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Our regular PC game round-up column underwent further mysterious ructions during my absence last week, when substitute news chief Brendy introduced a list format with subheadings. I can only assume he had been driven mad by terror of being eaten by the Maw. Regardless, I will trust his instincts and follow in his footsteps. Here’s what’s coming down the pipe this week.
Among the first terrain fixtures you discover on Dune: Awakening‘s Arrakis are moisture seals: puffy wads of fabric that fill cave entrances to create makeshift microclimates, where travellers can escape the constant threat of dehydration. Awakening’s moisture seal are, in practice, the paper lid on a tube of wilderness Pringles: poke through with your dagger to find resources and the occasional hostile NPC. But what if you could place your own moisture seals, rather than just tearing open the ones left by NPCs? I’d love to play a game in which you are constantly reading the barren landscape for the shallowest of shady depressions that can be plugged and converted into shelters. Think of the attentiveness it might teach, the sensitivity to the geometry of a world that can drain your O2 bar dry in moments.
I want Grand Theft Auto 6 to be good, and if I had to bet money on it, I’d guess it likely will be. The world is weird right now, and I want both you and me to enjoy driving a car into a man. It very much sounds like it’s got Stephen Root from Barry in it! I love Stephen Root from Barry!
But, god, am I feeling some kind of way about it constantly sucking all the air out of the room. It feels less like we’re looking forward to a game, more that we’re in thrall to a captor that knows it can command attention whether it earns it or not. ( I do not believe Red Dead Redemption 2‘s excellence earns uncritical hype for all future projects, lest we forget Cyberpunk). There’s plenty that can be said about the recent trailer, but if I had to sum up my own misgivings with it, it’s that it has an air less of “look at this cool thing we made, we can’t wait to share it with you”, more dick-swinging swagger, a cocksure sense of, well, you’re going to buy this anyway, here’s some absurdly good-looking beer to tide you piggies over.
I started writing this piece as a sort of “oh, this was cool!” bit of game archaeology after seeing a post from Scott Krol – who shares consistently fascinating bits of ephemera on video and tabletop games – on the physical bits that came with 1984’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy adventure game.
“Infocom, known for their brilliant text adventures, was the first company to put physical items in with their games,” writes Scott. “In fact, Infocom were attributed as the first to coin the term “feelies” for physical goodies that came with the game”.
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I’m currently reading Dorothy Parker, who did more for the language than I’d previously though. I’m having quite regular moments of “oh, she said that”. More proof, if any were needed, that the soul of wit is as much depression and alcoholism as it is brevity.
This week it’s game city design expert and author of Virtual Cities, Konstantinos Dimopoulos! Cheers Konstantinos! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
Right, sorry parents that proudly put their kids’ borderline impressionist drawings on the fridge, there’s a new bare minimum you have to meet. If you’re not turning your child’s drawings into full on video games, then I’m sorry to say you’re not doing a good enough job. This doesn’t apply to Artur Latkovsky, though, who is quite literally doing that with his game Odd Dorable (I’m sure I don’t need to explain the name to you), a game where every single bit of art in the game was made by his four-year-old daughter.
Horror asymmetric multiplayer game Dead by Daylight is celebrating its ninth anniversary later this year, an amount of time so large it really makes you think “man, most live service devs should have had the foresight to make their game a decade ago, huh?” With that anniversary approaching imminently, developer Behaviour Interactive held a year nine anniversary broadcast where there was one reveal that’ll have you going “yeah that makes sense” and another where you’ll say “ok, sure.”
Risk of Rain 2 is still trudging along, it seems, as yesterday publisher Gearbox announced that a new expansion is on the way, Alloyed Collective. In a post over on Steam, the Risk of Rain team explained that alongside updating the game’s previous bit of DLC, Seekers of the Storm, they’ve brought on some “additional folks that are familiar with Risk of Rain to help us build out the next DLC.” Alloyed Collective is apparently still a while away from being ready, but it sounds pretty jam packed.
DayZ creator Dean Hall is alleging that Unity are threatening to revoke all licenses for workers at his current studio Rocketwerkz, the team behind Icarus. The developer made this claim in a lengthy post on Reddit saying that Unity are doing based on “bogus data about private versus public licenses.” Hall shared what he claims is an email from Unity dated May 9th where they explained that the Unity Compliance Team has flagged Rocketwerkz’s account as according to their data, the developer “currently [has] users using Unity Personal licenses when they should under the umbrella of your Unity Pro subscription.”
There’s a new union in town. Yesterday, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) announced that almost 200 developers at Activision Blizzard working on Overwatch have joined the union. They’re doing so as the Overwatch Gamemakers Guild-CWA (OWGG-CWA), described in a press release as a “wall-to-wall unit that includes game developers across all disciplines, including design, production, engineering, art, sound, and quality assurance.”
