Not every Yakuza game has to pack in 100 hours of cutscenes
The post A Short Yakuza Is A Good Yakuza appeared first on Aftermath.
Not every Yakuza game has to pack in 100 hours of cutscenes
The post A Short Yakuza Is A Good Yakuza appeared first on Aftermath.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google announced Thursday it is discontinuing Stadia, its video game streaming service, in a move that shocked gamers all over the world who had assumed that already happened, sources have confirmed.
“Wait, they just announced that today?” said local gamer Terry Mullin, who was shocked to hear that the service that was introduced in 2019 was still operating. “You’re fucking with me. I had assumed that went the way of Google Glass and that stupid social media site they tried to start. Why did they stick with it for so long? Next thing you’re gonna tell me Amazon Luna still exists.”
Google executives confirmed that after an in-depth discussion, they decided it was best for the doomed project if they pulled the plug 34 months into the failed experiment.
“I kept telling them, ‘You’ll see, you’ll see, one more week,’ and stuff like that,” said Stadia vice president and GM Phil Harrison. “But at the end of the day, in the era of PCs, Switch, Tablets, XBox, Playstation, Smart Phones, Steam Decks, hell even Amazon Luna, I really just thought there was a place in the gaming world for an odd subscription service that absolutely nobody was asking for. Oh well, looks like a smaller bonus for me this year, you know what I mean?”
Stadia will remain online until January 2023, at which point servers will go offline. As of press time, Stadia had debuted a new UI today for some reason. Weird.
The post Google Shuts Down Stadia, Shocking Gamers Who Assumed They’d Already Done That appeared first on Hard Drive.
Clearly someone hasn’t learned about the Curse Of Wordle. A grade-A prick has created a Twitter bot that looks for those tweeting their score for that day’s word puzzle, and replies with a spoiler for the following day’s word. The bot’s goal, apparently, is “to terminate Wordle bragging.”
After researching nearly 50 budgeting apps, having eight people test six of them in their daily lives, speaking with three financial experts, and reading through a half-dozen personal finance books, You Need a Budget (YNAB) is the only budgeting app we’d spend our own money on. Its guided setup helps you create an effective budget, and its user-friendly phone and Web apps help you stick to it better than anything else we tested.
The bad news: it’s going to take a while. The good news: it’s probably going to happen eventually.
NCAA Football 14 entered the world on July 9, 2013.
It turned out to be the last release of EA Sports’ college football franchise. Later that summer, in Ed O’Bannon’s case against the NCAA, a federal judge ruled it was an antitrust violation to have a video game that featured players’ likenesses without paying those players for their use. The NCAA wasn’t about to allow that, fearing player payment by a third party might some day lead a court to force colleges to pay players themselves.
Without schools willing to appear in the game and with the NCAA not letting college athletes take money for appearing, EA had no game to make.
Fans have spent the years since then clamoring for the return of a game that can’t possibly return until a handful of key things happen. Here’s where those dominoes stand.
Progress grade: C
In October 2019, the NCAA said it would permit players to “benefit” from these kind of deals in a way “consistent with the collegiate model.” It wasn’t clear what that meant.
The organization has signaled a little more openness than before to letting college athletes take money for the use of their name, image, or likeness. That is probably because California enacted a law which will require that of schools in the Golden State, while Congress and several other states have bills in the works along the same line.
If the NCAA lifted the ban on players getting paid by third parties, it would theoretically allow players to collect money for appearing in a video game. That would seem to solve the legal problem at the core of the game’s disappearance after NCAA 14.
What’s not required here is for schools themselves to pay players, something they’re still loath to do. Payment would come from EA.
Progress grade: C
It’s easy to take for granted that Madden will ship every year with accurate, regularly updated rosters for every NFL team. That’s possible because EA has a relationship with the NFLPA, and the union has collective bargaining power for every active player. An EA-NFLPA relationship makes it simple for players to get a share of the money.
College athletes don’t have a body like the NFLPA. No organization has collective bargaining rights for football players. Even locally, there are no team unions to make the process easier. Northwestern busted football players’ union drive in the 2010s.
EA, according to both common sense and people in a position to know for sure, is never going to chase down more than 10,000 active FBS players per year to get their consent to appear in the game and be paid for it. It’s also not going to ship a game with the likenesses of unpaid players, because that would break the law.
There’s a solution, though. In October 2019, the NFLPA announced it was pairing with the National College Players Association to explore ways to “advance and market the group licensing rights of college athletes of all sports.” The NCPA, founded in 2001 by UCLA football players, is an advocacy organization for college athletes’ rights.
The NCPA doesn’t have the same power as a union like the NFLPA, in which every NFL player is automatically a member. But the organizations might be able to build a group licensing vehicle players could opt into, in order to make money from sources such as NCAA Football. Many would, and EA could exclude likenesses of players who didn’t sign up.
Another option is to make individual deals with certain players not in that licensing body. In those cases, don’t expect EA to pay a better rate than players in the group get, because the game-maker has an incentive to encourage everyone to be part of the group.
Progress grade: C
Schools did this for years before O’Bannon’s case and a shifting national conversation about athlete rights drove them away.
Typically, schools license out logos, uniforms, and stadiums via a couple of massive licensing agencies that rep lots of schools. A few make their own deals.
Even schools that are part of the big licensing groups pulled out during the O’Bannon suit. A few conferences backed out en masse. The dynamic is such that all 14 SEC schools could appear in a future game, but the SEC itself might not — which would require EA to make up a name for the real yet fictional SEC.
A big handful of schools have grown more comfortable with appearing. Ten of them agreed to be in a partial college mode in Madden 20, which didn’t include any player likenesses. So did the College Football Playoff, which the NCAA doesn’t control. But you’ll notice there are no Big Ten schools in that Madden. That’s not a coincidence.
So, there’s still work ahead. When NCAA last came out, it had every FBS team. Getting all 130 schools onboard would be a lot of work. Bowl games, fight songs, apparel companies (notice those Nike cleats in Madden), and TV networks (like how ESPN often appeared in NCAA games) would require their own agreements. So would any neutral-site stadiums.
Another area EA could explore in a new NCAA is the licensing of real coaches. The studio long ago talked with the American Football Coaches Association about using members’ likenesses, but a deal never came together. If EA were using real players, there might be more of an appetite on both sides to also include real coaches.
It’s theoretically possible to construct a game with fake teams and let users upload logos, jerseys, and stadiums for real ones, but that’s not how EA does business. It’ll only make a game that meets its usual accuracy standards fresh out of the box.
Progress grade: N/A
Even once every piece of paperwork is signed and the studio is forging ahead, EA will have tons of work to do in building a game that meets fans’ demands.
Expanding to include FCS teams is conceivable at some point (previous generations of the game included some), and that would only expand the number of deals needed. But EA is likely to start with FBS, because all of these things will be necessary:
One industry estimate is that EA would need one year to put out a passable but bare-bones version of NCAA. Coming back with a game on par with NCAA 14 would take two or three.
Progress grade: depends on the person
This will involve gaming out who’s going to be the ideal team approximately two years from the time it becomes clear the game is coming back.
The key criteria for the perfect dynasty team are the same as ever:
Personally, I hope to win the 2025 Pac-12 with the Colorado State Rams.
The NCAA’s longtime notion of amateurism has cracked, both in court and in legislative houses. The people in charge of college sports still love nothing more than money, and there are still millions of people eager to pay $60 for a college football video game. The chances they come to their senses and let the rest of this list commence are strong.