Everything Everywhere Once A Week (3/25/2023)

Hello and welcome to Everything Everywhere Once A Week, a weekly newsletter about the goings on in the video game industry over the last week. We’re a day later than usual today because I wanted to write about GDC, the game developer’s conference, but that meant having to actually attend GDC through Friday. I also had a couple of other topics in mind I wanted to hit so we’re running a bit behind.

Game Developers Conference 2024

I’ve been to every GDC since 2017, which sounds a little less impressive when you consider that it got canceled as a physical event for pandemic-related reasons a few years in there. But with those exceptions, I’ve suited up with a backpack and a media badge to wander the halls of the Moscone Center in search of stories in a lecture room or the unreported-but-useful stories at the bottom of a bar tab. This year, I attended with both Industry and Media badges, going to GDC for panels that help me with my job between pitch meetings, pre-arranged catching-up meetings, several lunches a day, and some really long nights.

If GDC 2022 was the year of blockchain and crypto, 2023 was the year of a sheepish admittance that 2022 did not really pan out. The wall of blockchain sponsors and enthusiasts dwindled significantly this year and an exhibition hall that was once sparse but for the rattling of crypto-carnival barkers is now a bit more full with, like, non-terrible things. Rather than learn any lessons from all this, though, this year we were treated to a similar circus of Metaverse content that existed without any real explanation of what the Metaverse is or how what these people are selling in any way benefits games.

The conference feels like a yearly bellwether of the direction people with money want us to go versus the direction we’re actually heading. At least if you look at the signs and banners, the actual meat and potatoes of GDC is in the panels where people learn things to the best of their ability and schedule. Feels unfortunate that the panel about Kirby and the Forgotten Land and God of War: Ragnarok’s end sequence were scheduled concurrently, but at least they’re archived.

There’s probably a pretty valid conversation that needs to happen about GDC”s accessibility, too. The conference is not cheap — an all-access pass for developers is around ten bills and that’s before you factor in things like food, lodging, transportation, etc. A sandwich at the convention center is $15 and a can of Diet Pepsi is $6 and sometimes you just have to pay that to get to your next meeting without collapsing. GDC should cost significantly less so it’s not a privilege for big AAA developers-only to learn how to make their next game better.

Talks are archived, sure, but that doesn’t help when you want to ask a question about the talk. The video isn’t going to answer. It’s not going to help you mingle to find your next connection for a future job opportunity. It won’t help you check out interesting new middleware tech on the exhibition hall floor that might massively change something about your next project. With GDC actively cutting away at bringing in diverse speakers and panelists and paying for them to be at the show, discussions of how to course-correct on this need to happen sooner rather than later.

Is it Ethical to Breathlessly Praise Diablo IV?

So this week, I’ve been playing a lot of the Diablo IV beta, the one I bought and ate half of a Double Down for. The beta is fun and I went from playing through a decent part of Act I to preordering the game online pretty quickly. I’ve seen some discussion elsewhere on the internet about the press reaction to the game, which is largely positive and effusive, and whether it undermines the still-ongoing problems at Activision-Blizzard, especially in light of the metronome-like waffling over the wizard game recently.

There will be people for whom the only stance is whether the game is fun or not and that’s all that matters. That’s a stance I can respect, even if I do not necessarily agree as a foundational principle. Sometimes that’s a large concern, but I also think it kind of does games as an artistic medium a disservice for it to be the only concern. I wouldn’t watch a Kevin Spacey movie today and go “Well say what you want but he’s a great actor!”

On the other hand, I’ve met and know quite a few people at Blizzard and on other similarly controversial games and corporations. I’ve known people who work at shitty companies that are doing their best to change it from the inside both in terms of culture and product. I’ve met people who have worked on controversial games that have thanked me for saying things they weren’t allowed to say. And I know for a fact there have been people who are proud of their work even on games that remain controversial for bad reasons and really wish everyone would shut up about it.

The point here is that there is no single answer or line that fits everyone. There’s no blanket “but think about the developers” claim that covers the full breadth of everyone working on or at a Blizzard or an Activision or what have you. People who pull out things like that generally just want to justify something to themselves rather than make an argument or an overall case.

So when it comes to Diablo IV, man, it’s tough. I think personally I’m going to enjoy that game, but were I still running a news department, I might be having a lot of conversations about our coverage of it. I made the call to not cover Overwatch 2, but that was also pretty easy because that game wasn’t doing significant numbers and still hasn’t really made anywhere near the kind of impact the original did. But Diablo probably will do good numbers and it probably will be pretty good and, considering the bloodbath games media has been lately, telling people to back off a sure thing is a dumb idea.

But back to the original question: is praise of something that was birthed problematically ethical? To that I have to say, no, probably wholly not. But also, there’s no good answer there that protects the people that are trying their best and punishes the people that are doing the worst without some degree of crossover.

Some part of me is just waiting for Microsoft to finish the acquisition so that they can clean house, but I doubt it will ever be that simple.

I Love When Celebrities Don’t Understand that Video Game Industry’s Stupid Secrecy Exists

This week, veteran actor Tony Todd — the voice of Venom in Insomniac’s upcoming Spider-Man 2 — replied to a tweet about the game saying he was told it is coming out in September with major advertising starting in August. Presumably he’d know this because PlayStation would be putting him on interview circuits and whatnot around that time. Todd then had to delete the tweet and jokingly handwave any mention of it. What’s Sony going to do, yell at Tony Todd?

It’s another example of celebrities openly talking about gaming projects because it’s justifiably ridiculous for them to think a thing that is coming out in six months has not been given a date yet. More than that, that the release date is some big secret that needs to be guarded as part of the marketing beat. We had something similar recently where Norman Reedus said Death Stranding 2 is in development roughly seven months before it was actually revealed.

And the walls did not fall down because he said it. People were still just as hyped for the reveal of Death Stranding 2 as they would have been had Reedus not said anything.

I see an argument often that talking about games before their official surprise reveals hurts the developers who are making the games, which it does to an extent, but I’d argue that’s only true because we have cultivated a culture where secrecy is paramount. We value the surprise over the work and then have spent years — decades — conflating the two until we see a ruined surprise as anything more than an annoyance for marketing.

It doesn’t help that consumers love the idea because hype is more important than the end product. But that’s a conversation no one really wants to have because that introspection is tough.

Other Things

• New Materia Possessions next week!