Insomniac Games has not had a good week (Picture: Sony)
The Thursday letters page tries to imagine what Sony in panic mode over the PS5 would be like, as one reader enjoys Stellaris Nexus.
Tell me everything
This whole Insomniac hacking incident is obviously awful, but I honestly don’t know what would be worse: it being done by rabid fans or just criminals looking to extort Sony. As far as I understand it’s the latter, but I do think the whole leak and rumour factory has got out of control.
I can’t remember the last time we found out about something from the company themselves and not a leak beforehand (it was probably something Nintendo related, whatever it was) and that’s a real shame. Everyone wants their five minutes of fame on the internet and so anyone in a non-critical role at a developer seems to want to leak out every little thing. Or at least that’s what I assume is going on.
Most websites have been quite reserved in what they’ve reported about Insomniac, but if you look on Reddit and Twitter people are going over everything in super detail. Not only does that seem ghoulish but I’m sure we’re just days away from the first report of someone being doxed or scammed, since employee information was included as well.
The games industry can seem like a very unhealthy place to be sometimes, and I think the need for constant news and updates has caused two extremes: publishers that try to say as little as possible and leakers that want to tell you everything. It’s not good and I predict it’s going to cause more serious problems the longer it remains the norm.
Staton
Panic mode
It doesn’t look like we’ll get an answer any time soon, but I can’t help wondering what Sony would do if the PlayStation 5 wasn’t selling well. Everyone would say that the reason it isn’t is because of the lack of games, so would Sony start fast-tracking stuff? Would they announce a bunch of games, just to prove they’re on the way?
I’m coming round to the idea that both Sony and Microsoft have been asleep at the wheel this year but while Xbox obviously realise they’ve got work to do Sony seem so complacent I can’t even picture what a non-complacent Sony would look like. Remember, after the failure of the PlayStation 3 we got the PlayStation 4, which for me is their best console and first party games.
Maybe we need another misstep before Sony get their mojo back, because at the moment they think they can get away with just doing nothing and they’re not being proven wrong.
Focus
Near future
I don’t have that much interest in Call Of Duty anymore but it did make me laugh that the ‘near future’ of 2025, imagined in 2012’s Black Ops 2 is almost upon us and it’s probably not that inaccurate. As I remember the future plot had to do with big swarms of drones and while I don’t think that’s how they’re used yet we’re probably only a few years away from them.
People like to mock the more sci-fi Call Of Duties, but apart from the jetpack stuff it all seemed relatively realistic to me. We’re seen the drone and robot stuff more and more nowadays, and while the supervillain plot stuff is always nonsense the actual style of combat they portray… it seems pretty believable to me. 2025 was 13 years in the future from Black Ops 2, so would anyone like to predict what military tech will look like in 2038?
Cordon
Take your time
Does anyone really have any faith that Game Freak are going to have some big change in how they operate, after all the complaints about Scarlet and Violet? We’ll see a 10% improvement or something, and probably less bugs, and that’ll be it. There’ll always be stuck behind the curve unless they take time out and spend longer on the next game.
If the DLC is over now then we could well be looking at a Gen X announcement next year, which would be madness but I wouldn’t bet against it. Even if they try and do a Pokémon Legends first, there’s been no time to improve that tech either.
My advice would be some more spin-offs and a low-tech Black and White remake, just to give them some breathing space and allow them take longer making the next game. They literally are a generation behind the rest of the Nintendo games and I have no confidence they’ll ever make something that looks as good as Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom.
Lentil
Christmas takeover
I’ve been playing a new game on the PC called Stellaris Nexus.
It’s basically an eight-player online Civilization set in space, where games last an hour.
You are competing with other players to claim the succession rights of the planet Nexus, in the middle of the solar system. All eight players are spread out in a circle around Nexus.
You can win with trade, culture, technology or war and just like Civilization the leaders/race you control changes the way you should try to play, as they will have specific bonuses such as ‘gain exp for exploration’ or ‘research six technologies’.
There is an offline mode of the Succession game and also a story mode with about five missions.
It’s great fun and was only £12.99 on Steam.
TommyFatFingers
GC: We should point out it’s only early access at the moment.
Career concern
Nice to see other, unconnected, developers giving their commiserations to Insomniac after the hack. I think that’s one thing the entire industry can agree on, that those responsible should be hunted down and sent to jail for a very long time.
The worse thing though were the tweets from what I assume to be low-level developers talking about how rotten their job is at the moment, with data leaks and the constant and very real threat of job losses. I’m sure being a game designer must sound very exciting at first but when you’re working in a team with hundreds of others and your job is being in charge of making the trees look real, or whatever, I imagine you’d start questioning whether it was all worth it.
Thing is, I’d also assume even those relatively mundane jobs still require quite a bit of skill and yet video game companies don’t seem to be concerned about scaring people off or retaining the people it does have. If I was a student I don’t think I’d want to be involved in this industry at all. Even playing some of the games at the moment is making me doubt myself, given how badly some of these companies are acting.
Tom Meadows
Early Christmas present
Just a quick message to say I have one month’s free code for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for anyone who would like it. It expires on the last day of this month. You have to be a new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate member to use it.
More: Trending news
Raw numbers
I never really thought about how far behind the Xbox Series X/S was in terms of sales until these recent figures started to come out. Which I guess is exactly the reason why Microsoft never release them. Being outsold 3-to-1 worldwide is really bad, especially when that means, as we found out recently, that the ratio is even worse in places were its extra unpopular, like Europe and Japan.
I remember Phil Spencer saying something like good games won’t save Xbox because people are too entrenched with the PlayStaiton but at the time I just thought he was being melodramatic or playing up to the FTC but we’re beginning to see now that it’s true.
But if it is true then what’s the next step. If the Xbox is never going to be a top-selling console then why isn’t going third party a valid decision? Are they holding out to see if Call Of Duty on Game Pass makes a difference? I’m going to bet it doesn’t and then are they just going to wait for the next big white hope until we’re in the next generation?
These rumours of them kickstarting it early don’t seem like they’d help either. I feel Microsoft would make much more money just selling its games, and Game Pass on the more popular consoles. It’d be a major power shift but I’m not seeing what the alternatives are.
Gaston
Inbox also-rans
I second Philipp Weber’s F-you to the Insomniac hackers. I sincerely hope those (very sweary word, plural) do prison time for demanding money with menaces. Honest, decent criminals will have a very warm welcome for little witches like that.
Mitchell
GC: If they’re caught then they will be looking at some serious jail time.
I have never heard of Pizza Tower before either but it looks great. But why is it not on consoles? It’s had a whole year almost, if it came out in January.
Klamer
GC: Some indie developers are very small – just a few people – and often don’t have the resources.
The Thursday letters page tries to imagine what Sony in panic mode over the PS5 would be like, as one reader enjoys Stellaris Nexus.
