Fame, Fandom and Fortnite
Level 14: What do you even do with $3M as a 16 year old?
Hello Gamer Friends,
We want to start by thanking everyone for your continued feedback on our new site, all of your notes have been super helpful as we continue getting this thing off the ground. We have plenty of new ideas in store, and are already hard at work to bring you Patch 2.0.0 with plenty of site wide buffs and bug fixes.
This week we take some time to cover the Fortnite World Cup, the death of retail gaming, and geek out about how Chance sampled Zelda in his new album. As always, if you have any good content for us to cover (or for us to read because you know we love this stuff) send it our way over at staff.pausebutton@gmail.com or @button_pause.
We've been making progress toward our goal of 500 subscribers, and we'd love it if you'd share the PB love with your friends and communities to help us get there.
BRB,
Max & Fawz
P.S. Favorite moment of the Fortnite World Cup:
Announcer - "What will you do with your prize money?"
Player - "Invest Responsibly" *chuckles to himself*
Is There Still Room for Retail?: Gamestop has been gaming’s premier brick and mortar location for as long as we can remember. After posting nearly half a billion (yes, with a “b”) in losses and share value loss of ~$10 in six months, it has become abundantly clear that Gamestop never got the memo: digital is here, and it’s the new gold standard for purchasing games. It’s so bad that no other company wants to acquire Gamestop. It didn’t come as a surprise when they recently announced that they’re pivoting their business, catering to a more niche audience by opening a series of retro “experience focused” stores.
Our thoughts on the matter are mixed. From midnight releases to pre-order bonuses, Gamestop has been an integral part of our gaming communities. We’re somewhat optimistic to see them double down on the value of their great asset, physical space, especially given the rise of esports and in-person tournaments. That being said, how can a company that has failed to evolve over the last decade instill any sense of hope in us as consumers?
Given the unique position Gamestop holds in the industry, it wouldn’t have been hard for them to bring about some creative yet incremental changes to prevent this from happening. Why not develop something around streaming? Or even better, create a platform to discover new games in the endless sea of content? Why not be a community hub? Why not leverage the incredible enthusiasm and knowledge of your employees to unearth new games and revitalize classics? The company holds a unique stake in gaming, and the relationships they’ve built with publishers and developers offers them a network that easily allow them to take a proactive (as compared to their historically reactive) approach to business. Given that their business be doing much worse, we’re sure their shareholders will be a bit more accommodating if they tried something a bit more drastic.
When politics seep into games: In previous issues of The Pause Button, we touched on the increasing political landscape of the games industry: Crunch, where companies force employees to work grueling overtime hours in order to finish game development on time; Unionization of employees to combat the often miserable working conditions and salary of a game dev; $60 games are an unsustainable price point for studios and publishers, given the cost of production; Micro-transactions are exploitative, yet provide a primary revenue stream. There’s a lot happening. This article (which strangely morphed into a political rallying cry) brought up another important point to consider: consumption is rapidly outpacing efficiency.
With the advent of cloud technology - Xcloud, Stadia and the likes - data centers, which support the development and power the back end of these types of games, also proliferate. The problem here is that these data centers are extreme and, more often than not, inefficient energy consumers. It isn’t the bigger companies, which out of necessity and scale have plateaued their consumption, increasing their efficiency ratings, it’s the small centers that create the inefficiency. And this is where it gets politicized: particularly in the United States, fossil fuel usage is top of mind and paraded around like it’s a statistic to be proud of. Yet, in an industry that is becoming increasingly dependent on these sources, how do we as gamers and institutions lobby politicians to take a stand on what’s important? Climate change is at the forefront of our discussions and experiences, and this article reminds us that game hardware, energy consumption, and e-disposal all have a role and responsibility in our political ecosystem. (Thanks to Adam H. for the submission)
You Should Play This: Papers Please (PC, iPad, PS Vita)
In concept, Papers Please is a game about being a border control agent in a fictional country somewhere in Cold-War era Eastern Europe. People come in, you check their documentation, and send them on their merry way. As with the real world, though, things never stay so simple. Someone is missing a stamp, their documents have mismatched information, or perhaps they’re a wanted criminal trying to overthrow the oppressive reign of your home country. With the ability to turn the mundane into a complex set of moral decisions, Papers Please makes you evaluate your choices from the moment the first person steps in front of your desk.
Like most good indie titles, the game is less about traditional gaming “fun” and more about capturing the essence of its messaging. The player begins to get a sense of what living in oppressive totalitarian regime is like. Empathy, compassion, and fun give way to efficiency, process, and timeliness. Don’t process enough people? You can’t pay the bills for your family and sacrifices will have to be made. As the stamps and documents continue to pile up on your cramped in-game desk, the game makes it harder and harder to see right from wrong; rather, the only thing that matters is the paycheck that you get at the end of the day. In a time where empathy seems to be in short supply, Papers Please is a chilling reminder to make no assumptions, and serves as a window into just how quickly liberties can fall in the face of process and power.
Don’t feel like spending the money to get the game? This YouTube short film does a great job encapsulating the Papers Please's Story. Check it out
Fortnite World Cup (lol, not the soccer world cup): Soooo, the Fortnite World Cup happened. We tuned in Sunday for the solos, which at peak viewership, boasted over 1.2 million viewers (by the way, this doesn’t take into account the stadium audience, viewing parties, and other non-Twitch ways of viewing like Twitter). 40 million players put their hat in the ring for this tournament, yet only ~200 participated in the finals. 13 years old was the minimum age requirement to enter the world cup. Oh, and also, the prize pool was 30 million dollars. Insanity. Of note is that 16 year old player, Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf, annihilated the competition, taking home 3 million dollars, the largest cash prize ever awarded to an individual in an esport tournament. Impressive stuff, but it didn’t all go so smoothly.
Technical difficulties always plague technology-driven events, and Friday in particular was a rocky stream filled with lag. Games like Dota 2 have to be paused and reset during play to reduce latency issues because even the smallest loss in technical fidelity might mean the difference between life and death in a game. Imagine 100 players competing in a battle royale and the work to alleviate the bandwidth strain. Analysts say that lag issues reduced viewership by over 100k, and in a world where each viewer correlates with more advertising dollars, that’s a big hump to overcome.
In other news, the event was more than extravagant: Marshmello performed three songs to “warm up” the crowd, large holograms danced everywhere, and they provided battle buses for the crowd-pleasing Gram. And yet it all felt so underwhelming; from our Twitch stream, nobody seemed that into it. Story of Fortnite, though. Right?
There’s Nothing Like a Good Book: Books make you smarter, games rot your brain. It’s a narrative that we’ve heard from our parents, modern media, and non-gamers on a regular basis. But with the rise of technology, books have entered the digital space in a very real way. Products like Kindle, LinkedIn Learning, and eduGames have bridged the gap between traditional information consumption and the digital world. It’s not surprising to hear that games have begun to cross that bridge in the other direction, via books about gaming, specifically esports.
Popular icons like Fornite’s Ninja, Smash Bro’s Mew2King, and others have begun to pen memoirs, tip guides, and other longform written content that’s poised to bring a distinct gaming spin to one of the world’s oldest forms of media. While historically gaming books have been relegated to walkthroughs and game reviews, we’re excited to see how gaming as a literary genre evolves. One of the reasons we started The Pause Button was to contribute to the limited library of long-form literary gaming content, outside of traditional media like IGN and other outlets. While the books are clearly a play at diversifying revenue for the rising stars, learning about the struggles of fame, industry trends, and more from the people who are actually revolutionizing it is something we’re definitely interested in checking out.
The International, a Dota 2 tournament we covered a few issues back, has officially reached a prize pot of $30M, making it the biggest prize pool in esports history
Origin put together a rig that has a PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PS4 in one. This is a literal dream come true
Death Stranding (still the world’s most confusing game) just released a new video profile on an in-game character, Heartman. The catch? He can only live for 21 minutes at a time before dying and being reborn. We still have no clue what is going on in this game
Chance the Rapper sampled Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Max’s favorite) on his most recent album. Check out this track and nerd out with us on how cool this is
Big wins for the esport world: FaZe Clan, a popular team, signed their first female player, Ewok.
Got articles, thoughts, suggestions or just wanna talk games? Hit us up! You can reach us at staff.pausebutton@gmail.com, or bug us on Twitter @button_pause