This week Hazel is in control, taking Rani and The Temporarily Returned Tobi on a journey through the musical influence video games had on their lives, while Zahra tells us about the cuddly cat game Calico, and Maylee delivers the freshest of video game news.
This week in Zed Games Zahra is in control with Maylee and Cam as crew, guiding us through the relaxing and interesting world of SEASON: A letter to the future in their review, Cameron tells us all about the Commodore 64 and it’s very vibrant and inventive community who still love this piece of gaming history, and Paul keeps us all up to date with the news.
World of Warcraft Player Maxed Out Without Playing
World of Warcraft players, and those who tried to become a WoW player, are probably familiar with the tutorial boat that takes players to the starter zone. And yet, despite there being absolutely no quests, enemies, or even resources to harvest on the boat, a player has managed to level up their character to the recently increased level 70. How?
Pets.
Cheatcho has a number of account-wide pet battle quests, meaning that they can be done on separate characters, while allowing Cheatcho to redeem the quest rewards on a completely different character, namely the one on the ship. Apparently if you have a level 25 Chrominius pet on your account, you can use an ability called arcane explosion that can wipe out the quest giver’s pets quickly.
This method took 200 days to achieve max level.
Xbox is now Aware (of carbon)
A new Xbox firmware update brings changes to power management, where every Xbox console defaults to energy-saving mode, reducing console power consumption when the console is off. This change won’t affect performance or how updates install, but you won’t be able to remotely wake your console, and it boots up a little more slowly. It is optional, and players can opt for ‘Instant On’, although this uses up more energy.
In addition, your Xbox can schedule game, app, and OS updates at specific times to help reduce carbon emissions, by connecting to the internet and using the available regional carbon intensity data.
You can also hide game art when choosing tiles for the home page, letting you change game art to blocks of solid colour, helpful if you find yourself overwhelmed with visuals.
Massive Trans Witch Games Bundle
In response to Hogwarts Legacy, and the rising interest in games centred around magic whilst being trans-friendly, itch.io has a bundle of 69 (nice) items made by indie queer artists.
24 of the games are digital, with a further 41 titles being physical tabletop games. Some notable mentions include a witchy dating sim called Casting Hearts, and my personal favourite, a game about a skateboarding witch in Magic Trick.
VRChat Sex Worker Denied Entry to US
VRChat is a form of chat room where attendees are present in virtual reality, allowing them to interact, talk, and play together in a virtual room despite being countries apart. It’s not uncommon to enter a room with a dozen skeletons, 3 furries, and a lot of chaos. Everything ranging from concerts to birthdays to just about anything can exist. Humans being humans, sex, and consequently sex work, also has a place.
The VRChat sex worker, Hex, resides in the United Kingdom, however attempted to visit the United States to visit some friends. She was denied entry and explained how her work was done in a ‘virtual game’. However, according to Hex, the woman interviewing her didn’t quite understand. Despite not technically meeting the legal definition for prostitution in U.S. immigration laws, she was issued an official letter stating that she was denied entry due to ‘prostitution’.
And now for some upcoming games!
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On Zed Games tonight, Maylee brings the week in gaming news while Rani and Cameron expresses concern about Zahra’s review of Sonic Frontiers, with Paul adding his thoughts on the blue blur as well as telling us all about Evil West!
Hitting your earholes from Zed Games, the crew talks news, Pokemon Scarlet/Violet hype, and Paul kicks groin in McPixel 3.
This week Zed Games is helmed by Zahra, Hazel, and Caroline while they talk gaming news, this years Australian Game Development Awards, and the recent AND local SpringCon 2022!
Valve VR
Valve has posted a job listing. Nothing new, except that it gives us a hint of what’s to come, with the listing looking for someone to ‘prototype, ship, and support’ a virtual reality headset, saying “At Valve, we are pushing the boundaries of virtual reality experiences… The main scope of this position is to prototype, ship, and support consumer gaming products leveraging visual-inertial tracking, camera passthrough, environment understanding, eye tracking, and hand tracking.”
This certainly isn’t Valve’s first foray into VR, but it does signal a push to get ahead in the VR headset market.
Metaverse Isn’t Popular
Decentraland, a Metaverse project, hasn’t exactly been flourishing. It’s a sandbox environment where users can buy and sell virtual real estate, and has a market cap of $1.2 billion. The number of active users over a 24 hour period? 38.
Dencentraland do point out that active users are defined as unique blockchain wallet addresses, which leaves out users who just use it as a place to socialise and hang out, which may bring numbers up to 8000 users per day.
Doom’s On Notepad Now
You’ve seen Doom on PC, consoles, calculators, pregnancy tests, and more. Now get ready for 60 frames per second Doom gameplay in notepad, the very same notepad you have at home. It is playable, using text to create the visuals, much like ASCII art. In very quick, simplified terms, notepad is being used as a monitor, with other software running in the background doing the hard work.
Splatoon Gets a Bit… Rowdy
Nintendo had to release a public statement recently, reminding players of Nintendo’s streaming guidelines, and more specifically, how open streamers are to legal actions. Why? Streamers had started a trend of using chroma-key to superimpose explicit adult videos over the enemy’s ink, essentially treating it as a kind of greenscreen.
As it goes against Nintendo’s streaming guidelines, they can now take down posts, videos, and streams, and even pursue legal action.
AGDA Winners
The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association has announced the winners of the 2022 Australian Game Developer Awards. Judging goes through 70 game industry professionals, with winners from 13 categories announced, plus an additional 4 cultural awards, resulting in this year’s awards being filled with the highlights of what Australia has to offer.
Cult of the Lamb has left with four awards, including Game of the Year.
Julian Wilton, Creative Director of Massive Monster, says “After experiencing our success overseas, it was an amazing feeling to see our game really resonate with Australians as well. We received such strong support locally and we love that it’s being enjoyed, not just for the gameplay, but also for the art and music.”
Raymond Corrigan, the creator of Earthlingo, won the Rising Star award.
Ryan McMahon, art director at Playside Studios, won the Ambition award.
Clara Reeves, CEO of Hipster Whale, has been recognised for her ongoing contributions to the Australian games industry with the Adam Lancman award.
Gameloft Brisbane has come away with the last cultural award with the Studio of the Year award.
And now for some upcoming games!
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This week Zed Games team with Maylee, Elliott, and Peter shakes up our expectations by talking this week in gaming news! Then Maylee challenges us in a review of Long Live the Queen, and the crew talks games that truly surprised us with their subversion.
Hello dear listeners!
This week the Zed Crew ask you to subscribe to 4ZZZ to keep the lights on and the show live and weekly for you all.
The show’s host, Paul, leads the team with Zahra, Rani and the all new Cameron talking gaming news, Caroline hailing the virtues of new game Cult of the Lamb, and Paul collecting the unique narratives of Hindsight and Before Your Eyes.
Indonesia Bans Steam
As Indonesia rolls out new content moderation laws, many online services have been affected, including Steam, PayPal, Epic Games, and even Yahoo.
Companies that are considered private electronic system providers have to register with the Indonesian government’s database to operate in the country. Any companies that failed to do so by 27th July have been banned.
Aside from making it challenging for those in Indonesia to access video games, the requirement is part of an overarching law that is intended to allow the Indonesian government to obtain data about users, and remove content that “disturbs public order”.
Microsoft, Google, Apple, TikTok, Netflix, Spotify, and many other service providers have successfully registered a licence, allowing them to continue to operate.
As of now, Valve is attempting to comply with the requirements, and PayPal has been temporarily unblocked.
Steam Bans Award Logos
The practice of putting award logos and review scores in key art on Steam is coming to an end. Valve is introducing new rules for store key art, or “store graphical assets”, prioritising cleaner images for the storefront.
Review scores, award names, and promotion of a different product are all banned starting from September 1st. If developers want to promote a major update, they can use “artwork overrides”, which slaps a separate layer over existing images.
Valve states that the move is prompted not only to reduce visual clutter, but also to avoid review scores that may be outdated, or even the sketchy practice of making up award names to make a game look a little fancier.
Diablo Immortal Player is Alone
Diablo Immortal has been having some bad press, but now the focus is on a player who has spent $142,000 AUD on the MMORPG, effectively locking him out of the game.
Diablo Immortal’s system allows players to invest financially in order to upgrade their character, a system often called ‘pay-to-win’, and it definitely works. Now this player’s barbarian is so overpowered that he has won hundreds of matches against other players, with very, very few losses. As a result, the game simply will not match him with another player, as there are simply none who could be fairly matched against him.
The player has contacted Blizzard hoping for a way to resolve this problem, however with an upcoming event called the Rite of Exile, he is unable to assist his clan, and with being stuck in matchmaking purgatory, he is unable to even qualify.
He isn’t exactly being met with sympathy, with some players saying that ‘he got what he paid for’.
And now for some upcoming games!
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