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Who Gets to Be on the Steam Store?

Ben Thompson, writing in his newsletter for Stratechery about Valve's decision on Steam moderation:

I believe that Valve got this exactly right:

The implication of platforms and aggregators is a tremendous centralization in power over distribution.

Centralized power ought to be managed collectively, that is, by government; thus Valve’s focus on legality (I suspect the company is saving the “trolling” designation to preserve the right to keep out a particularly problematic game in the future).

That everyone has a right to express themselves does not mean they have a right to be seen or heard; to that end, Valve’s intent to focus on building tools to control what content you see strikes the exact right balance.

This framework should be the starting point for platforms and aggregators. It is, to be clear, a tradeoff: it absolutely means tolerating content that, while legal, may be morally repugnant. The alternative though, thanks to the inherent centralization that happens with aggregators and platforms, is to entrust tech companies a degree of control over expression and thought that would make the most power-hungry despot blush.

Thompson brings up a fair point I did not think of yesterday while criticizing Valve. Asking them to moderate Steam means trusting a company that doesn't know its ass from its elbow.

Perhaps government would be a better Steam moderator than an unaccountable billionaire like Gabe Newell. That, however, opens a whole other can of worms.

Edit: I don't think Valve deserves the credit Thompson is giving them. They didn't do this as step one in allowing Steam to be government-regulated as a legitimate public space. They just want to make money without doing any hard work moderating content. Valve would fight tooth and nail to keep control from the government.

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Valve's new content policy is a gutless attempt to dodge responsibility

Brendan Sinclair, dropping truth on GamesIndustry.biz:

We’ve decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling.

There are a few simple problems with even this approach. First, it means Active Shooter (or a game like it) would probably be allowed on the storefront. There is nothing so racist, sexist, misogynistic, or reprehensible that Valve will step in.

Valve will face the same problems with content moderation Reddit did- there is no such thing as a neutral position. Valve’s choice not to act implicitly endorses Steam groups dedicated to school shootings, pedophilia and anti-semitism. It’s fucking disgusting.

It’s not the first time Valve has tried to dodge this problem either. When the media criticized them for hosting hate groups, Valve gave no public comment. Instead they quietly deleted the groups named in the press. They did nothing to change Steam being an unmoderated hellscape.

Valve won't change because they have a monopoly on PC gaming. They don’t have to be good. They don’t have to compete. They don’t have to care, and they don’t! As Sinclair puts it:

[Valve] doesn’t want the responsibility of being the biggest platform for PC games on the planet; it just wants its 30%.

Fuck Valve.

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Pokémon: Let’s Go is a turning point that could change the future of the series

Patricia Hernandez, writing for The Verge:

Hardcore fans are anxious that Let’s Go represents a dumbing down of the franchise, while Go players are nervous about how Game Freak will add complexity back into the mix... There’s a lot of room for Game Freak to mess this up or make both fan bases unhappy in different ways.

I'm excited for a Pokemon game with no random battles. I think they're an outdated and annoying JRPG holdover. Let's wait and see.

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Developers fear for Mac gaming as Apple deprecates OpenGL support

Corbin Davenport and Austin Wood, reporting for PC Gamer:

According to the official 'What's New in macOS' page, Apple is deprecating support for OpenGL and OpenCL with the release of macOS 10.14. [...]

[Vlambeer designer Rami] Ismail agreed that this change will likely make Mac a more difficult and less appealing platform in general. "It definitely doesn't help," he said. "If you wanted to make a game that was cross-platform, you just ensured you used OpenGL, or ported to OpenGL. For developers that are entrenched in OpenGL for portability, this will basically mean that OpenGL will continue working on Windows, which is the largest market—and as such, the financial impetus to switch isn't pressing."

This is terrible for Mac gaming. Over the last few years, gaming without Bootcamp has enjoyed a small renaissance. Developer tools like Unity make it easy to port PC games. Tons of indies launch on Windows, macOS and Linux.

That ease of porting, though, was built off a common technology stack, including OpenGL. If that goes away, the Mac goes back to the bad old days: infrequent ports and a game library a fraction of its current size. Remember when all you could play on macOS was Spore and The Sims?

It's not clear at this point if Apple will completely remove OpenGL support from a future macOS release, or if the company is simply pushing developers to adopt its Metal API without real plans to end OpenGL support.

Apple wouldn't deprecate OpenGL if they weren't serious. As iOS/Mac developer Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted, this move could be part of Apple's eventual transition to ARM-based Macs. If that happens, gaming on Mac becomes playing iOS ports. Building for macOS means taking on a whole new processor architecture. Windows ports are basically over.

Macs will still have games, but they'll be ports. Of mobile games. God help us.

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David Cage Games Keep Treating Women Like Shit

Heather Alexandra, writing for Kotaku:

Cage consistently drags his female characters into compromising positions where loathsome men enact their power over them, for the sheer sake of drama.

In isolation, these scenes are not necessarily a problem. Art can address many different scenarios with frankness, even things we find uncomfortable. But when a pattern of behavior emerges, attention must be paid. Detroit repeats tropes and scenarios from previous games in a gesture that’s not just exploitative but unimaginative. Can we go a game without compromising a woman’s agency for the sake of a cheap thrill.

This game comes from a developer accused of fostering “a toxic corporate culture.”

The allegations came to light last spring when members of staff, including the head of the IT department, filed a complaint against the studio regarding Photoshopped images of employees. These images, said to have been created by an unnamed member of staff and distributed around the office since 2013, are alleged to have included racist, sexist and homophobic elements. Some 600 Photoshopped images are said to have been circulated, depicting employees of the 180-strong studio in Nazi uniforms, swimming costumes and sexualised nurse outfits.

I can’t speak for other people, but I refuse to buy Detroit: Become Human and support this kind of company. They need to change their culture, stop suing journalists and fix mistakes like Alexandra points out.

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One Unused Pokémon Concept Was Just A Gun

Gita Jackson, reporting for Kotaku: [1]

In the release version of Gold and Silver, Remoraid is basically just a fish.

Remoraid evolves into Octillery, which is a large octopus. This doesn’t make too much sense, but there’s also a Pokémon that’s a pile of garbage, so whatever.

In the Gold and Silver demo, however, both of these Pokémon look much different. Remoraid is literally just a gun, while Octillery is a tank.

I didn’t spot these sprites on my own—there’s a lot to get through in the leak—but Kinja user Sub Judice pointed this out to me and I just had a whole host of questions. Do you, like, hold this version of Remoraid in your hand? Do you shoot other Pokémon with it? Does Remoraid have bullets? I showed this early Remoraid prototype to Tim Rogers and he asked me if its baby form is a knife.

Probably good they cut this.

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Image by The Cutting Room Floor via Kotaku ��↩

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The Man Who Inspired Snorlax

Brian Ashcraft, reporting for Kotaku:

In a recent interview with Japanese newspaper Yomiuri, Pokémon art director Ken Sugimori confirmed that planner Koji Nishino served as the model for Snorlax.

Nishino has worked on the series since Red and Green.

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The perfect platformer comes to the perfect platform

Sam Byford, writing for The Verge on N++ coming to Switch:

N++ is a sequel to N+, itself an expanded version of the 2004 freeware game N, and its minimalist aesthetic may not immediately impress. Even videos don’t quite convey the game’s appeal. I’ll just say it here, then: N++ is a staggering achievement and one of the greatest platforming games ever made.

This is because N’s creators, Raigan Burns and Mare Sheppard, are really, really good at making N levels. They’re as good at making N levels as anyone is at anything. They make N levels like Jiro Ono makes sushi, and each level in N++ is an exquisite nigiri of precision platforming design. N++ is what happens when you spend more than a decade on the same simple idea, refining your technique and sharpening it to perfection.

N++ is what happens when you cut away everything else. No story, no characters, no world, nothing but the game. N++ is pure, radical minimalism. It is also a perfect fit for the Switch and a great game to buy if you want to support female auteurs in game dev.

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Why Chrono Trigger endures

Chris Kohler wrote a nice retro review of Chrono Trigger for Kotaku and had some good thoughts on its legacy:

Chrono Trigger is an enduring game in part because you cannot make another one. It was the pinnacle of the 2D, 16-bit role-playing game, created with a generation’s worth of knowledge, shared across two rival production teams, about the process for creating the perfect 2D game.

I think this, not sales, is the reason the series never continued past Chrono Cross. Chrono Trigger was such a specific, perfect game. You can't replicate the magic.

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Memes Are Becoming Harder to Monetize

Taylor Lorenz, reporting for The Atlantic on how e-commerce businesses can't keep up with the "online joke cycle":

“In the early days of meme culture, so, late 2008 to early 2012, memes used to go on for months on end,” [Brad Kim, the editor in chief of Know Your Meme] says. Memes like the advice dog, for instance, first broke out in 2008 but remained in steady use until mid-2012. More recently, memes like Doge and Harambe stayed popular for nearly a year. “These are memes that would have way shorter shelf life now because they would get mutated into something different or cycled out by the community entirely,” Kim says.

Shortening the average meme half-life preserves everyone's sanity. I remember seeing "arrow to the knee" memes on 2011 Reddit for months. It was unbearable. 1

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It also gave the world u/arrowstotheknee, a wonderful novelty Reddit account that spent several years 2 driving that meme into the ground. That was funny. ↩︎

His most recent post from three months ago appears to be him buying opiates so this story may not have a happy ending. ↩︎

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🎮 GameInformer.com to shut down user blogs

Game Informer editor-in-chief Andy McNamara's announcement:

I am so excited to tell you about a big change coming to gameinformer.com. Sometime in the next month, we are switching to a new, faster design. [...]

We will no longer be supporting user blogs. This one hurts. We love the great work our community created, but the sad reality is there were more malicious entities attacking us with bots than our company could deal with.

Losing user blogs is the sad final note on a long, sad story.

I loved Game Informer's user blogs. For years they kept a segment of the website where any reader could write up posts. The tech was antiquated compared to modern platforms like Reddit or Tumblr. Comments couldn't nest more than one level. You didn't get notifications when someone replied to your post or your comment. The post editor was a weird rich-text mishmash that was too easy to break. One time strangely formatted OpenOffice quotes broke my entire blog history. The site was bad.

And yet Game Informer's user blogs were fundamental to my personal and professional development. They helped me go from a high schooler who wanted to be a journalist to someone working in the news industry.

The Game Informer user blog experience was unlike anything I've experienced on the internet to this day. You could write an 2,000-word essay about how Grand Theft Auto is about the American dream and not only would people actually read it- they'd leave long, well-thought out comments in response.

This was before the internet had become federated into apps. The online gaming community was not yet divided between Reddit, Tumblr and ResetEra. What you said actually mattered because people knew you.

Game Informer's user blog community was full of loveable weirdos. There was the elder statesman, a guy who had gotten out of the Navy and put out quality posts daily. There was the Estonian guy, who seemed odd but was effusively friendly. There was the girl who changed her username as often as she changed her favorite band, which is to say often. There was the other veteran, going to school on the GI Bill. There were a couple smart folks who seem to have gone on to become Game Informer interns, changing their account titles to their real names.

All this is kind of vague because to be honest, I haven't been a real part of the community since 2011. 2011 was simultaneously the peak and substantive end of my involvement with the Game Informer Online community. In August of that year I started college and got a part-time writing gig and that didn't leave much time for blogging.

But the summer before that... oh man. That summer was one of the most rewarding periods of my life in terms of writing. At the start I set myself a goal: write a blog post every day. It seemed like a crazy pace. By the time college came around, though, I'd more or less accomplished my goal.

Writing daily helped immensely. I would not be nearly the same writer I am today without Game Informer's user blogs. They provided a space to learn writing and a community for encouragement. They carved out a small corner of the internet where we could debate online passes (the controversy of the early 2010s) without descending into toxicity. It felt like a beautiful secret garden.

I understand why Game Informer is getting rid of user blogs. They don't really make sense in a world where everyone goes on Reddit or Twitter or ResetEra to talk about gaming news. They especially don't make sense on mobile phones, as GI's soon-to-be sunset site was always designed for desktop.

I understand.

Game Informer's user blogs was a weird, welcoming, wonderful corner of the internet. We are worse without it.

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PUBG sues Epic alleging Fortnite copied PUBG

Jun Ji-hye, reporting for The Korea Times:

A PUBG official said Friday that the firm filed an injunction, alleging copyright infringement, with the Seoul Central District Court against Epic Games Korea.

Regardless of what the court decides, this won't fix PUBG's problems. It won't go back in time and make PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds free-to-play like it should have been. It won't change PUBG's bland, uncopyrightable design. It won't fix PUBG's atrocious console port. Maybe they block Epic from releasing Fortnite in Korea (on their home turf!), but that's a small consolation prize.

I wrote this two months ago and nothing has changed:

It’s not that Fortnite is stealing PUBG’s playerbase (though some will switch), it’s that new battle royale players and kids choose Fortnite. The power of being free and having better console ports than PUBG is staggering.

The craziest part is there’s no way for PUBG to catch up, barring a colossal blunder from Epic. Network effects mean the more players Fortnite has, the more easily it attracts new ones and keeps veterans. Epic is riding a virtuous cycle that’s almost impossible for new competitors to keep up with.

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Battlefield V Shows How The Video Game Industry Is Turning On Loot Boxes

From the Battlefield Twitter:

No loot boxes. No Premium Pass. All players have access to the same maps and modes in #Battlefield V. Keep your squad together, no matter the front.

Jason Schreier, writing for Kotaku:

What I’ve heard over the past few months from people who work at various big companies is that Battlefront II got them nervous. Along with Shadow of War, which also recently ditched its microtransactions, the newest Star Wars game turned “loot boxes” into a dirty phrase. [...]

Last year at this time, publishers were drooling over the success of loot boxes in games like Overwatch and piecing together their own shiny chest-opening animations. Now, one of the biggest publishers in games is using “no loot boxes” as a slogan to help sell its newest shooter.

It's too early to declare victory, but this is a hell of a turnaround.

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Totalbiscuit has died

From Genna Bain’s Twitter:

Rest in Peace my Dearest Love

John @Totalbiscuit Bain

July 8, 1984 - May 24, 2018

We knew this was coming, but… damn. It still doesn’t feel real. TB was such a fixture in the gaming community. It’s weird to imagine PC gaming without him.

My deepest condolences to his family.

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Battlefield 5 will not have loot boxes

Charlie Hall asked the most important question while reporting for Polygon:

Asked for comment, an EA spokesperson told Polygon that there will not be randomized loot boxes in Battlefield 5. [...]

More information will be provided at a later date about potential real-money transactions in Battlefield 5.

EA seems extremely wary of offending anyone after the Battlefront II debacle. We'll see if this indicates genuine change or if it's just protecting Battlefield 5 from being tanked at launch like Battlefront.

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Oh No, There Are Women In Battlefield V

Luke Plunkett, writing for Kotaku:

Some folks are angry that their favourite violent multiplayer shooter, which has never been based on anything approaching historical accuracy, now has historically inaccurate portrayals of women and a black man fighting—with guns!—in the Second World War. [...]

It doesn’t bother them that a randomly-created soldier with no training can jump behind the controls of a complex fighter aircraft, or expertly handle a cross-section of enemy weapons. They don’t care that the streets of European cities aren’t recreated 1:1, or that uniform details aren’t strictly adhered to, or that Battlefield’s war is fought to time limits and kill counts.

Those things are acceptable compromises. It’s a video game, and those are video game things that the Second World War just needs to accommodate with its representation in order to work. Yet introduce something as relatively harmless (it has zero impact on gameplay!) as women or black soldiers where historically there were none, and suddenly the sky is falling.

It’s almost as though opposition to a British woman holding a gun, or a black man serving in a combat role has little to do with “historical accuracy,” and everything about someone finding their current views on gender, race and society challenged in a space—the good old days—they thought was safe.

Angry right-wing nerds always find the smallest, dumbest, most offensive hill to die on. Never fails.

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‘I’m Han Solo’: The Story Behind Star Wars Kinect and the Most Infamous Jason Derulo Parody of All Time

Brian Feldman, doing yeoman's work on Select All finding how how "I'm Han Solo" was created for Kinect Star Wars:

“The [reason] that I heard most often was that Microsoft had had success with a Kinect dance game, they had licensed a number of songs for a different dance game, and then that game fell through. They had that license and they had all these songs, and they knew that that gameplay was something that worked well with the Kinect. So somebody at Microsoft made the decision that they were going to add a dance section into [Star Wars Kinect].” [...]

Some of the already-licensed songs entered the game completely untouched, which would explain why players got to watch Han Solo and Lando Calrissian do a jaunty routine to Bruno Mars’s “Just the Way You Are.” Others received a parody rewrite: “Y.M.C.A.” became “Empire Today,” Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” became “Hologram Girl,” and perhaps most famously, “Ridin’ Solo” became “I’m Han Solo.” [...]

As long as you don’t take it too seriously (an attitude some Star Wars fans might want to internalize), “I’m Han Solo” is honestly really good! It’s goofy and fun to see Han and Lando do cheesy dance moves in front of skanking Imperial officers.

I unironically love "I'm Han Solo." If you accept that "canon" is stupid — and it is — the song is an incredibly silly and fun send-up of Star Wars. It makes me laugh every time I hear it.

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