News & Views
5/23/15-5/29/15
Let’s end
this cold foggy week on a high note with another edition of The Impact Factor’s
News & Views! The clock is ticking ever closer to the Christmas of video
game news, E3. This week was a slower one on the news front: a couple new
independent games were announced, Capcom talked from Street Fighter, and The
Witcher had some great sales. So what I’ve got for you all this week is a
bunch of great perspective pieces I found this week. The articles ranged from
talking about women in games being exhausted (and not for the reason you
think), how ‘big indie’ Kickstarters may be damaging ‘actual’ indies,
discussions about how slasher films are now finally being translated into
games, and much much more.
Later today
the new episode of The Impact Factor will be posted on my SoundCloud, so check there
to hear Charles Fliss and I talk games! (sorry for the slight delay!) This week
I also began streaming and
recording some of my Spelunky Daily
Challenges, which you can find on my YouTube.
The podcast will be posted there later this weekend, too! So, until Tuesday
folks, have a great weekend!
Spotlight
Leigh Alexander,
Offworld
Worth Reading
Jamie
Madigan, Gamasutra
Chris
Priestman, Killscreen
Katie
Chironis, Polygon
Mark R
Johnson, Ultima Ratio Regum
Sidney
Fussell, Paste
And the rest!
Mike
Williams, US Gamer
As many of you probably know, horror
is my favorite film genre. When they are good they’re good, and when they’re
bad they are still (usually) fun. I love that such a big genre in movies, the
slasher, is finally making its way into games. One title in which I am
particularly interested is Until Dawn, where you play as a
group of teenagers in a cabin in the woods struggling to survive against a
seemingly superhuman murderer. Could be great fun.
Lance Hood,
Shoryuken
I’ve gone into length before about
my love of fighting games. It sometimes makes me sad when people discredit the
depth of fighting game mechanics, or the skill that goes into being a top
player. No offense to any MOBA, but it’s crazy to me that DOTA2 and LoL viewer numbers blow
fighting game viewership out of the water. Still, Hood writes a nice piece
about just how hard it can be to play a fighting game at the highest level.
Blocking is so important, and doing
so can be pretty though when, you know, the human body can only move so fast.
Adrian
Chmielarz, The Astronauts
Chmielarz provides his perspective
on making games and his experience with the kind of feedback and communications
he receives from the community. While his piece comes off pretty mean spirited
and a little too much like “I am the almighty creator,” there are some good
points in there. If you have an idea for a game, just make it. If you want to
enter the games industry, just make a game. His sentiments echo a lot of what I
knew and a lot of what I have found out during my own career exploration. He
might have been able to say it a bit nicer, though.
Ben
Kuchera, Polygon
Camera controls are such an endemic
problem in video games. Always has been, and still is to this day. Seeing what
takes place is, obviously, so critical to the play experience. So why is the
camera usually so bad? Even some of my favorite games of all time, Dark Souls and Shadow of the Colossus, could
have used a better camera. Kuchera explores this phenomenon a little here.
Jorge
Munoz, Gamasutra
Munoz posed a short question to the
Gamasutra community: why aren’t IPs bought and sold? It’s a good question, and
one I have thought about quite a bit. It really doesn’t make any sense that
publishers continue to hold onto dead IPs for no clear reason. If you have
developers and creators excited to do something new with an old IP, I say let
them. Munoz brings up some good food for thought, at the very least.
Cam Shea, IGN
Shea talked to a bunch of
‘professional’ Hearthstone
players about the impact the 31 new cards
from Blackrock Mountain has had on the game. I gave my own predictions here on
The Impact Factor, which can be found here.
Boy was I wrong. So were a lot of the pros. The new cards have made very little
impact on the meta as a whole, at most making arguably one or maybe two new decks viable. Regardless,
it was interesting to read a bunch of the pros’ thoughts on various Hearthstone issues.
Brian
Crecente, Polygon
The ESA has made a big move,
announcing upwards of four to five thousand ‘prosumers’ will be allowed into
the E3 event this year. Traditionally, E3 is an industry only event (just devs,
publishers, media, exhibitors). These tickets aren’t completely open to the
public, but rather given to exhibiting ESA partner companies to give out to
their employees. It makes me wonder if this already gigantic event wants to be even bigger. With nightmarish stories
coming from all members of the media (several hour long lines for every game
demo) it also makes me wonder if this is a good decision. That said, I would
still love to go to E3. Anybody got
one of them prosumer tickets they want to give me? Hit me up on twitter @alexsamocha
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