🎮 Firewalk Studio is shut down, EA on doing Apex Legends 2 and Fortnite as a political tool...
🎮 Firewalk Studio is shut down, EA on doing Apex Legends 2 and Fortnite as a political tool...
Firewalk Studio is shutting down after Concord, EA CEO says they are not doing Apex 2.0, Fortnite as a political tool, Ubisoft launched an NFT game and more!
Hello friends,
Today is October 31st 2024 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌
In today’s news:
🎮 Firewalk Studio is shutting down after Concord
🎮 EA CEO says they are not doing Apex 2.0
🎮 Fortnite as a political tool
🎮 Ubisoft launched an NFT game
⚡ Lightning Round!
🫡 True Tribute!
😄 Personal Update
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 Firewalk Studio is shutting down after Concord
We were all wondering if it was going to happen after the disastrous launch of Concord and unfortunately, it is happening. Sony officially announced that it is shutting down Firewalk Studio and Neon Koi, a German studio working on a mobile action game.
As Sony put it, they were evaluating multiple options these past few months, but ultimately arrived at this:
Regarding Firewalk, as announced in early September (An Important Update on Concord), certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline. We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options.
After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio. I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication.
The PvP first person shooter genre is a competitive space that’s continuously evolving, and unfortunately, we did not hit our targets with this title. We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.
It’s very unfortunate that yet another studio is shattered after aiming too high either because of their own ambition or under the directive of their parent company. You all probably know that I wasn’t a great fan of this game and I was very confused that Sony even released it. The fact is that someone made a very critical miscalculation thinking that this is going to be the next best thing in the space of competitive shooters where in my opinion we are already past the oversaturation point. And now a bunch of good people are going to pay the price. It’s a pity how it all turned out and I hope that everyone affected by this decision will swiftly land a new gig 🫡
🎮 EA CEO says they are not doing Apex 2.0
If you were hoping to hear about Apex Legends 2 any time soon, you are out of luck. IGN shared that during a recent earning call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said that there are no plans for it and that the company is going to focus on working on the current game.
He said that EA recognizes a "need for meaningful systematic innovation that fundamentally changes the way the game plays," and said that this is something the teams are actively working on. Somebody asked whether this innovation would include "a whole studs-up rebuild" and here’s what Wilson had to say about it:
Typically, what we have seen in the context of live service-driven games at scale is the 'version two' thing has almost never been as successful as the 'version one' thing. And so actually the objective right now is to ensure that we are continuing to support the global playerbase that we have, and deliver them new, innovative, creative content on a season-by-season basis, as well as build these other things, but build them in a way that players do not have to give up the progress that they've made or the investment that they've put into the existing ecosystem. Anytime we cause a global player community to have to choose between the investments they've made to date and future innovation and creativity, that's never a good place to put our community in.
Our objective will be to continue to innovate in the core experience...and then build additional opportunities for engagement in different modalities of play beyond what the current core mechanic delivers. And we think we can do those two things together, and we don't believe we have to separate the experience in order to do so.
Credit to EA for sticking to your guns. With the current state of games, I don’t think anybody needs or even wants a new Apex. The game seems to be doing alright for itself. Again, I’m not a fan, but I do realize that a lot of people like this game and it’s something I can respect.
🎮 Fortnite as a political tool
Ok, just so that we are clear, I’m very far from American politics and I haven’t been following any election-related news. But I have to talk about this. Apparently, Harris' campaign is launching its own Fortnite map: Freedom Town, USA. It's a custom creative map themed around some of Harris' campaign pledges, including tax breaks for small businesses and a focus on affordable housing.
Honestly, I think it’s going a little bit too far. It’s already becoming absurd that all the media channels are filled with politics, whether it’s X, LinkedIn, TikTok or any other content platform. But you have to draw a line somewhere. My line is video games. I’m not too versed in video game history, but this thing sets a precedent that you can use a game to push your political agenda and I think it’s just wrong. We have enough propaganda machines already, why do you have to go to the one safe place we all have?
How long until every political entity in the world starts their smear campaigns using video games? Or maybe lobby for specific laws using them? Am I the only one who thinks it’s ridiculous?
Of course, Epic Games already put their disclaimer on everything saying that they are not supporting or being sponsored to do anything related to politics, but I just lost a lot of respect for Epic. Personally, I think all the companies that allow UGC should update their ToC today to ban themes that even remotely resemble politics. This is not the place for it.
What do you think?
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🎮 Ubisoft launched an NFT game
So, that was unexpected. Some time ago, Ubisoft promised it would start making its own blockchain games. Now it appears to have done it, having stealth-launched a full-blown web3 game last week called Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles on PC.
I haven’t played it, but the game itself looks good and somehow resembles Darkest Dungeon. It involves collectable figurines of various warriors from the in-game fantasy world of Grimoria, which players assemble into squads of three and then battle in turn-based combat. When you first start the game, you're given some temporary figurines to play with, but you'll eventually need to either purchase actual figurines (these are NFTs) from other players using either in-game gold or cryptocurrency, or craft your own using the "Forge" system which also requires either in-game currency or crypto.
I’m not sure how to react to this news, but good for them! They said they were going to do it and they did it. I know that crypto, NFTs and other stuff are very popular right now, but I kind of missed my window to get into it and now every time I think about doing it, I feel a surge of dread inside. But hey, now you can do both, play video games and collect NFTs.
Neat, right?
⚡ Lightning Round!
1…2…3…Go!
🎮 Oregon Trail is officially getting a movie adaptation
The highly popular game from the 1970s, The Oregon Trail, is being turned into an action-comedy movie by Apple.
Will Speck and Josh Gordon will direct and produce the movie. The duo is responsible for movies like Blades of Glory and Office Christmas Part. Also, Oscar winners The Lucas Bros. and Max Reisman will be responsible for writing the screenplay that follows the journey of a 19th-century pioneer on the Oregon Trail.
🎮 Bungie on the status of Marathon
It’s definitely not a sprint 🥁
In the video, Game Director Joe Ziegler gives quite an update on what’s been worked on since the last update on Marathon. The game is a new extraction shooter 😒
He covers the direction of the game as well as plans for future updates about the game. The update also doesn’t include any look at official gameplay but does come with some concept art for a few of the game’s heroes.
🎮 Sims 4 gained 15 million new players
Another interesting piece from an EA's Q2 earnings. Shockingly, Sims 4 remains quite popular, considering the game was released more than 10 years ago.
Of course, the fact that the game went free-to-play in 2022 helps, but still, I was genuinely surprised by this. I’m wondering how it’s going when it comes to the revenue numbers, but probably not bad at all.
🫡 True Tribute!
Today I wanted to salute
!
If you enjoy books, there’s no place better on Substack to get a regular (and great) selection of books in any genre! There’s a lot of content there and it’s all just top notch. Give it a look!
😄 Personal Update
Well, I’m officially in my last year till I hit the bit 3 0.
I’m probably going to be out most of the weekend with the Dragon Age release today. I finally gave up and preordered the game for myself. What can I say? Peer pressure. Everybody is discussing the news about the game both at work and at home when I’m playing with my friends.
So, this time I’ll be on the frontiers of all the excitement!
Also, I’m almost done with one of the side projects I’ve been working on with one of the Substack Writers, so that’s exciting 🤩
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
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Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.
A: So, what were you doing last weekend?
B: Oh, we tried to watch the Oregon Trail movie.
A: What do you mean 'tried'?
B: We did not reached the finale. We Have Died of Dysentery.
I think I am with you when it comes to the campaign in fortnight. It just feels like a step to far. Not necessarily because of the politics but as the medium becomes more and more excepted by the main streams and higher ups, I worry that it will be infested with ads. Playstation already tried to do this with their home screen right? We will be seeing product placements, ads during loading screens or waiting to find a lobby. I can just feel it. It will hit us like a tidal wave.