Why games are a unique form of entertainment.
Video games have been, for quite a while now, a popular medium for expression. But the age-old question always arises: are they art? Hundreds of years after painting and sculpting survived this debate, and decades after film and TV weathered it, video games are the newest form of entertainment to barge through years of preconceived notions to convince the world that they belong in the same realms as the aforementioned media.
With a solid foothold in the world of popular culture, it’s not a question of if, but rather when video games will be accepted into the same echelon of cultural consideration as other forms of art. Gamers clearly don’t need to be convinced, but people who can’t see past the 10-year-old versions of Call of Duty and the rudimentary application of the art form in something like Space Invaders will likely need more convincing. …
How a decade of anticipation was destined to lead to disappointment. And how it’s even worse than that.
Cyberpunk 2077 was released across the world on Thursday, December 10th. A game that was originally revealed to be in development by CD Projekt in 2012, the game rose to immeasurable levels of promise following a wildly ambitious demo that was shown behind closed doors to members of the press at E3 2018 and released to the public shortly thereafter. The 48-minute long demo gave viewers a glimpse into Night City and V’s story that lived within it. In the following years, the game has only deepened consumers’ enthusiasm for the end product. A few more gameplay demos and a shocking reveal that Keanu Reeves was involved in the project (and somehow played a major role), topped off by Reeves getting on stage at E3 2019 to present the game, enthusiasm for CD Projekt’s latest game only continued to grow. …
How Android is slipping in one of its cornerstones.
“Be together. Not the same.” Android’s fleeting motto in an ad campaign that ran a couple of years ago really spoke to me. As a longtime Android-user and iPhone-dismisser, my reasoning for sticking to the operating system was so succinctly summed up in just five words. It was an outright jab at a company that’s known for restricting its users’ ability to alter the way their devices function. It was also a celebration for the operating system, reminding its users that although they didn’t converse via blue bubbles, they were still one diverse community.
To me, the “Be together. Not the same.” campaign manifested itself in one primary area of the Android experience, an area that even many Android owners don’t know about — device theming. To those unfamiliar, device theming is the act of altering a phone’s home screen to look the way the user wants it to look. This goes beyond the widgets options and unconstrained app placement that most Android users know about. It’s like taking the screen with all of the apps on it on an iPhone and making it completely custom to the user: creating custom animations, custom app icons, custom wallpapers and custom displays. It was a hobby I really enjoyed, and stood as the main reason I would rather stick to Androids than switch to another operating system. I remember thinking in my younger naivete that the only reason so many people chose iPhones instead of Androids was because they simply weren’t aware of the customization options available on the platform. Because who wouldn’t want to customize their home screen? …
Netflix, Instagram, and YouTube — anything that demands your attention — are competitors too
Worldwide pandemics are objectively bad. Period. (Wear your mask. Keep your distance. Visit cdc.gov or who.int for more information). But we’d be remiss if we failed to recognize that this nightmare of a year has springboarded some lucky sectors into an unexpected wealth of opportunities. One such sector being gaming, and in the modern age of online consumption where everything is battling for your attention, video games are competing with more “mainstream” avenues for engagement whose sole focus is to hold onto your attention. …
The PS5 and (especially) the Xbox Series X bring in the next generation of gaming, and the load times are insane.
The days of deciding which game to play based on which game is already open are close to being over. For quick sessions, it’s not uncommon for me to decide with my friends that we are going to play one game versus another simply because one or two of us already have it loaded. Thankfully, given the technology of the newest generation of consoles, these days are numbered.
With the release of the Xbox Series X/S and the PS5, load times are finally brought to the modern era with the use of speedy Solid State Drives (SSD) rather than their much slower mechanical storage peer, the Hard Drive Disc (HDD). …
I think I’m probably not unlike many of my peers in this.
I used to really consider the amount of time I would get out of a game when informing my purchase decision. If all goes well and the game is good, I’d have hours upon hours of enjoyment ahead of me. If, for whatever reason, it was a bad game, I would need to get creative; to find the best thing to do in the game and hope that it provided me with some amount of entertainment. Luckily, I grew up in an era where games media was beginning to flourish. I rarely had instances where my purchasing decisions were the wrong ones. I was also lucky enough to grow up in a time where open world games were really getting good and becoming nearly the default format for games. Games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Minecraft were some of my happiest purchases. …
Only 10 PS4 games won’t be playable on the PS5.
Sony announced via its PlayStation Blog on October 9th that of its extensive library of PlayStation 4 games, just 10 games will not be playable on the upcoming PlayStation 5.
Set to release on November 12th, the PS5 has been the subject of some ambiguous messaging regarding its backwards compatibility, leaving gamers concerned with whether or not they will have the ability to play PlayStation 4 games on their PlayStation 5.
Messages included statements that “most” PS4 games would be coming to the PS5 and, later, “99%” of PlayStation 4 games will be playable on the PlayStation 5.
Given the recent news, of Sony’s 4,000+ PS5 games, only 0.25% of games will not be playable across generations. I suppose 99.75% doesn’t have the same ring to it. …
There’s actually a lot of good that comes from these games.
There is a certain genre of media that can most clearly be identified with the reason that its consumers enjoy it. Some forms of media can be more often associated with it than others, but just about every form of media has it in some way or another: escapism.
I’ve been thinking about escapism a lot lately. What better reason have we all to escape our current reality than our experiencing the horrors of what surrounds us all at this moment. Whether you’re living in a country which has taken firm control of Covid-19 or, you’re like me, and you live in a place under such constant disarray ahead of an election that could keep perhaps your country’s worst ever president in power during a pandemic, then you might be interested in taking an hour or so every couple of days to escape the news. …
In the wake of such insanity, you must still exercise your right.
In spite of what you just saw, you need to act.
The first of three presidential debates took place on Tuesday night at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, moderated by Fox News’s Chris Wallace. After beginning with cordial greetings between candidates, the cacophony that followed was at best contentious and at worst incoherent and embarrassing.
Pundits from around the political sphere are broadly claiming this to be the worst Presidential debate in the history of the event. Despite its incoherence, the format went like clockwork: Wallace poses a question to Trump, Trump answers the question while Biden oscillates between serious preparation and incredulous head shaking. Then, Wallace poses a related question to Biden, Biden speaks for 5 seconds and is then interrupted by Trump. Wallace then occasionally asks Trump to let Biden speak, and occasionally tries to grab his attention by offering that the president will be “happy” to hear his next question. …
And how it’s indicative of Microsoft’s iterative console strategy.
With preorders becoming available on September 22nd, the Xbox Series X ran into a problem that likely didn’t surprise many people. During pre-orders, sales numbers on Amazon.com went up more than 700% for the Xbox One X, Microsoft’s distinctly current generation console.
With similar images for each console, the mistake is an easy one to make. The listing on Amazon for each machine features a black console with a controller leaning up against it. Although the consoles have a different design from each other, even a seasoned gamer would likely need a second glance before confirming their purchase. To make matters more confusing, like Sony’s own problems with their PlayStation 5 preorder organization, Microsoft’s new console has been flashing in and out of stock since its initial offering five days ago. When searching Amazon for “Xbox”, the user is confronted by a slew of gaming offerings from the rest of Microsoft’s current lineup in various colors and skus. …
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