I think we have to just establish – verbally, conceptually – that we have entered into a kind of vortex where traditional assumptions about the industry have been annihilated. Megafauna are collapsing under their own weight; they’re loaning their treasured IP to tiny, scampering creatures so that something useful might be done with it at all. They’re slicing and sectioning themselves into charcuterie boards, or tarting themselves up for handsome saviors. The return of the demo, an attempt to thumb the scale in a world where making a good game appears to be a solved problem but people knowing you exist is increasingly impossible, means I’ve bought more games in the last two weeks than I have in the last two years. Escapees from “triple a” have gnawed at its root, drawing from it a dark strength. Or, you know, gotten utterly annihilated. Like I said: Vortex.
To see Overwatch return with the vigor that it has, minus any feline vulgarity, makes me incredibly happy. I don’t even play that game anymore; I just like the idea that – as SteamDB suggests – their old high for concurrency is now the bottom of their current usage. Before the new update for Marvel Rivals, Overwatch was on top – and that’s without showing hole. They can push that button whenever they need to.
I have hopes that Marathon will emerge from its cocoon “revigorated” also, and that they have oriented themselves toward reality, because I haven’t seen some of those colors since the mid-nineties and they have stirred in me strange hungers.
(CW)TB out.