The architects of the Starmer project are yes. It’s a tech capital driven, intelligence service backed transformational project to turn Britain into a techno-fascist vassal based on Israel and Special Economic Zones.

I swear I’m the only person in the world that absolutely hated Clair Obscura (although that wasn’t entirely the game’s fault).

This is what happens when woke DEI starts pushing modern ‘beauty’ agendas in video games.

They’re afraid of portraying the male ideal of a square jaw.

And a square head.

And a square haircut.

And square eyebrows.

And square hands.

And bad jewelery.

I played some of the Resident Evil remakes recently (spooky season) and gameplay-wise it basically reminds me of 2, which is the one I liked the most by far anyway. But then you have much richer storytelling, really confident deep worldbuillding, and just an amazing presentation all layered on top. It’s definitely a game and story that’s well honed to my vibes though (meta Stephen King stuff, Twin Peaks, XFiles, folk horror etc)

I didn’t mean to imply you did so apologies if that’s how it came off. I just thought it was worth saying for other non-anime people that I was exactly not the target audience and yet I didn’t find it alienating at all.

I’m really really enjoying it. Somehow it manages to be both a good game and better at being kind of a prestige TV show than most actual prestige TV shows.

They are a good deal of fun if you like anime high school tropes.

That’s fair but for the record I’m old and very much not an anime watcher of any kind, and playing Persona 5 for the first time absolutely hooked me despite it’s occasional anime-ness. I’ve played 3 & 4 now and I think they’re a bit more tropey maybe (I’m not expert, going on vibes)? I felt like the classic good-hearted teenage rebellion in an uptight country that dismisses it’s young people themes in 5 were enough for it to break out of what I expected it to be a bit more and get it’s hooks in me narratively.

Fortnite is an absurdly big platform now. I have it installed for playing with younger family members sometimes and it’s now multiple full games (a huge Rock Band clone with hundreds of songs, a full racing game, the original wave-based game, the main battle royale), over dozen game modes just by the developers a lot of which have their own maps weapons and more, thousands and thousands of skins and accessories and live service / shop shit, and then on top of all that there’s maybe tens of thousands of other games built in their engine as it’s become a huge garbage pile of user generated content games to rival Roblox. Throw in localisation, sound for all that, and stuff that doesn’t even get used all the time like locations and designs for live events and concerts and it’s an absurd amount of stuff. I’d argue a lot of it is junk, but it’s kind of crazy how much stuff Fortnite ‘is’ now.

I finally started Alan Wake 2 and wow is the style and presentation of it impressive. I’m only a couple of hours in, and in some ways it feels quite retro (although that seems like it’s kind of the point too), but it’s really effective - it’s style, it’s atmosphere, even it’s jump scares etc. The character writing so far is really solid too. Good TV level solid rather than just video game good. I’m really looking forward to playing more.

The Point is arguably the first modern multiplex cinema and entertainment complex that was built in the UK. Built in the experimental ‘New Town’ of Milton Keynes in the mid-1980s, it was a reflective glass ziggurat with sloped metal beams that glowed at night to make it look like a pyramid too.

He should tear more of it down and convert it into a full size crazy golf hole where you also have to hit it off the Washington monument.

I haven’t played much as I’ve been pretty hungover from a friend’s birthday, but I played about an hour of State of Decay 2 which is my go-to brain off / audiobook comfort game basically.

I might start Alan Wake 2 tonight if I’m not too tired. I’m excited to start it but don’t want to if I’m not in the mood.

Greta Thurnberg meets PM Theresa May to discuss Britain’s climate goals. - Feb 4th 2019

So much of the ‘game design’ for modern live service games is less like game design and more like marketing campaign design.

Reveals, content drops, surprise reveals, ongoing narrative, roadmaps, engagement drivers etc is much more akin to building sales funnels and advertising strategy, never mind monetisation strategies.

And the secret to successful marketing is that you need to start with a product that a) people want and b) doesn’t suck. Marketing companies like to complicate it, because they get paid for their failures too, but that’s the core of it.

So you can take $100m, five years, and a thousand devs/artists/sound people/writers etc but if 80% of that time and money and effort is spent in pursuit of the sales funnel/advertising strategy type stuff it’s gonna take a miracle for you to come up with something more fun and organically engaging than a far smaller project where that was the primary, or perhaps only, goal.

These are fair points, although just on the last one (working out what to do in bosses) that got less punishing some time after launch when they allowed for the option not to have things kill you, so you can focus on solutions and atmosphere and general creepy vibes. Not a perfect solution, but useful if that becomes an issue for players.

It’s a bit older, but I thought Soma was fantastic.

I agree and I think that’s the most likely outcome. I just was continuing on from the previous comments that if there’s a cultural control over profit aspect to this as there has been in some of the other media spaces (social, news) it’d seem an obvious target. Generally though, especially with the majority coming from the Saudi investment fund, I think the motive is just just profitable assets and more soft power in sports.

Agreed. I still wasn’t convinced we’d actually see a new proper Mass Effect, never mind yet another Dragon Age, even before this rumor and then confirmation of a buyout.

But yeah, the Sims seems like the obvious target if they were gonna try and meddle in studio culture and go after ‘woke’ output. Maxis has rightly taken some criticisms for moving too slow on representation issues in the past but they’re way beyond most big studios on inclusion when it comes to race, gender, trans-inclusivity, and increasingly differently abled and medical representation. A lot of the vibe of the studio and game is also extremely utopian-corporate, ultra-tolerance, progressive-lib in a way that’s probably a bigger red cape for the de-woke-business types than even something/somewhere actually more leftist.

I’d prefer the not talking pillow

The vast majority of major newspapers are also dependent on his fund to keep operating their essential for image, but unprofitable investigative units too so they’ll never write anything negative about him. Bezos bought a couple of papers wholesale, but Gates realised two decades ago that you could just buy up a load-bearing pillar in hundreds of papers around the world instead.