video game culture

Fornite, PUBG, and the Appeal of Not Being Last

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I will never forget the first time I played Fortnite. Before I’d even landed on the ground, I saw the player tracker already starting to count down from 100. “Wow!” I thought. “This is my first game ever and I’m not gonna finish dead last!” Aimlessly wandering the hills, I kept the player tracker in my peripheral view. Minutes were passing, and I found myself alone as players continued to drop in the dozens. By the time I finally found another player and was disposed of, I finished the game in fourth place, even though I hadn’t killed anyone. In fact, I only fired one bullet by accident in that whole match. Having played a number of matches since then, and in spite of me getting at least a bit more familiar with how it works, I haven’t reached that plateau again.

There are a lot of great things to like about Fortnite. Players really enjoy the balance between shooting and building that the game provides. It has a distinct look that appeals to a wide audience. Epic Games’ support of the title is unmatched, from the implementation of the Battle Pass, to an ever-evolving world that players are invested in. But when I think about that game, I think about the disproportionate amount of skill and effort I’ve put into the game relative to my final placings. It got me to wonder, “How much does not finishing in last place influence the player base’s enjoyment of the game?”

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Story in Games: A Tale of Two Nintendo Fans

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A little while back, I was watching Kris from Double Jump stream Deltarune. At a certain point, our conversation hit a big fork in the road. When it comes to what you enjoy more out of games, are you in it for gameplay or story? Though the true answer for everyone probably lies somewhere in the middle, I slant heavily towards gameplay, and she slants heavily towards story. Thinking back, it makes a lot of sense for why our taste in games is so different.

But then it got me thinking about the common ground we do have: Nintendo. How do we have this company’s work in common when we want very different things out of our games?

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More Than Just Easy Mode

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Historically, difficulty settings have been rudimentary in nature. You either get a choice of X number of settings from easy to hard, or the game simply is what it is. Whether the option of difficulty should be in every game – or no games at all – is a frequently debated topic. Try starting a thread about the Dark Souls series needing an easy mode and watch the internet explode in all directions.

Celeste may not have started it, but it’s the game that got me thinking about difficulty in a more granular sense. Since then, I’ve noticed other games that offer different takes on more nuanced difficulty settings.

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Top 7 Songs from the Tetris Effect Soundtrack

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When I’m not glued to the TV playing Tetris Effect, I’m pumping the game’s soundtrack into my ears every chance I get. Even pulled out of context from the game, I’m enamored with the vibes that the music provides. Until we get the official soundtrack, YouTube user Nazo No Hito has done the world a favour and uploaded the entire soundtrack running in theatre mode. I tried to make a top 5, but I couldn’t in my heart of hearts cut the list any shorter. Here’s my top 7 songs from the Tetris Effect soundtrack!

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When Can We Get the Tetris Effect Soundtrack?

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Tetris Effect works brilliantly as one cohesive experience, but if I were to isolate one aspect of it as standing out, it’s the music. Adding Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s taste for electronic ambiance and international rhythms works wonders for creating the synesthesia that occurs when playing the game. As soon as I finished up my first stream with the game, the first thing I did was to find the soundtrack online. I need this in my ears even when I’m not playing the game. The news I found was…disheartening.

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Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and the Quest to Minimize My Backlog

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November 15, 2004. I was in the midst of my first year in college. Was also working a part-time job as a stock boy at a pharmacy. On that day, I bought Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, the sequel to my favourite Metroid game.

November 15, 2018. Exactly 14 years later, and I still haven’t played the game. I don’t remember why I didn’t play it when I bought it, but it only got harder to fit it into my rotation the further away I got.

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Extra Life 2018 Marathon Highlights

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Capturing some of my favourite highlights from our Extra Life 2018 marathon, including the Punch-Out #tysonchallenge, rookie chefs burning down the kitchen in Overcooked 2, Jackbox Party Pack 5 and its freestyle rap mini game, NBA Street V3 dunk contests with Princess Peach, Jenna playing the best Overwatch of her life, and so much more! Thanks again to everyone involved and we’ll do this again next year!

Confessions of a Gaming Hype Beast

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Tetris Effect was not on my radar. I adore Tetris, to the point where I’ll gladly argue the stance that Tetris is the single greatest video game of all-time. However, it didn’t seem hard for me to build a case against me purchasing this particular version. Even with Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s flair for injecting games with hypnotic visuals and moving electronic music, the idea of paying $40 US/$50 CAD on a single-player-only version of Tetris seemed too hard to stomach. Especially when I’ve hemmed and hawed at picking up the cheaper-and-more-feature-complete Puyo Puyo Tetris on the Switch for over a year now.

Then the reviews happened. As of writing, it sits at an 89 on Metacritic, which is a fantastic score. All of a sudden, the game I’ve dismissed for largely rational reasons has flung to the top of my must-buy list. The only thing that’s changed is that a bunch of other people have said nice things about it.

In the world of urban fashion, the term often used for someone who chases trends is “hype beast”. If I really think about it, I am probably the video game equivalent of that. Sure, I’ll still play games and buy what I want based on my own personal motivations, and my final opinions on games are entirely my own, but the games I choose to buy and play can be heavily influenced by the conversations within the greater gaming zeitgeist. This is my story as a gaming hype beast.

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Extra Life 2018 – All of the Boss Rush Mini Games in One Playlist!

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Keeping up with the tradition of playing a game show at the end of each Boss Rush episode, we played a number of Boss Rush Mini games in between actual video games. Can you identify celebrities based on their gaming exploits? Do you know how popular these gaming-related hashtags really are? Can you tell a video game movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score based on the critics’ consensus? And how controversial are these gaming opinions? Play along and let me know how well you did!

The Making of and Post-Mortem of Our Extra Life 25-Hour Marathon

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For years, I’ve batted around the idea of putting together an Extra Life marathon. It always seemed like a cool way of partaking in an activity I loved while making a positive impact on the world. After sitting on the sidelines for many years, I finally decided to give it a shot while bringing my friends and family with me.

So glad we did it! We raised a lot of money for a wonderful cause and had a great time doing it. My body might still be reeling from the stress and adverse effects from all of the work that went into it, which culminated in a day of virtually no sleep. But it was all worth it in the end.

Right now, I’m itching to write down a bunch of the behind-the-scenes stuff that made the show what it was. Join me as I peel back the curtain a little bit on our Extra Life marathon!

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