ThreadStephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief is leaving Kotaku
He did a fantastic job helping Kotaku continue to blossom into something new and respectable while retaining the best of its roots. It’s a bummer to see him leave, but I also know it’s his best route forward to personal growth. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he lands at the New York Times where he can help them cover video games the way they should be covered.
ThreadI wish Lego would go harder on Collectible Minifigures.. similar to Funko Pops.
You should check out this interview about LEGO minifigures that just hit this week.
It's a conversation with one of the authors of the official design book for minifigs. She also was in charge of minifig design for years.
ThreadI would like a Lego Island remake or at least a modern rerelease
Hey all you LEGO Island fans, you really should listen to today's episode of Bits N' Bricks. It's all about the creation of LEGO Island. Let me know what you think. (We also talk to the fan-driven project working to recreate LEGO Island for modern gamers)
I got my j-degree from Maryland too. College Park? Did you work at the Diamondback?
Sorry things didn't work out for you. In terms of location, I'd say that there are more jobs on the east coast these days than the west. I rarely worry about west coast reporters when looking for writers. (That was true when I ran Kotaku and when I ran news at Polygon as well.)
That's nice of you to say.
I think timing and good fortunate helped a lot with my career, but I've also always believed that if you have the skills to be a reporter and writer (that magic combo that makes a journalist), you'll always be able to find work. I do agree that working in journalism and aiming to cover video games is the best approach though, especially as more publishers become interested in video games as a beat. Increasingly those sort of folk will be looking for journalism experience more than gaming knowledge.
Journalism is a great profession and covering video games as a journalist can be quite rewarding.
I teach a class on game journalism at NYU, so if you have any specific questions, fire away and I'll do my best to answer them.
ThreadNintendo Direct: E3 2019 |OT| Redacted by Request of Nintendo’s Legal Team
It's for a placeholder on Gamestop for Animal Crossing Switch:
Following in the footsteps of Animal Crossing: New Leaf (2013) and Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer (2015), Nintendo brings you a brand new Animal Crossing game for Nintendo Switch. This colorful simulation community-builder features your favorite characters from previous games in the series, including shop owner and occasional loan shark Tom Nook and adorable little Isbelle. Get ready to explore this brand new world and grab your copy of Animal Crossing.
I'm actually pretty indifferent to unions, which I've said before. I think they can be a powerful force for positive change, but I also don't view them as a panacea. I also have never been critical of employment security or defended wealth inequality. I just don't think that unions can necessarily fix pay disparity between an owner of a company and his or her employees. I've shepherded quite a bit of union coverage and writing on Variety, even well before the massive Acti-Blizz layoffs. We even named the Game Workers Unite as one of the most influential people in the game industry last year.
That aside, thanks for your kind words Locust Star and everyone. It's a bummer. I expect (hope) to land on my feet, but I'm more disappointed that Variety decided to ditch game coverage in the face of the vertical's successes. We were up to 2 million uniques a month, which is actually quite good.
ThreadSkybound Games to Continue Development of The Walking Dead The Final Season | Aims to hire Orig Devs
They're still working out the details of how this might work, also they aren't quite sure what's going to happen with folks who pre-ordered the whole thing. (But I bet they honor it)
ThreadNintendo NA: We are unable to guarantee cloud saves will be retained after canceling
I am astounded that we won't know which games will support cloud saves and which will require this for online play, until the service launches. That's really cutting it close.
ThreadNintendo NA: We are unable to guarantee cloud saves will be retained after canceling
On the positive side, the Family group rules are really, really good. It seems you can add and remove members at will and that it supports people being in one group from different countries.
ThreadNintendo NA: We are unable to guarantee cloud saves will be retained after canceling
There's a lot more about the service (good and bad) that I dug up here:
My least favorite is the requirement for a weekly check-in to play NES games offline. :/
I own maybe 20 of them. Hit me up if you have any specific questions. I personally love them, but there's a wide range and it helps to know what you want out of a watch before picking one up.
ThreadMagic Leap One augmented reality goggles finally revealed
A little context first. I've tried and own most of the major VR stuff and tried HoloLens both at its reveal and later at its first E3 showing, but not since.
The headset is by far the most comfortable and the Lightpack solution slipped into my jeans pocket and I forgot about it after a few minutes.
My sense, keeping in mind that I could compare Magic Leap side-by-side with anything else, is that it looked much better than an overlay. Certainly much better than any AR experienced through a phone. In terms of HoloLens, there's quite a gap between when I saw the two, but I feel like Magic Leap offered a more substantive visual. It felt more real, if that makes sense. I didn't get to try any Magic Leap games, which was a bummer, but the stuff I did try was very promising.
It's also worth noting all of this took place in a very, very controlled environment. The demo room was large, dim and free of real world distraction.
ThreadMagic Leap One augmented reality goggles finally revealed
Super duper late to the party (I'm embarrassed to admit that I just go around to signing up for Reset Era) but if you have any questions about my time with Magic Leap on my face, let me know and I'll try to answer them.
ThreadMy boss used a racial slur in rapid succession yesterday.
It's amazing how racist some old cartoons are. Equally amazing, how they weren't (at least publicly) considered racist at the time and shown to kids. I grew up watching some of this sort of stuff without having any idea. Shows and movies like Song of the South, Heckle and Jeckle, Popeye, Dumbo, Jungle Book, some Loony Tunes. The key, though, is that most people these days get that yes, this was some super racists shit. There's a reason Disney buried Song of the South. And it was a good one.
ThreadBrian Crecente joins Variety as New Video Games Editor
Thanks for more of the nice comments everyone.
You can find the Variety gaming stuff here:
Still rolling things out slowly as I get my sea legs, figure out the CMS and such. But we will have reviews. Our first is God of War, written by Arthur.
ThreadBrian Crecente joins Variety as New Video Games Editor
Hey everyone (but MutantMagnet :/ :\ :<)
Thanks for the kind words. I think Variety's decision to expand to full-blown gaming coverage is fantastic. I start Monday. It may have been lost in the PR that went out, but I'll continue to oversee big semi-regular features for Rolling Stone, like my GLOBAL EXCLUSIVE ON MAGIC LEAP'S UNVEILING (coughMutantMagnetcough) :D :D
In terms of Glixel the brand. I believe it won't live on at Rolling Stone and it's not coming over to Variety. Social channels will maybe stay alive though.
Worth noting that PMC owns both Variety and Rolling Stone.
See you at PAX East?
I am a huge digital watch nerd. Well, I'm not huge (yet) but my nerdom for digital watches is.
While I love mechanical watches (my great grandfather was a watch repairman long long ago), my interest in digital watches started when my parents decided to give me a Casio GM-10 as a sort of sorry-we're-getting-divorced present. It was stolen shortly after I moved from S. Korea to Texas, but I owned it long enough to fall in love with the Casio design and in particular watches that did things beyond telling time.
I have a pretty substantial collection of smartwatches and a few gaming watches. (I also wrote a fun story about the long, long history of gaming on your wrist back when I was at Polygon.) These days I'm also into hybrids, which are often mechanical watches with some neat low-end smart watch features. I absolutely love the Kronaby watches.
I'm going to write something, maybe not a review, but something. It seems fine. It's well put together, but also feels very much geared to young players. It's got a strong STEM feel to it for me, which is great for parents of tweens. I'm not entirely sure yet if it will attract an older audience, but maybe they don't want or need to.
No one else in the store looking for it and I've not heard much about concerns over supplies when asking around.