Fantastic article, Cole. Seeing that folks of the right age for my favourite era in games to start getting more writeups like this online is exciting and you have sold me on checking out this game in the near future.

Boy, I sure hope someone got fired for that one.

Am I crazy or is that a zoomed-in photo of a One S they used, not a Series S?

These guys might actually because they decided to invite the ire of Nintendo with Pokemon of all things. They could have gotten away with it if it were Chibi-Robo or Wrecking Crew but Nintendo would declare war on a foreign nation before it let anyone else make money off of this IP.

It’s Cormac McCarthy but reveling in violence rather than respecting it.

Mazin is ironically getting to the heart of what I hated so much about the effusive praise the world heaped on The Last of Us upon the release of it and its sequel - that these games which are in no great hurry to remind you that they’re games are supposed to be the pinnacle of the medium’s ability to tell stories. I…

This is part of the same initiative as the Last of Us battle royale that was rumoured a while back, right? Could see Horizon’s shaping out as a sort of Monster Hunter-y affair since PVP wouldn’t mesh the best with that combat.

Hey Justin, Mr. Roiland if you insist, why not just hire somebody to do that?

No, it isn’t, but is there any point to me trying to say why that is when you’re clearly not interested in good-faith discussion?

Crossfire X is still such an odd situation to me. Why hire Remedy if you’re not going to let them actually do what they shine at? Surely there are other studios that could have taken on the job and would have been cheaper.

“AI art” itself only exists to be commodified. Same as with NFT apes. Take your very short high horse elsewhere.

Looking into the comments, I see defenders of this AI garbage are now parroting the “if you don’t want your work being used don’t put it online” argument from NFT bros from a few months back. Crazy to think the same scum from then are hopping on the new bandwagon now. Wild, even. Inconceivable.

“Ideas” aren’t anything. I don’t see artistic value in an idea and I don’t see any craft in telling a computer what to make for you and sitting back while it makes it. Photoshop and Blender and the like are tools that still require a great deal of work to be done by hand, and what we’ve seen of the AI generation…

I wouldn’t say building an AI to generate images for you is “lowering barriers to expression”. That’s an incredibly generous read.

“Most importantly, this will allow Microsoft to expand XCloud and Game Pass and push real innovation in the gaming media space.”

Disney already dominates the box office every single year and is engaging in exactly the kind of aggressive predatory practices that got the film industry in trouble in the Studio Era. Them buying Fox gives them most of American adult animation and several more film franchises, to wit: eight of the top-ten…

You’re right, it is a different situation.

How many devs do you think were aware of this and the other issues and were told to stop complaining and just get the game to launch?

I’m not typically fond of this phrase thanks to the modern internet but that’s just about one of the most cringe-worthy things I’d ever read. Very similar energy to webcomics depicting game slang in casual conversations with normal human beings.

Grasshopper is a unique enough outfit that one assumes the leadership wouldn’t have sold unless they felt very confident in the acquisition. I hope to God that’s the case because I really don’t want to lose that collective’s spirit and voice in the medium.