies, Bethesda revealed their Star Field which is said to bring us dozens of solar systems. Even Star Citizen, with all of it's flaws and hang-ups, at least exists in some diminished form that players can pretend resembles a finished game.

But then it goes a step even further, to the games that Ubisoft conceived of in the worst possible haze of insanity and then, after brief spells of lucidity, have promptly cancelled: Wasting development time and money with their moronic propositions. Right now we have two VR titles that have been killed, Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed VR; of course representing something slightly atypical to Ubisoft's typical line-up, and thus were canned. Their embarrassingly ill-conceived 'Ghost Recon: Frontline', a battle Royale with literally nothing unique to it's premise whatsoever, was cancelled. Their limp multiplayer game Roller Champions, which actually launched, is said to be close to shuttering before it's third season. And we haven't heard from XDefiant for a hot minute but with everyone's reaction to that, I'm expecting the announcement to filter through literally any day now. Ubisoft is becoming the Netflix of entertainment products right now, and given the state Netflix is currently in that is not company you want to be keeping.

And that's just touching on the games that Ubisoft have killed off, what about the ones it actually has coming? Well we've got Skull and Bones, a game which has failed to score even a fraction of the hype it had the years ago when it was revealed thanks to it utterly failing to capture the sparked dreams it nudged and being effectively leap-frogged by Rare's own pirate game. Then you have the Assassin's Creed games which have utterly shirked their identity and are rocketing towards a coming live service 'megagame' which will host all future entries akin to what COD is doing with it's games, only without a clue as to how to navigate such a set-up. And then there's the NFT future they've committed to. At this point, the only project on their slate which hasn't totally drummed up pitchforks and torches are their two remakes, Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia. Neither of which are developed enough to offer a trailer and neither of which have even been heard from in brief updates all this year. They could well be on their way to cancellation soon too.

You know as an outsider looking in that things are dire when the company themselves are scrambling to make some emergency measures just to keep the lights on. And they need it too; the only big upcoming game they've got is the Avatar game which is meant to coincide with the movie later this year, for all that's worth. (Maybe the movie will be a hit, but I have a feeling the game will let it down whatever the case. It is a Ubisoft product, afterall.) And what have the fivehead business masterminds at Ubisoft cooked up to try and finagle some quick sales between now and their next big hit? Anything interesting and exciting, like perhaps a slate of those indie games they used to publish which they might push forward to be headliners this year? A new Rayman perhaps? No, how about another Assassin's Creed. Wait...

Yes, these absolute Neanderthals have such an iron deficiency they have been struck utterly incapable of taking in new information or forming independent thought, so when the graph line starts pointing down they just panic and start repeat the exact same three phrases they've been drippling out for the past decade and a half. "AC", "Ghost Recon" and "Grope". I'd imagine it was the studio heads who had to step up and remind the higher-ups that the solution to them not having enough time to develop a new Assassin's Creed quick enough to fill their schedule is not to start a new Assassin's Creed project. After which they were promptly fired and their replacement was informed the plan would now be to make a smaller Assassin's Creed game that can leverage all the success of their flogged horse with but a fraction of the development costs- and where have I heard this one before?

Oh right, there was a whole 2.5d series of Assassin's Creed games that were supposed to spearhead a slew of ancillary smaller budget Assassin's Creed games and only managed to wrap up their trilogy. What went wrong? Well the games themselves relied on feeding intentionally developed gaps in the lore, such as the mystery gift given by movie Ezio to Shao Jun, only to find that such mysteries appealed more to the book and comic fans than the game fans. One of the biggest problems with Assassin's Creed is the chasm between the fans of their specific chunks of media, and how they don't intersect nearly as much as they should. At the time of these games release there was still a unifying narrative for Assassin's Creed that had the attention of the general fan more than these ancillary mysteries did, so all those game ultimately had to offer was their gameplay which was... alright. There was a rigidity to the gameplay which made them feel more like explicitly linear puzzle challenges than stealth games that give you tools and leave the execution in the players hands. Every Assassin's Creed does that, but those others are open world games where you can brute force your own solution. That's harder to do when squished into a couple dimensions.

Am I saying that the upcoming Assassin's Creed light title is going to utterly fail to satiate audiences and won't even make it's meagre budget back? No, but I think it's going to be a waste of a development process anyway. Although I'm only half saying it because it's a bad idea. Ubisoft is a studio far past it's prime with a legacy utterly burnt by mediocrity after mediocrity; it's safest to assume any project starting in their offices is going to be a generic disappointment because that's literally all they make nowadays. And as the disappointments become less and less profitable, investors are going to start realising exactly what we already know and jump ship, leaving Ubisoft to go around begging to be bought again as the last of their funds dry up. A grim future for a company with so many livelihoods wrapped up inside of it, but a prediction I make fairly confidently. It's up to Ubisoft main to prove me wrong in the coming year if they can brook even a single success.