Level 41: A Little Bit of Everything
We're switching up the format to cover more news that matters to you
✍️ Editors Notes:
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📜 This Week’s Most Important News
GDC 2020 Postponed - Impact Felt Across the Industry: After rising concerns around coronavirus, popular game development conference (GDC) announced they’d be postponing the event until further notice. The announcement comes as no surprise after many industry juggernauts like Amazon, Epic Games and Microsoft already stated their intentions not to attend. What is concerning, however, is the impact this decision has on the small/medium business side of the industry. For many indie devs, GDC is the most important (and only) opportunity to network and market their upcoming titles. What happens when an event that many build their entire year around gets cancelled? The following article is a deeper dive about some of those affected and how they’re handling the situation. Link
Riot’s New FPS — Valorant: A few weeks back we covered the small amount of public info out about Riot’s newest FPS: Project A. After much hype (and a few leaks), this week Project A was officially announced as Valorant, a class-based tactical first person shooter, which is expected to launch in beta this summer. We’ve rounded up some of the most interesting coverage to get you up to speed:
FAQs - What you need to know about Valorant. Link
A First Look at Gameplay for Valorant. Link
A preliminary look at Valorant’s game design from an industry veteran. Link
💡 Industry Content
Why Gaming IP + Media Makes Sense: Video games are historically known for being box-office bombs. Media expert Matthew Ball explores why movies like Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu are finding recent success in the commercial market. Among his reasons, the idea of the “common geek” caught our eye: the concept that the proliferation of the internet made it easier for nerd culture to permeate our everyday lives. Link
Roblox Raises $$$: Popular gaming platform Roblox raised a $150M Series G led by Andreesen Horowitz, bringing its valuation close to $4 billion. The investment is not a surprise given a16z’s investment thesis around social gaming spaces. Roblox is currently cash-flow positive and boasts a user base of over 115M MAUs. What’s particularly interesting to us is the end game here: Is Roblox the first step toward the Metaverse? Link
The Rights of the Platform: NVIDIA landed in hot water for hosting a game on their streaming service, NVIDIA GeForce Now, without developer permission. It poses an interesting question: Should a consumer be able to play a game on any device when they’ve already purchased the game? Conversely, should a subscription service have a role in the distribution of digital goods, even if the goods have already been licensed to a specific distribution channel? It’s complicated, and discussions like these between developer and cloud distributor will set precedents for the rest of the industry. Link
🎮 Fun & Games
More Half-Life: Valve released an extended first look at their upcoming VR-title, Half-Life: Alyx. Expectations are sky high from fans after 10+ years of waiting for a new Half-Life title. Many expect the game to be a marquee title for VR, something that the platform has been sorely missing since its inception into the commercial market. Link
Does Longer = Better? The other most anticipated game of the year, Final Fantasy VII — Remake, dropped a free demo for Playstation 4 players this week. Initial reception is positive, but many have noted how drawn out the remake seems to be, with some reports saying the game is nearly 4x longer now. It remains to be seen if stretching out history’s most beloved RPG is the right choice, but the game has already received much fanfare (presale gold), so Square Enix seems to be doing something right. Link
Feeding Your Pets of Death: In an oddly bizarre (but brilliant) twist, the most recent entry to the Call of Duty franchise introduced virtual pets add-ons, called “Tomogunchi”. Players can nurture, train, and level-up their Tomogunchi by killing as many other players as possible in game. We’ve seen games like Fortnite create silly add-ons to incentivize playtime, but this is on another level. Link
😎 Other Cool Stuff
100 Thieves’ latest Heist: Popular lifestyle brand and esports creators 100 Thieves dropped their most recent merch set this week. The release broke ground for the team in many ways: one of the first launches led by the team’s merchandising VP Doug Barber and the first time they’ve hosted a retail pop-up at their physical space. Link
Twitch Streaming Can Make You Smarter: Media vet Matthew Ball partnered with Venture Capitalist Peter Rojas to launch Metaplay.gg, a live streaming show where they play Fortnite and discuss trends in the gaming industry. Link
Hacking the System: Popular tech news site Ars Technica interviewed Naughty Dog Co-Founder Andy Gavin on how his team hacked the original Playstation to build the first Crash Bandicoot title. Link
Hideo Kojima’s Worlds: The NYT wrote a long feature on Hideo Kojima and his strange, fantastical worlds. He’s increasingly entered the public sphere as a celebrity/artist since the release of Death Stranding. Link
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