Wednesday - August 6, 2024

Report: WB Discovery looking to sell off games, other divisions to prevent total breakup (Game Developer)

JR's Thoughts: Warner Bros. Discovery is struggling - and of course their first position is to sell the part of it's business that operates in a very expensive and volatile industry. It makes sense. Despite that, the timing kind of sucks. Massive players like Microsoft and Sony have made their major acquisitions, and are now firmly invested in integrating these entities into their core businesses.

Slightly smaller players, major publishers like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft, don't look to be in the position to make major acquisitions right now. The industry is going through a period of immense layoffs and uncertainty in how the economics of it should be run. Sure IPs like Mortal Kombat could be great, but it seems like no franchise is guaranteed revenue nowadays, so the risk seems high.

That being said, I do think that if WBD is looking to sell, there will be buyers. I just don't think they'll get the price for these IPs that they're probably hoping for.

Call Of Duty Black Ops 6 Leaks Continue, This Time With A Graphic New Ability (GameSpot)

JR's Thoughts: For better or for worse, Call of Duty for a very long time has just been, well, Call of Duty. Sure there has been some changes over the years, like dolphin diving or slide cancelling, but none have really shaken the game to where it looks and feels different. It's all been attempts at improving what already made Call of Duty such a sticky game to play.

When I saw the reveal for Black Ops 6, I thought to myself: "wow, this looks different!". And it was. What Treyarch was dubbing "omni-movement" looked like a genuine step towards a real change in how COD was played on a level that I hadn't seen since the introduction of jetpacks in Advanced Warfare (a franchise fad that quickly died out after 4 iterations).

With this new leak, however, I think Treyarch has most definitely approached development of this game with change in mind. The COD formula is great, but frankly the way it's been implemented in the past few years has been lackluster at best - it needs a major shake-up. Besides omni-movement, what's that shake-up? Meat shields. Besides being cool as fuck, this new mechanic introduces all sorts of interesting gameplay into multiplayer, and I can only hope it's not nerfed into oblivion either at launch or shortly after.

Gameplay-wise, this new mechanic makes sneaking up on multiple enemies a little different. I can't say for sure if it's better than just mowing them all down, but it could be pretty fun. This mechanic will surely get most of it's use and entertainment out of hardcore modes and probably search & destroy. It should be fun!

Generative AI tools have created a 'clusterfuck,' but do they have a creative future? (Game Developer)

JR's Thoughts: This is a great write-up on a presentation by Sarah Brin on the philosophical side of AI, creativity, and the theft of ideas.

In the context of the games industry - AI does worry me. The industry is already hyper-concerned with costs, a phenomenon that has led to so many layoffs in the past year alone. My concerns with regards to AI and its effect on the industry is that these jobs may not be temporary losses. A major studio that fires a quest writer in Q2 of 2024, may not hire a staff writer for that position ever again - AI can do that job, right?

As Brin alludes to in this article though, not really. At this point tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are mature enough for us to know that they don't produce the quality that a good, human writer is capable of creating. In fact, these AI models don't really create anything at all - it simply recycles that which it ingests.

My point here is that I hope that game developers don't look to AI as a solution to the costs associated with creating games. It'll only lead to worse games - and we don't need more bad writing in this medium then there already is.

That's all for today! If you have a topic or news item you want featured on the newsletter - hit me up at jeremy@gamesbeat.news.