Brendan Sinclair @BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social

#introduction I've been here a while but don't think I ever posted one of these.

I'm the North American editor for GamesIndustry.biz, a trade site about the video game industry. Before this, I was senior news editor for GameSpot.

I've been incredibly fortunate with my career in games and journalism, but don't know if I would suggest anybody get into either industry.

I try to be kind and I try not to make bad situations worse.

I'd like to make leaving Twitter more convenient for anyone inclined to jump, and I've noticed one of the things that keeps me there is it's where a bunch of media outlets post and they don't run accounts here.

So I'm starting up a GamesIndustry.biz account that will toot out stories for people who want to keep up with industry news:

https://mastodon.social/@GIbiz

It's frustrating that the AAA publisher that makes the biggest deal about games being art is the one that is the most terrified of its games having anything to say.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-06-07-ubisoft-says-avoiding-messages-is-part-of-making-more-mature-games

Old Captain America comics are a trip

Marvel's first computer-generated graphic novel was a real doozy.

Honestly depressed by the number of people who will defend their immoral behavior by pointing to some other societal mechanism that failed to protect people from it as evidence that what they're doing is ok.

"Where were the parents when their kids got hooked on my shitty loot box game?"

"There's no law against X so there's no reason for me not to do that."

"Customers vote with their wallets and my shit makes money. The market only rewards the virtuous so I must be a-ok."

Crunch is a systemic problem and getting developers and studios to fully understand that is the first step in fixing it.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-05-08-united-devs-stand-divided-they-crunch-opinion

Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm Studios has had a problem with crunch for years. Here's a story that might explain some of the reasons that hasn't changed.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-05-03-netherrealms-self-sustaining-culture-of-crunch

This is absurd and I kind of love it.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-16-capcom-rolling-out-its-own-retro-system

Realizing I could not give someone a list of the greatest Simpsons episodes because the best shows have all been so thoroughly referenced and rehashed they aren't even funny in and of themselves to me anymore; they're just Simpsons references.

On the latest @GIbiz podcast, Rebekah Valentine and I talk about Activision's creepy incentivized health monitoring program and discuss accessibility by way of early '80s arcade games.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-11-the-gamesindustry-biz-podcast-why-does-activision-need-pregnancy-data

I worry the games industry's reluctance to address games designed to make money off addictive play will re-open the discussion for banning violent games as well.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-11-nepal-bans-pubg

Really stuns me how the president can tweet crap like "[The press] are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!" and half the country can still just think this is fine and normal and status quo and everyone panicking is totally overreacting to this totally normal thing that in no way continues our descent into ever-darker places.

That also takes me back to the early days of the PS2, when the only way I could beat the last boss of Dynasty Warriors 2 was to do the same thing. He would use healing potions from time to time, but never actually move or defend himself. Good times.

The best part about only playing through Dark Souls once it came out on the Switch was remembering years of "it's so difficult!" discourse every time I sat back and whittled away an enemy with hundreds of arrows while it stood there doing nothing.

See also: "the Citizen Kane of video games"

It really is perfectly video games to look at Bob Dylan's body of work and take inspiration not from what it is or says, but from the fact that other people say it's influential.

Baba Is You is instantly fantastic. I stopped playing it a few levels in and deleted the save file so I could go through the whole thing together with my wife.