Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2024
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/24/24 at 05:22 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Labor Day will soon be upon us, signaling the official “end” of Summer, even though all the Genderqueer, Non-Binary Kiddies will have been back in their indoctrination mills for a month already. The only reason Summer Vacation even exists as a concept is because of MY industry, Agriculture. In the past, all the Kiddoes would be called away from school during the Summer growing season to plant, maintain, and harvest the crops on their family farms, powering the engine of America’s prosperity. However, with Child Labor Laws now being a thing, along with automation, illegal immigrant labor that can flaunt red tape by virtue of being ‘illegal,’ and the dwindling number of family farms being replaced by Corporate Industrial Farming, the entire concept of letting children (and teachers) piss off and be worthless for three months seems incredibly archaic. But they’re not the only ones, as the Wage Slaves of Industrial Gaming all …
Epic Ceo: “Paid Exclusives Not Good Investments”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/18/24 at 04:15 PM CT
It seems like Epic Games, the owner and operator of the Unreal Engine which underpins so many modern “AAA” games, just can’t seem to do anything right when it comes to expanding outside of their wheel house of Middle-Ware Developer. The software house mistakenly thought they were more important than they actually were due to the Early Access PvP mode of their (now canceled) Tower Defense game, “Fortnite” becoming meme fodder and siphoning billions of dollars out of the wallets of Millennials and Zoomers.
As a result, Epic’s executives thought they were in a position to challenge Valve and its digital distribution monopoly in Steam, apparently rationalized by Valve also making a ton of money off a memetic Freemium shooter. Maybe? I dunno. Regardless, Epic transformed its mid-range-annoyance DRM platform from a mere launcher to a full-blown digital storefront for PC games waaay back in the pre-plague year of 2018… a storefront that still sucked in 2021… and, …
Latest Financials Reveal Square-Enix Makes Next to Nothing from Traditional Games
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/10/24 at 03:38 PM CT
Oh dear! The news just keeps getting worse for the one-time Kingmaker and titan of industry, Square-Enix. While the titles coming out of both Squaresoft and Enix drove console sales across the globe in the Golden Age of the 4th and 5th Generations, things haven’t been going so well for the company after its early 2000’s corporate merger.
Over a decade ago, it was a well-established fact that Square-Enix was a ‘complete failure,’ falling from its position of creating games that consistently sold systems into a position of vague irrelevance. The massive Japanese publisher, like so many other Japanese videogame outfits, struggled to adapt to the modern era of gaming that began in the 7th Generation, and ultimately chose to ape Western game development trends, even to the point of buying some old, struggling Western PC game developers. This attempt at adopting Western paradigms was doomed to failure, and Square-Enix divested itself of its Western investments in 2022.
After …
Bungie is Bunged
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/04/24 at 01:13 AM CT
Uh oh! Not all is well in the studio that Sony bought in 2022 as hilarious parody of parity with Xbox’s massive merger with Activision-Blizzard. No, it turns out that having one game – “Destiny 2” – a live service at that, and mismanaging it into the ground is not a great way to turn a profit.
After a round of downsizing last year to signal “Destiny 2” winding down and preparing to enter End of Life mode, Bungie just culled over 200 more employees, leaving the studio no longer lean and mean, but downright skeletal. While the studio still allegedly has two new games in the works – one being the reboot of their original MacOS FPS, “Marathon,” and the other being a colorful Gen-Z-friendly multiplayer game code named “Gummy Bears” (HOPEFULLY not based on the candies… but might be kind of cool if based on the differently-spelled classic Disney cartoon). With both titles being so far in the future we know next to nothing about them other than (working) titles, …
View Archive
