causalgamer

[causalgamer]

Walmart removes “violent” imagery. Continues selling guns

Following two shootings in its stores on July 30th and August 3rd, the first killing two employees, the second where a 21-year-old man killed 22 people and wounded 24 others at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, American gun supermarket Walmart has taken swift and decisive action. By sending a memo. 

The memo, from America’s biggest seller of guns, instructs employees to immediately remove or turn off “any signing or displays that contain violent images or aggressive behavior,” including demos of “violent games, specifically PlayStation or Xbox units” from their gun shops. VGC reports: 

The notice instructs employees to immediately remove or turn off “any signing or displays that contain violent images or aggressive behavior,” including demos of “violent games, specifically PlayStation or Xbox units.”

Now blaming video games for gun violence is a bit like blaming Homer Simpson for alcoholism, Kim Kardashian for global stupidity, Greenpeace for climate change or PewDiePie for knife crime. (Although in fairness Pew’s face does make me want to stab him up.) Of course, almost twice as many people in the US die from self-inflicted gun wounds (suicide) than homicide, but you don’t see Walmart banning Pot Noodles, do you? (Oh.)

In the UK, where guns are not freely available there were no mass shootings in 2018. In the US there were 323. And in the UK we love violent games marketing as much as sun burn, constant apologising and not returning terrible food. 

In short. Fucking grow up, America.

@causalgamer

[causalgamer]

Rockstar has paid no corporation tax in 10 years

In a story with such obvious puns, even the taxman is pushing me back, winking and saying: “I’ve got this,” it turns out that lead GTA V developer Rockstar North has, well, read the headline. Criminal, huh? Indeed... 

"This is a drive-by assault on the British taxpayer and corporate welfare scrounging at its very worst,” 

TaxWatch director George Turner punned enthusiastically to Sixth Form Prefect-like games business site GamesIndustryBiz. “It’s like the UK tax payer is the prostitute, right, and Rockstar has done *mimes prodding an index finger through a hole made by the other hand’s thumb and forefinger* and then beaten it to death with a baseball bat,” George didn’t add. But probably wanted to. It annoyingly came to him just after putting the phone down to Derek at GI. Gah! Why does that always happen! 

It gets better. While refusing to pay a penny for the UK schools, roads, NHS infrastructure and such that its employees rely on every day, and making TakeTwo $6bn dollars in revenue, Rockstar have actually been *taking* money from the UK taxpayer. GIBiz explain better than me: 

The TaxWatch report also states the game giant has issued claims for £42 million in Video Game Tax Relief between 2015 and 2017; the figure accounts for 19% of all tax credits granted to the British games industry since the relief was introduced in 2014.

So £42 million in from the UK tax payer and nothing out – like some kind of reverse, nerdy sugar daddy  – with Rockstar and TakeTwo UK’s accounts somehow showing a total pre-tax profit of just £47.3 million between 2013 and 2018. On, [*checks again] $6bn of revenue. 

Indeed, to qualify for Video Game Tax Relief, the game being created has to pass a British "cultural test" which considers content, cultural contribution and whatnot. For Grand Theft Auto, which is a game about as British as nursery school spree shootings, shotgunning brewskies and racist presidents. (Bugger. Ignore that last one.)

[causalgamer]

Nine people made this. Nine.

Admittedly this is alumni from games such as The Witcher 3, The Division, Enemy Front and whatnot, but this is the first trailer for Agony from new studio Madmind. 

In it, you follow a big titty, vagina faced demon through hell, trying to escape by controlling NPCs and weak minded demons. These chaps have experienced Newcasle on a Saturday night, then. 

Look! Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpU9tyAsMFI

@thecausalgamer

[causalgamer]

PewDiePie clears a sweet $12m

Forbes is reporting that professional toddler PewDiePie is the world’s highest-earning YouTube star, pulling in $12million by screaming into a microphone and soiling himself while occasionally playing some games. 

This is pure, unadulterated jealousy of course. It’s a whole lot harder than soiling himself playing games. You could go the KSI route of being sexist and misogynist while playing games and earning £2.9million per year. 

Essentially, I’m saying I’m too good for this sort of thing. And I’m off to put some eyeliner on and cry and play some indie games, while writing to The Guardian about how games aren’t really art. 

@causalgamer

[causalgamer]

VG247 done a silly

Tourettes-suffering games blog VG247 published a wonderful apology last week after it came to light that their fairly critical Uncharted 4 hands on from last month’s Tokyo Game Show was, well, based on their chap mistakenly playing the rezzed up Uncharted 2. Oopsie indeed. There but for the grace of God, eh?

In the feature entitled “Is Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End too formulaic?” the writer, after getting hands on with the short demo ponders:

I was disappointed by this because it wasn’t until this fight that I’d really started to enjoy myself. Maybe it was that I was playing without North’s charming banter or the context of the broader plot, but I have to admit I was kind of … bored.

This apology didn’t feature swearing, queerly. So I’ve drafted another one for the editor, thusly:

Fuck a duck! We’ve fucked up! Shitting shits, cocking readers! In between the swears last month we only went and fucking did a fucking fuck up. It turns out our Uncharted expert titting writer only wankingly mistakenly thought she was playing Uncharted 4 when shit us sideways! It turned out she, silly old wank stain that she is, was playing Uncharted 2! No arsing wonder she – fuuuuuck! – found it fucking formulaic. Shit bricks and piss barbed wire out of our glorious jap’s eye!

We’re cunting sorry. 

There. Fixed it. 

@thecausalgamer

[causalgamer]

Games writing masterclass quiz #6

Oh hi there friend! And welcome to one of an occasional series of fun, Causal Gamer quizzes in which we take some recent writing from a popular games website – in this case, Eurogamer – and you have to read it and guess what this story might be about? Ready? Excellent. Go!

“One of the most dexterous words in English literature is things. Being flexible and useful is the entire point of a word like things, of course, but still: watch it sing in a book like I Capture the Castle or Cold Comfort Farm. Shall I clear away the tea things? That, I would argue, is the Early 20th Century English Novel Sentence par excellence. I didn't even look it up: I'm just assuming that Dodie Smith and Stella Gibbons will have both landed on it through sheer cultural resonance. How could they not? There will be tea so there will be tea things, and it's only polite to ask when you're thinking about getting rid of them, isn't it? And look what the word things is doing in that sentence! It is creating a friendly out-of-focus clutter of everyday objects, a nimbus of impedimenta. It is suggesting that even the most mindless of routines like serving a pot of Earl Grey will have a quiet exactitude to it, often requiring the use of tools. Life is ritual. Brew up.”

So what the heck could this be an introductory paragraph for? 

[a] Everyone’s Gone To The Rapture review

[b] This Is England game first look

[c] Something something sexism something

[d] Gamescom round up

Here’s the answer, dummy!

[causalgamer]

Legends Of Gaming cut from three days to one

"Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Legends Of Gaming.”

“Legends Of Gaming who?”

It’s a shit business.

[causalgamer]

Gamescom news update (EA edition)

Following Xbox’s barnstorming reiteration that games set to come out are still coming out, EA took to the Cologne stage this morning to pick up the Gamescom news batton. And hold on to you knickers, ladies (and some men, if that’s your thing), this is going to get “Diddy party” crazy. Sunglasses on, here’s the EA news nuke...

Star Wars Battlefront is still coming out. 

FIFA 16 is still coming out. 

Need For Speed is still coming out. 

Mirror’s Edge 2 is still coming out. 

Star Wars The Old Republic: Knights of the Fallen Empire is still coming out.

Plants vs Zombies 2 is still coming out.

Unravel is still coming out. 

Seriously, the New York Times’ crack journalist squad must be watching this show like inky fingered hawks. The chances of Pulitzers here are high to pretty much guaranteed. Still think there’s no news at Gamescom? I bet you feel pretty jolly silly now. 

@thecausalgamer

[causalgamer]

Konami sounds fun

Reported by Kotaku from a (Japanese newspaper) Nikkei story, it seems that Konami have taken a leaf out of the Rana Plaza school of employee management, and are treating their staff like Snake treats balaclava-d henchmen. Indeed, if you’ve got an interview planned at their Minato City, Tokyo HQ soon, here are some things you might want to bring up at the, “Have you got any questions,” bit...

Staff are given ever cycling alpha-numerical email addresses to deter headhunters.

Hideo Kojima Productions has been renamed “Number 8 Production Department”, with computers taken off the grid and only internal emails allowed. 

Lunchbreaks are monitored with time cards, with any over time investigated and met with frowning and eye rolling. 

Premium filter coffee in kitchens has been replaced with Maxwell House instant.

Office cameras monitor all employee movements. 

Developers who aren’t seen as “useful” are reassigned as security guards, cleaning staff at the company’s fitness clubs or in roles at a pachi-slot machine factory.

Ha! It turned into a quiz! I made one up! Can you guess which one it was? Hint: amazingly it wasn’t the one about senior producers being humiliatingly made to clean up at company health clubs. Konami, everyone: about as fun to work at as a chicken factory. 

@thecausalgamer

[causalgamer]

Meet the Legends

Right here, (l to r) are Barry, Elton, Clive, Tank, Jeremy, Quentin and Token. And they’re not here to tell us about the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus who is Risen. No. Even though they look like a Christian rock band or the garden customer service team of Homebase, they are, of course big YouTube stars, getting paid unseemly amounts of money to front Big Brother owner Endemol’s first foray into live events: Legends Of Gaming Live. There’s a complementary YouTube channel, too, naturally.

And the good news is that a number of lucky visitors selected at random will be able to meet these Legends in person, presumably to natter about mortgage interest rates, cross stitch, juicing and advances in auditing. While after the show – sponsored by Mmm... Matteson’s Fridge Raiders – presumably they’ll be in their onesies tucked up in bed with a cup of SkinnyMint detox tea and a good Stephenie Meyer, dreaming about flock wallpaper and how to find a dependable gardener who doesn’t charge the Earth before 9 o’clock. 

Honestly, these kids make One Direction look edgy, Ed Sheeran like he’ll carve his initials in your face with a Stanley, George Osborne like he’ll spit on his dick, roughly take your anal virginity and charge you 3% over base rate for it. 

@thecausalgamer

[causalgamer]

Hot Gamescom news

Debunking once and for all the myth that Cologne’s GamesCom is as important for news as the Women’s Institute AGM. Here are the headlines from the Xbox keynote...

Forza Motorsport 6 is still coming out

Halo 5 is still coming out

Quantum Break is still coming out

Rise Of The Tomb Raider is still coming out

Scalebound is still coming out

Crackdown 3 is still coming out

Halo Wars 2 is coming out

Phew! E3′s looking nervously over its shoulder, furiously liking all of EA’s Instagram posts and @ing Rihanna, saying that video wasn’t tragic clickbait.

PS, that Quantum Break bit is bull, obviously. There’s about as much chance of that game coming out as Randy Pitchford admitting responsibility for Colonial Marines being worse than blue waffle. 

@thecausalgamer

[causalgamer]

Gaming’s idiot detector

The Fallout 4 Pip-Boy Edition comes with this real-life, wearable Pib-Boy, and it looks like an exact replica of the one in the game. The Edition went live on Amazon.com for $119.99 seconds after it was announced at the Bethesda keynote. And, oh God, I don’t even...

Honestly, it looks like a smartwatch for specials. A criminal’s ankle bracelet from some shit, 70s sci-fi movie. An Albanian Apple Watch. This is literal relationship kryptonite. Lady repellent. A bucket-sized prophylactic you wear daintily on your wrist. 

Update! They’ve sold out, in an inequivocable triumph for social Darwinism.

@thecausalgamer

[causalgamer]

Bedwetter’s corner #8: The Witcher is sexist

Today’s hand-wringing gaming scandal has been highlighted by famous misogyny hunter Anita Sarkeesian, in preparation for her next round of rape threats, SWATing, doxxing and bomb alerts called in to any venue they think she might attend. She’s like The Witcher, see, only of douchiness. 

Sarkeesian contests that over-complex RPG The Witcher is sexist because NPCs shout misogynistic insults at female character Ciri for the brief time you play her, but no such thing happens to beardy bloke Geralt while you push him around with a godly thumb. Enemies in Witcher 3 yell gendered insults at the playable female character, contests Anita, but insults thrown at the male lead are decidedly not gendered. Look! In a tweet.  

Enemies in Witcher 3 yell gendered insults at the playable female character but insults thrown at the male lead are decidedly not gendered.

— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq)

May 31, 2015

Au contraire, comments Nikolas Kolm, Quest Designer at CD Projekt RED, confirming that Geralt has gender insults including freak, cocksucker, whoreson and more levelled at him, thusly: 

@PetiteMistress It is also false. I respect people's opinions, but Geralt gets called freak, cocksucker, whoreson, and more. 1/2

— Nikolas Kolm (@NKuillAndInk)

June 1, 2015

So that’s that cleared up: The Witcher, everyone, a non-sexist, equal opportunity cocksucking, whoreson, cunt-spouting insult machine. Phew! For a moment there I though the gaming industry might come out of this looking bad.

@thecausalgamer 

[causalgamer]

Minecraft is big

The nerds in Phillipe Starck specs and Gucci sandals over at Wired have produced a hugely entertaining video explaining just how big the Minecraft world is. And – spoiler alert – it’s pretty, pretty, pretty big. 

The Earth, for instance, boasts a surface area of 500 million square kilometers. Minecraft laughs at your puny planet, boasting a surface area of nearly ten times that at four billion square kilometres. That’s theoretically 1,048,576,000,000,000,000 blocks. 

For context, that’s almost as big as Notch’s house. 

@thecausalgamer

[causalgamer]

Oculus coming in 2016. Maybe.

So 2014 was definitely going to be the year that virtual reality gaming broke through to the mainstream. Then only the Samsung VR kit was released. Hey ho. Onwards and upwards. With Oculus Rift, Sony’s Project Morpheus, Valve and HTC’s Vive and Avegant Glyph furiously beavering away then 2015 was definitely going to be the year that virtual reality gaming broke through. 

Nope. Oculus announced last week that it will be coming to market “early 2016″. About the same time that Project Morpheus should be hitting shelves. Oom cha. Itchy chin. Truly, this is bigger vapourware than Quantum Break.

OhhellyesIwentthere

@thecausalgamer

[causalgamer]

Konami have given up 

So Silent Hills was taken out like a FIFA executive last week, with even mild mannered man bear Guillermo del Toro exhibiting surprise at the extreme prejudice/glee Konami evidenced in canning it, describing the situation as: “A sort of scorched earth approach. It was not a gentle and ambiguous cancellation.” Ouch. 

And now Konami have announced that they are pretty much withdrawing from the whole, console game thing and focussing entirely on mobile. A bit like Michael Bay moving to Apple Watch. If the fifth biggest games company by revenue can’t make a go of console gaming, then, what chance have smaller, nicer publishers like Activision got? 

Still, single named Konami CEO Hayakawa enthusiastically told Nikkei (via NeoGaff): “Following the pay-as-you-play model of games like Power Pro and Winning Eleven with additional content, our games must move from selling things like ‘items’ to selling things like ‘features’.” And transitioning the “customers” into “ex-customers” model, presumably. Have you heard a more chilling sentence pertaining to gaming at all this year? 

But the move makes a lot of sense, really, when you consider how well their brands – Metal Gear Solid, PES and Castlevania – will translate to a five-inch screen and bleepy, public transport ADHD play. I’m going for “APB”. 

@thecausalgamer 

[causalgamer]

Women finally make FIFA 2016 teamsheet

EA Sports has announced that this year’s FIFA game will, for the first time ever, feature women football players. Well, 12 international teams including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Sweden and the USA, to be precise. Still, at least it’s a start. 

This will, of course, come with FIFA’s unrealistically bombastic presentation of screaming fans, ticker tape and massive stadiums. Not, presumably a PES, more lifelike presentation of tumbleweed-filled stadiums, coverage on the Wild West of cable TV channels and goalkeepers flappier than London Zoo’s penguin enclosure. 

Fun quiz! Which of these women isn’t an international women’s football team captain? [a] Steph Houghton. [b] Liz Carmichael. [c] Christie Rampone. [d] Wendie Renard.

Thought so. 

@thecausalgamer