![]() One notable example is what happened to the Deus Ex franchise. Things like 4K gaming, VR, 60 fps, and streaming all began as homebrew PC projects before being embraced as commercially viable. It’s the one platform for people who like to tinker and experiment with upcoming technology. The PC is the only open gaming platform, and a lot of game developers began their career making mods or total conversions for PC-based titles. These quasi-jokes have been used both sarcastically and earnestly to either mock or celebrate PC gaming. I know for years we’ve had the dueling memes of PC Gaming is Dead and The Glorious PC Master Race. That’s a valid way to look at it, but I think it can help if we realize that the Blizzard audience skews heavily towards the PC as their preferred gaming platform. casual market, or perhaps as a conflict between mobile gaming and everything else. Like I said above, a lot of people are examining this through the lens of the hardcore vs. However, the problem actually runs a little deeper. On it’s own, this is enough to generate some controversy. This shows that either Blizzard doesn’t understand their audience, or they don’t respect their time. They traveled all this way only to discover the big surprise is that they get to watch a commercial aimed at some other group of people. This is a crowd dedicated to a very particular niche, and the presenter is selling them something that runs directly counter to their tastes. The crowd isn’t upset that this thing exists, they’re upset because this is not what they’re here for. Imagine a Star Trek convention where Paramount promises to unveil something new, and then it turns out to be a trailer for an upcoming Transformers movie. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the people who spent hundreds of dollars to attend Blizzcon to assume that the show will be designed for them and not aimed at some other absentee group. Blizzard was marketing a mobile game to people largely uninterested in freemium mobile gaming. Both are groups of people who enjoy games, but they’re still two entirely different groups. There’s very little overlap between the people who’ve been playing StarCraft since 1998 and people who routinely dump money into Candy Crush Saga. Having said that, it’s important to recognize that we are talking about two very different groups of consumers here. This is ugly and it tends to derail the discussion. We need to use labels to talk about them if we’re going to have a rational conversation about this industry, but those same terms are often hijacked and used as a form of community gatekeeping. We all recognize that hardcore and casual gamers are different groups of people with different playing habits and spending patterns. The problem is that we don’t have more neutral terms for these groups. I dislike the notion that one particular style of play makes you more of a gamer than another, or that people that play certain games don’t count as gamers. I’m wary of terms like “hardcore” and “casual” because they’re loaded terms that tend to start fights. That same week, Bob Chipman gave his take on it where he posed the perfectly reasonable question, “Why get mad about this?” Bob gave his take on where he thought the ire was coming from, so I thought I’d do the same. If you missed the story or need a refresher on the details, Russ Pitts can bring you up to speed. My commentary is pretty sparse and I've played this enough to know when he talks, but if you want just the game with no commentary on the videos, you can check out Jouda's LP that finished a little over a month ago.The big news last week was the controversy surrounding Blizzard Entertainment after they showcased a free-to-play mobile game as the headlining title at their convention. Voice commentary on a game that already has a narrator? It's available on Xbox Live Arcade, PC, and you can even play it in Chrome! It's pretty cheap, too. With this let's play I'm hoping to convince more people to try out this game. The graphics are great, the gameplay is fun, the music is awesome, and even the story is pretty decent! Despite being created by only a handful of people, this game managed to be way better than a lot of 2011 releases. I had no idea what the game was until it came out on Xbox Live Arcade last summer, and it took me completely by surprise. Bastion is the first game by indie studio Supergiant Games.
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