Gaming's Netflixification draws near
Plus Bungie, Magic the Gathering and game anniversaries.
Hello there! It’s been another relatively slow week for game releases, but decidedly the exact opposite in most other measures, so I hope you’ll excuse the late newsletter. This week we’re talking about game streaming, getting hyped about new Magic cards, and turning to dust at the realisation that there are now interesting video games to talk about from 50 years ago.
But before we get into it I did also want to quickly touch on the disturbing news this week surrounding PlayStation and Bungie. The global economy is in a state right now and everything is being squeezed, but I feel like Bungie being gutted and talent being extracted to feed PlayStation Studios is the exact kind of thing Sony steadfastly claimed would not happen when it paid billions to acquire the Destiny 2 (and OG Halo) developer. This comes very soon after Microsoft more or less dissolved studios it had acquired via its Zenimax purchase. I remain optimistic that a lot of people at PlayStation and Xbox really do believe acquisitions can empower creators and augment franchises that people are invested in. But this is a reminder that those brands are run by multinational businesses, and they simply can not care about much besides sustained growth.
Game streaming is inevitable
By Tim
When will we be at a place where someone who plays games as their primary hobby might stream them over the internet rather than having a local console or PC? Will we ever get there? And what will we lose along the way? These are questions we’ve been asking ourselves for years but, despite it seeming like this is still quite an unpopular way to play, I think the time is coming rather soon.
I currently subscribe to the 4K Netflix plan, which runs $26 per month. Before streaming was the defacto way to get movies and TV, I don’t think there’s any way I would have spent that much, never mind the fact that I also pay for Disney+, and I probably watch less overall. If you look at how we got here, we can get a good idea of how it could happen for games too.
The ad-supported free TV of yesteryear is like the free-to-play games of today, and getting physical or otherwise local copies of movies and TV shows, which we all used to do, is like having games on your console today. Buying each one is expensive, but they’re yours too keep.
What Netflix did at the start was send people physical movies on rotation for a subscription fee, which is more or less analogous to how Game Pass and other services have worked up until now. You don’t get to keep the games, but you get to play so much more of them for less than the price of a single game per month.
Netflix didn’t go all in on streaming right away; at first it was just an element of the subscription, which is where we are with video games now. What I expect to happen next is for a low-cost streaming-only option to appear, offering a library of new and old games. Many will scoff about streaming quality, but with Netflix the move resulted in people who would never buy a Blu-Ray becoming binge-watchers overnight. The stage after that is exclusive content, bringing over even the hardened physical media lovers.
If you adopted Netflix when it first launched in Australia you’ll know the streaming performance absolutely sucked, but it got better and the revolution happened anyway. I’ve been streaming a lot of Game Pass recently as I tested a new Amazon Fire TV Stick, and the performance has been close to flawless. Currently only available as part of the $23 per month Game Pass Ultimate, I expect uptake to continue slowly. But eventually, whether it’s from Microsoft or someone else, a model will arrive that makes streaming games popular.
What to play
If the Olympics has you keen to play some sports games where you can actually control the outcome, there’s plenty of good and serviceable games available on Xbox Game Pass. Some good options for Olympic sports include EA Sports FC24, NBA 2K24, Descenders, Friday Night Champion, Football Manager 2024, Golf With Your Friends, NHL 24 (it’s not field hockey, but it’s close enough), Skate 3, and to get the full going to a stadium experience, You Suck At Parking.
Currently free on the Epic Games store is LumbearJack, which is what it sounds like, but instead of cutting down trees you’re a bear cutting down every man-made object you see to return the woods to their natural state.
For your weird indie of the week I’ll point out Thank Goodness You’re Here, a brief but hilarious Northern English slapstick adventure obsessed with sexual innuendo. Plus it has Matt Berry.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
I’m back! While I was on a break from Pressing Any Button, I assisted in creating new life (my daughter, Artemis, is 7 weeks old this week), played Fortnite in a sleep deprived state, and caught up on all the Magic the Gathering sets I missed. Remember when Magic the Gathering only released a new set once every three months? Now it feels like there’s a new drop every week.
I had the pleasure of going to a pre-release tournament at Plenty Of Games in Melbourne last week for the latest set, Bloomburrow, and I was both surprised and pleased to see that the breakneck pace of updates has not dampened the community’s enthusiasm for new cardboard. The store was so packed they put out extra tables in the corridor to accomodate extra players.
Bloomburrow is, coincidentally, my favourite Magic the Gathering set in a long, long time. It’s entirely themed around adorable forest creatures. There are giant bears, and bunnies that make more bunnies. One particularly notable card is Tamiyo, Field Researcher, which is a Planeswalker with a -7 ability that gives you an emblem allowing you to cast spells without paying their mana cost. That is ridiculous, and I can’t wait to play with it. There’s a Commander deck themed around a gang of squirrels. It’s all utterly delightful and a pleasure to play.
Other new sets since we last spoke include the Assassin’s Creed crossover, which was a mini set appealing to fans of the game, but not a set that will go down as a classic. The set that goes down as a classic is Modern Horizons 3, which launched in June and featured reprints of classic and powerful cards.
It’s difficult to tell whether this avalanche of sets makes it the best time to be a Magic player, or the least affordable time. Either way, Bloomburrow is great.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
Here are a handful of notable games that celebrated a major anniversary in July.
Now 30: Star Wars TIE Fighter It was cool to participate in the events of A New Hope as a rebel pilot in 1993’s X-Wing, but you know what’s cooler? Being a bad guy behind the controls of the Empire’s much more iconic (if demonstrably more expendable) TIE starfighter, blowing up Luke Skywalker’s friends and maintaining order in the galaxy. Set during and between the second and third films, the game and its expansions is notable not only for its incredible flight combat sim gameplay, but for its original story elements featuring Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Now 35: Mother When the Super Nintendo RPG Earthbound developed a cult following in the West, years after its original release, it came as a surprise to some that it was actually a sequel to 1989’s Japan-only Mother. An odd game that utilises the turn-based battle structure of Dragon Quest to comment on the same and tell a story satirising American culture, Mother was one of the earliest games that online nerds were excited enough about to translate and campaign for a re-release (which eventually happened in 2015, when Nintendo released it in English as Earthbound Beginnings).
Now 50: Gran Trak 10 Fifty years you say? As in a half a century? Yep, that’s where we’re at now. Gran Trak 10 was one of Atari’s major follow-ups to Pong, and though it was a commercial flop it’s still arguably very influential. It’s a top-down driving arcade game you operate with a wheel and pedals, a full 20 years before the Daytona USA of your childhood. It looks rudimentary by today’s standards obviously, with a black-and-white track on what was essentially a regular CRT TV, but the control is smooth and accompanied by some very realistic revving, brake screeching and crashing sound effects.