Hannah Dawson

Incredible how I can go from real hype to "whelp, that kills competent VR dead" in ten minutes, but them's the breaks. Going from lighthouses to SLAM is performance regression, not progress. Not sure the point of the Frame at all if it's ultimately a Quest clone.

As is Shiftall, presumably

Valve is now shipping a headset that has worse audio, worse controller ergonomics and worse tracking than their 2019 headset, whilst killing both the Beyond and both Tundra and HTC trackers, as I'm unaware of anyone other than Valve manufacturing Base Station 2.0s.

i am now, unfortunately, dead.

Aside, I do understand why HL3 would be tied in (because I'd be surprised if the folks at Valve who wanted to make it could get the project pitched internally without being able to bolt it on to the Frame) but it's not the best IP Valve have. Portal would be perfect and has more modern relevance.

I would expect it to be the other way around, you announce the Frame, then next week you announce HL3, the pack-in game for the Frame that supports both immersive and flatscreen modes, and Frame owners get the game before general release.

Not sure if I buy the pitch that the Frame gets announced tomorrow and then Half-Life 3 next week, but HL3 _isn't_ a VR game, or maybe HL3 has a VR SKU with different content or something. If you announce the Frame, and then announce a huge game which doesn't need the Frame...

Spectral Blade
Improved Spectral Blade

The problem with the BBC is that impartiality can mean a requirement to report without fear or favour, a requirement to make all sides heard, and a requirement to be a viewed as a "neutral" (or evenly-disliked) source by all wings, and those are not all achievable without screwing up all the time.

A game notorious for being the product of a single dev laser-focussed on servicing a niche market with the best damn cozy farm lifestyle game they could make is politically rooted in Japanese farmers specializing in matcha and Wagyu beef. Same economic logic.

Fun fact: the Story Of Seasons (nee Harvest Moon) franchise, and ergo Stardew Valley, call back to the Japanese trend toward encouraging local quality produce production in the wake of being outcompeted by the US in farming after globalization in the 80s.

The future of games development is Wagyu beef. Developers need to specialize on quality they can sell for a premium. AAA development has to be left to projects backed by nation-state investment funds/Chinese publishers/etc.

Win on quality and hope there is an audience.

The conclusion from me having an existential crisis about games development is that you either crunch to ship someone else's project or you crunch to ship your own, and if you do the former, that product has to compete with products made in far more competitive countries like China.

At this point, weighing up everything, I am genuinely not sure what the future of western games is, especially on console. Looking at job adverts, I'm not seeing a healthy range of roles being offered at all.

Then again maybe there is just an easier answer: recession, stagflation, etc.

God, looking at LinkedIn jobs atm and it is just a mess. If you told me London's IT industry only did sports betting and casino apps I'd believe you.

Union-busting action at R* is a further black mark on an already-crippled British games industry. And if it can happen at R* it can happen at any studio. Games industry staff should be unionized, and the response to attacks on workers should be the capacity to strike.

There's a lovely series of VERY LONG videos doing a writing project focussed on revising and editing the books by a child therapist and writer going by My Little Thought Tree. Recommended listening on the topic of adaption - flags a lot of the issues/missed opportunities early on, constructively.

As discussed endlessly the problem they've got is that they're adapting a book series that has really quite serious problems without the liberty to cut what doesn't work and without a focus on adapting with the benefit of hindsight.

You'd need a narrator etc even if this was an animated production with adult VAs tbh. Potter is a series for kids with a storybook air to it which ages into YA, so you start with a narrator and then let the rising drama replace the need for Stephen Fry to lavishly describe Christmas at Hogwarts.

A total and utter hero

SAG-AFTRA stands in solidarity with the IWGB Game Workers Union exercising their right to organize following reports of union-busting at Rockstar. Our members’ union performances on Rockstar games are an integral part of the success and legacy of games like Grand Theft Auto. All Rockstar workers deserve the same. We are in this fight together.

SAG-AFTRA stands in solidarity with the IWGB Game Workers Union exercising their right to organize following reports of union-busting at Rockstar. Our members’ union performances on Rockstar games are an integral part of the success and legacy of games like Grand Theft Auto.

Black Panther - a film about black identity packaged in a good superhero movie at the height of Marvel's draw; it was really impactful to me to realize how much the movie's themes meant to the audience around me.

DBZ Broly: Oh my god French anime nerds are LOUD

My two favorite cinema experiences were Black Panther (I think at the Wood Green Cineworld?) and, of all things, Dragon Ball Z Broly at that weird chain cinema just up the road from Forbidden Planet in central London. In both instances, the audience were the best part, for different reasons.

A cinema which I understand why they built, but not its continued operation, other than to avoid paying off the lease early.

If the cinema is deserted: yes, quietly, make sure you don't piss someone off
If the cinema is even 10% full - no, but if you honestly laugh or are in tears, that's OK, feelings are valid
If it's packed: the audience is literally half the fun, try and vibe it out

Peak cinema is when everyone cheers

No, but also do not do what the guy at my viewing of One Battle After Another at the Wood Green Vue did (with 6 people watching it) and blow his lid loudly at the people behind him for talking.

Then again that cinema is nuts on a good day soooo

I responded to what I assume was the skeet asking for advice on this and, reading the article, I'm glad to hear the lady got her phone back 🫡

Unsupported client It seems you are using an old or unsupported browser. To continue enjoying our product, please update to a recent version of one of the following browsers:

Canva (who own the software formerly called PagePlus) have now rolled out a unified app that covers photo, vector and design editing in one. Free, supported by a subscription tool that hawks the usual cloud services.

Massive unlock for local parties, esp. the LDs. www.affinity.studio/download

The difference between a good politician and a great one is that the good politician picks a platform that wins them an election, and the great one wins on the platform they actually believe in.

The real reason I gave up on politics (other than it being a horrendous career for the neurodivergent) is that when I spend an hour getting home on a bus on the A1010 and watching as we linger,
stuck behind a row of empty Audis, I end up considering violent revolution.