Sunday can be saved for unboxing the Steam Deck when you get back from vacation, just to beat that boredom. Before you nearly lose your willpower, let’s read this week’s best gaming (and related) articles.
Keza MacDonald asks The Guardian are the Olympics getting video games wrong. The first Olympic eSports Week will feature nine virtual sports, but it’s not what you might expect. Hearthstone, Valorant, Overwatch? No, Tic Tac Bow and Just Dance, my friend. Macdonald explores why the IOC would choose lesser-known, “non-eSports” games, and whether this is necessarily a bad thing.
“For the average eSports fan, its inclusion in the Olympics should have been a triumphant moment, marking a step forward for a community that has grown from a few hundred gamers in the early 1980s to over half a billion this year,” says Matt Woods. head of eSports marketing and talent agency AFK. “Unfortunately, last week’s announcement left us feeling disappointed and, to be honest, a bit confused. Instead of working with existing game publishers or well-known tournaments, it seems the Olympic Committee has instead decided to use this event as a marketing vehicle for brand new, poorly designed, unlicensed mobile games.”
Nicole Carpenter wrote a post for Polygon on an indie studio that hasn’t paid its employees for months. A difficult read, with some confusing moments, namely Weslaty making a joke about the whole situation.
About 20 employees at Montreal indie studio Dynasty Loop are looking for answers — and money — after months of not being paid, four employees told Polygon. The studio, led by CEO Rania Weslaty, apparently owes its employees and outside contractors more than $2 million in back pay, expenses and bonuses, according to people affected by the situation and multiple documents and work chats reviewed by Polygon. Those employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, told Polygon that they were asked to turn in their work equipment and were unable to gain access to the Montreal office. The studio told them they weren’t fired, but they were left with no expected due date or any work to do in the meantime.
Christian Donlan wrote about it on Eurogamer An idyll, a gentle social world from the creator of Library Of Babble. A great, quick piece by Donlan about little pills and conversations that can take years to unravel.
I’m wandering around, a smart little pill person, and I realize that I might meet other pill people who happened to be brought here. I can announce my thoughts to the wind and the sky, and when I reach the shoreline, there might be a bottle floating in the surf with someone’s thoughts in it. I can add my thoughts to theirs if I want.
For VG247, Dom Peppiatt wrote about The final hidden exotic quest of Destiny 2 Lightfalland why it reminded them why they love Destiny 2 regardless all. Liam and I have been thinking about our next one Inventory space episode that happens to be related to Destiny 2. Stay tuned.
I wasn’t kind to Lightfall. Yes, I think there are some really cool moments, and yes, I had a lot of fun playing the Legend campaign. But overall it falls flat – a strange tonal aberration that undoes so much of the work The Witch Queen has done to fix the shaky history of this nearly decade-long experience. But Destiny is much more than its campaigns; The game lives and dies by its seasonal content and how it brings players back to the best-in-class FPS sandbox. And little missions like this newly added NODE.OVRD.AVAL.ON quest are great examples of where Bungie really excels.
This week’s music is “on the street (with J.Cole)” by j-hope. Here Link to Spotify and Link to YouTube. I found out that j-hope is a member of the K-Pop supergroup BTS, and that this song acts as a “see you” before his mandatory military service, and also features his idol J.Cole – hence the name “j – hope.” J. Cole’s verses remind me of the typical rap in pop songs, but elevated. He perfectly combines lyricism with accessibility. The man looks so comfortable right now.
That’s it for this week folks, have a great weekend!