“When even PlayStation is cutting jobs, something is seriously wrong with games” – Keza MacDonald (Pushing Buttons, Guardian)

“Andrew Fray, a lead programmer at UK studio Roll7, makers of OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome, shared what they called the PS2 manifesto on social media earlier this month: “7-13 hours of content. Combine a few old ideas in a new way, or have one big new idea. No complicated character upgrade trees. Limited online, little post-launch support. 2 ish years, 30 game devs. Thanks for your money, on to the next one.” This attitude gave us so many weird classics 20 years ago, games that are difficult to imagine existing now, from Ico to Gitaroo Man. None of them were multimillion sellers but, crucially, they didn’t have to be”

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/feb/28/pushing-buttons-playstation-job-losses

“The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same” – Kyle Chayka (extracted in The Guardian)

“To court the large demographic of customers moulded by the internet, more cafes adopted the aesthetics that already dominated on the platforms. Adapting to the norm wasn’t just following trends but making a business decision, one that the consumers rewarded. When a cafe was visually pleasing enough, customers felt encouraged to post it on their own Instagram in turn as a lifestyle brag, which provided free social media advertising and attracted new customers. Thus the cycle of aesthetic optimisation and homogenisation continued”

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/16/the-tyranny-of-the-algorithm-why-every-coffee-shop-looks-the-same

“The Story Behind the Rise of Hamas” – Das Spiegel

“What exactly does destroying Hamas actually mean?” wonders a source in Doha who is familiar with the negotiations. When Sinwar and Deif are dead? What happens if they are liquidated, but a new leader takes over control? Does the entire command structure need to be annihilated? Do all Hamas fighters have to be killed? The Israeli government, the source says, has thus far been avoiding all of these questions. Along with that of who should rule the Gaza Strip in the future.”

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-gaza-conundrum-the-story-behind-the-rise-of-hamas-a-d9e30bb6-2295-45a1-825c-dbd0c43c3613

“Bluesky opens up to the world – but can anything really replace Twitter?” – Alex Hern (TechScape, Guardian)

“Threads is massive, but its user base is lurkers and influencers. Like being in the audience of a Marvel movie, you may consume some professionally produced content, but you’re certainly not going to form any lasting memories. For the past year, Bluesky has been pure posters, locked in a room with each other, deprived of much of the dopamine that they need to maintain their frenetic energy. And Mastodon is a community of commenters and reply guys, decentralised to the point that it’s possible to have a nice chat, but difficult to discern a conversation arising from within”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/13/bluesky-twitter-jack-dorsey-social-network

“Microsoft is about to share a new ‘vision for the future of Xbox’ – here’s what that could mean” – Keith Stuart (Pushing Buttons, Guardian)

“Microsoft has effectively backed itself into a corner from which no escape route is totally desirable. In many ways, the smart thing would be to combine the business models of Sega, which abandoned console development after the failure of Dreamcast and became a third-party games publisher, and Valve, which stopped being a developer and became a digital platform holder with Steam. In effect, it could abandon the Xbox hardware and concentrate on bringing Microsoft exclusives to other platforms while maintaining the Xbox name for a streaming service accessible via PC, phones and smart devices. But that would leave a lot of extremely unhappy Xbox fans”

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/feb/07/pushing-buttons-xbox-future-phil-spencer

“The video game magazines of our youth are disappearing” – Simon Parkin (Pushing Buttons, The Guardian)

“This venue –and every publication is a venue with its own dress code and decor, its favoured clientele and font-choice aesthetic –felt more like the Garrick than a youth club: deep-chaired, wood-panelled, its resident critics ruthless and assured, unafraid to skewer whatever video game everyone else was busily fawning over. Edge’s writers became my tutors; they helped me develop a sense of taste, to recognise brilliance, and to mourn the distance between intention and attainment”

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/jan/31/pushing-buttons-video-game-magazines

“Video-Game Companies Make Workers Relocate, Then Fire Them” – Jason Schreier (GameOn, Bloomberg)

“Blizzard canceled its survival game Odyssey after six years in development largely due to its struggling technology. One factor behind those struggles may have been the company’s inability to retain or attract senior engineers, in part, because of a lack of remote-work flexibility.

But the hardest impact of this policy is that both companies asked people to move to southern California — where the rents are expensive and the cost of living is high — only to then take away their jobs.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that productivity does take a hit when people work from home. Maybe it’s especially hard for some disciplines, as managers have argued, and maybe it’s difficult to engage in creative collaboration on Zoom and Trello. Doesn’t matter. CEOs should recognize that no productivity boost is worth the short- and long-term repercussions of forcing people to move and then laying them off”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-01-26/video-game-companies-make-workers-relocate-then-fire-them

“I hated going back to games – until The Last of Us Part II Remastered came along” – Keith Stuart (Pushing Buttons, Guardian)

“Replaying a linear narrative game is like rereading a favourite novel: nothing changes apart from you. The way you feel, the age you are, the experiences you’ve had – these all contribute to your new experiences with the text. Vladimir Nabokov once said, “One cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.” Perhaps we should think about linear narrative games in the same way.

Now that I’ve opened this experiential door, I will definitely keep it ajar. I guess movies and short novels are easier to re-experience thanks to their comparative brevity, but if we look at story games as an escape, a vacation from the new, they’re always worth revisiting. And they have things to tell us about ourselves”

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/jan/24/pushing-buttons-last-of-us-2-remastered-replaying

“What Does “Defence” Really Mean?” – Samia Madwar (The Walrus)

“Defence” is not supposed to be about seeking justice from your enemy,” says Colleen Bell, an international relations scholar at the University of Saskatchewan. Yet that’s how the concept is largely perceived. Many have rightly questioned how many Palestinians Israel needs to kill before it feels it’s sufficiently defended itself. While international humanitarian law dictates that defensive strikes must not disproportionately harm civilians, there are no legal precedents that specify what is considered proportionate”

https://thewalrus.ca/what-does-defence-really-mean/

“Why big tech could learn big lessons from the Post Office Horizon scandal” – Alex Sheen, TechScape (Guardian)

“If you still want to track down the point where bad IT became a crisis, then you have to look past the tech altogether. The Post Office declared, as fiat, that Horizon worked. From there, everything that happened after was the logical conclusion. If Horizon works, then the errors must be because of what the subpostmasters did. If they say they made no errors, then they must have committed fraud. If they committed fraud, then a conviction is morally just.

But Horizon didn’t work”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/16/techscape-big-tech-post-office-horizon-scandal-substack