Make vs. Let
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/12/18 at 06:02 PM CT
The handwringing over the popularity of the Sandbox genre (or style, if you prefer) has reached something of a head. Perhaps it was caused by the fact that Nintendo has finally gotten on board with the idea of non-linear, open-world game design; or perhaps it’s because Ubisoft has continued to produce the same basic Sandbox over and over again, and just released another iteration of it in “FarCry 5.” Non-linear, open-world gameplay is, regardless of oversaturation, still incredibly popular, and there’s a very simple reason for it that has been with gaming as far back as the transition from the NES to the SNES (and caused no small share of handwringing then too).
This concept first started to crystallize for me during a discussion with MeltedJoystick’s CTO, Nick. I was making fun of him for wasting his time speedrunning the original “Super Mario Bros.” and wondered why he was doing that instead of playing one of the many, many untouched games in his backlog. I also …
D&D 3.x Officially to Die, as Paizo Pushes Pathfinder 2nd Edition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/05/18 at 04:23 PM CT
I’ve frequently praised Paizo, the third-party tabletop RPG publishing house turned savior of tabletop gaming, for their consistency and willingness to stick with a rules set for a long time. Unfortunately, that praise must now come to an end, as over the last few months, Paizo has been sending out e-mail blasts promoting the upcoming 2nd Edition of the Pathfinder RPG which will enter active playtesting on August 2 of this year. It’s a pretty crappy birthday gift for me to have nearly 20 rulebooks in my tabletop RPG collection obsoleted in one fell swoop… but my tabletop gaming group hasn’t used Pathfinder in a couple years in favor of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, anyway.
While D&D 5E reverted a significant portion of its mechanics to be more similar to 2nd Edition, it also decided to adopt ‘bounded accuracy’ – which is code for ‘flatter numbers’ – in order to address balance issues, it won’t be clear what Paizo intends to do to address the numerous math …
Backlog: The Embiggening – May, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/29/18 at 03:14 PM CT
Summer’s just around the corner, and with folks graduating from various institutions of education in droves during the month of May, there will be high demand for a videogame-based escape as they find it impossible to secure employment and begin paying-off their soul-crushing debt. The videogame industry hears the pleas of the downtrodden, and has a whopping 27 game releases slated for the month-before-Summer, perhaps in the hopes of shutting us up about ‘game drought’ as June and July roll in. Unfortunately for us, there are even more ports and remasters than usual. Seriously. This is BAD… there are soooo many ports it’s hard to wrap my head around it.
Mercifully, there’s only one piece of licensed IP flotsam floating around this month. “Conan Exiles” is based on the once-popular Conan the Barbarian pulp novels. I’ve been wanting to get into the Conan IP for some time, but find the extant volume of written work overwhelming, so I’ve been hoping for a videogame …
Enhanced Steam Reveals Russia Receives Massive Game Discounts Thanks to Regional Pricing
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/22/18 at 03:14 PM CT
I’ve been a fan of the Enhanced Steam browser plug-in for nearly as long as I’ve been using Steam. I admit, however, that, like with most fancy, multi-function software, I don’t use even close to all of Enhanced Steam’s features.
However, while browsing Steam recently, one of Enhanced Steam’s features caught my eye and really threw me for a loop. By mousing-over the little globe icon next to a game’s price, Enhanced Steam will reveal how much it costs in other parts of the world in those countries’ regional currencies, as well as whether or not the game is available in a given region at all. Naturally, I was unsurprised to find several Japanese games from my test sample that aren’t available for purchase in Japan, but I was surprised to see just what a massive discount Steam offers on games purchased in Russian Rubles.
As illustrated in the above screen captures, Russian gamers who pre-order the upcoming “Dragon Quest 11” will get it for 45% off of …
The 10 Best IPs that Somehow Have Less than 3 Games
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/15/18 at 03:07 PM CT
Sequels: Love them or hate them, in an Intellectual Property-driven medium like videogaming, wringing all of the value out of an idea is simply good for business. Some companies, like Nintendo, have managed to stave off irrelevance solely via the strength of their long-running franchises. Yet, sadly, in far too many cases, a great IP is cut short and never allowed to live up to its potential. Among the ridiculously long-running franchises out there, there are also a significant number of tiny franchises that, for whatever reason, never managed to receive even a full trilogy of titles. I’m not talking about one-hit-wonders or stand-alone titles that were never intended to be part of a larger series, but actual franchises that just faded away as their slated follow-ups were canceled or never materialized. Perhaps the first game in the series was terrible, so nobody was willing to give the significantly-improved sequel the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the sequel was actually at …
“Shadow of War” is but One Victory in an Ongoing Conflict
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/08/18 at 02:36 PM CT
This week, videogamers and Middle-Earth fans alike were greeted with the fantastic news that the huge stink made by games journalists and the gaming public alike has resulted in Warner Bros. allowing “Middle-Earth: Shadow of War” dev, Monolith (not to be confused with the Japanese ‘Xenoblade’ dev, MonolithSoft) to dial-back the macrotransactions in the game before completely patching out the real money store in July of this year. While I enjoyed “Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor” well enough, and consider it to be something of a high water mark for licensed games based on non-game IP, I had no intention of ever touching the loot-box-riddled follow-up. With this complete reversal by Warner Bros., I’ll be doing a complete reversal of my own, and will definitely partake of the continuing adventures of Talion… sometime after the July update.
However, we as gamers can’t take this victory and put it in the bank. If we rest on our proverbial laurels, other game publishers …
Backlog: The Embiggening – April 1, 2018
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/01/18 at 01:36 PM CT
Oh, boy! April’s here, and that means the loveable professionals of the AAA videogame industry and the scrappy homebrewers of the Indie development scene are ready to give us tons more awesome games to play! Let’s take a look at how fun and exciting this month will be. I can hardly wait!
We all love the biggest corporations because they are the best. They have the best IP and they’re not afraid to use it. This month, we’re getting an awesome Action/Adventure based on the beautifully drawn and incredibly animated ‘Adventure Time’ TV show! WOW! The Switch is also getting ports of the WiiU’s “Hello Kitty Kruisers” Kart racing phenomenon and the culturally relevant (and also beautifully animated) JRPG, “South Park: The Fractured, But Whole,” so folks who missed out on these gems the first time have a chance to buy them again. YAY!
Indie devs are still using their loving attention to detail to bring versions of some of their best games to the Switch at a …
Steam is Becoming Darwinian by Design
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/25/18 at 03:31 PM CT
Recently, I took some time away from videogames to do something I haven’t done since college: Read non-fiction. Among the several books I read between the Holiday Season of 2017 and now was “The God Delusion” by evolutionary biologist and prominent anti-religion advocate, Richard Dawkins. One of the shortcomings in the American education system – and at the very root of the whole Evolution vs. Creation faux-debate – is that Darwinist systems are never explained particularly well to our Public School students. At least it wasn’t explained particularly well to me… or Chris or Nick, as we all attended the same high school with a Biology teacher who actively promoted Creationism, disbelieved Evolution, and gladly handed out laughable-in-hindsight videocassettes promoting a religious worldview.
“WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH VIDEOGAMES?!” I can hear raging forth from the less enlightened.
It turns out that our digital gaming storefronts are currently in the midst …
Games “Like”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/18/18 at 05:08 PM CT
I have a history of making a fuss about RPGs and the definitions of certain real and imagined subdivisions of my long-time favorite genre. I’m not going to rehash any of those arguments today, though. However, my reasons for demanding clarity, reason, and logic in the definition of RPGs radiates out from that one genre to encompass the whole of videogames as a hobby and a community. Genres and terminology are being diluted, and with this corruption of language, we are left with confusion, frustration, and lack of clarity and direction.
What brings me to the topic of the decadence of videogame terminology, once again, is the current cooperative game the MeltedJoystick Crew has been playing on Monday nights: “Shadow Warrior 2.” This game has affected me in a way no other shooter has before. It’s ostensibly an ‘old-school’ ‘fast-paced’ FPS with lots and lots of action and gore, yet as one of the world’s leading haters of the ‘DOOM,’ ‘Quake,’ ‘Heretic,’ …
Beware the Coming Tide: 5 Dominant Mobile Genres
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/10/18 at 03:52 PM CT
With the end of 2017 bringing a storm of Trump-like ‘Fire and Fury’ from gamers and gaming journalists alike in the face of EA’s and Warner Bros.’ escalation of loot-box-based microtransactions in $60 games, it feels like there is indeed an ethical push-back from Core Gamers against the deplorable predatory monetization practices that have been used to target the Casual Gamers of the mobile phone App Stores since game-like Apps first started appearing in those venues. I fear, though, that it is only a matter of time before the corporate overlords of the “AAA” games industry try some other mobile-inspired angles to gain access to all the money in the world. Here’s an outline of what I perceive as the 5 major ‘genres’ of mobile gaming which could (or already have) bleed into ‘real’ gaming and ruin things for everyone.
5. The Nostalgia Mash-Up Gacha Machine
I’ve talked about this mobile genre quite a bit already, largely because these are the only mobile …
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