Original link: https://markonreview.com/2023/08/28/markon-review-express-weekly-5/
Weekly directory
general information
- Information summary of the pre-show conference in Cologne
- The Atari 2600+ host that supports the original game cartridge is released, priced at $129, and officially released in November
- VGC: Denuvo has been able to protect Switch games from being run by emulators, and has updated the protection function for Unreal Engine game content
- Kotaku: Leaked “GTA VI” teenage hacker completed the invasion in the hotel room with only an Amazon Fire Stick set-top box
- ID@Xbox Celebrates 10 Years, Program Lead Chris Charla Shares Precious Memories
- “Entertainment Weekly” interprets the latest trailer of “Alan Wake 2”
- Polygon: “Broken Sword” developer talks about how AI can help remakes
Market Dynamics
- Microsoft Licenses Activision Blizzard Cloud Game Service to Ubisoft to Prompt CMA to Agree to Deal
- 80 Level releases survey report on cloud gaming
- Video Games Europe released a report to sort out the situation of the European game industry in 2022
- Epic Games Announces Exclusive Partnership Program, Participants Will Receive 100% Of Revenue Within 6 Months Of Game Launch
- Eurogamer interviews Phil Spencer to discuss Microsoft’s near-to-mid-term plans for gaming
- BioWare Lays Off 50 Jobs, Community Worry About Its New Title
point of view discussion
- Unwinnable: Quantitative analysis of Wholesome Direct 2023 press conference, exploring the connotation of “Wholesome”
- Game Developer: Games About Trauma
- Game Developer: How “Shadow Conspiracy: The Cursed Pirate” uses “S/L Dafa” as the core mechanism
- GamesIndustry “This Month Ten Years Ago”: “Creative Vision” and “Popular Demand”
- GamesIndustry: Why did the developers of BattleBit Remastered want to make a low-spec mass shooter?
general information
Information summary of the pre-show conference in Cologne
In the early hours of this morning, Gamescom, generally known as “Cologne Game Show” or “Cologne Exhibition”, officially kicked off with the pre-show release event Gamescom: Opening Night Live. Since 2009, Gamescom has been held in Cologne, Germany at this time of year. It is currently the largest annual video game event in Europe. It integrates trade and various related industry activities and is open to ordinary consumers. Affected by the epidemic, 2020 The Cologne exhibition in 2021 and 2021 will be held online, and in 2022 it will return to the traditional offline event mode.
Starting from 2019, Geoff Keighley, a well-known industry media person, has reached a cooperation with Cologne with reference to The Game Awards event he hosted, and held a live event called “Gamescom: Opening Night Live” (Gamescom ONL for short) before the official launch. Concentrate on publicizing and distributing a batch of game works. In this article, the author will sort out the game information released at this year’s event for you.
Source: Markon Review ; sspai
The Atari 2600+ host that supports the original game cartridge is released, priced at $129, and officially released in November
Atari and Plaion have jointly announced a new modern version of the 1980s Atari 2600 mainframe, the Atari 2600+, which looks almost exactly like the original, with a classic Atari-style handle called the CX40+, HDMI output, and widescreen mode ;The most important thing is that this device supports the direct use of most of the original 2600 and 7800 cartridges (check the compatibility list here, three of which cannot be tested so far), and a popular Atari 2600 game will also be included with the purchase of this device 10-in-1 cartridges, and many more new cartridges released this year are available for purchase.
Sources: VGC , by Chris Scullion; Atari
VGC: Denuvo has been able to protect Switch games from being run by emulators, and has updated the protection function for Unreal Engine game content
Security software company Denuvo recently announced that its protection tools are available to Switch game developers. This “revolutionary technology” will prevent emulators on PCs from running related Switch games to protect the sales of these Switch games.
At the same time, Denuvo also disclosed the “Unreal Engine Protection” feature designed to “prevent games from being modified”, which is used to prevent malicious users from tampering with games made with Unreal Engine.
According to the official, the new function can “implant the game at the machine code level, effectively defeat data mining, and form a strong barrier to cheating, piracy, and fraudsters”, and can “protect Unreal Engine game data files from decryption, preventing in-game Invoking the console, hiding the injector prevents the game from being modified”, which could theoretically also make it harder for players to get the data needed to make mods. VGC has reached out to Denuvo for clarification on whether non-malicious mod development will be blocked, but has not heard back by press time.
Source: VGC , by Chris Scullion
Kotaku: Leaked “GTA VI” teenage hacker completed the invasion in the hotel room with only an Amazon Fire Stick set-top box
According to Kotaku citing BBC reports, documents submitted by the British court revealed details of 18-year-old hacker Arion Kurtaj’s attack on Rockstar Games, access to “GTA VI” data and leaks.
Kurtaj was “caught red-handed” by the City of London police at the Travelodge Hotel in Bicester, a small town in south-central England, where he was being released on bail after being arrested for hacking Nvidia in March 2022. Hacking devices: Amazon’s digital streaming device, the Amazon Fire Stick, as well as keyboards, mice, cell phones, and more. In addition to Rockstar Games, Kurtaj used this configuration to attack Rvolut Bank, Uber, and Microsoft; the attack on Rockstar Games was his most daring, because he not only showed arrogance during the attack (messaging in the company Slack group claiming he was not an employee but an attacker) and that he is still out on bail.
According to the BBC report, another anonymous teenage accomplice of Kurtaj has been released on bail, and Kurtaj is still in custody.
Source: Kotaku , by Levi Winslow
ID@Xbox Celebrates 10 Years, Program Lead Chris Charla Shares Precious Memories
Xbox Wire published an article during the Cologne Games Show to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the independent game self-publishing project ID@Xbox. It was at the Cologne Games Show 10 years ago that Chris Charla, the person in charge of the business, officially released ID@Xbox. According to the statistics of this article , Over the past 10 years, the project has released more than 3,000 games, paid developers more than $4 billion, and has another 3,000 games in development.
The author of this article interviewed Charla, who reflected on the important feelings of the ID@Xbox journey from her own perspective. Charla sees a key success of ID@Xbox as “reaching out to gamers who don’t consider themselves indie gamers, but have been playing ID@Xbox games without knowing it”; early on, ID@Xbox will feature a Certain sessions focused on announcements, but now that ID@Xbox games don’t have to be a set of showcases, one of them can naturally follow Cyberpunk 2077, and no one has a problem with that opinion, which is entirely their place.
In the article, Charla shared precious memories with ID@Xbox works, such as talking about the first ID@Xbox work “Strike Suit Zero”, the biggest surprise in the history of the project “Cuphead” (Cuphead), a great influence on 3A game developers Big impact Hades, Wheels of Aurelia exploring genre boundaries, favorite ID@Xbox developer stories, works that inspired future generations to get involved with ID@Xbox, and more.
Source: Xbox Wire , by Joe Skrebels
“Entertainment Weekly” interprets the latest trailer of “Alan Wake 2”
After the latest trailer for Alan Wake 2 aired at Gamescom, Entertainment Weekly caught up with developer Remedy Entertainment creative director and Finnish game writer Sam Lake.
Players will play the roles of FBI agent Saga Anderson and writer Alan Wake in “Alan Wake 2”. The previous trailer focused on the new protagonist Saga. The new trailer at the Cologne exhibition finally came to Alan’s perspective, revealing his situation . Lake said that this time we saw Alan in a more “primitive” (Raw) state. The struggle and continuous nightmare left a mark on him. There were ups and downs.
Lake joins Entertainment Weekly to break down the trailer shot by shot, talking about plenty of creative inspirations (like Martin Scorsese’s movies), noteworthy menus, considerations for live-action trailers, and more , which is very detailed.
Source: Entertainment Weekly by Nick Romano
Polygon: “Broken Sword” developer talks about how AI can help remakes
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a well-known point-and-click adventure from the early 1990s by Revolution Software, a team led by Charles Cecil, about a team of lawyers, An ancient religious conspiracy that journalists stumble upon. The last work in the “Broken Sword” series was “Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse” (Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse), which was released in 2013. Today, at the Xbox Cologne exhibition conference, Revolution Software announced the first game in the series. Six works are in development, and the first generation will also be fully reworked.
Cecil talked with Polygon about the unanimous call from fans to release Broken Sword: Mystery of the Templars on modern platforms, but the huge renovation workload is unbearable for Revolution Software, which has only 6 full-time staff, luckily What’s more, the team finally applied AI technology to make this remake possible under the premise of controllable cost. The two sides also excitedly discussed some wonderful plots in the “Broken Sword” series, related historical secrets, and made a brief preview of “Broken Sword 6: Parzival’s Stone”.
Source: Polygon by Oli Welsh
Market Dynamics
Microsoft Licenses Activision Blizzard Cloud Game Service to Ubisoft to Prompt CMA to Agree to Deal
In order for the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to agree to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft and the CMA recently announced that Microsoft will transfer the operating rights of Activision Blizzard’s cloud game business to Ubisoft, a third party, through the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Microsoft pays a one-time fee (there will be compensation based on market pricing in the future), and Ubisoft has obtained the cloud game authorization of all Activision Blizzard games on PCs and consoles for the current and next 15 years.
Since some cloud games were excluded from the original deal, both Microsoft and CMA recognized that this is a different deal, so the CMA has reopened the investigation of the case, with a statutory deadline of October 18, 2023.
Source: GamesIndustry , by James Batchelor
80 Level releases survey report on cloud gaming
80 Level published a relatively simple industry report, which mainly covered the status quo data related to cloud games, and made a brief discussion and analysis from the perspective of players; this article is obviously a soft article for 80 Level’s own consulting services, but it does not prevent it from A lot of valuable information.
This article introduces the results of a survey conducted by the 80 Level research team on 700 players. The survey is mainly to understand the basic conditions for players to participate in cloud games, such as network, software and hardware. The results show that:
55% of respondents own a 5G device, and most of them are actively using the 5G network.
In terms of ownership of hardware devices, PC, Andorid, and NS have the highest ownership rates, respectively 91%, 57%, and 34% (the rest of the ownership rates are shown in the attached picture).
25% of players play with others almost every time, 52% occasionally, and 23% almost never, highlighting the importance of the remote play feature; in another question, 43% said yes Interested in remote gaming, 33% said they were not interested, and the remaining 24% were not sure.
On the importance of being able to play games without downloading, 33% are positive, 49% are negative and 18% are not sure.
The follow-up of the article also contains insights and discussions on more aspects of cloud games. For details, please refer to the original text.
Source: 80lv by 80 Level Research
Video Games Europe released a report to sort out the situation of the European game industry in 2022
Video Games Europe (formerly known as Interactive Software Federation of Europe), Europe’s largest game industry organization, released a report called “2022 All About Video Games – European Key Facts” , which is also the fourth report of its kind released by the organization. Player structural data, status quo of the European game industry, social responsibility, cooperation development, etc., comprehensively sort out the development of the game industry in Europe.
Source: GamesIndustry by James Batchelor; Video Games Europe
Epic Games Announces Exclusive Partnership Program, Participants Will Receive 100% Of Revenue Within 6 Months Of Game Launch
Epic Games has announced the “Epic First Run” project aimed at quickly attracting developers. Developers of any size who participate in the project can release their games exclusively on the Epic Games Store for 6 months and receive 100% of the sales revenue during this period. The store will also provide traffic exposure support. Games released on or after October 16 that have not been released on other PC platform stores before are eligible for participation; after 6 months expire, the developer and Epic Games share returns to the standard 88%, 12%.
Source: VGC , by Chris Scullion
Eurogamer interviews Phil Spencer to discuss Microsoft’s near-to-mid-term plans for gaming
Eurogamer interviewed Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft’s gaming business, during the Cologne Games Show. The content mainly involved new Xbox hardware, prices, positioning of Series S, etc. The following are some key points extracted by the author:
Spencer pointed out that mobile devices are the fastest-growing platform in the gaming industry, and mobile devices are the only device that many players currently own. Microsoft wants to ensure that all types of games can run on mobile devices. Players should be able to decide where they can play themselves. Of course, this is inseparable from the support of mobile devices such as cloud streaming services, Steam Deck or ROG Ally.
In Spencer’s view, the game subscription service Game Pass is not a replacement for the retail model, but provides another way for players to build a game library; Xbox also has no intention of forcing players to buy their own consoles to play games, Xbox hopes to build around players Serve.
Regarding the “half-generation” new host, Spencer said that Microsoft will not stop hardware innovation, and the concept of “generation” may have gradually blurred. He believes that if the host’s replacement speeds up and there is a trend of catching up with the PC ecology, it will be for itself, The development community has created a lot of headaches (such as developers who may not be sure what platform to release their games on), and many similar problems, which together drive Xbox to think carefully about hardware replacement.
Spencer believes that one of the major advantages of consoles compared to the PC ecosystem is that their functions are relatively simple and start quickly. Under this premise, Microsoft’s attitude is becoming more and more open. Spencer specifically mentioned that he is very happy that Discord can be used on the Xbox platform. 10 years ago, Xbox would never accept such a thing. The reporter said, “Teams must be used”, and Spencer smiled noncommittally. However, Spencer also said that the ecology of the host still brings about the problem of “closedness”, and he is also thinking about whether there are other models to choose from.
Due to the high cost of key components, it is currently difficult to reduce the price of Xbox hardware; Spencer reiterated that he will not give up on Series S, and the team is working with manufacturers including Larian Studios to solve performance problems.
The preservation of the game is an important concern of the Xbox team. The goal of the team is to ensure that the game can run on different hardware. Spencer said that one of the current practices of the team is to release the game to the PC platform, because he believes that the PC is the best ecology for game preservation , It does not depend on a specific hardware. The recently announced decision that the Xbox 360 store will be closing is largely due to hardware and backend service life issues, but they have noticed the severity of the game save issue and hope to find a solution to allow all games in the Xbox 360 store to continue be played down.
Source: Eurogamer , by Tom Phillips
BioWare Lays Off 50 Jobs, Community Worry About Its New Title
BioWare recently announced a restructuring to meet “requirements for upcoming games,” which will result in the layoff of 50 of the studio’s developers. BioWare general manager Gray McKay explained in a blog post that the layoffs will not affect the development of new titles in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, and that the layoffs are aimed at “creating great , a story-driven single-player experience”.
However, according to Kotaku, in response to these remarks, a large number of fans expressed anxiety on social media. On the one hand, because the development of “Dragon Age: Dreadwolf” has been postponed and high-level resignations, and the new work of “Mass Effect” is still in its early stages. On the other hand, BioWare outsourced Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in June.
PC Gamer reports that yet another group of BioWare veterans has left the studio, including community-beloved BioWare writer Mary Kirby, who has been with BioWare since 2006 and created the arguably most beloved Dragon Age franchise. Varric Tethras, one of the characters.
Sources: Kotaku , by Isaiah Colbert; PC Gamer , by Fraser Brown
point of view discussion
Unwinnable: Quantitative analysis of Wholesome Direct 2023 press conference, exploring the connotation of “Wholesome”
The independent media Unwinnable recently published an article from Hilver , a non-game-related research institute. The topic of the article is the quantitative analysis and comment on “Wholesome games”. The ” Wholesome games ” here can be translated as “healthy games”. It is a brand or a vague concept created by developer Matthew Taylor and gradually moved from the independent game community to the public. Canceled 2020 hosted the first Wholesome Direct launch event.
Taylor defines Wholesome games subjectively and loosely on the official website as games that “evoke comfort, compassion, and warmth.” Since 2020, there have been constant discussions in the community around this concept, and it has gained more and more more recognition. In this article, Unwinnable cuts into the discussion from a quantitative perspective: What are the characteristics of the games released on Wholesome Direct, how to classify them, and what are the proportions of each type? The author extracts a large number of features that appear more than twice, including: 2D/3D, the race or shape characteristics of the player character (and what kind of creatures are they), the real behavior of the mapping, the game mechanism, whether the player character only listens or not The language, background era, etc. are quite interesting feature elements.
The analysis of Wholesome Direct 2023 is the second year in a row that Unwinnable has done this . Obviously, this approach is beneficial to our intuitive understanding of the event organizers and the community’s deconstruction of Wholesome games. The authors concluded from this analysis that “Wholesome games” seem to share mainly common characteristics such as “based in 2D or 3D space, emphasizing nature and ownership, and presented in a safe environment”. However, the author also pointed out that Wholesome Direct still carries the risk of “forming a set of stereotyped values”, and without critical reflection, it may convey a conservative and narrow worldview to the audience (especially in terms of climate); the author said , He knows that it is a “little miracle” that the game can be released, but he feels that Wholesome games still has a lot of room to explore, so that we can have hope, thinking, and inspirational attitudes towards the future.
Source: Unwinnable by Hilver
Game Developer: Games About Trauma
An article published on itch.io and reprinted by Game Developer, the author described his views on “games present a certain kind of trauma”. The author believes that “the way these games exist, the space they occupy, means that games are a real outlet for real human experience”; some may see games labeled as “trauma” as “loser narcissism,” but the author argues that as long as indie games exist, such games will be will continue to exist.
This article lists a variety of games of this type. The original text is detailed and full of emotions, and it is very worth reading.
Source: Game Developer , by Nathalie Lawhead
Game Developer: How “Shadow Conspiracy: The Cursed Pirate” uses “S/L Dafa” as the core mechanism
Game Developer spoke to Mimimi Games, creators of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew and Desperados III, about save cheating in console games.
Moritz Wagner, design director at Mimimi Games, said that many players, including players who rely on save works, clearly understand that this is cheating. They will feel that they are doing something that is not expected by the game, because the game usually works like this. of.
Wagner believes that “S/L” is an integral part of the game, but internalizing a save cheat in some games may “break the fourth wall”, such as the studio’s Shadow Tactics: Generals Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is set in the Edo period, and there is no reason, no motive, to allow the characters to go back in time every few minutes.
Therefore, in this year’s “Shadow Conspiracy: The Cursed Pirate”, Mimimi Games organically integrated archive cheating into the normal process of players. The development team described a lot of specific methods of rationalizing “S/L” in the article. consideration. The author pointed out at the end of the article that whether it is archive cheating or other strategies that players have come up with, it shows that players want to interact with this game, but in a different way than the developers expected.
Source: Game Developer by Bryant Francis
GamesIndustry “This Month Ten Years Ago”: “Creative Vision” and “Popular Demand”
This is a column that the author particularly likes, as the author said at the beginning: “Sometimes, this specialized column allows us to look back at the problems that the industry has faced, to see who was right, who was wrong, and what happened afterwards. It seems how different things are.”
The topic extracted by the author for August 2013 is the relationship between the creator, the audience, and the role of the latter in shaping the work of the former. The article first quoted the opinion of Jesse Schell, the founder of Schell Games, who pointed out that successful game companies always make the mistake of “listening to customers”. Customers always want to enjoy the benefits of new technologies, but they do not want them to come from the current market leader. This refers to the online verification of digital versions of games promoted by Xbox One at that time. This policy was shelved in the voices of players, but ten years later, almost the vast majority of players have accepted a more interconnected world, which is more important to games. It also has less power.
Starting with this topic, the author discusses the entangled relationship between creative efforts in game development and public discourse power, and points out that the industry pays less attention to “creative vision” and pays more attention to what the audience wants. “Real” data began to shake various decisions, including but not limited to the content, form, payment model (such as the prosperity of F2P), related news reports, etc. of the game.
The author finally mentioned that he worries that the big data and market feedback that people rely on actually distorts the work and even makes it more superficial, but it will still be said to “enhance people’s ability to create the best works”, When a work needs to challenge the status quo, but still make it powerfully consumable, it will make the careers that many people pursue become mere commodities, whether they are game developers or journalists.
Source: GamesIndustry , by Brendan Sinclair
GamesIndustry: Why did the developers of BattleBit Remastered want to make a low-spec mass shooter?
The author interviewed the three-person development team of the FPS work “BattleBit Remastered”. It also adopted simple graphics and made the performance requirements of the game very low, which achieved great sales success.
Two of the core creators Okyanus ‘SgtOkiDoki’ Mutlu and Uladzislau ‘Vilaskis’ Shalashou pointed out that one of the reasons for the birth of “BattleBit Remastered” is the frustration of the high hardware requirements of modern games. Players want such an experience, but their equipment is too poor , so the development team wanted this game to have a high-fidelity battlefield experience, even on very low-end hardware (minimum requirements are mid-range hardware from 2011).
Another interesting thing shared by the creators is that none of the core development members actually made the game. The “Remastered” in the title of this work is a joke about this, which means that the development work had to be restarted internally five times. Even without a professional background, team members still learn by doing. Many intermediate products may be completely discarded, but they have accumulated experience and are getting closer to what they want; however, Max ‘theliquidhorse’ Fink, the art director of this work, also reminded , which is only suitable for amateur entertainment.
The development team also talked about the business model. The work currently does not include paid unlocking content other than buying the game. Fink said he likes this old-school approach. This is what the team agrees and has always wanted. With the battle pass, the game becomes your job, and you’re always so bogged down with quests that the game isn’t fun anymore.”
Source: GamesIndustry , by Alex Calvin
(The pictures in the text come from the Internet)
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