Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment is the latest book from noted video game journalist, Jason Schreier, and over the course of thirty-one chapters, it walks us through the story of one of the most prominent video game developers of all time, Blizzard Entertainment. The history of Blizzard is available on the internet for free, so why should you spend your hard earned money to buy a book that narrates the same story? That’s where Jason’s experience in being a video game journalist comes in handy. He tells us the story that we have known for years, but adds in some interesting tidbits that give a bit more context to some important events.
I have not made a video review of a book before, so I don’t know what exactly you, as a viewer, would be interested to learn. With nothing more than a guess, I have split the video into different sections. To learn more, watch the video!
A few years ago, Bungie announced that the Chinese gaming giant, NetEase, had given them a significant amount of money, reported to be more than $100 million, to take the Destiny franchise in new directions.
More than six years after that initial announcement, we now have a first look at what that partnership has resulted in. It’s a new mobile game called Destiny Rising, and it is being developed and published entirely by NetEase, with Bungie merely providing the license to the franchise and a whole lot of suggestions. Here’s the first trailer.
There’s a lot to unpack in this announcement. My first thought was, Why did it take six years to show this project to the public? Sure, a lot has happened in the background since the partnership announcement. Bungie split with Activision, operated Destiny independently for a while, then got sold to Sony, and is now almost on the verge of losing its independence entirely. But if there’s one thing we know about mobile game development, it’s that they are supposed to be faster to make, right? That’s a huge part of the appeal of mobile games – they are cheaper to produce and bring in more money than PC/Console projects.
It may be a while before we learn about why it took NetEase so long to announce Destiny Rising, but I guess the far more interesting thing to focus on is the upcoming closed alpha, which begins in November, in the US and Canada. It’s a bit surprising that NetEase isn’t including its home country in the test, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a separate announcement for China. I’m a bit bummed that India isn’t part of the first test, but on second thought, I don’t really mind.
I’m currently taking a break from Destiny 2. I haven’t bought the annual upgrade of the current expansion, meaning I don’t have access to the latest episodic content, which started last week. Naturally, I’m not too keen about starting a whole new grind with a mobile game. If anything, I’m just curious to see how the Destiny experience will translate to mobile. That’s why I’m hoping the upcoming alpha test isn’t restricted by an NDA, and that streamers can show off the gameplay.
A lot of the initial feedback to the trailer revolves around regular fans joking (or not?) that Destiny 2 could use some of the features shown in the mobile game’s trailer, such as new supers, weapons and a flexible class system that doesn’t restrict the player to a certain class. Comments also expressed concern about the monetisation system, and for good reason.
The last big PC/Console franchise that NetEase converted into a mobile game was Diablo Immortal. That went on to become one of the most infamous mobile game releases in recent times, with several predatory monetisation practices in place. It’s only fair to assume that Destiny Rising will have something similar in place, since NetEase has to recover the $100 million (and more) it has invested in this franchise.
It’s probably too early to speculate, so let’s just wait for the alpha to begin or until we get more details. For more details about the game, and to pre-register for the alpha, you can visit the official website.
With the one year anniversary of QC Done fast approaching, I decided it was time to dust off the cobwebs on this website and bring it back to life.
When I registered this domain, I intended for it to act as a companion to my YouTube channel, featuring more details about whatever topic I was talking about in the videos. However, I was biting off more than I could chew, since I was running two YouTube channels with a total of four videos coming out each week, and I was learning game development at the same time. There was no time left to build and maintain this website.
Fast forward to today, and I have scaled down operations on one of the channels, and even the main channel has come down to one video per week instead of two. This felt like a good time to see what I could do with this website.
To begin with, I will merely link to all of the videos published on my channel, but by the end of the year, I hope to start adding some text to each of the posts, to give some more context to the videos. We’ll see how it goes from there.
If you have been watching my videos, and would like to provide any suggestion related to the YouTube channel or this website, please do let me know in the comments!
Similar to last week’s video on Frostpunk 2, this video about Ara History Untold is not a full review, even though I have finished one full playthrough. Once again, it’s because I feel I haven’t played this game the way it’s meant to be played, which is a strategy game.
I played it more like a clicking simulator, where I set my game on the easiest setting so that I didn’t really have problems with resources, and after a certain point, I just had to keep clicking to go to the next turn, and the game more or less played itself. I did this because I was curious to see how the game would end. I played other 4X games like Civilisation 6 and Humankind, but never really played beyond the first hour or so. But Ara was simple and approachable enough for a casual player like myself to stick till the end. And the presentation of the game goes a long way to enable this.
Sadly, it appears that regular fans of the 4X genre are not too impressed with this game, and it currently sits at a Mixed review rating on steam. However, 67% of the reviews being positive is still a good sign, and hopefully the developers can push some quick updates that will improve the game.
This is not a full review of Frostpunk 2. Even though I have finished one playthrough of the game, I am not comfortable with calling it a full review, because I don’t think I have played this game the way it was meant to be played and experienced. I was just curious about the game based on the success of the first game, and seeing that it was a day one release on game pass, I gave it a try and ended up completing one full playthrough.
Long story short, I liked it quite a lot. It is a blend of a city builder and a survival game, and even on the easiest difficulty, you can never really relax, because things can fall apart within minutes and your run may end abruptly. In fact, on my very first attempt, I got a game over in the prologue, because I was still learning the basics and made a few bad decisions. Then I actually paid attention, and was rewarded with a really good gaming experience. Watch the video for more details!
Welcome to the fifth season of QC Done. We are nearing the one year anniversary of this channel, and it’s been a really interesting journey so far.
Now I’ll admit that one of the reasons I started on YouTube was to eventually get the channel monetised and explore content creation as a revenue stream, but since day one I have told myself that this will always be a side-hustle, even if I do reach the monetisation goal. That’s because I’m not a big fan of depending on YouTube to make the rules on how and where I earn money. In any case, unless my videos get hundreds of thousands of views in the next three weeks, there’s no way this channel is getting monetised before its first anniversary. Even if it does, it probably won’t change my next plans for this channel, which I’ll talk about in this video.
Another three months have gone by very fast, and it’s time to have a look back at some of the highlights. I decided to record this video in the first half of September, after seeing that my script had already become quite big. So, any important news that may surface in the second half of the month will be covered in my end of the year highlights video in December.
After putting out a review for Star Wars: Outlaws, the huge Destiny video and another review for Quidditch Champions, I needed a break. So I came up with this video where I talk about three random games.
Quidditch is a tough sport to convert into a video game. That’s partially because it isn’t a real sport and is impossible to recreate accurately in real life, unless someone invents flying broomsticks, but also because if some of its rules are implemented, the game could become very boring to play. For instance, if catching the snitch really ends the match at any point, then a seeker could be lucky and skilled enough to end a match within seconds, which isn’t exactly fun. Also, 150 points being awarded for the snitch capture sounds interesting, because you have to constantly be aware of maintaining a good lead over your opposition, but in a video game, scoring 15 goals before capturing a snitch sounds like a chore, again leading to boring matches.
So I wasn’t surprised to see developer Unbroken Studios get a bit creative with the rules in order to make Harry Potter Quidditch Champions a fun game to play. And I would say they’ve succeeded – in the short time I spent playing the game, I did find it fun, and I wouldn’t mind going back to play a few matches every now and then. However, I did play only for around 3 hours, so I don’t know how soon I’ll get bored of the concept. More details in the video.
September 9, 2014. Destiny was unleashed onto the world, and it’s safe to say that the world of video games has never been the same. To be brutally honest, the world of video games changes so rapidly that every few years, we get one or two games which change the market forever. What makes Destiny a bit unique is that it continues to remain at the top of its subgenre, which can probably defined as a shared world first person looter shooter.
Quite a few games tried to replicate Destiny’s success, but none of them succeeded at the same scale as Destiny. Probably the only other game that comes close is Warframe, which actually came out before Destiny, and has successfully survived for 11 years, but as a third-person, character based game, Warframe is in a league of its own.
This video is my tribute to the Destiny franchise, which has played an important role in shaping my video game hobby. This is not a summary of Destiny’s in-game story, so if you are looking for something like that, please consider visiting other channels like MyNameisByf or Myelin Games for a dedicated analysis of Destiny’s 10-year story. This video is more of a highlight reel of playing a live-service game over several years, dealing with the highs and lows that come with such a habit, and also talks about why I feel one needs to plan an exit point from such long-running games.
