Tag

Social Media

Browsing

The fall chill was in the air, in 2007. It was another Hallow’s End and the decorations, quests and festivities in World of Warcraft were the exact spirit of Halloween. The world felt like a fantasy novel had come alive and the holiday had this sense of true meaning. Now it’s as if a holiday is more side quests, you don’t really want to mess with unless the game offers some kind of inresistable reward for the effort. Players complain frequently about the lack of connection with holiday events or, even worse, they get almost little press and fanfare being more or less automatic gestures of the change of time. Why in two decades has gaming changed so much from the cozy, comfy connected holiday experience to what tad amounts to almost ignorable window dressing in online games? While I think it wouldn’t be fair to answer that with a…

Tim Cain is known as part of the legendary trio behind Fallout 1 & 2. He also worked at Troika and programmed Vampire: The Masquerade and one of my favorite games Arcanum. He recently released a video lambasting Carbine and NCSoft while disclosing some deep interpersonal issues at Carbine. Tim’s video is authentic and his recount is accurate by all means. I covered WildStar heavily from 2011 onward and the stories back then were well known. Carbine was a toxic and unhealthy workplace which had the potential to release the best MMO of the golden age but instead failed with 9 years of development time and a further four post-launch to win back everyone ala Final Fantasy XIV. The video is very misleading in some ways. It argues that there was a lack of unified vision. That’s true, but it was also completely the fact that everyone at Carbine was…

It seems that G/O Media, owner of Kotaku, has made the transition to AI content. This in turn has alienated the editorial staff who have taken to social media along with their union. The use of AI generative text is currently extremely controversial, with Gaming Tier List parent owner Yurika Corporation banning its use on all properties. There’s a lot of reasons for that, which we’ll get into, but first let’s get the information from the source. Relevant Tweet What Is G/O Media Doing and What Does AI Mean? We need to be really fair here for a moment and explain what the business, G/O Media, is saying instead of focusing on the hype. What they’re arguing is that they’ve begun using generative text to create articles that are reviewed and fact checked by an editor. The editor then approves the post to go live, assuming that it has been…

Gaming is the most social activity online. The only other more social activity is FaceTime, due to its liminal space intrusion into your life when someone calls. Social activity requires platforms that allow users to connect. The entire basis of the Internet is to send and receive from other users in other locations. Twitter has recently rate limited users on a temporary basis, which has greatly slowed the flow of information between communities. There’s a crisis unfolding on the Internet’s most social town square. Twitter’s pathway to monetization continues to be rocky. Decision after decision has left users a gasp at what to do when their normal that had been consistent for so long rapidly changes day after day. The long and short of the current crisis is that new users, regular users and paid users all have different amounts of posts they can view per day. The limit seems…

Dave the Diver Developer: MintRocket MSRP: $19.99 – Steam Dave the Diver captivated me within the first few minutes of playing. After dinner I was on my PC exploring the Blue Hole with Dave and loving every second of it. Dave the Diver is an action 2D/3D mash-up that has you exploring the Blue Hole with Dave while running a seaside Sushi resturant. There’s so much more though jammed into this amazing must play game. Dave the Diver is definitely well put together, the pixel art is striking and the game systems are considerate and have been iterated on efficaciously through the game’s early access. We don’t give any sort of numerical or percentile ranking to games, but if anything about Dave catches your eye then I would definitely say it’s worth the full price admission. It does everything it promises and it does it well and my nights with…

Hi-Rez Studios is removing the mantel of being a game studio and undergoing a transformative business process, to say the least. The community is biting its nails about what this means for the games they love dearly, but the people who are being put in charge know what they’re doing. Let’s break down the announcement and I’ll share some of my expert thoughts on the recent changes. The announcement was posted to LinkedIn. Hi-Rez Studios to Become Hi-Rez Ventures This is just a means of branding themselves away from developing games and being a multi-channel organization that supports games and funds the development of games as well. The branding around “Hi-Rez” as the prominent owner of any particular game will likely disappear in the near future as “Hi-Rez” becomes a “parent company.” The subsidiaries have already existed as modulars within Hi-Rez, but this reorganizes them into clearly defined self-contained entities.…

Starfield is an up-and-coming game that’s really releasing, unlike Star Citizen, except that like Star Citizen it seems the game may only be ethereal: the physical edition will follow games like Fallout 76 and not offer a physical disc. Something fun to mention about Fallout 76 is that I got burned hard, I paid more for a physical copy only to get a code in a disc box that, may I add, was made of the absolute flimsiest plastic. Boo on you Todd Howard. This story starts with a tweet on June 25th 2023 where Bethseda said that the game would include only a code in the box. Following that, they immediately deleted the tweet. Screenshot below: The tweet is now missing. No word yet from Bethesda on whether Starfield will include a physical edition or not. It’s quite clear though that if they don’t include physical media then they…

The following is an editorial submitted by a vetted source posted anonymously. You know what’s a shame? Every ounce of praise that I can give to a game and it’s beautiful creative work as an art-form is corrupted by the foul practices of the exploitative and outright evil video gaming industry. Almost every single studio exploits their employees because “games.” See, video games are a seen by some as a hedonistic form of entertainment and so working on them is seen as “fun” and a “privilege.” There is very few video game jobs out there, you see, so if you get one then you’re “cool” and “hip” and this allows the employer and management to leverage that against you as if you owe them something for the benefit. I know this first hand, I know this from seeing it with my eyes, I know this from countless nights spent with…

Hogwarts Legacy, by Avalanche Software, is one of the more fun RPG games of the year but there is a strong stigma around the game. Within that stigma, there are a specific group of militant extremists who believe anyone who purchases the game deserves some kind of retaliation. Sites have popped up, which we will not promote, encouraging communities to search for streamers and users who are playing the game in order to harass them. The issue is that much of the rhetoric is subjective; objectively the game was developed by a diverse team at Avalanche and WB. Playing the game is a choice that each person decides on their own what it means to them and the ability to make that choice is critical to self-autonomy. If you feel you should boycott the game then you should do so; if you do not feel it morally objectionable to play…