In The News
Another Friday, another Weekly Talkthrough to catch you up on the biggest stories from this week. Sit back, have a giggle and educate yourself. Or be left in the dust. Your call.
Games for Change starts Monday in New York City, and TheDW spoke with President Susanna Pollack about what to expect from this year’s festival, its heavy focus on virtual reality and whether or not it’s a good idea to mix alcohol and VR.
Here’s a snippet, and you can find the whole thing here: “‘Our mission is to empower the social innovators and game designers,’ Pollack says of the festival, which is nicknamed ‘the Sundance of video games.’ ‘For me, the end goal really is that there are ideas that…’”
Alas, the kerfuffle over an alleged Grand Theft Auto 6 leak via a motion capture actor’s online resume turned out to be a very elaborate hoax. #FakeNews.
Paul “Redeye” Chaloner broke down why large esports tournaments should require at least 2 hosts. “Progress comes painfully sometimes, by raising difficult questions or by taking a hard look at ourselves and our industry,” Redeye argues. “Ultimately, we need to persuade the organisers and publishers that having two hosts becomes the norm (much like in Olympic broadcasting for example) and I’d personally welcome the chance to prove this can be a better road for everyone should the opportunity arise, not least that the fans get two hosts for the event!”
Does daddy have a dark side? The lighthearted game about dating hot dads TheDW covered a few newsletters ago apparently has a sinister twist. “{layers have started wondering if there’s something more sinister hiding beneath the original story, thanks to rumors of a “cult ending” that is allegedly hidden in the game’s files,” Kotaku’s Chloe Spencer reports. “In this alternate finale to the game, one of the dads is revealed to be a sadistic cult leader.” No one has been able to unlock the ending yet.
There are appropriate responses to things, and then not-so-appropriate responses. These are examples of the latter in regards to backlash against YouTuber Joe “Angry Joe” Vargas for taking a 2-month break.
“Angry Joe Is Like An Abusive Boyfriend Who Makes Promises He Can’t Keep.”
“Someone needs to give Joe a swift kick to the balls.”
“What a whinny bitch.”
A quick note, don’t compare a YouTuber to an abusive boyfriend. They’re nothing alike and it waters down the seriousness of that allegation. Back to the issue at hand: “After announcing he was taking a break from game reviews for two months, fans have lashed out at the creator, who has since disabled comments on his videos,” Kotaku’s Gita Jackson reports. Fans are angry because 6 months ago, Angry Joe released a schedule for his Angry Reviews. On July 14, he announced he was deviating from the schedule to take a vacation. “Fans weren’t happy about this turn of events. While most of the comments were civil in expressing their unhappiness at this development, one highly rated comment called Vargas a lazy cunt.”
Angry Joe proceeded to disable comments on his videos after he was hit with a deluge of negative comments and fighting between fans, which took viewers’ outrage level up to a solid 9.5. A flood of people unsubscribed from his channel and the subreddit dedicated to his show, /r/angryjoeshow, has been a war zone. He acknowledged he shouldn’t have created the schedule in the first place, because it put concrete expectations in the minds of his fans. Drama is still ongoing.
EA is pouring money into influencers for advertising instead of traditional mediums like television. Aside from being significantly cheaper than TV or radio ads, EA says “it likes influencers because it is easy to track the return on the money it puts in,” according to GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb. “EA also wants to spend about the same on marketing as it always has, but it plans to spread that throughout the year instead of dropping the bulk of it during the holidays.”
“‘Things like cloud and streaming we believe is in the 2-5 year time frame. When we think about subscription, we’re already seeing return from that,’” GamesIndustry.biz’s James Brightman quotes CEO Andrew Wilson as saying. “‘As we think about media consumption over the last five years, the greatest disruptor has been the combination of streaming and subscription.’”
You think headshots in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds are hard, try doing it with a handicap. Rocky “Rocky NoHands” Stoutenburgh is a quadriplegic Twitch streamer who’s far better at most competitive games than you or I am.
“He racks up headshots and chicken dinners in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on a weekly basis and also enjoys games like For Honor and Rocket League,” PC Gamer’s Austin Wood writes. “11 years ago, when he was 19, he caught a nasty fall and landed in just the wrong way, severely dislocating two of his thoracic vertebrae and severing his spinal cord. The incident left him paralyzed from the neck down.” Paralysis doesn’t stop him, though, and TheDW commends him for kicking some serious ass. Check out the article for more information on Rocky NoHands.
Niantic’s problems aren’t going away quietly after a host of issues put a big damper on Pokemon GO Fest in Chicago. A group of attendees has filed suit “seeking travel reimbursement,” Polygon’s Allegra Frank writes. “Zimmerman insisted that his clients were asking for the amount of money spent on travel be covered more than anything else. Although Niantic made ‘promises that were not kept,’ he said, the fact of the matter is that claimants say that the event did not provide the experience they expected.”
Niantic offered full ticket refunds and all visitors got $100 in in-game credit and the newly-released Legendary Pokemon.
$1.8 million later, esports audience monetization company FanAI Inc. is on its way to digging through troves of data to monetize esports fans. The company’s premise is “an artificial intelligence (AI) driven audience monetization platform that is initially focused on exploiting the esports landscape by collecting fan data owned by the rights holders and data available on various social and streaming platforms, as well as data repository services and payment data, and enriching it to build brand-specific personas and achetypes to predict behavior,” Forbes’ Darren Heitner reports.