Author: Game Infliction

Google ended its Stadia services months ago, but it’s not out of the games industry entirely. Instead of building its own platform, Google is pursuing live-service games to support using its Cloud infrastructure and admitting past endeavors didn’t work well alone.

Speaking to Axios, Google Cloud’s director of games industry solutions, Jack Buser, offered insight into the company’s new gaming strategy. Instead of pursuing its old consumer-facing platform, Google is bundling Cloud services for live-service game publishers. Buser said they’re still “absolutely committed to games,” but the future looks different after Stadia.

“It was at that moment when we basically had to make decisions about Stadia that we realized that at Google Cloud, we are at our best when we’re helping other people build this stuff, not necessarily building it ourselves,” Buser told Axios.

It’s a pivot positioning Google as competition for other Cloud infrastructure providers, like Amazon and Microsoft, and abandoning its pursuit as a gaming platform. Google Cloud has already partnered with publishers and developers like Niantic, Embracer Group, and 2K. The service is one that’s distinctly different from its original Stadia offerings, it’s not there to provide the old Stadia streaming tech.

“We are not offering that streaming option, because it was tied to Stadia itself,” Buser told Axios’ Stephen Totilo. “So, unfortunately, when we decided to not move forward with Stadia, that sort of offering could no longer be offered as well.”

The options Buser mentioned was an AT&T deal from 2021, where Google’s Stadia tech powered the wireless provider’s game-streaming via mobile browser.

Google’s tumultuous saga with Stadia came to a close on January 18 of this year, refunding hardware and other Google Play-related purchases in 2022. However, don’t throw out any old Stadia controllers lying around, as those may still come in handy. You can’t use them for Google’s platform anymore, but a Bluetooth update should get it working elsewhere.

Andrea Shearon is a freelance contributor for IGN covering games and entertainment. She’s worn several hats over her seven-year career in the games industry, with bylines over at Fanbyte, USA Today’s FTW, TheGamer, VG247, and RPG Site. Find her on Twitter (@Maajora) or the Materia Possessions podcast chatting about FFXIV, RPGs, and any series involving giant robots.

Following Microsoft and Nintendo’s agreement to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms for at least a decade, Microsoft has further detailed its plans for Call of Duty on Nintendo Switch.

In a filing submitted to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (via The Verge), Microsoft revealed that it believes the free-to-play Warzone and Call of Duty’s full premium releases can both have a home on Nintendo’s hybrid console.

“The game engine that powers Warzone is mature and has been optimized to run on a wide range of hardware devices (ranging from the Xbox One console released in 2015 up to the Xbox Series X),” part of the filing reads. “Warzone supports PC hardware with GPU cards that were released as far back as 2015 (i.e., prior to the release of Nintendo Switch in 2017).”

Just because the Switch is newer than the Xbox One doesn’t mean that Nintendo’s console is more powerful. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, as we’ve seen multiple games that originally released on Xbox One get native Switch ports with lowered performance and resolution to get it running on the system.

It seems Microsoft is ready for Activision Blizzard to pursue the downgraded port option as well when it comes to releasing Call of Duty on Nintendo platforms.

“The Activision development team have a long history of optimizing game performance for available hardware capabilities,” the statement reads. “The Parties are confident that in addition to Warzone, CoD buy-to-play titles (e.g., CoD: Modern Warfare 2) can be optimised to run on the Nintendo Switch in a timely manner using standard techniques which have been used to bring games such as Apex Legends, DOOM Eternal, Fortnite and Crysis 3 to the Switch.”

In addition to the games listed in Microsoft’s report, Nintendo Switch has also seen ports of games like Skyrim, Wolfenstein 2, Dark Souls Remastered, and more. It seems Microsoft won’t take the cloud version approach on Nintendo platforms, as the company said the agreement means “Microsoft will develop and publish future native console versions of CoD titles for Nintendo platforms for at least 10 years.”

The report submitted to the UK’s CMA is the latest in Microsoft’s attempts to push its acquisition of Activision Blizzard through. The back-and-forth statements from Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, and Sony have been ongoing for more than a year now, with Sony’s latest argument saying Microsoft could intentionally sabotage the PlayStation version of Call of Duty.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Spoilers for The Last of Us HBO Episode 8 – When We Are In Need. Read our review of the episode here.

Troy Baker loves The Last of Us, and being such a vital part of the series there was no way he’d pass up getting involved with the hit HBO live-action adaptation. “I would be happy if I’d just been a clicker,” Baker tells IGN in a post-episode interview.

Well, Baker isn’t a Clicker in The Last of Us HBO series, he plays James, a member of David’s survivors in the penultimate episode of The Last of Us season one. “Neil and Craig came to me and said, “We have a role for you.” And Neil was like, “It’s James,”’ says Baker on how he first got involved with the HBO series.

“And I went, ‘Oh dude… who’s James?’ Like, ‘Oh, right, buddy boy, the guy with the hat.’”

Baker is one of the hardest working actors in video games, and despite playing characters like the Joker and Revolver Ocelot, no role is more linked to Baker than his turn as Joel in The Last of Us video game. Across two video games, and a special One Night Live stage production, Baker portrayed the post-apocalyptic survivor Joel. But he wasn’t fighting to get the role in the HBO show, he was looking to learn from someone new.

“The thing that I wanted more than anything was for whoever was going to play Joel to just show me something new about the role,” Baker tells IGN. “Was there something that I overlooked? Was there something that I missed? Was there something that I didn’t know?”

Luckily for Baker, HBO went with a choice he thinks is perfect. “The second that I found out that they cast Pedro, I was like, ‘Oh, well, we’re bulletproof now.’ Because obviously his pedigree as an actor is incontrovertible, but it’s also the fact that he has embraced this character with such loving arms. And I couldn’t imagine more careful hands for this character to be in.”

Baker embraces the changes The Last of Us HBO series is making, from casting to the story, because it expands the video game world he clearly loves. “we’re limited because we are telling the story of Joel from Joel’s perspective, or we’re telling the story of Ellie from Ellie’s perspective,” Baker observes. “And what the show allows us to do is be able to break away from those characters and spend time with a lot of the other characters that we glossed over in the game.”

One of those characters is Baker’s James who isn’t just “buddy boy,” but a wary survivor who might not be okay with what he’s doing. Throughout the episode, there are points where James seems clearly at odds with David, whether it’s about the way they’re surviving (spoilers: cannibalism) or the way David seems more obsessed with capturing Ellie than getting revenge for the murder of one of their own.

Baker says this is similar to another pair of characters who are newly introduced into The Last of Us universe, Perry and Kathleen from the Kansas City Quarantine Zone. “It calls back to the relationship that Jeffrey Pierce’s character, Perry, has with Kathleen, where there is a leader who has a right-hand person who is in some ways either sycophantically or sympathetically helping guide their decisions,” Baker says.

“James recognizes the evil that is inherent inside of David, but it’s better to be on the right-hand side of the devil than on the wrong side. And so, he’s very careful about playing his position, but he’s trying to also achieve his goal, which is, ‘Don’t let this girl in.’ And he uses pragmatism as his method. She’s just another mouth to feed.”

It was announced early on that Baker and his video game co-star Ashley Johnson, who voices Ellie in the games, were going to be part of the series, kicking off speculation on what roles they’d get. One early suggestion was that Baker would play David, but Baker said that decision would be too obvious.

“There was a lot of rumor and speculation that I was going to be playing David. I was like, ‘That would’ve just been too kitschy. That would’ve been too on the nose.” Furthermore, the decision to cast Scott Shepard is another example of something Baker loves about the show. It’s different.

“The thing that I love, that’s a departure from what Nolan did in the game by playing David, is that, again, this is a different representation of a character that people might be familiar with.”

Ultimately, Baker stresses that the show and the video game are two sides of the same coin and that both mediums help each other tell this story that has garnered so many fans each.

“I’ve told people, this is not a ‘either/or,’ an either play the game or watch the show. It’s a ‘yes, and.’ I’m excited for once people finish the series to either go back through and play the game again, or go back and play the game for the first time ever and participate in that conversation.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Eight years after Bloober Team formally became known as a horror game developer, the studio is preparing for another shift, though it’s admittedly a touch less radical. It wants its games to start competing with industry giants of horror and adjacent genres like Resident Evil, The Last of Us, and Hellblade, and it’s starting with the remake of Silent Hill 2.

Speaking to IGN at DICE Summit 2023, Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno says it wants to change the way it tells stories. He wants to move beyond games that lean on simple mechanics typically found in “walking simulator” games – a term that Babieno acknowledges still attracts undeserved derision from gaming audiences.

Instead, he wants Bloober to be making games with larger scopes and more complex and involved gameplay mechanics on the level of other giants in the horror genre. He wants Bloober to be known as the studio that defines the future of video game horror, especially as he observes more people turning to horror for catharsis amidst increasingly chaotic and terrifying real-world events.

“We still would like to make meaningful games, we still would like to keep our DNA to tell [stories] about things which are important to us,” he says. “However, not by environmental storytelling, but by full action, to have much more mass appeal. And I think that this is the reason why we have chosen Silent Hill.”

I ask Babieno if the studio’s remake of Silent Hill 2 means that Bloober will continue to carry forward the Silent Hill franchise on behalf of Konami with more titles in the future. He replies that Konami is interested in conversations with Bloober, and “I’m not going to say never,” but affirms Bloober is focused for now on Silent Hill 2 and its secret project with Private Division. What’s more, he makes a point to defend Konami a bit, noting that the publisher has been on the receiving end of plenty of audience ire in the years following incidents like Hideo Kojima’s controversial departure and related reports of a dehumanizing work culture, as well as an overall reduced number of releases in recent years, especially of its most beloved IP.

“Those people who are in charge of Konami Gaming right now, of course I can’t tell you all the details, but I believe that they do understand how gaming works,” Babieno says. “They came from companies which worked on many great projects, and I’m pretty sure that they are making great choices by choosing partners, by choosing projects…And I do understand that people are a little bit angry at Konami for the stuff which happened in the past, but I would like to say, give them the time, because they do know what they are doing.”

1-2-3-Bloober

With this shift in how it looks at horror, Babieno says Bloober Team is hoping to effectively launch a new “phase” in its studio life, of sorts. He calls it “Bloober 3.0,” and while he’s not throwing any launch parties or making any big announcements around it, he’s quietly hoping the effects will be visible as a significant shift in the way Bloober Team makes psychological horror games going forward.

Babieno explains this Bloober 3.0 idea first by going back to when he believes Bloober team first transitioned from “1.0” to “2.0”. He recalls that when the studio first started in 2008, it made “all possible mistakes.”

“I micromanaged at the beginning, I made a lot of mistakes by choice in projects,” he says. “And at the beginning we thought about our shareholders, and we tried to make them happy because they were investors in our company. We followed their needs.

“We awoke in 2014 when we launched Basement Crawl, which was the worst game on PlayStation for that time. And…it was the moment which changed us because we decided, if we would like to keep [making games], we need to focus on something that we will be part of, that we will feel we would like to give gamers.”

Which is how Bloober Team ended up pivoting hard back into the horror genre it had originally been born from, having previously been a part of a studio called Nibris that worked on a number of canceled Nintendo DS and Wii horror games. The studio considered changing its name to something “darker and more meaningful” along with its portfolio shift, but opted to keep the name Bloober Team in an effort to own its history and mistakes.

And there was a culture shift too, Babieno says, specifically in how he himself worked. Babieno says he made an effort to quit micromanaging projects or even being involved as a producer, and instead took on more of a top-level leadership role giving overall guidance, providing resources, and endeavoring to trust the experts on the teams. He’s happy with how it’s gone so far, noting that studio attrition is extremely low and the company is vehemently avoiding layoffs amid a surge in redundancies industry-wide.

Forever Independent

Bloober’s recent history has involved a number of different publishing and IP partners, which would seem to make it ripe for acquisition. But Babieno is adamant that while he has had a lot of conversations with potential partners, and while a dedicated horror studio is a desirable prospect, Bloober is not a studio interested in being acquired. He wants to remain independent, because he doesn’t want anyone else besides the members of Bloober Team defining what kinds of games the studio gets to make.

“If we will have someone who [acquires us], then perhaps one day they will make the decision, ‘Maybe we could put them on a [different] project,’ and I don’t want to. Those people who came to us from…other big studios in Poland and foreign countries, I think that they came because they would like to be part of the creative process. So my goal is to stay independent. We had a renewal of strategic options and we decided that as a company we would like to follow the path of independence.”

For Babieno, Bloober 3.0 is his vision of the long-term future. Focused on making psychological horror games conceived and crafted internally that get lots and lots of people talking and define the future of the genre. And most importantly, he wants to make games that cause players to think deeply about what they experienced long after they’ve set down the controller.

“Our idea is to make games which will make an impact on you, that you understand more not so much about our characters, not necessarily about the universe which we are creating, but about yourself,” he says. “Because those choices which we are offering in the game will allow you to understand better, ‘Am I [a certain kind of] person? Why did I make this choice and not the other? Is there something wrong with me?’ Those moral conflicts, which are in the best games, are not made by people more than once, maybe twice [in their real lives]. Usually never. But because we have the opportunity to check ourselves by playing games, we are able to understand ourselves and others better.”

The interviewee’s responses have been lightly edited for clarity.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.