Mobile

The Growing Disconnect Between Developers and Their Community

January 18, 2019 Editorials

“Do you guys not have phones?” A phrase that will live in infamy as the moment where people of the what I would define as more “hardcore” gaming audience realized that mobile games had worked their way into even the most “sacred” of gaming franchises. Mortal Kombat has one, Diablo is getting one and now the much-loved Alien: Isolation is getting a mobile sequel. But that is old news now and acts more as inspiration and example then the breaking of a story, so this one’s for you Alien: Blackout. What I am trying to say here is that there are basically two things that are examined when a game is put into development and that is money and popularity. The gaming community is at a crossroads where those two things are starting to butt heads which is ultimately hurting the people caught in the crossfire. No one can deny…

The Journey is More Important than the End – An Open Letter

January 15, 2019 Editorials

We get caught up playing games to finish them or achieve something or score some victory or some win. Some amount of points, some kind of achievements; these are things that we crave in order to drive us to play games but really, the journey to do these things are so important. I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and I noticed something. Moving between objectives was far more fun than actually completing them. Seeing the world, listening to the sea, watching the ships move in the distance while mountains lumbered over the horizon; the views in the game are beyond gorgeous. The combat, while enthralling and the story, while good creates a world that really makes your time in it exciting and fun. In games we often think about the goals, often listed directly on the screen and of little more. Games like Shadow of the Colossus really brought the…

Activision Blizzard is Being Weird

January 5, 2019 News

Activision Blizzard is just outright being weird. It started many years ago when Activision bought Blizzard. At that point everyone declared Blizzard dead and that profits will rule the kingdom. That wasn’t… true you could say? Blizzard, under Mike Morhaime one of the co-founders of Blizzard, continued to prosper and be the one game launcher (Blizzard App, previously Battle.net) that no one complained about, Then 2018 hit and like many things, Activision Blizzard got weird. Mike Morhaime left the company, the CFO was poached twice and they basically began mothballing their very popular game Heroes of the Storm. All the while they spent most of the year being besieged by positive press about their profits. Then, there was BlizzCon where they announced the Diablo: Immortal game to basically people pausing and going what. Why did this happen? There is a lot to it, with many moving parts. If I had…

Free to Play Games: The Hidden Cost

January 2, 2019 Editorials

Free to play games are great, or are they? I can get behind a free to play game under certain circumstances but unfortunately those circumstances are far and few between. The truth is nothing in life is truly free it is like magic everything has a cost. But what is the real cost of a free to play game? I can get behind a free to play game if it uses ads in a respectful manner, micro-transactions solely for ascetics, paid expansions but beyond this I find it unacceptable and the price is your enjoyment. If I must play with people willing to spend real money to rank up it ruins the game for me (though there is always joy when you beat a paid player.) The problem is greed is strong and of course I understand that it costs insane amounts of money to make these games and they…

Project Stream is a Future in Which Gamers Win While Consumers and Pirates Lose

February 28, 2019 Editorials

It’s no joke that game piracy really hurts the industry. How it hurts the industry, I do not know. Most of the pirates I’ve seen probably don’t have enough money to buy the games they “steal” but nevertheless it’s a problem. I mean, if games don’t make money then investors don’t invest in games and then we’re stuck with GoFundMes and Kickstarter games that have as much success making it past the first released alpha build as you do getting your order right at the local fast food restaurant. The key to piracy is that the games code is executed within the PC that it is installed in. If you play, for instance, Fallout 4 then there is very little online connectivity built into the game. Everything, from NPCs to damage calculations, is ran through your processor and graphics card to present the game to you. The game’s code is…

VPNs are Over Sponsored in Modern Media

November 12, 2022 Editorials

Several years after the below article was wrote, the VPN issue still hasn’t been resolved. They’re just now far more expensive than they were before. Everything online right now is sponsored by VPNs and I don’t really understand it. You basically are glad handing another company your complete and total internet traffic instead of your home ISP, who now gets instead of mostly encrypted traffic gets all encrypted traffic. Every single tech blogger out there and now even gaming sites are just spamming it with VPN deals from a variety of VPN companies, who I assume are carting over buckets of gold. Let’s talk about VPNs. So a “Virtual Private Network” is slang for “this thing that connects your PC to other PCs via encrypted tubes over the Internet protecting your privacy get one today.” Which is, really interesting to me. I mean, REALLY interesting to me. In a traditional…

Bethesda the Grinch that Stole Christmas

December 31, 2018 Editorials

With Christmas all wrapped up you would think the trauma of the yuletide flooding everything would be over and for some, you would be right; however, there are hundreds of children whose trauma is continuing into the new year thanks to Bethesda! My brother-in-law who is 14 really wanted Fallout 76 and it was the one thing he was looking forward to. He went absolutely ballistic with joy when he opened it just repeating “Thank You!” over and over again! That is until the trick came into play; Apparently, Bethesda thought Christmas was Halloween and opted for a trick instead of a treat. He could not play the amazing game he had just got because Bethesda in their wisdom decided to make Fallout 76 an online only game and require a separate subscription service. No adult should see a child suffer because the game they are most excited to play,…

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak Review

December 30, 2018 Reviews

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak was recently on the Steam Winter Sale so I finally picked it up, several years after release, because I noticed many top RTS articles had it prominently featured and I absolutely loved the Homeworld series. Deserts of Kharak was an interesting experience because it removed the Z axis from the original Homeworld series and placed the game flat on the ground, but kept the generally same gameplay. If you’ve played Homeworld before, then I’d say get it when it’s on sale or even when it’s not, because it’s more of the same but different enough that you’re not drowning in a formulaic experience. Persistence exists, so resources gathered are kept map to map along with units and their promotions. Units have an almost Atlus / Shin Megami Tensei vibe to how they play against each other’s weakness. Armored vehicles take strike vehicles out, but strike vehicles…