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Far Cry: Blood Dragon to
get animated seriesPSVR turns three; still no
Lawnmower Man tie-in0102Headlines
from the virtual front
- Life Is issues
Life Is Strange has never shied away
from covering the personal and political- tackling those harder subjects, yes,
but also making sure to take a stand on
showing what its creators believe is right
and wrong. Would you believe it, the
game’s director at developer DONTNOD,
Michel Koch, does it on purpose.
“I don’t want to spend three years
of my life working on a project without
trying to talk about subjects that are
important to me,” he told GIBiz. “I’m
really happy our publisher allows us to
talk about tough subjects. We could be
afraid of representation or talking about
those heavy subjects and important
themes, because the choices we make
when talking about these subjects can be
divisive. It shouldn’t be, but it is.
“There are a lot of different characters
that I think are not represented enough,
and it’s not just about minorities.
Sometimes it’s about emotions, or state
of mind, or the way they’re thinking.”
03. VCS happy,
VCS sad
Atari’s upcoming new bit of hardware,
the VCS, has welcomed classic game
streaming service Antstream into
the fold, with a special version of the
subscription-based system set to be
available on the console. Should it ever
release, that is. It was originally set to
launch in December 2017, and at the
time of writing that launch is set for
March 2020.
In less fun news, the VCS’s lead
designer, Rob Wyatt, quit the project
earlier in October, claiming Atari
had failed to pay him for six months.
The former architect on the original
Xbox said his company was lucky to
have survived as long as it did without
the cash coming in. The resignation
has brought big doubts into view as to
whether the VCS will actually be able to
release in March 2020 as planned, or if
we’ll see yet another delay.03- Blizzard of
controversy
Taiwanese Hearthstone player Ng Wai
‘Blitzchung’ Chung has been banned
from participating in tournaments for
the game in the next six months, with his
original penalty of a 12-month ban and
being stripped of his winnings dropped.
Apparently, Blizzard doesn’t like it when
competitors playing its games say
“Liberate Hong Kong – revolution of our
time” during post-match interviews.
The two casters interviewing Chung
were fired after the fact, though each
was reinstated and slapped with a six-
month ban later. Hearthstone casters
quit, Blizzard employees staged walkouts
in protest of the perceived censorship,
and everyone’s gone ‘a bit political’ over
it all, with boycotts of the publisher doing
the rounds. Makes a stark change from
the usual ‘keep politics out of our games’
nonsense that gets bleated around.