Gaming

Tim Schafer Talking Double Fine’s Psychonauts 2

Tim Schafer:

Psychonauts is an interesting thing. It’s about the human mind, and it goes to some really dark places, yet it’s a comedy. We make a lot of jokes, but we deal with life and death and sadness and all sorts of mental conditions. We bring to life and show people’s inner demons.

But I always try to remember it’s a comedy because you can get hung up on resolving plot points and doing that kind of mechanical stuff. You forget that you’re supposed to be making people laugh.

One of the industry’s best talking about the state of the video game business.

Trailer:

How LucasArts Bad Decision Making Killed The Company

Kotaku:

“One of the problems of working in a film company—[Lucas] is used to being able to change his mind,” said one source. “He didn’t really have a capacity for understanding how damaging and difficult to deal with these changes were.”

Lucasfilm executives meddling with development visions was a common theme at LucasArts for much of its existence, according to people who worked there. It was always a problem.

One of the most prominent examples of this came in the spring of 2012, just eight weeks before E3, when George Lucas dropped a bombshell: instead of starring a generic bounty hunter, 1313 would be helmed by the iconic mercenary Boba Fett.

It had to be Star Wars related.

Valve Backtracks Statement on Releasing Rape Day on Steam

Valve:

Over the past week you may have heard about a game called ‘Rape Day’ coming soon to Steam. Today we’ve decided not to distribute this game on Steam. Given our previous communication around Who Gets To Be On The Steam Store?, we think this decision warrants further explanation.

Much of our policy around what we distribute is, and must be, reactionary—we simply have to wait and see what comes to us via Steam Direct. We then have to make a judgement call about any risk it puts to Valve, our developer partners, or our customers. After significant fact-finding and discussion, we think ‘Rape Day’ poses unknown costs and risks and therefore won’t be on Steam.

Not sure why this took any time at all.

Video Game Workers Plan to Unionize in 2019

Video Game Developers to start a Union, according to Polygon:

With an armload of handmade zines and an animated roundtable discussion, the grassroots labor organizers from Game Workers Unite made quite a showing at the 2018 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Now it appears their work is beginning to pay off.

Earlier this month, a chapter in the United Kingdom officially became a legal trade union in that country. Representatives of Game Workers Unite tell Polygon that they anticipate multiple public efforts to form unions at major studios in the United States and Canada in the coming year.

“By the end of 2019, you’re going to see some public campaigns,” said Emma Kinema, one of the co-founders of Game Workers Unite.

The Last of Us 2 to be Released Before Halloween

Inverse:

The sequel to Naughty Dog’s groundbreaking 2013 post-apocalyptic adventure, The Last of Us, might be released sooner than anyone else guessed. If new leaks turn out to be true, then The Last of Us: Part II might be out before the end of this year.

On February 28, video game blog The Loot Gaming noticed that Peruvian video game retailer LawGamers had shared a promotional image advertising for The Last of Us: Part II pre-orders. The bottom-left corner of the digital sales poster reads “LANZAMIENTO: OCTUBRE 2019” which translates directly to “Launching: October 2019.”

Gameplay demo:
(Warning, it’s bloody)

Harold Halibut, a hand made adventure game

Kotaku:

Harold Halibut is an adventure game where everything is handmade. “Almost every object you see in the game exists in real life,” one of the game’s developers told me during an Xbox event at GDC yesterday.

The demo I played felt like a streamlined take on standard point-and-click adventuring (with some worrisomely clunky dialogue), but the BioShock-esque undersea setting and claymation visuals knocked me flat. It’s coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC sometime this year.

Trailer:

Game looks amazing.