The previous two podcasts got corrupted on upload, and now I have to reedit them completely. Be patient.
This week’s there’s a bunch of minor news items, covering things like Sony’s lawsuit, S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 and the Ukraine invasion, Minecraft frogs, various remasters, and the gang talk briefly about the newly released Tunic.
The main news items include:
Let us know what you think.
Gaming is mainstream and growing, this is obvious to most video game enthusiasts. Even Jack Thompson has failed in taking down the industry in his efforts on video game violence and general FUD. In order to survive in a mainstream environment publishers and developers are going to target a broad demographic to make them as much money as possible.
The game industry, like other entertainment avenues, is a risky business in which publishers have to pick titles they “predict” will do well in the market while passing on other “risky” propositions. While a the good ol’ shooter title will break sales records, the market cannot rely on one genre to carry the business especially considering many of these titles are forgotten within two months from launch. Publishers are going to be forced in expanding their reach to “family games” in order to finance new blockbuster titles.
Enter family gaming.
The idea of designing a “family” game isn’t new to our industry, as a matter of fact, it’s one of the oldest cornerstones of video game entertainment. Pong, Centipede, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and many other classic titles were no doubt playable by the entire family, but things have changed. We’ve evolved from hit titles like Donkey Kong to hit titles like Halo. We migrated from 2D gaming to full 3D adventures and pixel graphics to pixel shaders, but where do we go next?
Nintendo has the correct vision for the next stage of the video game industry and it involves bringing the entire family into gaming. It’s mainstream, right? Mainstream isn’t your dad playing a video game in the basement after the kids go to bed, it’s replacing Sorry with Spore and bringing out Wii Sports and having little family tournaments. We must respect what the big titles have done for the industry in merchandising, novels, sequels and spin-offs but we should not rely on them to carry us into the next generation of gaming.
Jonah goes absolutely off on NBA 2K20, not just on its buggy launch, but it’s decline into microtransactions in the form of Virtual Currency.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
We just found out that my recording of Podcast #283 didn’t take on my end. However, there is a backup, so all that means is that you’ll have to wait til tomorrow for the next podcast. Sorry for the delay.
