Sometimes I miss the era of worthy easter eggs!

If you ever guessed what's going on with the game industry recently, the anime production is a great way to explain how a money-making machine can be completely in debt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEIPa9b3OU
#Business

Kenney updated his all-in-one asset pack on itch.io. He was giving it away for free so you may have the access already. And a lot of stuff is available for free separately.

#GameAssets #GameArt

Microsoft will terminate over 1900 contracts in its gaming division. The majority of them will be in Activision Blizzard, recently acquired for $69B.

There are several top-tier workers among people who will leave the company including Mike Ybarra, the president of Blizzard Ent.

It means that on January alone there were about 6000 jobs lost across the game industry, compared to 15-20K during the last year.

#Business #Finance #Microsoft #Xbox

Traversal in open-world games is very often a pain. Boredom is hidden behind "random events" and rule of 40 seconds but in general moving around is just not fun and more like a side effect.

There are exceptions: Dying Light 1 and 2 with parkour, High on Life with platforming, Death Stranding with its funky physical steps and cargo caring, etc.

Dragon's Dogma looks like there will be environmental puzzles to solve but I don't expect any interesting platforming or parkour. Sadly, they will also use random events, note that and feel free to tell me if I was wrong.

#GameDesign #OpenWorld

Game reviews #meme

Another Music Sunday #OffTopic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0XCoYrcTGo

Fully #procedural leather materials in #Blender 4 using Voronoi texture by Joakim Tornhill.

💡 Higher quality version is available in the chat!

#GameArt #Shaders #Nodes

Unfortunately, we have yet another unpleasant news: the upcoming Deus Ex game has been cancelled and 97 staff members have been laid off from Eidos Montreal.

Previously, Embracer Group acquired the studio from Square Enix and promised to make things right. They restarted the development of Deus Ex and now it's gone again.

#Business

Also a great moment to appreciate Andre (head of marketing) and Johnathan (Art Director and the face of Adam Jensen). We used to meet in Moscow in 2010 during the Deus Ex Human Revolution showcase. I was working with the publishing and had long hair.

Both of them left Eidos after Mankind Divided and haven't returned for the preproduction of the new game.

When you find a note on a computer in a sci-fi horror game #meme

Enshrouded #Survival #RPG, that looks like Valheim + Zelda, sold over 1 million copies in a few days, despite how many survival fans are busy with Palworld:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSSIH5L2liI

After Embracer shut down Volition (Saints Row, Red Faction), studio veterans founded a new company and already co-developing a project for Xbox Games Studio. They are also hiring and their main focus is Unreal Engine 5 games for PC and consoles.

#Business #Xbox

Death Stranding is now available on recent iOS devices. The game was fairly playable on handhelds, it may be a nice experience on mobile platforms too.

The native macOS version is also available on App Store. Saves are synced via iCloud between all platforms.

⭐ Do you have a recent iPhone? Would you buy DS to play it on the go?