Calling Steam a storefront has always felt a little inadequate. It is a library, a marketplace, a social network and, according to one former Valve writer, something closer to an MMO. The comparison is not as strange as it first sounds, and it has apparently been part of Gabe Newell’s thinking for a long time. The case rests on what an MMO actually is. The genre is defined less by swords and levelling than by persistent shared spaces, long-term identities and social systems that give people a reason to return. Steam has all three. Profiles, friends lists, achievements, reviews, community hubs and a marketplace all add up to a place where people spend time rather than simply pass through. The point underneath the comparison is that players are not merely consuming. They are articulating their identities. A profile, a review, a curated wishlist, a badge or a screenshot can all say something about who...
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Store listings have a habit of spoiling announcements, and this week’s example concerns a licensed game from the mid-2000s. A remaster of 2004’s Shrek 2: The Game is reportedly in the works, based on an Xbox.com entry that appears to have been published before anyone was ready to talk about it. That page has since been taken down, which is the usual sequence of events. A listing goes live, players notice it, details travel around the internet, and then it quietly disappears while the publisher works out how and when to make the news official. None of that confirms a date, a price or a full reveal, but it is a strong hint that something exists and is far enough along to have store assets prepared. What the listing reportedly indicated was modest but clear: improved textures, an upgraded user interface and 4K resolution. Higher resolution artwork means surfaces and characters hold up better...
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There is a long-running joke among PC enthusiasts that any device with a screen and a processor will eventually run Doom. Every so often, someone proves the joke right. This week the device in question is a coffee machine. The Fellow Espresso Series 1, an appliance built for brewing rather than gaming, can apparently operate 1993’s Doom on its small, round display. A Reddit user going by FullExtraction demonstrated the vintage first-person shooter running on the machine, and the control scheme is where the novelty really lands. The brew button starts the game, the steam button fires, and the scroll wheel moves Doomguy left and right. It is a silly thing, and it is also a neat piece of improvisation. Doom has been ported to an extraordinary range of hardware over the decades, from calculators to office equipment, largely because its engine is well understood and its requirements are tiny by modern standards. That...
Read MoreWorld of Warcraft: Forever is opening its beta to everyone next week, but only for a limited stretch of time. The free window is aimed at players who want to see the updated edition of Blizzard’s long-running MMORPG without paying the $60 that beta access has commanded until now. Paid beta access has become a familiar arrangement in the MMO space. Charging for early entry filters the audience, funds development and gives a studio a committed group of testers who are invested enough to report problems rather than simply look around. The trade-off is that a large portion of the curious audience stays outside the door until launch, which is exactly the group a free period is designed to reach. For anyone on the fence, the appeal is obvious. It is a chance to see how the new version plays, how it looks and whether it recaptures whatever pulled you into the game in...
Read MoreGrand Theft Auto 6 is due on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and the expectation around it has been building for years. Arguably no other game in development carries the same weight of anticipation, which makes the commercial side of its launch almost as interesting as the game itself. Predicting that it will make an extraordinary amount of money is close to the safest bet in the industry. The reasons are not complicated. A mainline entry in this series arrives rarely, it lands on two enormous install bases, and each previous entry has raised the bar for what a blockbuster release can earn. When supply is that limited and demand is that broad, the maths takes care of itself. What records might actually fall? Launch-day revenue is the obvious one, since the combination of digital sales and pre-orders can produce figures that rival major film openings. Fastest-selling entertainment product is another...
Read MoreA recent hands-on demo of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has left us with more questions than answers, which is an unusual place for a preview to end up. The third chapter of the remake trilogy is being positioned as a conclusion, and conclusions carry a different kind of pressure from middle chapters. Part of that pressure is structural. The trilogy has spent two games establishing a version of a familiar story that deliberately deviates from the original, and the final entry has to resolve threads it created while also landing the moments people have been waiting years to see. A demo can show tone, pacing and combat, but it cannot show whether those two obligations fit together. Openings are revealing in their own way. The first hour of a game sets the rules: how quickly it hands you control, how much it explains, whether it trusts you to remember what came before, and how...
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