It is a sad day for the entire industry, Mike Magee has passed away.
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Last week AMD did their 'Tech Day' and it was anything but.
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SemiAccurate has a little more on Intel executive departures even though this one is half known.
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Looks like a big name Intel executive is leaving the company.
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Qualcomm's new AI/Copilot PCs has overwhelming hype but their actions point to a far murkier picture.
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Last week ARM unveiled their new IP that will be featured in the devices consumers buy in 2025.
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It looks like Microsoft is turning on Intel and AMD over AI PCs.
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I recently attended a closed-door digital event hosted by Bethesda, where they showcased new gameplay footage of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. I gained some key insights into MachineGames’ take on Indy’s next globetrotting adventure.

Update: During Gamescom 2024 Opening Night Live, it was revealed that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will release on December 9 for Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Xbox Game Pass. It, will also release on PlayStation 5 sometime in 2025.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Preview Event

The gameplay presentation wasn’t live but featured a lengthy guided playthrough, highlighting various points in the campaign. This was also the first time we got a glimpse of the game’s UI during gameplay. The interface is clean and simple, displaying essential information: Indy’s primary weapon is shown at the bottom right, while an icon at the bottom left indicates the game’s disguise mechanic, which I’ll discuss further later on.

The Tools of Indiana Jones

At the start of the presentation, the developers explained Indy’s tools, each of which plays a crucial role in the overall gameplay. One standout is Indy’s camera, used to capture key moments during exploration. Players are tasked with taking specific shots, which reward Adventure Points. These points can be used to unlock new perks for Indy. With this mechanic in mind, I can already see myself scouring ruined temples, eagerly snapping photos to rack up points.

As you capture key figures or environmental elements, a pop-up appears on the screen, similar to gaining experience after completing a quest. This seems to be the game’s primary progression system, although MachineGames didn’t go into much detail about what exactly can be unlocked with these points, nor did they show the menu where these points are spent.

Next up is Indy’s iconic whip, which plays a significant role in both traversal and combat. In the new playthrough, the whip was primarily used for swinging Indy across gaps in third-person view. In one instance, the player threw a spear into a wall, creating a makeshift anchor that Indy could use to swing across. While the whip is mostly used for traversal, we also saw it in action during combat, similar to what was shown in the first gameplay trailer released months ago.

Speaking of combat, Indy has his trusty revolver ready for when gunfights break out. The new gameplay footage prominently features gunfights, with Indy even picking up a machine gun dropped by a downed enemy. We also got a closer look at the melee system, which allows players to block incoming attacks and counter with a series of humorous head smacks. It was thrilling to see new footage but I hoping to see more of the combat in it’s most raw form as it wasn’t enough to show off how gunfights will feel in the end.

From what I saw so far, combat in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle feels more subdued compared to other adventure games, giving the impression that this isn’t a game where Indy will be taking out 20 Nazis in one room. I’m not expecting a one-man army BJ Blazkowics situation, but I was hoping to see how thrilling combat can be in this game considering that this is being worked on by the folks that worked on the latest Wolfenstein games. This preview didn’t give me that, and while I do concede this is more of an adventure than a true action shooter, I was hoping MachineGames would flex their gun combat expertise to showcase that when the bullets start flying, it will be a fun ride.

Lastly, we saw Indy jotting down information in his journal, which will serve as the player’s reference point for solving puzzles and understanding key details. The journal seems to function similarly to those found in other adventure games like Uncharted or the Tomb Raider reboot, and can be brought up at any time.

Disguises – Dressing for the Occasion

One of the biggest reveals during the gameplay was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s approach to stealth. Players will have the opportunity to disguise Indy in various outfits that help him blend in when navigating hostile territory. In the presentation, Indy meets up with his partner Gina after discovering the entrance to some ancient ruins. They quickly realize they need an ancient key, but was unfortunately in the hands of the nazis and is heavily guarded. The gameplay then skips ahead to show Indy backtracking and disguised as one of the workers at the excavation site. He sneaks into a tent to steal the key but is briefly interrupted by a guard who asks him to pass a bottle of wine—Indy complies to avoid suspicion. This disguise mechanic seems to play a significant role, with the Indy icon at the bottom left of the game’s UI indicating the current disguise in effect.

However, the presentation didn’t show what happens if Indy is spotted by guards or if he acts suspiciously. Will a fight break out, or will the game reset before he’s caught?

At this point, MachineGames also hinted at side activities that players can encounter, which feel similar to side quests. We saw Indy walking through a bustling market and being approached by a vendor with information about a secret that piqued his interest. Although they didn’t show how these side activities play out, it suggests that Indiana Jones and The Great Circle won’t be strictly linear, allowing players time to explore and discover hidden content.

Third-Person Perspective – When the Camera Steps Back

MachineGames opted for a first-person perspective for this game, which initially seemed like a choice driven by the studio’s expertise in this viewpoint. However, Game Director Jerk Gustafsson and Creative Director Axel Torvenius emphasized during the Q&A session that they chose this perspective to bring players closer to Indy’s adventure, especially when solving puzzles and examining discoveries up close.

Despite this, the third-person perspective does make appearances. We’ve seen it in the first gameplay trailer, and in the new footage, it triggers when Indy uses his whip to swing across gaps or during climbing sequences. Once the climbing is done, the game quickly switches back to first-person.

So far, these are the only instances where the perspective changes. As for cutscenes, the crucial ones play out in full cinematic style, letting us see Indy in all his glory, interacting wth all the key characters in the story.

Indiana Jones and The Great Circle: MachineGames’ Longest Adventure Yet

During the Q&A session, the developers discussed the game’s length, confirming that Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is MachineGames’ longest game to date. While they didn’t provide a specific timeframe, I compared the length of their previous games with similar titles, leading me to believe that the game’s duration would be a reasonable length.

Motion Capture was all done in-house

One of the more interesting revelations during the Q&A session was that all the motion capture and design of Indiana Jones were handled entirely in-house by MachineGames, with LucasFilm providing guidance and their blessing. Despite LucasFilm having existing references for Harrison Ford’s likeness, especially with their de-aging work for the latest film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, MachineGames chose to create their own assets, performing their own scans to recreate a young Ford for the game.

In the presentation shown, we witness more cutscenes and from what I’ve seen, they’ve done a fantastic job of respecting the source material, delivering moments that could rival the movies, with Troy Baker delivering a commendable performance as a young Indy. While there are moments where Troy’s natural voice comes through, he does an impressive job of capturing Harrison Ford’s tone, especially in more intense situations where Indy’s stress levels rise.

Final Thoughts

This presentation focused heavily on mechanics, with no big set pieces that one might expect from an adventure game. It offered a glimpse into the various elements of Indiana Jones and The Great Circle but lacked the kind of thrilling sequences that would make players eager to dive in. The combat footage, while intriguing, didn’t leave me thinking, “I want to play that right now” as everything feels interesting yet safe.

It’s worth noting that while new gameplay elements were shown, the presentation felt somewhat lacking in selling what to expect from this title to make it stand out beyond it being a known iconic franchise. I guess I was expecting a massive showing as MachineGames is still set to release the game this year. With the “Ber” months just weeks away, I’m starting to suspect that a November or December release is more likely if the 2024 release sticks. They’ll need to ramp up their marketing efforts and showcase a bit more of the game to convince players that it’s worth a subscription on Game Pass or a day-one purchase.

I had the chance to play a preview build of The Casting of Frank Stone, an interactive horror game developed by Supermassive Games. Set within the Dead by Daylight universe, the demo took around 45 minutes and left me with the impression that Behaviour Interactive has given Supermassive the freedom to do what they do best. The game echoes their previous work, both in gameplay and in how choices and events shape the overall story.

The demo begins with you playing as Sam Green, a police officer investigating a child's disappearance, which leads him to a steel mill in the dead of night.

Nods to Dead by Daylight

This brief introduction effectively sets the stage, featuring a few nods to the Dead by Daylight universe with plenty of Easter eggs for dedicated fans. However, The Casting of Frank Stone is primarily played like any other Supermassive Games title, where you make choices that influence key events and outcomes, with quick-time events adding further nuance, from subtle shifts to severe consequences.

The demo offered a glimpse of the various possible outcomes. Dialogue choices are limited to two options, a similar approach to titles like The Quarry as multiple A or B choices lead to a web of possibilities.

Choices and Outcomes

In terms of gameplay mechanics, Supermassive stays within their comfort zone. You explore areas in a third-person perspective and control multiple characters throughout the story. In the demo, you only play as Sam, exploring the mill, examining key objects, climbing fences, and squeezing through tight spaces to progress. Quick-time events are present, and the first one caught me by surprise. The game has integrated Dead by Daylight’s Skill Check system, where you must press a button to spot the dial to land on the right spot of in the dial. I wasn’t expecting this Dead by Daylight-inspired twist, and I failed to press the button at the right time, resulting in Sam injuring himself and losing his flashlight.

This injury didn’t affect much, as it only slightly altered how one scene played out. On a second playthrough, I discovered that if Sam hadn’t been injured and still had his flashlight, he could have used it to try and blind the threat, a slight change that didn’t completely change the outcome, though it does hint at the potential for varied experiences in the full game, making the player second guess whether their success or failed attempts are either major or minor changes.

The demo also showcased various quick-time events, none too complex, which is expected as the fun in these games lies in shaping the story.

Overall, the demo gives just a glimpse of how the game will play out. It’s another story-driven game with the classic Supermassive touch, which is a win in my book. I’ve always appreciated their approach to horror storytelling, even when it veers into typical clichés or B-movie territory. Some of their games are so bad they’re good, delivering humor and entertainment. As for The Casting of Frank Stone, it’s hard to tell if it will evoke the same feelings with less than an hour of content to sample, but knowing that Supermassive is doing what they do best is a promising sign.

Based on my experience with other Supermassive Games titles, I expect The Casting of Frank Stone will follow a similar pattern — offering a mix of major and minor consequences that shape the narrative, encouraging multiple playthroughs for different outcomes.

At most, this preview suggests that Supermassive isn’t attempting anything new or groundbreaking with this title. The difference here is the game’s setting within another developer’s established world.

The Connection to Dead by Daylight

The real question is whether The Casting of Frank Stone will add meaningful context to the Dead by Daylight universe. Behaviour Interactive has been steadily expanding the lore with each update, giving us more insight into the Entity, the Survivors, and the Killers. Will this game provide new lore for Dead by Daylight enthusiasts, or is it simply a spin-off filled with Easter eggs for dedicated players? It’s hard to tell if this game is more for Dead by Daylight fans or Supermassive Games fans, but hopefully, it strikes a balance between the two.

It’s also worth noting that The Casting of Frank Stone will feature a couch co-op mode for 1-4 players, where each participant controls the actions and decisions of one character. This feature adds an extra layer of unpredictability and replayability to the experience and is how I prefer to play games like it as I’ve done this even way back in 2010’s Heavy Rain, my first introduction to games like these.

The Casting of Frank Stone is set to launch on September 3, 2024 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC.

On Wednesday night, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy sat down with four creators from Australia and New Zealand for a Q&A stream. The creators involved – 8bitElliot, JackHuddo, Carla, and Trash – were free to throw questions to Clancy and Twitch’s ANZ content director Lewis Mitchell about the state of its Australian business and support for local streamers. 

There’s been a growing restlessness among creators in the ANZ region since a major wave of redundancies in January gutted its Australian operations. Previously clear communications and healthy support that local creators enjoyed before the layoffs have dramatically withered in the months since. Many of Twitch’s bigger local creators have found it harder and harder to draw the company’s attention as it focuses on more populous and lucrative North American and European regions.

Though Clancy stressed at the beginning of the stream that he hoped it would be a fun conversation, the creators came prepared to play hardball. What they were given was two hours of broad assurances that left Australian creators feeling uncertain and unsatisfied.

The future of Twitch ANZ

Trash did not beat around the bush, immediately hitting Clancy with what is, for creators, the obvious question: What is the future of Twitch ANZ? 

It’s clear that the January layoffs – a global reduction of 500 jobs that decimated the ANZ team – have badly damaged Twitch’s operations in ANZ. In the months since, the lines of communication have gone dark. Creators are feeling under-resourced and unloved. What is Twitch doing about this? Does it even care about us anymore?

Clancy’s lengthy answer wasn’t as good at reassuring local creators as it was at covering the company’s arse. What he felt was “tricky to appreciate” about the layoffs was that, from the company’s perspective, Twitch ANZ was over-resourced compared to other regions. "For quite some time, we actually invested, in terms of the number of people working on ANZ, it was quite disproportionate, in terms of the number of creators, the number of partners, the number of streamers, everything."

"A big thing that we’ve been needing to do is kind of look (at) where we’re spending our money and being as efficient as possible, because every dollar we have is the cut we take from streamers’ rev shares. … Don’t take us feeling like there’s less resources as us not caring about ANZ. We do care deeply about Australia and New Zealand, I think it’s a critical market."

Translation: Twitch was spending too much on ANZ and not making its investment back. This comes as no surprise. Despite the massive influence it exerts on the livestreaming space, Twitch is famously unprofitable. In a livestream from January, Clancy admitted that, prior to the layoffs, Twitch had been relying on financial backing from parent company Amazon to remain afloat. The slashing and burning of regional offices, like Twitch ANZ, was done to keep the company from financially bleeding to death.

Asked by JackHuddo about the size of Twitch’s ANZ operations post-layoffs and whether Mitchell was now doing the work of what had previously been an entire team, both Mitchell and Clancy avoided a direct answer. A marketing team was mentioned, but not whether they were ANZ-based or resources allocated from a wider APAC (Asia Pacific) team.

Another answer about Twitch Rivals and its viability in Australia pointed to difficulties offering value to creators while paying the bills. Clancy spoke about how Twitch has been trying to evolve Rivals (the ANZ version of which didn’t even stream on the main Rivals channel) to ensure it brings in the kinds of views required to make it worth Twitch’s while financially. 

This went down like a lead balloon in 8bitElliot’s chat, with creators wondering when the platform will start prioritising community sentiment ahead of metrics. The answer, even if Clancy isn’t able to say so, seems fairly clear: The business reality is that it can’t, not if it wants to survive.

However, Clancy does point out that he isn’t just keeping his eye on the region through the safety of a spreadsheet. The CEO is making several trips to Australia this year. His first was at Dreamhack Melbourne, where he roamed the halls and sounded out larger local creators. He will return in October for back-to-back appearances at PAX Australia and SXSW Sydney. Travel is a big component of Clancy’s role. As he correctly points out, Australia is not terribly easy to get to but he’s making the effort to get down here anyway. 

I will give him this: three trips in a year is more attention than most American CEOs pay us in a lifetime. However, the frequent flier miles need to be backed up with results. The face time is good, but taking feedback gleaned from these trips and doing something with it is better.

A global approach (if you live in the Northern Hemisphere)

Since the January layoffs, many ANZ creators have noticed support from Twitch HQ drying up. Communication between Twitch and creators had become slower and more difficult. The transparency Twitch ANZ offered local creators around which new programs were geolocked was gone. Even the company’s local social media channels, which had been used to promote channels of all sizes, had gone dark.

Mitchell chimed in to note that Twitch ANZ socials were firing up again and that promotion would continue (though appears Twitch has contracted an external agency for help).

Answers around creator programs excluding ANZ creators were considerably murkier. According to Mitchell, programs like Twitch Ambassadors are being rolled out in larger markets before they can be rolled out in smaller ones like ANZ. This is an inversion of the previous strategy, where markets like ANZ were used as test beds precisely because of their smaller population. Curiously, Clancy puts this down to various languages and cultures, with the company focusing on English-language streamers in regions like APAC. According to Clancy, certain programs can’t "scale globally" (i.e. work in every region, due to cultural sensitivities or legislative concerns). 

Even requests for smaller community programs, like a Twitch Unity Guild dedicated to First Nations and Torres Strait Islander creators were met with a similar response: we’d love to some day, and we’re working on it. Clancy appeared unaware of programs like Twitch ANZ Grassroots, a previous avenue for promoting smaller creators and affiliates.

Clancy then went on to say that his wider strategy revolves around putting money back in creators’ pockets, like lowering the threshold for entering the revenue sharing Plus Program, but did not get into any further specifics.

Even things like booths at shows like PAX have been de-emphasised. Twitch is not alone in this, many major parties in the games industry have been attempting to move away from conventions like PAX in an effort to save money. In Twitch’s case, it moved toward officially sanctioned Gatherings to give creators IRL spaces to socialise and network. Carla immediately disputed this, pointing out how successful the Twitch booth at PAX Australia had been in 2023, well beyond what local Gatherings had been able to accomplish. Clancy appeared unmoved, but admitted in regions as far-flung as ANZ there is a case for retaining the convention booth strategy.

Broadly, what Clancy and Mitchell are saying makes sense as a business case, but it also makes it clear what the layoffs have cost Twitch streamers in ANZ. In 2023, ANZ was using its resources to thrive. Now, we’re bundled up with much larger, more populous, far more important markets, and it shows. Despite Clancy’s insistence that we remain an important market, and his own regular visits, ANZ has plainly been shuffled down the order of priority.

Though Clancy stressed at the beginning of the stream that he hoped it would be a fun conversation, the creators came prepared to play hardball. What they were given was two hours of broad assurances that left Australian creators feeling uncertain and unsatisfied.

Live ANZ reaction

As the chat went on, sentiment from creators watching the stream began to roll in online, and few were feeling positive.

Here, the division between the needs of the region and the needs of the business are cast in black and white. Local creators want more, they want to be taken seriously and given the opportunities of their contemporaries in larger markets. That’s a fair request, but it seems clearer than ever that Twitch can’t help them without spending money it may not have.

Where to now?

For Twitch, Australia has become the same problem it has been to so many American companies: a region too small and underpopulated to worry about when money’s tight. Though I’m sure Clancy meant every nice thing he said about us as a region, his responses paint a picture of a company with too many masters and no money with which to serve their increasingly complex needs. It’s a battle that can’t be won – creators who’ve turned to the platform as a way to make a living are at odds with a company that cannot seem to turn a profit.

If Twitch hopes to take a global view of what it can offer creators and viewers alike, then it needs to ensure that every region gets a fair shake, not just those in the Northern Hemisphere. That feels like it goes without saying, but as Australians know, Americans rarely think about anything that goes on below the equator.

In the end, creators can only hope that the chat gave Clancy something to think about. And if it didn’t, he will hear about it in person in Sydney and Melbourne this October.

I hadn't expected that we Americans would get access to Omori until next year at the earliest. That may still hold true for a full manga collection, but you can read the first chapter online right now courtesy of Kodansha, translated fully into English. The website also has accessibility pages to allow for easier reading. Nui Konoito is doing the adaptation with Omocat, writing and drawing the pages.

The responses I've seen have been mixed. Some people aren't fans of the art, and others are questioning why events are reordered. I feel it's a great way to enter a familiar world when we don't have the RPG framework as a guide to dreams and reality.

Omori, a 2020 RPG that was supposed to come out half a decade earlier, has become an international success. It depicts a boy named Sunny forced to either confront a great tragedy that weighs on him and his original friends or withdraw into his dreams to become a hero to dream characters. Since it was originally supposed to be a manga from the creator Omocat, the existence of a Japanese manga serialized in Kodansha may see her vision and original intentions mixed with a new interpretation of the source material.

Context matters

Manga can be trippy, and there are several contenders for zaniness from Kodansha, Viz, Shueisha, and other magazines. The problem, however, is that still art cannot convey the trippiness that anime or video game animation can. You can't have random jump scares or jumps to different forms of media to indicate a mood shift. Accordingly, when translating a video game into a comic, you have to know when to make sacrifices.

Manga creators also have less time to set the stage and win over the reader. You can't spend an hour in Headspace with Omori wandering outside and then pull a bait-and-switch when Sunny wakes up since that could take up twenty pages. The creator has forty or fifty pages at most to introduce us to this game and the world. They need to be pragmatic about the important details to show.

And we do see pragmatism, along with gorgeous art. Rather than follow the Main Route word-for-word (a wise idea since the Main Route in Omori takes 25 hours minimum to complete), we get the first night and day depicted in the story. The creators choose to start with Sunny rather than Omori in a happy flashback, hinting at the tragedies that have affected this friend group. Sunny, not Omori, is the real protagonist of the story, and you don't need to conceal this for the twist of what Omori really is.

The authors trust that most readers who will be picking up the manga already know what Omori's main story is. Ergo, we don't have to start with the bait-and-switch of Omori in Headspace, when Sunny is the protagonist. We also don't have to go through all the details of microwaving steak inside a fridge long after the power has been turned off when a few silent panels can indicate the depression and disassociation that Sunny feels. Detailed art can substitute for the many activities you undertake just to get Sunny and Omori through their first night in-game.

The problem, however, is that still art cannot convey the trippiness that anime or video game animation can.

And speaking of detailed art, Nui Konoito goes all out on the scares. Sunny's hallucinations twist around him, showing how visceral his fears of heights, spiders, and deep water are. You feel for the kid, even if you know why he has become such a recluse. Little details, like him shielding his eyes when he goes outside for the first time in years, become very relatable for those that had to deal with the pandemic shutdowns. The Something and Hellmari hallucinations gain depth and texture. Without the limit of sprites, we can understand why Sunny sees long black hair everywhere.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying the manga is better than the game. Instead, it's a different interpretation, with varying visuals as a result.

What could the next chapter bring?

It's highly possible that the next chapter will take place exclusively in Headspace, now that we have set the scene. Omori has taken Sunny's place as the central character and is seeing his friends as they were six years ago. On the other hand, we could find out the aftermath of the fight that Aubrey starts in the real world.

Konoito has succeeded in keeping the wary reader guessing, and that is an achievement when most coming to the manga would already know the full story. We don't know what specific plot points will emerge in the dream world or real world, or what flashbacks we will see in which order. I'm looking forward to seeing how the manga unfolds.

PS Plus members have renewed calls for more notice on games leaving the service. This has been a recurring complaint since the revamp because Sony often gives players as little as one week to wrap up their progress, which isn’t enough when it comes to lengthy games. There have also been occasions where Sony didn’t announce a departure until the very last minute.

When does Sony typically announce the list of games leaving PS Plus?

Sony provides a preliminary list of games leaving the service shortly after a catalog refresh. As an example, September 2024’s departures were announced today after new games were added to the service this morning.

However, as emphasized above, these are preliminary lists. Sony may remove games without a warning — like it has done so in the past — or give as little as a few days notice.

Players refreshed their demand for more notice after they discovered that Sea of Stars and Lost Judgment — both lengthy games — were added to PS Store’s ‘Last Chance to Play’ section with barely two weeks’ notice. Forums like Reddit and ResetEra saw members asking fellow players if there was a way to expedite their progress before the games left the service.

Given that there are hundreds of games in the catalog, Sony should endeavor to provide one-month notice for departures. We don’t see a good reason why this isn’t possible or why this shouldn’t be the case. Random updates with little notice are quite a nuisance.

The post PS Plus Users Continue to Demand More Notice for Games Leaving Service appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

All the tunes and cars you’ll need to complete this week's festivities, those found in the Forza Horizon 5 Festival Playlist Weekly Challenges for Series 37 Summer and onwards.

The post Forza Horizon 5 Festival Playlist Weekly Challenges Guide Series 37 – Summer appeared first on TheXboxHub.

In her first economic policy speech as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris rightly criticized Donald Trump for favoring steep tariffs, saying her Republican opponent "wants to impose what is, in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other countries." But in the same speech, Harris pitched a half-baked idea that is just as economically dubious, promising to crack down on "price gouging" by the grocery industry.

That proposal is so misguided that it provoked undisguised skepticism from mainstream news outlets such as CNN, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, along with criticism by Democratic economists. It showed that Harris joins Trump in pushing populist prescriptions that would hurt consumers in the name of sticking it to supposed economic villains.

"If your opponent claims you're a 'communist,'" Post columnist Catherine Rampell suggested, "maybe don't start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls." Harvard economist Jason Furman, who chaired President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, was equally scathing.

"This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality," Furman told the Times. "There's no upside here, and there is some downside."

That downside stems from any attempt to override market signals by dictating prices. High prices allocate goods to consumers who derive the greatest value from them, encourage producers to expand supply, and spur competition that helps bring prices down.

Without those signals, you get hoarding and shortages. This is not some airy-fairy theory; it reflects bitter experience since ancient times with interventions like the one Harris proposes.

Consider what happened when President Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls in the 1970s. "Ranchers stopped shipping their cattle to the market, farmers drowned their chickens, and consumers emptied the shelves of supermarkets," Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw note in their 1998 book on the rise of free markets.

Or consider what happened more recently with eggs. Thanks to avian flu, Furman noted, "egg prices went up last year" because "there weren't as many eggs," but the high prices encouraged "more egg production." If federal regulators had tried to suppress egg prices, they would have short-circuited that market response.

Harris, of course, says she would target only unjustified price increases, the kind that amount to "illegal price gouging" by "opportunistic companies." But as she emphasizes, there currently is no such thing under federal law, and any attempt to define it would be plagued by subjectivity and a lack of relevant knowledge.

The fact that Harris pins the sharp grocery price inflation of recent years on corporate greed suggests that her judgment about such matters cannot be trusted. Economists generally rate other factors—including the war in Ukraine as well as pandemic-related supply disruptions, shifts in consumer demand, and stimulus spending—as much more important.

High profits, in any event, are another important signal that encourages investment and competition. By forbidding "excessive profits," Harris' proposed price policing would undermine the motivation they provide.

According to the most recent numbers, the annual inflation rate dropped below 3 percent as of July. With inflation cooling, this might seem like a strange time for Harris to resuscitate an idea that was already proving disastrous thousands of years ago. But as the Times notes, her message "polls well with swing voters."

The broad tariffs that Trump favors, which Harris condemns as "a national sales tax" that would "devastate Americans," also poll well in the abstract. But they are popular only until voters consider the consequences.

In a recent Cato Institute survey, for example, 62 percent of respondents favored a tariff on "imported blue jeans," but that number plummeted when they were asked to imagine the resulting price increases. Harris likewise is counting on voters who like what she says but do not contemplate what it would mean in practice.

© Copyright 2024 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

The post Kamala Harris' 'Price Gouging' Ban: A New Idea That Has Failed for Thousands of Years appeared first on Reason.com.

There’s really nothing quite like playing an Atari 2600 game, and The Atari 2600+ is coming to capitalize on that. The technological restraints of the 1970s forced the Atari 2600’s games to be simple and addicting. In so doing, the library would go on to become iconic, instantly recognizable, and timelessly fun. Somehow it even managed to hang on to some relevancy well beyond the NES era. Even today this library holds a special place in the hearts of gamers and technology buffs of all stripes.

Atari is no stranger to revivals either, with countless collections of old games repackaged for modern systems being released over the decades. We’ve also seen plenty of console emulation boxes released under the Atari name with varying results. Most of these attempts were marred by limited functionality, poor emulation, or some combination of the two. Now, however, a new kind of revival is underway. The Atari 2600+ has emerged and seems to be hitting a lot the right notes. If handled correctly, this could very well be the ultimate revival for the undisputed golden era of gaming. Here’s what we know so far.

Identical form factor (80% scale)

Wood grain, ridges, switches and all. The Atari 2600+ is not trying to modernize the design like the baffling VCS. This is a plain and simple miniaturization of the original machine, like the NES classic. Perhaps a bit more in line with Konami’s Turbografx-16 mini, as it won’t be that much smaller than the original. The original stylings of the switches are the most interesting part of this. That particular design language is so alien today, and will certainly stand out in modern living rooms.

Compatibility with original 2600 and 7800 games. 

This is wonderful news, and instantly sets the 2600+ apart from nearly every Atari clone console before it. The majority of Atari clone consoles that have emerged only contain whatever AT Games felt like including. Also including the small-but-excellent 7800 library is a nice tough. How the 2600+ runs the games is a big question, though. Latency, compatibility and accuracy are big sticking points for much of the community. However, generally speaking, being able to pop in my own copy of Spider Fighter and play it on my TV from the sofa is alluring. That said, compatibility isn’t perfect, as Atari reveals on their website. More on that later.

New Joystick and Paddles

Seemingly identical in form, and hopefully at least equal in build quality. These new controllers seem to be aiming to look, feel, and function just like the originals. However, weight could be an issue, as light controllers can feel cheap and unsatisfying to use. The paddles in particular need to be well-made, as most original paddles today are not working well. The Atari 2600+ only comes with one joystick, though, so others will come at an additional cost. This is a bit of a letdown considering the $129 price tag. Although given the connection type, you should be able to use your original controllers as well. Atari’s website does confirm that the new controllers will work on the original 2600. It’s fairly logical to assume the inverse is true as well.

10-games-in-one Cartridge Included

This cart includes Haunted House, Adventure, Dodge ‘Em, Combat, Missile Command, Maze Craze, Realsports Volleyball, Surround, Video Pinball, and Yars’ Revenge. Any compilation of Atari games will feel like it’s missing something, but overall these are great choices. The major genres of the era are represented here. Combat on its own has several modes and difficulties that can easily provide many hours of single or multiplayer mayhem. Compared to the 20+ games Nintendo, Sega, and Konami offers on their mini consoles, though, 10 is less than impressive.

HDMI Output 

This is essential in today’s world. Most of the clone consoles and emulation boxes released under the Atari name have been composite (red, white, and yellow cables) only. Having HDMI immediately puts the 2600+ in the upper-echelon of ways to play these games. Whether we’re going to get 1080p or 4K remains to be seen, but ultimately might not matter. Most modern displays still recognize 720p today. For the sake of future-proofing though, the higher resolution we can get, the better. Extra points are up for grabs if Atari can throw in some display options. Scanlines, screen curvatures, or other filters would be welcome. No word on anything like that yet, outside of the Black and White switch anyway.

Sold separately

The 2600+ is going to launch alongside some companion products. Mr. Run and Jump, a new game designed for the 2600. A so-called enhanced edition of Berzerk. An additional compilation cartridge focused on paddle games Breakout, Night Driver, Canyon Bomber, and Video Olympics. This appears to come with a new set of paddles as well, which is great. Most of the original paddles hanging around today are barely working – if at all. An additional joystick is also going to be available, and should be an easy upsell. The 2600+ only comes with one, after all.

Potential pitfalls

Before throwing down your hard earned money, there are a couple byte-sized issues to consider. First, the $129 price tag itself. You could buy Atari 50 today for significantly less and play it on the modern console you already own. In so doing you would immediately have access to exponentially more games than the 10 included with the 2600+. $129 vs $30. 10 games vs 90 games. Also, the inclusion of only one controller almost certainly means you’ll need to buy another. This drives up the price even more. Do with this information what you will.

Secondly, hardcore enthusiasts might be left wanting with the 2600+. Atari confirms on their FAQ page that the 2600+ is using emulation to run the games. This isn’t inherently problematic, but it could spell trouble for rom hacks and homebrews. Also, the compatibility list on Atari’s website confirms several official games will fail to work. Super Cobra, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Real Sports Boxing are among them. Many more are listed as “untested” which is frankly bizarre. I know it’s no small task, but if Atari is serious about this, why not test all the games? This makes the “No Cartridge Left Behind” moniker on the webpage ring more than a little hollow. A potential saving grace here is the USB-C port. This will almost certainly be utilized by the community to improve compatibility. For now though, the incomplete compatibility is a notable red flag. I highly suggest all Atari enthusiasts take a look at the list before claiming a pre-order.

Flawed or exciting? Depends on the beholder

These issues aren’t huge ones, but they do muddle up the deal a bit. Casual players who want a quick nostalgia trip could understandably be put off by the price point. Conversely, hardcore enthusiasts may balk at the emulation and incomplete compatibility. The perception of a high floor and low ceiling could threaten the appeal of the 2600+. That said, there is certainly value here. Between the nostalgic form-factor, HDMI, and generally solid compatibility with games and controllers, the 2600+ makes a decent case. Hyperkin’s Retron 77 may have it beat with price, but there is something to be said for an official Atari product. The hassle of converting the video signal of an original 2600 is arguably worth paying $129 to side-step. Yet the phoniness of emulating Atari games on a computer undercuts the entire experience. You could certainly look at it either way.

The 2600+ may not be for the super fanatical or the super casual. This is a bit of a shame, as it comes quite close to being an ideal solution for everyone. Still, here are more comprehensive and cheaper solutions for those two extremes. Are there millions of people who would pay a premium to play the vast majority of their Atari games in a modern, yet authentic way, though? Absolutely. It’s just going to come down to whether or not Atari can get them to do it. If marketed well, and supported with some post-launch firmware updates, the 2600+ could easily soar to great heights.

Atari 2600+ releases this November

We won’t be waiting long to get our hands on this thing. The 2600+ launches right before Thanksgiving. This might just prove to be perfect timing. Whipping an Atari out after Thanksgiving dinner for a few rounds of drunken Missile Command with the family sounds like an excellent way to wrap up the Holiday. If nothing else, it could at least distract everyone from whatever arguments transpired during dinner.

Atari 2600+ releases on November 17. Do you plan to jump back into some retro favorites? Or do you prefer more old-school ways to enjoy old-school games? As always, let us know what you think down in the comments!

The post Can the Atari 2600+ reignite the magic? appeared first on Mega Visions.

I was fortunate to sit down and talk to Ranida Games’ CEO and studio head Ben Banta, along with the head of business development, Walter Manalo. Ranida Games participated in the recently concluded Xbox Game Camp Asia event, and they shared their experiences and also gave us a glimpse into the current state of video game development in the Philippines.

Ranida Games, based in the Philippines, started in 2015 and is known for infusing Filipino culture into its games. Their notable titles include the mobile game PBA Basketball Slam, which features official PBA licensing, and Bayani, a PC and mobile fighting game inspired by revered Filipino historical figures like Jose Rizal and Andrés Bonifacio.

What is Xbox Game Camp?

The program, which started in 2020, aims to "empower people from traditionally marginalized communities and non-traditional backgrounds to realize their potential in the gaming industry and grow thriving games communities and industries around the world." It has had different iterations in various regions, including Africa, Sweden, Korea, and now Asia.

Opportunities for local Filipino game studios to gain such exposure are rare. Banta and Manalo shared that they eagerly embraced this opportunity despite their years of experience in the industry. The team was "hungry to learn".

"Even if we are veterans, it doesn’t mean we know everything," Banta said. The program allowed them to be mentored by industry professionals, providing insights and advice on game design, narrative, and marketing. Banta was particularly thrilled to be mentored by veterans like Ken Lobb, known for his work on the original Killer Instinct game. This was an event that took place over a few weeks through online sessions.

Xbox Game Camp as a Creativity Catalyst

At Xbox Game Camp Asia, participants were tasked with either enhancing their current projects or starting something new. Ranida Games, known for fighting and sports games, stepped out of their comfort zone to pitch a narrative-driven cooking simulator game called Soul Food.

They produced a trailer for Soul Food and polished the concept for Xbox Game Camp Asia. The game features a cyberpunk-like setting where players create food that can potentially bring back customers' lost memories. It’s a crazy mix of ideas and concepts developed in a short time but showcases how programs like Game Camp can inspire creativity.

Ranida Games plans to reveal this project to the public at this year’s PGDX but time will tell if it's a project the studio will pursue to completion.

Xbox's Support for Southeast Asia

Xbox’s presence in the region and its outreach to local studios like Ranida Games provide developers like Banta and Manalo with more confidence in the future as they continue tackling new projects.

"Xbox being in Southeast Asia gives us the confidence to know there’s someone we can reach out to and ask for help,"

Both Banta and Manalo emphasized the value of Game Camp, highlighting how the studio can revisit previous sessions and utilize the resources provided to elevate their game development process.

Related articles: Fallen Tear: The Ascension — CMD Studios’ Bold Leap into Indie Development

Addressing Industry Challenges

With Xbox’s growing support for developers worldwide, it puts a spotlight on the other challenges in the Philippine video game industry. Studios like Ranida Games have been fortunate to operate for years, but much is still lacking.

Mentorship and Learning: One of the critical needs identified by Banta and Manalo is the importance of mentorship. Despite their experience, they emphasized the value of learning from industry veterans. "We want to learn so we can teach," they said, highlighting the necessity for continuous education and knowledge sharing within the industry. Programs like Xbox Game Camp greatly help here.

Accessibility to Development Kits: Accessibility remains a significant issue. Although Ranida Games specializes in mobile and PC platforms, they face challenges in expanding to consoles due to limited access to development kits. This barrier hampers their ability to diversify and reach broader audiences, or have the opportunity for their developers to learn development in those platforms.

Budget Constraints: Budget constraints are another major hurdle. While Ranida Games aspires to develop its own titles, financial limitations push teams to juggle outsourcing projects to support larger endeavors abroad. This issue is prevalent across many local studios in the Philippines, where outsourcing services are often the primary source of revenue. The need for financial support and investment is critical for these studios to thrive independently.

Public Perception and Comparisons: Banta and Manalo also shared that local developers often face unfair comparisons to triple-A titles. With their games, such as PBA Basketball Slam and Bayani, being compared to franchises like NBA 2K or Tekken, there is a need for greater public awareness of the unique challenges and achievements of local game development. Increased recognition and understanding can help shift perceptions and garner more support for homegrown talent.

Despite these challenges, there is optimism for the future. Banta and Manalo believe that showcasing Filipino innovation and creativity is key to advancing the industry. Events like the 2024 PGDX, which feature sections for indie developers, provide much-needed exposure and opportunities for local talent to shine. The presence of foreign visitors from the video game industry at such events further enhances the potential for international recognition and collaboration.

The Road Ahead

The experience of Ranida Games at Xbox Game Camp Asia highlights the transformative potential of such programs for game developers in the Philippines. Through valuable mentorship, creative challenges, and exposure to industry veterans, studios like Ranida Games are gaining the tools and confidence needed to innovate and grow.

Ranida Games soldiers on. I’ll keep an eye on Soul Food and see how that project materializes. As for other projects, they did mention development on Bayani stalled but is now back on track to release a new character for their fighting game. Bayani is still in Steam’s Early Access program since 2019.

Despite the significant hurdles of limited access to development kits and budget constraints, the passion and talent of Filipino game developers remain undeniable. For Banta and Manalo, mentorship and support are critical in bridging the gap between potential and realization. 

Grinding Gear Games revealed the 3.25 update of their ever-popular action RPG Path of Exile. Titled Settlers of Kalguur, the July expansion contains various balance improvements set to shape up the meta and add new content when the expansion goes live on July 27.

Settlers of Kalguur will add a long list of balance work, but just like previous seasons, a new league will be introduced.

Here’s what you need to know about the Settlers of Kalguur Challenge League:

“In the Settlers of Kalguur Challenge League, players will help Kalguuran pioneers build the town of Kingsmarch and establish trade between Wraeclast and their homeland. Players will focus on mining exotic resources, hiring and protecting skilled workers to construct and defend the town, and build out a harbor to establish and manage trading. Once the town is constructed and trade is underway, players will be able to buy and sell currency and other stackable items in the Currency Trade Market, and craft and recombine powerful weapons and items on the Runesmithing Table.

Ascendancy classes will be refreshed with the addition of the new Warden class, as well as a rework of the Gladiator. The Warden will replace the Raider class, focusing on elemental attacks, damage mitigation and a specialization in Tinctures, which can now be found throughout the land. The Gladiator class maintains powerful skills for Bleeding and Block, along with receiving newly designed skills including the opportunity to invest in Retaliation Skills, a new type of skill that allows you to unleash devastating damage upon meeting certain conditions in combat.

Endgame content will see changes to many Scarabs, a 6th Map Device Slot, new encounters in Tier 16 and Tier 17 Maps, updates to Blight and Ritual and more. There will also be a set of new Chisel types and a massive increase in the drop rate of Valdo's Puzzle Boxes.“

The developers shared the patch notes for update 3.25 and as expected, it’s quite extensive as it tackles various changes to certain skills concepts and even adds quality-of-life changes. For those interested in deep diving into the changes one by one, patch notes are right here.

Console Love

The reveal of 3.25 also came with the developers improving console performance on PS5 and Xbox Series X as the action RPG is now taking “full advantage of PS5 and Xbox Series hardware” as you can expect a huge reduction in load times and texture pop-in. Good news as console performance has been criticized as of late, especially players on the PS5.

Path of Exile 2 Closed Beta coming soon

Grinding Gear Games also announced that they are hard at work in developing Path of Exile 2 and that the first closed beta test for the sequel will happen soon, encouraging players to sign up for a chance at being the select few to try out the game before launch.

The Settlers of Kalguur expansion goes live on July 27, at 4 AM (GMT+8).

In a vote on June 26, Microsoft employees who worked at Bethesda Game Studios voted to unionize. Microsoft acknowledged 241 union members on July 20, and the studio will now be affiliated with Communications Workers of America (CWA). According to reporting by IGN, the new union would negotiate with Microsoft for a new contract that would prevent any workplace abuses or exploitations. Bethesda Game Studios is the famed developer of several popular franchises including Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, and was Microsoft's biggest acquisition prior to their industry-shaking purchase of Activision-Blizzard-King in 2022.

The news of the studio's move to unionize is welcome, as other AAA companies have instigated mass layoffs for talented teams, with NDAs preventing them from sharing portfolios containing relevant assets. Bethesda Game Studios has also had its share of troubles with shutdowns and workplace controversies from its parent company. In May 2024, IGN reported that Microsoft shut down at least four Bethesda-owned studios and would not provide updates for games like Redfall despite retailing a DLC. The most that players could expect to receive is "the value of a purchased upgrade."

Bethesda employee controversies

In 2018, the development of Fallout 76 involved a high "human toll" with 10-hour, 6-day workweeks and employees not given time to rest and recharge if placed on that team. Contracted QA testers, in particular, were reportedly underpaid despite several being coerced to work on weekends, and the extra pay did not compensate for the physical and emotional demands. Paid employees would monitor and time the contractors' breaks. Complaints to upper management achieved nothing and Fallout 76's buggy release led to increased pressure and even death threats from frustrated players.

A 2022 report from Kotaku condemned this crunch culture and how it encourages burnout in creative fields, leading to entitlement in upper management and lower-quality output. Several employees even reported developing chronic conditions such as tinnitus and back pain, with low morale settling among the team. No one was trying to protect those working to find the bugs and remove them; in some cases, the recommended fixes were never applied.

Another troubling workplace incident saw a Bethesda employee posting an eight-paragraph pro-life rant on Slack in 2022 following the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. This rant contributed to what some employees felt was a work environment where affected employees, including those queer or identifying as female, already felt tension and hostility rooted in sexism and ableism as they inquired about what protections they would receive regarding contraceptives and abortions. Neither ZeniMax Studios nor Microsoft offered comments when Kotaku reached out to them. The existence of an unsafe environment is often cited as a reason for low morale in the workplace.

Possibilities of unionization

Unionization is one method to protect game developers and employees from these sudden layoffs, crunch culture, and hostile work environments. Workplace union protections may assist those who have gaps in their portfolios owing to NDAs or whose work may never see the light of day if a game gets canceled. Most importantly, vulnerable employee positions like QA testers could receive competitive wages and appropriate allocation of hours on projects that require large amounts of input and testing.

With luck, Bethesda Game Studios will report positive changes in the workplace. Concrete improvements could help prevent a repeat of the Fallout 76 controversies as well as chronic health conditions that overworking can cause. Employees can take pride in working at the company, rather than lose the spark that made them enter gaming with a desire to create. Unionization at Bethesda Game Studios was a long time coming and may represent a continuing trend in the industry.

Over a year since its launch, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a rare example of a sequel that managed to invent the wheel for a second time. Where Breath of the Wild reintroduced the world to the sense of adventure that literally birthed The Legend of Zelda as we know it, Tears of the Kingdom builds upon the foundation that was laid by its predecessor and actively encourages players to go beyond the boundaries that were set in the previous title. The result is a revolutionary game that takes a familiar and well-trodden world and elevates it to - literally - new heights while similarly evoking a sense of nostalgia as players explore a world that has naturally changed with time.

My first playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was truly made when I stumbled upon one of the final areas of the game by complete accident. My own story of exploring the reimagined world of Hyrule will be very different from anybody else's and these are the stories we share. These memorable moments of discovery and excitement stick with players for years after they put the game down, even more than the so-called "Legend" itself.

Link’s new abilities in Tears of the Kingdom expand the scope of puzzle-solving, with a renewed focus on physics and building. This approach to puzzle-solving is completely unique to this title and flourishes at every opportunity it gets. One particular example manages to capture this extraordinary feat in what at first appears to be something completely mundane - an unfolding bridge. Polygon has already deconstructed this (and more) impressive feats hiding in the Shrines and Dungeons of Tears of the Kingdom - and so I link to their impressive analysis here. 

I wish to focus on the game's physics because I want people to know that I do find Tears of the Kingdom to be an exceptional experience when I play it. No other open-world game has captured my interest in the same way, with almost boundless potential to experiment and create solutions to the game's various open-ended problems. And it’s precisely because of this innovation that I find Tears of the Kingdom is also one of the most confusing games I’ve ever played. 

Where the gameplay (literally) soars to new heights, the story of Tears of the Kingdom is one that paradoxically represents the polar opposite, holding itself tightly to the legacy of The Legend of Zelda, at the cost of its own identity. 

Leading up to the game's release, we were promised a Zelda experience unlike we'd ever had. A uniquely dark atmosphere was present all throughout the game’s marketing, with imaginations running wild about the depths to which Nintendo would go in this new entry. The image of Link losing his arm was particularly striking to veteran Zelda fans and Nintendo fans in general - not many of their characters are shown to effectively lose limbs on screen.  The closest is Samus Aran and her experience with the X-Virus in 2004’s Metroid Fusion, and even this was portrayed mostly through text. Tears of the Kingdom was a new frontier for Nintendo as storytellers. 

While Tears of the Kingdom manages to commit to this promise in its opening set piece - with the creative excuse of reducing Link’s health down to the classic three hearts - this promise of new ideas is quickly disposed of in light of a familiar structure and general progression that seemingly betrays the ambition that exists in the gameplay. On a surface level, Tears of the Kingdom is about metamorphosis and change. Characters we’re familiar with are distorted and changed to challenge our perception of this familiar world, exploring how these changes offer new opportunities.  This extends from the large scale all the way down to the minute details. The geography of Hyrule has changed in the six years between Breath of the Wild and this game, with the addition of the Sky Islands and the Depths being the most prominent changes to the layout of the world as we know it.

While Tears of the Kingdom manages to commit to this promise in its opening set piece - with the creative excuse of reducing Link’s health down to the classic three hearts - this promise of new ideas is quickly disposed of in light of a familiar structure and general progression that seemingly betrays the ambition that exists in the gameplay.

The addition of layered subterranean cave systems similarly adds to this sense of evolution and natural change with time. The previously desolate Tarrey Town has burgeoned into an industrial hub for Hyrule’s rapidly developing construction industry, as a direct result of Link’s efforts in the previous game. This sense of consistency and tangibility between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is a part of the appeal of a direct sequel like this. Players are rewarded for having engaged with the previous game with their discoveries in the sequel. Even being able to call upon the same horse as you had in Breath of the Wild is a satisfying moment of continuity that reminds you that you are returning to this world as an experienced adventurer rather than beginning all over again. Despite being lowered back down to 3 hearts, you still have some tricks you can rely on, and knowledge that you’ve gained. 

These subtle but meaningful moments of continuity are then confusingly undercut in this game’s complete refusal to engage with the main narrative of the previous game. While I wouldn’t expect every shrine from the previous game to be present in this one, I was expecting an explanation as to where all these old things have gone to make room for the new. This extends more significantly to the disappearance of the Divine Beasts from Breath of the Wild. The four Divine Beasts stood as the primary objectives in the previous game and also doubled as that game’s iteration of classic Zelda dungeons. They also stood as landmarks against the natural landscapes of Hyrule, with a distinct sense of purpose and style in the areas they existed in. They’re borderline inseparable from the places where they reside, and yet they’ve seemingly vanished without any explanation. Where Divine Beast Vah Medoh used to stand above Rito Village as a guardian protector, the robotic bird is conspicuously missing and leaves a massive void in its wake.

The ancient Guardians of infamy from Breath of the Wild have all but completely vanished in Tears of the Kingdom - with a single one being stapled to the top of an ancient laboratory, without any form of explanation. While it was clearly a focus not to alienate players who hadn’t played the original, there is something missing in not acknowledging the journey that most players will have been on in the previous outing. Tears of the Kingdom attempts to have it both ways and therefore succeeds on neither scale when respecting new and old players. This inconsistent approach to storytelling leads to an awkward outcome where no group of players can be fully satisfied with the way that things have been continued in this highly anticipated sequel. 

Beyond the links to the original game, Tears of the Kingdom also betrays its innovative and transformative gameplay in terms of its own story above all else. Despite Link losing an arm and gaining Rauru's assistance, Mineru becoming a robot-possessing spirit and Zelda literally becoming an ancient Dragon, all of these elements are rendered moot by the end of the game. Link regains his own arm, Mineru disappears and Zelda is back to being a human again. These are pivotal moments throughout the story and are massively impactful when they happen - but I can't help thinking there should be some permanence behind these moments of sacrifice. In the case of Zelda, her decision to become the Light Dragon is one that epitomises a noble sacrifice that allows Link to take the final step to restore some semblance of order and safety to the world.

On paper, Zelda herself is left as a dragon for centuries; this moment is more than impactful on its own. So for her to be restored without much challenge by the game's end really feels like a "safe" option. Despite the time-spanning and long-reaching sacrifices that have been made to get to the end of Tears of the Kingdom, the game ends as every other - Ganondorf is defeated and peace is restored to Hyrule, with Link and Zelda standing on the other side.

Link travels to the four regions - again. Link fixes their problems - again. And then reclaims the Master Sword - again. For players jumping from Breath of the Wild, there is a recognisable formula at play that punctuates the experience with an odd sense of repetition, for a game built on avoiding linearity. Some interesting ideas and setpieces are held within a recognisable sequence that feels like it misses a beat or two through a dedication to choosing your own objectives. Open-world game design and linear stories can mix and often do so with compelling results.

This commitment to safety is prevalent to the extent that it feels like the game is actively acknowledging that the transformations that these characters undergo are harmful and the better outcome is to return to the status quo. Return to what we know instead of embracing new and exciting new opportunities - which is oddly self-fulfilling.

These subtle but meaningful moments of continuity are then confusingly undercut in this game’s complete refusal to engage with the main narrative of the previous game.

Herein lies the paradox at the heart of Tears of the Kingdom, and the greater trilogy that includes Breath of the Wild and Age of Calamity. Despite pushing the greater Zelda series to new heights in terms of gameplay styles and ideas, the stories are so afraid of embracing those changes to create something truly new. The transformative nature of these games and their narratives contradict themselves to create an overarching series that feels muddled and lost in its own ideas while trying to please everybody in the process. The champions die in Breath of the Wild, only for the plot of Age of Calamity to be a time travel story about helping them to survive. There's no weight.

The so-called "Legend of Zelda" has proven to be a restrictive narrative framework where each story is almost obligated to end in the same way. And while I'm not daring to say that there should be a game where Link and Zelda canonically fail in their mission - it feels like this framework is really holding Nintendo back from exploring some exciting new potential for the series and the stories that it tells.

For how wonderfully innovative the mechanics of Ultrahand, Fuse, and Recall are, they deserve a far more exciting story to be used in than something as muddled as this. When all is said and done, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a game that is far more fun to play than it is to experience, thanks to the clunkiness of the story, and that's the biggest shame of all. I can only hope that by moving beyond this iteration of Hyrule, we're able to enter a new era for the series and really see some exciting ideas emerge.

The games industry in the late 1990s was in the midst of a technological arms race. The industry had been rapidly expanding for many years on the back of the Dotcom Boom, and the Internet was helping to proliferate gaming culture faster than ever before.

With the introduction of 3D accelerator cards, the arms race witnessed the emergence of its latest weapon. Specifically, PC games were transitioning from the pixelated 2D abstraction of sprites to the realm of three-dimensional models, bump-mapped textures, and real-time lighting, thanks to groundbreaking technologies like 3dfx Interactive’s Voodoo graphics cards. Likewise, the console market was leaving the sprites behind, with the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation both pushing the console market deeper into the 3D frontier.

Technological leaps forward were synonymous with progress in game design, while victory was decided by benchmarks and unit sales were the spoils of war. However, in the 2010s, the previously unmatched reign of high-quality AAA games was being eroded by the rise of a new era - low-quality indie games and remasters. What happened, and why?

The spectre of technology

More than any other art form, games have a deeply intrinsic relationship with the medium used to create them. A painting requires nothing more than a canvas and a type of paint. A book requires ink and paper, or in more recent eras, an e-reader and digital file. A film requires a screen and some method of projection. But games are complex, the result of commands sent to hardware, rendering processes, and translation of user inputs. They are often written in languages that are tied to a specific type of technology or platform. You cannot simply load a Nintendo game onto a PlayStation or a Mac computer. A game written for the IBM XT personal computer in the 1980s will not work on a modern Windows PC without a great deal of tinkering and emulation.

Other art forms, for the most part, do not suffer from the perishability of their medium. Paintings, sculptures, and books have existed for centuries and even millennia. Paper does not undergo “upgrades” that make previous types of paper obsolete and incompatible. Even with film, the ability to record and reproduce a film in a newer format offsets the obsolescence of older mediums.

Games do not have that luxury.

The technology we use to experience them is perpetually evolving and changing, and the rate of obsolescence vastly outstrips the best efforts of game preservationists. While preservation continues to be a challenge in all fields of art and history, the issue is most pronounced in the games industry.

Though technology has been the source of an immense challenge for game historians and preservationists, it has also been an enormous boon to game designers. The rapid advance of computing technology over the past 50 years has provided developers with an exponentially expanding toolset to communicate their ideas. Only 20 years after 1972’s Pong, Nintendo released Super Tennis on the Super Nintendo. Fifteen years after that, thousands of living rooms worldwide saw friends waving their Wii remotes back and forth while they played tennis in Nintendo’s Wii Sports. It’s hard to imagine that Allan Alcorn could have predicted what tennis games would look like a mere three decades later.

Marketing departments have exploited this relationship between games and technology from the beginning. A 1996 magazine advertisement for The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall stated:

"Daggerfall's world is twice the size of Great Britain, filled with people, adventures, and scenery as real as reality."

In 1998, Epic Games (then known as Epic MegaGames) released Unreal, featuring the debut of the now-ubiquitous Unreal Engine. It was a huge leap forward for FPS gaming, and a chief reason for its critical acclaim was Unreal’s spectacular visual fidelity. I can recall my own feelings upon first stepping outside the crashed prison ship and seeing that iconic scene of a waterfall plummeting into a deep canyon below. “Games will never look better than this,” I naively told myself.

Competitors in the console market rivalry between Microsoft’s upstart Xbox and Sony’s sophomore PlayStation 2 frequently drew battle lines based on technical performance. Gaming magazines often compared the two platforms on hardware specs and game performance, rather than assessing games purely on their design merits.

Games rely on creating memorable interactive experiences, and when the latest tech allows you to craft an immersive experience unlike any that has come before it, then it is no wonder that critical success often accompanies technical innovation. But, as the perceived leaps forward become smaller, the benefits of technical superiority become less apparent.

The visual communication plateau

Back in 1998, I thought games would never look better than Unreal, and I was wrong. I'm not stupid enough to make that statement again, but the graphical leaps forward of previous decades are today more commonly “measured steps”.

Back in 2018, EA's Battlefield V arguably heralded the dawn of the "Ray-Tracing Era", being one of the earliest major releases to natively support a technology that had by then become relatively attainable on consumer hardware. However, for many gamers, the increased visual fidelity that ray-tracing offered in those early years wasn't worth the extra cost in hardware. This was compounded by the cryptocurrency bubble and then a global semiconductor shortage that vastly inflated the price of even entry-level graphics cards. Even today, with ray tracing being more widely supported, the performance cost is arguably not worth it for many games, which will opt for higher frame rates over greater visual fidelity.

Games rely on creating memorable interactive experiences, and when the latest tech allows you to craft an immersive experience unlike any that has come before it, then it is no wonder that critical success often accompanies technical innovation.

The Ray-Tracing Era has exacerbated what has been occurring since the early 2000s: diminishing returns on pushing performance. In 1996, a 3dfx Voodoo card retailed for around USD $299 on launch (that's about USD $600 today when adjusted for inflation), and the Voodoo was simply the best consumer-grade graphics card on the market. Compare that to today's graphics card prices, and the difference in the value assessment becomes quite staggering (even when you factor in that Voodoo cards were not standalone, and needed to be paired with a standard "2D" VGA card). More to the point, though, is that the difference in visual fidelity was staggering. Seeing a game with a Voodoo for the first time was a transformative experience, but the difference between a top card like the Nvidia RTX 4090 and a budget card like the RTX 4060 is hardly earth-shattering. The fact is that, even on lower-end cards, games can still look great.

Before going on, I want to clarify one point — the difference between game performance and visual communication. Game performance — framerate, number of computations per second, physics calculations, etcetera — has continued to advance at an impressive rate. On the other hand, visual communication is the ability of a designer to communicate a concept through graphics, textures, and animations.

With raw processing power, computing power has a limit – the speed of an electron moving through matter. Computing continues to push those boundaries, but the cost-benefit analysis for games is different from that of computer engineering, and there is a point where it stops making much of a difference to visual communication. The latest hardware offers incredible leaps in performance, with the ability to emulate accurately the path of light rays on reflective surfaces, create interactive physics between objects, or upscale textures on the fly. However, the concepts that this additional hardware is able to communicate are limited. There is only so much extra detail you can add to something like an in-game car, a dog, or a building. The average gamer won’t necessarily care if powerful and expensive hardware accurately models and animates the individual strands of hair on a character’s head. All they care about is whether it looks like hair.

Back to basics

Since the dawn of the indie and remaster boom in the early 2010s, there has been a noticeable return to lower-fidelity graphics. The reasons for this are many; developers are banking on nostalgia, of course, and simple graphics require less development overhead. One might have initially argued that this was a fad, but 14 years later, I think it is safe to say that lo-fi games are here to stay.

I’d argue that one of the big reasons for the emergence of lo-fi games is the growing maturity of the games industry. The combination of the growth in indie/retro games and progress in graphics becoming more granular, with resources devoted to less obvious technical details has created an environment where audiences that consume games are assessing graphics in a more aesthetic frame of mind, rather than a technical one.

Perhaps another contributing factor is the increasingly uninspired state of AAA gaming. AAA developers have always focused on utilizing the latest technology, but despite their visually appealing nature, they have burnt much goodwill with excessive monetization, buggy releases, and bland gameplay.

The days of games being punished in reviews for not looking cutting-edge are, largely, a thing of the past. It still occurs, usually when a game advertises itself as groundbreaking when it’s not, but most of the time, criticism of graphics is more focused on artistic coherence rather than technical brilliance.

One of the great positive side effects of this change in perspective has been the reinterpretation of many classic games that were once criticised for their dated look. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura was one of these titles; it looked dated before it was even released and was judged accordingly. But as many players who braved the game’s many bugs found at the time (and many have since), Arcanum is an RPG with incredible depth and a truly unique world.

When there is no need to maintain currency with the latest tech, critics evaluate a game based on different aspects, such as mechanics, story-telling, aesthetics, and gameplay. The mechanics might still feel dated, but this allows for a reasonable comparison between many classic games and their modern counterparts.

Boomer shooters: A case study

The release of David Szymanski's DUSK in 2018 was a defining moment in the emergence of what would come to be known as the "boomer shooter" genre. After a decade of iron sights, regenerating health, and grounded settings, shooter fans were ready to return to the genre's roots: gore-soaked, lighting-fast, run-and-gun tests of player skills and reflexes. DUSK showed that, far from being a tired genre, there was still life to be found in classic shooter design.

The years since have seen an explosion of interest in the genre. HROT, ULTRAKILL, Project Warlock, Proteus, Ashes 2063, Amid Evil, Cultic, and Selaco are just some of the titles that have received acclaim. A poster child for this classic shooter rebirth was Ion Fury (Voidpoint Interactive, 2019), a game developed in the Build Engine. If that name sounds familiar to those who have been around the block a few times, the Build Engine was used for many of the games that were the inspiration for this genre rebirth, titles from the pre-millennium FPS heyday like Blood, Shadow Warrior, PowerSlave and of course, the mighty Duke Nukem 3D. Seizing on the popularity of this FPS renaissance, developers like id Software, Apogee and Nightdive Studios released remasters and remakes of classics like Doom, Quake, Rise of the Triad, Turok, and many more.

The days of games being punished in reviews for not looking cutting-edge are, largely, a thing of the past.

If you consider DUSK to be the beginning, then the boomer shooter genre has now reached the same age as Doom was when Quake III Arena was released in 1999. By most metrics, the genre is doing better than ever, but from a technical perspective, there’s been little progress. Released in 2024 by Altered Orbit Studios, Selaco was developed using the GZ Doom engine, a source port of the original Doom engine from 1993. Yet, while the tech hasn’t advanced at all, the technique has taken leaps and bounds. Developers are constantly finding new and novel ways to employ tech that is in some cases almost 30 years old.

The big reason behind the longevity of the boomer shooter revival so far, and other retro-revival genres like classic RPGs, driving sims, and strategy games, is that these aging engines and graphical styles can communicate design intent effectively, without relying on performance-taxing techniques. Yes, Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, and Forza Motorsport look spectacular, but clever indie developers have been showing for many years now that gameplay always trumps technical complexity, and an adept designer can deliver artistic impact in a dated style just as well as a designer using the latest technology.

If games are truly art, then the medium used to create them is not central to their worth. I highly doubt that Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) viewed the works of Rembrandt (1606-1669) with any less admiration or respect, simply because Rembrandt was using a medium and style that, in Picasso’s day, was no longer current. Similarly, many contemporary artists strive to recreate the style and technique of Baroque masters like Rembrandt in 2024

Likewise, a game released in 2014, or 1992, or 1979 is no less important today than it was at the time. These games are not “obsolete.” They are merely of their era. The revival of classic genres is a testament to this. The games industry has reached a level of maturity where classics are being reinterpreted as a defined style rather than simply being dismissed as obsolete.

The intrinsic relationship between games and technology will continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in game design, but it is design methodology and artistic interpretation that continue to broaden game design horizons. Progress is not framerates, clock speed, and polygon counts. It is the creative minds that drive the industry, perpetually reinterpreting their influences and breathing new life, innovation, and richness into the hobby.

Thirsty Suitors is a unique, story rich game that features love, battles, and Asian family drama (and not the kind of drama that would end up in a soap, but the mundane ones that haunt a queer South Asian).

Player character Jala is flawed, funny, and relatable. She has to skateboard through her hometown and battle her exes, even if they're cool. With a month to go before her sister's wedding, Jala has to make amends, and find out if she's invited. That isn't a lot of time for reconciliation!

I've been looking forward to the full release of Thirsty Suitors for a while since playing the demo two years ago. You can find my thoughts here in a compilation of Superjump's October 2022 Steam Demo fest recommendations. A friend was kind enough to gift it to me, and I finally got a chance to play it this June for Pride month.

What I love is that this game understands how hard it is to be queer and Asian in a diaspora world. Some family members refuse to comprehend the meaning of the word "bisexual". While Jala's parents are more understanding, with her dad providing unconditional love and support with bad puns, her grandmother has questions about why Jala is not happily settled down with someone. Namely, settled with an Indian guy who has a job and a career. For Jala to assert she doesn't just want to settle, she has to fight. Literally!

Beyond the diner scene in the demo

The Thirsty Suitors demo starts with a bus ride and tutorial. We also start there in the proper game. After a messy breakup, Jala is homeless, and without anything but a skateboard and her backpack. She scrounges up her pocket money to take the bus home to Timber Hills. A chance run-in with an ex may provide her a ride home, or an awkward battle as she and her opponent fight, flirt, and flex. The flexing is literal since Sergio has been working out since their elementary school days.

Turns out that Jala has gotten around a lot, with enough exes to rival the ones that Ramona Flowers had in Scott Pilgrim. Some are not interested after she broke their hearts, while others seek revenge. A few, like Sergio, consider getting closure. Either way, it seems Jala will have to fight them with the power of thirsty or angry taunts.

So that's where the demo ended. But then the story really begins when Jala finds out over an awkward breakfast with her parents that her big sister Aruni is getting married. Their grandmother is coming for the wedding and has been sending suitors after Jala to court her. All Indian guys, of course, who have jobs and respectable backgrounds. Jala loves Patti but isn't ready for any sort of romance after her breakup. Heck, she doesn't even know if she's back in Timber Hills to make amends with the family she left behind or improvise a way forward. Talking to Aruni is a high priority, but so is avoiding all the Indian suitors. They appear in gift boxes around town last that I checked.

I'm so relieved that the game gives settings for adjusting the battle difficulty. The battles in the demo were difficult, especially for someone like me who is not coordinated in a 3D pixel world. I'm already having trouble managing Jala on her skateboard since it's easy to nearly run over people or crash into railings. Still, you get some time to practice and determine Jala's Thirstsona based on the points she earns from battles.

Caught between expectations and tradition

This game totally renders what it's like to be adult, South Asian, and queer. Specifically, when you are out of the closet and your family remains in denial. If you're a cis woman and Indian-Asian, you have to fit the mold that before you turn 35, you need to get married to an Indian guy. Sure, you may be able to avoid it if your sisters end up with non-Indian men and scandalize mothers with a divorce, but awkward questions will arise. And those who marry non-Indian guys will always face their parents' remorse about it.

Elephants in the room exist in the game. Jala's parents don't want to talk about the fact that she cut them off for three years following a nasty fight with her mother and moving in with a woman named Jennifer. Her mother instead expresses disappointment about how she didn't bother calling while her dad suggests activities to mend bonds with Aruni and other family members. Jala doesn't want to talk about why Jennifer kicked her out and didn't even let her pack clothes. She can admit that her mother was right about Jennifer, but that's about it. Time will tell if these people will open up about what really happened, without dramatic meltdowns.

On the surface, Jala meets some of her parents' expectations. She's skinny owing to her constant skateboarding and wears clothes that some consider fashionable. In addition, she's been independent for a while and doesn't have chronic health conditions. When you hear meltdowns and needling remarks about any of these things, it sets the tone for impossible standards to meet.

In private, however, Jala's mother expresses some of the traditional views and disappointments that can hit any queer Indian adult. Her younger daughter doesn't have a high-power job that earns a lot of money or any sense of direction in life. Not to mention she's single, and her choice of romantic partners has been questionable at best. Jala has no future right now, and her past is sordid by conservative Indian standards. These small jabs hit close to home, even with her dad playing good cop. Jala internalizes all these criticisms and repeats them on loop, another thing that hits very close to home.

Then there's Aruni. The older responsible sister, who has found a decent guy, moved out but stayed within walking distance, and apparently has no issues. Jala wants to mend her bond with her older sister but doesn't know how, since they ghosted each other. She may not even have a wedding invitation! Conversation has to happen, along with answers. But Aruni also represents everything Jala isn't: the model daughter for South Asian parents. Jala implies that's why the two haven't spoken in months but someone has to break the ice.

Skating to a new life

It will be interesting to see where the rest of the story will go. Jala is by no means perfect, but she is relatable to the Gen Y South Asian in the West. Her story is bound to have as many twists and turns as her skateboard routes.

I also can't wait to see how the game will address this awkward status that Jala has as a South Asian disaster bisexual. She will have to assert herself to her grandmother and figure out a way forward after a breakup.

For strategy fans, one of the biggest pieces of news from the barrage of summer showcases was the long-awaited announcement of a new Civilization game. We're certainly overdue; with Civ (like everything else) transitioning to a live service-lite model, brand-new releases are coming farther apart. The people who started frantically searching for Civilization VII around the time that Civilization VI launched can certainly sleep easy.

That being said, we don't have much information, or any specific information, aside from the fact that Civ VII is somewhere on the horizon. 2K and Firaxis have promised more details in August, which will inevitably lead to rounds of analysis, scrutiny, criticism, and planning. What are the key mechanics? Have they changed any of the things that people have complained about? Which countries will be available out of the gate? Will we once again be subjected to the worst people in the fandom complaining about how it "looks too much like a console game," whatever that even means? These are all questions waiting for answers.

I suspect that different people are anticipating different aspects. Some want to see what combat will look like. Some want to get a handle on unique units and civilization abilities. For me, it's all about the technology tree. As someone who's obsessed with being ahead of time in tech, this is what I always scope out first.

I anticipate being disappointed because no strategy game has ever gotten the tech tree exactly right. Frankly, I'm not sure perfection is even possible.

This isn't to say that they're not trying. Civilization VI featured two very profound changes to technology: The Eureka system, which added little mini-quests to speed up research on specific upgrades, and the splitting of "social" technologies into an entirely separate tree. Both of these were significant improvements, but they still failed to address all the problems I've noticed.

So let's discuss those problems and all the ways that a developer might address them.

Issues with tech tree design

Most people probably don't have serious problems with the Civilization tech tree. It's certainly a functional mechanic, and the trees have improved greatly from earlier versions, shedding useless upgrades and making the overall design more intuitive, for example. That doesn't mean there's no room for improvement, though.

Balance issues and key technologies

The most obvious issue with tech trees is something that Firaxis has already been working on for a while now: balance issues. In older Civilization and Civ-type games, there were inevitably a handful of key technologies that any half-competent player would race toward, often ignoring everything else in the way. Often, these techs unlocked Wonders or their equivalents, which could be game-breakingly powerful in earlier games.

Both Civilization VI and Beyond Earth (and even Civ V to a lesser extent) showed signs of Firaxis trying to fix this. These games feature less powerful Wonders that are nice to have but not worth prioritizing, as well as more types of units to create more nuance in the combat. Even so, most victory types have certain essential developments that encourage this race for certain tech upgrades.

Contribution to third-act problems

Strategy games in general can have some serious issues during the late game. Put bluntly, the end of any strategy campaign can be boring. Civilization games in particular suffer from the "next turn" problem, with a player pursuing a Space Race or other late-game victory type, absentmindedly tapping the "End Turn" button for the last thirty minutes or so.

While this isn't directly a tech tree problem, the two issues are tied together. End-game technologies should feel really impressive, but the player is far more likely to just ignore anything developed in the last fifty turns or so. Either you're already on track to hit a victory condition, or you're falling short and whatever unit or building you unlock isn't going to be around long enough to change that. Technologies developed in the fifty turns before are unlikely to play much of a role in the game, simply because everyone's strategy is largely set by that point.

Narrative issues

The most abstract problem with the standard Civ tech tree is how artificial it feels.

This didn't matter all that much in older strategy games, which more resembled board games. However, strategy games have been developing in a more narrative-focused direction, and that includes Civilization. In Civ II, it was amusing that you could potentially start the Apollo program without having ever developed the wheel. It feels much more false in a modern game, and so does the idea that your country could so consciously focus its technological development.

Alternatives to the standard Civ tech tree

While some variation on the tech tree is still standard in the strategy space, there have been plenty of games - ranging from very early 4X titles to recent indies - that took other approaches. Whether these are viable options depends on a wide range of factors, including the game's overall focus (big-picture strategy vs. turn-to-turn tactical), scope, setting (historical vs. speculative), speed, and complexity.

Linear tech tree/tech tracks

A few games have simplified their tech trees to the point where they feature linear tracks down which players can advance as far as they want.

An extreme example of this is Europa Universalis 4, which features three tracks for administrative, diplomatic, and military advancements. Each track consumes a different resource, so there are no real decisions beyond deciding when to unlock the next level. This is clearly too restrictive for a series like Civ; I'm not sure anyone would or should accept it. It works in EU4 because of that game's focus on strategy over tactics - technology isn't about specific choices, but rather a component of resource management.

A more robust version can be seen in some of the older Galactic Civilizations games, in which there are many tracks that represent specific upgrades - weapons, trade, industry, etc. This solves the problem of having to unlock undesired technologies - a player in need of happiness-generating buildings can simply pursue the appropriate track without needing to research anything else first. It's not a nice narrative fit for a historical game, though, and only feels natural in GalCiv because the upgrades are more abstract in its sci-fi setting. It's also worth noting that GalCiv has moved away from this in the most recent release.

Tech web

Firaxis' own Beyond Earth experimented with a nonlinear tech tree. Rather than moving along in a fixed direction, players can develop their technology down three distinct paths representing not just different scientific disciplines, but different philosophical approaches to the relationship between humans and the alien planet. There's no specific endpoint, and many upgrades feature ample "leaf technologies" - nonessential upgrades that players only need to pursue if they are useful.

The tech web is a really interesting idea, but like most things in Beyond Earth, it's not exactly well-regarded.

I think one of the problems was the attempt to connect technology with philosophy. The idea was that players would select whatever upgrades were immediately useful, and this would guide them down one of the three paths. For example, a player in bad starting terrain would seek out technologies that helped clear that terrain and make it useful, pushing them down the Purity path. The problem is that there were perks (including unique victory conditions) that really required the player to commit to one of those three paths from an early point in the game, so it wasn't exactly a natural exploration.

Besides that, this is another situation where it just works better in a speculative setting than a historical one. Real-life technological development isn't as linear as people assume, but in a history-themed game, we still expect events to proceed in a manner similar to history.

Tech tiers

The tiered approach, as far as I know, has never been tried in this context. Tiered upgrades have been used as a replacement for skill trees (for which a tech tree is just the strategy equivalent), and even the Civilization series has experimented with tiers, such as in the ideology system in Civ V. The notion is that the player would not need to research specific precursor technologies to unlock the next one, but would unlock a new era of technologies after researching enough from the previous era.

Tiered upgrades are sometimes used in other games (such as action RPGs) because they are seen as less restrictive than skill trees. With tiers, the player isn't forced to take unnecessary upgrades to gain access to desired ones. Such a system would allow for a lot of flexibility while still keeping clearly defined eras in place.

The drawback (and the reason I think this hasn't been tried) is that it doesn't seem all that narratively satisfying. Research is an iterative process, and a tiered system would allow a player to skip what would seem like keystone technologies. Honestly though, if it's done right, a tiered tech upgrade system might actually be more realistic than a conventional tree, as it would capture real-world concepts such as the advantage of backwardness. Every society didn't have to invent the wheel ex nihilo - you ultimately know what your neighbors know.

Random/blind research

Alpha Centauri added an interesting twist to the tech tree, one that was radical enough that Firaxis enabled players to turn it off (and, full disclosure, I usually did). Technologies in Alpha Centauri are divided into four categories - Explore, Discover, Build, and Conquer, loosely mapping onto the 4X concept. Rather than researching specific techs, the player sets research priorities and then gets either a tech in that category or a precursor to one. Thus, a player looking to develop an economic base might set Discover and Build as priorities to gain new base facilities.

So what was so wrong with this concept that no one bothered trying it again for almost a quarter of a century? For one, Alpha Centauri has an old-school tech tree, with Secret Projects (their equivalent of Wonders) that can be so disgustingly powerful that some strategies are designed around them. When a single Project can make or break your playthrough, blind research is a massive disadvantage.

Alpha Centauri's tech tree is also big and messy, and that makes it too unintuitive for this system to work as intended. Say you're focusing on your military, so you do the sensible thing and focus on Conquer tech. You might not get a single Conquer tech for a while if you lack the prerequisites for them (which can include techs in the other three categories), but it doesn't matter because most of the weapons, armor, and unit types are unlocked by other tech types. It's simply not intuitive enough for blind research to work.

I think some variant of blind research could work with Civ's current style of tech tree. The more streamlined and balanced trees from the last few games are already split nicely into de facto categories (transport, civic, military) that make this much more sensible. But would players accept it? As I said, even the original version had an option to go back to the standard tree.

Narrative-linked upgrades

The most interesting prospect is foregoing a tech tree altogether. I don't mean eliminating tech upgrades altogether, though this has been done; tech-free strategy games are restricted to those with unorthodox settings, such as the high fantasy setting in Master of Magic. What I mean is getting rid of a purposeful tech tree in favor of tying tech upgrades directly to the player's actions.

This is another concept that Firaxis has played with. The Eurekas and Inspirations of Civ VI are kind of a lightweight version of this concept. Research speeds up based on how the player's civilization is growing - a country with cities on coasts will naturally develop sailing faster, those with lots of archers will gain access to better bows, and so on. It's an interesting way to blend mechanics and narrative in a way that really suits the new direction strategy games have been growing.

Would it be possible to go farther? I have seen games in which tech development is based wholly on the player's natural actions, but these tend to be city builders and base builders - distant cousins of strategy, with similar design principles but very different objectives and sensibilities. In a game that's innately competitive, a narrative-based tech tree becomes just another thing to manipulate, which is exactly what happened with Eurekas in Civ VI.

This is maybe the most interesting possibility, but also the hardest to put into effect. Maybe someday we'll see a system like this, but probably not in Civilization.

Non-tree tweaks

Most of the problems I've identified don't necessarily demand radical changes to the tech tree. A standard tree with some under-the-hood adjustments can accomplish the same thing without upsetting anyone.

I've already explained one way that Firaxis has done this - less powerful Wonders to discourage tech tree races. Other issues can be addressed in similar ways. Third-act issues can be overcome by staggering the emergence of game-changing developments. The slow pace of the endgame can be addressed with more flexible victory conditions that require more attention and input from the player. The narrative issue is trickier, but a few changes in how tech trading works and a sprinkling of random events could do wonders here.

Does it really matter?

Firaxis will almost certainly experiment with the tech tree, but I don't expect any game-changing differences. My guess is that you'll see an expansion and refinement of the Eureka system, more leaf techs to add flexibility, and perhaps some new mechanics to make the technology and civics trees feel more distinct. They may not even go that far, and could just move a few things around.

Why not make more profound changes? As much as we like to talk about "balance" as this perfect end-state of video games, it's not clear that the actual consumers really care. To the people who end up buying Civilization VII, what's important is that the tech tree be creative and intuitive, and these are things that Firaxis does reasonably well.

Honestly, it's probably for the best. I said at the beginning that perfection is likely impossible. It doesn't matter how flawlessly balanced your system is, someone is going to find a way to break it. For many strategy fans, that's the whole reason they gravitate toward these games in the first place. Make it perfect, and you're just going to encourage them to try harder.

So while I'm curious as to what Firaxis might pull, I'm not sweating too much over it. After all, I'll likely end up as one of those people trying to break the system.

Last week, after a few months of waiting, Samsung finally released its first 1TB microSD cards, the Evo Select and Pro Plus. As a Nintendo Switch user, I must say these 1TB cards have been a long time coming. But they are finally here, and they might be the perfect accessory for collectors to complement the Switch as we get closer to the console's eventual sequel – expected to be announced before the end of Nintendo's 2024 fiscal year (March 31, 2025).

The Nintendo Switch debuted in 2017 with 32GB of internal storage. The variant equipped with a Samsung OLED panel followed in 2021 and bumped the internal memory to 64GB. That's not enough storage to support a more comprehensive game collection that keeps growing, but thankfully, the Switch is equipped with a microSD card slot. And that's where I think Samsung can come to our rescue as game collectors and enthusiasts who have had to deal with limited storage.

In theory, Switch users can store games on multiple SD cards and swap between them as needed. In practice, Nintendo recommends using a maximum of two cards. Otherwise, the game selection screen can get a bit too confusing. Plus, you can't hot-swap microSD cards. You have to power off the system before swapping the memory card. The more SD cards you use with your Switch, the more cumbersome the experience gets.

Samsung, I've been waiting for you for years

I've used the Nintendo Switch as one of my main gaming systems for the past few years, and during this time, I've acquired enough games that a single 512GB Samsung microSD card was no longer enough. I had to get a second 512GB card for more games, and I wish I didn't have to split my collection in half.

Unfortunately, back when I reached my 512GB limit, Samsung had no 1TB microSD cards on offer, and other brands that had 1TB options were asking way too much money. It was cheaper to buy smaller memory cards, so, like many other Switch users, I resorted to using two.

Now, thanks to Samsung finally introducing its first 1TB microSD cards at what seems to be a fair price, having my entire game collection on a single card doesn't seem as out of reach as it used to.

The story continues after the video

All in all, I feel like Samsung's 1TB microSD cards are kind of a blessing for Nintendo Switch users with sizeable game collections that look for more convenience and hate swapping out microSD cards. Even if they won't buy a Samsung card, the company has enough brand power to help keep 1TB microSD prices in check. They were fairly ridiculous a few years ago when I wanted one, but now I feel like the market is finally stabilizing.

As for me, I'm very tempted to make a final investment in my Nintendo Switch and swap out my two 512GB cards with a single 1TB Samsung card before Nintendo announces the Switch sequel. I don't need it, but it would make my Switch gaming experience more comfortable.

Image credit: Nintendo

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There hasn't been much said recently about Intel's Emerald Rapids, time to change that
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Intel is offering 'upgradeable' features on their new Xeons, an idiotic move that will hurt the company.
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Meta is announcing their new AITemplate framework for GPUs.
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What is going on with Intel's GPU program? The chatter is negative but what is really happening?
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Why does AMD keep pissing off the press and inflicting needless wounds on their reputation?
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There has been a lot of talk lately about Intel delaying their upcoming Meteor Lake CPU but what is really happening?
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There has been a lot of talk about Intel and price increases over the past week or two, some wild some less so.
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Time for another code name on the Intel server front
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SemiAccurate hasn't done an update on Intel's consumer offerings in a while so lets rectify that.
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