The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for nudging the fridge door shut with your knee. Before you make contact, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).

Over on IEEE Spectrum, Eliza Strickland wrote about bionic implant users whose eyes are now obsolete and unsupported. Super interesting look at novel technology and whether taking it's worth taking a punt on it. Above all, though, more measures need to be put in place to stop things like this from happening again.

These three patients, and more than 350 other blind people around the world with Second Sight’s implants in their eyes, find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget. One technical hiccup, one broken wire, and they lose their artificial vision, possibly forever. To add injury to insult: A defunct Argus system in the eye could cause medical complications or interfere with procedures such as MRI scans, and it could be painful or expensive to remove.

Over on Eurogamer, Sam Greer wrote about Nioh 2 and why it's a Soulslike to savour. As a big fan of Nioh 1 and 2 myself, this piece does a great job of summing up why they're both worth a shot if you're a Souls fan.

As punishing as Nioh can be, it seeks to empower and make you feel deadly. A total badass, if you will. Victories in Dark Souls or Bloodborne often felt earned by the skin of your teeth, clawing each tiny bit of progress from the jaws of defeat. Nioh feels more decisive. You can die as quickly as you can kill, with even the weakest enemies remaining perfectly capable of slaying players who become too comfortable, but you're not as much of an underdog as in a Souls game. It makes for a dynamic where you simultaneously feel very vulnerable but also incredibly dangerous.

Over on NME, Andy Brown wrote about how a logistics strike in MMO Foxhole created a war like no other. A look from the inside at a war that's dragged on thanks to a flawed logistics system.

As the war has dragged on, which Knight says is partly down to the L.O.G.I. strike and issues with faraway production buildings, the effects of the strike have become more apparent: “You’re seeing multiple hexes where nothing is being built and supplied, they’re constantly being flipped back and forth overnight, and we’re even seeing the wider servers and on Reddit especially, people acknowledging just how bad the logistics situation has gotten and saying maybe the logistics strike is a thing after all.”

Over on PitchBook, Marina Temkin wrote about Web3's utopian 'propaganda'. Namely, she spoke to Phil Libin, a Silicon Valley vet who emigrated from the USSR as a child. He believes the promises of the metaverse and Web3 is reminiscent of Soviet propaganda.

Same thing with Web3. It's slow. It's not reliable. It's expensive. It's super not-secure. It's dangerous. It just doesn't work. You know that other stuff works because you see it on the rest of the internet. But you are supposed to believe in it like the Soviets were supposed to believe in a communist utopia. I would be happy if I turn out to be wrong about Web3 because it's based on some very beautiful ideas about decentralized trust and democratizing everything.

Music this week is Wayfarer by Audien. Here's the YouTube link and Spotify link. A progressive house all-timer.

That's me folks, until next time!