I’ve chopped up the content into semi-related sections. Given just how much of it there is, feel free to use the following index references to go where you want to go.

Indexathon
1) – Next Gen Intro and Index
2) – Next Gen Press Conference Summary
3) – Next Gen Specifics for Next Gen Games Exclusive to Next Gen Consoles
4) – Totally Next Gen thoughts about Next Gen Games that are only on Next Gen Consoles (nothing but words about meh games, skippable!)
5) – The Next Gen big hitters with Next Gen thoughts and Next Gen Trailers
6) – Next Gen big hitters part Next Gen two
7) – Games that really only have Next Gen trailers
8) – E3 random Next Gen scraps and Next Gen The End

PvZ: Garden Warfare
I feel this needs to get hashed out first because…well, because my impending immense dismay needs a release. Yes, you’re reading the name right and yes the game is rumored to be a FPS. No, that isn’t a genius decision and yes EA is behind it. Apparently, last year, EA went and brought in a diverse set of programmers and developers with the intention of creating a multiplayer focused FPS game “in the vein of Team Fortress 2“. Seriously, I’m not making this shit up. We can hope its all an elaborate ruse, a joke that is just publicity for PvZ 2. Regardless, we’re going to find out at EA’s press conference on Monday. If worst comes to worst, we can hope it’s an Xbone exclusive.

E3 Gossip:
So apparently Microsoft has been going around and cancelling the majority of their 1 on 1 interviews and general group Q&A sessions so they can “focus on games” or in laymen speak “because everything we say about the Xbone digs us a deeper hole, the best possible strategy now is to say nothing and hope everyone forgets all about it”. This comes on the tail end of a rumor that Microsoft is throwing around money to publishers and developers to not showcase much, or any, of their PS4 material. I want to believe that this is true but in all reality, most of the devs and publishers have had their presentation stuff lined up for a great long time now and I doubt that much can be changed on short notice. I’m sure some sleuthing individuals will be trying to find out and we can rest assured that notable absences, at certain presentations, will be highlighted by the internet. But I’d be quite surprised if the cold war between Sony and Microsoft has actually escalated to the point of paying people for privilege on such a public stage.

Your Random Esports gossip:
So Edward, you know The Thresh Prince now formerly of Gambit Gaming, aka Moscow 5, well he’s joining up with Curse NA. Roster changes happen all the time in the LCS. But usually they are limited to cycling around other regional related ladder players etc. So for one of the best international players in the world to decide hes going to bail on his extremely strong and successful team…some small waves got made as a result.

LCS related, Link of CLG put up a new blog post the other day that covers the daily schedule and grind of being a professional gamer and also his thoughts on LoL vs Dota 2 in a competitive sense. Now, maybe I’m just linking it because what he has to say about LoL is something I’ve been mumbling about since basically the first time I played the game. Or maybe I just like it when a top tier player pisses all over the delusions of the elitists within a games competitive scene.

WCS finished. Some Korean guy won.

Dying Light and The End:
Pretty good trailer. It has ZERO seconds of gameplay footage so for all I know its an 8 bit JRPG. I thought I heard something about it being a parkour FPS?

As I said, this little post is little and short and small and sweet and made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Next week I’m undecided on what I’ll be posting and when. Frankly it probably has a lot to do with what exactly gets presented and what kind of controversy, or the lack therein, comes out of E3.

E-Sports Gossip:
Dota 2 might be coming to MLG! Then again, this has been rumored for the last year or two. Confusing the issue is how this works with Riots supposed exclusivity deal with MLG and also the incoming Infinite Crisis which seems to have the money to throw at MLG to get included on its roster of games. It’s all in the “wait until it actually happens” to ponder the implications of what happens if a game gets officially picked up by MLG and what that means for general exposure.

In SCII, the LAN finals have already finished, at least, their first day by the time you’ve read this. Since they’re being held in Korea, the normal rules of “if you work/sleep regular hours you’re shit out of luck” still apply to watching it live if you’re so inclined. Since the first day of competition is already over, I’ll just go ahead and spoil it some for you. Of the 3 “foreigners” in the final 16, none made it through the first day of competition. Statistically this isn’t really surprising since there were 13 Koreans, 1 Frenchman, 1 German and 1 Ukrainian. Personally, the mix of shitty regional rules and generally poor, or altogether absent, hype has me ambivalent about the WCS as a whole. It is safe to say that the WCS hasn’t been near the success that Blizzard wanted when they first announced this large, LCS like, “international” tourney.

PvZ 2:
Well shit, troubling news. The game is coming only, initially, coming out for iOS devices which is a bit of a kick in the balls to plenty of fans of the game. Even more concerning is the fact that the game is being released as a F2P title with microtransactions. Now, there are really three routes the microtransactions can take. First, and best, is that everything  is purely cosmetic or flavor and doesn’t have an impact on the game itself. Second, and slightly more troubling but perfectly acceptable, is that everything can be achieved/gotten within the game by playing and you can purchase stuff to “shorten” grinding for money to but stuff from Crazy Dave or to make the experience as a whole easier. Third, and basically the death of the game, is that elements of the game are locked behind a pay wall. I suppose it could get worse from there and certain purchases are limited use items etc. We’ll find out when the game releases but most everyone would have been perfectly happy with an initial purchase price for the game and I’m still holding out hope that when they get around to releasing a PC version that the strip out all the microtransaction bullshit and just ask me for $15 or w/e.

Anyways, here is a trailer that doesn’t show any game play and hints and alternative timeline version of PvZ. While pretty enough, did it really take them this long to come up with some new planets, zombies and an Egyptian theme etc?

300 Heroes:
Chances are this will be both the first and last time this game gets mentioned here. Watch the trailer and marvel at how surreal the entire situation seems to be.

Blizzard:
Bad news bear ripped through Blizz HQ earlier this week with news that 70 of the 100 developers that were working on Titan have been redistributed amongst Blizzards other projects. The reason being they’ve apparently hit the reset button on the entire project. One theory holds that the remaining 30 developers are all engine people and they’ve simply decided to scrap the old one and build a new one up and then re-approach the game once they know what the new engine is capable. On the flip side some people think this is a sign that Blizz completely lost its way during the design portion of the game and realized that, as a whole, the project no longer sounded tenable for them. Whatever the case, Titan most certainly won’t show its head at this years Blizzcon and we likely won’t hear anything more about it for several years unless they straight up axe the whole project.

LoL, Dota 2 and WCS:
Last weekend saw the LoL All-Star tourny play itself out on the elaborate stage in Shanghai. Unfortunately most of the matches where less then spectacular and since there is a 12 hour time difference between here and there, the viewing times resulted in watching rebroadcasts or replays. Which, in hindsight I’m happy about since I would have been quite annoyed to have stayed up to watch the majority of these matches. The only series that was really worth watching was the NA vs EU one. Even the “skills competition” was a little mehish. It was basically a bunch of 1v1 games (except in the case of the bot lane competition) that had ZERO fucking relation with the categories the people where entered in. A notable “issue” is that there was absolutely no limitations on champion select. The result was that everyone just picked strong single lane champions in a game that is defined by the strength of a team as a whole…yeah. To make matters less spectacular, no one actually had to play the role their category identified them as. Best jungler in the world was crowned without actually jungling. So while the single lane map they used was nice and all. I have no idea why they didn’t just throw everyone into one giant bracket and have them play through it. It’s a skill competition, crown the best 1v1er in the world or something. When the supports are playing ADC’s I’m no longer watching a competition for best bot lane, I just ain’t.

In Dota 2 news the G1 LAN finals also happened in Shanghai over the weekend. The end result was surprising to basically everyone as Alliance, a EU team, cleaned house against basically the best Chinese teams in the world. China has long be heralded as the powerhouse of Dota. iG, the defending TI champions, got generally mashed up by almost everyone too boot and ChuaN of iG remarked that this in large part because the West now seems to be ahead in drafting compared to the East. Some people are theorizing that this is LoL’s fault. Hear me out on this. The thinking is that with LoL taking up such a huge amount of space in the esports scene that ACE (Association of China E-Sports) isn’t providing the money or allowing the Chinese Dota 2 teams to go to a large variety of the smaller paying Dota 2 tournies. The numbers back up the premise to a certain degree as Chinese teams have been playing in significantly fewer tournies. The result is that the Chinese teams are getting less competitive play in. All of this really shouldn’t surprise much of anyone. Tencent has some MAJOR fucking pull and the bank to back it up. If you don’t know who Tencent is and aren’t aware of their business practices, you need to go do some Googlefu unless, UNLESS, you’re a LoL fanboi, then don’t.

Finally on the WCS front a Korean won the EU division. Yes, that is as stupid as it sounds. Since the WCS is no longer a local region competition, all the Korean players dispersed themselves amongst the KR, NA and EU divisions and basically entered into whatever one they felt they had the best chance of winning in. The end result is, and its entirely possible hardcore SCII fans don’t even notice, that casual fans or people mildly interested in SCII have basically been put off the entire event. The fact that players aren’t required to even be living in a region, let alone from that region, means that until the LAN finals section of play, you had Koreans playing from Korea in both the NA and EU tournies.

I understand that Blizzard wants to try and grow interest in the SCII competitive scene. But the approach of this years WCS was off the mark enough that it might have done more harm then good to the competitive SCII as a whole. Both of the best native players from NA and EU have announced they taking a break after the WCS finishes up (Scarlett and Stephano respectively) and having the majority of players “representing” a region being from an entirely different region is…it’s kind of /facepalm really. Anyways, the WCS NA LAN finals are this week and the lineup consists of 6 Koreans, a Norwegian and an Australian. Maybe the matches will be amazingly good. I’m not sure I care though.

Endless Space:
Here, have an interesting little trailer, for this fun little 4x space game, to breakup the monotony of having to read words.

Xbone aka Xbox One aka Brobox aka Terrible Console Name aka Standard Microsoft:
First, lets start off with a little 2 min primer about the Xbone reveal show that happened on Tuesday. It concisely summarizes the major elements that were presented.

“I wanted a game console, not a voice and gesture based tv remote box. : /”
Markus “Notch” Persson

I’d like to preface this mass of words with the suggestion that, despite what you’re about to read, I’m not proclaiming the console war over and done with. E3 is another opportunity during which futures are made or broken and no one has a console in their hands to stress test or play around with. Mistakes made now can be corrected. Things that might be flaws might simply have been poorly presented or misrepresented. The proof of everything will be in the month old pudding later this year after the consoles have come out. Hell, it is entirely possible that either the Ps4 of the Xbone is complete crap but sells like hotcakes anyways because no one, NO ONE, has ever said that the masses are consistently an intelligent and well informed collective. Anyways, into the breach once more.

Thus far it seems to be a console made entirely out of buzzwords with a HEAVY focus on TV interconnectivity. This goes hand in hand with earlier rumors that had Microsoft aiming to integrate itself as the middleman between content providers and the user. Telling me that there are 5 million transistors sounds fancy dancy. But it doesn’t ACTUALLY tell me the capabilities of the CPU. The GPU isn’t even mentioned and at the end of the day the Xbone, on paper, is a touch better than my PC…which is going on 5 years old. One thing that people are taking away from all of this is that the PS4 is a more powerful system, even if only by a little bit. The logic being simply that with the information that is out so far, if the Xbone was more powerful there is basically zero chance that Microsoft wouldn’t have had a masturbatory celebration at the reveal event about it and stressed its hardware specs more. This is based on rational speculation concerning the kind of RAM being used, the suggested differences in GPU selection and various internal pipelines being larger (for those not quite familiar with differences between PC and consoles, the internal pipelines or bandwidth is where consoles make up a lot of ground in terms of power because the unified architecture allows for more throughput and etc etc where PC’s don’t have the same unified architecture on their MoBo’s because of the nature of said piece of hardware and the current industry standards in that regard).

Microsoft isn’t trying to hide its hand here. It wants the Xbox to be your cable box essentially. The are some MAJOR problems with pitching TV functionality as the best new feature with the Xbone though. Services like Netflix and HBO aren’t available everywhere and I doubt that Microsoft is going to find a way to get legacy content providers to give access to their products via the Xbone just because. Service men and women of the American Armed Forces are kind of fucked in this regard as well. If you’re not stationed in the continental USA, you can basically forget about full service and that’s not to mention the potential issues with the internet requirements for the damn thing.

The force Kinect integration is another whole realm of suck in and of itself. It is essentially always on, can read your heart beat etc and, if that’s not creepy enough, does so with IR so even if you can’t see it, it can see you AND recognize who you are, whether you are happy, sad, excited, etc. Or so they say anyways, but the privacy concerns on that front are fairly significant, especially when paired with the necessity of having an internet connection. It’s also worth mentioning that the Kinect is notoriously terrible with languages that aren’t American English. Given that the majority of the population of the world is not American, this kind of poses a problem that goes hand in hand with the TV aspect of the Xbone. Namely that this “core” feature is absent or useless. So why is it that someone should buy an Xbone when its focus is on the interconnectivity of media that they don’t have access to again?

Steam:
Valve has decided that everyone has too much free time. To combat this growing plague of people not religiously playing various video games for every waking hour of the day they’ve decided to create a trading card system within Steam. Each game has a different set of cards. You use the cards to create badges which give you exp which gives you lvls which gives you various goodies including but not limited to emoticons, profile backgrounds, and the most important of them all, coupons and/or DLC.

Currently its in “closed” beta but invites are floating around and the more the merrier tends to be the way of any Valve beta. Unfortunately since it is beta the current participating games list is limited almost exclusively to Valve titles. Regardless, going forward it seems like they’ll expand it out to as many games as they can much like they did with the achievements. In the process they’ll pull people into buying and playing more games.

Of course the more insidious side of this is that some people will feel more compelled to make their purchases on Steam instead of from some of the other digital distributors out there. Hell, if the coupons and free DLC are plentiful and useful enough, it might just make financial sense as well. One can only imagine the gluttony of spending that will occur if the Trading Cards goes live in a bunch of games just before the Summer Steam Sale. It also serves as an easier way to bring people into the Steam marketplace that is already rather diverse and a lot larger then people think. That is, of course, if it proves to be successful. The fine balance between making something irresistible to the user and making the user feel like their being gouged for money or forced to play is rather fine and if you don’t get the balance right, shit fails. Rumor does have it that you can only collect half of a set of cards through playing a game and you can only do so once. If true, that puts a pretty hard limit on how many badges people will be completing as the only way to get the other remaining cards for a set is by trading with others or buying them off the community marketplace. What would I want to trade though? I’m trying collect them aren’t I and if the most practical thing to do is buy the remaining cards off the marketplace then…yeah, couldn’t care less about the entire system. What we do know for sure though is that a little poop just soiled some underwear over at the Origin HQ for EA.

Dawngate:
Sound like a pretty generically silly name? That’s because it is. It’s the classic “take two words, smash’em together and you’ve got a name” game. In this case EA is apparently developing a MOBA (who isn’t at this point? Seriously, there’s already over a dozen in development in a market that already has insanely stiff competition as LoL and Dota 2 force each other to improve). There’s not much to say about it at this point. Apparently the website was prematurely ejaculated from EA’s grasp and no one is suppose to know about it just yet. The one beautiful thing about the game is that since its going to get released into a competitive market the consumer really does have a voice in the conversation. Maybe it’ll be great. Rumor does have it that the defunked Visceral Games is behind the game…though I don’t know what a studio that designed Horror FPS games is going to bring to designing a MOBA not to mention the potential bitterness at having been dissolved because Deadspace 3 didn’t manage to meet EA’s metacritic desires despite being a decent game that was intermittently ruined by decisions by EA to include shit like a money store in a single player FPS. /kicks horse again

NintenDOH:
Nintendo is an odd company. Certainly the odd one out when compared with any other hardware developer or major game publisher. They do things their way, damn the consequences and who cares about what anyone else is doing. But Nintendo has started to fall on hard times as interest in their products declines, notably with the way under projected sales totals of the Wii-U. Whether the low sales of the Wii-U are a microcosm of the impending shift in the console market as a whole for a variety of reasons, we just won’t know until the next gen of the Playstation and Xbox hit.

The larger point being that it because Nintendo does things its own way, there are going to be times where “their way” just isn’t going to gel well with even their die-hard fans. Case in point is the recent attack on Lets Plays by Nintendo on YouTube. For those not quite up on their lingo a Lets Play is when someone plays a game, usually adding commentary as they do so, and uploads the video to YouTube so others can watch. In the age of games that refuse to release demos and shitty, brief, IGN like game reviews, these Lets Plays are basically the hands down best way to find out more information about a game you might want to purchase. Back to Nintendo, they’ve automated an IP copyright machine thingie with YouTube that allows them to claim the copyright on any Nintendo stuffs and then attach ads to the video. Nintendo views this as them being generous with the community and even seem to have the opinion that they’re the good guys in all this, champions of the community. Needless to say the community doesn’t.

The murky legal battleground that this all plays out in is using woefully out of date and out of touch law to try and make it work. So, unfortunately, what might be “right” by the rule of law is very likely going to be illogical by “common sense”.  But what is done is done and now Nintendo are, hopefully, paying a lot of attention to the potential fallout along side what those in the wider video gaming community have to say about all of it. Because, if your die-hard fans start to boycott your products, you’re fucked. After all, and this is especially true with Nintendo, if the die-hard fans don’t buy your middle of the pack rated 20th Mario game, then who the fuck is? Expect to see plenty about it on various gaming sites as this plays itself out in the next couple of days and perhaps weeks. Really it’s not a hard mess to clean up or make right. But the odds are always on a company not being in touch with the finicky nature of the culture that supports it.

The Elder Scrolls Online:
I remain somewhat skeptical about TESO and while I hope it’s fantastic and gets everything right I’m pretty damn sure that anyone who comes in expecting the game to be Skyrim the MMO is going to quite unhappy with the finished product. Anyways, here is a little video about gathering and exploration that offers up the suggestion that “hey, look, we’re like other Elder Scrolls games!” without actually mentioning how all this stuff works in an MMO. Is each and every little thing instanced or is it communal? What kind of impact does it have on the world etc? I could go on and on but I’ll spare you…for the moment.

Marvel Heroes and The End:
Or, if you prefer, The End of Marvel Heroes.

Last weekend the game held an open beta weekend that let me get my poutine gravy smeared fingers on it. As I’ll know elaborate upon though, it turned out to be a waste of said gravy as after about 2ish hours I simply couldn’t play it anymore. I believe my words were “I can’t…I can’t play this anymore, I just can’t.”

I started my adventure as The Hulk and immediately ran into immersion problems. I understand that at lvl 1 I can’t be The Hulk of the comics or movies. But there was zero, zip, nil, nothing, flat out no attempt to explain why as The Hulk I had basically none of the famous Hulk abilities and why I was comparatively kind of weak in relation to what I should have been when up against low lvl enemy minion mobs. I did my best to stomp around and get into the mindset of The Hulk by smashing everything I could find. But that left me relatively bored and let my my wonder about the inane plot of the game. But whatever, since when did a dungeon crawler need a story? Sure a bad story can kind of ruin a game a bit, aka D3. But D3 levels of production value this game is not. I’ve seen better cutscenes on Newgrounds.

Anyways, nothing was horribly amiss just yet. Sure I couldn’t remap certain keys and it only even told me what a couple of keybinds where but whatever, small things don’t count! Then I got an item. Items are what dungeon crawlers are all about. I opened up my inventory for the first time and vomited a little in my mouth. The inventory is ugly as sin. The items that go in the inventory are ugly as sin. Everything about the window of shame that pops up when you push I was sinful! Ok…fine, the inventory and items be damned, their not important in a dungeon crawler right?

I beat up the Green Goblin who, for some unknown reason, was still at the prison despite having a machine that fucking flies. After that ended up at Stark Towers and promptly realized that the game was trying to also be an MMO. Multiple copies of all of the available superheores were running around. Three Ironman over there by the vendor, two spiderman on the waypoint, another Hulk over at the stash and a pool of my tears in the far corner. The MMO aspect of the game adds nothing. Mother fucking nothing. There are MMO levels or zones where there are “dynamic” group quests that pop up. But since the good, or at least better, content is in instances areas on the other side of the MMO zones. They server only as something to run through as you wonder why you’re playing the game at all.

Sometime after watching another one of the shitty cutscenes in which some villain I don’t know stole a stone tablet from a warehouse of another villain, neither of which had escaped from the prison I originally started in and had been the main plot point, I just gave up. I pictured Hulk losing the will to live, laying down on the ground and having a pouty face as the same faceless, nameless white suited minions I’d killed a hundred of or so came and slowly buried him in decaying corpses.

I feel bad. I feel bad for playing the game. I feel bad for the people making the game. I feel bad for anyone to goes and brags to their friends that this is the game they play for enjoyment. I feel especially bad for anyone who has spent the $200 on the founders pack. It took me awhile to get a sense of why Marvel Heroes doesn’t work but I finally narrowed it down to the fact that it feels like mobile game. It has that kind of air about it. That kind of finish and polish. Like someone took a mobile game and tried to make it into a core game and never realized that the task is much more difficult then it seems.

To close up I’ll paraphrase Mustrum, our aspiring Hyper-Chicken, concerning his thoughts on Marvel Heroes; “After two minutes I realized I’d wasted a lot of time downloading it”, now fuck off and thanks for reading.

The Sims 4:
We’ll start off with the news everyone has been eagerly and impatiently waiting for. The Sims 4 is dated for release sometime in 2014!!! ZOMG right? So when does the hype machine start up for the game…well now actually as they have started to throw out various overly flamboyant press releases about the game.

I don’t know…a lot of someones have to have really enjoyed The Sims games. They’ve sold something like 150 million copies of the games and that’s not small peanuts. Now whether they include all the DLC and expansions into those numbers, they surely won’t tell us. But still, its a highly successful franchise and baring the ability to create a Battle Royale island (a much better form of entertainment in a dystopian future then The Hunger Games btw, seriously go watch the damn movie) I can’t see myself playing it. But who knows, as per normal the future slate of games seems like a smorgasbord of awesomeness. But, as history as taught me, half of the games I want to be great will likely suck. Another half of those that don’t suck likely won’t be great and the remaining quarter just won’t have “it”, whatever “it” is that makes a game into that special shinning jewel of awesomeness that provides years upon years and hundreds, possibly even thousands, of hours of fun and enjoyment.

Total War: Rome II
The initial pre-order information is out. The games release date is the 3rd of September but, and this is the current conflict amongst fans, pre-orders get free access to release day DLC. I still don’t quite know why release day DLC is such a common thing. Yes I understand the process of game development and the “golden print copy” and all that shit. I’m not ragging on CA for this existing. If they say that most of the development of the game is largely complete and that the group of people working on the Greek States DLC would otherwise have nothing to do and might have to be let go or something and so this lets them retain them or w/e, that’s great. It’s just that I have zero interest in being gauged on tidbits of DLC (not that this looks like a small DLC by any stretch). Any TW fan is also likely a bit cautious after the disaster that was Empire and pre-ordering. Rome II represents another one of those generational jumps for CA, the kind that they don’t usually handle real well because they have a retarded monkey running QA testing.

Still, I’m uncertain. Their reasoning seems sound, the content seems good and we don’t have a ton of info on the game yet regardless. It’s just that pre-ordering is increasingly the incorrect way to go about purchasing a game. Despite how badly I want Rome II to be great,  I can’t even bring myself to consider pre-ordering until they’ve dished out a lot more info about the game. Especially when you balance it all out against the influence of the TW modding community. Is CA going to continue to embrace the modding community with comprehensive tools, steam workshop support, etc like they’ve done at the end of Shogun II’s life cycle? If so, what is the actual value of DLC? Mods tend to add more then all the DLC combined. Or is CA going to go for a semi closed platform approach like we’ve seen with Civ V or even early Shogun II? CA DOES have a history of keeping their games kind of locked up until the next one in the series is due to come out or they’re no longer developing DLC or expansions for it. Lots and lots of days to go…here is a trailer that looks entirely too good and makes me want to play the game right fucking now.

Star Wars:
Back to EA again. This time it includes all this Star Wars on consoles and PC. Having likely outbid everyone else, or at least promised the most, EA has shored up exclusive liscensing rights for the creation and distrubtion of Star Wars games. The press release made mention of Bioware, DICE and Visceral as all working, or will be working, on Star Wars games. That seems like marginally good news since they’re all fairly decent developers. Sure their products have suffered under EA but that might not necessarily be EA’s fault right? I mean, just because ever developer that is bought up by EA either burns out like Bullfrog or Westwood or sees a steady decline in the quality of their product or even starts pumping them out annually doesn’t mean EA is bad for those once awesome developers. Maybe its fucking leprechauns. Did you ever think of that? Or unicorns. No, you didn’t think of that did you so shame on you.

World of Warcraft:
Our origin game doesn’t get much mention around these parts anymore. The most recent bit of data suggests that Blizzards flagship MMO lost 1.3 million people since the end of last year. Now, most games would be dead after losing that many and most games would even love to have that many to begin with. But since that brings WoW down to “only” 8.3 million subscribers, they’re still doing fine and dandy.

NGD itself left during the twilight years of the MMO and I don’t expect the game to ever again have the degree of popularity and success that it once had. It’s aged well if you think about it. But video games are worse then cats and dogs. WoW’s age might only be 9 human years old. But in video game terms that has got to be like +60 or something. The only possibility of it once again capturing the hearts and minds of double digit millions is if it made the switch over to FTP. Which almost certainly won’t happen because if you’re making, at minimum, $108 million per month, you don’t go switching up business models.

The End:
Kind of. At least the end or words for this week. I leave you with a borderline obscene Saints Row IV trailer and my particularly unique parting words of fuck off and thanks for reading.

Nintendo and E3:
That is to say Nintendo has announced they will not be hosting a press conference at this years E3. Given that they’re still, officially, one of the big three of console gaming, its come as a bit of a head turner for some. But the logic behind it seems pretty sound. First, holding a press conference at E3 is hella expensive. Compare that to putting up a stream and dishing out the info that way and you’d better REALLY want the live and in person conference. Part of that, and the second item, is actually having something big to announce or show. Nintendo likely doesn’t. Third, Sony and Microsoft are both bringing their new consoles to the party. There is no two bones about it, the Wii-U is basically a failure. It’s under initial sales projections by almost half, player feedback on the console and its titles is largely a collective “meh” and it’s almost certainly going to get annihilated by the PS4 and XBOX 720 or whatever its called. The plain truth of the matter is that Nintendo is in trouble. Like deep, potentially fatal, crisis level trouble if they can’t find a way to right the ship.

At the end of the day though, its not hyper relevant to us gamers. E3 isn’t for us or even for gaming journalists. It’s the big press event for the general public media outlets. The CNN’s and other stuffs. It’s the one time of the year these media outlets commit to “gracing” the gaming culture with their presence. I must also say I’ve really thankful I’ve never once caught their coverage of E3. I think that it’d probably have adverse effects on both my stomach and my brain.

CoD: Ghosts
What to say about the next CoD game…there will be guns, there will be music, there will be some slow-mo effects shit, some explosions…no, lots of explosions and it’ll all be tied up in a prettier package. The singleplayer will certainly be the same linear shooting gallery as all the previous ones. Multiplayer will be the same deathmatch twitch shooter thing with unlocks and crap. I’m sure there are fanbois out their who shit their pants in glee over the announcement and I direct them to this comic on the matter.

The brain power behind Infinity Ward is long gone but the game is being developed and will be released with the Infinity Ward label front and center. It’ll almost certainly get released in or around November. It’ll almost certainly have various editions and pre-purchase prizes and shit. Maybe they’ll even make an amusing blunder and attempt to sell ghost ski-masks or something. In the end though, I’m clearly not their target audience and I want, so badly, for them to know that.

Worth mentioning is the fact that the debut teaser trailer (why is that even a fucking thing?) is to be “exclusively” debuted at the Microsoft XBOX announcement presser this month. That’s not to say the game is an XBOX exclusive. This is Activision we’re talking about it. The only reason the community loathing for them has dissipated over the last couple of years is because EA has done a fantastic job of trying to fuck everything, with two legs, in the ass. Point being, Activision still wants money, lots of money. Afterall the company pays 7% of its gross profit to it’s CEO. That’s fair right? ANYWAYS, the game is going to be coming out for everything that can run it and probably some things that can’t.

Infinite Crisis:
The closed beta for the DC comics based MOBA starts up on May the 8th. The game is still slated to be released later this year and rarely do licensed games ever miss their release date, finished or not…usually not. Thus far is promises a deep roster based on DC comic multi-verse characters, pvp, a F2P business model etc. Really, all they need to do is make a DC comics version of LoL. That’s practically it. Have someone study what works and what doesn’t with LoL, copy a lot of the good stuff, maybe tweak some of the bad stuff or add some creative stuff and call it a day. The competitive gaming space isn’t for people who “have a vision”. It’s for people who understand what is required in a game to create a relatively balanced and enjoyable experience that is both easy to play and has a lot of deep in attempting to master.

Thus far the game looks pretty good. It’s, oddly enough, not as good looking as Dota 2, but at least it doesn’t look like HoN so its got that going for it. I imagine they will be a lot more to say and show about the game in the not too distant future so stay tuned for my regularly grime and condescending commentary on it.

Marvel Heroes:
On the “opposite/competitor” side of the table we have Marvel. While DC has put its weight behind a MOBA game, Marvel has decided to go with a Diablo clone. Yes, you read that right. Marvel Heroes is a diablo dungeon crawler. They have also decided to go with a F2P business model which is a bit head scratching given the game type. It makes more sense when you find out that they aren’t following the thinking of the Path of Exile guys when it comes to what can be purchased. Instead we’re looking at purchasing heroes (that makes plenty of sense, especially if the roster is large and the heroes generally balanced) but also being able to purchase items (this is just not smart, not smart AT ALL). Now, no ones actually seen the items in the shop yet. But games have failed on fair less then foolish F2P shop choices. But if they do make the fundamental F2P mistake of allowing the purchasing of power, the game is likely to get shunned by the hardcore gamers and quite possible the majority of core gamers as well. I expect plenty of people might give it a try given that it’s a F2P game. But who is going to want to stick around to play it if they make a mess of their F2P shop? Likely almost no one is the answer…except the whales but Zynga has proven you can only run a company on whale income for so long.

In the, not so snazzy, trailer you’ll see some of the button mashing going on. What I want to know is why is their so much particle debris everywhere? It reminds me of a LEGO game when you smash certain things and shit pops out everywhere. Except this appears to be related to the destruction of the environment. Sometimes it looks like someone set off a confetti bomb. I don’t know, as a fan of diablo clones, nothing really seems to attract me to this game other then the idea of playing certain Marvel superheroes. At least it’s F2P right?

SEGA and Gearbox:
Our last little bit of words deals with a recent lawsuit filed in California over the mess that still is Aliens: Colonial Marines. Apparently some people have taken exception with the fact that the only material available with which to gauge the quality of the game was all prefabricated for the express purpose of making the game seem like it was a lot better then it was. It seems kind of stupid when you say it like that since that’s what all advertising does, try and sell you something on the partial premise of an illusion. Such lawsuits have come and gone before. This one might have more ground to stand on then most, but its still a bit of a reach and anyone who bought the game can expect roughly $5 back if the lawsuit wins through.

The End:
I’ll, last time I promise, once again recommend going and playing Papers, Please. It’s not the best game ever created but its pretty damn good for being made by one guy and if you like it, go upvote it on Greenlight on Steam. It seems the least that can be done for someone who isn’t trying to gouge money out of everything up to and including bone and stone.

And thus ends the meandering of my mushy mind for yet another mellow week in, now, the month of May. Now fuck off and thanks for reading.

They’ve taken a real minimalist approach to alterations with the game itself. Update the graphics, perhaps tweak some mechanics. Put the game on the much more volatile eastern front and, I assume, incorporate an increased amount of some kind of social/multiplayer experience. Given the games legacy, one hopes it lives up to the billing.

Star Trek – The Game:
The Game has been delayed for a bit so that its release would line up a bit better with The Movie. Sadly, apparently a lot of The Time was wasted as reviews are ranging from steaming pile of shit to moist and runny pile of shit. There happens to be quite the shit pot around the coop functionality for PC as well. The gist of The Game is that you play as either Kirk or Spock. The other character can then be played by a person or as whatever stands in as AI in a licensed game designed to help The Movie. The problem that arises is that NO ONE on PC can play coop with anyone else. It’s flat broke as shit. So fine, a core function of the game doesn’t work at launch. Shit happens. What’s got peoples buttholes puckered is that a dev nonchalantly said its working for him and that there was a small rash of user reviews on Metacritic that gave the game 9s and 10s, sometimes for multiple systems from the same user. Of course this is the first and only game most of these users have reviewed and so pitchforks have started to be handed out as the mad fan boys and internet angry people get a head of steam up to try and burn the pile of shit down.

E-sports…V-sports…D-sports? News:
My little jabs, at both how silly the contrived label of esports is and the absurdity of others attempting to “go against the grain” and either produce other labels or shun them altogether because they’re rebellious bad ass fighter game gamer people, aside. There is a little bit of interesting news to relate on the front of professional gaming or gaming for money or whatever you choose to call it.

First up we have the DISASTER that was the NA WCS qualifier tournament. Blizzard choose MLG to setup and run a lot of their NA WCS stuff and in traditional MLG fashion, they failed to grasp the intricacies of the community around a PC game (yeah, that’s right, I just called MLG a bunch of console bro gamers! Sup!?! Wanna fight about it!?!). Essentially what happened was MLG failed to assure that only talented players got into the tourny in the first place. Which meant that some players, who are or have the ability to and are aspiring to be professional SCII players, were unable to get into the tournament because random gold players etc managed to soak up some spots. What happened after that point was a rash of terrible scheduling, disqualifications after it was already too late for variety of reasons including, but not limited to, people not being who they said they were, attempting to qualify in multiple regions and map hacking.

Rightfully so the SCII community is some pissed at practically everyone and anyone involved in the debacle. Originally everyone was super glad that Blizzard had decided to “unify” the entire WCS process. But I think most people expected it to be the largely seamless product that is the LCS. Instead, its more of a rushed entity that’s fraying at the edges and kind of being forced through so far. To its credit MLG did apologize to the community over what transpired. But MLG has had to apologize several times before for poor tourny design, failed coverage etc. I don’t know if that makes them good for open communication with players and fans or a poor company as a whole for being in such a position on, what seems like, a regular basis.

I am still personally interested in seeing how the later rounds of the WCS play out both in NA and in Europe. But because regions are not limited by nationality, I wouldn’t be surprised if Koreans won all 3 international regions. If that does happen, I’m not sure the quality of the content/product matters at that point. The only reason to really have distinct regions is to provide an opportunity for regionally local players to compete on “the big stage”. Now, sure, this mixing of players might allow non-Korean players to improve due to the increased strength of their opponents and maybe that works out great for everyone. The flipside could also occur though. Since Koreans already have a much more well established training and practice regiment with a much larger pool of quality training partners, they’re are inherently at an advantage coming into this WCS. If the clean the slate of all three regions, its possible that players within the NA and EU regions will simply lose interest in even trying instead of jumping into the shark pool while well trained and determined Korean players shift around looking to play in the “softest” region for the best chance at winning. Of course none of this will matter if Blizzard and is cohorts don’t do a better job of promoting and presenting the entire WCS to the public. If no one watches its going to be real hard to justify sinking money into a product that can attempt to compete in the esports space with Riot and the LCS.

The last little thing is that there continue to be rumors that, because of who Blizzard choose to run WCS content, the NASL is considering switching over to Dota 2. Frankly Dota 2 desperately needs a large, unified product. All these small, irregularly scheduled tournaments are too much of a hassle to attempt to care about. Valve might very well not give a shit. They tend to be a lot more hands off on their products then other companies and so they might be perfectly happy just letting Dota 2 play out however it manages. I’m not certain that will work this time around though. Sure a lot of people will continue to play Dota 2 and I’m sure the number of people playing will continue to increase. But the LCS is…something of a phenomena in video gaming right now. The number of viewers it pulls in. The general interest in drums up in the community and the “carrot on a stick” that is a paid salary to play likely does wonders for compulsive playing habits of its community. That and Blizzard is almost surely going to have a unified product for its MOBA…if it ever fucking comes out. Unified communities/product are, for competitive gaming, clearly the way forward at this point in time.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot:
The essential breakdown of the game is that you are some fantastical leader/ruler guy  or girl who does their ruling over a floating island in the sky. Within this island you can setup a little dungeon thing that others can attempt to clear to get loot. You, likewise, can attempt to clear their island dungeon things. Actually…that sounds overly simply when broken down like that… Anyways, the humor within reminds me quite a bit of that found in Orcs Must Die. Also the social aspects to the game seem like they could be sufficient for a little bit of fun. Some competitive ribbing and jostling amongst friends.

Concerned Joe:
Super Meat Boy wasn’t a game that I enjoyed playing, though it was fun to watch someone else play for the most part. It’s entirely possible that Concerned Joe will be the same for me. Hopefully there are some people who want to do the actual playing. The game itself is simple enough, run and jump your way to the end of the map. It’s the humorous elements and different puzzle elements that look to differentiate Concerned Joe from Super Meat Boy. Just…just watch the trailer and if afterwards you don’t think Concerned Joe is kind of adorable then…well, you’re just a dick.

The End:
Well kind of. First I want to take a quick moment to do something I’ve, thus far, refrained from doing. That is to directly link to an article on another site. In this case it’s RPS’s editorial piece on SimCity. There is a lot to be said about how bad SimCity was for everyone in a multitude of ways. But since I can’t be bothered to do all the digging and research myself and because the RPS guys were kind of at the forefront to calling bullshit on Maxis and EA over SimCity, I’ll do my part in getting them a couple extra hits for their excellent breakdown on the SimCity situation.

My quota of galvanizing against EA, and to a lesser degree Maxis, done for the week. I bid everyone adieu so fuck off and thanks for reading.

Defiance:
The game itself continues to get increasingly poorer reviews as people gain longer exposure to the game. But I’m here to talk about the tie-in show…or maybe the game is a tie-in for the show. Frankly it’s hard to tell which is suppose to be the premier product of this little family. Anyways, I sat down and watched the first episode of the TV show. Here are my polite and kind thoughts.

The show itself is kind of…terrible really. It comes across as everything that someone who isn’t really into science fiction thinks that people who are into scfi would want. None of the main characters are interesting. All of the initial plot points are nonsense, ordinary and predictable or just plan stupid. Also, what the fucking FUCK is with the alien music? Is it suppose to make us be all “wow, that’s totally alien!”? All I know is it sounds terrible and in no way endears me their entire nomenclature and yes, yes, I see you made alien swearwords. How novel, its not like you’ve done it in other shows on your channel. Here is the thing…if the swearword is in your alien language, how do I know you’re not just saying “puppy” with a very contrary tone.

Frankly I had trouble watching the whole thing through. Numerous times I had to pause it and find something else to do because I kept on getting bored or annoyed with the show, riveting TV it is not. Also, whats with the jarring contrast between scenes that have “terraformed earth” and parts of either that aren’t terraformed? So you haven’t put a lot of money into the CGI. I get that, shits expensive. But this is suppose to be a flagship product. Surely you can do better then this?

The best way to sum up my thoughts on the show is that its “great” moments, the ones that are suppose to awe and/or inspire me. Those moments almost universally made me cringe. This isn’t Firefly. This isn’t Battlestar Galactica. It’s a show that’s a mess named after a town that has seemingly regressed to barely above the wild west after a war that involved space ships! At some point show, you need to explain the why of this. Well…maybe not. I only watched the first episode because of the game and now either the game nor the show make me want to play or watch either. GJ SyFy channel, you’ve got a real winner here.

Mark Jacobs:
Dafuck is that and why are you talking about him you ask? Well, apparently he is the developer on Camelot Unchained and was the lead on Dark Age of Camelot. Anyways, he thinks that the entire F2P business model is going to result in a massive, apocalypse level, collapse within the gaming industry in a couple of years. His reasoning is that in the next couple of years developers will start shutting down when their F2P games don’t do well at launch after heavy investment during development.

Yeah…so the reasoning is a bit wishy washy. A lot of F2P games aren’t usually from big developers nor are they usually given large budgets. Similarly, some developers put a ton of money into games that have initial purchase costs, subscriptions, microtransactions or combinations of all of the above and plenty of those tank as well. What I’m saying is that the failure of a game and thus its developer has little to do with the business model and more to do with whether the customers feel they’re receiving a product of value. If you don’t give them something you’re not going to make you’re money back on the game no matter which business model you choose to us. Yes, choosing the “right” one might result in being close to breaking even in the end. But the success or failure of a game in the long term is only marginally effected by its payment type. Quality content people. Learn what that fucking means already. I mean, did LucasArts ever do much of any F2P? /humph.

Camelot Unchained btw, is some kind of kickstarter MMO thing that is PvP ONLY. As in there is absolutely no PvE. That’s an interesting design decision. Having basically read nothing about the it though, my guess is that its a fantasy MMORPG with three waring factions or pits three waring worlds (read realms or servers) against each other. If even half of what I just said is right, Mr. Jacobs might want to reconsider his position as a gaming development prophet.

Ubisoft:
Ubisoft doesn’t get enough hate around here. That’s partially because they infamously said PC gaming was shit and focused heavily on console gaming and subsequently have come to, at least suggest, they regret that decision. This time Ubisoft makes the news because of enlightened statements by its CEO. He says people are ready for an always one console. Now, sure the only reason people don’t hate on Ubisoft as much anymore is because its been eclipsed by the likes of EA and yes Ubisoft is synonymous with money grabbing, would sell its mother to sex slavers for $5, pieces of shit. Also yes its Uplay “service” recently got hacked and that whole debacle made them the laughing stock of anyone who bothered to pay attention. But the general gist of the statement is actually kind of right.

Now the why of that isn’t necessarily covered by said CEO. But he does, and this is totally to his credit, suggest that IF, and I do mean IF, always on functionality provides something to the customer then its existence can be justified. Of course, that’s not the case previously, currently or likely in the immediate future. Always online DRM functionality is for the developers first and foremost and anyone arguing otherwise needs only look at the recently SimCity debacle to understand the convoluted reasoning that developers and publishers possess in trying to defend their positions on the matter. The general gist of all immediate online functionality is for anti-piracy measures and player marketing/data collection. None of that provides anything to the customer. So when/if the paradigm swings on that and developers find a way to provide something customers want via an always on connection, then the discussion on it being mandatory can begin. Though that’s not going to happen and all signs point to Microsoft forcing the issue and making the bet that they’re right and the customer is wrong. I mean, what’s a major company if it can’t tell the customer what the customer wants even if the customer doesn’t know it or just says no right?

EA:
Seems like not a week goes by when I’m not talking about EA. This time they shut down the vast majority of their social offers. This is despite having once shouted to the heavens that social gaming was the way of the future. Just look at Zynga they said. Well, we now know that Zynga was a bit of a bubble and likewise that social gaming was a bit of a bubble. Some of us did kindly, totally without swear words, suggest that social gaming wasn’t the next coming of any gaming gods. But people with better business skills than me…I mean us, said differently and so EA bought Playfish for $300 million back in 2009. Well, not that’s dead. EA recently announced they’re shutting the entire thing down. Some of the game did well enough. But the catch with social games is that the number of people who actually pay money is retardedly low. We’re talking 3% low here. So even though they had numbers as high as 40 million players at some point, having such a low % of paying players means that these social games are monetary losers for them.

The real concern of all of this has, by in large, been overlooked by most. Games die out all the time. Servers even get shut down and games go dark as a result. So while everyone is focused on shitting on EA over this, what about the digital “goods” purchased by people in these games going dark? Some people make big time investments of not just time but money in these games. When the games got dark they lose everything. There is no refund, no compensation. So at what point does this become a concern again?

I say again because once upon a time this was a major issue. During the initial launch of Steam, everyone was all in a fluster over the idea of not physically owning what they’d purchased. People were, rightfully, concerned about what would happen if Value tanked as a company and so Steam had to be shut down. Value being Value simply told everyone that if that was the case they’d allow clients to get copies of the games before the service shutdown. Maybe that’s still their position. I don’t know. The topic has barely been mentioned for years even though more and more games really only exist online. For some games this is reasonable, ie MMOs. But what about Diablo 3? It doesn’t and can’t function without a connection. Likewise, what about games for companies, like EA, who don’t give a shit about trying to balance things out in the end? Is their justification that social games are somekind of MMO variant so they don’t need to try and balance the closure of these games with the customers investment? Perhaps this has more to do with digital property rights then I’m knowledgeable about. Regardless, it’ll probably take something massive going offline in a brutal manner to really produce an immediate change of direction on the matter. Like say LoL. If tomorrow the servers just don’t exist and the games never going to be playable again. How many people are going to be upset not just because they don’t get to play again but because they’ve lost all the champs, skins etc they might have purchased with money?

State of Decay:
The next game in the grand old line of zombie games. Unsurprisingly people are starting to get burnt out on the whole zombie thing. I’m sure heavy saturation of the market has nothing to do with it. As you’ll see in the trailer, the game is pretty enough. However, the trailer doesn’t tell you jack shit about the game. It essentially looks like zombies meet GTA sandboxing…maybe?

It’s out in June. It’s single player only which is really kind of sad pants since coop at the very least seems like it’d add to the game. But there are also plans to make the game into an MMO if the initial launch does well supposedly. But we’ve heard that tale before and even more often we’ve seen people try to build MMO’s. I hardly need to explain how those stories end.

Reus:
Hey look, he is actually talking about a game!!

Fooled you! Well…kind of. Reus is a god game and its out on May 16th. That’s about all I know about it.

Da End:
Got so little to say here. I used up my quote for words longer then 6-8 letters writing all of the above. So for all the lovers of poutine and sushi out there, I bid you fuck off and thanks for reading.