Opinion by Matt S. Square Enix announced a bevvy of new Dragon Quest remakes and new projects today. Most of them are good, exciting announcements, suggesting that the series might be hitting a new purple patch. Rather than summarise them all, I’ll just link you to the various Gematsu stories,…
Read MoreVideo by Matt S. It often feels like it’s impossible to talk about video games without ending up talking about their price, as though the capitalism is related to the quality of the artwork. I would argue that they’re independent of one another, and while the cost of games is…
Read MoreOpinion by Harvard L. It’s hard to state the significance of Essays on Empathy (reviewed here) without at least mentioning the significance of Game Jams. More than half of the games in this collection were originally created for Ludum Dare, or other time-restrictive challenges. In a Game Jam, participants are…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. One of the few big blockbusters that I have cared about in recent decades is about to get a long-awaited remaster. Yes, I am talking about the Mass Effect trilogy. Putting aside Andromeda, which was a horrible step in the wrong direction, this series of space…
Read MoreVideo by Matt S. From the release of Resident Evil Village, the big debate about game length versus value has jumped up. Again. This is so exhausting. I realised that I haven’t actually done a video on game length to this point – I’ve written articles, sure, but no video.…
Read MoreFor years now the games industry, media, and community has been calling for the Australian government to do something to support the games industry. We look over at places like Poland and Canada, which have become thriving hubs of game development and the arts thanks to government investment, and can’t…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. We had another round of the discourse last night in the Australian video game scene. Our national broadcaster (the ABC, but no, that’s not America’s ABC) published an investigative report, titled “Are you being played,” which was, principally, a look into microtransactions, loot boxes, and whether…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. One of the most common words you’ll hear from people when talking about video games is “consumers”. People who buy and play games are “consumers.” The game developers and publishers are creating “products” and “content” for their fans, the “consumers”. This way of thinking hurts the…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. I’ve touched on this topic often enough in the past, but I saw a tweet this morning from a game developer that annoyed me enough that I felt like it was worth re-iterating on here, because it speaks to a common attitude towards games that are…
Read MoreImagine if the Louvre Museum in France came out with a statement to the effect of “the Mona Lisa is really old content and it costs too much to continue to preserve. So, since we have newer paintings to show off, we hereby announce that we’re going to throw that…
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