Saturday, November 25, 2017

News:: Farfetch'd is available in Pokemon Go for a limited time

Just last week, Niantic announced that it would be holding a global catch challenge for Pokemon Go over the holiday week. As incentive to get people playing, the developer promised to unlock rewards for different tiers, with the final tier making Farfetch'd available in worldwide (and Kanghaskhan in East Asia). The goal for that tier was a cumulative total of three billion captured Pokemon in six days; somehow, people around the world made that ludicrous number happen.

Farfetch'd will now be available for the next 48 hours. I'm not sure if that started today, but some people on Twitter are reporting they have already found the creature. Regardless, having a new Pokemon to catch that was previously region exclusive is neato.

Farfetch'd is available in Pokemon Go for a limited time screenshot

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News:: Robit Riddle is a kid's gateway into role-playing

Tabletop role-playing has survived all these years, through the advent of video games and the resurgence of board games starting in the 1990s. One reason it's still around is that it provides an experience those other media don't. It gives players a venue to tell a story as a group, to think laterally, and to play off each other's ideas.

One of the biggest barrier to entry into role-playing is the need for a dungeon/game master. And it's not just a DM the group needs for a successful campaign, but a good one. One who will provide interesting situations, force difficult decisions, and allow players the freedom to deviate from the pre-written path.

Robit Riddle is trying to address both of these to an extent. Billed as a storytelling game, it serves up the skeleton of the story, but leaves the details to the dice and the imagination.

Robit Riddle is a kid's gateway into role-playing screenshot

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News:: Why do people enjoy, yet loathe, Gacha games?

Clickbait proof: I hate exploitative practices in freemium games. I only advocate playing these games when spending a budget comparable to an MMO subscription, if not less (actually, always less). I do not consider microtransactions exploitative by default, but it's are extremely easy to go off the slippery slope, especially in retail priced games. We clear? I hope so, because I’m aware I’m treading on thin ice with this topic.

Do Ya Feel Lucky, Punk?

The gaming market has become over-saturated with the concept of paid lootboxes, both in standard console affairs and free-to-play attractions. There’s a lot of self-explanatory reasons to be unhappy with the concept of paying money to more or less enter a lottery for game content. Yet, one particular subset of them - colloquially known as the "Gachapon" game - maintains a degree of goodwill. Free players flock around them, including myself, my friends and even several other Destructoiders. Even here, on one of the platforms with the most vocal outcry against this type of monetization.

I want to be transparent about this subject matter. During the Unpopular Opinion meme that QToid perpetuated near the time I first joined this website, I said the following:

Unpopular Opinion: I think gachapon games are made better for their communities by their random nature.

I didn’t elaborate on this post at the time because I wanted to write an article on it. But the more I reflected on this, the more I felt there was something wrong about that thought. The connotation of that opinion felt far too positive for what was obviously mutating into a harmful trend.

I was definitely going to address the exploitative nature of gacha games in my original article idea, in a way similar to my clickbait proof above, but I wasn’t going to place a lot of emphasis on it. As I noticed more and more examples of this practice being used for blatant predation, such as in
Shadow of War, I felt I needed to do some soul-searching before I knew how I really wanted to approach this subject matter.

Today, I’ve decided to dive deep into the uglier half of that topic too. I want to deconstruct my own opinion, and explain why we still enjoy these types of games, knowing their blatant flaws, and to explore how we might see the model iterate beyond those ugly ethical issues. So let me ask you the question: Why do I, and other people, still enjoy gacha games?

I’ll admit that, for me, it’s partially a matter of my oddly specific tastes. I like leveling up a personal army of RPG characters, but I could just play Pokémon or Ever Oasis to achieve that. I like the extreme convenience of playing on my phone while I listen to a podcast or something, but I could just buy Super Mario Run instead. I like fighting alongside dozens of friends as a community marches ever further towards endgame content, helping each other out along the way, but I could just play Final Fantasy XIV or Dragonball Xenoverse and catch up with my pals there. No, there has to be something unique to gacha games that pulls me, and others, in.

I said what I did on QToid because there is one specific appeal the random nature of gacha pulls offers. One advantage that can’t be replicated without that random element, which makes or breaks personal interest in the formula.

A Rare draw crystal in Granblue Fantasy.

We tend to define "gacha games" as games where the content used by players to build a loadout or team - such as equipment, party members, cards, or the like (for simplicity, I’ll refer to them all as cards) - is obtained at random. That’s their most basic definition. But they also tend to be freemium games-as-services, that receive continual updates with new cards to pull, more content to challenge, and so forth, funding that content through microtransactions players buy for digital card pulls. This changes everything about the typical dynamic games have with their equivalent of cards, but for the sake of being specific, I’ll compare Final Fantasy VI (an excellent classic JRPG) to Granblue Fantasy (one of the most popular gacha RPGs).

In Final Fantasy VI, all the cards are available to all players, just with certain prerequisites set in stone. You need to reach X story point to get Y character into your party, you need to open Z treasure chest to obtain Q weapon, etc. Everyone has the same toolset, the same options, the same strategies available. You could write a guide for every player to follow to optimize their playthrough, and provided everyone is roughly as skilled as each other, everyone who follows that guide to the letter will have the same experience.

Compare that to
Granblue Fantasy, where most cards are obtained by random pulls, which can theoretically happen at any point of a player's playtime. Several endgame cards - such as Omega weapons and Eternals characters - are obtained via special conditions that anyone can fulfill, with enough time and effort. But for the most part the core of most players’ loadouts and teams will be made of gacha cards. Every player has a different toolset, different options, and different strategies available.

The gacha dynamic with how you obtain cards can be interpreted in two ways. On one hand, it’s annoying to not be able to have exactly the tools you want without forking over an unreasonable amount of money. On the other hand, because every player has a unique and randomly assigned toolset, every player can have a unique experience, even if just slightly different. Even if you religiously study the game’s wikis and guides, you won’t know which tools you have available for your next big challenge until you face that point, having spent as many or as few of your rolls as you chose beforehand.

It introduces an element of uniqueness and personal individuality to your cards and how you progress through the game. This dynamic appeals to players who enjoy exploring and experimenting with game mechanics, at the expense of players who like to collect and complete everything. Drawing parallels to the Bartle taxonomy of player types, it settles games which follow this model into a niche that favors explorers over achievers.

The Chrono Turtle, one of Cedi's favorite low-rarity monsters in Puzzle and Dragons.

But my old QPost didn’t just say I believe this dynamic to be a benefit to (certain) players; I said it benefits the community of players. What I meant by that is that this dynamic promotes community interaction, intentionally or otherwise. Because every player has their own individual set of cards to play with, you can’t create a single all-encompassing strategy guide for the game. Well, theoretically you can, but either it’d be littered with labyrinthine Choose Your Own Adventure page directions or it’d be so broad that it can’t possibly address every single question you’d have.

Yes, there are dozens of guides available for
Granblue and similar games, but they can’t offer nitty-gritty advice like the guide to a Final Fantasy VI 100% playthrough or what have you. Instead, players are constantly refining and reiterating upon their own strategies with their own cards, depending on what their cards are. Social elements such as borrowing friends’ cards in battle already encourage interaction, but that only applies on a surface in-game level, and usually a very limited one at that. The open-ended nature of building loadouts with random cards? That opens up tons of opportunity to make discussion with other players, extremely similar to the appeal of discussing strategies in trading card games. To exchange ideas on how to make the most of what cards you have. To share card collections and discuss what you like or dislike about them. To debate over who is the best girl!

Freemium games have the added bonus of lowering the barrier of entry into themselves (As a quick aside, the whole barrier to entry thing is why power-based gachas/lootboxes in retail priced games is a bad and counter-intuitive idea for the consumer). By requiring that players only invest time into them instead of time and money, they open the floodgates to more players to join them. More players means more opportunities for their playerbases to find other players to compare cards with. More opportunities for people to connect. I’ve said before that I consider one of the greatest strengths of gaming to be its ability to bring people together. This mechanism, thanks to its random and freemium nature, incentivizes countless players of different mindsets and different toolsets to connect and mingle with each other.

A barracks filled with Cedi's Fire Emblem Heroes characters.

These are the big reasons why I think me and my friends have gotten into so many gacha games. But there are a lot of conditional “ifs” that, when dissected, caused me to question my prior advocacy for the genre.

Let’s backtrack to what I said about the dynamic gacha systems create with their cards.

”On one hand, it’s annoying to not be able to have exactly the tools you want without forking over an unreasonable amount of money. On the other hand, because every player has a unique and randomly assigned toolset, every player can have a unique experience, even if just slightly different.”

Unfortunately, this logic neglects one very prominent subset of players; those who will have exactly the tools they want because they keep forking over an unreasonable amount of money. It’s common knowledge that such players, known as whales, are the primary source of income behind this model. These games don’t need to convince 100% of its playerbase to spend $5 when they can instead convince 1% of its playerbase to spend $5,000.

Which brings us to this model. The elephant in the room.

The list of current summoning events in Tales of the Rays. Note that the highlighted banner is a limited time event that has expired by the time this writing is published.

Every gacha game I’ve ever seen is designed so that you always roll from banners that promote a specific set of cards. Sure, you can just roll whatever from them, but they’re prominently advertised as an opportunity to pull whatever is featured on the banner. If you watch a video or a stream focused on a player making gacha pulls, chances are there’s something in the title or on a sidebar or from their mouth mentioning a “target” card; a specific result that is their primary concern.

This is the mentality that banners promote, encouraging you to spend more and more until you obtain your “target”, because banners are your best shot at getting a target. Now, if you approach these games with a mentality of “never spend more than $5 or $10 per banner”, that point becomes moot… to you. The problem remains relevant to hundreds, thousands of whales who will buy as many pulls it takes to obtain their target. And hey,
if you have the money to spare and if you enjoy spending it on this kind of stuff? There’s no problem in that by itself! But that brings us to the bigger ethical questions; do you actually have the money to spare, and do you actually enjoy spending it?

Oftentimes, when gacha players are rolling for a target card in front of an audience on video, their reaction to not getting their target isn’t “oh, at least I got this other good thing”. They might have that reaction if they get lucky, but if they just get a bunch of low-rarity pulls or even a high-rarity pull that isn’t what they were looking for, you can expect them to show regret. That they didn’t enjoy spending their money because they didn’t get their target.

Furthermore, whales are not just people with money to burn. Whales are also easily exploited people who will throw away so much money that they put themselves into a financial hole, just because they believe they need their target card for a myriad of personal reasons. Because if they miss that one-week banner, it’ll be a heck of a lot harder to pull their target in the future, if still even possible at all. So why do they spend so much of their money anyway?

I’ve spoken with some of my friends, who are also into gacha games, about this whaling dilemma before. One of them responded with “it’s their money, and it’s their responsibility if they use it wrong”. I agreed at first, but as I stewed over it, something didn’t sit right with me about this sentiment. After all, people don’t always make their own decisions; they are often influenced by others. Peer pressure tells us to go with the flow, role models tell us to be like them (even if they never say so), and advertisements - hint, hint - tell us to spend our money on specific things. The way people spend money is every bit as much of the seller’s responsibility as it is the consumer’s, because the seller has the power to convince people to buy things they might not buy otherwise. It’s why people hate sleazy used car salesmen; because they sell crap is part of the reason, but the bigger reason is that they convince people to buy crap.

Gacha game developers are most likely aware of their players’ spending habits, and the ethical thing to do would be to spur players to spend money with responsible limitations. Of course you want to tell people to give you their money, that’s how you keep a free service running, but there’s a threshold where suggesting purchases to run a free service can be more harmful than good-natured. Hey, what do gacha game advertisements say, again..?

SPEND MONEY, GET THE THINGIES

That you should keep pulling until you get your target.

The reason legal systems are giving to not recognize lootbox/gacha models as gambling is because every time you spend money on them, you obtain something you can’t get otherwise. If you look at these games the way I outlined earlier as being the model’s unique strength, you maybe kinda sorta could argue in favor of that ruling, but there’s a gaping hole in that logic. Their developers and publishers are obviously promoting a radically different mentality that primarily rewards that tiny chance of a 5* SSR Omni-Level card. They want people to gamble on their targets. They are convincing people to gamble. It’s fudging gambling.

Which brings me back to my original question… why do we still enjoy gacha games? And what can we do about that huge issue?

Playing a freemium game without spending any money on it doesn’t really do much to support the model. It’s not like the conundrum of paying $60 to play a retail-priced game that uses lootboxes to gate off content and progression previously taken for granted (Cedi says as he nervously sweats and flashbacks to a statement in Destructoid’s Shadow of War review nobody remembers him saying but he regrets saying and has since backpedaled on oh gosh he’s dwelling in monologue get out OUT OF THE PARENTHESES) because, well, these games are free. That’s the whole point of the model. You choose how much you want to support the model as you play it, including zero dollars for hundreds of hours. I see no ethical quandaries with continuing to pour hours into it. If anything, it could send the message of “this game does enough right for me to put so much time into it, but I’m not happy to spend money on it”. So… really, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying these games that way. As long as the gameplay is good in the first place, of course I keep enjoying them!

Unfortunately, this doesn’t change the issue much because we’re not as loud as whales. We could debate over whether it’s right or wrong to ever spend a few bucks on these kinds of games, but in the end, it wouldn’t actually make a strong impact either way. Like I said, these games don’t need to convince 100% of its playerbase to spend $5 when they can instead convince 1% of its playerbase to spend $5,000.

Whether you enjoy these games or not is a personal matter; the same can be said for how much money people are willing to spend on these games. Instead of thinking about whales, we should turn our attention back towards the law. Legal institutions don’t have a great track record for understanding the impact games have as a medium. To get them onto our level of understanding, we need to raise our voices with facts and logical threads of cause and effect. We need to speak up not on the principle of what these games offer, but on the principle of how they promote themselves.

A selection of Granblue Fantasy's roster.

A handful of gacha games have inched towards relying less on that high-stakes only gambling mentality. I can’t say they definitely aren’t exploitative, because they still cling to the same trappings I’ve outlined as problematic in this very article, but we need every step in the right direction we can get. Granblue Fantasy in particular makes a few interesting choices, such as low-rarity only quests, but the Surprise Ticket (or Suptix) is the biggest one. It’s a 24-hour offer that becomes available at random times, usually in intervals lasting a few months. The Suptix lets you choose any character currently available in the gacha with a single purchase, and though you can only buy one every 24 hours, you may buy another when it’s offered again. Granted, paying approximately $30 just for a single character feels like too much (even though it comes with a 10-pull ticket too, but that’s not why people buy Suptix) unless you really like the game, but my point is that it’s the kind of microtransaction I know I'd be satisfied with if I bought it regardless of RNG. My hope is if we see the ESRB and other groups threaten to bring down the hammer, Granblue and other games may pick up the pace on those steps in response, since they’ve felt the path.

When a demon possesses your friend, your first thought isn’t to kill your friend. Maybe it’d work. Or the demon might find a new body to possess instead. Rather, the best outcome is to exorcise the demon, to save what we love while getting rid of the root problem. I’m not saying I believe this model exploded in popularity because of what I consider to be its unique positive. On the contrary, I’m pretty sure the games that pioneered this model did so mostly to emulate the lucrative TCG market for profit first and foremost. And profit it did.

That’s why we continue to see this practice spin out of control. But to assume the entire design model in all of its implementations is sustained through malice and greed alone is too shallow an argument to kill the demon. Some of these games have done a lot of good for a lot of people. They’ve spawned communities with deep webs of friendship. They’re inspired passionate fan-art. They’ve spunoff into less dubious models to great effect, such as
Puzzle and Dragons getting a 3DS game with zero microtransactions. I myself have spent hours rambling about Fire Emblem Heroes and Granblue Fantasy with my close pals as we play them together, and I enjoy every second of that time! That’s why I want to see these games leave behind their ugly exploitation. Is it realistic for me to expect that? Not particularly so. But it’s probably more likely than pulling a 5* Tana and Bluecina in the same summoning session.

Pulling a 5* Tana and Bluecina in the same summoning session.

Why do people enjoy, yet loathe, Gacha games? screenshot



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News:: 10 Hot Tips to tame your backlog

Man, I've always wanted to write a clickbait listicle. It's so liberating.

As it stands, I'm rather happy with my gaming backlog. It's at 80% completion with 88 games to go at this point in time. Marred by the majority of them being JRPGs, but, hey. From what I gather, that's relatively low when compared to the average gamer. What are my secrets, you ask? Let me tell you.

What follows are my hot tips (heh) to tame your backlog. It might work for all kinds of backlogs, but it's aimed at games primarily.

Hot Tip #1: Get a Backloggery account

Knowledge is power and with a Backloggery account, you'll know exactly what you're up against. The site sorts games by system and lets you tag them to your liking. It then uses this information to give you stats like those I wrote above.

The only annoyance is that you'll need to input all your games manually, but no-one said this was going to be easy. I actually found it relaxing to go through all my games and write them down.

Hot Tip #2: Know your taste

As a wise weasel once said, playing games you don't like is a pain in the eyes. With that in mind, you should only buy games you will probably like. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't experiment a tad, but keep it reasonable.

If you don't like horror games or visual novels, then don't buy them. It'll save you money, and make it easier to play the games you have.

Hot Tip #3: Limit yourself to 1-3 games at a time

This might be the toughest thing on the list for the majority of you. But in order to beat a game, you need to focus. And nothing lets you focus like only having a handful of games on your mind.

I can't really help you here, it just takes willpower and planning. But if you only have games you want to play, then it shouldn't be impossible.

Hot Tip #4: Limit replays & multiplayer games

The point of clearing your backlog is to play new games, so playing old ones will only hinder you. You shouldn't keep yourself from old games completely, but it's worth thinking about if you already have another incomplete game, that could scratch the same itch. Sequels and spiritual successors can help you greatly in this regard.

Multiplayer games are a different beast. They can eat up a lot of time and be great fun. As such, I think you should be rather selective with them. Only play the ones you really love and play games from your backlog instead of mediocre multiplayer ones.

Hot Tip #5: Learn to love the nuke

Even with my selective game acquisition, bad games slip through the cracks. When that happens, I go for the nuclear option and exorcise them from my backlog completely.

There's no shame to be had by doing so, just be sure that it's so bad that you'll never want to touch it again.

Hot Tip #6: Swallow your pride and use guides

Being lost does you no good, so don't feel bad over using guides. It'll save time and make 100% completion more likely, meaning you'll be less tempted to replay anything.

I wanna say that using guides saves me around 10 hours per JRPG, which is amazing. The less time I can spend doing random battles in a puzzle room, the better.

Hot Tip #7: A wishlist is better than a backlog

A nice feature of both Backloggery and Steam is the ability to put a game in a wishlist. It's free to do so, which makes it a great reminder for games you have a passing interest in.

The true value of this is that you essentially put the games in your backlog without buying them. That is both fiscally sound and won't drown you in as much guilt.

Hot Tip #8: Be wary of bundles

Game bundles are the tool of the Devil and are to be feared. When buying one, it's imperative that you get your money's worth. So make use of Hot Tip #2 when you decide.

And when you have bought one, go ahead and scour it for games to nuke. The risk of there being something crap in there is rather high.

Hot Tip #9: Patience is a virtue

When buying games, there are many factors to keep in mind. It's generally to your benefit to wait before buying. Prices get lower, reviews are released and patches drop, all of which will only do you good.

But some games are still worth a launch day purchase of course. It could be a multiplayer game that you want to experience with a high playerbase, it could be made by a company that you want to support, or it could simply be amazing.

But you also need to be careful with certain games. Some games, particularly JRPGs, will never drop in price or be available for long. So do you your research and make sure you won't miss a game because of greed.

Digital games usually have a long shelf life, so you can probably wait a few years before you buy them. But they can also be de-listed, so you need to keep yourself informed. All of this is a mighty balancing act, but it must be done.

Hot Tip #10: Choice by poll

For you indecisive lot who can't choose their next game to play, consider setting up a poll. Generally speaking, the popular choice will be a game of some value to you. That's dependent on you buying good games in the first place, of course.

There's also the risk that you'll have to play something immediately that you wanted to save for later, but that's life.

There you have it. Now, sally forth and best the beast!

10 Hot Tips to tame your backlog screenshot

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News:: Fernando Alonso is the first F1 driver with an eSports team

You've seen basketball and soccer (aka football) teams dive into eSports, and now it's the turn for individual Formula One drivers to get in on the action. McLaren Honda driver Fernando Alonso has launched an eSports team in partnership with Logitech, with Alonso serving as a team principal. The FA Racing G2 Logitech G team -- yes, it's a mouthful -- will compete in a slew of games across multiple platforms, and has already enlisted F1 eSports league finalist Cem Bolukbasi.

Via: Reuters

Source: G2 eSports (Twitter)



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News:: Review: The Punisher (Season 1)

Netflix's announcement of a full Punisher series definitely caught a lot of folks by surprise. Jon Bernthal's turn at the popular anti-hero was received well enough that a full series seemed like a good idea at the time.

As the first Marvel Netflix series in the post-Defenders era, and the first series not included in Marvel's initial plans, The Punisher definitely had enough space to really make an impact outside of the previously set standard. 

Despite being unlike every other Marvel show on Netflix thus far, The Punisher eventually succumbs to the same issues marring its predecessors. 

Review: The Punisher (Season 1) screenshot

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News:: Seven myths that gamers believe in

During my morning commute today, I was thinking about falsehoods that gamers believe. Over the years that I've used the internet, I've seen a lot of gamers talk about their theories and ideas about games and the gaming industry as a whole. Sadly, these gamers are often mistaken about their beliefs. Let's take a look at a few of them:

Game companies care about me!

Image result for caring

Wrong. They do not care about you. 

Smaller, independent developers might care about you. That is completely possible. But publicly traded corporations do not. Not even a little bit. A publicly traded company cares about one thing, and one thing only: maximizing shareholder value. That's it. They don't care about their customers as people. I know mom says that you're special and that everyone loves you. But, despite what some politicians will tell you, corporations aren't people. People might love you, but corporations don't. 

I want to go to E3!

Image result for e3

As a kid, you eagerly awaited the annual issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly in which they'd preview every game they saw at E3. They'd talk about the event. They'd throw in pictures of booth babes. Oh my, did you want to go? It's been your dream ever since.

In reality, you don't want to go to E3. Firstly, you won't get in to the press conferences, which is where all the cool stuff happens. All you'll be able to do is go out on the show floor and wait 8 hours in line to play a demo of a single game for just a few minutes. Everything significant at E3 is inaccessible to John Q Public. After the press conferences, the real game previews take place behind closed doors and they are by invitation. 

If you really want to go to a convention, go to PAX. You can actually play games there. You can meet real developers. You can play actual games. You can also attend panels where developers talk about those games. Or so I've heard. I've never been to either. One day!

Lots of cash means the company is healthy!

Image result for dark knight cash burn

"Nintendo is doing great! They have 9 billion dollars of cash in the bank!"

I've seen people make similar statements about Nintendo and other companies over the years. Here's the deal. That company that you fawn over might very well have huge cash reserves. That doesn't make them a healthy company. Does a company need cash? Absolutely. It's used for all kinds of things. But sitting on huge stores of cash is foolish. It doesn't grow your business. If you want to grow, you spend your cash on Research and Development, Marketing, Advertising, and Investments. You purchase assets. The cash doesn't sit idly. Don't look to cash as a sign of a health company. 

If a company is pro-consumer, they will be successful!

Image result for pro consumer

Some people believe that all a company needs to do in order to achieve success is to put the consumer first. Clearly, this is not true.

We have seen countless examples of this proving to be false. Consider lootboxes. These are very unfriendly to the consumer, but they are turning out lots of revenue for companies. Similarly, many mobile games require huge investments of cash by the consumer in order to make any notable progress (games like Boom Beach or Game of War: Fire Age are good examples).

Lastly, I'll mention Microsoft. They have decided that every game they put on the XBone will also be released on PC. This is a hugely consumer-friendly move. It is utterly shocking that they would do this. But what is the net result? It obliterates any exclusivity on the XBone, which in turn makes it less appealing to consumers. If they can play the games on other systems, why buy an XBone to play them? 

Ultimately, you need to realize that companies exist to make money. Being your best friend isn't always the way to make money.

The Zelda timeline makes sense!

Stop it.

The Zelda timeline is nonsense. Just look at this thing. It's insane. Stop trying to convince people that it makes sense. 

The biggest thing is the split into three separate timelines. Why? Why do they do this? It doesn't make any sense. There are three paths, all based on Ocarina of Time. First is when you beat the game as an adult, which is what actually happens in the game. Second is when you defeat Ganon as a kid, which you can't do in the game. Third is if you get a game over and Ganon rules the world (why doesn't the timeline diverge on any other game over?). 

It's just silly. More so, it's unnecessary. Just look at Zelda as a collection of folk tales, all based around character archetypes. Enjoy them each separately. Forget about the timeline.

If I tweet at game companies, they will listen to me!

Image result for social media

Game companies have social media engineers that run their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media pages. These are normal people, just like you and me. They're just doing their job and doing what their told. They have no actual influence over corporate decision making. If you tweet at them and tell them you want a sequel to your favorite game, it will do exactly nothing. 

If you want to support a game franchise, buy the games. Vote with your dollar. Tell your friends about the games and get them to buy copies. Don't think that shouting into the void on twitter is making a difference.

But if it makes you feel better, shout away!

Half-Life 3 confirmed!

It's not coming guys. It's just not. 

So, what do you think? Tell me what I got wrong! Share with us any other myths you see that need to be squashed!

Seven myths that gamers believe in screenshot

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News:: Get your Sanic on in Sonic Forces with some free DLC

The Sonic series has seen a lot of peaks and troughs, so obviously the internet has latched onto the darker side of things and created Sonic memes. The most prominent of those is "Sanic," a poorly drawn MS Paint rendition of the blue blur with terrible grammar. Just looking at that image for too long makes me question my role in life.

With the latest Sonic Forces DLC, Sega has included a "Sanic" shirt. You can put it on your OC and contemplate your meager existence in life. Where did humanity go so wrong?

Get your Sanic on in Sonic Forces with some free DLC screenshot

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News:: Collecting video games: Time travel made possible

Ah, nostalgia—that sublime elixir that prods me through my daily drudgeries. Dead end jobs, failed relationships, endless bills and setbacks—sometimes I wonder whether, were it not for the buoying, gilded memories of simpler years, I’d just sink beneath life’s tepid sea.

And I’m not alone; even the happiest of souls find solace in their past, when the world seemed unsullied and distant, when life was a safe, automated journey between home and school. For souls like myself, video games became the “filler” between these pillars, magic portals wherein I could reach worlds far beyond my neighborhood. A medium in which I possessed a purpose, be it hero or savior or simply a babysitting dinosaur.

Oh, the memories of being green and always hungry. Yep, being a teen wasn't always easy!

Twenty years later, these 8 and 16-bit greats still hold the same glamour. While I might wax nostalgic on some past cartoon or movie, only video games allow me to truly venture backward, to revive a time otherwise dead. I can return to the same exotic locales I explored as a kid, finding towns exactly as I left them, filled with the same sights and denizens. I can relive my former glories, saving princesses and blasting aliens, and I can confront my old failings, succumbing once more to Ninja Gaiden. With each console I transform, from kid to teen and back again, both versions needing escape and finding wonder. Indeed, gaming is exactly that—a perpetual time capsule, an eternal meal.

This is why I collect. Not so I can brag about my stack of carts, not because I’m a hoarder or discriminating investor. No, I collect only to remember; my shelves are not rows of carts and discs, but corridors of doors that all lead elsewhere, opposite of here.

Like the doors in Monsters Inc., a game is a gateway to a different land.

So…be a collector! Capture, then preserve and savor, a piece of that living past. Indeed, collecting doesn’t mean owning hundreds of games or spending years chasing every rarity. It just means saving, playing, and celebrating the titles already there—now and forever.

Because someday, you’ll be yearning for today.

 

Feel free to check out this blog's sister podcast for more about collecting.

Collecting video games: Time travel made possible screenshot

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News:: Aegis Gundam finally coming to Gundam Versus, Zaku 1 and Raider Gundam receive trailers

It's been a busy week for Gundam Versus to say the least. In addition to the on-time release of the Atlas Gundam and Zeydra DLC, Bandai Namco has dropped two trailers for next week's DLC and revealed two more DLC units. The new DLC is the most notable aspect, as it introduces another franchise entry into the game, but also brings in one of, if not the, most demanded characters.

The Aegis Gundam and its pilot Athrun from Gundam SEED are coming to the game.

Aegis Gundam finally coming to Gundam Versus, Zaku 1 and Raider Gundam receive trailers screenshot

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News:: Jigsaw puzzles still rule, but maybe this Mario puzzle kinda sucks

Late last year, I persuasively argued that jigsaw puzzles are extremely cool. My rhetoric was so sound that I was even cited in some generic local news blog thing with quotes that I definitely didn't say. I'm probably the foremost authority now.

That's why you should believe me when I tell you that this Super Mario jigsaw puzzle seems lame as hell. Look at this fuckin' thing. Conservatively, it's probably 60 percent red. What a pain in the ass.

Jigsaw puzzles still rule, but maybe this Mario puzzle kinda sucks screenshot

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