News & Views
5/9/15-5/15/15
Welcome back
to The Impact Factor everyone! It’s time for another week of News & Views.
I really hoped everyone enjoyed the first episode of our podcast, which you can
find on SoundCloud or on
our YouTube
page. The second episode is up on both already! Here, though, I found a
bunch of great editorial pieces to share with you all. From tales of poor gamers,
to pessimism in video games, to arguments for sustained criticisms of games,
this week’s News & Views has it all. A lot happened this week on the news
front, too. Nintendo announced its World Championship for E3 2015, Ubisoft told
the press it no longer planned to develop for the previous generation of
consoles (PS3/360), Koji Igarashi had an incredibly successful Kickstarter, and
much much more (Fliss and I talk about these at length in TIF Episode 2!).
Until next time!
Spotlight
Christian Donlan,
Eurogamer
Worth Reading
Kiva Bay,
Critical Distance, KillScreen
Eugenia Hu,
The Mary Sue
Heather
Alexandra, Paste Magazine
Dana
Goldstein, The Marshall Project
Taylor
Bair, Gamasutra
Brad
Williams, Game Chruch
And the rest!
Rob Fahey,
GamesIndustry.biz
Steam Greenlight has been the source
of a lot of controversy ever since its introduction. New, unfinished games
flood the Steam storefront making it increasingly difficult for fans to find
the best games and developers to get their game discovered. Fahey explores just
some of the many troubling aspects of this Valve initiative.
Brian
Crecente, Polygon
I love Spelunky. I know it may not be much to look at but please, if you love video
games at all, do yourself a favor and pick this one up. It is deceptively deep,
challenging, fun, frantic, and one of the best games of all time. This speedrun
is just one of the zany, awesome things about Derek Yu’s fantastic roguelike.
Nick
Robinson, Polygon
Oh P.T., how I wish I heard good news about you. P.T. has been steadily dying a digital death over the past two weeks. Now,
not only has it been removed from the PSN so that new users cannot obtain it,
but users who had previously gotten it can no longer re-download the game onto
their PS4’s. (I have my digital copy installed on my hard drive, phew!)
Robinson discusses how Konami, likely unintentionally, just made P.T. a phenomenon.
Edge Staff,
Gamesradar
Lots of cool stuff about games I
love this week. As you all (hopefully) read in my Final
Fantasy Type-0 HD review, I am a big
fan of the franchise. I recently finished up the FFXV: Episode Duscae demo and
really enjoyed it. But, for now, Final Fantasy VI is by far my favorite. It was great reading through the rich history of
this landmark game’s development.
Brian
Crecente, Polygon
As a stalwart console gamer, I don’t
agree with everything Crecente has to say in this opinion piece, but he
certainly raises some interesting points. I would be all for a home console
‘box’ that is a service rather than what we have today. Nintendo would not be
my guess for which company would be the first to initiate this change, however.
Johansen
Quijano, Gamasutra
Quijano crafts
a compelling argument for why he thinks game criticism, on a fundamental level,
should be revisited. Quijano argues that the nature of games mandates more
higher level, long-term criticism like what is seen with literature or art. I
agree that this new direction could produce interesting discussions about
important games, but I don’t know if I could be the one to write about a single
game for several years.
Zac Gooch,
OKgames
Gooch
argues that the side quest filled tedium of Ubisoft’s many open world games are
dulling the genre and creating a sense of stagnation. I completed Far Cry 4
a few months ago and really enjoyed it, but I don’t see myself playing more
than two maybe three games like that it year. The collectathon, mini-map marker
rich experience can be exhausting for completionists like myself.
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