The E3 dust is settling and there was a lot announced this summer. The final announcement of them all was one we heard about back in March—a full remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

And as the Direct came faded out, my reaction was not one of celebration, but a frustrated cry of "that's it?!"¹ I was living out what I wrote about when the leaks occurred and the "rumors" of Super Mario Titans:

It is far less exciting when the leak is just a statement on a podcast. If Star Fox is announced next month, it'll have a little "eh, I knew that was coming." More crucially, now we enter the phase on imagination, which has its own ramifications.

"Leaks have immense power to shape perspective. If you like the leak and it doesn't come to pass, you can become disappointed. Same happens when inverted. I think lots of folks forget to bring along their big chunks of salt to these conversations and revel in the fun of it."

Nintendo is remaking one of the greatest games of all time in 4K and releasing it within six months and I walk away bummed out I didn't see more? What is wrong with me?

What's wrong with me was the leak and a loss of perspective. Kit and Krysta talked about this on their podcast episode after the Direct.

"I think it had a huge effect. Like, if that was actually a surprise and there was a teaser of an Ocarina of Time remake at the end of a Direct, I think people, like, it would be insanity. But it's we've known about this since March. Yeah. We've been talking about this for at least two months. We have we have we have gone in circles around talking about here's all the myriad myriad of ways that they could do this all these and we got this little teaser of him sleeping on some dirt."

"Leaks have immense power to shape perspective" indeed past Max. Just a year ago, I was all aboard the Hype Train heading into the Switch 2's debut Direct, not for the leaked hardware, but the mystery and excitement of games unknown at the time, like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza.

Sure, the hardware itself leaked months and months beforehand. But what is truly exciting about tomorrow is the games. Nintendo's lineup has been a complete mystery with genuine leaks being basically nonexistent. The mystery surrounding the launch window titles is captivating. That is why I am riding the Hype Train.

Brian Altano at IGN reminds me why this remake is coming at the right time and reoriented my hype.

"Imagine being a 10 year old who walks out of the Zelda movie, heads home, grabs their Nintendo Switch 2, and plays Ocarina of Time for the first time in their lives. It’s hard not to be envious of experiencing a moment like that. Also, consider this: it’s been almost three decades since the original game launched, and it seems pretty likely that a sizable number of people who played it back then now have children of their own. Hmm, if only there was a Zelda game about experiencing how the world changes from the perspective of a child and the perspective of an adult…"

My own kid isn't quite old enough for 3D Zelda yet, but man, to play a game like Ocarina of Time for the first time again. What a moment! I am envious of the kids and people that will get to experience this game in that way. I am also reminded that this is not solely for gamers like myself. There is a whole world of folks about to dive in for the first time thanks to the movie. Back to Altano,

"The Legend of Zelda is about to have a gigantic big screen moment on April 30, 2027 – just a few months after the Ocarina of Time remake is set to be released. A live-action Zelda movie hitting theaters will introduce a whole new audience to this series for the first time. Having a stunning new remake of the most iconic Zelda game on store shelves and at the top of the Nintendo Switch 2’s eShop in time for the movie’s premiere makes perfect sense. After all, it’s happened before: Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 got Nintendo Switch remasters six months before The Super Mario Galaxy Movie premiered. Kids saw the Mario movie, wanted a Mario game to play, and Nintendo made sure they had something ready, even if it was something many of us played ages ago."

Taking a beat and reassessing has me excited. This game is out so soon and knowing nothing can be a good thing. I remember not knowing a ton about Breath of the Wild before its release, so much so that Nintendo made statements confirming towns and villages. The thing we have to watch out for is that our imaginations not run too wild and trust in the developers and the game's known formula. It'd be really hard to mess up Ocarina of Time.

I hope that Nintendo does seize this opportunity to shake up the game though. Perhaps open its dungeon structure up a bit or fully integrated ideas in the Master Quest. I haven't played them yet, but my understanding of the Final Fantasy VII remakes is that the team subverted expectations to surprise and delight while making a new game and a remake. I think there is immense potential for subversion with the time mechanics alone. I doubt it, but a boy can dream. Nintendo is not usually one for drastic redesign in their remakes.

Speaking of Final Fantasy VII remake, I remember sitting in a movie theater in that summer of 2015. I had never played Final Fantasy VII. I had no clue what was happening. But I remember the eruption at the reveal and the news that it was a remake. I don't recall leaks or rumors, but perhaps there were. All we got was a CG cutscene in a very Tetsuya Nomura way. There was no gameplay. No date. It didn't come out for another five years. The other parts are still coming out to this day. There is much to celebrate about this remake of Ocarina of Time and I plan to stop letting leaks rob me of joy.

There has been a vocal sentiment in video game production over the past few of years that only seems to be getting louder as more companies use AI. That's right. The AI corpos have come for Tomb Raider, Crazy Taxi, and maybe even Kingdom Hearts.¹ The knee-jerk response I see every time this kind of information is discovered is "The devs used AI? I'm out! Nope! Never!"

This reaction, as far as I can tell, is always in regard to visual art assets; something the player could see or hear or "touch."

And I can't help but feel like this instantaneous rejection is shallow and lacks nuance these folks often provide to the medium. I've been chewing on this for the past few days and hope I can provide some of that nuance. Here's Liam Triforce on his new blog,

"Personally speaking, I refuse to give an inch in this regard. While many studios have adopted the use of AI to create schedules or expedite the administrative processes that would otherwise interfere with the creative side of game development, many have also used it to outsource the creative elements as well, and as soon as you use it for that purpose – you’ve lost me. No matter how “small” they claim this use of generative AI to be, I find any use of it to be an active betrayal of what it means, intrinsically, to be an artist, and that’s not even mentioning the high power and environmental costs of the models they use."

Liam rightly calls out efficiencies in scheduling or administrative desk jobs. AI certainly is used all over the office. His rejection is in response to "creative" elements, like Crazy Taxi's background assets or Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's use of some generative art.

To that I say, is coding not a creative art?

The 1s and 0s that make up the digital fabric of masterful tapestries like The Last of Us, Journey, Outer Wilds, or The Legend of Zelda were all written and tested by coders, a word which here means "a person who writes code for computer programs." Author means "a writer of a book, article, or report." Painter can mean "an artist who paints pictures." A coder is an author of code, an artist working with bytes instead of paints.

There are endless stories of coding prowess, hacking, and ingenuity that led to seemingly impossible worlds magically appearing on our tiny TV screens 20 years ago, let alone the scope and scale of modern titles. Just last month, Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit put out a video about the sheer wizardry Rockstar Games did to make Grant Theft Auto III run on the PlayStation 2. Another favorite example of mine is this interview with Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin about they hacked the PlayStation to make Crash Bandicoot run. Here's the opening excerpt,

"Memory was so short in Crash Bandicoot that I took to stealing little bits and pieces of extra memory from the Sony libraries. I would like just try erasing parts of them that I thought I wasn't using and see if things still worked. If they did, I would mark them as available and I just hacked their code by just changing the byte codes. I'm like, you can do this. Look, I fixed it.

If they wouldn't fix it for me, I was just gonna like edit their code. It was free memory. The memory was finite. But you were definitely not supposed to do that."

The whole video is excellent and for even deeper dives, just check out Andy Gavin's blog detailing many years of endeavors at The Kennel.

Given my experience with coding—a CSS and HTML class in college, running a Wordpress blog, and telnet—it is no wonder that I am amazed by the likes of Claude Code when I redesign my entire blog while cooking dinner. It is magic. At the same time, it is no wonder that when I hear stories like those memory hacking tales I am also amazed.

All of my friends and coworkers in the coding world are using these types of tools. From writing, review, and fixing bugs, there is little these AI tools don't touch in the process. I fail to see a world where the industry at large is not using these kinds of tools in the creation of video games. So is that not okay? Are we supposed brand them like Sneetches on the beaches with Steam labels. Then we can post a Steam chart and amplify the echo chamber of zero AI that could end games, stop sales, etc.? Has an inch been given by default? Liam ponders this aftermath,

"Somehow, the responsibility falls on me to make the right decisions so as not to betray my own values, because if I retroactively discover that a game used generative AI – I would feel like I had given my money to people that I do not respect, and I had, unfortunately, 'given an inch.'"

I think this means leaving games behind entirely, unless you seek out and confirm not an Watt of AI was used at any moment in its development. If you consider video games art and therefore consider the game's code art this standard becomes too high to uphold. It'd be like vowing to only read books that didn't use spellcheck. Granted, thousands of books were written ages before the notion of a notion of an inkling of an idea of spellcheck was conceived. But certainly the list of books written without it in the 17 years since Mac OS X system-wide spell check was introduced is few and far between. I wonder how many millions (billions?) lines of code were written after a Google search and landing on Stack Overflow?

Okay, so maybe we can't consider code and AI to be the line because it would erase too much. We aren't Neo looking at The Matrix after all. Let's just focus on that stuff we see and touch. When I think of "AI" used in a visual way, my brain goes to Peter Jackson.

Back in 2018, Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old was released. It is a World War I documentary assembled out of 100-year-old archival footage. Where "AI" enters the picture is in the machine learning and software developed to take unstable, grainy footage and to transform it by upping the resolution and restoring it. Then the crew went in and added color and sound. It's a remarkable documentary.

OpenAI was still a non-profit organization then. The marketing buzz around slapping "AI" on ✨everything✨ wasn't common practice. These techniques were referred to by the more accurate title of "machine learning." Training the computer on film grain, framerates, scratches, and dirt. Jackson would do similar work with his documentary The Beatles: Get Back by training software on instrument sounds and vocals to isolate tracks never recorded that way.

It is no different than the likes of PSSR, FSR, and DLSS to upscale low resolution video games to make performance gains or creating frames for smoother experiences with frame generation. Focused tools that usually enhance the artistic experience and give players a better time.

That does not mean that the computers can't get it wrong. Just take a look at DLSS 5 and its initial reveal. Woof. The tech there may be cool, but that ain't Grace Ashcroft. I think that's where the nut of it lies. The people using the tool are responsible for the final output, not the computer. Capcom wasn't involved with the DLSS 5 demo. Their artist didn't factor in this lighting tech when making the models. Nvida slapped a layer on top, like an old Hollywood studio smearing color on a black and white film just to re-release it. When used in a thoughtful and considerate way, the tool can elevate a work.

This zero tolerance approach to AI in games development is the wrong one to take, I think. I do understand it though. I won't buy from Limited Run Games anymore. A more extreme example is I won't listen to Michael Jackson music when I can help it after I watched the Leaving Neverland.

Much smaller stakes include not backing video game development on Kickstarter or not buying games published from companies owned by the Saudi Royal Family. They own SNK. That's fine. I don't play that stuff. They're trying to buy EA? That'll be okay, I think. They mostly make sports games anyway. Wait. They own how much of Capcom? Nintendo too?! At least that stake went down...

I hope that little tangent illustrates my point. All or nothing gets messy. The responsibility does, in fact, fall to you and me to not betray our values because they are ours. You have to draw your lines and make amends if you accidentally cross them. When it comes to AI in game development, I make the call when I see it. Does the game look good, play great, and resonate? The devs used the tool the right way. If it looks sloppy, I say that's the developer's fault, not the tool's.

I have always been obsessed with getting my handheld games on the big screen. From the Game Boy Player to the Analogue Pocket to modding my 3DS, I have had a lifelong pursuit of tiny games on big screens.¹ Growing up playing a Game Boy in the back of a minivan meant playing smaller, weirder, divergent titles. I cut my teeth on the likes of Pokémon Blue, Mega Man Battle Network 3, and Link's Awakening. In fact, the first time I played Yacht Club Games' Shovel Knight was on my 3DS during a road trip. When I got back home to my Wii U weeks later, I immediately bought the home console version.

I've been a champion of Yacht Club ever since. I bought the game for my friends, visited the team at PAX East 2019, and reviewed quite a few of their games over the years. When Mina the Hollower was announced in 2022, I closed out my blog post with this:

"The current window for Mina The Hollower is December 2023. That’s a solid two more years of development time. Eager to see how this one lands."

Nearly three years after the original target date (making games is hard!), Mina the Hollower is out in the world. Mina is a modern fusion of the aforementioned Link's Awakening, Castlevania titles, and modern "Soulslike" ideas all gelled together with Yacht Club's signature retro-inspired, modern-infused design principles. On paper, it's a dream game for the likes of me.

In reality, it is a grandiose, modern title crammed into the constraints of handheld games of yore. Yacht Club Games' ambitions do not fit in this box. Mina is dense. Mina is irritating. Mina breaks my heart.

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"3Beans emulates the 3DS at a low level, which means that it runs the entire OS as if it were on real hardware. It can boot the home menu and launch some games, but it's still young and has plenty of issues. It has both software and hardware GPU rendering, but CPUs are still fully interpreted."

First emulator of its kind that I have seen. 3DS is a tricky one and when Citra got shut down a couple of years ago, I stopped looking at the scene. Apparently, there are quite a few 3DS emulators out there. None of them have a name as good as 3Beans.

Also, a Mac version out of the gate from a developer that seems to main macOS. Certainly doesn't use Windows based off the video. Good for him.

Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac Will Soon Stop Letting You Edit Documents by Tim Hardwick at MacRumors via 512 Pixels

Microsoft will prevent Office 2019 for Mac owners from editing their documents from July 13, a restriction the company is attributing to the productivity suite's expiring digital certificate...

Microsoft has actually renewed the suite's certificate, but the fix can only be delivered through a software update. That means users of Microsoft 365 and Office 2021 are in the clear – they'll receive the update, so neither will be affected. However, Microsoft stopped offering support for Office 2019 on October 10, 2023, and the suite has received no updates since. As such, it won't be updated to version 16.83, which is the release that includes the renewed certificate.

Microsoft says the problem can't be fixed by reinstalling Office 2019. Instead, it suggests affected users turn to the company's free Microsoft 365 web apps, take out a paid Microsoft 365 subscription, or make a one-time purchase of Office 2024.

You know what still works today? A copy of Microsoft Word 5 loaded on Infinite Mac.

Get your act together Microsoft.

This article has sat as an open tab in my mobile browser for I guess nine years now. Time to finally share it.

"Last weekend’s New York Times profile of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick had plenty of important revelations about Kalanick and the company he runs, both of which have been facing some tough PR lately. But there was one incidental, almost throwaway line buried in the piece that made me stop in my tracks:

“In other personal pursuits, he once held the world’s second-highest score for the Nintendo Wii Tennis video game.”

...I’ve spent an admittedly ridiculous amount of time looking into this one sentence over the past few days. As it turns out, getting to the bottom of Kalanick’s Wii Sports skill requires delving into the vagaries of human memory, reverse engineered asymptotic leveling systems, and the semantic meaning of video game achievement itself."

Words have meaning. A great examination of hubris and the ubern myth with a deep dive into the nitty gritty of Wii Sports. You would think that Silicon Valley inventors and investors would place higher value on numbers, technology, and their meaning.

"Designed in California is a podcast dedicated to telling stories from across the whole scope of Apple history, hosted by Myke and Jason. We have been discussing Apple current events in depth on the Upgrade podcast since 2014! Now it's time to consider the bigger picture."

Recent guest on The Max Frequency Podcast and friend of the blog, Myke Hurley, is making a new podcast alongside Jason Snell. It's a fusion of Upgrade and their favorite podcast The Rest is History. I am eager to give it a listen later this year and you should be too.

I like the approach of pre-selling annual memberships via Kickstarter. It's a smart and simple approach that gives them permission to pour the time into creating a research heavy show like this. They smashed their initial goal, more than doubling it within 24 hours.

Thanks to Jason Kottke, I came across this art project. Each window is a story. It's fun to see the trends too. I noticed tons of nature, as if the residence are trying to escape the concrete jungle. Plenty of Asian massage parlors and feet. This particular one of a billboard for the law firm Morgan & Morgan being warped in glass actually is an accurate representation of how I perceive John Morgan.

I do find it disappointing that there is some sort of crypto/NFT angle to the art. Somehow, it also feels very NYC.

I am also reminded of Aristotle Roufanis' Alone Together series, which lives rent free in my head.

Logan Moore and Max are back once more to press F to pay respects for the Electronic Entertainment Expo by predicting summer shenanigans from Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, and Geoff Keighley.

• Download (58MB) — Episode Transcript

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"There are so many aspects that make up a video game, and this means incredible ideas have the opportunity to exist alongside terrible ones, turning the game as a whole into something not all that remarkable despite containing aspects that are. This video is an examination and celebration of a few games that fall into this category."

My pal Razbuten put out a new essay a few days ago. He explores neat mechanics in mediocre games. While I was watching/listening while cooking dinner, I got to thinking about the bygone era of pack-in multiplayer modes. Because I occasionally get on the same wave length as Raz, of course he talks about this too.

But there was one multiplayer niche that felt like it had a moment in the spotlight during this 360/PS3 generation that I kinda miss—asymmetrical multiplayer.

I'm talking Spies vs. Mercs in Splinter Cell. I'm talking the 3 vs 3 vs 2 multiplayer mode in Batman: Arkham Origins. I'm talking Mario Chase in Nintendo Land.¹

Asymmetrical multiplayer hasn't gone away so much as evolved (I couldn't resist) into the social deduction sub-genre of a sub-genre. Think Among Us or SpyParty. At times, I feel like battle royales or (now because I can't get enough of Marathon) extraction shooters have asym design elements in them.

Is asymmetrical multiplayer a "bad" mechanic though? I suppose it is more of a genre. I miss it being the focus though.

Another actual mechanic is miss is a subtle one. I love the few Splinter Cell games that have the color space go black and white when you are in cover and transition to color when you are visible. It's slick and stylish. Mirror's Edge and its Runner Vision could fit here too. More bold colors that make games stand head and shoulders above the rest of the industry while providing gameplay information to the player.

We also need more—I don't really know the term for this—external elements? For example, Metal Gear Solid reading your memory card or the "close your DS" solution in Phantom Hourglass. I've heard a ton about how Eternal Darkness plays with console and TV standards of the time to warp player expectations. Doki Doki Literature Club is a modern example of this too. More games that exist in the world instead of just in the game world, even if it is just for a moment.

That's all I can think of right now, looking back at my shelves of games and this Post-It note that I wrote on while making that dinner. You should go ahead and watch Raz's video.

Season 2 of Marathon looks sick. I continue to be in love with the game and am amped for all this new content and a fresh start. I mean, look at these screenshots and the cinematic trailer!

I think the new level up system dubbed "The Cradle" will be a huge win and change of pace from burying stats in Faction trees. The KKV-9SD and its integrated suppressor sounds so, so fun. The new defensive shell sounds like a proper shake up to team balance and gives the lineup more support/tactical roles.

There is a clear emphasis on the horror elements that have popped their spooky heads up during the game so far. This night version of Dire Marsh appears dark. I might switch back to my OLED for a few matches just to see those colors and HDR pop. I also love that they are bringing design ideas from Outpost's Pinwheel to Dire Marsh. More focused, high risk, access elements please.

The big win out of the gate though is the open play week. I think this is a great idea, when everyone starts at gear zero. A week is a solid chunk of time for friends to get together and get in the groove with the game. I had a friend ask me about it a few weeks ago while at the driving range. I immediately sent this news to him so he can give it a shot with me.

My favorite tidbit though?

"Added new PC and console cursor speed settings."

Can't wait to dive straight into Season 2 - Nightfall next week. With the State of Play the same day and Summer Game Fest on Friday, it's going to be a great gamer week.

I watched a little bit of Google IO this week. If you missed it, here's a great summary. One bit I did see was a demo of Google using AI to develop an operating system.

"So using the new Antigravity and Gemini 3.5 Flash, we asked our agents to take on what we consider to be a highly complex and impressive task: Build a working operating system from scratch. We were surprised by what we found...Over 12 hours, 93 subagents working in parallel made over 15000 model requests and processed 2.6 billion tokens to take an initially empty project to the core of a functioning operating system."

Makes me wonder if this is the power behind Aluminum OS.

"My PSN account was hacked, seemingly as part of an ongoing sophisticated series of moves against both random and "prominent" users.

Indeed, I was told by someone a few days ago that I was going to be targeted, and he was right. (He was also hacked.)"

Colin shared quite the thread on Twitter yesterday afternoon.¹ These types of hacks have been ongoing in the PlayStation community. I remember seeing a headline about the top trophy hunter in the world getting their account banged by hackers earlier this year.

"1.) I wasn't phished, didn't click on any links, didn't randomly put my password somewhere, etc. I am completely positive of this.

2.) At the time this happened, my email started getting spammed with hundreds of random emails from all sorts of sources (SubStack, EA, AliExpress, Slack... s—t I'm not even signed up for).

3.) I then got a text message that my PlayStation Network email address was changed. Then I got a text message saying 2FA was turned off.

Frankly, how can any of this even be possible if someone isn't feeding information from the inside or has some sort of bespoke access to things they shouldn't?"

I saw some replies speculating social engineering scams by calling support and pretending to be said user. PC Magazine did an article with other folks that have been hacked. It's seems like a mix of social engineering and an absolutely unhinged recovery process.

When you initiate an account recovery, you submit a PSN ID, the registered email address, the user's full name, and one other detail:

• The first four and last four digits of the credit card number used on the account.
• Serial number of the first console used to create or log into your account.
• Order number for a recent transaction made on this PlayStation account.

I submitted an order number from 2023. The chatbot processed my request and let me register an entirely new email address for my PSN account. I didn't need to verify the process from the original email address at all...

...I was stunned because the process completely bypassed the passkey I had registered on my PSN account. The chatbot even asked me: "May I know if you also need help to disable extra security measures activated in the PlayStation account?" I said yes, and the passkey was gone.

I am not a betting man, but I'd wager that this chat system is one powered by a LLM, as they have taken over the technical chat support business. But even if you get in touch with a human on PlayStation's support team you can seemingly just keep casting out the phishing line until you get one willing to hand over the account. It all reminds me of "The Snapchat Thief" episode of Reply All. Customer service seems so willing to cater to users and positive reviews that they lack common security sense. In fact, it is identical:

In the meantime, the hijackings have been traced to hackers who are reselling dozens of stolen accounts on social media for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. They're focused on stealing accounts with desirable screen names, often created 20 years ago when PSN launched.

What makes this whole affair even more alarming is that Sony is mostly silent and unwilling to assist. Back to Colin,

"...they told me it will take three weeks for them to get to have any answers, which seems f—g insane. They removed my credit card info, etc., from the account in the interim, but seemingly couldn't mass-change the password and boot others off in the interim? Okay then. If I don't get my account back by tomorrow, I'll file with the Better Business Bureau, as has been recommended."

I am not sure filing with the Better Business Bureau would have helped Colin though. Pete Wenzler did just that and received this reply from Sony.

"...after which Sony told him it was 'unable to assist in gaining access to the account mentioned.'"

Colin went through PlayStation Support. His friends that work at PlayStation reached out and helped escalate the issue. He called Greg Miller. Thanks to all his friends and connections, Colin has his account back. I can't help wonder for how long though...

This is a major issue and Sony needs to address it immediately. While not to the scale of the infamous PSN Outage of 2011 or Insomniac's leak, this is a risk and removes all confidence in account security.² How am I or anyone to trust two factor authentication with Sony? I thought about enabling my first passkey before writing this article, but clearly that matters not based off my research. There is no point to all these security measures if they can be removed with a old order number and zero verification. I am starting to underestimate the power of PlayStation.

"But because the streaming system is tied to the camera, and not the player… well, even if I take control of  the camera and fly far away, the streaming will just follow me and the city will materialise around me. The only solution, ultimately, would be to somehow get the GTA 3 source code, rewrite several sections of the program, and compile a brand new executable.

So, I got the GTA 3 source code, I rewrote several sections of the program, and I compiled a brand new executable."

A great video from Mark Brown that showcases supreme design born out of constraint. Of course he'd rewrite bits of the game.

It reminds me of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart instantaneously loading worlds or how we can slingshot across New York City as Spider-Man. As I understand it, these techniques leverage the speed of the SSD rather than the memory, like Grand Theft Auto 3 did on the PS2. Rift Apart in particular showcased why this was neigh impossible on PS4 and spinning disks.

I've fallen out with Fortnite over the last couple of months. I think the last season I touched was the South Park one. It felt same-y, commercial, and it was harder and harder to get the boys together for a night. I still see the updates though and I remarked to my pals that it feels more and more like a Disney marketing machine. Seems my feelings were spot on. Cecilia D'Anastasio at Bloomberg reported on Epic banking on all this Disney IP and money to help Fortnite make a comeback.

"The company is pinning a resurgence on games it’s been developing with Walt Disney Co., which agreed to invest $1.5 billion in Epic two years ago. Epic is on track to launch the first game in its new Disney partnership in November, according to four current and former employees. It will be a shooting game along the lines of Embark Studios’ hit Arc Raiders, but with Disney characters battling enemies until they can reach an extraction point, according to the people. So far, internal reviewers have expressed concerns that the game mechanics are not very original, but some of the employees are optimistic that Epic will get it right by the launch date."

There's something about giving Buzz Lightyear a rifle that feels wrong. I suspect Disney feels the same way since the official marketing for the skin doesn't show Buzz wielding a gun at all. It's the same wrong that I felt when opening Disney+ and seeing huge banger images for Alien: Romulus and some lady dying of a disease who wants to have a bunch of sex up there with Disney classics and kids shows. It's not right.

Don't get me wrong. I love the absurdity of Fortnite's mashups. There is an undeniable humor to it. But everything doesn't belong in Fortnite.

The rumor that Epic is pursuing the new hotness genre in an extraction shooter sounds very much like Epic, given the battle royale mode of Fortnite came about the same way based off PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds success at the time.

"Other splashy new initiatives, including Epic’s mobile store and an effort to allow users to create their own games, also didn’t live up to internal expectations, according to eight current and former employees who spoke with Bloomberg. In chasing popular trends or business whims, Epic regularly released products before employees felt they would resonate with consumers..."

"Epic routinely released products in what some employees called “Version 0.5,” the people said, suggesting they were only half ready."

I'm sure this will work out swimmingly for everyone involved.

Another angle to this Disneyfication is the recent Star Wars tools the game added. Sophie McEvoy at GamesIndustry.biz:

"Epic Games and Disney have launched creation tools that allow fans to develop their own Star Wars games within Fortnite."

Why bury a franchise into the ground yourself when you can monetize the hard work of kids and developers to pile onto the mountain of content?

"To publish Star Wars islands, developers must join the Fortnite Developer Program and accept additional terms and conditions in the Creator Portal.

Publishing islands with Star Wars assets requires users to share 20% of their engagement payout with The Walt Disney Company. They must also follow Star Wars Brand Rules."

Surely everyone will follow these rules.

"In 2024, The Walt Disney Company invested $1.5 billion to acquire an equity stake in Epic Games and announced plans for an "open, persistent, social universe" where players can "watch, shop, and engage with content, characters, and stories" from across Disney's portfolio."

I think Disney is banking on the metaverse still here.

Now that my review of Marathon is out, I can finally share other's work on the game in good conscience. My YouTube algorithm is all sorts of messed up now, so I watched this yesterday per recommendation.

I've heard one element of his thesis before; that the game and its commercial success are two different elements, but online commentary fuses the two then reduces them to whatever brings in the clicks. If I never had to see a Steam player count chart again, I'd be a happy gamer. It's a big part why my review focuses 100% on the game and not the fractal data the tabloid-esque entertainers are fixating on.

It all reminds me of this other piece I read before launch from Kevin Dowling:

Gaming brings people together. It also helps people escape the ridiculous reality of our intense lives. I found that in Marathon. And found it ironic that online chatter was of doom & gloom. Because of course, if I said that Marathon was a disaster, Sony will go under and the industry is in turmoil I'd get more hits. It's a great game, Bungie-esque and a lot of fun is not what people get riled up and click things about.

"TRUE FINAL RELEASE DATE!! 🐭 🙌 Mina the Hollower launches May 29 for only $19.99! Prepare yourself for one of the greatest top-down adventures ever to be delivered directly to your soul for less than 20 bucks. Mark your calendars. Tell your friends. Wishlist now"

Confirmed just over a week ago, Yacht Club Games has ended the silence on the indefinite delay that Mina the Hollower received back in October. At the time, Yacht Club cited delaying the game for:

• Finalizing design, art, and sound,
• Overall game balancing
• Implementing localization
• Eating cheese
• Testing, testing, testing… on all platforms!

Seven months feels like a long time finalization and polish, but I've never made a game before. I hope it is a question I can ask the team some day. When you factor in the kickstarter launched four years ago, it's been quite the journey.

I played a piece of the demo when it came to Switch 2: I even put the game on a CRT for the "authentic" feel. The game feel at the time was that juiced up game movement with the digging and popping up. The combat was snappy. The aesthetic was everything you'd want it to be. I did feel like the menus and systems were overbearing. It felt like a lot the grasp in the heat of a demo. I hope the onboarding is smoother in the final game.

Since the release date announcement, Yacht Club has put up a couple of videos on socials detailing game design decisions. One is about platforming precision and the other is about not including a nitty gritty map in the game. The platforming one in particular reminds me a lot of the disciplines in Celeste that Mark Brown talks about in his video.

There are just two weeks to go. Here's to the team and the game—it seems like a lot is riding on this little mouse.

I had never heard of Fred again.., but I do know Thomas Bangalter as half of Daft Punk. Jason Kottke shared this performance back when it was uploaded almost two months ago and it has sat in a tab on my laptop since then. I finally dove in this morning and have been loving it.

I may not necessarily advise watching the show—there are waaaaaay too many flashing lights. The music is straight fire though.

It's a rare treat in many ways. First and foremost, seeing Bangalter live in any way shape or form is remarkable. Second, getting to see it after the performance when I was nowhere near London or even knew it was happening. I wish more musicians offered up ways to consume their live music. I know Phish does. Maybe its a jam band thing. Third, it's wild to not only watch it, but I can also add it to my library on Apple Music. I was fully prepared to download the audio and plop it on my phone, but Fred again.. just did it for everyone. He seems like a cool cat. Maybe I will listen to more of his stuff.

sees new A24 trailer

"Okay. Let's see if this is a horror movie or something else."

reads description

"From director Matt Johnson..."

Okay. I am now seated.

Jason Kottke celebrating the continued return of Every Frame a Painting:

I’m gonna call it: Every Frame a Painting, my all-time favorite YouTube channel, is back. Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos stopped producing their fantastic video essays back in 2017 and while they have popped up here and there since then, they’ve mostly stuck to their retirement.¹

But for the past few months, the duo have been releasing video essays produced in partnership with Criterion: Night of the Living Dead: Limitations into Virtues, The Blade (1995): The Edges of Wuxia, and just yesterday, The Visual Comedy of Isle of Dogs(embedded above).

But is it a return or are buried essays finally surfacing?

Out of the recent uploads, two of them are actually old essays made for the Criterion releases of Night of the Living Dead and Isle of Dogs. In fact, it seems that the Night of the Living Dead essay was made eight years ago for the Blu-Ray release of the film before the iconic duo retired.²

The essay for The Blade is also a part of the Criterion release, but that just came out in March~April of this year, so that essay is brand spanking new. Taylor and Tony just (like the one hour ago kind of just) put out a new essay with Turner Classic Movies about Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu.

I had no idea Every Frame a Painting had an archive hidden away on certain Criterion releases. It makes me wonder how many more are hidden away. A targeted search on Google tells me there is an essay on Tampopo and on The Breaking Point, the latter of which is already on Criterion's YouTube channel from eight years ago (again!).

All this searching reminded me of the essays the duo made for David Fincher's Voir on Netflix—I wonder if Kottke knows about those. If this trend of releasing new old essays continues, I suspect we will see the Tampopo one next. I wonder if there is more to this "hidden in plain sight" archive or if we will get more new essays or if Every Frame a Painting will once again go away until there is more to say. Either way, I am always here for more essays by Taylor and Tony.