Issue 21 January 18th 2020

Microsoft Announces Plans to be "Carbon Negative" by 2030

I love to see huge companies like this lay out roadmaps to reach a point where they can help the planet become a better place. Microsoft's commitment to being "carbon negative" by the year 2030 will definitely effect Xbox, but that's a good thing! Aside from helping the planet, you can be happy that a company you support is standing for something good.

A while back, PlayStation announced that the PS5 will have an upgraded version of the Rest mode that's commonly used on the PS4. This is to help reduce the amount of energy spent while the console resting, which saves consumers money and helps the planet just a little bit. I'm interested to see if Xbox will have any similar function for the Series X. It's one thing to change your own actions to help reduce waste, but it's incredibly impactful when you give your customers the tools to do the same.

Image credit: Microsoft

Outer Wilds Dev Talks Effect Of Subscription Services and Crunch Culture

Outer Wilds was the darling of the 2019 indie game scene, and I can see why. The reveal trailer featured in this article looks incredible and the concept of the game really grabs my attention. It's on my backlog list for sure, but who knows when I'll get to it.

Luckily, this article focuses on the impact of subscription services in gaming and crunch, not the actual gameplay. The co-creative lead, Loan Verneau, gives some incredibly wise insight on the effect of gaming subscription services, like Game Pass, on the industry. He admits that while Game Pass is great for developers like his, he understands that it might not be the best solution in the long-run. Without Game Pass, Outer Wilds ran the risk of low exposure and Mobius Digital, the developer, would be at risk of losing a lot of money. Game Pass dispelled these risks, but the power of this service could rock the industry by introducing another monopoly into the mix. So while it's great that Game Pass is giving these opportunities to developers, it's important to be aware of their sway on the industry. It's promising to see people like Loan see the invisible strings.

Aside from Game Pass and monopolies, Loan also addresses crunch in the industry. (A little disclaimer: I don't want Load Save to turn into a crunch centric publication, but this take on crunch is valuable to the situation. With that said, I'm staying cognizant of how much I talk about crunch, so don't worry!) Loan brags about the seemingly awesome culture of Mobius Digital, especially the fact that serious crunch is not a part of their workflow. He mentions something that's important to keep in mind: as long as you make realistic schedules and don't push employees to make unrealistic deadlines, you can make games faster. He backs this statement up with evidence from the development of Outer Wilds. He says that the first bug list was applauded for being so small, which is a testament to the absence of crunch. It's refreshing to see someone in the industry straight up say "hey, serious crunch doesn't have to exist. All you have to do is be smart with schedules and care more about your employees than making more money." I always hear that crunch is inevitable, but Loan says that's not the case. And I applaud him for taking that stance.

Image credit: Mobius Digital header

Is PlayStation Right to Skip E3?

With PlayStation announcing that they are once again skipping E3, we have to ask the question: is this a good move? Well, since PlayStation is PlayStation, this move won't hurt them too badly. And depending on how they move the rest of the year with press for the PS5, this could be a very smart move. Why pay a ton of money to share an event with the competition when you can use that money to put on an incredible fan experience where you're the main attraction? From a business perspective, it makes more sense to focus on communicating directly to your audience, who is already following every move you make, through individual consumer events, which PlayStation says it will participate in "hundreds" of them. It all depends on what PlayStation does after this. Will they bring the PS5 and new exclusives to hundreds of fan events and generate even more hype for this Holiday? Only time will tell.

This article also discusses the state of E3. With PlayStation opting out this year and probably years to come, E3 is reconsidering their positioning. Up until now, they could attract viewers by saying "hey, we have Xbox and PlayStation announcing their latest stuff. Don't you want to be the first to know?" This brought in millions of viewers to the livestreams and thousands of media members to attend in person. Today, more and more media people are opting to watch from home and viewers are losing the interest to tune it. So what can E3 do to regain the attention they once had? I think they should take a page from Geoff Keighley and The Game Awards book: work with developers to release demos of games being shown off at the event to people watching at home. This will re-engage the people at home and reignite their interest to watch as well as bringing good press to E3 working with devs. There's a hundred other ideas for E3 to respond to PlayStation's decision to leave, but we'll have to wait and see what they decide.

What do you think? Is PlayStation leaving the nail in the coffin for E3? What can they do to reinterest the gaming community? Let me know!

Image credit: E3 Twitter

A Week of Delays

It's been a big week for news. Most of which I never would've guessed. First, Nintendo pulled the trick of announcing the new Fighter reveal for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate only a week after the Pokemon Direct, then a lot of games got delayed. Outside of that news, there's also been a lot of incredible articles about how gaming is helping make the world a better place and an inside look at development companies like Mobius Digital, developer of Outer Wilds, and Pillow Castle, developer of Superliminal. There's a little bit of something for everyone this week!

If you have any feedback on the newsletter, any of the articles linked, or just want to say hey, you can find Load Save on Facebook, Twitter or respond to this email!

Development

There's Been A Lot of Delays

All I have to say is wow. I've never seen this many delay announcements happen in such a short amount of time. But, I'm completely fine with these delays. Whatever these developers need to do to make the game as good as it can be without destroying their personal lives is more than fine with me. I'll continue to stay hype for these titles! Here's a list of the delays with a brief article with more news about it.

Final Fantasy VII Remake delayed from March to April.

Marvel's Avengers delayed from May to September.

Cyberpunk 2077 delayed from April to September.

Iron Man VR delayed from February to May.

While I hope that these delays mean less crunch on the developers, CD Projekt Red has admitted that their team will have to go through some crunch to meet the new deadline. They mention that they're trying to balance out the crunch, noting that some employees who have no experience with crunch are shocked by the harder work while others who come from developers like Rockstar don't think it's crunch at all. It always sucks to see crunch, so I hope that it doesn't negatively affect too many employees of CD Projekt Red.

What's the most disappointing delay for you?

Image credit: Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter

Everything Announced In The Super Smash Bros Direct

The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct packed a lot of news into half an hour! The biggest of which is the next DLC Fighter, Byleth, who will be released on January 28th. This is another character from Fire Emblem, and while some are irritated that Smash has too many FE characters, we should respect Sakurai (game designer for Smash) for everything he has brought to this game. He shocked everyone by bringing Banjo and Kazooie to the game, so we should let him have some fun with bringing a character that he loves to the fight. Along with Byleth, we'll also get some more music and additional stage. To read everything more about Byleth, check out the linked article.

Surprisingly, we're also getting some fun Mii costumes with this DLC! You'll be able to dress your character up as Altair from Assassin's Creed, Cuphead, and more. On top of this, a DLC for Fire Emblem: Three Houses got announced! Overall, this was a great day for Fire Emblem fans!

What's one character you would love to see in Smash?

Image credit: Nintendo

Designing the mind-bending perspective puzzles of Superliminal

Remember Superliminal? It was one of the games at PlayStation's last State of Play and it looks super trippy. It's a Portal style game that focuses on messing with your perception by resizing objects and making paintings look like hallways and vice versa. It's already out on the Epic Games Store so you can play it right now, but I'm going to wait to pick it up on PS4. This interview with the lead developer Albert Shih takes a look at how he and his team built the game and it's crazy puzzles. Reading through this makes me so much more excited to try out this game when it launches on PS4 in April.

Image credit: Pillow Castle Twitter

Deals!

Help Australia By Buying Games

I'm switching up the order of article categories just for this issue because if you only see one link, it should be this one.

The fire in Australia is terrible and I know a lot of people who are looking for ways to help. If you're one of these people, Humble Bundle is offering a Bundle that includes some great games and is worth over $400. Better yet, all of the proceeds are being donated to three charities that are actively working to help Australia and its animals. For $25, you can get some great Australian-made games like Void Bastards and Paperbark as well as some great indie titles like Hollow Knight (my personal favorite), Euro Truck Simulator 2, and Hand of Fate 2. And that's only a few. Don't let the minimum cost of $25 restrict your generosity. You can donate however much you want to help Australia. Currently, the highest donation is $1,337, think you can beat that?

Image credit: Humble Bundle

Community

Help, I Can't Finish RPGs Anymore

This is a feeling that I think most of us can relate to. You start up an RPG that you've been excited to play for so long and you're in love with it from the start. But after a while, something comes up that takes you away from the game. A few weeks go by where you haven't had time to jump back in, and when you do have a chance to jump back in, you've forgotten what you were doing. You forgot the part of the story you were in, or the side mission you were pursuing, and you've definitely forgotten how combat works. After a few minutes of being kicked around by enemies, you turn off the game in frustration. For me, this game is The Witcher 3. I love this game, but I know I'll never beat it. There will always be something that happens that distracts me from the game and I'll fall out of it, just like I have in the past. It's the game that I'll never delete and I'll probably hop back in soon, but I'm sure I'll never get around to beating it.

I think I'm okay with that. This article is searching for help with staying with RPGs and convincing yourself to beat them, but I gave up on that quest (pun intended) long ago. I'm more concerned with enjoying a game rather than holding myself to a standard of beating a game that could take a month or more to finish. When I did that, I lost the joy of gaming. If you find yourself struggling to beat RPGs, don't force yourself. Play the games you want to play in the way you want to play them!

What's that one game that you can't bring yourself finish?

Image credit: Witcher 3

Before You Go

The End Of Break Approaches

Normally I don't talk about personal stuff on here much, but this is the last Load Save issue before college starts back for me. This means that you might not see as detailed discussions about each article like you did this week simply because I'll be much more busy than I was while on break. Don't worry, you'll still get the same quality articles in each newsletter, but I may not have time to write a few paragraphs about each one.

That being said, I can't wait for another week of gaming news and articles to read. I'm surprised that this never gets old. I hope you feel the same way too. As January heads out the door, we're getting closer to the big releases of the Spring, like Animal Crossing 3, DOOM: Eternal, and The Last Of Us 2. Let's keep our fingers crossed for no more delays!

As always, thanks for taking the time to read Load Save. I'll see you next time!