“Psychologically akin to gambling” — A phrase used to describe loot boxes by two researchers who conducted a survey of more than 7000 gamers. Their report said loot boxes as they exist right now can provide publishers with an unregulated way of “exploiting gambling disorders among their customers”.
STAT | 16 — Number of international gambling regulatory agencies that co-signed a letter expressing concerns “related to the blurring of lines between gambling and gaming.”
QUOTE | “We’ve been here. We created this. The question is not how do we get more women in, but how do we stop men from pushing those women out?” — Code Liberation Foundation founder Phoenix Perry says it’s irresponsible for the industry to encourage women to get into tech and game development while ignoring the abusive culture that awaits them.
QUOTE | “That’s the problem that’s unique to esports: the mob culture, the cult-esque mindset that people get into when they’re trolling on the internet. I don’t think ignoring things is a good solution — I think we should actively speak up. Men should speak up when they see something they don’t like, women should speak up when they’re being harassed, and more women should support other women.” — Hearthstone pro Cordelia Chui says while sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia cut across all aspects of society, some of their manifestations are specific to gaming contexts.
QUOTE | “As a result of reviewing titles in development at Capcom Vancouver, Capcom has decided to cancel the development projects at this studio and will concentrate development of major titles in Japan.” — Capcom announces that it is shuttering the Dead Rising developer, ending a period of Western development that produced Dark Void, several Bionic Commando titles, and DMC, among others.
QUOTE | “It’s where I think the industry’s moving towards: Larger, more persistent, deeper, more complex simulations of worlds” — Former BioWare general manager Aaryn Flynn explains why he joined Improbable to head up the cloud-tech company’s new Edmonton studio.
QUOTE | “When someone asks, ‘Should I go through with making a VR game?’ the answer is almost always, ‘No. It’s not worth the risk. There aren’t enough players around and if your game is less than perfect, no one will like it and you’ll fail horribly.’ It’s all very pragmatic.” — Mere days before launching the VR title Blind, Matteo Luna of Tiny Bull Studios was unsure of how it would perform and unwilling to advise others to follow in his footsteps.
QUOTE | “It’s not quite like reading a book, but it’s in that same sense where you get to use your imagination to fill in the gaps. Modern games hand you everything. They spell out every little detail.” — Retrotainment co-owner Tim Hartman explains one aspect of older games that convinced him to co-found the company and create new NES cartridge games that actually work on the original hardware.
QUOTE | “PS3 games are not available for downloads because they are not compatible to run natively on PS4.” — A Sony representative explains why PlayStation Now has added the option to download PS2 and PS4 games for subscribers, but not PS3 games.
QUOTE | “Experts who can correctly evaluate the potential of one game after another simply do not exist” — Alexsander Enin of My.com gives a deep dive on how the company figures out which middling mobile games just need more time to flourish, and which ones should be shelved ASAP.
QUOTE | “The one thing that’s been in all our games is the feeling of participating in big world that doesn’t really care about you, and that will definitely outlive you. Like ordering a frappuccino at Starbucks, I guess.” — Tomorrow Corporation’s Kyle Gabler details the connective tissue between Little Inferno, Human Resources Machine, and 7 Billion Humans.
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