The Wall Street Journal:

The video streaming service is in the early stages of developing a live action series based on “Zelda,” about an ordinary boy named Link who must rescue a princess named Zelda and save a fantasy world called Hyrule, said a person familiar with the matter. As it seeks writers to work on the show, Netflix is describing it as “Game of Thrones” for a family audience, this person said.

…

As it is still seeking a writer to work on the series, Netflix has a long road to travel before a “Legend of Zelda” series actually becomes a reality. It’s also possible that Netflix or Nintendo will kill the project before it gets off the ground.

Considering Netflix’s vision without a writer, I’d say this has a very long road to travel.

Arthur Gies:

Whatever factors were preventing publishers and developers from setting their games loose upon consumers in an unfinished state have become less pressing, apparently. I’m not actually interested in calling any particular publisher or platform holder out here, as I don’t think I have enough fingers to point at them all. The point is, simply, that it’s becoming harder and harder to know, even on release day, if a game will function on day one, two, three or indefinitely.

I don’t think this is going away. In fact, for the time being, I am absolutely positive it won’t. It will be some time before publishers get the hint that this isn’t ok, where they move beyond lip service about “making it right” and actually start doing the right thing and delaying games that aren’t in a state fit to be sold. I don’t know what it will take for this to happen. I don’t know what the final straw will be for consumers to push back.

That said, I think there’s more we can do to serve our audience and offer some modicum of caution and warning about games we have reservations about.

Like clocks and cars, video games are two-fold: wondrous products made functional by mechanical innards. Video games are at once magical experiences full of narrative, music, design, and animations; at the same time highly mechanical, dynamic pieces of software full of the nuts and bolts of computer science.

Playing a video game is an individual, singular experience. As Griffin McElroy has stated before, “games by their very nature are interactive, meaning… your experience playing the game is going to be different.” Therefore, the critique of a video game’s artistry (design, narrative, visuals, music, etc.) should hold little weight to an individual. Where a video game’s critique should be heavily considered is it’s functionality. If a manufacturer isn’t going to hold up their end of the consumer protection bargain (or be bad business, even better if the outlets can forewarn.

I am excited by this stance from Polygon. Video games are artistic illusions that only work if they are fully functional. If the undying mechanics are broken, the illusion is broken, too.

Justin McElroy on the Dying Light episode of Polygon’s Quality Control podcast, edited for clarity:

I think in our profession, our desire is to have an experience and then be able to move on to the next one. There is a pressure on us to be comprehensive in our knowledge and awareness of the medium. So, for a game that can reveal everything it has to say in three or four hours, there’s a real attraction because we can have the entire experience and move on to the next thing.

I think that people who are playing games for fun maybe don’t have the same sort of voracious compulsion to get to the end, which I would separate from rushing through a game. I think it’s more of a desire to have had the full experience and then be able to move on to the next thing.

This describes exactly the reason I play video games now. Unlike McElroy, I am not expected to have comprehensive knowledge and awareness of the medium, but for the sake of my blog and personal interests, I try to. I certainly love writing about video games and the industry at large, but actually playing video games has become more about connecting with the zeitgeist rather than enjoying and immersing myself in the experience.

In my gaming heyday, I could pour countless hours into Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Starcraft, and Heroes of Might & Magic III simply for pleasure and to perfect my strategies. I played Star Fox 64 over and over just for fun. I spent an obscene amount of time playing Final Fantasy X just to be swept away. Today, there are plenty of video games I enjoy (see my reviews of Monument Valley and Rocksmith 2014), but it has been a long while since one has repeatedly beckoned to me to spend hours playing for fun. Instead, I find myself dipping into a game for a few hours to understand it on a mechanical, design, and experience level just to be part of the conversation. Hell, I spent $60 on Super Smash Bros. for Wii U only to tap out after 2 hours. (Queue Nani McElroy.)

Gamespot:

In the home console space, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX sold well, and catalog sales were also “strong,” Square Enix said. Meanwhile, the publisher added that Final Fantasy XIV and Dragon Quest X are “making favorable progress.”

Unrelated: Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD ReMIX is what prompted me to sell my PS3.

To my surprise, an Amazon shipment notice informed me that the game was on its way. The pre-order had slipped my mind as I had placed it nearly a year prior. I was already on the cusp of pulling the trigger on a PS4 when this IGN bit put me over the edge. I stuffed my unopened Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD ReMIX back into the post, traded-in my PS3 and Xbox 360, and picked up a PS4.

I have no doubt that these games will end up on PS4. Worst case, another reason to subscribe to Playstation Now.

Ludwig Kietzmann, Joystiq:

How can you envision an end when your purpose is to be in motion, always? Where do you stop if what you make, write and think is inextricable from the moment? We poured a bit of our heart and humor into each little vessel – a news story, an opinion, a review – paraded it for thirty minutes and then watched it fall off the page to make room for the next one. And the next. And the next. There is no end.

I just compared blog posts to heart vessels, by the way, and you should know how irritated I am by that. It’s just reporting. It’s just video games. It’s just… what we did.