Backlog: The Embiggening – March, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/19/17 at 03:41 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Unadilla Bill, Nebraska’s version of the fat woodchuck who predicts the weather, did not see his shadow, thus Wintery weather will be leaving us sooner rather than later. Just in time for a huge glut of March videogame releases! Don’t worry, though. There still aren’t very many reasons to stay inside playing new games rather than doing something less painful.
Shovelware starts us off with “LEGO Worlds,” a new sandbox game based on everyone’s favorite plastic building bricks… and that’s really the most egregious pile to be shoveled. Other shovelware includes an annual release in the ‘MLB: The Show’ baseball franchise and ‘WRC’ rally racing franchise, but purveyors of all things Sport know they have a captive audience that will buy whatever they produce. Aside from those, the only remaining licensed tie-in titles and other garbage all happen to be ports, thanks in large part to Nintendo releasing their new …
Mass-Market Gam(bl)ing
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/12/17 at 04:51 PM CT
As time marches on and videogaming continues its move from niche hobby to mass-media industry, the one guarantee is that old revenue systems will be replaced by new ones, more profitable ones, more questionably-legal ones. Mobile gaming is, as we know, a darling of the folks at Forbes and The Wall Street Journal who don’t care about gaming as a hobby or as a cultural phenomenon, but are primarily interested in the games industry’s ability to generate profits. As faithful MeltedJoystick readers are aware, we don’t place mobile gaming and traditional videogames into the same bucket, partially because of things in mobile gaming that make it feel more like a quasi-criminal attempt at getting fools and their money to part. Hence why MeltedJoystick (and every other videogame site) doesn’t cover video slots, online poker, or any other forms of gambling.
Recently, I stumbled across a short, interesting article from 2012 about how Japanese mobile games make money. While it is true …
Gamers Divided
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/05/17 at 04:21 PM CT
With the election of Donald J. Trump as the current President of the United States, the divided nature of Western civilization has come to something of a head. Protests in the streets, abuse of power, cronyism: All of these things have been symptomatic of a problem for decades, but they are significantly worse right now.
“Why are you talking about political bull feathers in this column?! I come here to read about vidyagaemz!” you might say.
As a microcosm of society in general, and as one of the fastest growing forms of media in terms of visibility, popularity, and social justice pressure, gaming is something like the proverbial canary in the coalmine. Things seemed good in gaming for several decades. After the Videogame Crash of the early ‘80s, when gamers reunified, we were a fairly monolithic block of culture. The same games were generally well-regarded by players and critics alike. There were no overwhelmingly vocal, yet minisculely-niche groups demanding that every …
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