Call of Duty Is Really Betting On The Nostalgia This Year ▍

This ad tries, and mostly succeeds, to get that same feel as the original from back in the day. Everyone still plays COD and when you enter “The Lobby” you never know who you’re matching up against and given the way matchmaking works these days it does feel like a big nightclub. Like the original it also doesn’t take itself seriously and even makes fun of the absurdity of the things you end up with in game as a result of the serious operators and weapons mixed with the bright and ridiculous bundles in the store.

To me, the original “there’s a soldier in all of us” ad was one of Call of Duty’s best over the years and was the moment it was the moment COD was cemented as not just a gaming phenomenon but a cultural one. Everyone plays COD and this ad put that on display. I guarantee that if you don’t play COD you know someone that either does or has in the past.

But man, with Modern Warfare 3 (2023) launching this year with no new original maps (just remakes of classic Modern Warfare 2 (2009) ones), map voting, teasing the whole Makarov thing, and now with rumors that more “fan favorites” will return over the first two to three content seasons, they must be hoping that nostalgia is strong enough to carry this year. People are going to figure out very quickly, if they haven’t already, that this is little more than a full priced expansion pack for Modern Warfare 2 (2022) with changes to address complaints about movement and ttk from streamers and creators that don’t want to look bad when they get out played.

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The Scariest Or Most Interesting Thing About The Microsoft FTC Leak Isn’t The AMD And ARM Stuff Or That It Thought About Buying Nintendo. It Thought About Buying Valve. ▍

Tom’s analysis on the Game Pass situation is pretty interesting and honestly probably the best breakdown of numbers that nobody seems to be talking about. Game Pass is in trouble and Microsoft knows it. It’s one the two saving graces of the Xbox Series consoles with the other being backwards compatibility all the way back the Xbox 360, if not even the original Xbox. Unfortunately for Microsoft the numbers are clear: people prefer to own their games (well, as best you can own them digitally anyway).

In the talk around the Game Pass numbers Microsoft knows they have to bump subscriptions and hard. Tom gets right up to the heart of the issue but I feel like he doesn’t quite see the bigger picture. How would Microsoft goose the numbers on Game Pass? Nintendo is the shiny distraction here while Valve is the real cash cow. But what does Valve own that could interest Microsoft to the point they would want to own them? The answer is simple: Steam1. Here’s the thing: almost every PC gamer I know buys their games almost exclusively from Steam unless for some reason it just isn’t available there.

Tom asks what Phil Spencer is smoking. I know exactly what Phil Spencer is smoking. Yes, buying studios and publishers allows Microsoft to retain big titles for some kind of exclusivity. That’s expected and unfortunately in the FTC’s eyes, a problem for down the road. That will only get them so far though. Take the studios out of the equation for a moment and tell me: what happens if Microsoft simply controls all the storefronts? You don’t think they’re going to try to goose those Game Pass numbers? Take away the crazy deals Steam is known for and and swap it out for Game Pass. This is one of the scenerios I see, forcing themselves even more on PC gamers that already want nothing to do with them. That’s worse than them buying all the publishers or studios. At least when they own the studio or publisher, they either put it in the Microsoft Store exclusively (where almost no one will buy it) or on Steam (where people will buy it). The options suck but at least this way theres a choice.

What I feel like Microsoft’s end goal could be here is to replicate the Apple/Google app store experience across all of gaming. That works for phones, tablets, and even game consoles but it’s a tough sell on an open platform like the PC.

And we aren’t even getting into the Steam Deck. You know, the sorta kinda hand held PC that runs Windows games on Linux thanks to the Proton compatibility layer that I’m sure Microsoft would love to get their hands on and kill.

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  1. For anyone who may not know, Steam is the biggest PC gaming storefront. There are others, EA has Origin and Activision Blizzard has Battle.net, but Steam is by far the oldest and the largest. They’re also known for their incredible deals. Their seasonal and random mid week sales often have such deep discounts that I’m surprised no publisher has publicly complained all these years. Literally no one I know that games on PC unironically buys games from the Microsoft Store in Windows.  ↩

> John Romero To Receive Lifetime Achievement Award At GDC. Mabel Addis to Receive The Pioneer Award

Game Developers Conference:

“This year, the Game Developers Choice Awards will recognize two of the most impactful game development talents in history, Mabel Addis and John Romero.” said Stephenie Hawkins, Director of Event Production for Media & Entertainment at Informa Tech. “The Game Developers Choice Awards are proud to honor two artists with wildly divergent career trajectories, who worked decades apart but shared a creative passion and ingenuity that would help define entire game genres for decades.”

Mabel Addis is recognized as the first female game designer, but that title alone does not convey the breadth of her pioneering work. As the lead designer of 1964’s The Sumerian Game, she helped pave the way for game elements that wouldn’t become mainstream for decades. Among the innovations she helped conceive were game updates, in-game narrative experiences, and early iterations of what would become known as cutscenes—which, in 1964, took the form of photo slideshows accompanied by synchronized audio. The Sumerian Game itself predates modern display technology and instead used a computer printer to express dialogue and prompts, which took the form of an in-game narrator/character who conveyed game information and asked questions of the player.

I didn’t even know who she was until I read this. Amazing to think that everything we consider fundamental for today’s games came from her and way before they were even possible.

Makes Romero’s accomplishments seem somewhat small by comparison, even though he helped define an entire genre.

John Romero will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his work developing more than 100 published games, which include such genre-defining classics as Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM and Quake. As an early indie game developer, Romero’s first game development experience started in 1979 on a computer mainframe before moving to the Apple II in 1982, working as a completely self-taught programmer, designer and artist. He is considered to be among the world’s top game designers, with previous works that have won over 100 industry awards, and a range of development experience in the PC, console, mobile and mod space. Romero is an advocate and supports diversity in the game industry, particularly among Indigenous and Latine youth. He has co-founded 10 game companies, including id Software and Romero Games, which celebrated its seventh anniversary in 2022.

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> Id Software Turns 32

These guys made me the gamer I am today. These guys are also why I’m a software engineer.

When I first got my hand on Wolfenstein 3D at a friend’s house back in high school I was intrigued. It seems like a different kind of game and I wanted to give it a go. But it strangely didn’t hook me right away. It wasn’t until Doom that I was absolutely hooked. But back then Pcs were not cheap. Graphics cards didn’t exist. Windows wasn’t even a thing yet. It was around but it was in its 3.0/3.1 phase where you still booted to DOS first.

Computers, as gaming devices, were still kind of primitive. These guys cracked the code, opened up a whole new genre, and pushed what was possible at the time to its limit. We have graphics cards because these guys pushed hardware to to its limit.

Whenever someone asks me about tech idols I usually give two people: Steve Jobs and John Carmack. Steve often gets an eye roll because, well, he’s Steve. Carmack always gets a “Who?”, to which I remsond: You’ve at least heard of a game called Doom, right? At that point any nerd who knows just kind of gets it.

Absolute fucking legends. All of them.

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> A Dumpster Fire Of A Processor

Picking up right where we left off…

So basically you get about an extra 2% for the same power consumption as the regular Core i9 1300K. Sure the DDR 5 memory helps but right now it’s really, really expensive. $269 expensive and that’s with a $180 discount as of this writing. And it doesn’t even help that much.

No wonder Intel didn’t sample this to reviewers. I’d be embarrassed by this too.

This is their answer to AMD’s V-Cache? Oh boy…

ThisIsFine.jpg

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> Intel Suspiciously Throwing 350 Watt Extreme Performance Mode At Raptor Lake

I never thought of Intel as a company that would panic. Or even be reactionary. Intel is usually the company everyone wants to be. They’re the powerhouse of chips. But this latest rumor of an “extreme performance” mode seems less like something Intel would do and more like something AMD would do to grab attention. Up until the last few years anyway.

Intel’s Raptor Lake flagship, the Core i9-13900K, is going to feature a new “Extreme Performance” mode on high-end Z790 motherboards. The new performance mode would essentially allow the chip to run at an unchained power setting, sipping over 300 Watts of power to deliver its fullest potential.

First off it’s only on high end boards. Most people building PCs aren’t spending that much on a high end configuration. I’d even argue most people can’t. A cursory glance at Newegg shows high end Intel 12th gen boards at around the $650 mark for the Asus Maximus Z690 Hero. That’s more than most people spend on a CPU. Then there was the ASRock Z690 Taichi coming in at much more reasonable $440. I can’t imagine a “high end” board that will have this feature being much cheaper than these.

Consider a boxed Core i9-12900K is going for $590 and a Core i7-12700K for $400. I didn’t bother to check the much more mainstream Core i5. So $840 pre tax if you go with the cheaper ASRock board and an i7. Going one step higher to the i9 will run you $1090 with the same board. I imagine that’s more than half most people’s build budgets and we haven’t even touched on DDR5.

It does make me stop and go “what the fuck” just not in a good way. Sure being the first to 6Ghz isn’t a bad thing. The way they’re doing it is.

As ProHardver explains, the Intel Core i9-13900K CPUs or the Raptor Lake Core i9 “K” series in general, are going to get a new profile known as “Extreme Performance”. This is also known as “Unlimited Power” setting on certain motherboards. What this profile essentially does is unlock Raptor Lake’s power limit and let it reach up to a power-gobbling 350 Watts at stock loads. The higher power results in higher performance but at the cost of the aforementioned power budget and thermals.

This “Extreme Performance” mode will be amongst the several overclocking and tuning options coming to the Raptor Lake “K-series” CPU lineup. An interesting thing that the site states is that high-end Z790 motherboards will be required and only a certain will be qualified to support the feature. It is evident that a 350W power design will require a lot of cooling, not just for the CPU but also for the motherboard VRMs. Also, whether this feature remains exclusive to Z790 boards or also comes to Z690 is something only time will tell. The high-end Z690 boards are capable enough so some vendors may release the BIOS with “Extreme Performance” mode for current-gen boards too.

We have already seen overclocks of over 6 GHz pushing the power consumption to 350W and this profile is going to do the same thing. Overclockers will definitely be setting their boards to run at the “Extreme Performance” mode for best overclocking results while users can stick with the standard power profile and still get decent performance out of the chip. It is mostly a matter of preference here since a 350W power draws on the CPU alone isn’t sustainable for the gamer’s room considering the heat that this beast would output. Even using a high-end cooling solution, one shouldn’t expect temps lower than 70-80C while running at full load.

The “K” series are the flagship series that are unlocked and can be overclocked and it comes with integrated graphics. It makes sense it would appear on this series first.

The problem that I have with this mode is that it literally screams of Intel just wanting to claim “First”. As if this were Slashdot circa 1997. But really this just reeks of insecurity. What does Intel know about the very soon to be launched Zen 4 and new Ryzen series chips that has them so worried that they need to resort to this? Because this really is just another checkbox on a feature list. This “feature” is pure marketing and isn’t really going to be used by many people. I certainly can’t see this factoring heavily into anyone’s buying decision. I just can’t see anyone saying “You know what? I’m going to get that new Intel chip and run it at 6 Ghz. Who cares if I burn my house down.”

I haven’t seen anything in the rumor mill that suggests that this wouldn’t be a close competition between Intel and AMD. Is it because at some point AMD is going to release a second round of Zen 4 series chips with v-cache and it will eat Raptor Lake’s lunch? Or perhaps even launch Zen 4 with v-cache? If these are new chips they should be fairly equally matched right? This shouldn’t be like the 11th gen Intel Core series chips all over again right? And V-cache did make AMD scale back some of their core clock speeds even if games got better performance. That pull back on pure clock cost them in other areas though so, at least for Zen 3, it was s compromise. It wasn’t a pure upgrade. But Zen 3 is now trading blows with Alder Lake.

Something doesn’t seem right here and it looks like Intel saw something that freaked it out. This doesn’t pass the smell test. I’m wondering if Raptor Lake isn’t going to match up well and Intel knows it.

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> Facebook Meta Announces Horizon Worlds And Somehow Manages To Make Xbox Avatars Look Good

Mitchell Clark at The Verge:

Earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg posted a screenshot of his digital avatar standing in front of the Eiffel Tower and what I think is supposed to be la Sagrada Família as a way of announcing that Horizon Worlds was launching in France and Spain. Unfortunately for him, the internet more or less immediately started dragging and meme-ifying the screenshot of the virtual reality platform — likely because the graphics were, as one Twitter user described it, about on par with the Teletubbies game for the PlayStation One.

I’ve always said that if any of these headsets would be successful it would be Facebook’s Meta’s. They were smart to hire John Carmack in 2013 because if anyone knows how to optimize a system for performance its him. The optimizations and things that he and his team at id Software did to get Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake to do what those games did on the limited hardware of the time was nothing short of genius. Buying a Quest, at least in terms of the system itself, means that you’re getting a solid hardware platform. Carmack simply understands hardware and how to use it, or trick it, to get the software to do what he wants. It’s a shame to see all that work put in to make something great only for it to essentially end up with the graphics of a Nintendo Wii. But this seems like typical Facebook Meta these days. Lots of things and no idea what to do with them.

Ultimately, though, graphics are secondary to what you do with them. Even if Meta’s new update to Horizon upgrades the visuals to the level of, say, Fortnite, that won’t matter unless there’s something interesting to see in its virtual worlds. That point is perfectly illustrated by this tweet dunking on Zuckerberg’s original post

Problem is it’s up to developers to make interesting things with it or good games that will get consumers to buy into it. That doesn’t seem to be happening. Carmack’s game dev days are over. There is no “Doom” coming to save this ship. Besides, they already tried that. While the second screenshot looks much better it does nothing to pique my interest. On the upside they finally got Zuck to look like an actual human. Unfortunately good graphics only go so far. Hell I’d even bet that if you had a really good game with mediocre graphics you could still sell some headsets. But don’t try and tell me this is the future when it looks like something my Nvidia Riva 128 from 1997 could run.

The thing about this whole Metaverse nonsense is that it’s being pitched as some Next Big Thing. But for who? When Facebook Meta announced the shift to Meta and all that entails last year it was met with a heavy dose of skepticism and rightfully so. While VR always leaned into gaming it’s a very niche gaming platform. Facbook Meta pitched it as a sort of office replacement. Problem there is it isn’t an apt replacement for an in person encounter. Sure there’s lots of uses for VR and I’m big on allowing a surgeon to practice a surgery before doing it for the first time or whisking a student away to fantastical version of ancient Rome. But again, these are niche uses and VR is great for that.

Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe it’s time to recognize VR for the niche product it’s always been and will most likely always will be.

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> Stray Cat Strut

Sometimes the best stories are told without saying a word. When the story unfolds around you, it opens up a sense of wonder and draws you in and does it in such a way that were the story told to you it simply wouldn’t have the same effect. It makes BlueTwelve’s story of a simple stray cat that much more interesting. Our main character never says a word and yet the story is told through the world around us. Honestly if the story were told through a fantastical talking cat I don’t think this game would have had the same appeal. What makes the game so interesting is its simplicity. Simplicity in both its story telling and its gameplay.

While the story is a wonderfully simple one, let’s talk about the actual gameplay first. Stray’s interface is incredibly clean and and easy to use. A simple prompt for what you can do and when you can do it guides you through most of the world. There is no map, mini or otherwise. But that’s ok. The early game is there to guide you through getting used to the controls. What to do, when to do it, and how to go about doing it. This allowed me to simply focus on the game itself instead of worrying about a complex set of controls. These simple controls let you explore as a cat should. A tutorial in such a simple game in 2022 is a waste of everyone’s time and not having one allows you to be curious 1 as a cat tends to be. And while Stray is short, there is plenty to be curious about. We’ll get back to this in a minute.

The way that BlueTwelve handled the jumping from platform to platform should be stolen by every studio making a platformer type of game 2 . It was nice to not have think about certain things when jumping from one place to another. It seemed like the game just had it’s path programmed and as long as you timed things correctly it generally led you to the appropriate place. There was no second guessing. Maybe it’s a little hand holdy but that’s ok. I’d rather focus on the game itself than being frustrated because I can’t figure out what angle I’m supposed to make this jump at. Sometimes simple really is better.

I played on PC and while my system isn’t exactly top of the line these days it still holds it’s own. Generally we’re talking about an i7700k with 32GB of ram and a 2070 Super. Good. Maybe really good. Not top of the line. I played with a spare PS4 controller I had handy and my experience was really good. Yes, I did experience some of the stuttering talked about in reviews but the shader issue is a distinct PC Problem related to the Unreal Engine. Maybe it’ll get fixed, maybe it won’t. It didn’t disturb my experience at all. Your mileage may vary. That said Stray looked as good as it played. The animation on our cat was as natural looking as one can probably get.

The world was well lit and full of character. The art in the game was beautiful and full of style. The colors of the neon signs that light the early cities are perfect and convey a sense that this was once a city bustling with life. Noodle shops, laundromats, bars. All these things tell us that life once existed here. There are even buildings left half built. To some extent life still exists it’s just not the same kind of life that exists there now. The piles of trash remind you that humans once lived here but not anymore. The fact that the current inhabitants feel the need to do nothing about it reminds us that while the city’s new robot in habitants try their best to mimic and emulate human culture, they sort of have a new culture of their own. The robot inhabitants of the game can be interesting to interact with. Even with their own versions of “dialogue” they all convey distinct personalities. Both in the way they act and even in the way dress. They are very much individuals even if they all generally look the same. Perhaps that’s a philosophical statement waiting for an analysis.

Our story begins with a day in the life of a cat wandering with his 3 friends. As you start to explore you’re introduced to the control scheme which is incredibly simple and straight forward. It also reinforces the idea that you are a cat and you are expected to do cat things such as drink, play, and scratch things. Sudden tragedy hits and you’re separated from them. As you start to explore your new surroundings it seems you’re in an abandoned city. Id say the story itself has no dialogue but the robots in the city do speak in their own way. I loved that this was how the story was told and that the developers didn’t, uh, stray, from that. Again the story was pretty, again, simple and uncomplicated. Though the idea that you keep unraveling the mystery little by little through interactions and collectables called ‘memories” makes the game feel like a giant puzzle in and of itself. That’s not a bad thing and it allows BlueTwelve the creative freedom to tell a story their way. I missed one memory and a few other things and the game is interesting enough that I wouldn’t mind playing through again to find them, just see that part of the story I missed.

I really do wish there was more to say but Stray is so beautifully simple and straightforward. In this case you really do get what you pay for. I was going to say “Nothing more, nothing less” but I think you get a lot more than you pay for. Especially since it’s only $30 instead of the normal $60. $70 if you’re playing on PS5 and paying the Sony Tax.

As reviews generally stated it is a short game if you don’t go collectable hunting but that’s ok. Sometimes less is more and keeping things short and focused is better than stretching things out and unnecessarily complicating things. I’ve seen it happen too many times. Something, be it a book, TV show, whatever, starts out with a really good and novel idea that seemingly has a plan to it. In the need to keep the story going for whatever reason the writers invent things along the way and then get stuck in the precarious situation of having to make it all fit into an ending that wasn’t planned for. It rarely works out. Stray doesn’t suffer from that. It’s short but it tells its story. Period. A story of kindness, forgiveness, friendship, among other things. But it also tells a story about bravery. Not just in the game itself but in the fact that it even exists. Making Stray was a brave decision for BlueTwelve. It’s different and it makes no qualms about that. BlueTwelve took chances and tried something new. That’s a good thing. In an industry that constantly feels the need to produce the next Halo or Call of Duty, or whatever top tier franchise comes to mind for you, Stray is not those things. Or at least it doesn’t intend to be. True to its name, Stray takes its own path and its own direction.

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  1. There’s even an achievement / trophy for it: Curiosity Killed the Cat ↩
  2. Respawn I’m looking at you. The platform mechanics in Jedi Fallen order, especially on Kashyyk, were awful. ↩
  3. Or her. We don’t really know as we’re never told and it doesn’t matter at all. It’s completely irrelevant to the story. But since I had boys I’m going with the masculine. ↩

> Warzone 2 Looks Like It’s Slowly Turning Into Blackout 2

Luca Di Marzo writing for Charlie Intel:

Industry insider Tom Henderson claims that Warzone 2 could introduce players to a bag system for looting purposes much like Escape from Tarkov. The same report also suggests that the sequel will come with a new way to store armor. On May 20, Tom Henderson published a Warzone 2 report which revealed various details that could be coming to the battle royale. While players are already excited by leaks of classic MW2 maps being involved in Warzone 2, they also got word of the potential inclusion of Pro Perks. Henderson’s report highlighted several exciting new features that are rumored to make their way to Warzone 2. Among these new features is a bag system for looting as well as armor vests that are similar to what players had in Black Ops 4’s Blackout. It seems the devs have decided to combine the current armor system in Warzone with the previous armor system in Blackout. In Blackout, players were tasked with searching for one of three levels of body armor that would increase their overall health.

According to Henderson, “players will need to find a tiered armor vest in order to equip armor plates,” in Warzone 2. If leaks are true, players can expect both armor plates and a version of body armor, aka armor vests, in Warzone 2. The report claims that there will be three tiers of armor vests, and each tier will hold one more armor plate than the previous tier. Furthermore, “your armor vest does not break, but your armor plates do.” These claims suggest that plating in Warzone 2 will abide by a similar structure to the familiar Warzone system.

I don’t know how I feel about this. As someone who doesn’t play alot of Warzone I feel like this adds complexity to something that was already working and working well. The armor system in Warzone is simple and a level playing field. Part of the reason I hated Blackout was it was too complicated and thus I couldn’t get into it. While I certianly wouldn’t say that Warzone would be as big as it is without the Call of Duty branding, part of what I think has made it such a huge success is its simplicity. I feel like there’s a bit of nostalgia for Blackout here, possibly because it was the first and Treyarch has it’s own fanbase, but first doesn’t always mean best. As I said, Blackout was complicated. Warzone is not. I know whenever I come up on an opponent in Warzone that there is a certain expectation depending on the weapon I’m using. Complicating the armor system complicates that and takes away from how good the gunfights feel. It will make them feel less solid and predictable and more random which will just frustrate players.

I know this type of system exists in other Battle Royals but there is a reason Warzone is consistently at the top of the heap even with all its issues.

A lot of people also like to think that the reason Blackout failed was because it was behind the paywall of Black Ops 4 but I’d argue that if Blackout was as good as people want to believe it would’ve helped sell more copies of BO4 and thus Activision would’ve found a way to keep it around.

Another interesting aspect of the report was the suggestion that Warzone 2 could adopt a bag system, with similar functionality to that of Escape from Tarkov’s. Henderson stresses that the bag system is in early development and far from finished as a new feature.

RIP Console players. There’s no way they’re going to be able to manage this efficiently if this is true. There just aren’t enough buttons.

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> Apple Discontinues The iPod Touch Officially Ending The iPod

“Music has always been part of our core at Apple, and bringing it to hundreds of millions of users in the way iPod did impacted more than just the music industry — it also redefined how music is discovered, listened to, and shared,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Today, the spirit of iPod lives on. We’ve integrated an incredible music experience across all of our products, from the iPhone to the Apple Watch to HomePod mini, and across Mac, iPad, and Apple TV. And Apple Music delivers industry-leading sound quality with support for spatial audio — there’s no better way to enjoy, discover, and experience music.”

Apple ending the iPod Touch is truly the end of an era. They may have ended the iPod Classic and all of the other iPods ages ago but this was the last survivor. It was always looked at as the iPhone without the phone but it was also a glimpse into what Apple could and would do in the long run.

The king is dead. Long live the king.

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