Scope out a few of the game industry news stories from the last week below, hand-picked from across the world of games. This week, we’re looking at an upcoming Nordic Game event that will try for a hybrid physical/digital approach, how Riot Games pulled off a highly poliahed virtual esports event, how politicians are using gaming and media platforms ahead of the U.S elections, news about the still-hot Nintendo Switch and the freshly-hot indie game, Among Us, and more!
Index:
- Nordic Game to Host November Event with Limited In-Person Tickets
- The Art and Science Behind Riot’s 2020 LoL World Championships
- Creating Political Engagement Through Gaming Media Platforms
- Among Us has Quickly Become the Latest Hot Game
- Should Streamers Pay Royalties to Game Developers?
- Nintendo Switch the Best-Selling U.S Console for 22 Months
- Saving Games History by Saving Game Source Code
Nordic Game to Host November Event with Limited In-Person Tickets
Source: Gamesindustry.biz
While almost all events in any given business sector have been postponed, canceled or presented in a digital format for 2020, a small handful of events are exploring hybrid or even a live presence. in this case, it’s the game development-focused Nordic Game that’s bucking the trend, as this GamesInfustry.biz story details:
“Nordic Game is among the first major conferences to return to in-person events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The event’s organizers today announced that they will host NG20+ at Slagthuset in Malmö, Sweden from November 25 to 27 while “upholding the strictest health and safety precautions.”
The event will be livestreamed as well, but “a very limited number of NG20+ pass holders” will be admitted on-site for networking and talks.”
Polygon dives the details of a making-of video by Riot Games about the complex process of adjusting a massive esports event production into a virtual event, complete with mixed reality and next-level displays for the streamed event:
“The 2020 League of Legends World Championship was supposed to be the biggest and expansive event that Riot had ever put on. It was going to be a true 10th anniversary blowout for the ultimate tournament in the world’s most popular esport. But this is 2020, which means things often don’t go the way we plan them.
For Riot, that meant hosting almost the entire Worlds 2020 event in one single location, with no fans in the studio because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So the Riot production crew teamed up with its creative partners at the production company Possible to bring the League of Legends universe to Shanghai for Worlds.”
Creating Political Engagement Through Gaming Media Platforms
Source: NBC News
During this elections season in the United States, especially with so many people spending a lot of time at home, some media-savvy politicians have gone to where the people are to stimulate civic engagement, such as on Twitch or Animal Crossing, to bring up the examples mentioned in this NBC News piece:
“As the presidential election approaches, politicians and gaming companies alike are using video games to promote both voter education and turnout in November.
“They’re a primary way people of all ages kind of interact socially and entertain themselves. And so it seems quite obvious in the way that Rock the Vote, when it was developed in the 1990s, organized itself around music that we would see similar kinds of interventions happen around games,” said Laine Nooney, an assistant professor of media industries at New York University.”
Among Us has Quickly Become the Latest Hot Game
Source: Lifehacker
It’s not easy keeping up with the latest red-hot game pulling huge downloads and big revenue in 2020. Heck, it was only earlier this month when we called attention to another high-octane game title, the free-to-play action role-playing game, Genshin impact. but catch your breath, check out this Lifehacker story and get acquainted with InnerSloth’s Among Us (if somehow you haven’t heard about it yet):
“If your kid has been calling everything they don’t like “sus” lately, they’re probably playing Among Us. In Among Us slang, “sus” means “suspicious,” a word that sums up the appeal of the multiplayer social deduction game perfectly: It’s all about mistrust, misdirection, and paranoia. But in a fun way.”
Should Streamers Pay Royalties to Game Developers?
Source: GameSpot
After a messy week of panic and concern due to DMCA content takedown notices on Twitch, the questions around licensing sparked up when the questions about game streamers paying licensing fees to their creators was brought up. GameSpot shares some of the discussion:
“The debate surrounding whether video game streamers should pay royalties to respective developers and publishers has been around for the better half of a decade. Comments made by a creative director at one of Google Stadia’s in-house studios has reignited the argument, forcing Google to distance itself from the remarks.”
Nintendo Switch the Best-Selling U.S Console for 22 Months
Source: Forbes
As the launch month of the next-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles approaches, you’d think the less-powerful and older Nintendo Switch would be at risk of losing some of its mojo in the U.S. market, but the data says otherwise. Take a look at the Forbes article to find out more:
“At one point there was a conversation happening in the games industry about whether or not the Switch could compete against PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Nintendo’s more powerful console competitors. Suffice to say, that conversation’s been dead for awhile. We now live in a world where the almost 4-year-old Switch is expected to outsell next-gen systems Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 this holiday. Given the Switch’s new sales record, that’s hardly surprising.
According to the latest video game industry sales data from NDP, the Nintendo Switch has now claimed the title of best-selling console in the United States for 22 consecutive months.”
Saving Games History by Saving Game Source Code
Source: TheGamer
Video game source code and assets are our best tools for studying how a game was made, yet access to this behind-the-scenes material is virtually unheard of for historians. We’re changing that, starting now. Introducing The Video Game Source Project. https://t.co/Isk8vAJJFJ
— Video Game History Foundation (@GameHistoryOrg) October 15, 2020
As developers, computer storage, documentation and other means of preserving games and the creative and coding process that led to the finished product grow older, it becomes more of a challenge to hold on to the complete picture of those games as cultural milestones. But a program around (the sometimes tricky process of) saving source code by the Video Game History Foundation aims to change that, as this story by TheGamer explores:
“The Video Game History Foundation has announced an initiative to save as much gaming source code—which includes everything from concept art, to e-mails, to computer code—as they possibly can. The problem, as they explain it, is that game creators don’t want their “source code” to be public knowledge in the first place.”
Do you have interesting news to share, or something coming up that would also fit into this regular feature? Let us know!
