Classic anime, but not as a cartoon, and starring Scarlett Johansson, and directed by the guy who did the first Snow White movie that we liked! What could go wrong? At the 1:15 mark, against all odds, we do a 3×3 of come-from-behind victories.
Next week: Rock and Rule
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It’s not unusual that a movie studio options a book before it’s published. Especially if it’s a well-known author or a story with some sort of early buzz because it’s part of a franchise or based on a well-known event. But as far as I know, that’s never happened with a videogame. Instead, a game comes out, some sequels get made, lots of people buy them, and eventually Hollywood is all, like, “Huh, what, marketing groundwork already laid? Built-in opening weekend audience? Let’s make a (modest) deal!” Then several months later a Max Payne or Assassin’s Creed movie tanks at the box office. Worst case scenario, Crackle plops a Dead Rising movie online.
But Variety reports that it went a little differently today. A minor studio called Gold Circle Entertainment bought the rights for We Happy Few, which isn’t even out yet. It’s a successfully Kickstartered currently early access game by a bunch of veteran Montrealer developers gone indie. To its credit, We Happy Few has a unique sense of style. And by unique, I mean indebted to Bioshock without being slavish. That’s not something you find very often in videogames.
Gold Circle has been around for a while, and their success comes from stumbling into a couple of accidental hits that appealed to underserved female audiences. The first was My Big Fat Greek Wedding back in 2002. The second was Pitch Perfect back in 2012. Pitch Perfect — which is a very very good movie whether you’re a dude or a chick — is a commercial juggernaut for Gold Circle. The sequel — which is a very very bad movie whether you’re a dude, a chick, or even a Pitch Perfect fan — put it on the map as an Official Franchise with its $70 million opening and eventually a 10-to-1 worldwide return on its production budget. A third Pitch Perfect is in the works, adding the awesome Ruby Rose to its already awesome cast. With actors like these, who cares if the movie sucks? I can say this because it’s been several weeks since I suffered through Table 19, which I saw because Anna Kendrick, Lisa Kudrow, Craig Robinson, and Stephen Merchant were in it, so who cares if the movie sucks? I’m nearly over the trauma.
Obviously Gold Circle is casting about for new properties. Someone figured maybe this We Happy Few videogame might do well, so let’s get it while the getting’s good. The average internet reader will take this as an announcement that a We Happy Few movie is ON TEH WAY!!!1! But that’s not how these things work. Variety is just announcing a deal has been made. The majority of these deals do not result in movies. It’s unlikely a We Happy Few movie will ever see the light of day, much less a theatrical screen projector. But if We Happy Few 2 does well, it just might get handed over to some hapless European director as his entrance fee into the Hollywood creative mulcher. So stand by for news of a potential announcement concerning the early stages of what could be a possible We Happy Few movie sometime in 2020 or so.
Seasons in Diablo III are a way to play a self-contained character facing a unique set of challenges. Basically, an optional reset button so you can enjoy the early stages of the game all over again, without all the other hours you’ve played twinking the experience. Seasons also earn you unique rewards. When they end, everything you’ve earned gets transferred to normal Diablo III.
Seasons have only been available on the PC version of Diablo III. But the 10th season, which starts today, is available for those of us who play on the PS4. In other words, there is no longer any reason to play Diablo on the PC, where you can’t use a controller, where you can’t enjoy same-screen multiplayer support, where you don’t get all the cool interface shortcuts to manage your inventory on the fly, where the right stick won’t let you do a super helpful evasive roll, and where you have to sit in your office chair instead of on the comfy couch in the living room.
It was one heck of a run, PC Diablo. We’d remember you fondly if we weren’t so busy playing Diablo III on the PS4.
According to an article on The Economist’s online magazine:
…games have got [sic] immeasurably better. They are often beautiful, narratively interesting, enriching and social. Indeed, it is possible that they are too good. Today’s games seem to be displacing careers, friendships and families, and thus stopping young people (particularly men) from starting real, adult lives.
Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man. Oh, what? You have some data?
Between 2000 and 2015, the employment rate for men in their 20s without a college education dropped ten percentage points, from 82% to 72%. In 2015, remarkably, 22% of men in this group – a cohort of people in the most consequential years of their working lives – reported to surveyors that they had not worked at all in the prior 12 months. That was in 2015: when the unemployment rate nationwide fell to 5%, and the American economy added 2.7m new jobs. Back in 2000, less than 10% of such men were in similar circumstances.
And what’s that got to do with videogames?
Economists typically (and reasonably) assume that people tend to buy more things as they earn more money. But as they grow richer, they buy proportionately more of some things and less of others. Spending on necessities, as a share of all consumption, declines as incomes rise. Economists label “luxuries” the things that account for an increased share of spending as income goes up. There is a similar logic to leisure luxuries. As the amount of time people spend at leisure (as opposed to work) rises, some activities (like bathing or sleep) account for a shrinking share of total leisure time. Others the leisure luxuries account for more.
(What does it say about me that as I read that article, I imagined how that model would fit into The Sims?)
Among those predisposed to the leisure-luxury life, better games mean people are quicker to swap working hours for gaming hours; given nes-era [sic] gaming technology, a twenty-something might decline an opportunity for overtime work to have a little longer with Mario and Luigi. Now, a part-time job might be all they are willing to do, so good are the worlds and characters waiting at home. For those with the means, any hour on the job is an hour too much.
A lot of writer Ryan Avent’s anecdotes smack of videogaming guilt, a unique phenomena which doesn’t exist to the same degree for other forms of entertainment. His attempt to draw a parallel between life and game design is cringe-worthy, particularly his conclusion that the real world needs better dynamic difficulty adjustment. But his basic premise isn’t the usual mainstream alarmism. While I believe videogames belong alongside other forms of leisure and entertainment, their capacity to suck up time is unique. The long-term and widespread effects can’t be negligible.
When you’re really good at a strategy game — a boardgame, a card game, Civilization, chess — there’s a whole other kind of pacing than when you’re learning it, or just casually letting it unfold, or playing it as one of a half dozen other strategy games currently rattling around in your brain. The dilettante considers each move because he doesn’t know the game well enough to hurtle through it. When you master a game, your brain works as if it has muscle memory. In a given amount of time, someone who knows a game well can play twice as many games as someone who doesn’t. Maybe three times as many.
But even I can play a whole bunch of Monster Slayers in very little time. Continue reading →
If your Xbox One home screen looks a little different today, calm down. It’s supposed to be different, thanks to the March Update. (If your console’s menus haven’t changed, you can do a manual update by checking under the settings screen.) The March Update for the Xbox One brings a number of features and usability enhancements such as speedier menus, Beam streaming, and more granular parental controls.
The update also did away with Snap, the previously much-touted ability to multitask by “snapping” an application to the side of the screen while doing something else. Remember the ideal scenario? You could be playing Madden and then Snap the live NFL broadcast through your cable connection to your screen so you wouldn’t miss a thing! Alas, this was back in 2013 when Microsoft’s vision for the Xbox One was still a fusion of TV, gaming, and an all-in-one multimedia hub. Multitasking is much simplified in the new Xbox One strategy.
We’ve added a new achievement tracker that is active based on the game you’re playing, and allows you to select and follow multiple achievements in an overlay, all while you’re playing. Cortana will also appear as an overlay on your screen, allowing you to set reminders and alarms, access Party controls, and play music with simple voice controls.
Goodbye Snap! We hardly knew ye!
The centerpiece, heart, and bedrock of Macon Blair’s playfully blood simple black comedy is actress Melanie Lynskey. She plays the sweetly aggrieved Ruth, suffering the injustices of daily life with baby-faced resolve (you’d never guess it’s been nearly 25 years since Heavenly Creatures). She comes home from work every day to drink Coors, read Game of Thrones, and seethe about how everyone is an asshole. Something’s got to give.
There’s a subtle point almost hidden in Blair’s script. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore begins on the day Ruth stops taking medication for anxiety and depression. It’s not a decision she intended. The movie doesn’t even call attention to it. But given her terrible day, given that her anxiety and depression are abruptly unchecked, no wonder her mid-life crisis is of existential proportion. No wonder she breaks down at the fact of astronomical insignificance. No wonder the movie has an Alice in Wonderland quality. When percocet and religion briefly enter the picture, it just gets curiouser and curiouser.
This is where Blair’s second act introduces a picaresque cast of white trash villains and accomplices, with Elijah Wood and David Yow as standouts. The location happens to be Portland, but the setting could be any red state with a Green Room off in the woods. Ruth is to rural America what Jeff Goldblum is to Los Angeles in Into the Night, or Jeff Daniels to New York City in Something Wild: having a midlife crisis and liable to do something reckless.
It’s a little eerie how physically similar Lynskey is to Macon Blair in Blue Ruin. They could be siblings. They both have the same dejected brown-eyed soulfulness. You just want to hug them. “You have such beautiful black little eyes,” someone tells Ruth.
“Okay,” she allows politely.
Lynskey is also in XX, a pretty good horror anthology, called XX because the five directors are women and chromosomes don’t make for confusing movie titles at all. Annie Clark’s segment, The Birthday Party, is mostly a set-up for a punchline, but it works because it’s focused on Lynskey playing the same kind of sweetly aggrieved and eminently watchable protagonist. I mean, seriously, sit Lynskey in front of the camera, set it to a soundtrack, and you’re 90% of the way to a movie.
Blair is a little unsteady getting his footing on the tightrope of black humor. Sometimes I Don’t Feel at Home pinwheels its arms and sways more Napoleon Dynamite than Fargo. But when it’s poised on that razor’s edge of Fargo, it’s dead-on. For instance, few movies manage the endearing inanity of Lynskey’s exchange with David Yow during a climactic showdown. And Blair knows how to orchestrate nutso sequences of unintended action and unexpected consequence. Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Rube Goldberg, and the NRA would be proud.
Blizzard is bringing big changes to Heroes of the Storm. The new initiative, dubbed Heroes of the Storm 2.0, features a new reward system with Overwatch-style loot chests, a new currency, more cosmetic items, and level caps are being removed. In the revamped MOBA, experience curves will be flattened to present a more consistent progression experience and rewards will comes at regular intervals. With every level, players will receive a loot chest which can contain skins, emotes, sprays, or even a new hero on a rare roll. (Of course, you will be able to purchase chests outright as well.) Duplicate goodies received from chests will break down into shards which can be crafted into other items. Players will earn gold through matches, but gems, the new currency, will be required for purchasing items in lieu of the real-world money pricing currently in use. With the 2.0 update, Cassia, the Amazon from Diablo 2 joins the Heroes of the Storm roster.
Beta testing for Heroes of the Storm 2.0 begins this week.
The next patch for Civilization VI will make conquest a little less painful. The Spring 2017 update, features tweaks to harbor bonuses, combat unit strength, and finally adjusts penalties for warmongering so that the political game hopefully won’t seem as capricious. On the diplomatic side, Firaxis has reduced the warmonger penalty for declaring war or capturing a city based on your existing relationship with that other civilization. Players will now get less of a penalty if they are already denounced, and much less if they are at war.
Macedon is at war with Persia. If India goes to war with Persia sometime in the middle of this Macedonian/Persian War and captures a Persian city, Macedon will reduce its warmonger penalty against India by 40%.
The developers are also reducing warmonger penalties for city population after a city capture if the city is smaller than the average city in the game.
Persepolis is conquered and its population after conquest is 6. But the average size of a city in the game is 8. So this city is 2 / 8 = 25% below the size of the average city in the game. Therefore the warmonger penalty is reduced by 25%.
The Spring 2017 update is scheduled for later this week. Just in time for the Double Civilization & Scenario Pack featuring Persia and Macedon.
Some people think a floppy space octopus isn’t a good monster for a horror movie. You’ll find some of them on this podcast!
Next week: Ghost in the Shell
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Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties is the worst game published for the 3DO system. It may, in fact, be one of the worst games ever published for a console. Thanks to the efforts of YouTube personality psychoticgiraffe, we can now bask in the glory of this not-safe-for-work 1994 softcore porn game. Stilted voice-acting, casual misogyny, (including the threat of rape) a bit of nudity, and amateur technical prowess came together to create a game somewhere between a visual novel and a PowerPoint presentation. Unlike previous showings of Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties, psychoticgiraffe is also releasing the PC code for the game, so everyone can experience the wonder firsthand.
It turned out that there was one copy of the PC version of Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties sitting in the Ball State University library. According to psychoticgiraffe, he was able to ferret out the find when he was tipped off by an old archive of the PC Gamer magazine that revealed an obscure PC version of the game. By backtracking through the game’s system requirements, psychoticgiraffe found the sole listing for Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties in the world library database. Good news for videogame historians and game playing masochists everywhere!
Do you love grenades? You should love infinite grenades! Grenade spam made some modes and maps in Battlefield 1 matches intolerable. Choke points like the tunnel in Monte Grappa or the titular space in Ballroom Blitz had a tendency to devolve into explosions and gas on an endless loop. Buried within last week’s They Shall Not Pass update was an initiative DICE is calling “Ammo 2.0” meant to reduce these grenade standoffs. The solution? Take grenades out of the Support’s ammo resupply kit and make them an infinitely recharging power for everyone. It sounds counterintuitive, but the change seems to be working.
We’ve seen around a 7% decrease in grenade throws per second and grenade kills per minute across all base game maps since Battlefield 1 They Shall Not Pass was released.
The Ammo Box gadget that can be thrown out by Support players speeds up the cooldown for grenades, but by making players wait on a timer, DICE is able to reduce the kinds of grenade stalemates seen in the past. Previously, players would throw grenades, resupply, throw more grenades, and repeat. As with any big change, the Ammo 2.0 revamp has been controversial, but DICE maintains that it is working and they are collecting data and adjusting as needed.
“Did you ever hear about this alligator who went into a restaurant?” Lamar Thigpen took them by the neck and drew them close as lovers.
“No, I didn’t,” said the courteous engineer, though he had. Jokes always made him nervous. He had to attend to the perilous needs of the joke-teller.
–Walker Percy, The Last Gentlemen
Two minutes into this excruciatingly long ten minute video, I’ve seen all it has to show me. But I’m still watching it because my friend thought it was funny. “Oh, let me show you this,” he had said excitedly, typing the words “nightclub mashup” into YouTube.
Instead of telling each other jokes anymore, we show each other videos. Continue reading →
EVE Online, the world’s largest economic experiment disguised as a space opera MMO, is changing the way its currency works. One of the attractions for EVE players currently is that the in-game economy is player-driven, risky, and easily converted to real-world money. Unfortunately, that same economic hazard can be off-putting to new players and CCP Games wants to change that.
It’s all a bit The Big Short, but Plex, one of the currencies for EVE, is being made more granular and safer, while Aurum, another kind of virtual funny money, is being done away with. The crux is that for the hardcore EVE Online community, the fact that Plex was an item in-game that had to be hauled in players’ ships as cargo was a feature of the player-driven economy. Attempting to shuttle around with a large amount of Plex was a gamble because if your ship was destroyed, you could lose all your money when it too was blown up or fell into the hands of looters. In fact, a few of the biggest events in EVE’s history were player-on-player piracy. The proposed changes to Plex include a virtual vault that will allow skittish players to move the money without risking it in their ships. While the risky old-fashioned Plex cargo method will still be available, it won’t be required. To concerned players, this new safe option for money transport is contrary to the spirit of EVE Online’s dynamic economy.
Players are encouraged to leave suggestions in the official forum. CCP Games says they will have more information on the proposed Plex changes in April.
Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk talk to Johan Nagel, the guy behind Vietnam ’65 and now Afghanistan ’11. Nagel also reveals his next two (2!) games and a boardgame that doesn’t look like the sort of boardgame you’d expect from the guy who made Afghanistan ’11.
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