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Video game news that reflects on the latest trends and cultural impacts brought on by gaming. From the perspective of a few guys who wish they had more time to play video games!
Episodes
Wednesday Sep 29, 2021
Wednesday Sep 29, 2021
You should have learned. I didn't learn, it's one of my issues. This famous line by Mario could have been said about Blizzard entertainment. What? Not Mario ... Oh yes it is. That and everything else announced at Nintendo direct on this episode of Joystick and Mouse.
http://www.joystickandmouse.com
http://shop.joystickandmouse.com/
https://www.patreon.com/joystickandmouse
Guest
David Luzader - https://twitter.com/davluz
Show Notes
It's been a couple of weeks since we've talked about Blizzard Entertainment but I think we need to give an update. So looks like the feds are getting in on the act as the SEC announced that they are opening their own investigation into the gaming giant. Also it seems more folks are jumping ship as Blizzard lost their Chief Legal Council and the Executive Producer on Overwatch this past week. It's not all gloom and doom in Irvine though with the release of Diablo II Resurrected this week although that launch was very subdued.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-21/blizzard-executive-overseeing-hit-game-leaves-in-latest-exodus
https://www.esportstalk.com/news/more-and-more-activision-blizzard-employees-quit-amid-legal-trouble/
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/21/1039393895/more-on-the-investigations-into-video-game-publisher-giant-activision-blizzard
Big goings on in the world of Mario this week as Nintendo held a Nintendo Direct to give us a glimpse into whats coming for the switch and ... well ... we have questions. What do we think about what was announced and yes, we'll get to that other thing later in the show.
https://www.techradar.com/news/nintendo-direct-september-2021-all-the-biggest-announcements-you-need-to-know
https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/the-nintendo-direct-made-me-finally-cancel-my-switch-oled-pre-order
Aaaaaaannnd it's time for the other thing. During the Nintendo direct, Shigeru Miyamoto dropped the bomb that there was an animated Mario movie coming next year with the dinosour wrangling Starlord himself as the voice of the main character and the internet loved it ... Just kidding, as usual they hated it and threatened to burn the castle down. So what do we think about the movie in general and the star-studded cast that is voicing it?
https://kotaku.com/the-internets-hateboner-for-chris-pratt-as-mario-in-nin-1847739685
https://www.cnet.com/news/a-super-mario-movie-starring-chris-pratt-is-coming-dec-21-2022/
Full Stream Ahead
Nintendo also announced this week that The Forgotten City will be available on the switch via their cloud gamning service. Yes they have their own service and noI wasn't really aware of that either. As far as I can tell they have 3 whole games available. So it begs the question, Is Nintendo missing the boat when it comes to cloud gaming?
https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/the-forgotten-city-is-coming-to-nintendo-switch-as-a-cloud-game-today-3053556
Wednesday Sep 22, 2021
Wednesday Sep 22, 2021
Going to take a dive into the psychology of gaming today and take a look at how we project ourselves into games. When we make a decision in a game what is it that drives us to make that decision and how does it affect us? Gamers will now be able to experience the "pleasure" of building IKEA furniture and XBox cloud gaming is loose in the wild on this episode of Joystick and mouse.
Guest Info
Scott Johnson - @scottjohnson
GameCentral had an article where they interviewed psychologist and author Dr Rachel Kowert about why we make the choices we do in games, and why they’re usually good ones. But are they?
https://metro.co.uk/2021/09/16/why-video-games-can-make-you-a-better-a-person-but-not-a-worse-one-15270237/
Holy Swedish Meatballs, Batman! IKEA is releasing a full lineup of gaming furniture and accessories. They have partnered with ASUS to come up with a ROG inspired line of gaming offerings including everything from desks and chairs to ring lights and phone holders. The big question is though, will it come with scratch and sniff mouse pads in Swedish meatball scent.
https://www.spieltimes.com/news/republic-of-gamers-collaborates-with-ikea/
https://nerdist.com/article/ikea-gaming-furniture-line-asus/
Time. It is the single most important commodity in life and there never seems to be enough of it. There are so many things every day that vie for our attention and video games are one of them. So lets talk about how we select those games that we give our time to and how we can experience more of them.
https://www.techradar.com/news/pressure-to-be-good-at-games-is-ruining-my-ability-to-enjoy-them
Full Stream Ahead
Microsoft released X-Cloud gaming to the masses this week. That's really cool and we'll see how that plays with people but along with it, the ability to stream your XBox to your PC.
https://www.pocket-lint.com/games/news/xbox/158381-xbox-cloud-gaming-local-streaming-pc-windows-10
Wednesday Sep 15, 2021
Wednesday Sep 15, 2021
This week Sony held a Playstation showcase and reminded us who has the best line-up of games and why that $500 console is worth every penny. Let's dive into what was announced and look at our favorites and maybe some other angles of these announcements that weren't readily apparent on this episode of Joystick and Mouse.
Our Guest
The one and only Brian Ibbott - @Coverville
Show Notes
Here's everything that was announced and shown at the Playstation showcase event.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/9/22663238/sony-playstation-showcase-2021-ps5-trailers-spider-man-god-of-war
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5VtfD2i3rc
https://www.gameinformer.com/2021/09/10/uncharteds-amy-hennig-and-gary-whitta-are-working-on-forspoken
We saw some real honest to goodness gameplay from the forthcoming God of War Ragnarok game and it was glorious. Behind the scenes though there was a change of directors. What did that mean for this game and what does a director for a game really do anyways? We'll take a look at that and maybe at some times where a director chage didn't work so much.
https://www.ign.com/articles/god-of-war-ragnarok-eric-williams-cory-barlog-interview
https://www.gameinformer.com/news/2021/09/11/how-god-of-war-ragnaroks-new-director-brings-a-different-perspective-to-the-series
And in a surprise announcement Sony announced a new release from Rockstar games. Thats right folks were getting ... GTA5 on the playstation 5. Its OK, we were underwhelmed too.
https://www.ign.com/articles/grand-theft-auto-5-playstation-5-reveal-backlash
Sony killed it this week. With the last several announcement events being pretty meh, (Nintendo anyone) Sony finally put on a show that made us truley excited about some new games that were coming out and once again showed us what THEIR marketing strategy is. Having the best line-up of games is pretty simple but hard to execute but somehow Sony keeps doing it.
https://kotaku.com/sony-brought-its-playstation-a-game-today-1847647997
Full Stream Ahead
So a lot of us in the community were running around Aeternum chopping trees, killing wolves and any number of other tasks in the open beta for New World from Amazon Studios. Well this week it was announced that this new MMO would be available on Amazons cloud gaming service Luna. This got me thinking what does that mean for the game does it change our outlook for it?
https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/10/22663690/amazon-new-world-luna-cloud-gaming
Wednesday Sep 08, 2021
Wednesday Sep 08, 2021
Get your woks out because we are going to stir up a couple of Chinese stories today. We'll offer that with side dishes of mashed no upgrades and steamed tutorial and end it all with big ol slice of 5G cloud gaming on this episode of Joystick and Mouse.
http://www.joystickandmouse.com
http://shop.joystickandmouse.com/
https://www.patreon.com/joystickandmouse
Our Guest
Searanex - https://twitter.com/Searanex
Story Links
last week we told you about China's new law limiting minors to 3 hours per week of gaming but does that have unintended ramifications. Better yet will it help at all? This article gives another perspective on this new law and what it means for the Chinese gaming industry.
https://www.ft.com/content/ffca0c80-b6b4-473f-9be2-c3a313e94f62
With that take on the China law in mind, should or could the western countries and companies do something similar?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/04/why-the-industry-should-heed-chinas-crackdown-on-video-game-players
Well the honeymoon is over for folks that are holding off and getting that PS5 and are still buy triple a titles for their PS4. Sony announced this week that Horizon: Forbidden West will be their last game that gives free upgrades to the new console version.
https://kotaku.com/sony-will-no-longer-offer-free-next-gen-upgrades-for-it-1847621301
Every game starts with them. We've all seen them .. we all hate them. Yes of course I'm talking about game tutorials. Some times they are done well and some times not so much so what do we think of them. Are there any that we remember as being really bad or really good?
https://www.wired.com/story/the-case-for-video-game-tutorials/
Full Stream Ahead
Indian telco giant Airtel conducted a cloud gaming test last week that may show the future of the technology.
https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-cm/airtel-demonstrates-india-s-first-cloud-gaming-experience-on-a-5g-network-121090201005_1.html
https://www.livemint.com/
Wednesday Sep 01, 2021
Wednesday Sep 01, 2021
It appears Blizzard goes full TMNT about the lawsuit ... (PSSST, Not that kind of Shredder) Pinky wonders what China is up to. Is it getting toxic in here or are we all just a little more salty now and what does cloud gaming hold for us on this episode of Joystick and Mouse.
Our Guest
Rishi B - @rishibh
Story Links
Here's what you don't do when somebody sues you. You don't destroy the evidence and then deny that you destroyed the evidence. The state of California emended their lawsuit against Blizzard this week by saying that that is exactly what they did.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-blizzard-accused-by-california-of-shredding-abuse-evidence/1100-6495597/
https://kotaku.com/california-accuses-activision-blizzard-of-shredding-abu-1847550659
In this weeks example of lawmakers don't understand video games at all, If you live in China, and are under the age of 18, you can only play up to 3 hours of video games a week.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/30/china-cuts-amount-of-time-minors-can-spend-playing-video-games
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/video-games/chinese-state-media-slams-video-games-warns-addiction-children-rcna1584
Speaking of China, I'm pretty sure they are going full Brain on the video game industry and trying to take over the world. Well if they own it all maybe they can enforce that 3 hours a week thing.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/video-games/s-china-gaming-tech-giants-are-snapping-video-game-studios-rcna1536
I had an interaction this week that was less than pleasant. It got me thinking though and then this story crossed my feed so I decided to bring it up on the show. That question is: What is the most toxic game community.
https://blog.unity.com/news/the-state-of-disruptive-behavior-in-multiplayer-games-2021
On this show, we talk lot about the future of cloud gaming and where it is going and wha that means for us as gamers. This story though presents a list of trends and futures for cloud gaming so you know we couldn't pass that up.
https://www.datamation.com/cloud/cloud-gaming-trends/
Wednesday Aug 25, 2021
Wednesday Aug 25, 2021
Today we'll make you feel old. We'll talk about a company other than Microsoft trying to take over the world. We diverge a little bit and mention some big hardware news and then look to the future a bit. Now get off my lawn and listen to this episode of Joystick and Mouse.
Guest Info
Steve - @steveHNH
Episode Links
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-epic-games-stores-equivalent-to-steam-direct-is-in-beta/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/introducing-discrete-graphics-brand-intel-arc.html
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/16/22626912/intel-arc-gpu-brand-alchemist-codename-release-date
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-super-nintendo-entertainment-system-is-officially-30-years-old-today/1100-6495438/
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/aug/23/best-video-games-autumn-2021-lake-metroid-dread
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tencent-cloud-powers-up-korean-application-mall-one-store-to-make-mobile-games-playable-on-pc-1030751007
Wednesday Aug 18, 2021
Wednesday Aug 18, 2021
So, you're looking for a job? Look no farther than a certain game development company in California. How do I know they are hiring. Ho, let me tell you about that, the latest stupid politician antics along with a couple of mostly wrong lists on this episode of Joystick and Mouse.
http://www.joystickandmouse.com
http://shop.joystickandmouse.com/
https://www.patreon.com/joystickandmouse
Our Guest
theJEN - @thejensays
Show Links
https://www.axios.com/activision-blizzard-harassment-lawsuit-hr-da4f678a-510c-4975-9d64-f5d744aa5c02.html
https://kotaku.com/what-really-happened-at-that-blizzcon-panel-according-1847408469
https://kotaku.com/democrats-are-already-bungling-new-call-for-laws-to-pro-1847457366
https://kotaku.com/the-best-video-games-of-2021-so-far-1847467401
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/aug/13/the-15-greatest-video-games-of-the-00s-ranked
https://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/news/steam-deck-xcloud-xbox-cloud-gaming-game-pass-ultimate-phil-spencer-confirmed-2511431
Wednesday Aug 11, 2021
Wednesday Aug 11, 2021
The first domino topples in the fallout from Blizzardgate, but will it help? You can now light up your life while fighting the pandemic and who needs sweaty crowds, lots of traffic and broken vocal tapes to lip-sync to when you and 45 million of your closest friends can jump in the mosh pit together virtually. We talk about this, Favorite game art styles and the latest way Microsoft is taking over the world on this episode of Joystick and Mouse.
http://www.joysticksandmouse.com/
http://shop.joystickandmouse.com/
Guest Links
Audie Norman - @OddlyNormalOne
Episode Links
https://massivelyop.com/2021/08/10/blizzard-workers-address-the-drawbacks-of-boycotts-gamers-lament-wows-deep-decline/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/08/03/j-allen-brack-resigns-blizzard-lawsuit/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/08/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-women-sexual-harassment
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/aug/07/no-limits-in-the-metaverse-video-game-concerts-big-business
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/9/22616664/ariana-grande-fortnite-rift-tour-worldbuilding-storytelling
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a37155885/video-game-animation-art-trends-2021/
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-08-09-xbox-cloud-gaming-launches-in-beta-form-on-pc-for-game-pass-ultimate-members
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/9/22616774/microsoft-xcloud-windows-xbox-app-xbox-cloud-gaming-beta
Wednesday Aug 04, 2021
Wednesday Aug 04, 2021
The torches were lit, the pitch forks were brandished and the angry mob set its sights on Activision-Blizzard. What to do in the face of an angry mob? Dr Frankenstein didn't know and frankly we don't really know either but whatever the right solution is, What Blizzard did this week was not it. We'll explore what they did do, what they should have done and maybe what some others are doing on this episode of Joystick and Mouse.
http://www.joysticksandmouse.com/
http://shop.joystickandmouse.com/
Guest Info
@tvstravis
Story Links
https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-hires-union-busting-firm-as-workers-1847386654
https://www.wowhead.com/news/activision-zoom-meeting-with-employees-doubles-down-on-appalling-official-323563
https://kotaku.com/activisions-torture-apologist-executive-is-now-blocking-1847405007
https://www.wowhead.com/news/bloomberg-report-unveils-warcraft-iii-reforged-development-issues-323518
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-22/inside-activision-blizzard-s-botched-warcraft-iii-reforged-game
https://www.vg247.com/2021/07/31/ubisoft-ceo-open-letter-response-employees/
https://www.gameinformer.com/2021/08/02/former-blizzard-dev-and-undead-labs-founder-calls-for-gaming-industry-to-unionize
Wednesday Jul 28, 2021
Wednesday Jul 28, 2021
Warning! This episode contains discussions concerning sexual abuse.
There really was only one story this week in the video game world. The lawsuit filed by the state of California against Blizzard/Activision exposed the culture at the game development giant but maybe more importantly has started a conversation about the way women are treated in all corporations and even society at large. This week we have some very special guests (@Daniora and @WickedKitten13) to give their unique perspective and insights. We have the hard conversation about this uncomfortable topic on this episode of Joystick and Mouse.
http://www.joysticksandmouse.com/
http://shop.joystickandmouse.com/
Guest Info
Amy - Daniora
Monica - @WickedKitten13
Story Links
https://kotaku.com/some-gaming-websites-youtube-channels-halt-coverage-of-1847362179
https://i.redd.it/2edt72rfbyc71.png
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi5dQzZp3f0&t=267s