What's Up With Video Games? (May 2022)

Hey patrons,

Hopefully you’ve seen our latest video that went live earlier this week. It’s about VRChat and involves a lanky wine bottle interviewing a variety of different anime girls about our collective virtual future. I think it’s pretty great! I wanted to use this newsletter to remind you that as a PMG patron, you’ll also have access to an extra, exclusive video in which Quinns introduces me to this brave new world. We do link to that in the original post, but an extra mention here can’t hurt.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest stories from the last month or so, shall we?

Special mention: A Funomena follow-up

[Read in 16 mins] The Hopeful Beginning and Abrupt Shuttering of Funomena

As some of you may already be aware, following our investigation back in March, Funomena has now laid off almost its entire staff after an investment fell through, leaving the studio without the necessary funding to continue, according to its founders.

This was an absolutely heart-breaking moment for a team who’d already sacrificed much for the studio, whether through periods of intense crunch, or as we investigated, through what several former employees have described as abusive working relationships with Funomena’s co-founder, Robin Hunicke.

A couple of weeks ago, Fanbyte’s Imran Khan also spoke to a number of former employees from the studio to piece together what exactly happened when our video was published, but also to try and understand how all of this came to be in the first place.

As bizarre as it feels to see PMG be a part of the story here, I thought this article did a fantastic job at fleshing out some of Funomena’s issues over the years and filling in some of the gaps in the timeline that we’d first established in our own reporting.

Here’s a quote I absolutely hated reading:

“At the March 23 meeting, Hunicke was blunt: all contractors were being let go immediately and did not qualify for unemployment. Funomena had just over a week before its doors would close for good, barring a funding miracle. Without skipping a beat, she argued that the People Make Games video caused investors to pull out and, without the expected financial gains, Funomena couldn’t afford to stay in business. According to several sources, she not only blamed People Make Games, but also implied that it was the fault of those who spoke with Bratt in the first place.”

Now I can’t claim to be unbiased on this matter, obviously, but I’d argue that it’s somewhat telling that the subject of an investigation into abusive management would ascribe the blame to those who spoke out, rather than thinking a little more internally about why they chose to share their stories in the first place.

If you work in the games industry and might be in a position to help some of Funomena’s former staff find new employment, please do take a look at this Twitter thread.

Twitch Chat

Back when I worked at Eurogamer, one of the video game beats we had the hardest time covering was probably live streaming. Twitch, and to an increasingly larger extent, YouTube Gaming, are deeply complicated worlds to unpack and these last few weeks do a decent job of showing you why. From VTubers, to fair compensation, to the incredibly tragic Buffalo shooting, these platforms are intertwined with so many different topics it can be difficult to keep up. I’m surprised more editorial teams don’t have a dedicated Twitch desk, to be honest.

(I should add that Eurogamer has more recently hired a fantastic reporter called Ed Nightingale who lives and breathes this stuff, much to the relief of the rest of the team, I imagine)

[Read in 9 mins] How a pink-haired anime girl became one of Twitch’s biggest stars

This one feels especially relevant to our latest video and the discussion around VRChat’s preference for anime girl avatars. In fact, earlier conversations about our reporting had us talking about working in a section on VTubers as well. In hindsight, that was probably some ambitious thinking! Anyway, this is a great piece from Nathan Grayson on one of Twitch’s most popular channels right now.

[Read in 3 mins] Amazon’s Twitch Seeks to Revamp Creator Pay With Focus on Profit

“Some changes to Twitch’s monetization structure could be implemented as soon as this summer... Twitch staff is considering paring back the revenue cut of channel subscriptions granted to the top echelon of streamers in its so-called partnerships program to 50%, from 70%.”

[Read in 4 mins] Mass Shooting Apparently Planned On Discord, Streamed On Twitch, Investigated As Hate Crime

This one makes for extremely difficult reading, so please skip this article if you feel you need to.

Last Saturday, ten people were murdered in Buffalo, New York by a white supremacist armed with military grade tactical gear and a rifle. He attempted to livestream the whole thing on Twitch via a camera on his helmet, having potentially shared details about the attack on Discord beforehand.

Whereas Twitch claims to have pulled the stream within two minutes of the shooting having started, there are some unanswered questions about how this man was able to go undetected for so long on Discord, in particular. The New York attorney general has just announced an investigation into the role of these platforms in what happened.

[Read in 6 mins] On Twitch, entertainment meets trauma as streamers cover Depp v. Heard trial

“The trial has played out in the public eye thanks to a freely available YouTube stream of the proceedings as well as ample press coverage…. In recent weeks, Twitch has followed a similar path, with the trial ushering in a new “meta” — the Twitch term for a trendy viewership goldmine — that sees stars and small fries alike broadcasting Depp and Heard’s ugly legal throwdown for hours each day.”

Other bits and pieces

[Watch in 27 mins] How Call of Duty turned war into a circus

Polygon’s Patrick Gill charts the bizarre history of Call of Duty and how, in his words: “It's part of a military apparatus selling war to the public. And it's fun.” Thought provoking stuff for anybody who grew up playing this series without really questioning the message being sold to us along the way.

[Read in 12 mins] The Nintendo of America Contractors Who Feel Like Second Class Workers

Nintendo of America has been accused of union busting after firing a contractor who’d previously raised the topic of unionisation during a company meeting. Following this complaint being made public, Kotaku interviewed multiple current and former contractors at the company who claim to be underpaid and treated unfairly when compared to the company’s full time employees.

[Read in 10 mins] Ukrainian Game Developers Persevere

“Russia’s attack occurred as Ukrainians in the games industry were in the midst of extremely normal activities: testing new builds, plotting out levels, planning events, making budgets, hashing out publishing deals, spending time with their families, and living their lives. Now, they’re trying to get back to those same activities, but with a new motivation: a hope that by keeping the Ukrainian games industry alive, they can bring funding, awareness, and support to the country they call home.”

[Watch in 64 mins] This is "Ravenholm" - The Cancelled Half-Life Game from Arkane Studios

Noclip’s Danny O’Dwyer reveals almost a full hour’s worth of gameplay from Arkane’s unreleased Half-Life game. This must have been burning a hole in their hard drives up until now. What a thing to be able to publish!

[Read in 10 mins] Video Games Are Lagging Behind In South Asian Representation

“Patel shared an experience where he noticed early concept art having a hijabi character get cut out through the development process on a previous AAA project. “Later down the road I would see [the character] get cut quietly, no one would say it was cut--you just see it not appearing anymore. Then you would ask around, and someone would say something like, 'Oh there are technical reasons,' or something like that, and it's not true because you'll see an earlier prototype where it was actually working.””

[Read in 4 mins] One Dev’s Xbox Struggles May Show How Game Pass Is Already Changing Games

An interesting perspective here from a developer who claims that indie games are struggling to find visibility and success on Xbox, unless they’re included as part of Game Pass. You're either in or you're out, it seems.

[Read in 4 mins] Sony PlayStation Staff Fume Over CEO’s Abortion Comments

“Some staff at Sony Group Corp. are seething following an email Thursday from the head of PlayStation that urged employees to “respect differences of opinion” on abortion rights before entering into five detailed paragraphs about his two cats’ first birthday.”

[Read in 2 mins] Bungie says "there will never be a 'muzzle' big enough to stop us from standing up for what's right"

The ripples of Jim Ryan’s comments on Roe v. Wade have spread to some of Sony’s biggest studios too, with Insomniac Games pledging to donate $50,000 to the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project and Bungie CEO Pete Parsons supporting his staff’s statement that Sony won’t be able to ‘muzzle’ his studio when it comes to supporting women’s rights.

What have we been playing?

Chris - Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters (PC)

I certainly won the award this month for playing the game with the longest, most overdone name possible. Seriously, try saying that out loud. It’s very silly.

With that out of the way, oh my gosh, I’m having a lot of fun with it. Whereas XCOM begins with you taking charge of a squad of rookies who'll eventually feel like super soldiers by the end of your campaign, Daemonhunters’ space marines feel like that from pretty much the get go.

Although you’ll want to avoid taking too much damage during a mission, as the injury timers in this game can be brutal, it’s actually very difficult to see any of your squad properly die. Even if they run out of hitpoints, this typically knocks the soldier out of action for just a few turns in the mission itself (they’ll have to deal with their injuries later down the line, but that’s a future problem), before they come roaring back to their feet, ready to smite whatever minion of chaos happens to be closest to hand.

Add power armour to the mix and the fact that your soldiers refuse to open doors, but instead kick them into oblivion, and you’re left with a very different sort of turn-based tactical game. Gears Tactics got close to this feeling back in 2020, but I much prefer Daemonhunters from what I’ve played so far.

Quinns - Norco (PC)

I started playing Norco this week, after hearing everyone announce some variation on "Wow, Norco is a bit magical." And guess what? Norco is, in fact, a bit magical. Honestly, it's the most moving and moody game I've played since Disco Elysium.

Set in the real-life town of Norco, Louisiana, Norco (the game) is at heart a contradiction — it's both a heartbroken, true-to-life depiction of the town of Norco and its real-life struggles with a local oil refinery, and then the game is *also* a piece of day-after-tomorrow science fiction full of androids and conspiracies. So it's both real and... unreal. And yet in play, both halves of the game just end up making the other half more refreshing and intriguing. It gets my absolute highest recommendation.