Entry 3

Upon reading The Rhetoric of Video Games by Ian Bogost, I was transported back into the old days of me going over to my older cousin’s house to play. I would be on the lite-brite while she was on the game cube. Her go to game was always Animal Crossing and despite the fact that I was 9 and could understand the game, I never really appreciated it for the teaching tool I recently learned it was. For a game to be able to simultaneously teach children about saving, debt, free market, mortgages, interest, and at a deeper level, the monotony of working a full time job to be able to afford the things you want. For games to widely be discredited by the public (especially in previous years) as a waste of time and of no value is ridiculous. In my experience It is often those same people that will complain that the school system isn’t teaching their children real life matters like writing checks and maintaining a good credit score. With virtual, and especially augmented reality on the rise I see much more potential for education. Because once the technology is good enough and has reached an economy of scale, what will be keeping K-12 aged kids coming to the schools?

Today I played the new Tom Clancy Breakpoint early beta and in my opinion, it’s going to be a flop for at least the first few months. Much like Anthem and Fallout 76, the beta is showing a slew of problems that I don’t believe can be properly addressed before the official release in mid October. My complaints include but are not limited to: Jittery camera moves when walking, unintuitive and finicky lean from cover feature, terrible UI that requires cursor precision on a console, motorbike has too low gravity and too high suspension, input lag for weapon aiming is significant with no connection issues, and unclear waypoints. I feel it also can’t go without being addressed how sub-par the graphics are for 2019. Main character models look significantly and worst of all, noticeably better than all other minor characters in cut scenes. The announcer for multiplayer games lacks enthusiasm or is overly theatrical and it takes away from the feeling of being in a tense wartime engagement. The multiplayer gameplay itself is often unbalanced with 3 vs 4 teams and a severe lack of any type of pacing. Often times it feels like a hide until they shoot first then you win strategy which gets pretty old. If I were to design a game, especially at a studio of this caliber, I would play test it well in advance of the release date. Treating the game like a ball of pasta dough is my formula. Play test and mold as you’re developing, but don’t become so invested and focused on being different that you overwork the dough. Because as soon as you roll it out it will start to come out great but will ultimately crumble and break.