Malenia? DEID
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Godskin Duo DEID on the second attempt, albeit with help from Bernahl and my trusty Mimic Tear. Felt a bit like cheesing it, tbh
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very sad about id being gutted, surely one of the most talented teams of coders and engineers in the whole industry. I hate Microsoft so much
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so obvious that gamepass was going to end up crushing the whole industry, super infuriating to see people cheering it on for years
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Covid overspending and speculative markets are going to ultimately crush the industry
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Iâll cheer it on because it is amazing for consumers. I love it. I wouldnât be here playing games without it
Bought warhammer space marine on 360 from cex just now cos apparently itâs a solid Gears clone and that sounds about all I want rn.
Itâs Black Flag Resynced day! Although iâm probably not gonna get it today as thereâs still some of Shadows I need to finish first and iâm just finishing up the story again of GTA5, first time iâve redone it since 2013.
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Black Flag was a fun one! Probably the best of the 3 AC games Iâve played (Black Flag, Syndicate and Origins)
Just won a game of Meccha Chamelon with over 5000 points, in the end both hunters were climbing all over me and still couldnât find me. Can you see me in this? Iâm not the white one with the bum
Like I said way back then.
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Got Gran Turismo 7 for PS4, what a fantastic port!
Beautiful game, really leans into the calming jazzy cafe atmosphere of GT, they just get all the little things right, the UI, the little miniature village on the map, all the nice little pictures of the cars, deeply relaxing game to spend time in. Still got some of that wonky charm too with the cheesy guitar solo victory music and such.
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I think I have just had a realisation about modern video games media.
Theyâre children. Theyâre not grown ups, theyâre immature. It is just kids who are fans of games and cannot critically think about the industry. Nothing could be more obvious.
Nathan Brown is the exemplar of this.
This would never passed muster in a magazine of old, not even in the proper big boys, for it is so unbelievably naive it borders on satire. Even as an opinion piece.
It is writing an opinion piece about things they dislike without a single moment to consider the actual reality of the situation. It is like writing about a Finance Company as if it is a football team, whining like a child why they arent winning games. Why arenât Gillingham in the Premier League, I want them to be. A child whines to their parents, stamping their feet.
You can be hugely cri2of video game companies for redundancies, absolutely, but calling them clowns just shows your arse as an unserious child unable to grow up and realise that there are realities in the world beyond I Want Games.
Microsoft are scum - we all know this. But when a company has Invested billions and seen no return, what do you expect? Either their games sell, and they make money, or they donât and they stop spending money. Thatâs capital. Itâs shit, but itâs the truth of the world. It is the grown ups talking about bills and income and expenses versus a child crying why they can have McDonaldâs for dinner every night. It is so fucking embarrassing to actually state in print you donât understand what theyâre doing when it is obvious - theyâve made bad bets on what games folk would buy and the cost of that is job losses. It happens in every industry all the time. I donât thi k there are five hundred podcasts talking about why my energy company let 400 staff go during the oil and gas crisis, right?
And the outright idiocy of saying, in print, that you didnât actually read what Xbox said (they didnât say a billion players a day, they said a billion people using Xbox services a day) it isnât so fucking far out when Candy Crush Saga has over 2 billion downloads, and Roblox and Minecraft have over 200 million active users.
It is so depressing that the voices our media have and the people who are supposed to be critical thinkers canât go beyond their own anger and consider the actual problem - no one buys games any more. Consoles have stalled at 200 million sold. And now theyâre ÂŁ1k per box. Thatâs the existential threat, and Microsoft and Sony are fucked because of it. Both of them are. Maybe even Nintendo, in the long term too.
Imagine a grown up actually using âfuck offâ in a journalistic article. The companyâs need to be held to account but not like this.
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Xbox is especially interestong case because ots becoming increas8ngly apparent that the studios that were aquired were given a lot of control and it backfie spectacularly outside of arguarbly obsidian who seemed to be the o ly studio that understood the directive of feveloping for a platform like gamepass.
The reqson its particuarly awful 8s because so many studios are under their umbrella and poor bets and managment ha e catastrophic impact across the industry but a lot of the takes iv seen are just as you describe above and feel like easy point scoring/easy slam dunks for likes
For sure, but also Sony went the other route, with a lot of central control on what the studios were allowed to develop and thatâs equally backfired, with the deep bet on live service killing multiple previously successful studios.
The only large publisher/platform holder thatâs avoided culling studios en-masse is the one that didnât bet heavily on acquisition six or seven years ago⌠and itâs not like Nintendo donât have their own problems at the moment, theyâre just not as existential for the overall business right now.
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Iâm really enjoying Titanium Court. Weird match-3/tower defence/roguelite/visual novel with some great writing. Laughed out loud a few times already. Tonally completely different but definite Inscryption vibes where youâre never really whatâs going on or where things are goingâŚ
I went on RockPaperShotgun for first time in years to read a review of 007: First Light. Got as far as:
Thereâs a clear difference between this behaviour and Bondâs usual mannerisms, despite both being strains of the same insufferably establishment Englishness that infests the southernmost reaches of Sadness Island like a particularly nasty case of genital warts.
and noped right out of there. Itâs like the writer wanted to express how he liked the game but was insecure about coming across as a Brexiter so crowbarred that line in. Deeply childish writing.
I know that you have an emotional connection to Xbox but the idea that youâd write 5 paragraphs about a guy saying Microsoft should fuck off on his substack is wild to me. This is the second time recently youâve gone off about a games media strawman critiquing MS and I just donât get it. I know itâs an upsetting time to be an Xbox fan, because the people in charge will not stop messing up, but I donât think a perceived childishness amongst games writers has anything to do with it.
Nobody forced Microsoft to spend close to $100bn buying up games studios. The people who made that decision are clowns, and should fuck off. I say that both as someone who likes games, and also as someone with a serious business person day job. The only way buying those studios would be a good idea is if you convinced yourself that the Covid era of low interest borrowing was gonna last forever. Itâs sheer business idiocy by MBA grads with no understanding of or connection to the industries theyâre leading companies in.
Iâm also not sure when this period of amazing journalism in games was meant to be? When I first started reading games mags they were all wildly sexist & homophobic, and publishers were buying coverage for their games with elaborate expensive press trips. I tend to think the sort of stuff the folks at Aftermath & People Make Games are doing about worker conditions and business practices in the industry are far better journalism than anything weâve ever had before on games, but maybe I too am being childish.
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Respectfully, it isnât about Xbox. It is about how unserious they take actual issues in the industry. They complain about jobs being lost but stop at the idea that somehow Xbox is to blame, but instead of actually being contrite and considered about the problems the industry has - with Labour rules, money, cost of games, loss of audience, and the price of development, as well as wondering why good games arenât selling well enough anymore, they stop at calling them clowns and telling them to fuck off, and that is their job done.
They did it with Sonyâs physical disc issue to, calling Sony bad names and drumming up reactions, never once wondering how we got here in the first place - folk criticising the decision yet get all their games digitally, for example. Strawman there sure, anecdotal too, but it isnât me being upset at the pilloring Microsoft are getting - they deserve it - but bemoaning the quality of the opinion pieces, full of expletives and name calling, as if there isnât a real world that the events are happening in.
You and I can agree on this, for sure conceptually, but a journalist writing it supposedly seriously about games is a different thing. We get more measured takes on this forum, for fucks sake!
Aftermath I find a little too pious for my own tastes, but People Make Games, The Game Business and VGC (who sometimes err a little on the outrage than the substance) I like and agree with you.
But the so called era I am talking about is the Games TM, Edge, Joystiq era in the 2000s, letâs say. Agree they were homophobic and sexisg, for sure - but I donât think they even be as immature as Nathan to call folk clowns in print and admitting they didnât understand the most basic of business decisions either.
To be clear - Xbox is the place I play games. If Sony had sold a ÂŁ249 console and Game Pass Iâd be playing there. Thatâs the end of my brand loyalty, which doesnât exist.
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No, but the likes of PC Zone certainly were. The quality of the article here wouldnât have been out of place in mainstream journalism then - itâs just about which mags you read.
(Not saying someone like Nathan Brown shouldnât be above this writing, just that thereâs always been this kind of analysis around in games media. The gap between this and what Chris Dring or the PMG guys are doing is just much more obvious today.)
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