Community driven creative development is always a big win! If only because it means the industry is seeing what people actually want, but also because it increases the longevity of a game when you have a community that can, and is, building new content for it. We saw this with Counterstrike, Far Cry, Crysis, and even the birth of the Battle Royale from Arma 3 mods. Now that the Unreal Editor has been released - are we on the verge of new game genres like the moba or battle royale?
We all saw this coming. We had a good time last week talking about lame, but beloved villains. Of course we have to do it for our beloved heroes.
So, lets talk about why our favorite heroes are lame, and maybe why that is good.
Sorry for the delay this week - I was sick and sounded awful!
This week we have decided to slaughter a sacred cow. We're going after beloved villains. A good villain should be a solid foil to your hero and they don't always have to be memorable for the game or story to be good. That being said, sometimes in the course of trying to make a villain memorable, or seem more daunting, the creator will take an otherwise fine villain and turn him LAME.
The Yoshi P commentary really stirred the hornets nest.
The early 2000's were the wild west of the digital age. Other, more poetic, writers have said that before, and sometimes it's the only way to explain it. People from all over the world were just starting to interact with each other via online gaming, forums, or even Myspace (tm). Add to that: gaming journalism, while not new, was still sorta niche. Gaming hadn't quite exploded yet and G4, gaming magazines, websites were all targeted toward a very niche, sheltered audience made of edgy, horny, dudes. To say there were common jokes, terms, and themes that today would be viewed as ignorant at best - would be a massive understatement.
The point is: if you look back and haven't changed, or can't confront that past - you might be an as*%^le. Or Adam Sessler, apparently. (I don't know that, I haven't read his tweets. Don't get mad Adam, it's just a joke.)
This week's episode is all about that wild a time in the early oughts' gaming media/culture. And we aren't pretending we were above it. Both of us have regrets, and were plenty stupid.
So, if you take only a single thing away from this episode, let it be this: F&^% G-Fuel.
I have a few friends who really love VR. The conversation usually goes in circles, beginning and ending with "how to make VR worth it". Today, former Nintendo USA CEO Reggie Fils-Amie tweeted an infographic from statista showing projections that VR will remain niche in the coming years. His commentary was " Until there is a 'must play' experience, this will be true."
So what is that must play experience?