Cradling My PlayStation NFTs 'Till The End Of Time
Video game consoles deserve better social hubs
PlayStation Stars is a mobile app rewards program Sony rolled out back in 2022. You buy games and play them in return for a little bit of PSN currency and weird virtual collectibles. It makes no more sense now than when Sony first launched it and I can't stop thinking about how it could be so much better.
But first a programming note:
I decided to start a personal newsletter during my parental leave to try to stay disciplined about writing and also it’s a thing I’ve always wanted to do and the start of the year seemed like a good time to give it a go. It will be a place to share links to everything I’ve found interesting online that week in the world of and adjacent to games, as well as idle thoughts, anecdotes, and whatever else comes to mind.
In the future I’d like to make it to two posts a week—one a familiar rambling round-up like this and another that’s focused exclusively on the drama, antics, or cool stuff happening in live service games (hence the name of the newsletter: Dead Game). Live service games have never been bigger or felt more in peril, leading to both giant disasters as well as fascinating stories of recovery, redemption, and resilience. I hope to do some small, more focused coverage on the random corners of that rapidly changing landscape in the months ahead.
For now I’m starting with something much more freeform and forgiving (and free). I’ve been out on parental leave twice before and know exactly how malcontented and ornery I can and will get without some online writing to keep me occupied. Consider this an early access beta for what Dead Game might become in the future.
To that end I’d love for you to subscribe and follow it on that journey, generously sharing your feedback, encouragement, corrections, and hate mail at ethangach@protonmail.com. If the newsletter gets big enough I’d love to start incorporating reader mail at some point as well. We can start with an easy prompt: what game are you looking forward to most in 2024 and why? Also very much appreciated: recent screenshots you took in a game, links to cool stuff online, or a photo of where you’re sitting while reading the newsletter.
And now a few headlines:
Magic: The Gathering uses AI art, lies about it, then apologizes
In a now-deleted post, Wizards of the Coast tweeted that it was "positively shocking" how good new Magic: The Gathering land cards from an upcoming Dungeons & Dragons set looked in front of a retro art frame featuring a late 1800s-looking experimental laboratory. Fans quickly realized the frame, full of wooden book shelves and incandescent light bulbs, was AI-generated. Telltale signs like the light bulb filaments being incomplete gave it away.
But Wizards of the Coast initially denied AI was involved, despite an entire set of promotional images appearing to use it. "We understand confusion by fans given the style being different than card art, but we stand by our previous statement," the company claimed in a now-deleted tweeted. "This art was created by humans and not AI."
Except it wasn't. Fans could see this with their own eyes. It was a clear violation of Wizards' previous promise not to use AI after it was implicated in a promotional campaign for a Tomb Raider MTG set. Artist David Rapoza tweeted that he was quitting Wizards over the latest AI stunt. Eventually Wizards relented and admitted that some AI art had "crept" into the images, despite the fact that a human had allegedly composed the overall package, whatever that means.
We've now seen the Fallout TV show, Ubisoft, Microsoft, and others push AI-generated promotional images for their products and brands, sometimes backtracking after getting called out and other times simply ignoring the whole thing and continuing on like it never happened. Wizards doesn't even seem to have been alone with fans recently identifying AI-art wrinkles in other game ads, including for the new Final Fantasy VII Rebirth cross-over with Apex Legends. As Aftermath's Luke Plunkett pointed out, EA, which publishes Apex Legends, made $7.4 billion in revenue last fiscal year.
The drumbeat around AI has lasted much longer than the 2022 NFT craze, but it's hard to see it ending any differently in the short term unless the companies behind it are somehow granted free reign to keep stealing people's work and then giving it away for free to anyone willing to open up the Bing web browser.
An Undertale bet backfires
Undertale Yellow is a fan-made prequel to the hit 8-bit-looking RPG by Toby Fox. The project initially got into some trouble over using Fox's copyrighted music in the game, possibly over a misunderstanding between Yellow's creators and Fox's views around fair use and fan games. \
Enter Sebastian Wolff, CEO of Materia Collective, which published the Undertale OST. He went on a long tweet thread about the chaos around fan projects and their legality. He then infamously posted this: "How about this: show me "clearly defined permission" that Toby granted 7 years ago, which covers all of these uses, and I'll personally donate $10k to Undertale Yellow's dev team and retract this whole thread."
On January 2, the Undertale Yellow account tweeted that it had worked through all of the issues with Fox. Fans told Wolff to pay up. He quibbled over the technicality of "clearly defined permission" received seven years ago versus just having an implied understanding that the project was fine. The fan game account then responded with a supposed email from Fox himself that he would donate $20,000 to the charity of Undertale Yellow's choice (AbleGamers) on behalf of himself and Wolff.
Netflix wants to make money from its game nobody plays
The Wall Street Journal reports that after spending $1 billion on gaming-related content and acquisitions that only about 1% of its users engage with, Netflix is now looking for ways to actually make money off the unusual gamble. It's big-brain strategies include the usual culprits like microtransactions and in-app ads:
Some of the ideas that have been discussed include in-app purchases, charging for more sophisticated games it is developing or giving subscribers to its newer ad-supported tier access to games with ads in them, the people said.
Netflix and other streaming services have been raising prices and adding ad-tiers to their subscription services in the last year, effectively rebuilding the cable TV bundle in the process, except even more confusing and fragmented. Apparently the "golden age" of television doesn't come cheap, and Netflix thinks the actual subscription price required to fund all of the shows would be anathema to its users. I imagine this is where Microsoft's Game Pass is headed eventually as well. There have been rumors and speculation about an ad-supported tier for a while now, and given how quickly the game service appeared to hit a ceiling on consoles, it seems like the only place left for Microsoft to go to make more money off of it.
Speaking of Game Pass, the service added Grand Theft Auto 5 last July and then lost it six months later. Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden are also set to leave this month a year after getting added to the service. The annual turnover makes perfect sense from a budgeting perspective, but as a subscriber there are lots of games I simply never get around to trying before they leave the service. And unlike TV shows and movies, games, especially open world ones or lengthy RPGs, can take several hours just to get started in and dozens more to complete. According to The Loadout, Game Pass added $5,000 worth of games in 2023. It would be interesting to see the dollar value of the total library the average user actually engages with.
Unpacking Microsoft's weird approach to Xbox exclusivity
There is a rumor going around that Microsoft will bring more of its exclusives to the Nintendo Switch, as it did with Ori and the Will of the Wisps in 2020. Here's how it started. YouTuber “Nate the Hate'' teased that a big Xbox exclusive was set to launch on another console. Resetera user lolilolailo cryptically suggested it was Hi-Fi Rush coming to Switch.Windows Central later added that, according to its sources, Microsoft is exploring bringing some of its back catalog to competing platforms.
Hardcore Xbox fans, who have become very invested in Microsoft leveraging its acquisitions to build up a library of premium, exclusive games as Sony has done, immediately lost it. The copium response was that maybe it was Psychonauts 2, a game long in development before Microsoft bought DoubleFine. People started trading vague old quotes from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer about what Xbox may or may not do when it comes to porting games to Switch.
It's all a symptom of Microsoft's own wishy-washy approach to exclusivity, the convolutedness of which was on full display back during the FTC trial last year when now former Bethesda marketing head Pete Hines tried to explain why some of its games were becoming console exclusives. It doesn't help that the company has continued to gesture in the direction of more cross-platform deals.
When Arkane revealed its new Blade game at the 2023 Game Awards, there was no mention of Xbox exclusivity or even of it being a day-one Game Pass release. When Game File's Stephen Totilo asked Disney about exclusivity it deferred to Bethesda who remained silent on the question. When Xbox chief financial officer Tim Stuart recently told audience members at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit that Microsoft planned to bring its "first-party experiences [and] our subscription services to every screen that can play games," including "what we would have thought of as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo," Spencer came out just days later to say the company had no plans to bring Game Pass to PS5 or Switch, but didn't actually contradict Stuart or say his number two misspoke.
Fans could be forgiven then for being confused about what Microsoft's strategy around console exclusives and building up the Xbox platform actually is. The entire idea of a "console war" and big content creators' identities as "console warriors" relies on direct competition between one platform and another. I'm not surprised Microsoft's shift toward a broader content and services approach is causing some Xbox fans' minds to implode. There is a reason Xbox is considered Microsoft's only major consumer facing product, and there will clearly be consequences for its brand and community if and when it quietly decides to abandon that part of the business strategy.
Here's a Super Famicom playing a PlayStation game:
Our winter of discontent with PlayStation Stars and Microsoft Rewards
Sony's very first PlayStation Blog post of the New Year was about the program*. It showed off GIFs of three new "digital collectibles" players could earn in January, including a replica of its recent accessibility controller, a retro lunchbox, a snow globe, and a computer chip for your brain. "Relax and unwind with some cozy game time," the post read. Start any of the games listed below to snag your snow globe Digital Collectible."
The year is 2094 and some water baron slips into deliria on his deathbed muttering "cozy game time."
There are 29 comments on the blog post and almost all of them about how this program sucks. They don't even mention how weird it is that most of the rewards are GIFs of random nonsense that can only be viewed within an app that's completely separate from the PlayStation 5. Instead, the comments are all about how PlayStation Stars hasn't properly been awarding players points for weeks and nobody can spend the ones they already have redeeming free games due to recurring error messages. "Give me my points, Sony! You owe me $200+ worth of them!😡," wrote gjdmobv2.
None of this matters except that against all odds I'm lowkey obsessed with earning PlayStation Stars rewards. My productivity-addled min-max brain desperately wants to optimize my time playing games. Destiny 2 is a tedious space shooter about collecting shiny junk. The part of it I love most is trying to hash out the most efficient way to go dumpster diving. Bungie's loot shooter nests smaller quest objectives within larger ones. As a result, you usually knock two or three things off your to-do list simultaneously if you're smart about it. Fulfilling all of the requirements at the same time feels even better than finally getting the powerful gear you're supposed to be chasing. It's real sicko shit.
I used to play Destiny on my lunch breaks at my old office job. I would actually drive 20 minutes home, play for 20 minutes, and then drive 20 minutes back. That's how much more rewarding its sci-fi hamster wheel felt than the actual job that was paying my bills. I’ve become similarly hooked on meta-achievements like PlayStation trophies and Microsoft Rewards streaks for playing Bejeweled 2 on my phone which is very much a real thing that I’m currently wasting my life doing.
Microsoft Rewards don’t have bizarre collectibles but they do offer an incredibly involved way to try and optimize your Xbox play time. Only recently they’ve been getting much, much worse and players aren’t happy.
"Microsoft really wants to be the Grinch that steals Christmas from all of us." That's what user pradiggitydog wrote on the Microsoft Rewards subreddit last December after the tech giant overhauled its loyalty program. The Bing search engine is so bad that Microsoft will actually pay people to use it by giving them points that can be redeemed for gift cards. There are also celebrity quizzes, trivia surveys, and other tedious tasks they can complete to maximize their rewards. People have bought entire video game consoles this way, including PlayStation 5s.
But at the end of 2023 Microsoft dialed things back, giving out fewer points, blocking progress with activity cooldowns, and removing certain opportunities altogether like getting 50 points for using Microsoft's Edge web browser. Diehards on the subreddit christened the event "Nerfmas" and railed against the changes. Now the same thing has happened to Xbox Game Pass quests, which feeds into the same points program whereby players get small monetary tokens of gratitude for the time they invest in Microsoft's gaming platform.
Instead of spreading the points out more generously between a variety of daily and weekly activities, Microsoft upped the monthly total but backloaded more of it on a single monthly "completionist" quest. It's worth 1,000 points (roughly $1) but requires players to essentially log in and hunt Xbox achievements every day of the week. If they miss even just one of the requirements they lose out on all of the points. Some people are already deciding to cash in all their points now and call it quits.
As gaming platforms ditch Twitter integration and the social internet breaks down, it actually feels like a good time for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo to offer small but meaningful niche alternatives for sharing screenshots and gaming moments, discovering new hidden gems, and celebrating meta achievements like unlocking a glorified Bloodborne lunch box GIF by finally completing the Platinum. Maybe 2024 will be the year they finally step up. Hell, maybe the Switch 2 will even get a group chat feature.
Putting a pin in 2023
I've been enjoying a ton of great Game of the Year discussions as I change diapers, fold laundry, and try to break up fights between two toddlers. They include Triple Click's, Remap's, MinnMax's, and the Besties'. I love hearing what everyone loved or hated about the biggest games of the year, as well as find reasons to become interested in all the ones I missed. And I think it's great that Giant Bomb, a site that was built in 2008 and still looks like it, still does written lists from a variety of different people, including pro wrestlers.
Heard on the radio
Japan suffered a 7.6 earthquake last week. The death toll is up to 100. The Pokémon Company, among others, donated $350,000 to the Red Cross response to the natural disaster. The thing that caught my attention was this exchange about it on NPR's A1 where they talked about how Japan keeps earthquake casualties so low through constant training and vigilance starting at a very young age, sort of like "active shooter drills" in the U.S.
In print
I thought the first paragraph of Ben Tarnoff's great review of Walter Isaacson's not very good book on Elon Musk was fantastic:
To be a man is to dominate others. This is what I absorbed as a boy: masculinity means mastery, power, control. To be socialized into manhood is to gain a love of hierarchy and a willingness to do whatever is necessary to preserve your own position within it. One of the many tragedies of this arrangement is that the people it makes miserable can nonetheless become its most loyal defenders. An extreme example from recent years is the incel phenomenon, whereby men who feel excluded from conventional masculinity develop a violent attachment to it. Nerd culture as a whole often exhibits the same dynamic. The nerd is not the opposite of the jock but a different iteration of the same logic. Nerds have their own flavor of macho. Rather than relinquishing the script, they find alternative ways to perform it.
Shot, chaser
Beloved satirical gaming mag Hard Drive has instituted a wildly successful Patreon after threatening to close up shop unless it could reach a certain amount of subscribers.
The announcement comes after lots of veteran talent and voices at the site already left, including some who said they did so because they were overworked and underpaid, and their pitch for getting more money by going to Patreon was shot down by management:
Unrealated
Another rough night for the Eagles. As is tradition, they strung fans along until it seemed like another Super Bowl win was not just possible but inevitable before skidding into a ravine.
To bring this back to gaming, I tried to stream Lies of P on my Razer Kishi v2 during the epic defeat but was told there was a 10 minute wait. It ended up being more like five minutes, which isn't a big deal but just enough of an inconvenience to make me that much less likely to try and fight marionette abominations through my WiFi lag.