Zero Counts

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer Retiring, Xbox President Sarah Bond Resigning

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:35:00 GMT

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who has been at Microsoft since he joined as an intern in 1988 and with Xbox since the software giant launched its first console in 2001, is retiring, sources familiar with the matter who are not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to IGN. Spencer’s retirement is effective on Monday, February 23. Meanwhile, Xbox President Sarah Bond, long thought by many both inside and outside of Microsoft to be Spencer’s heir apparent, has resigned. The new CEO of Microsoft Gaming will be Asha Sharma, currently the President of Microsoft’s CoreAI product. Finally, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is being promoted to Chief Content Officer and will work closely with Sharma.

I’m at once shocked and not shocked by this news. Shocked that Sarah is resigning. I pegged her more as a successor and trying to change the narrative. And I’m sure the money is good.

Not shocked as I had a hard time believing that Phil (and Sarah) could weather the storm that has been Xbox over the past few years — aquisitions, massive layoffs, studio closures, etc. They seemed to genuinely care about the brand (or I would like to believe they did). But at some point, something’s gotta give.

Maybe the most comically sad and telling part of this announcement is in the opening paragraph of Satya Nadella’s company-wide email (via GameFile, emphasis mine):

Gaming has been part of Microsoft from the start. Flight Simulator shipped before Windows, and you can practically ray‑trace a line from DirectX in the ’90s to the accelerated‑compute era we’re in today.

Ray-trace? JFC.

Still Super After All These (10) Years

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 23:40:00 GMT

I came across this article reflecting on 10 years of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in September 2001 issue of EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly). I was initially humored by the title — Still Super After All These Years. “All These Years” being ten. Surely, ten years is not that long in video game parlance. It’s not a far cry from the spread of proper Zelda or Mario games (5-11+ years).

But then I got to thinking… what happened between the release of the SNES and ten years later? Here’s a timeline:

SNES (1990/1991)
Atari Jaguar (1993)
Sega CD/Saturn (1994)
Sony PlayStation 1 (1994)
Nintendo 64 (1996)
Sega Dreamcast (1998)
Sony PlayStation 2 (2000)
Microsoft Xbox (2001)

Compare that with the last ten:

Nintendo Switch (2017)
Microsoft Xbox Series (2020)
Sony PlayStation 5 (2020)
Nintendo Switch 2 (2025)

I wouldn’t rush to call this the greatest decade in gaming (though, it very may well be). But I’d argue it was the most magical time in video game history. A breakneck pace of console releases. We were witnessing gargantuan leaps in fidelity, design, and input every year or so — from the perfection of 2D side-scrolling and top-down adventures to the birth of 3D and its evolution into arguably what we know it by today.

While it definitely feels like consoles now have diminishing returns —hence Microsoft and Sony’s pivot into subscription services, publishing, and porting — I don’t think anything has illustrated it more than the ‘91–‘01 decade.

There is no such thing as a video game industry

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 19:13:00 GMT

Christopher Dring, The Game Business:

My argument is that Resident Evil is more a competitor to Stranger Things than it is to Clash of Clans. Candy Crush is more directly competing with Tiktok than Fortnite. Roblox is more a rival to the school playground than Street Fighter.

I just picked four segments, but you could easily add more to it. I would argue there are games that are akin to toys, for instance. And there are other ways to categorise these player motivations, such as Professor Richard Bartle’s four-way ‘Bartle types’, or Quantic Foundry’s motivation model. Or you can just create your own based on your own world view.

These different ways of reframing the business helps us understand a few things. For one, being amazing at one type of game, doesn’t mean you’ll be amazing at another. How many single-player story studios have tried and struggled to develop and launch a live-service multiplayer title? Naughty Dog stopped mid-way through developing its The Last of Us online game with the realization that it wasn’t set-up to deliver it. Of course there are exceptions (take a bow Rockstar), but there are far more BioWares, Crystal Dynamics, Remedys and Rocksteadys. It’s not that these studios aren’t talented, it’s just their expertise lie in different areas.

Beyond talent, I also think reframing the business is something we need to be doing more with those outside of games, whether that’s investors, analysts, legislators, and even politicians. It’s not uncommon for me to speak to a non-games analyst who has made the mistake of looking at mobile games and console games through the same lens.

With so many games published monthly/weekly/daily and “forever” games seemingly dominating the market, I continually wonder who is playing all of these games? Does a 40-100 hour turn-based RPG stand any chance of business success if the market is at once so fragmented and consolidated? (There’s room for Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, so I suppose so!)

I think the answer to those questions lies in Dring’s statement. Evaluating “video games” as a whole — whether that’s due to the legacy of the medium (a new form of entertainment that all looked the same) or to prop industry numbers as Dring’s guest Nicholas Lovell points out — is broken. I think “this is no video game industry” is a much healthier way to consider the interest and investment.

This sentiment feels like the perfect follow-up to my piece “Video Games Do Not Exist”.

Adam Grant's Mario Kart Theory of Peak Flow

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 05:15:00 GMT

Flow has bubbled up to my attention through the book ”Designing Your Life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, as well as various TED talks and podcasts. I’m currently listening to the audiobook ”Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Outside of identifying flow for future career growth, I’m also intriuied by the idea of “flow” combating “languishing”. In the spirit of this blog and its focus on video games, I wanted to share two fun ideas I came across when searching Overcast for the term “languishing”, coincidentally within minutes of one another…

Adam Grant, TEDMonterey:

Like many of you, [during the pandemic] we were isolated from our extended family. My sister was halfway across the country. One day, we were reminiscing about how much we loved playing Mario Kart as we were kids. She said, “Well, we could all play together online now. WHy don’t we start a family game?”

Soon we were playing every day with a video call running at the same time. After a couple of weeks, I stopped feeling so blah. I was living zen in the art of Mario Kart. In the mornings, our kids were asking what time we’d play. They loved it when I would gloat about an impending victory, only to be bombed by a flying blue shell only to just sit there watching all three of our kids drive past me to the finish line in tiny go-carts.

We had so much fun that we started a new Satuday night tradition after the kids were asleep: Adult Mario Kart.

After reflecting on that experience, I’m proud to present to you for the first time my Mario Kart theory of peak flow. It has three conditions: mastery, mindfulness, and mattering.

…

Stop here and take 15 minutes to watch the talk. Lots of good stuff here.

…

This all explains why Mario Kart was such a great experience for me.

It gave me a feeling of mastery. The sweet satisfaction of a perfectly placed banana peel for my sister to slip on.

It required mindfulness too. My brother-in-law was the best player. Beating him demanded total concentration. Especially when my kids were ganging up with him against me.

And it wasn’t just a game. It mattered. Over the past year, we’ve all felt helpless in one way or another. I felt helpless to fix COVID. I couldn’t even do that much to make online school better, and I’m a teacher. But in Mario Kart, I felt helpful. I was able to give my kids something to look forward to when we couldn’t go anywhere. I was able to keep my family close when we were far apart.

We normally think of flow as an individual experience, by playing Nintendo, we were all immersed together. And although we don’t play daily anymore, I feel closer to my sister and my brother-in-law than I ever have before. I learned that love is not the frequency of communication. It’s the depth of connection. I also realized that the antidote to languishing does not have to be something productive. It can be something joyful. Our peak moments of flow are having fun with the people we love.

And the other conversation:

Corey Keyes, Good Life Project podcast:

When I learned about why pinball machines were created, I was astonished to find out that the man, the person who created pinball, created it because he wanted people to experience during the Great Depression the sense that what they do matters. And to enjoy life because they can get better at accomplishing things and making things happen in the world.

And that’s what pinball, the whole story of pinball is. And the man who saved pinball, that movie and book, is all about showing the people in Chicago that it wasn’t gambling, it wasn’t a game of chance, it was a game that you develop skill. Yes you had fun, yes you had to put a little money in there, but he showed them.

I learned to get better at something and I learned that whatever I can focus my mind on and do, I can accomplish something. So out of all the things you would think that could lead to that play, can teach your children and continue to teach adults that what you do matters.

Yeah, I love that and I’ve been actively trying to cultivate more opportunities for play in my “for all those reasons, you know. I think it’s just, we leave it behind, like sometimes forgetting that it’s really fun to do things for no other reason than the feeling it gives you in the moment. And then if you can actually, you know, like build skill around that and gain competence at it also, you know.

Connection and all those other.

I mean, you look at the world of online gaming these days, and I’m not a part of that world, but I know folks who are. And they will spend hours and hours and not getting paid to do this. In fact, you know, they’re paying for the privilege of having access to the games and the machines and, and yet it’s just, and it’s effort.

They’re working hard, you know, they’re probably working harder from a sort of a creativity and a cognitive and a collaborative standpoint than they may be doing at their jobs. And yet they’re doing it simply because they love doing it. You know, it’s to them, it is that thing.

It’s play and they get better at it over time and they do it with other people, you know, and it’s“there’s something kind of magical about it.

I don’t necessarily find it surprising for video games to make their way into conversations of flow. Most consider video games to be a medium that delivers the fastest path to flow. But hearing two smart folks express why that is was quite fun.

Nothing overly earthshattering here. It’s just neat to hear “serious” people bring up games in “serious” talks.

”I won’t cry if you leave.”

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 04:55:00 GMT

“I won’t cry if you leave.”

I left.

She cried.

Détante.

Reset tomorrow.

Those words stung. Not because I’d never heard them before. Because she’s now in preschool.

For the past week, I’ve been baffled by my emotions. Confused. Heightened. Anxious. Excited. Scared.

“I won’t cry if you leave.”

This is one of my biggest fears. In context, it’s a bedtime fit. I’m upset because she seems to have regressed into several potty accidents per day. I raise my voice. I take away books and toys. I’m disappointed and frustrated. She doubles-back with threats of her own.

“I won’t cry if you leave [my room at bedtime].”

It feels like a clear jab at the fact that she does not cry for us when she enters preschool each day. Something I’m proud of.

It’s a few hours a day, but it’s clear: this is the beginning of leaving her exposed to a world that is not overseen by me. She is not aided by me. She is not guided by me. She is not protected by me.

Today, at an older girl’s birthday party, I guard her spot in line from bigger kids; shielded her from bigger kids during a piñata rush; encouraged her to sit with the bigger kids during cupcakes. I’m cognizant of her hearing aides. Is she she’s overwhelmed? Can she hear the kids around her? Is she spatially aware of what’s going on? I’m proud when she leans into her independence, hurriedly leaving the crowds for scaling playgrounds bigger than she ought to for new and exciting slides. Maybe I should let her fend for herself more often. But then there’s the accidents. Maybe she still needs me.

“I won’t cry if you leave.”

It’s all too real when she tells me this when she’s upset with me. When she wants to prove her independence. And it’s all too real when she doesn’t cry when she leaves me for preschool — for a world that is not mine to oversee.

’I just want more portrait mode games on my iPhone.’

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 19:25:00 GMT

Brendon Bigley and Stephen Hilger, Into the Aether Podcast: S7E48 - “BB’s Romhack Shack”:

Brendon Bigley: I just want more portrait mode games on my iPhone.

Stephen Hilger: Yeah, that’s the dream.

BB: That’s the dream. That’s what we’re always saying on this podcast. The whole reason we started the podcast.

Hello and welcome to Into the Aether.

SH: Jean d’Arc definitive edition in portrait mode.

BB: Honestly, it’s amazing. Just thinking about that, it’s amazing that all of the Dragon Quest games are available in portrait mode on iOS.

SH: That’s for you.

BB: And it’s so wild that they did that. Yeah, even VII. Like they have a port.

It’s so wild.

Couldn’t agree more. Single-handed portrait-mode games, if I may add.

Post Games: A new podcast by former Polygon Editor-in-Chief Chris Plante

Mon, 26 May 2025 16:00:00 GMT

Are you missing Polygon as much as I am? Do you appreciate in-depth journalism about niche topics with your hobby of choice? Do you like tightly edited podcasts with clear structure? Are you a fan of personality, interviews, and well-crafted story? Are you addicted to gaming podcasts because you have very little time to play yourself and/or you might just love the conversation around games more than the games themselves? Then you’re in luck.

Post Games, the new podcast from former Polygon Editor-in-Chief Chris Plante, feels like the canonical audio form of Polygon. Everything I loved about Polygon from its clean yet charming design to its niche stories to its rich journalism with personality is woven into Post Games.

I had the pleasure of providing early feedback on the first episode, which details an under appreciated game award that is damn near prophetic of seminal indie game success and stories and developers I’ve never heard of, but now can’t help but keep my eye fixed upon. Episode 0, an interview with Platformer’s Casey Newton, lends great insight into what a career in independent journalism looks like — a world Plante now finds himself in.

While you can find the show for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and any other podcast app via RSS, I encourage you to check out the show’s Patreon to both support and receive a bevy of bonus perks.

It’s inspiring to see former Polygon folks make haste with a poor situation. Seeing Nicole Carpenter’s byline appear on Game File, Aftermath, and 404 Media is thrilling. And now the Post Games podcast from Chris Plante, one of my favorite voices in video game journalism, is leveraging his decades of experience and insight (and a deep Rolodex to boot) to deliver some of the most unique stories in gaming in a wonderfully produced format.

It seems the Polygon legacy lives on.

Polygon’s Masthead

Mon, 05 May 2025 00:05:00 GMT

Aftermath’s Luke Plunkett posted a brutal comparison of Polygon’s masthead from last week vs today on Bluesky. Eviscerated. A tragic, gross visual of the human cost of senseless layoffs.

’An implosion supervised by idiots who have been grifted by other idiots who have been grifted by actual grifters’

Sat, 03 May 2025 16:30:00 GMT

Brendon Bigley, Wavelengths:

I’ve been reading Polygon since the day in launched in 2012. I was an avid fan because of its focus on people — at the time most sites were primarily focused on their own branding which led to sites as monolithic entities. Reviews weren’t by any specific writer, they were by [BRAND DOT COM] and discussed on early social media and in forums as such. Polygon broke the mold by being staunchly supportive of the individuals who made its ongoing success a reality, story by story and brick by brick until it became an institution in the space. They made videos about funny bullshit (complimentary) and reported on troubling labor practices in the game development space in equal measure because different people are good at different things, and all of that is what boiled up to being the brand. It’s why so many freelancers and ex-employees are online today speaking highly of their time working with Polygon. The boots-on-the-ground team that allowed the site to function cared about these people in a meaningful way and there was a tangibility to that care that permeated into the readership.

I can’t help but walk away from this news feeling like the very thing that inspired me to spend my time considering games and the industry around them has died a very permanent death. While I’m glad to see independent outlets like MinnMax and Aftermath continue to pave a new path forward and inspire future generations to think critically about the medium, there’s a real sense of loss here that reaches all the way backwards to Facebook’s disastrous “pivot to video” era. What we’re left with is Patreon and Memberful and influencers and IGN. That’s games media now.

And what’s left of the sites I used to love and find community within in Polygon and Waypoint and Giant Bomb and so many more is just an AI grind house serving Google of all companies. Google, who are well on their way to speedrunning destroying their own business model at the cost of everyone else’s. It’s an implosion supervised by idiots who have been grifted by other idiots who have been grifted by actual grifters.

’The people of Polygon deserved better’

Fri, 02 May 2025 17:10:00 GMT

Grayson Morley on his Backlog newsletter:

I’m a fiction writer who wandered into games criticism. I say “wandered,” but the truth is, I got some serious help early on from Chris Plante, former editor-in-chief of Polygon. When I was a nobody, and not, as I am now, nearly nobody, Plante hopped on a Zoom call with me when I was between jobs, trying to see whether I could pivot into doing some games writing. Our correspondence up until that point had been mostly me emailing him about my short story, “Brent, Bandit King,” which had won an award and was based on an article he’d written at the time for The Verge. Let me be perfectly frank: Very few people on this earth would email back a random stranger telling them they wrote a short story based on an article they wrote. Plante did. And not only that, but he offered sage advice to me when I was first getting Backlog going, a kindness for which I have no way of repaying him.

Besides Plante, I owe a lot to current and former Polygon folks like Mike Mahardy, Maddy Myers, and Matt Leone for their edits and guidance. But before I was a contributor, I was a Polygon reader, and that’s the part of me that’s mourning right now. For me, Polygon was my absolute favorite place to read about games, both on the reportorial side, thanks to powerhouses like Nicole Carpenter, and especially on the critical front, with its variety of voices, both in-house and freelance, who offered fresh takes on the art form I so love. For that to be more or less gone this morning is incredibly sad.

I don’t have a radical take to propose today besides to say that you should follow these writers wherever they go. People make the publication, and not the other way around, and when the business side loses track of that, we all suffer. I fear there will never be another Polygon, and as someone who cares about this medium, that’s a hard pill to swallow. The people of Polygon deserved better. The readers of Polygon deserved better. The industry deserved better.

I echo Morley’s sentiments. I’ve had the great fortune of meeting and befriending a handful of folks from Polygon over the years. Their empathy, care, wit, and insight only made me want to be part of their team even more. Some incredibly bright and dedicated individuals that certainly deserved better.

Press Reset: The Story of Polygon

Fri, 02 May 2025 04:55:00 GMT

Here’s a 13 part documentary on the creation of Polygon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At1NP_hl7pc&list=PLFECD492AC5E3201F.

I’m so glad this exists. (Truthfully, I couldn’t remember if this documentary was real or just a dream I had. I’d first seen it 13 years ago. I don’t remember it being carved up into 13 parts.)

The introduction of this documentary is terribly ironic and depressing. Here’s a short snippet:

The Goliaths inspired a nimble counterpart — the game blog; sites like Kotaku, Joystiq, and Destructoid. Once again, a newcomer had the advantage of speed. Within an hour, a reader saw multiple posts. Within a week, they had a magazine’s worth of content. This speed occassionally resulted in misreporting, and pretty visuals took a backseat to getting the post live first. But they were persistent, news-minded, and at least at first, outside the system. The rising tide began to threaten traditional publications. The survivors retreated to the high ground of co-marketed partnerships with console makers and game retailers. But even these publications were a risk.

Which brings us to today. A time of shift. Fast blogs creating more original material. Gargantuan networks that are breaking news. Magazines testing their hands online and in apps. Everyone learning from each other. Games writing is stronger than ever and games are covered in almost every conceivable way. There’s no shortage when it comes to information about games.

Major gaming sites get tens of millions of hits a month. Gaming grows every year. More gamers. More success. More influence. The stakes have never been higher.

Poring over the somber Bluesky posts, Discord conversations, new articles, and newsletters regarding Polygon’s sale to Valnet and the mass layoffs at the site has sent me spiraling down memory lane. In my previous post, I mentioned Polygon inspiring me to become a games journalist and/or web developer. A lot of that sentiment stems from this documentary. I didn’t just want to be a games journalist and/or web developer. I wanted to be a games journalists and/or web developer at Polygon.

Polygone

Thu, 01 May 2025 17:45:00 GMT

Jay Peters of The Verge, reporting on the sale of Polygon to Valnet:

Polygon, The Verge’s sister site dedicated to gaming and entertainment, has been sold by Vox Media to Valnet, a company that owns brands like ScreenRant, GameRant, and Android Police. Some Polygon staffers will continue with the publication under its new owner, while others have been laid off, according to posts online and an internal message sent to Vox Media employees.

Valnet owns more than 27 different brands that cover areas like entertainment, gaming, sports, and travel. A recent report from TheWrap includes one former contributor to a site under Valnet’s purview describing conditions as “almost sweatshop-level.”

This is gut-wrenching. Polygon meant so much to me. It’s a big reason I dreamed of becoming a games journalist, in turn starting this blog, and likely the sole reason I took any interest in web development.

When the website launched in 2012, the design, articles, and personality forward staff felt like a revelation. I was hooked. Pieces like their PS4 and Xbox One reviews took my breath away. Tracy Lien’s No Girls Allowed is an all-timer.

Between 2013–2014, likely even longer, I had daily ritual of poring over Polygon to find pieces to blog about. During my stint working in the podcasts industry, I did everything in my power to help promote their shows like The Besties and Mini Map. During my time working in the news industry, I took a go at building their Breath of the Wild review in Apple News format (which turned out great), and had the great fortune of showing it off to then EIC Chris Grant.

Working in games media had (has?) always been a dream for me. For every friend and acquaintance I made at Polygon, that dream had been partially realized. I look up to the folks. I adore their work and how they elevated games journalism. I’m sure I’ll have more to say, but for now, tearing up as I write this, I’m absolutely gutted to see Polygon go. All my best to those affected by this news.

Gaming is in its big tech era

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 05:15:00 GMT

Phil Bothun, 70 Percent Complete:

Which makes sense: after the less-than-stellar sales of the WiiU, Nintendo has had 8 years of massive success, enjoying the success that comes from smart, innovative design and long tail growth from lowering the barriers for indies and third parties. That’s only really possible because of that coalescing: porting and selling games becomes easier (and more profitable) when the platforms are more similar.

But the downside is where we are now: this massive storyline for the past two or three years of “when is the Switch Pro or Switch 2 coming out?” ends leaving me feeling kinda bored. Sure, price plays a part in that: $299 for a Switch felt good in 2017, but $450 now doesn’t feel quite as nice. And yeah, the games look good, but I already have too many games to play on my other incremental consoles. The realm of innovative game design seems to have fallen to indies, most of which don’t require the power of a PS5’s hard drive, a 5090, or yeah, a Nintendo Switch 2.

Two Switch 2 Bugaboos

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 07:10:00 GMT

The internet is awash with Nintendo Switch 2 takes, from hands-on impressions to business analysis to uncovering the things unsaid by Nintendo. I don’t have much to add — I think it looks fine, the price kind of sucks, I’ll probably get one ASAP because I just can’t help myself with a new Nintendo console — but I wanted to document a handful of “bugaboos” about the Switch 2. (I posted these to Bluesky, but this blog will live in posterity.)

1. No OLED

Upgrading from the original Switch to the Switch OLED felt like a revelation. The inky blacks, brilliant hues, and increased brightness made the device feel premium. Jumping from a 6.2-inch screen to a 7.0-inch screen was much more comfortable. Hades is a standout. Metroid Dread is gorgeous. All older games almost feel new again. “Seeing” a transition to and from a loading screen go completely black in my already very dark room feels oddly magical. Yes, I am a sucker for OLED.

I was very disappointed to learn that Switch 2 has reverted back to an LED screen (with HDR). Nintendo even neglected to show a Switch OLED during the Switch 2 presentation, likely to create the optics that the Switch 2’s 7.9-inch display is notably larger than the original Switch’s 6.2-inch screen (as opposed to the Switch OLED’s 7.0-inch screen).

In my heart of hearts, I know this won’t really affect my enjoyment of the console, but I know I’ll be bothered by it, knowing Nintendo will likely release an OLED version mid-cycle with a smaller bezel (thus larger screen) and an even more beautiful picture. While next-gen does not equal “premium”, the downgrade feels like a missed opportunity to meet the premium market where it is as a standout device.

Understanding the cost of Switch 2 is $450 US (sans tariffs), perhaps the decision to sacrifice an OLED screen was one that had to be made to counter an even more shocking price tag. And offering a “premium” version alongside a standard version would undercut a mid-cycle refresh and perhaps create additional insult to the injury of the already high price.

The snob in me is not excited to see a big gray box between load-ins.

2. No Built-in Camera

This is at once easy to ignore and completely shocking. Nintendo spent a fair amount of time focused on the Switch 2’s GameChat social feature, including their first-party camera that can be used in docked mode to stream your face and/or create in-game avatars.

I repeat: Docked. Mode.

After the first six months of the original Switch’s launch in 2017, Nintendo stated that only 20% of users play primarily in TV (Docked) Mode. 30% primarily in Tabletop/Handheld Mode; 50% in both Docked and Handheld Mode.

I’m extremely curious how these numbers have changed after eight years of a gangbusters run, including the Switch Lite (2019) that cannot be docked. But I’m sure primarily Docked Mode has not become any more favorable. So, it’s curious that the camera feature of GameChat is only available via the Dock.

In an effort to declutter our house, I’ve mounted my Switch dock behind my TV. I’m certainly not going to be sticking a camera out from the side it. Without that, I have no way to share my killer facial reactions when I destroy friends in Mario Kart World on Switch 2.

GameChat seems to be a feature Nintendo is hanging its hat on for Switch 2 — one that even gets its own dedicated “C” button. Wouldn’t a built-in camera for Handheld mode make sense? Unlike an OLED screen, this seems like a hardware feature that wouldn’t break the bank. The Wii U Gamepad had a camera. The DSi and 3DS had cameras. Even the Game Boy had a camera! (Yeah, yeah…) This just seems like a very weird miss for a feature Nintendo is building its own hardware accessory to support. Maybe the justification is that Handheld users are less likely to have an internet connection and therefore couldn’t use the camera for this purpose. But no internet means no GameChat altogether. And surely a camera could be used for other fun features. Weird!

Bonus: No Wind Waker HD?!

There’s surely no better way to advertise GameCube games coming to Nintendo Switch Online than with one of the greatest Zelda games of all time, which is exactly what Nintendo did when they announced The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker as a launch title for the Nintendo Switch Online GameCube library.

However, we’ve now gone a full console cycle without said great Wii U HD port of one of said greatest Zelda games of all time. I shouldn’t be so dramatic about a Wii U port, but a handful of the Switch’s best titles are Wii U ports. Switch launched with Wii U ports Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (the #1 bestselling Switch game) and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (yes, I count it as a port)! There’s long been speculation that the Wind Waker port — along with the port of Twilight Princess — has been in the can and ready for release at any time, likely a “break glass in case of emergency” situation.

While the release of the original is great for the sake of preservation, it’s a gut-punch for anyone eager to play the acclaimed, refined, and enhanced HD port. Now the chances of the port making it to the Switch 2 feel years away.

For now, we can try to ignore that something better is likely sitting on a shelf and relive the magic of the original through pillarboxing. (I only want to see 4:3 on my CRT.)

NYT: ”Metroidvanias: The Video Games You Can Get Lost In”

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 06:00:00 GMT

Lewis Gordon writing for this gorgeous article on The New York Times (Note: This article is walled off. I’m not sure if I was able to access it because we subscribe to the NYT Cooking app, or if it was because I simply signed in with an existing account):

The two Metroidvania progenitors — 1986’s Metroid and 1987’s Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest — cultivated a sense of geographical bewilderment by letting players unfurl the secrets of their arcane worlds in any direction along the X and Y axes. Part of the charm is that the entirety of these expansive play spaces is not immediately accessible: Sections lie gated behind power-ups, like the so-called Morph Ball and High Jump Boots in Metroid, and players are forced to rely on a labyrinthine map.

Decades later, the genre continues to yield rich rewards. Ultros, Animal Well and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown were included on many best of 2024 lists, and other notable releases within the past year include Nine Sols, Tales of Kenzera: Zau and Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist.

The genre has come to be known for its friction, with a propensity for baffling mazelike settings, acute sense of isolation and often punishing combat. Yet Jeremy Parish, a journalist who helped popularize the term Metroidvania and wrote an upcoming book on the genre, said that in some ways they are more accessible role-playing games that do not get bogged down in stats and menus. Characters grow while exploring a vast world, allowing Metroidvanias to deliver immersion, exploration and a sense of discovery.

Metroidvanias (referred to as “search-action games” in Japan, as listeners of The Besties will recognize) are some of my favorite games. A few years ago, in anticipation for Metroid Dread, I played through the five core 2D Metroid games:

Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)
Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
Super Metroid (SNES (via 3DS))
Metroid Fusion (GBA)
Metroid Dread (Switch)

Before that, I’d played through and loved Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

To Parish’s point, immersion and discovery are my favorite parts of Metroidvanias. But I’ve learned that locomotion is critical to making them feel great. Ori and Zero Mission: Bingo. Super Metroid: Not so much.

It’s a wonderful genre that continues to innovate, seemingly at all odds with its narrow corridors and repetitive core-loop. How cool that The New York Times gave the genre this beautiful treatment.

(I prefer Into the Aether’s term “Gate-Punk” for this genre.)

Y-Button: Andy Robertson (Ludocene)

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 17:35:00 GMT

Last week, I welcomed games journalist Andy Robertson to Y-Button to talk about his new project Ludocene — a video game recommendation deck-builder in the form of a simple dating app. Ludocene’s special sauce lies in its human-centric connections (players who liked this also liked this) and “expert cards” that you can use to augment your recommendations — tastemakers that Andy and team have paid (which is where much of the Kickstarter contributions will go in the future).

About half of the episode is focused on some nitpicky details of Ludocene. The other half gets to the mystery and organic nature of video games, and why adults should lean into curiosity as opposed to dismissal of the new gaming experiences kids prefer.

This episode came together extremely quickly. I read The Guardian’s post about Ludocene, I connected with Andy on Bluesky, he recognized me from a conversation we’d had years ago, then he DMed an offer of a press kit to write something up. I agreed, but quickly realized it’d be more fun to talk about Ludocene on my podcast. Andy agreed. The next morning we recorded for an hour (before I rushed to work), I blurted out an intro and outro, sent the recordings to my editor AJ Fillari, I listened back, and we launched the episode in less than 24 hours. Podcasting pros out there may not think much of that, but for three people in three different time zones (and one with an extremely busy day job, speaking for myself), it felt like quite the feat. I’m really proud of this one. And I’m very excited for Ludocene.

Y-Button: 15 - Andy Robertson (Ludocene, Family Gaming Database, Taming Gaming): Website | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Pocket Casts

Speech Bubbles

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 05:20:00 GMT

An article from The Atlantic by Derek Thompson titled “The Anti-Social Century” (Atlantic link; free Apple News+ link) has been making the rounds in my feeds. It’s a great piece that says the quiet part out loud — society has become homebodies to the point of extreme danger. We’re glued to our phones and TV, tucked away in the comforts of our own homes, shut away from our neighbors, and afraid to interact with strangers.

There are some great insights and observations in the piece and I strongly suggest you read it. However, I find it shocking that podcasts are not mentioned once.

I empathize with the piece. I’ve been working with therapists and a career coach recently to figure out why I don’t feel fulfilled in my work and how to stave off or work through bouts of extreme depression and anxiety. It’s becoming quite clear that I don’t spend enough time out with other people. Even in the workplace, I find myself working more with colleagues in other parts of the world than I do in my local office. And I’m coming to find that one of my remedies for loneliness is podcasts.

Over the course of a year, I will listen to hundreds of hours of the same voices. One-way conversations where I feel intimately familiar with the hosts’ lives; laughing, nodding, and crying along to their conversations as if they are speaking to me privately. I feel a connection to these people with shared interests, hobbies, humor, and passions, many of which I’ve never met. And just as soon as I have a quiet moment to acknowledge that this intimacy is false, another episode is right there to fill the silence.

I’ve been fortunate enough to befriend some of the hosts of my favorite podcasts. Thankfully, that “connection” and “intimacy” have borne fruit. Now when I listen to thier shows, I know there exists a genuine relationship where I can reach out directly and chat about a topic they brought up, or something else entirely. But that is not the case for the overwhelming majority of podcast listeners. Yet, they likely feel an “intimate connection” to their favorite hosts.

So, when I came across this bit in Thompson’s piece, a chill ran down my spine:

AI’s ability to speak naturally might seem like an incremental update, as subtle as a camera-lens refinement on a new iPhone. But according to Nick Epley, fluent speech represents a radical advancement in the technology’s ability to encroach on human relationships.

“Once an AI can speak to you, it’ll feel extremely real,” he said, because people process spoken word more intimately and emotionally than they process text. For a study published in 2020, Epley and Amit Kumar, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, randomly assigned participants to contact an old friend via phone or email. Most people said they preferred to send a written message. But those instructed to talk on the phone reported feeling “a significantly stronger bond” with their friend, and a stronger sense that they’d “really connected,” than those who used email.

Speech is rich with what are known as “paralinguistic cues,” such as emphasis and intonation, which can build sympathy and trust in the minds of listeners. In another study, Epley and the behavioral scientist Juliana Schroeder found that employers and potential recruiters were more likely to rate candidates as “more competent, thoughtful, and intelligent” when they heard a why-I’m-right-for-this-job pitch rather than read it.

This bit about AI is hardly the meat of the article. Perhaps even a distraction from the core thesis. But it did remind me of a fear I’ve had for a few years now — one that seemed almost too “science fiction” to write about, but is no longer fiction: Personalized AI-generated podcasts.

Years ago, the concept of podcast dynamic ad insertion led me to consider a sci-fi future where beyond ads, podcasts became hyper-tailored to the listener. To Epley’s point, speech can create a much stronger bond than text. What if a podcast could tailor itself to you, going as far as to address you by name? This would not only be compelling in the face of loneliness, but extremely dangerous considering the free-range of rhetoric available in podcasts.

So when Spotify announced that they had partnered with Google to create custom Spotify Wrapped AI Podcasts for each Spotify user, you can see why I freaked out a little bit.

I’m sure I’m behind the curve here, and not only is Google’s NotebookLM playing in this space, but people are surely feeding their digital interactions with obedient GenAI content. So what stops a future where we are not only reading what we want to read, but we’re hearing what what we want to hear from a voice speaking directly to us for hundreds of hours a year?

Switch 2 Teaser Impressions

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 22:30:00 GMT

With Nintendo’s announcement and teaser of the Switch 2, a few thoughts have been percelating in my mind. I’ll keep this brief, inspired both by Brendon Bigley’s ingenius hot take “Switch 2 thoughts but I only have as long as Nintendo’s announcement” and the limited time I have while my daughter naps.

I stated the following on my post “Nintendo Switch Presentation 2017 Impressions”:

Without question, Switch is another unique and possibly industry changing device. Like Apple, Nintendo often skates to where the puck is headed, defining industry trends. And without question, the biggest dream of all is being able to take your home console on the go.

Boy, if that wasn’t an understatement. At 146.04 million units sold (so far), Nintendo Switch is the third best-selling video game console of all time (and only ~14M units away from dethroning PS2 from the top spot). Five years after the launch of the Switch, Valve released the Steam Deck and we’ve seen a plethora of other manufacturers following Nintendo’s lead.

But where does the puck go after the Switch and “home console handhelds”?

So far, the Switch 2 looks like a bigger, more comfortable Switch. The new Joy-Cons seem to suggest some new features such as doubling as a mouse. And we can only assume the Switch 2 will pack a bit more power, if not for the fact that chips have gotten much more powerful in eight years, but the form-factor alone should support better thermals, larger components, and a bigger battery to support said power. It’s an iterative upgrade, which would (sort of) be a first for Nintendo considering the fact that they’re touting strong backwards compatibility with the Switch.

With that, here are a few unfounded, potentially crackpot throughts on the Switch 2 and Nintendo at large:

Switch 2 will not sell gangbusters. Early adopters are eager to get thier hands on this, and assuming it will pack much more modern power, it will probably do well in the years to come if more demanding games can launch alongside their PC/PS5/Xbox Series counterparts on the Switch 2. But just as the current Switch is “good enough” for many players, I assume the original Switch will continue to be “good enough” for most players until they can no longer find the titles they want to play on their 8+ year-old console.
Nintendo will focus on micro-innovations moving forward. Maybe my imagination has run dry, but I think we’re at the end of the road for video game console innovation. Nearly as soon as console video games arrived, players began dreaming of taking them on the go. The original Switch made that a reality (per my quote above). If this is true, that puts Nintendo in a very interesting position. A company known for its video game console innovation may not have much more room for large innovations such as the NES, Game Boy, DS, Wii, and Switch. I do think we’ll see micro-innovations on their consoles moving forward (such as the suspected mouse-input on the Switch 2 Joy-Cons), but I don’t think we’ll see big swings from Nintendo or others in the industry going forward. If Nintendo is seen as prescient of the games industry, the fact that they’re only iterating eight years later may suggest that we’ve hit a plateau. Innovation will happen — motion input, touch input, XR, etc — but it likely won’t be considered the core-gaming experience consisting of… well… buttons.
Nintendo will look outside of consoles for innovations. Maybe an iteration of the Switch was obvious. Perhaps the writing of the the aforementioned plateau was on the wall as soon as Super Nintendo World was announced in 2015. But the fact that Nintendo seems to be making a full-throated effort to reach outside of video games with theme parks, movies, a music app… an alarm clock… may show that there may be limited room to innovate in the hardware space. Video games will continue to be the hub of their flywheel, but expansion beyond innovative video game hardware and into thier franchises seems to make even more sense now.
Switch 2 could be the Microsoft handheld. Probably the wildest idea that I’ve had for a while. Microsoft has been stressing Xbox everywhere, now even porting games to PlayStation. Depending on the power of Switch 2, it’d be silly for Microsoft not to execute the same strategy on Nintendo’s “home console handheld platform”. Just like that, Xbox titles would be on an extremely popular handheld device. A boon for both Microsoft and Nintendo (which could blow a hole in my first bullet point). Furthermore, if the Switch 2 does suggest a video game hardware plateau, what’s left for Microsoft to do in the space? Why take the loss on building their own hardware? Lean on PlayStation as a powerhouse home console and Nintendo Switch for the handheld-first market.

If this is as far as Nintendo’s console innovation goes — yes, I know how ludicrous that sounds — at long last, I’ll be able to play my “Nintendo”.

Netflix: The New Blockbuster

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 22:30:00 GMT

Stephen Totilo on his excellent Game File newsletter (paywalled):

I might have the games-movies-TV comparison on my mind because of Arranger’s Netflix connection.

The new game is available on Switch and PlayStation for a price, but is also offered on mobile at no added cost to anyone with a Netflix subscription.

It’s one of many excellent games offered via Netflix on mobile (see also: Kentucky Route Zero, Oxenfree, Poinpy, The Case of the Golden Idol, Storyteller, Immortality, Into the Breach and more).

But it’s not quite the kind of game that Netflix execs were hyping to investors last week as they made clear they’re still bullish on being a big player in gaming. They kept focusing on games that spin off of Netflix shows, and salivated over how a tie-in game can let Netflix “take a show and give the super fan a place to be in between seasons.” That’s the kind of synergy talk that investors like. It makes sense the way it makes sense to extend a brand by selling official t-shirts and coffee mugs. It might even result in some delightful games tied to TV shows.

It’s just not what Arranger is.

Arranger is something only possible in games that only needs to be a game and have nothing to do with anything else.

My wife and I resubscribed to Netflix the night before the above newsletter went out (July 26, 2024 — I’m a bit late to posting this). She’s been wanting to watch Live to 100 and is excited about the upcoming Emily in Paris season.

After starting our new Netflix subscription, the first thing I saw when launching the app was a row of mobile games, leading with Arranger. I had no intention of playing anything that night, but had heard a lot of good buzz about Arranger, so I launched it not 30 seconds after becoming a subscriber.

Then I had an epiphany: Netflix feels like the new Blockbuster.

Blockbuster is most fondly remembered as a movie rental store — truly, Netflix/streaming has been seen as the new Blockbuster for decades — but after seeing Netflix’s programming layout of movies/TV and games, I was teleported back to browsing the shelves of Blockbuster on a Friday night — my parents looking for movies while I looked for video games.

Movies/TV and games are complementary — the former is passive and latter is participatory. This often comes up on my podcast Y-Button. As a child, it was such a treat to browse both movies/TV and games under one roof, asking, “What am I in the mood for tonight?” I doubt Netflix is looking to Blockbuster as a model. And it’s not to say one can’t experience any piece of media or medium at any given time on their smartphone, or movies/TV and games on their console. But one curated location (the Netflix app) offering two types of experiences feels right.

Video games are Millennials too

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 06:00:00 GMT

Kyle Orland, Ars Technica:

A 16-year-old who was sinking all their free time into Diablo II when it launched in 2000 is pushing 40 these days. That means the core, nostalgic audience for the series is now very likely to have a career, family, and/or other responsibilities eating into their playtime. There’s nothing like a few decades of aging to make the prospect of sinking hundreds of hours into a loot grind seem less appealing.

I was 15 years old when Diablo II released. I’m pushing 40 these days. What is true of Diablo’s grind is true of video games in general.

As a teenager, I would dream of playing video games all day. The desire propelled my career ambitions. If I could make enough money to buy any game whenever I wanted, I had made it. (This motivation still lingers…) But it’s in the past five or so years that I’ve had to face the reality that time is scarce. Free time: Scarcer. I’ll spare you a write-up on the increased thoughts of mortality that sink in after you have a child, but that’s part of it too. Choosing what you do with your ever-decreasing free time becomes paramount.

And while decreased leisure time is not a new phenomenon, decreased time for video games is. Video games were a construct of the ‘50s–‘70s, but they did not become ubiquitous until the ‘80s. Add 10 to 20 years to that for the first player base, and you get people now in their late 50s/early 60s who grew up with games. But it’s likely the Millennials in their 30s and 40s who have the most profound attachment to the medium as they grew up alongside it. Video games are Millennials too.

The fact that we have yet to uncover the full spectrum of age demographics that are native to gaming is exciting but continues to throw wrenches in business models. As people age, how they choose to spend their time changes. In a few decades, we’ll understand how to meet every age demographic and their native technological culture where they are, with wider varieties of gaming genres and experiences. Until then, expect the old way of doing things to die on the vine.

Avoiding Hell

Fri, 10 May 2024 17:00:00 GMT

Matt and the Evil Empire team announcing a delayed release date for Ubisoft’s upcoming The Rogue Prince of Persia:

So it’s been a bit of a crazy week for us! It all started when a little game called Hades 2 released - you might have heard of it?

Seeing as everyone and their mum is playing that game (including our entire team… and their mums), we have decided to let people have their fun with it before we release The Rogue Prince of Persia.

We will still be releasing in May and will be back with a precise date on Monday.

While we have every confidence in The Rogue Prince of Persia, it’s not every day that a game in the same genre as you, which is one of the most anticipated upcoming games of 2024, will release into Early Access a week before you plan to do the same.

Years ago, I wrote about self-competing and time blocking. While I’m not sold on the conspiracy, it remains true that the year-by-year, month-by-month deluge of amazing games has titles eating each others’ lunch. Hades 2 — the sequel to one of best and most hooking games ever made — is certain to eat everyone’s lunch. This announcement from Evil Empire is the sort I’ve been yearning to see.

As calendars become packed with incredible releases, many developers and publishers have found their highly anticipated game gets overshadowed by an even more highly anticipated game releasing in the same window. More often than not, it’s impossible for release dates to shift due to in-flight marketing campaigns, resource forecasts, and release management on various platforms.

Seeing as this delay is specifically for the Early Access (beta, more or less) version of The Rogue Prince of Persia, Evil Empire and Ubisoft have the benefit of a much smaller impact for delaying. Still, it’s a small step in the right direction. Even more shocking that this is an Ubisoft title. Maybe I’m naive, but I didn’t have “Ubisoft approved game delay” on my bingo card.

My favorite part:

This also lets us keep polishing up the game, add even more cool things and kick some stubborn bugs out before release. The Day 1 patch was getting pretty hefty, so gaining more time to test it and add more stuff before launch day has considerably lowered the stress levels of our producer and game director already!

Wonderful move for both players and the team.

'They’re getting away with it because everybody is doing it.'

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 02:45:00 GMT

Bobby Allyn, NPR:

“There is a herding effect in tech,” said Jeff Shulman, a professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, who follows the tech industry. “The layoffs seem to be helping their stock prices, so these companies see no reason to stop.”

Some smaller tech startups are running out of cash and facing fundraising struggles with the era of easy money now over, which has prompted workforce reductions. But experts say for most large and publicly-traded tech firms, the layoff trend this month is aimed at satisfying investors.

Shulman adds: “They’re getting away with it because everybody is doing it. And they’re getting away with it because now it’s the new normal,” he said. “Workers are more comfortable with it, stock investors are appreciating it, and so I think we’ll see it continue for some time.”

'So don't get worried and sell all your shares'

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 07:00:00 GMT

Gita Jackson, episode 2 of the new Aftermath Hours podcast (edited for clarity):

Microsoft is beginning to gear up for their first financial meeting where they’re discussing the impact of the Blizzard Activision acquisition. As sort of a runway up to that, they laid off a huge number of roles…

What really drives me wild about the Microsoft one [compared to Riot] is that Microsoft is a company that makes profit at a level that if they eliminated their gaming division tomorrow, it would have a minimal impact on their bottom line. By that same token, they could keep their gaming division at exactly the same size and those 2,000 jobs would not actually impact their bottom line all that much.

Think about how big Microsoft is. Because of the way that the economy works and the way that I’ve learned that most of economic projections are just sort of guesstimates and lies, video games for a company like Sony or Microsoft that do other things, that do consumer electronics and software, video games are not even a secondary revenue stream. They’re like a tertiary revenue stream. They’re like third in priority. They don’t need to do this. They really don’t need to do this. And by that same token, it doesn’t make sense when they have layoffs this huge. This is like a show of force for their investors more than anything else, right? To say that they’ve identified the profit centers and are trimming the fat in their new acquisition. “So don’t get worried and sell all your shares.”

In years past, I would have written extensively about the insane amount of gaming industry layoffs occurring right now. This is exactly the thing I want people paying attention to. Thankfully, there are loads of outlets covering this madness. I also haven’t had time to put my thoughts together. My jaw hasn’t left the floor. I’m flabbergasted by the current state of things, keep seeing more bad news, and frankly, I’m out of practice of research and reporting. Plus, there are much more informed people dropping insightful takes about this atrocious time, like the folks at Aftermath. (I’m really enjoying the Aftermath Hours podcast. Highly recommend.)

That said, if I had written something, I would have wanted it to echo what Gita has said here. It isn’t a coincidence that Microsoft’s layoffs came one week before their shareholder meeting. That’s not to say these layoffs wouldn’t have happened regardless, but this timing does away with any facade.

(Also, if I’m reading this correctly, Gaming accounted for about 7% of Microsoft’s FY24 Q1 revenue. I wouldn’t say it has “minimal impact on their bottom line”, but it certainly isn’t their moneymaker.)

Miyamoto: 'The border of video game is becoming less and less set in stone'

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 15:00:00 GMT

Shigeru Miyamoto, in an interview with The Guardian’s Keza MacDonald:

When Miyamoto started at Nintendo, video games were still yet to be defined. Arcades and early home consoles were sketching out the earliest versions of what would become possible with virtual worlds. In 2023, most of the world plays video games, and the boundaries of what constitutes a game are once again becoming porous. The corporate world is encroaching on the universes of play that gamers have long inhabited, rebranding them as “the metaverse”. Everything from shopping and language learning to going for a run is being gamified through apps.

“Even grandpas like me know what games are now,” says Miyamoto. “Nowadays it’s very common to use PCs and smartphones, they’re used as pen and paper used to be. The border of video game is becoming less and less set in stone. People are having a broader understanding and acceptance of the term.”

Video games do not exist.

Announcing Y-Button

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 14:00:00 GMT

Today, I’m launching Y-Button: a podcast that asks why we care about video games.

Since my previous, short-lived video game podcast Ported went on hiatus in 2016, I’ve been ruminating on what would make a compelling video game podcast. (I’m not exactly sure why Scott Taylor and I stopped recording after only three episodes, but I’m sure we fall into some statistic.) Video games are space I care deeply about, but I’m not exactly sure why. I don’t play video games often, but the majority of media I consume — podcasts, news, documentaries — is video game related.

After seven years of asking myself why I care about video games, it dawned on me that maybe I should ask other people why they care about video games. (The realization hit me when I was listening to the Smartless episode with Rian Johnson and he and Will Arnett went on a tangent about games.)

Y-Button will feature interviews with journalists, enthusiasts, creators, and media personalities covering their origins with video games, why they care about the medium, and what excites them about the future. I’m starting with some friends and aquaintences, but the goal is to branch out to both well known industry insiders and celebrities you may not have known had a passion for video games. Dream guests include Kumail Nanjiani, Emily Gordon, AOC, Chrissy Teigen, Sarah Bond, Reggie Fils-Aimé, Rian Johnson, and Will Arnett to name a few. If you know any of these folks, hook it up! (The late Lance Reddick was also a huge source of inspiration and would have been a great get. RIP.)

Publishing this podcast is a source of immense excitement and anxiety for me. Worst case, I’m very proud of the name and cover art. I spent two nights learning Blender to create the 3D rendered button — my first experience with 3D modeling. I also wrote the theme song featuring my friend Scott Wilkie on a Minimoog with the direction, “make it sound like Steve Winwood”.

I hope you listen, provide constructive feedback, and maybe even suggest or connect me with a guest you’d like to hear on the podcast. It’s available wherever you find your podcasts including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can find the RSS feed here.

Enjoy the show.

Gunpei Yokoi, Game Boy creator: Our competition has a color screen? 'Then we're fine'

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 19:15:00 GMT

An excerpt from the book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” by David Epstein:

From a technological standpoint, even in 1989, the Game Boy was laughable. Yokoi’s team cut every corner. The Game Boy’s processor had been cutting edge in the 1970s. By the mid-1980s, home consoles were in fierce competition over graphics quality. The Game Boy was an eyesore. It featured a total of four grayscale shades, displayed on a tiny screen that was tinted a greenish hue somewhere between mucus and old alfalfa. Graphics in fast lateral motion smeared across the screen. To top it off, the Game Boy had to compete with handheld consoles from Sega and Atari that were technologically superior in every way. And it destroyed them.

What its withered technology lacked, the Game Boy made up in user experience. It was cheap. It could fit in a large pocket. It was all but indestructible. If a drop cracked the screen—and it had to be a horrific drop—it kept on ticking. If it were left in a backpack that went in the washing machine, once it dried out it was ready to roll a few days later. Unlike its power-guzzling color competitors, it played for days (or weeks) on AA batteries. Old hardware was extremely familiar to developers inside and outside Nintendo, and with their creativity and speed unencumbered by learning new technology, they pumped out games as if they were early ancestors of iPhone app designers—Tetris, Super Mario Land, The Final Fantasy Legend, and a slew of sports games released in the first year were all smash hits. With simple technology, Yokoi’s team sidestepped the hardware arms race and drew the game programming community onto its team.

The Game Boy became the Sony Walkman of video gaming, forgoing top-of-the-line tech for portability and affordability. It sold 118.7 million units, far and away the bestselling console of the twentieth century. Not bad for the little company that was allowed to sell hanafuda.

Even though he was revered by then, Yokoi had to push and shove internally for his “lateral thinking with withered technology” concept to be approved for the Game Boy. “It was difficult to get Nintendo to understand,” he said later. Yokoi was convinced, though, that if users were drawn into the games, technological power would be an afterthought. “If you draw two circles on a blackboard, and say, ‘That’s a snowman,’ everyone who sees it will sense the white color of the snow,” he argued.

When the Game Boy was released, Yokoi’s colleague came to him “with a grim expression on his face,” Yokoi recalled, and reported that a competitor handheld had hit the market. Yokoi asked him if it had a color screen. The man said that it did. “Then we’re fine,” Yokoi replied.

Rewind My Heart

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 05:40:00 GMT

Maddy Myers, Polygon:

In 2023, it may sound absurd for Blockbuster to stage a comeback. But it should, and here’s why: Video game rentals. Although movies, TV, music, and even books have made the leap to digital subscription platforms with (relative) ease, video games haven’t been quite so lucky. Sure, Xbox Game Pass is great, and it’s only a matter of time before internet access becomes widespread enough that cloud gaming becomes a viable business concept (pour one out for Google Stadia). But we also live in a world where games suddenly become unavailable or delisted from online stores, like the impending Nintendo eShop situation.

I can’t see myself leaving the house to rent a video game, but I love the idea. I enjoy playing bits of games to get a feel for the mechanics, innovation, and splendor, largely because I want to stay in tune with the zeitgeist and the video game podcasts I listen to.

While digital video game demos remain a thing, they are hit or miss in terms of showcasing the actual game. Some demos provide an accurate taste for the game, even allowing players who purchase the game the opportunity to pick up where the demo leaves off (Dragon Quest XI), while others are poor examples of the true heart of a game (Kirby and the Forgotten Land).

The notion (and memory) of renting a game for a limited time to play as long as my heart desires, and progress as far as my time can muster, feels like an unappreciated lost love.

'Regret's a killer worse than death'

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Jack Billings (Billy Crudup), Hello Tomorrow! (Apple TV+):

Explain this to me… we live with miracles at our finger tips. We fly to the stars. We split atoms. We’ve got robots taking out the trash. Why are we all still waiting to live our dreams?

Well, there’s a technical term for that in my business: That’s call a “shit deal”. Our best days: they’re piling up in the rearview. And that hope that keeps us going: it’s wearing down to the bone. Some of us are losing people we love. And just like that “any day now”, that turns into “too late”. Gone forever. Because every day that we’re not living for Now — Right Now — we’re waiting around dying. One empty promise at a time.

I’m not waiting around anymore, goddammit. Neither should you. The time is Now. And regret’s a killer worse than death.

Great writing that shook me out of a funk. Put it next to ”I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

No Fail Mode

Mon, 13 Feb 2023 21:30:00 GMT

I advocated using Tunic’s No Fail Mode in ”My Favorite Things of 2022”. Here’s some neat detail about the feature from Wired’s “How Indie Studios Are Pioneering Accessible Game Design” by Grant Stoner:

Accessibility may seem daunting, but by listening to experts in the field and the lived experiences of players, it affords disabled individuals the opportunity to play some of this year’s best games, and by proxy, makes games better for everyone. In March, developer Andrew Shouldice launched Tunic, a game about an adorable little fox trying to solve a grand mystery. With exploration and puzzle mechanics harkening back to the original Legend of Zelda, mixed with Soulslike combat, Tunic offered quite the challenge, more so for those with disabilities. But rather than expect and force people to overcome potentially inaccessible barriers, Shouldice wanted everyone to play his game.

“It’s true that challenging combat is a core part of Tunic. However, including options like No Fail Mode does not ‘compromise the integrity’ of the game or anything like that,” Shouldice says. “Really early on, I thought it would be a challenge to incorporate that sort of setting into a game that uses difficulty to gate progress, but in the end, it was a very straightforward decision. The truth is that people who enjoy the combat challenges are just not going to use the option, and those who don’t want to engage with the combat will. In the end, the core of Tunic isn’t about exclusion based on whether you can press the buttons at the right time. It’s about being curious and willing to explore a world you don’t understand. Adding some options to let more people experience that part of the game was absolutely worth it.”

The creation of No Fail Mode did not detract from a central mechanic of Tunic: exploration. Players are actively encouraged to seek out the unknown and regularly return to visited areas with new items. Discovering alternate pathways and searching every nook and cranny of zones is what makes Tunic so enticing to play. Despite the success of No Fail Mode, the feature still needed fine tuning, and proved that accessibility is a continuous process, one that does not stop when a game is released.

“A few months before launch we set up a Discord for press folks to collaborate on puzzles prelaunch,” Shouldice says. “One reviewer got to the credits, having defeated the final boss using No Fail Mode. It didn’t take long for them to realize that they missed out on a big part of the game—you’re supposed to fail that fight in order to unlock the game’s next act. As a result, we added a special case, where even if you’re using No Fail Mode, you can die in that fight. Our rationale was that if someone turned on that option because they preferred the puzzlier aspects of the game, it made no sense to penalize them and lock off some of Tunic more intriguing late-game riddles.”

This is essentially the curb cut effect:

…the phenomenon of disability-friendly features being used and appreciated by a larger group than the people they were designed for.

I learned about the curb cut effect from The Besties episode ”Accessible Gaming with Steven Spohn”. I’ll likely post the excerpt of Spohn’s description of curb cutting and it’s effect on gaming soon, but it’s a must listen episode. And I recommend having a box of tissues handy.

Zweisamkeit

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 19:00:00 GMT

A passage from “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin:

“‘Zweisamkeit’ is the feeling of being alone even when you’re with other people.” Simon turned to look in his husband’s eyes. “Before I met you, I felt this constantly. I felt it with my family, my friends, and every boyfriend I ever had. I felt it so often that I thought this was the nature of living. To be alive was to accept that you were fundamentally alone.” Simon’s eyes were moist. “I know I’m impossible, and I know you don’t care about German words or marriage. All I can say is, I love you and thank you for marrying me anyway.”

Ant raised his glass. “Zweisamkeit,” he said.

I mostly enjoyed “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”. While the tapestry of the novel is of game development (which hooked me initially), as Zevin puts it, it’s really a book about work and love, which stuck with me; namely the passage above.

I’m so thankful for my wife and daughter, but I’ve had similar feelings of loneliness — lonely while in the company of others — in other parts of my life for far too long. I resolve to change that this year.

GameDiscoverCo: ‘Compulsion loops’, predatory monetization & you..

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 18:00:00 GMT

Simon Carless, the GameDiscoverCo newsletter (weekly free issue)

We’ve been sitting, mulling on this subject for a few weeks now. But it’s time to uncork it. You may have noted that the PC/console game market is changing, with a high supply of new games, and a tendency to reward titles that allow recurring play.

Along the way, we’ve been preaching things like: ‘make deep, mechanically complex games that you can additionally monetize with DLC’. We’d defined this as both good business & ‘ethically sound’, whatever that means. (We’ll get there later.)

But what happens when you get too far down the spiral of monetizing your human-computer interface at all costs? One of the most powerful books I’ve read in the last few years is Natasha Dow Schüll’s ‘Addiction By Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas’, which answers precisely that question:

“Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, [the book] explores the dark side of machine gambling - a solitary, rapid, continuous form of play that has less to do with the competitive thrill of winning than with the pull of ‘the machine zone,’ as gamblers call the trancelike state they enter.”

As an industry, we make video games that give people pleasure. But I do think people should, from time to time, ask - are we jamming people’s brains with overly ‘addictive’ things? And are we taking advantage of that to make money, especially from those less able to afford it?

Dow Schüll’s book is relevant because - remarkably - it is both a meticulous history of how machine gambling companies learned to retain players, and a close study of some of the local, less affluent Las Vegas gamblers locked into a vicious cycle of spending - because these machines demand money constantly.

One big conclusion from her work? Winning money back from slot machines - the thing that makes the government regulate them so closely - doesn’t actually seem to be why many people play them. It’s about reaching a ‘flow state’, as defined by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi - the idea that you can get lost in an experience.

A good piece from a good newsletter.

'I Just Took the One with the Best Story'

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 15:55:00 GMT

Alex Barasch detailing the origins of HBO’s The Last of Us for The New Yorker:

When Druckmann expressed confidence that the show “will be the best, most authentic game adaptation,” Mazin said, “That’s not the highest bar in the world.” He went on, “I cheated—I just took the one with the best story. Like, I love Assassin’s Creed. But when they announced that they were gonna make it as a movie I was, like, I don’t know how! Because the joy of it is the gameplay. The story is impenetrable.”

The other day, a close friend of mine sent me a rumor that an animated Legend of Zelda movie is in development by Illumination, the studio responsible for the upcoming Super Mario Bros. animated film. My quick rely was something to the effect of pure agency not translating to film. I.e. Link has (almost) always been a silent protagonist. Unless they give him a voice, I don’t understand how the movie is compelling. The world, characters, and music of Zelda are charming and iconic, but refined puzzle solving and discovery — agency — are what makes Zelda games great.

Furthermore, agency is what makes games special. Somewhat shamefully, I only recently came to understand this thanks to C. Thi Nguyen’s book/thesis ”Games: Agency as Art”. After decades of playing video games in wonder, asking myself why these things and this industry captivate me so, telling myself that they are the evolution of story and immersion, truthfully it comes down to agency — I get to play a part in a universe whether it’s a pre-determined story on rails or a completely open world that I get to explore on my own.

As for The Last of Us, the game itself created such a fervor because there was an incredibly compelling story spliced into the game. But if memory serves, the story beats and gameplay felt very siloed from one another — the latter feeling repetitive and much weaker between the two. Brendon Bigley of the Into the Aether podcast put it best on Mastodon:

cards on the table: i’ve never been a huge fan of the first Last of Us. i found it more impressive than good, if that makes sense. my feeling was always that it used the language of cinema in its storytelling so much the game itself fell by the wayside — i spent all of my time playing wishing i was just watching.

point being: the hbo show is GOOD SHIT baybee

Nintendo Nintendos

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 16:45:00 GMT

Jeff Cannata and Christian Spicer hypothesizing on Nintendo’s next console during their “Bold” and “Cool Ranch” predictions of 2023:

Jeff Cannata: Your number 3 “Cool Ranch” prediction…

Christian Spicer: The next mainline Nintendo console — I don’t know if we’re going to hear about it this year — but it’s portable also. I don’t think it’s going to be the Switch 2, but I think they’re gone from having a discrete home console and there’s no looking back on portability. I don’t think they’re going to have a separate “portable” and a separate “home” [console]. From this point for the foreseeable future, the next Nintendo console is also a portable of some form or fashion.

JC: Why isn’t this you predicting Switch 2?

CS: ‘Cause Nintendo’s Nintendo. I don’t know if it’s going to be Switch 2.

JC: You think it’s going to be like a Game Boy?

CS: Or a Steam Deck? I dunno.

JC: I mean, Switch is a Steam Deck, basically.

CS: I don’t know if there’s money in that name. You already can’t “switch” with the Switch Lite.

I was surrounded by nieces and nephews at the end of last year and here in 2023, and they almost all refer to it as Nintendo. “I wanna play my Nintendo. Where’s my Nintendo?”

JC: But the Switch has sold 100M consoles, or whatever it is…

CS: It has! But so did the Wii. And the Wii U… was meh. But Nintendo is not afraid to just name things. Maybe Super Switch?

JC: Yeah, Super Switch could be. A lot of people have speculated on that.

The thing I don’t understand about why you think this is “Cool Ranch” is that I feel like it’s a no brainer that to me that they’re in the handheld place now. You can’t go back from Switch to now having, like, a GameCube. It can’t just be a home console anymore. I feel like that’s a no brainer.

CS: I wonder if they know how many people play docked vs. handheld? I feel like when I would talk about the console for years on this show, how I was exclusively handheld mode, you and so many people would say, “it hurts my hands. I got these grips and now I can use it,” or “I only use it docked and you gotta get a Pro Controller.” Maybe I haven’t been reading the tea leaves, but to me as a big handheld proponent — and I think 2022 having been the Year of the Handheld, in a lot of ways — I think that’s what will push this into happening. I think when the Switch launched, I don’t know if Nintendo was like, “yeah, we’re going all in on one handheld, one thing pushing forward.” I think the progress of mobile chips has made this a reality that it wasn’t before. That’s why I feel like we’re still living in that “Cool Ranch” world. Nintendo Nintendos.

JC: I went back and forth. I really struggled. For the longest time I had one of my predictions being Switch 2, or Switch Pro, or Super Switch, or whatever they’re going to call it. Part of me was like, it definitely gets announced this year; it definitely doesn’t get announced at all this year… I went back and forth. It’s too hard for me to predict because I feel like Nintendo could just wait another year at this point. I literally wrote down a “Bold” prediction of “Pikmin 4 is the last big hoorah for the original Switch; the Switch 2 is coming in 2024”. I feel like whatever it is, it has to be the next extension of the Switch. The Switch is become the de facto Nintendo console.

I belabor the above because I find it hilarious in context with my and Scott Taylor’s belaboring of the rumored Nintendo NX console back in 2016 on the Ported podcast:

Scott Taylor: For people like you and I — the older generation, who have the luxury of affording and owning multiple different platforms — how great would it be if I could start on my Wii U — OK I’ve gotta catch my plane — then pick up on my 3DS. That would be a rad experience!

Kyle Starr: That’s the dream, right?

ST: Absolutely! And I think that alone would be my incentive to buy a 3DS. That I could take my desktop experience (if you will) and turn it into a mobile experience. That would be a huge win. That would be really, really great to see in the future. I do think that kind of thing is making its way into the industry. I do think we’re going to see more and more of that. For years, there was a rumor of a mobile Xbox, which obviously never came to light. I do love the idea of starting in Location A and picking up in Location B.

KS: Rumor of the Nintendo NX — their next console — is that it’s achieved that dream: one console, multiple places. I don’t know how… I’ve been trying to comprehend what that would be like; trying to fathom how that would work, to have a console and mobile experience. One and the same, and not totally break the bank and give you two consoles when you buy the thing. But who know? We’ll see. Nintendo’s the crazy toy maker.

ST: They are, but I don’t know if I have faith in them to be the one that innovates and really disrupts the market.

KS: But they did it with Wii.

ST: But they didn’t though, right? To this today, it doesn’t matter. Nobody else is doing it. Xbox 360 never picked [motion controls] enough so that they said, “that’s a disrupter; we have to do it.”

KS: They went into Kinect which was sort of motion control.

ST: I don’t want to get started on Kinect. Kinect is a joke. Kinect shouldn’t exist because they don’t even believe in that product.

KS: But they tried.

ST: They innovated in their own division, I think. They innovated in their little avenue. It was innovative. I’m not saying it wasn’t innovative, I’m just saying it wasn’t disruptive. It didn’t change the rest of the market. I don’t know if I have faith in Nintendo to disrupt the market. I have faith in them to innovate, but are their innovations — this is going to sound silly — for the sake of innovating? They can’t compete on a CPU level. They can’t compete on a GPU level. So what do they do? They create some sort of “gimmick”.

If you remember, Wii was huge. It was monster. It was sold out Monday through Sunday. For months, you couldn’t get it. It was definitely something that worked, but I don’t know if I’d put my money on Nintendo to be the ones to innovate and disrupt the market.

KS: That’s a good point. There’s a difference between innovation and disruption. If you look at gaming right now, motion controls had their place and then they were gone. You don’t talk about motion controls anymore, except in the instance of VR which is way to early to talk about. But I do think that Nintendo’s claim to fame truly is innovation. The NES alone was innovative in the sense that they had a great marketing strategy; they had this certification process for games ensuring that when you bought a game it was going to be certified that it’s a good game to combat the crash that happened before that (which was before my time, but I’ve read enough about it to understand that). The SNES was more of a power horse. Nintendo 64 was first to really understand the 3D space, coming out with games like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time and teach people what it means to play a video game in a 3D space. And then the GameCube which was, in my opinion, kind of a weird move — another “let’s make this thing a bit more powerful”.

ST: That was them trying to get into the disc space to compete with PlayStation and Xbox. People loved the GameCubes. There are people who would absolutely defend GameCube as one of the best consoles that Nintendo put out. I never owned it. It never did anything for me.

I would say they innovate, but they don’t disrupt in terms of hardware. In terms of software, they innovate and disrupt. To your point, 3D worlds is a huge one.

KS: Then there was the Wii, which obviously innovated in the space of motion controls. Everybody thought that was the future. For a while there, it felt like that was the disruption point. Xbox followed with Kinect with their own kind of motion controlled thing. Sony came out with the Move, which flopped. And that was the end of the motion control space.

Then when PlayStation and Xbox went to create their bigger, better hardware, Nintendo decided to take another route and try something new again with the Wii U. It is an innovative platform. I love the experience of it. I think it was poorly marketed. That was the biggest downside of that console.

ST: The name itself is confusing for users. “What do I do with that? Is it an expansion? Is it a little bit better? It is a completely different system?” As a customer who’s about to give you $300-400, I don’t want to have those questions in my mind. I want to know that this is a brand new system. I want to know this is brand new hardware. I want to know this is a brand new experience that I’m about to… experience. Those kinds of questions are going to kill you. And it killed them.

KS: One Christmas, I watched my aunt gift my little cousin a Wii U game. He opened it up and freaks out. He didn’t have a Wii U. He had a Wii. She had no idea. She didn’t understand. If you’re in the space, you’re going to know. I don’t put the fault on her. I put the fault on Nintendo because that marketing was just awful. Needless to say, he had a fit and she was bummed out. It was terrible.

ST: So you could say Nintendo ruined Christmas for a lot of kids.

KS: I’m sure it did, and I was there to witness at least one of those kids.

Anyway, I think the NX… we have to remember that Nintendo has a ton of cash in the bank from the Wii. They have room to innovate. Their shareholders are probably pushing them in one direction — they obviously want them to compete in the space. But Nintendo has their own priorities with innovation. I think what we’re going to see with the NX is something in between. It’s going to be an innovative platform, but I think they do understand that they need to compete in the power playing experience which is what Xbox One and PS4 are doing. They have these insanely powerful consoles. Getting tons of third-parties on-board. Nintendo’s going to be at a cross-roads with what they internally want to do and what the shareholders want them to do. I don’t think they’re keen on third-parties. They love their own experiences. But they’ve got to branch out a little bit more. If they can’t come up with a killer console on their own terms with their own first-party content, then they have to expand a little bit.

So, I’m super curious about the NX. Again, this all stems from that dream of having the same experience in multiple places. Whether it’s on your TV or on a handheld device.

While I’d love to edit/add/update what was said in the above episode of Ported — (OK, just one: motion controls disupted camera/aiming mechanics with gyro enchancements) — the length of this post is the point. Speculation of what Nintendo will do next are some of the most fun conversations to have in gaming. That’s because Nintendo is more than just an innovator; they are an inventor. They garner the same secrecy and mystique as Apple, but rather than perfecting existing experiences, Nintendo is in the business of changing the game, pun half-intended.

What will Nintendo do next? Who knows. I couldn’t wrap my head around the NX before the Switch was announced. In hindsight, Wii U was very telling of where Nintendo would go with the Switch — scrap the dual-screen experience and lean into taking games off of your TV screen and into your hands. The writing was on the wall. The Switch has disrupted console design and the direction of gaming. You can see it not only in the Steam Deck, but the promise of cloud gaming — taking console (or greater) experiences on the go.

But where does Nintendo go after the Switch? Where is the writing? Where is the wall? Any guess is wild or “Cool Ranch”, in my opinion. The crazy toy maker remains illusive. Nintendo Nintendos.

Pentiment in The New York Times

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 05:45:00 GMT

Gilbert Cruz in The New York Times: The Morning newsletter:

The world of video games is large indeed. Last year, it encompassed difficult open-world dark fantasy titles like “Elden Ring” (for many, the game of 2022), surprisingly Zen experiences like “PowerWash Simulator” and this one, which I started just before the holidays and am slowly making my way through. “Pentiment” is set in 16th-century Bavaria, and you play as a manuscript illuminator who must eventually investigate a murder. (It sells itself, right?) With a look that tries to approximate medieval art styles, this is a largely text-driven game that becomes more engrossing the longer you play it.

In 2018, Pentiment developers Obsidian Entertainment were acquired by Microsoft, so it doesn’t seem fair to call recognition by a widely circulated mainstream newsletter “indie love”. But I think it’s fair to say Pentiment is a niche game. Within games media, it’s been widely discussed/praised — immaculate art design and impressive moral system — but it doesn’t seem like a title that would typically garner such placement. “Books-level boring” (in a good way) per The Besties.

I have yet to play Pentiment, but the more I hear about it, the more I’m itching to invest in it (after the three books on my nightstand). Very cool placement from The New York Times. Congrats, Obsidian.

Stephen Totilo: ‘Gaming takes over everything’

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 02:20:00 GMT

Stephen Totilo, Axios:

Video games will move to the center of the entertainment and pop-culture universe next year.

Why it matters: Streaming services, Hollywood studios, tech giants — even the Saudi government — are racing to capitalize on gaming’s vast and ever-expanding popularity, and its lucrative intellectual property.

…

Between the lines: This is what happens when a subculture has been deepening its roots for a half-century.

Many of the first kids who grew up with gaming become gamer parents, ready to pass gaming to the new generation.

Power takes notice. Outside elites elbow in.

Inside, young workers and players look around and see their once-rebellious pastime as an establishment that needs to be challenged.

The bottom line: From World of Warcraft to Wordle, it’s a game-lover’s world.

I’d been thinking a lot about why my blogging on Zero Counts has steadily slowed down. A lot of it has to do with the a busier work-life. Some of it has to do with my duties as a new parent. But I can’t help to think that it’s simply harder to have unique takes on games and the games industry, and for good reason. Not only has the mainstream popularity of gaming skyrocketed, but so too has solid coverage from mainstream media — Totilo (formerly of Kotaku) writing for Axios as an example. I touched on this one year ago in ’NYT: Making Video Game History‘.

The odd bits of coverage I found in mainstream media was an inspiration for Zero Counts. I captured what I could to elevate said pieces, but I didn’t feel the gaming space was being covered in a way I wanted to see. I’m no business expert, but I did what I could to fill the gap. Now video game coverage from top-tier veteran games journalists, critics, and analysts is ubiquitous at major media outlets. Meanwhile, traditionally games focused outlets seem to be leaning into the surrounding media (movies, tv, anime, comics, conventions, etc.) more than ever, which makes sense seeing that media at large is incorporating more and video game IP into it’s catalog.

None of this is a bad thing. In fact, quite the opposite. I love how big this hobby of mine has become. It’s important. It influences so much of the world around us from technology to entertainment to education to culture to art, and it’s not getting smaller. There is obviously a huge dark-side to Big Business — “elites elbow in” creating “an establishment that needs to be challenged” — I’m just glad (read “hope”) press coverage has grown to a level to hold it accountable.

Or perhaps this new father who grew up with gaming is just happy to see the medium proliferate, is optimistic about the new generation, and was giddy to see this piece published on his birthday.

Project Leonardo for PlayStation 5

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 05:35:00 GMT

Playstation.Blog:

Through conversations with accessibility experts and incredible organizations like AbleGamers, SpecialEffect and Stack Up, we’ve designed a highly configurable controller that works in tandem with many third-party accessibility accessories and integrates with the PS5 console to open up new ways of gaming. It is built to address common challenges faced by many players with limited motor control, including difficulty holding a controller for long periods, accurately pressing small clusters of buttons or triggers, or positioning thumbs and fingers optimally on a standard controller.

This is the most exciting news I’ve seen out of CES this year.

Project Leonardo comes nearly five years after the Xbox Adaptive Controller was announced, but much better late than never. And coming in at a distant second means Sony has surely incorporated a lot of feedback about the Xbox Adaptive Controller into the design of Project Leonardo.

Project Leonardo can be used as a standalone controller or paired with additional Project Leonardo or DualSense wireless controllers. Up to two Project Leonardo controllers and one DualSense wireless controller can be used together as a single virtual controller, allowing players to mix and match devices to fit their particular gameplay needs, or to play collaboratively with others.

For example, players can augment their DualSense controller with a Project Leonardo controller or use two Project Leonardo controllers on their own. A friend or family member can also assist by helping to control the player’s game character with a DualSense controller or a second Project Leonardo controller. The controllers can be dynamically turned on or off and used in any combination.

The design of Project Leonardo is radically different from the Xbox Adaptive Controller. The sheer fact that hardware itself is highly customizable, from physical button layout to analog stick distance and size, let alone the ability to map buttons together and pair this device with a DualSense for individual comfort or collaborative, assistive needs, the combinations are seemingly endless. I’d be stunned if some curb cut effects don’t come out of all of this flexibility.

So Morimoto, Designer, Sony Interactive Entertainment:

“Because players can customize Project Leonardo according to their needs, there is no one ‘right’ form factor. We want to empower them to create their own configurations. The controller can also flexibly accept combinations of accessibility accessories to create a unique aesthetic. I am excited that the design will be completed through collaboration with players rather than presenting them with a single form factor.”

Competition fuels innovation, and the accessibility space can never receive enough innovation. I’m eager to see the informed reception and comparisons between Project Leonardo and the Xbox Adaptive Controller, and how accessibility in gaming evolves from here.

MegaMan X: Corrupted

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 21:50:00 GMT

This is a seriously impressive fan-made Mega Man project. Gorgeous Mega Man X art. Multiple missions. Metroidvania style level design. And incredible soundtrack by Dominic Nimark. (I hear fan-made Mega Man projects are typically high caliber.)

Perhaps foolish, but I find it inspiring when creators invest in their fandoms to breath new life into beloved franchises. I don’t know if or how projects like this survive, but I’m certainly rooting for it. Worst case, I hope this catches the attention of Capcom and these folks get picked up for their talents.

Something Dissonant

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 04:45:00 GMT

David Yee, posting on Mastodon:

Something dissonant about the way that my Twitter feed is currently fully in desperation over the terrifying critical injury of Damar Hamlin, a 24-year-old football player, on a field in Cincinnati—a communally-experienced condemnation of the NFL—and how my feed here is… just not? I want to leave that place with an urgency, but the transition is teaching me a lot about network effects and the nuances of specific communities and the intention of spaces and I mostly just want that kid to be okay.

My heart goes out to Hamlin and his family. The footage is ghastly.

Had I not followed Yee on Mastodon from Twitter, I fear I would have no idea about this heartbreaking injury in such a timely and communial manner. I don’t follow sports much, and seemingly I don’t follow many sports enthusiasts on Mastodon. For as much as I praise Mastodon’s tech and positivity, the insight into periphery or even foreign communities through Twitter’s algorithm, its large userbase, and (dare I say) its “town square” ethos was a huge draw for me. I felt more informed about topical stories on Twitter than I do on Mastodon. This is a chilling insight from Yee.

My Favorite Things of 2022

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 08:15:00 GMT

My daughter!

Excuse my lack of preamble, but she is without a doubt my most favorite part of 2022.

It’s very hard to describe the joy that courses through my entire mind, body, and soul every time I see her. I’ve wanted to be a father for as long as I can remember. But hours before she was due, I had this paralyzing fear that some damaged part of my brain would about-face and reject the pride of parenthood. Thankfully, I was very wrong. The second I heard her cry, my heart burst. It was one of the greatest moments of my life, and things only got better. I discovered an incredible force of nature. Instinct took over. I immediately knew exactly how to care for her; how to protect her. And not only her, but my wife who had just endured the incredibly invasive and major surgery of Caesarean section — common, yes, but it will lay out strongest person.

Caring for both my wife and daughter

For the three days we spent in the hospital, I was on constant watch for my family. The second my daughter cried for food, I was awake and ready. Every moment my wife asked for help out of bed or for a breakfast burrito, I was there. I yearned to support and care.

Prior to leaving for the hospital, I had packed my bag with books and video games, none of which I touched post-operation. I found the experience of “being there” riveting. It was the most present I’ve felt in a long time and I’ll cherish it for as long as I’m able.

Now, onto the “things”…

(Favorite) Games of the Year

Loco Looper — A crafty iOS puzzle game built with Metal, Swift, and SwiftUI. It lulls the player into a sense of calm with very simple 6x6 railroad crafting levels, but eventually turns into an incredibly challenging puzzler, always leaving one piece to frustrate one to their wits end. Continuing the theme of my daughter, I have extremely fond memories working through Loco Looper while rocking her to sleep every 2-3 hours for weeks at a time. Hail portrait single-handed mobile games!
Tunic — (I’m listening to the soundtrack as I write this. What a joy!) An homage to early 2D Zelda titles, printed game manuals (in foreign languages), and an unparalleled sense of discovery. I started this game on an M1 Mac and finished on Steam Deck — a joy on both. Do yourself a favor and turn on No Fail Mode. The combat doesn’t do its brilliant experience of discovery any favors.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge — I won’t go on too much here. Read my review. All I can say is that TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge is a damn near perfect brawler with wonderful nods to both the original TMNT cartoon as well as the 8- and 16-bit era of TMNT video games.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land — I have not completed Kirby and the Forgotten Land, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less charming or impressive. For a Kirby game, I was not expecting something as rich and detailed as this. It demos poorly, so just move ahead with the purchase. You won’t regret it.
Elden Ring? — I didn’t play many games from 2022 in 2022, but I did pick up Elden Ring last week. In the 3–4 hours I’ve played, this game is incredible. I hate the lack of explanation about the controls, menus, items, builds, etc., and I’ve avoided any enemy more difficult than two swipes of a sword, but the world, fidelity, animation, and music are jaw dropping. This is my chill game of 2022. I’m sure that will change when I actually start playing in 2023.

Mastodon

For nearly 15 years, I was a heavy Twitter user. I made connections with many people I felt I had no business connecting with, found my tribe, and boosted my blog’s reach through some fortunate retweets and endorsements. And I tweeted a lot. But the act of tweeting began to feel more like an addiction and ephemeral than something of value. It was far from the feeling I get when I write a blog post, which was becoming fewer and fewer by the year. Once Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter, I bolted. I deleted all of my tweets, more or less bid adieu to the platform, and leaned into the Mastodon account I created in 2018. And it feels fantastic.

Since November 13, 2022, I’ve been monitoring my social media Screen Time:

I find these results shocking. Not only have I reduced my overall social media usage, but dropping Twitter was much easier than I thought it would be thanks to a wide adoption of Mastodon from many folks in the communities I take part in.

While my time engaging with Mastodon is on the rise, that’s not due to an algorithm. It genuinely feels like a healthier, friendlier social-network. And the decentralized nature means my content won’t just disappear.

In small part, I owe Musk thanks in prompting me to have a healthier relationship with social media. In large part, I owe Mastodon for being there when the rug of a centralized platform was pulled out from under its users. A brilliant technology at the right time.

If you’re unfamiliar with Mastodon or think it might be too complex, check out Brendon Bigley’s “How to Use Mastodon” explainer at his blog, Wavelengths.

Analogue Pocket Cores

I received my Analogue Pocket in 2021 and loved it then. But in 2022, its firmware was updated to unlock the FPGA technology inside to developers. Through this, multiple open-source “cores” have been released for the device including cores for NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance, amongst others.

These cores have changed my relationship with emulation and 8- and 16-bit retro gaming in general. Being able to hardware emulate my catalog of NES, SNES, and Genesis games and take them on the go is a childhood dream realized. In the early to mid ’90s, the best we could get was a Game Boy or Game Gear with slimmed down games, grayscale graphics, and/or poor battery life. Honestly, most of those experiences were great, but they paled in comparison Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the SNES, or Sonic 2 on the Genesis. We just wanted to carry those experiences in our back pocket. And now we can. At a hardware level. The future.

Steam Deck

I’ve been missing out on PC gaming for some time. With the Steam Deck, I can finally enjoy classics like Half-Life 2, Halo, Mass Effect, etc., etc. On top of that, the ease of emulation through the Steam Deck is remarkable. While the emulation is not operating at a hardware level like the aforementioned Analogue Pocket, I am able to quickly load-up 3D favorites from PS2, PS3, GameCube, Wii, and many other consoles of yore. The Steam Deck is a wonderful companion to my Analogue Pocket, a great current-gen console (in handheld form!), and a hopeful glimpse into the future of handheld gaming.

Music

New Releases

Band of Horses - “Things Are Great” — A return to form for pop/party rock indie mainstays.
Momma - “Household Name” — ’90s era alternative wrapped up in a Gen-Z mindset.
Dawes - “Misadventures of Doomscroller” - Throw Elvis Costello, The Greatful Dead, The Band, and a dash of Elton John into a blender.
LIES - “Camera Chimera EP” — One half of American Football picks up where LP3 left off.
The Mars Volta - “s/t” - Modern prog-rock legends return with a pivot into high-pop.
mitch murder - “Selection 6” — Another collection of b-sides and rarties by the ’80s cheese synthwave mastermind.

Vinyls

Monique Judge: ‘Bring back personal blogging’

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 21:45:00 GMT

Monique Judge, writing for The Verge:

If what is happening on Twitter hasn’t demonstrated it, our relationship with these social media platforms is tenuous at best. The thing we are using to build our popularity today could very well be destroyed and disappear from the internet tomorrow, and then what?

What happens to all the content you have created? Where will the archive of all your funny memes and jokes be? What is going to happen to all those selfies you felt cute in but didn’t delete later?

The answer is we don’t know because we don’t control Twitter (or Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok). If one of these companies decided to shut down their service permanently, there would be nothing we could do about it.

Owning your content and controlling your platform is essential, and having a personal blog is a great way to do that.

This blog started out on the managed platform Wordpress.com. Wanting to own my own content, I spun up a new self-hosted Wordpress.org site called The State of Gaming (tsogaming.com) which would eventually become Zero Counts. In 2020, I migrated from Wordpress to Gatsby due to (amongst other things) a strong desire to get my content out of a database, into Markdown files, and stored in remote and local repositories, thus backed up via Time Machine, Drobo, Backblaze, iCloud, etc. Zero Counts and my career as a writer may not go anywhere, but it’s important for me to own, catalog, and control my work.

I genuinely appreciate the sentiment of Judge’s piece — I want to invest much more time blogging on Zero Counts in 2023 — but I struggle to understand how personal blogging crosses the chasms of connection, discoverability, and elevation. Perhaps surfing the web is a muscle I haven’t exercised for over a decade thanks to Big Algorithm, but I’m not exactly sure where to start with finding new blogs and outlets. Twitter was my primary source for new and interesting voices through retweets from my favorite writers and outlets. I think Mastodon has become my go-to community, but I don’t find myself connected to the zeitgeist, finding new content, or even engaging with my favorite creators on the network due to the lack of an algorithm. And that’s OK. It’s actually nice! I just hope I can find a way to find and consume the work old favorites as well as new and diverse voices.

I found Judge’s post via my RSS reader Reeder, so that’s a start.

Marvel Snap's Bedlam Highlights Mario Kart's Balance

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:45:00 GMT

The Besties Podcast discussing Marvel Snap during their Game of the Year bracket:

Justin McElroy: Recently, I’ve found the Locations that will pop up are so wild and random and significant that it sort of makes all your deck building and even the playing of the match irrelevant. I’m running into more and more areas like that. I had the planet “Ego” Location pop-up and that just plays all your cards for you. Like, you don’t even play anymore. And there’s a lot of Locations like that, where it’s so wild that it doesn’t matter what I’ve got in my deck — the match is already over.

Griffin McElroy: There was a recent Location that had you draw three cards then it destroyed the rest of your hand. I run a deck based around a handful of cards that if I don’t draw them, that’s it. If that was the first Location on the very first round of the game, I would say, “welp, I’m gonna lose, so bye.” And the game’s not particularly fun when someone bails out after a round or two. It completely gets rid of the whole Snapping-wager mechanic, which is so brilliant because it forces you to slow-play and bluff sometimes, which are mechanics that haven’t really been featured in a trading card game before. But it’s rendered completely void by these Locations that pretty much turn it into a roll of the dice.

Marvel Snap was a saving grace when rocking my infant daughter back to sleep after middle-of-the-night feedings. I could squeeze in five or so games due to its quick-start gameplay, small playfield, six round limit, and low stakes. It’s the perfect pick-up and play mobile experience. (Honestly, the 10s splash screen is the most tedious part.)

When the game first launched, I felt like I was able to run quick math to strategize the most opportune plays, which led to informed Snaps, the wagering mechanic Griffin mentions above. But as time went on, the Locations that alter the playfield with unique rules became so batshit insane that I felt like I could no longer track how a particular play would net out. I might increase Iron Man’s power 20-fold and obliterate my enemy’s cards or somehow sabotage myself by accidentally negating my cards’ powers, destroying my cards, or sending my cards to my enemy. Sometimes, a combination of all of the above would be triggered.

Hearing The Besties discuss the chaotic turn Marvel Snap’s design has taken initially had me drawing parallels to Mario Kart’s “anyone’s game” design. But the more I think about it, the more I believe Marvel Snap’s wild and seemingly unpredictable behavior highlights the balance and restraint designed into Mario Kart.

Stratechery: Consoles and Competition

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 00:20:00 GMT

Ben Thompson:

Forty years of context may seem like overkill when it comes to examining the FTC’s attempt to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, but I think it is essential for multiple reasons.

First, the video game market has proven to be extremely dynamic, particularly in terms of 3rd-party developers:

Atari was vertically integrated

Nintendo grew the market with strict control of 3rd-party developers

Sony took over the market by catering to 3rd-party developers and differentiating on hardware

Xbox’s best generation leaned into increased commodification and ease-of-development

Sony retook the lead by leaning back into vertical integration

That is quite the round trip, and it’s worth pointing out that attempting to freeze the market in its current iteration at any point over the last forty years would have foreclosed future changes.

If I rely on Ben Thompson for one thing, it’s to distill core principles, milestones, and maneuvers from the complexities of business history into simple patterns and through lines. This piece is a shining example.

Thompson’s argument aside, “Consoles and Competition” serves as a succinct and beautiful history of the video game business.

Nova198Nine

Mon, 05 Sep 2022 09:00:00 GMT

I was humbled when NovaNine asked for a custom Game Boy mod to commemorate their debut album. To fit the record’s ‘80s synthwave aesthetic, NovaNine and I settled on the original Game Boy (DMG) from ’89 as the base.

This was my first mod with LED backlit buttons. I wanted to highlight the album cover’s glowing retrowave sun. Luckily, I was able to find some of Natalie the Nerd’s awesome DMG LED flex boards — custom flexible PCB boards with perfectly placed LED lights. Paired with a blue LED power light, this Game Boy vibes like NovaNine.

Nova198Nine includes:

Note: In DMGs, the new display requires more power than the original display, thus increasing the noise floor. Buzzing from the speaker is a normal side effect.

Ten Years of Zero Counts

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 23:45:00 GMT

Today, I stumbled upon the Rands in Repose 20th anniversary post. This struck a chord:

Sometime during 2022, this weblog turned twenty years old. No one noticed, including me. While I write for this place actively, other creative endeavors increasingly occupy my free time, including the aforementioned Slack community, the podcast, and the bikes. This means fewer articles per year, but the writing… never stops.

Sometime during 2022, this weblog turned ten years old. No one noticed, including me.

In an fit of self-preservation and soul searching, I doled out the history of Zero Counts below. It’s amazing to see what this blog has brought me. It was an effort to break into games journalism. Professionaly, that goal was never realized. But the blog exists, therefore my writings on the games industry also exist. So, in a way, the goal was realized from the start.

As I reflect, recognition might have been a more accurate goal. That sounds a bit shallow, but for an industry I’ve been wanting to break into since childhood, any semblence of affirmation from industy players or adjacent feels great. And by my own definition, I’d call myself successful. Through will and/or luck, my writing has been linked to by Daring Fireball, Stratechery, How Games are Changing the World, and Into the Aether. Some of my favorite writers, journalists, podcasters, and creators have become Twitter mutals. It’s a bit mystifying to me, and it wasn’t until I wrote out the history that I connected the dots.

An unintended side-effect of the blog has been professional success. Through Zero Counts, I’ve learned to write and edit better, kept my eye on the digital publishing landscape, and learned enough web dev to be dangerous. All of which have been applied to my career in tech. I’m doing things profressionally that I wouldn’t have dreamed of ten years ago, in large part because of blogging. Crazy.

Writing the history was cathartic for me. Maybe you’ll find some insipration in it too.

Thanks to anyone who’s ever read or shared a post. Retweeted, liked, or replied. Thanks to John Gruber, Ben Thompson, Zach Kahn, Brendon Bidgely, Stephen Hilger, Colin Campbell, Chris Plante, Pavan Rajam, and so many others. I’ve never received a penny for my thoughts on Zero Counts, but I’ll take a link or retweet any day.

Here’s to ten more years of writing, developing, and learning. 🥃

Somewhere around April 13, 2012, I simultaneously fell in love with running, podcasts, and blogging. I had relocated for an intra-company internship away from friends and family. I would bide my time between work and sleep with jogging. I had grown tired of listening to music and decided to give podcasts a fair shake. The Nerdist Network of shows all featured cohesive artwork which enticed me to subscribe to a handful. I immediately locked into the (now defunct and delisted) Indoor Kids, a video game podcast hosted by (then small-time comedian) Kumail Nanjiani, his wife Emily Gordon, and a rotating cast of comedy and industry guests. I was smitten. Their mature conversations about video games came off as novel and inspired me to explore my own thoughts on games.

During the internship, I’d purchased an Xbox 360 and Skyrim to pass the time. I quickly realized I was chasing more side-quests than focusing on the main objective. I drew a corollary to my own life, wrote my first post ”Finding the Rails”, and sent a copy to Kumail and Emily. And Emily wrote back! This was a powerful moment. My writing felt validated and these podcasters felt real.

2012–2014

My post to Kumail and Emily wasn’t my first writing. I had been writing music reviews, video game reviews, and musings at TheStarrList since 2011. But after Emily’s response and with the extra alone time during my internship, I challenged myself to write more often. And I found writing through the lens of video games eased the process.

In an effort to increase readership, I cross-posted my writing on an IGN blog figuring there would be overlap between IGN readers and my gaming focused pieces. On January 29, 2013, I was highlighted in the Community Spotlight on IGN’s homepage — “One of the best up and coming bloggers on IGN, Kylestarr writes some of the best non-gaming blogs in our community.” Like Emily’s response before it, and as a long time fan of IGN, this accolade made my head spin and sent me into overdrive.

I began writing multiple posts a week, squeezing the most fleeting thoughts for tiny morsels of content. I started pushing myself to research. I wanted to contribute back to the video game industry I so enjoyed reading about. Genre/Gender Breakdowns for 2013 and 2014 found traction with IGN reporters. John Gruber’s Daring Fireball appeared on my radar prompting me to write link blog style. Polygon.com also became a steady read for me and inspired my writing, design, and content platform curiosity (i.e. Chorus). TheStarrList was growing beyond musings and into an industry and culturally focused blog. It needed to evolve.

INTERLUDE

As fate would have it, it was also around this time that I found myself joining the podcasts industry. After my internship, I’d struggled for more than a year to find the next step in my career journey. However, the inspiration I’d had from The Indoor Kids never left. I’d launched my own podcast focused on my friends’ journeys into their dream jobs. Creating a podcast was harder than I thought it ought to be. I happened upon a job listening as a podcast content producer and landed the gig on my background in customer service, my experience launching a podcast, and my misgivings about the barrier to entry. This will serve me in the future…

2014–2020

In a desire to own my content, I took blogging beyond the writing itself and decided to learn the basics of web development. While TheStarrList lived on Wordpress.com, I wanted push beyond its templated limits. With Wordpress.org, I was able to customize the HTML, CSS, and PHP. This allowed me to format my link blogs in a way I found intuitive and attractive.

Seeing as my content was moving in an industry and culture focused direction, I felt a rebrand was also in order. I chose “The State of Gaming”. “State” was play on “government”, meant to focus on aspects outside of the games themselves — culture, social, education, health, business… government. This was the lens that Kumail and Emily used for Indoor Kids and inspired me to write in the first place.

With this new format, I felt like I was making active contributions to video game journalism. In doing so, I began analyzing video game companies’ business tactics. In ”Hail Mario”, I took a stab at understanding Nintendo’s Mario Kart 8 release strategy. To my shock, the post was picked up by Daring Fireball. Views on this post shot through the roof. It was also with the Daring Fireball link that I began to meet new acquaintances on Twitter. Folks like Zach Kahn (then at Vox Media), Into the Aether’s Brendon Bigley, Stratechery’s Ben Thompson. There was a sense that connecting with the media world could become a reality.

But with all of this, I immediately hated the name and look of “The State of Gaming”. I needed something fresh, personal, and unique. Not a month later, I rebranded again.

Zero Counts

I still have no idea what “Daring Fireball” means, but it seems personal and is certainly unique. I landed on Zero Counts as a homage to a phrase my step-brother and I would use to describe video games that used x0 to signify “zero lives left”. In the early days of gaming, and probably still today, there was a discrepancy between “x1”, meaning you’re on your last life, and “x0”. Finding out a game allowed one more chance at victory when you reached x0 was pure elation. “Zero counts!” we would exclaim.

As for the design, I used blue, white, and black as an homage to Mega Man. My first memory was of Mega Man 2, so it felt appropriate. Personal.

Relaunching The State of Gaming as Zero Counts felt like a sea change in the blog. I would become less prolific, but more comfortable.

INTERLUDE

Work also began to heat up. My passion for online journalism and web development that Zero Counts enabled helped find me on the launch team of a major news aggregation service. This allowed me to peek behind the curtain of web development and CMSes as well as traveling the globe assisting various partners and heroes. Meeting folks like Polygon’s then Editor-in-chief Chris Grant (thanks Zach!), Rene Ritchie, Steven Aquino, and Federico Viticci was a dream come true.

2020–Today

The last big change to Zero Counts came slowly. After a few years of working on the news aggregation service, I jumped to managing a team of content producers, editors, and web developers. Professionally, I not only grew my skills in people management, but furthered my web development skills. I applied things I’d learned from Zero Counts like SEO, CI/CD platforms, and front-end dev to my day-to-day.

It was in this role that I came across GatsbyJS. I won’t rehash my ”From Wordpress to Gatsby” post, but the short of it is that I learned a bit of React and transitioned this blog to a static-site. It was a huge performance win and allows me to manage the content via GitHub from any of my devices, free of a CMS.

All this is to say that while my blogging has cooled down, Zero Counts itself has been a transformative vehicle. It’s a hobby that has acted as a platform for my career. I was inspired to create it from a podcast. I then took a job in the podcast industry. I became intrigued by digital publications, began to understand web development, moved into self-hosting, and eventually took a job in the online news media space. I’ve taken my experience running this blog into my current role where I can speak to web standards and best practices. When I was writing more often, I became a better writer and editor. I’ve met a good handful of idols and created some lasting friendships. And while I’ve always had a desire to work professionally in the video games industry, Zero Counts has helped me learn more about it — highlighting its strengths and calling out its shortcomings. It’s made me feel like I’ve made meaningful contributions to the space.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Review

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 00:30:00 GMT

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is tight. Both “tight” in the way Michelangelo would describe a new skateboard and “tight” in the way Leonardo leaves little room for anything other than his focus.

It’s Tight 🤙

It’s awesome! Righteous! Bossa nova… er… Chevy Nova? Excellent! In the words of the ’90s youth, it’s tight!

Many reviews have already pointed out how awesome Shredder’s Revenge is. It absolutely rules. It’s a must-play arcade throwback. It’s way more than retro-cool. It’s the best nostalgia trip you’ll ever have. It’s heckin’ dope.

The game overwhelming succeeds at recreating the ’80s/’90s TMNT arcade beat-em-up experiences. If you spent any time with the original TMNT arcade game (arcade/NES), Turtles in Time (arcade/SNES) or Hyperstone Heist (Sega Genesis), you’ll find the familiar variety of foot soldiers, patterns of obstacles to dodge while riding cheapskates and hoverboards, mutant (and robot) baddies from across the franchise, pizza boxes, and quotes likes, “Turtle Power!” and, “Ugh… shellshocked”.

In addition to the familiar, the level designs feature lovingly handcrafted pixel art by Juanito Medina that feels like it was ripped right out of the cartoon — colors pop, tiny details strewn about — with those aforementioned foot soldiers taking part in the scenes as office workers or checkout clerks. You’ll uncover cameos from the first two seasons of the original 1987 cartoon. The turtles themselves — voiced by the actors from the original cartoon series — feature their own unique stats and animations. And not only can you play as the four titular heroes, but you can also play as Splinter, April O’Neil, and Casey Jones. There are even clever nods to the legacy of TMNT video games: The overworld map resembles the overworld map from the original NES game, and — follow me here — a video game-based villain from the original cartoon summons other villains from an old TMNT video game who originally appeared in one of the films. (Spoiler: Tokka and Rahzar from the TMNT 2: The Secret of the Ooze film are villains in the arcarde/SNES game Turtles in Time. In Shredder’s Revenge, Tempestra — a villain who escapes a video game in the original cartoon — can summon the arcade versions of Tokka and Rahzar, seemingly from an in-game version of Turtles in Time. Radical!) It even plays homage to other classic fighting games:

https://twitter.com/ryugainai/status/1538086616258035713?s=21&t=3WJIA2YSi2IyfkB2Vk-7_A

https://twitter.com/ryugainai/status/1538311850630098944?s=21&t=3WJIA2YSi2IyfkB2Vk-7_A

Of course, just like a classic beat-em-up, Shredder’s Revenge is designed for co-op play. Unlike the TMNT beat-em-ups of yore, Shredder’s Revenge allows up to 6-player co-op. As of this review, I’ve only gone as far as to play 4-player co-op which was utter chaos (in the best possible sense). I cannot imagine what mayhem 6-player co-op brings.

https://twitter.com/genepark/status/1538281074865807360?s=21&t=3WJIA2YSi2IyfkB2Vk-7_A

Perhaps the best part of the Shredder’s Revenge experience is the ability to jump in to a random party’s game. During stage select, you can pull up a menu of other parties currently playing that level, which characters they’re playing as, and how far along they are in the level. At the press of a button, you can jump right into their game and fight alongside their party. The experience mimics the feeling of seeing an empty seat at an original 4-player TMNT arcade cabinet, dropping in a quarter, and joining the other three ~~strangers~~ players in their quest to best the Technodrome.

Some of the voice acting feels like a miss, and the final bosses aren’t particularly challengeing. But overall, the game rips!

It’s Tight 🪢

TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge is billed as a throwback/sequel to the original TMNT beat-em-up games. And that’s exactly what it is. Full stop. Even with all that’s new, the game is extremely focused. While it’s jam-packed full of character(s), there isn’t an ounce of fat on the game. It sets out to recreate the experience shared by many a ’90s mall rat and sticks the landing. 10/10. A perfect video game ass video game. Playing it at age 36 sent me back to playing Hyperstone Heist on my family’s 13-channel TV on loop. Scrolling through Twitter, I’ve come across well over a dozen tweets about parents playing through with their children, sharing an arcade experience from a bygone era.

A Little Too Tight?

Immediately after my first playthrough (as Donatello, of course), I was left wanting, and I felt extremely conflicted by this. I’d gotten what I wanted of the game, but I didn’t feel wholly satisfied. I didn’t want my time as Donatello to be over. It felt like the game was missing something. Side quests. Time trials. More Easter eggs to uncover. But that’s not the point of this game.

It’s probably not a shock to anyone reading this that video games are packed with optional tasks and mini-games. I’d be quick to point to the recently released Kirby and the Forgotten Land as an example of a game that tactfully blends the critical path with side-missions/time-trials, town restoration, power ups, and collectables, but this isn’t a new concept. Super Mario Bros. 3 was full of little mini-games, alternative paths, and secrets. Perhaps it’s the overworld map in Shredder’s Revenge that led my imagination to wonder if there was more to this game than its 16 levels. The routes off of the critical path tease, only leading to fetch-quest status screens from the extra characters discovered during the game’s story. There’s a list of achievements to complete, but I had tackled 70% of those after my first story run and one online level. Essentially, once you’ve completed the story, all that’s left to do is to play the game again.

It’s completely unfair to ask of more from this masterpiece, but nonetheless, here I am wanting. This feeling must be akin to seeing Star Wars (A New Hope) in theaters in 1977. Audiences had just experienced something special, but what next? Surely there’s more magic in that galaxy, but the the only way to feel it was to watch the film again.

Turtle Power

Amongst friends and family, I’m considered “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Guy”. Whenever someone is watching one of the movies, stumbles upon an old toy, or catches the annual float during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, I’m notified… and I love it! I own the original set of action figures in their boxes, have the entire 1987 cartoon series, rewatch the original movie annually, own movie and video game soundtracks on vinyl, and used to run a TMNT blog.

But truthfully, my fandom only runs as deep as the ink of my (bad) TMNT tattoo. I hadn’t rewatched any of the original cartoons since elementary school, rarely if ever dabbled in any new video game releases, and ceased following the franchise once I started investing more time in Zero Counts (and, you know, my career). Yet, I still appreciate every text message and memento sent my way. And I actually do see the turtles as a part of my identity; personas I often reflect upon. But I’d begun to feel detached from the franchise. A lapsed “fan for life”.

When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge was announced, I felt an excitement for the franchise I hadn’t felt in a decade. The game looked like everything I’d remembered of those classic games with additional fidelity that brought the art direction to closer parody with the original cartoon. When I learned that the original voice cast of the turtles would be reprising their roles and Splinter, April O’Neil, and Casey Jones would be playable characters, my excitement went through the roof. The mention that there would be plenty of nods to the franchise and Easter eggs from the original cartoon prompted me to begin rewatching the show while feeding my newborn daughter during the middle-of-the-night. (We’re through the first two seasons and it holds up!) All this is to say that this game has rekindled my affection for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Not only is it true to the arcade games my nostalgia so deperately yearns to relive, but I can feel the care, craft, and love that went into the game. All at once, I felt like I was back in the arcade, watching Saturday morning cartoons, and having an overnight pizza party with my best friends. It’s one of the most wonderful nostalgia trips I’ve experienced and it only makes me want more.

Tight 🤙

Reggie Fils-Aimé on the Wii U Struggle

Fri, 20 May 2022 18:55:00 GMT

Reggie Fils-Aimé discussing the Wii U’s struggle to perform in his new memior “Disrupting the Game:

New versions of key software in the Mario Kart and Legend of Zelda franchises were not coming until 2014 or later. Coupled with the announcements that new Xbox and PlayStation consoles were launching during holiday 2013, Wii U sales struggled to gain momentum.

Once again, we were faced with a difficult situation that had to be addressed immediately. Wii U had launched with two versions: white with limited storage at $299 and black with four times the storage capacity at $349 including the game Nintendo Land, which we had featured during the 2012 E3 conference. We had hoped this game would be a system seller like Wii Sports, but it did not live up to our expectations. There was not enough volume to support the two different versions at retail, and the black bundle was outselling the white one dramatically, even with the higher price.

In the Americas, I took action to eliminate the white Wii U configuration and consolidate the volume on the black bundle. By summer 2013, we had taken the price of the black bundle down to $299. We also worked with NCL to create unique offerings for our market that would appeal to our players. These included black hardware with Zelda graphic elements and the game Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD and a different special hardware bundle that included New Super Mario Bros. U and bonus content called New Super Luigi U.

Promotions offering unique hardware and different software bundles are typical in the video game industry. But having to resort to these tactics within one year of launch was unheard of. It was clear that there were not enough product and pricing tactics to keep Wii U alive for a traditional five-plus-year life cycle.

THE SO WHAT
Businesses in trouble need immediate and decisive action. You don’t have the luxury of time as the situation worsens around you. Stay true to your principles and the key foundations of the business. Stabilize the situation, then prepare for the next wave of innovation to grow the business back.

That “next wave of innovation” was the Nintendo Switch — one of the best (and possibly the fastest) selling consoles of all time.

On a selfish note, it’s too bad Reggie didn’t mention a certain Wii U hail mary.

Random Access Controls

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 18:20:00 GMT

The Dev Game Club podcast sat down with Halo: Combat Evolved designer Jamie Grisemer to discuss the origins of Halo’s development, constraints that turned into boons, and design considerations that have become staples in first-person shooters today.

I was particularly fascinated by their discussion around controllers, limited input, and removing friction from action at timestamp 57:43:

Jamie Griesemer: I think a really fundamental aspect of… I think it is Bungie’s design, but also my own, is something I call “Random Access Controls”. You can activate any ability with one button press. There’s no state or preamble.

When we were working on Halo, the way that you would add a grenade to your game is that you would switch to the grenade weapon and use the fire button to throw it. Everybody did it that way. We were like, “I just want to throw the grenade now!” Melee attack is the same way. You don’t switch to a melee weapon. It’s like, “now!” It’s all available right now with no delay. I think that makes your experience much more engaging because instead of having to plan to throw a grenade with your conscious mind, it moves it down into the hypothalamus; like, “no, I’m just going to react with a grenade.” At that point, the controls are just going to disappear and you’re not thinking about the controller or the keyboard or whatever anymore. You’re just thinking and having actions happen. I think that’s a really important aspect of games, that I enjoy at least. So I definitely try to recreate that.

Brett Douville: If you have to plan, you’re never going to touch the right stick. You’re never going to switch the weapon.

Tim Longo: You snuck in there “the triangle” (melee, grenades, guns). You melded it into the thirty-second conversation. You wouldn’t have that otherwise. It would be so inaccessible if you had to switch between all of those modes. As it is, you can react on the fly and tap, tap, tap.

JG: We called it the “Golden Tripod”. It keeps them all top-of-mind.

One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot over the current project is… we’re developing it for the PC and it’s really tempting when you have a whole keyboard in front of you to just invent a bunch of new abilities and just assign them all to different letters and numbers and what not. But I really think the controller is the complexity that it is and no more complicated because that’s kinda the maximum number of things you can have at the top of mind. Like, you wouldn’t improve the Dualshock by adding eight more buttons to it. It would just become more difficult to use, I think at that point.

I wonder if controllers got more complicated because players got more capable of holding all those actions in their mind at once.

TL: I think there’s actually some papers out there about this — the evolution of Nintendo’s controllers specifically — and how each one of their generations brought something new, like the D-pad and then the analog stick… not to give them all the credit, but there’s an evolution you can see; gamers evolving with it.

BD: It’s interesting that you don’t really see that with arcade controls. Those just locked into a stick and two or four buttons. They were always kind of limited in that way. They never matured because you never knew who was going to be plugging quarters into that thing. It had to be lowest common denominator. Anybody could walk up to it an do the thing.

This bit pairs nicely with Chris Plante and Jered Petty’s conversation about Wii Sports and the Wii Remote as well as my thinking about there being too many buttons for casual gaming, of which I’m beginning to turn around on.

(Hat tip to Rahim Sonawalla on the podcast recommendation.)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 17:30:00 GMT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-78FD9xvc0

Konami:

Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo are back from the sewers with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection! Thirteen radical games from KONAMI’s entire archive of retro 8-bit, 16-bit, and arcade Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) titles and their Japanese versions* will be coming to PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC Steam. Physical retail and digital versions will be available in 2022 at SRP $39.99.

This incredible collection of thirteen original classics gives chasing down Shredder, fighting the Foot, and tangling-up with Bebop and Rocksteady a fresh look at why KONAMI’s adaptations of the heroes in a half shell set the standard in beat ‘em up, action games. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection includes:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Sega Genesis)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Sega Genesis)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan (Game Boy)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From The Sewers (Game Boy)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy)

This collection surpasses my wildest expectations. From the inclusion of the Game Boy games to all three versions of Tournament Fighters, Konami, Nickelodeon, and Digital Eclipse have outdone themselves.

Growing up a Gameboy + Genesis kid, I have fond memories of Fall of The Foot Clan and Hyperstone Heist, though, I played my fair share of the original TMNT and Arcade games for NES with my step brother and cousins. I was only able to consume crowd favorite Turtles in Time through schoolyard conversations and a handful of quarters at the arcade. And try as I might, Blockbuster always seemed to be out of Tournament Fighters. Thanks to the quality-of-life improvements advertised — save anytime, rewind — I can see myself completing all of these titles. I’ll be able to conjour up my childhood memories and create some new ones.

Cowabunga, indeed!

NYT: Making video game history

Mon, 03 Jan 2022 16:00:00 GMT

German Lopez, The New York Times:

Hades is the first video game in history to win a Hugo Award, the prize for science fiction and fantasy that has historically honored books, graphic novels and other written works.

The game, from the developer Supergiant Games, follows the story of Zagreus — son of the game’s eponymous god — as he tries to escape the Underworld. Along the way, he fights all sorts of hellish creatures and meets a wide array of characters, including the gods up on Olympus. He also uncovers family secrets and gains perspective on why his dad has made seemingly unsavory decisions.

The Hugo Awards’ inclusion of video games, which organizers are considering making permanent, speaks to how far the medium has come. In the early days of Pong in the 1970s or the original Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda in the 1980s, technology limited how much text a game could include. Today, a game’s storytelling can be its primary selling point, whether it’s a high-budget science-fiction epic like the Mass Effect trilogy or an indie game made by a small team like Celeste.

This news broke last December, but I was tickled to see it included in today’s NYT morning newsletter. Not only is winning a Hugo award a tremendous achievement for Supergiant Games and the medium as a whole, mentions of specific titles large and small — from Mass Effect to Celeste — by a publication as massive as the New York Times is particularly noteworthy.

One of the reasons I started Zero Counts in 2013 was to gather and (hopefully) elevate video game industry coverage from major publications. I felt the medium had every right to be taken as seriously as art, big business, and cultural touchstones and should be covered as such by the largest publications in the world. At the time, it was only happening in fits and starts, typically prompted by the latest console craze or ”Nintendo’s white Playstation 4“.

Coverage has changed a great deal since then, putting a spotlight on scandal, working conditions, earnings, and acquisitions. What’s more is that most major outlets have now hired staff focused on the video game industry — NYT’s Kellen Browning, Washington Post’s Gene Park and Teddy Amenabar, Axios’ Stephen Totilo and Megan Farokhmanesh, and The Guardian’s Keza MacDonald to name a few. Coverage of specific games still feels spotty, but short of a consumer warning, reviews may be becoming less critical. So when specific games are highlighted — namely indies — it magnifies the growing recognition of the industry and the importance and impact of the medium.

On that note, I think I need to give the Underworld one more run.

Anybody's Game

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 00:30:00 GMT

End of the year lists are pervasive as ever. We know they’re coming, but the wave seems so relentless that they’re both easy to ignore and easily read with indifference. The voices and outlets sprawl from big media to niche publications, from massive awards shows to independent podcasts. The beauty (and horror) of the landscape is that everyone can find a personality or outlet to align with — something that won’t challenge their opinions or taste. Validation!

And I’m a sucker for these lists! I used to pour over best of music lists, but the sheer amount of artists, releases, and my dwindling time to incorporate new music into my comfort zone removed my familiarity with most music lists. Books are much the same. There’s just so many.

Video games are approaching the same level of proliferation, but following the output still feel manageable to follow. I’m able to have some familiarity with the titles released throughout the year regardless if I’ve played them or not. To be fair, the majority of my media consumption is spent reading games industry news and listening to gaming podcasts. But even without a devout following of the world of video games, reading a review, watching a video preview, or listening to podcasters discuss a game in detail offers enough description of mechanics and/or fidelity that a general understanding of the experience can be perceived. Most games are judged on the merit of “fun” which is an extremely easy thing to feel, but an extremely difficult thing to create. I’d argue music and books require a deeper level of personal interpretation of the sonics, prose, and style that many video games do not. But even that is becoming less and less true.

Beyond fun, video games are so complex that breaking best of lists into categories similar to movies (and more) feels more appropriate — music, mechanics, narrative, art direction, systems, acting, etc. But even film falls victim to the singular “BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR” generalization, and video games follow suit. And after reading a few of these lists, one typically finds that the same game is selected by a majority of outlets as “THE BEST”; hence, the inclination to ignore the list entirely or feel indifferent.

All of this is to say that this year felt… unique. “Game of the Year” lists came from individuals, were compiled by an outlet’s staff, voted on by jury, or debated through via a brackets. And the games that topped these lists varied wildly. Here are examples from major media outlets:

Polygon: Inscryption
IGN: Forza Horizon 5
The Game Awards: It Takes Two
The Guardian: Returnal
EDGE: Deathloop
Golden Joystick Awards (GamesRadar+): Resident Evil Village
Ars Technica: Psychonauts 2
Destructoid: Chicory: A Colorful Tale
EGM: Psychonauts 2
Game Informer: Halo Infinite
GameSpot: Deathloop
TIME: Metroid Dread
Esquire: Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

This observation may not be novel. This very well may have been a trend in years past. But briefly skimming the Wikipedia article for ”List of Game of the Year awards”, you’ll find a much more refined alignment of “Game of the Year” winners:

2020: Hades, The Last of Us II, Ghost of Tsushima
2019: Control, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Outer Wilds, Resident Evil 2
2018: God of War, Red Dead Redemption 2
2017: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Perhaps 2021 is an anomaly. Many AAA games were delayed due to the ongoing challenges of the continuing pandemic. Maybe this gave a little room for smaller or unique titles to spread their wings. Or perhaps this is a a natural evolution of where “games” are headed.

At the end of 2020, I wrote about the idea that video game masterpieces are becoming so wildly varied in experience that to compare two incredible video games is to compare “apples to fabric textures”. Video games are comprised of the same elements but now yield profoundly different experiences. Much like music. Much like books.

This year’s “Game of the Year” lists exemplify the changing landscape in not only vast array of great games, but how each one hits players/reviewers/outlets in different ways. Instead of a definitive Game of the Year, players now have a vast spread of opinions to consider that will not only validate or challenge their own justifiable contender, but a litany of incredible choices to fit their preferred experience.