Friday, May 1, 2015

News & Views
4/25/15-5/1/15

Another week down, another week closer to E3! News continues to spill out about the biggest event in video games, with yet another press conference announced. There was a bunch of high impact news this week: Silent Hills seems to be completely dead, Batman: Arkham Knight has a crazy expensive DLC season pass, and Valve removed paid mods. I found some great editorial pieces too, from how fashion designers made Deus Ex better, to the dehumanization of online harassment being used as a gameplay mechanic. This week I’ve also been working on a super secret project that I hope to share with you all soon. Until then, see you next week! 

Spotlight
Brian Crecente, Polygon

Worth Reading
Jeff Cork, Game Informer

Hugo Bille, Gamasutra

Luke McMillan, Gamasutra

Jess Joho, KillScreen

Ashley Reed, Games Radar

And the rest!
Ant, Retroactive Fiction
What an amazing story. It’s crazy to me that video games have been around for over forty years now. This story was a reminder that with some big ideas and innovation, we’ve gone from a simple text adventure game to high fidelity cinematic, artistic and powerful interactive experiences.

Matt Porter, IGN
Sad news indeed. This news coincided with the amazing P.T. being pulled from the PlayStation store this week. P.T. was one of the scariest games I’ve ever played, and it makes me sad I’ll never see the expansion of these ideas take the form of Silent Hills. Poor Guillermo can never catch a break in the video game world.

Dave Smith, Business Insider
A sobering reminder of the power of an angry mob. I don’t think charging for mods is inherently bad; in fact, if done right, it could be great for modders and the community at large. Valve’s poorly thought out implementation and greedily portioned share of the profits made for a huge misstep that, as the title implies, cost the company seven figures in a matter of two or three days.

Matt Akins, Medium
The mobile market is a horrid place. Greedy, shoddily made pieces of junk are released daily. The in sea of free, and the sea of clones, it’s hard to get your name out there. Akins’ story is probably one so many mobile devs have experienced.

Dan Stapleton, IGN
I love the Arkham series’ from Rocksteady. I can say without question they are the best comic book superhero games I have ever played. But this DLC season pass situation is just ridiculous. Charging $40 seems steep for any amount of post-release content, but WB is refusing to even elucidate what exactly is included in the package. Buyers beware.

Andy Chalk, PC Gamer
This makes, what, 8 press conferences at E3? It is increasingly hard to keep up with the faced pace nature of video game news, and the sheer number of press conferences at E3 is certainly reflective of that fact. I’m interested to see what exactly will be shown at this one. It’s still a big question mark.

David Chandler, KillScreen
You didn’t think I would stop finding great Bloodborne content, did you? I love Chandler’s writing. Makes me a little jealous. Chadler explores Bloodborne’s unique synthesis of Stoker and Lovecraftian horror present in the exceptional From Software title. For my review of Bloodborne, see here.

Patrick Klepek, Kotaku
Boy do I wish there were a good Jurassic Park game. It’s something I’ve wanted since I was 3 or 4. Alas, never have I been so lucky. I really tried to get into Jurassic Park Builder (now Jurassic World?), but it was your standard freemium wait-or-pay garbage. Looks like this new game is a big miss, too. I’m still holding out out hope for LEGO Jurassic World!

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