Category: IGN

Xbox has confirmed that it will not be on the E3 2023 showfloor, but signaled support for E3’s digital week by confirming that it will be co-streaming the event when it kicks off on June 11.

In a new statement, an Xbox spokesperson told IGN, “We can’t wait to host our Xbox Games Showcase on June 11 and will share more details later. We also look forward to co-streaming our event as part of E3 Digital and will not be on the E3 showfloor.”

IGN first reported that Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo would not be formally taking part in E3 2023. Nintendo has since confirmed that it will be missing E3, while Xbox previously announced in January that it would be “returning to Los Angeles” for its own event. We have reached out to ReedPop for comment on Xbox’s statement.

Xbox’s confirmation was in response to a list of questions sent by IGN on whether it would be taking part in E3’s week of digital events, which was announced yesterday, while asking for more clarity on the nature of its physical event, which did not receive a response from Xbox. E3’s digital week will roughly align with Xbox’s showcase, and will feature streams by Guerilla Collective and other graoups.

Beyond that, participation from AAA exhibitors remains unclear. Yesterday’s announcement simply said, “Exhibitors from AAA companies to indie darlings and tech companies will be announced leading up to the expo.”

Behind the scenes, IGN is hearing that participation continues to be unsettled, and that many publishers are unclear on who will be taking part in the event. Ubisoft has been the clearest in expressing interest in participating in E3, saying that, “If E3 happens, we will be there and we will have a lot of things to show.”

Xbox, for its part, has continued to express support for E3, with CEO Phil Spencer calling it “one of the seminal moments of gaming.”

“Xbox is on the board of the ESA, and I think a successful and healthy ESA is critical to what we’re trying to go do. So we place our showcase, like we always have done, at a time where hopefully it’s convenient for press and even consumers that are going to the E3 event, and that’s what we’re trying to do now,” We will continue to work with ESA in terms of their plans. As I said, we’re on the board, and we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to help make the E3 successful.”

Xbox recently announced that Starfield will release September 6 on Xbox Series X|S and PC, and that it will be hosting a deep dive “Starfield Direct” will more info on June 11.

E3 2023’s physical event, its first since 2019, will be split between business days for professionals and “Gamer Days” for fans. It will take place from June 13 to June 16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Disclosure: Kat Bailey is a former ReedPop employee, having previously worked at USgamer from 2014 to 2020.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Sony is claiming it’s not happy with Microsoft’s latest Call of Duty offer, as the company said it would “irreparably” harm competition and innovation.

Earlier this week, reports filed from Sony and Microsoft to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority went public. From these documents, we learned that Microsoft is confident it can get Call of Duty running on Switch, and that Sony is worried Xbox will find ways to sabotage Call of Duty on PlayStation.

Also in these documents, however, were redacted details about Microsoft’s proposal to Sony to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for the next decade. In a new statement regarding these documents, Sony claimed that the 10-year deal in its current state would be bad for competition.

“Redacted versions of the observations filed by SIE and Microsoft on the CMA’s remedies notice were made public this week,” Sony wrote in a statement to GamesIndustry.biz. “Information regarding the terms of an offer made by Microsoft to provide future Call of Duty releases on PlayStation was redacted at the request of Microsoft. We believe their current offer will irreparably harm competition and innovation in the industry.”

In Sony’s filing to the UK CMA, the company wrote that it is “extremely sceptical that an agreement with Microsoft could be reached, much less monitored and enforced effectively.”

Some of Sony’s listed concerns included Microsoft raising the price of Call of Duty on PlayStation, lowering the quality of the PlayStation version, not investing in the multiplayer experience on PlayStation, or making Call of Duty available only on Game Pass.

This new statement from Sony is the latest entry in PlayStation’s ongoing opposition of Microsoft’s attempts to push its acquisition of Activision Blizzard through. The year-long battle has included Microsoft calling PlayStation too big to fail and comparing Sony to Blockbuster. Meanwhile, Sony has said Battlefield can’t keep up with Call of Duty and claimed that “Game Pass leads PlayStation Plus significantly.”

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.

The console versions of Ingame Studios’s Crime Boss: Rockay City will launch in June 2023. The PC version is still releasing on March 28.

In a recent financial report, Digital Bros said, “The personal computer version of Crime Boss will be exclusive on Epic Store only until June 2024, at least. The launch of the console version will follow in June 2023. Crime Boss was first showcased last December during The Game Awards.”

Since the game is a timed Epic Games Store exclusive, it won’t land on any other PC storefronts like Steam for at least a full year.

Digital Bros also explains that Crime Boss: Rockay City is one of the largest investments made by the company through an internal studio and is set up to receive additional content over the next few years to generate recurring revenue.

Crime Boss: Rockay City was first revealed at The Game Awards 2022 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. The game also features big stars in its cast of characters such as Chuck Norris, Danny Trejo, and Vanilla Ice.

In IGN’s Crime Boss: Rockay City preview, we said, “Unfortunately, the wacky, over-the-top presentation seems completely at odds with its gameplay systems, which appear to be playing it a bit more straight, and potentially biting off more than they can chew.”

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

The Day Before is an upcoming post-apocalyptic open world MMO in which players must contend with zombies and other survivors in equal measure.

It quickly grabbed the attention of those looking to fulfill their own Walking Dead or The Last of Us-esque fantasies and exploded to become Steam’s most wishlisted game, but excitement eventually turned to doubt for many fans after several delays and other controversies surrounding developer Fntastic.

Now with a release date of November 10, 2023, IGN has chronicled the ups and downs of The Day Before’s development as it gears up for its long anticipated launch.

Plain sailing.

On January 29, 2021, Fntastic announced The Day Before with a five minute trailer. It showed two players driving into a city and looting various cars and shops before getting into a firefight with another group, and then fleeing from a hoard of zombies that were attracted to the noise. The graphics were of a higher quality than many games released since, the gameplay was seamless, and the world was open, full, and completely interactive.

It gained the attention of the gaming community, who looked on hopefully at what appeared to be a mix of Ubisoft’s The Division and PlayStation blockbuster The Last of Us. And the next few months only gave fans more reason to get excited.

Fntastic co-founders Eduard and Aysen Gotovtsev appeared in a combat gameplay trailer in February to show off what they called “a real breakthrough for the MMO survival genre”. Adding to this idea, they told IGN at the time: “It’s no secret that [most survival MMO’s] are all built on the sandbox model, when you set goals for yourself and wander around the [deserted] world. In The Day Before, we reinvented everything from the in-game goals to the ways we approach the quality of the game mechanics.”

More and more game footage followed, with Fntastic releasing a quick look at vehicle gameplay in March and a hefty extended trailer in April. The latter increased the scope of The Day Before even more by showing off a completely new environment in the form of America’s great outdoors, with players exploring a lake, forests, and finally a creepy farm that all looked meticulously detailed. The Day Before blew up again, with the trailer being viewed more than one million times in a day.

The first release date.

Fntastic went quiet following this April gameplay video, not sharing much of the game beyond a few screenshots and concept images. Excitement began building again in October, however, as the developer shared The Day Before’s release date.

A calendar at the end of a new trailer joked the game wouldn’t be released until June 21, 2025, but slowly ticked down the years until Fntastic revealed The Day Before would launch on the same date in 2022, just eight months away at the time.

Fntastic made various other announcements, including that it was working on a completely new game called Propnight. IGN described it as a mix of Dead by Daylight and Prop Hunt, and without any complications at all, it launched just a few weeks later on November 30.

The Day Before once again slipped below the radar as Fntastic focused on pushing Propnight, but a brief trailer in January 2022 showed the game’s high end PC potential as it ran in 4K and with RTX turned on. It only reared its head again in May, one month before it was expected to launch, when Fntastic announced The Day Before’s first delay.

“Feeling and understanding the great responsibility that we face, with enormous gratitude in our hearts, we’re pleased to announce that The Day Before is switching to the new Unreal Engine 5 technology,” Fntastic said at the time.

“The transition to a more advanced and adapted open worlds engine will make the gameplay of The Day Before even more fantastic. In this regard, we inform you that the new release date of the game will be March 1st, 2023.”

Cracks begin to show.

It was seemingly the first time Fntastic hadn’t given fans exactly what they wanted. PC players upgrading their hardware in anticipation of the game’s release, which at this point was a measly six weeks away, had to wait another six months.

Despite cultivating a positively passionate fanbase over the course of a year and a half, this delay became the first of several incidents that caused some fans to become concerned over the state of the game, and of Fntastic itself.

Unlike its initial reveal, when Fntastic came out with a one-two punch of exciting news and gameplay clips, the opposite had now occurred. One month after the delay, the developer faced scrutiny after reports emerged surrounding its “volunteering culture”, meaning the use of unpaid workers.

Fntastic defended the practice, saying all of its employees, paid or not, were volunteers, because it “always [tries] to bring in proactive people with open hearts”. It categorized its workers in two camps: full-time volunteers and part-time volunteers. The former are regular, paid employees, while the latter are unpaid workers who contribute to game development. These unpaid workers can “get cool rewards, participation certificates, and free codes”.

It would be the last news on The Day Before for a while, with Fntastic only talking about Propnight throughout the rest of 2022. Having started its journey with such regular updates and gameplay showcases, Fntastic’s fans began raising concerns over just how quiet the developer had become.

Unhappy new year.

Outside of another minute-long gameplay trailer showing The Day Before running in 4K with RTX turned on, Fntastic had a rocky start to 2023 as a large portion of the game’s community seemingly turned on it altogether.

After sitting around the top of Steam’s most wishlisted games for almost two years, The Day Before’s Steam page was removed altogether following a trademark dispute. In a statement published to Twitter on January 25, the developer claimed that “Steam blocked [its] game page at the request of a private individual” who registered The Day Before trademark in the United States.

Saying it hadn’t been aware of the trademark issue until January 19, 2023, when it received the complaint, Fntastic said the dispute would be settled eventually but it would have to delay The Day Before as a result. This would push the game back to November 10, 2023: 17 months after it was originally meant to launch.

The situation soon unraveled further, as Fntastic admitted to IGN that the delay was planned even before the trademark dispute. “To be on the safe side, to ensure there are no more transfers, we, along with the publisher, chose November 10. That is a safe date, given the trademark dispute,” Eduard and Aysen Gotovtsev said.

“We’re very confident that this issue will be resolved since we have strong legal partners,” they added. “The extra time will allow us to better prepare for the release and make the overall improvements for the game. It will become even more polished, optimized, and content-filled.”

Fan revolt.

The trademark dispute, third delay, and conflicting messaging appeared to be just half the battle for Fntastic, as a large portion of The Day Before’s fanbase had seemingly turned on the developers.

The game’s Discord server and Reddit page erupted with complaints and concerns over the state of the game, with many saying they now believed it to be a scam and that Fntastic had been lying about progress.

“Of course this is a scam,” wrote TS-Slithers on Reddit. “The scam is that they produce gameplay video after gameplay video and build their YouTube channel until they have millions of followers, then they rug pull the game.”

Another user, TrueMyst, said they believed Fntastic had bitten off more than it could chew. “They realised how much work actually has to go into making a AAA-level title and they just can’t do it,” they wrote. “It’s not a scam, exactly. But it’s deceitful and quite frankly, really embarrassing.”

Fntastic itself replied to the chatter, maintaining that The Day Before is definitely real and will launch in November 2023. “The storm will calm down eventually, and time will put everything in its place. When the game comes out, people will finally see the truth,” it told IGN.

“We only believe in the final product. No matter what anyone says, you’ll see for yourself on November 10 this year. We hope that after the game’s success, we’ll give people faith that in this life, if you persevere toward a dream, it will come true, despite all the obstacles and doubts.”

Copycat accusations.

It was only a few days later on February 2, 2023, that more doubts were spawned in the community, however, when Fntastic released its first extended gameplay trailer since 2021. The ten minute video was seen by many as a hopeful return to form, with Fntastic finally showing off proper gameplay of The Day Before as it had in the early days and months following its reveal.

Certain scenes in the gameplay trailer looked familiar to some fans, however, and Reddit user PatFury lined up its opening shots with a Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War trailer from 2020. Starting at around 38 seconds in, the Call of Duty trailer has a shot looking down at people through bars, followed by a hooded soldier illuminated in red light, then a first person shot of someone walking through a dark room with another person in front of them, and then another shot of a soldier in red light.

The opening few seconds of The Day Before’s February 2023 gameplay video has a shot looking down at people through bars, followed by an armed person illuminated in red light, then a first person shot of someone walking through a dark room with another person in front of them, then another shot of someone in red light. The video then moves into other shots akin to what Fntastic has shown before and then quickly into brand new gameplay.

PatFury’s comparison also highlights comparable features between The Day Before and other games. These include its font’s similarities to The Last of Us, a screenshot similar to The Division, and more. Following these accusations, which were picked up by various media outlets and YouTube channels, Fntastic released a statement on Twitter about the dangers of disinformation.

“We all live in a time of disinformation and lack of fact-checking,” it said. “Anyone can say anything for views, and everyone will believe it. Disinformation needs to be dealt with as it can harm not only us but also other indies and small/medium studios. It also has a mental impact on the members of such teams.”

Upping communication.

Despite The Day Before’s Steam page and several of its YouTube videos having been taken down as a result of the trademark despite, Fntastic pledged to boost its communication efforts following the statement on disinformation.

Fans commenting on Twitter expressed to Fntastic their beliefs that issues of disinformation may not have occurred if the developer didn’t have long periods of not sharing updates on the game. As mentioned, Fntastic kicked off The Day Before’s marketing campaign by releasing four gameplay videos over four months, but didn’t release another for six months and then, outside of two minute-long clips, went quiet again for more than a year.

“We don’t have a marketing department at all. All our resources go to game development. But we’ll get better at communication,” Fntastic replied to one user. “We’ll improve communication and give more transparency,” it told another.

It followed up on this promise on February 12, 2023, by sharing an update (and subtly its opinion) on the trademark dispute. Fntastic presented what it called three facts.

“The so-called ‘owner’ of the rights to the title is the creator of the calendar app, which has nothing to do with the games category,” it said. “After we announced the game in 2021, he also wanted to take over the title and filed for trademarks ahead of us,” and finally: “He ambiguously offers to contact him to discuss something, but what?”

Fntastic finished: “We’ll fight. Power is in the truth.”

It then released a development vlog on February 16 showcasing how The Day Before had progressed from the beginning of its development in 2019 to its current state, and promised that more information on the game, its mechanics, world hub, base building, character customisation, quests, player interaction, and more would arrive in the coming months.

We don’t have a marketing department at all. All our resources go to game development. But we’ll get better at communications, thanks.

— Fntastic (@FntasticHQ) February 8, 2023

Trademark holder responds.

Following Fntastic’s tweet with “three facts” on the trademark dispute, the individual that filed the copyright ahead of Fntastic told Eurogamer on February 24 that they have no plans to give the name up and are “taking measures to protect trademark rights”.

TheDayBefore countdown calendar app, which is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store (where it has a 4.1/5 rating from 96,651 votes), was released in 2010. It has more than 40 million downloads and is used in many countries around the world according to the app developer.

“Since the trademark registration in Korea in 2015, we have held the right (registered in the name of The Day Before CEO Lee Sun-jae),” the app developer said. “Knowing that the game of the same name was produced, we are taking measures to protect our trademark rights.

“We currently hold trademark rights in Korea, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Vietnam, and the European Union.”

The app developer also commented that it wants to “solve the trademark problem as soon as possible and continue to protect the app so that users can use it without worrying”. With Fntastic also saying it is very confident it can resolve the trademark issue, however, it’s unclear which way the dispute will fall.

Fntastic didn’t respond to Eurogamer at the time and has yet to comment on the app developer’s statement.

What’s next for The Day Before?

Fntastic certainly has a lot on its plate between the trademark dispute, a disgruntled fanbase, the copycat accusations, and simply finishing The Day Before. Its development period has been full of ups and down so far, and with the app developer insistent on maintaining rights to The Day Before name, it will perhaps have even more to come.

That being said, Fntastic is confident that it will be proved right when The Day Before launches. “We only believe in the final product,” it told IGN in January. “No matter what anyone says, you’ll see for yourself on November 10 this year. We hope that after the game’s success, we’ll give people faith that in this life, if you persevere toward a dream, it will come true, despite all the obstacles and doubts.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Square Enix has conceded that sales of its action role-playing game Forespoken fell below its expectations following the title’s January 23 release on PlayStation 5 and PC earlier this year.

“Reviews of Forspoken, which we released on January 24, 2023, have been challenging,” said Square Enix’s president and representative director Yosuke Matsuda in a February financial results briefing detailing the fortunes of the past year.

“However, the game has also received positive feedback on its action features, including its parkour and combat capabilities, so it has yielded results that will lead to improvement of our development capabilities of other games in the future.”

Despite this positive note, Matsuda admitted that sales of the game had been “lacklustre”, and that there was “considerable downside risk to our FY2023/3 earnings”. The concession follows an announcement from earlier this month that Forspoken developer Luminous Productions – founded in 2018 – would be folded back into Square Enix effective on May 1.

“Luminous Productions Co. Ltd. is meanwhile equipped not only with AAA title development capabilities but also technical expertise in areas such as game engine development,” said Square Enix following the announcement. “Combining the two entities will further enhance the Group’s ability to develop HD games.”

Prior to being reabsorbed, the developer announced that it would use its remaining time working on a patch to improve the game’s overall performance, and developing the DLC In Tanta We Trust, which is “on track for release this summer”.

Summarising our 6/10 review, IGN said that “Forspoken’s flashy combat and parkour can be fun, but they aren’t enough to make its cliche story and barebones open world very interesting to explore”.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

Cardy, Dale, and Jesse are here to talk all things chainsaws and dinosaurs following new looks at Resident Evil 4 and Exoprimal. Excitement for The Super Mario Bros movie continues to grow as well as Cardy’s long-delayed appreciation for Death Stranding. It’s all building up to the building of three Frankenstein monster creations of horror movies, though, as some truly unwatchable films are pitched.

Got a game for us to play, or just want to tell us the weirdest thing you’ve eaten for breakfast? Drop us an email: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.

IGN UK Podcast 687: The Build-a-Horror Movie-Workshop

• IGN UK Podcast 686: Sons of the Final Fantasy
• IGN UK Podcast 685: You Kang Make Me Whole Again
• IGN UK Podcast 684: Horizon Call of the Weetabix
• IGN UK Podcast 683: Magical Castles and Talking Cats
• IGN UK Podcast 682: Creating the Next Best Video Game TV Show

This week’s reveal trailer for Mutant Mayhem has us extremely stoked for the next generation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the big screen, but more than anything, it just makes me want a new TMNT game. As much as we loved last summer’s throwback beat-em-up Shredder’s Revenge, this is one pop-culture franchise that desperately needs the triple-A game treatment. And no, adding Shredder to Call of Duty doesn’t count (nor does it make much sense to bring a guy made out of knives to a gunfight.) But you know what really stings? We just got an incredible AAA open-world co-op action game that captured all the fun of TMNT… it just happened to be centered around Batman characters: Gotham knights.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: four masked vigilantes take to the streets and wage war on crime using martial arts skills and gadgets. You’ve got the leader in blue, the tech expert in purple, the surly short-tempered heavy-hitter in red, and of course the youngest member of the team who offers some comic relief. They operate out of a cool hideout in the middle of the city where they train, park their extremely toyetic vehicles, play video games to unwind and receive guidance and/or scoldings from an elderly mentor who drinks a lot of tea. They fight a variety of animal-themed villains, but their biggest threat is a gang of ruthless assassins who operate from the shadows, and which has a high-ranking member whose namesake is something that can cut you.

All the above is true of both Gotham Knights and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Part of the reason I can’t unsee this is that the last big, triple-A non-LEGO, non-cartoony DC game was Injustice 2. In addition to a roster full of characters who appear in Gotham Knights, the Turtles also showed up as DLC. We’ve seen Raph and Leo taking on Harley and Mr. Freeze already, now let me take them bounding across skyscraper rooftops looking for gangs of street punks to beat up.

There are a variety of reasons why Gotham Knights is NOT a TMNT game, no matter how much I might want it to be. First and foremost, WB has full ownership of DC characters, while TMNT is a Nickelodeon property, and Nick is a subsidiary of Paramount Global, which is one of WB’s competitors. WB Discovery CEO David Zaslav has a historic dislike of talking animals that solve mysteries, so that could be a factor too. (Okay, not really, but he did shelve Scoob!: Holiday Haunt and I’m still sore about it.)

Also, WB Interactive has cracked the code to making solid Batman games. The sky-high expectations set by the Arkham series may have ultimately worked against Gotham Knights’ reception, but it’s also what paved the way for it in the first place. Either way, Ninja Turtles hasn’t had the same luck as Batman in the triple-A space, so the higher-ups at Paramount might not think pumping millions of dollars into game development is exactly, uh, paramount.

That said, between the massive success of Shredder’s Revenge and the possibility of Mutant Mayhem exerting some Turtle Power over the box office, maybe it’s just a matter of time before a big huge modern TMNT game comes out of the shadows.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll have to use my imagination. I can pretend that Professor Pyg is Bebop and Man Bat is Wingnut and Clayface is Muckman. And hey, maybe if I’m lucky, somebody will whip up some PC mods that mutate Gotham Knights into a TMNT game. After all, if someone made a mod where you can play through Spider-Man as IGN’s gotham knights review score, anything’s possible. Cowabunga!

Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2: MEGA, arrives today, bringing with it a host of map changes, new vehicles and traversal mechanics, an Eren Jaeger skin, and a whole lot more.

One of the biggest map changes is the introduction of the neon-lit urban playground of MEGA city. Beyond this seemingly cyberpunk-inspired cityscape, a range of new biomes have also been added, including Steamy Springs, Drift Ridge, Kenjutsu Crossing, and more besides.

Chapter 4 Season 2 also brings new traversal mechanics to the game. Players will be able to zip around MEGA city with the help of the omni-directional mobility gear (ODM) ripped straight from the anime Attack on Titan, which is not so coincidentally ramping up to an epic endgame that has been 10 years in the making.

Incoming… #FortniteMEGA pic.twitter.com/n8QBNv2Pcg

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) March 10, 2023

Beyond that, players will be able to jump on grind rails to get around quickly, or make use of the two-person Rogue bike or the Nitro Drifter four-seater sports car.

Season 2 also comes with a fresh Battle Pass, the purchase of which will immediately unlock an outfit for the “fine-tailored Renzo the Destroyer”, while the “streetwear savant” Thunder, and “The elegantly casual Highwire” will also be available with a Battle Pass purchase. Later on, players will also be able to gain access to the Eren Jaeger skin.

New Reality Augments are also being added in Chapter 4 Season 2, seven of which will be available immediately, including the Munitions Slide, Shotgun Recycle, and the Dignified Finish.

Check out the official Fortnite blog for a full list of the updates coming to Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2.

A few weeks ago, Devin Reimer was doing a bunch of game testing at VR developer Owlchemy Labs, when one of the developers asked him, in VR, if he would like a donut. He said he did. But instead of reaching out and taking it with his hand, the developer passed Reimer the donut and put it in his mouth. His character ate it.

It’s a simple gesture, one that any of us could do in the real world any time there are donuts around. But in VR, this sort of combination of simplicity and playfulness has been the successful brand of Owlchemy Labs for over 12 years. And it’s a legacy Reimer is deeply proud of as he steps down from the post of “CEOwl” to move into philanthropic work using climate tech to fight the ongoing global climate crisis, leaving his colleague Andrew Eiche as the new “CEOwl” in his stead.

Speaking to me at DICE, the two are ecstatic about the leaps and bounds Owlchemy and VR as a whole have been able to make over the years. Hand tracking technology, for instance, is progressing well, and is a major staple of Owlchemy’s plans for multiplayer play in its upcoming new, untitled VR game. Specifically, they tell me, they want to work on multiplayer play that’s collaborative, not competitive, because they believe it just works that much better in the VR space specifically.

“VR multiplayer in the current state, which is totally great and fine, is a lot like, I lay on my floor and shoot you with a big sniper rifle, or I’m flying around an arena throwing the ball,” Eiche explains. “But people haven’t conceptualized: we’re playing a duet on the piano, the equivalent to that, or we’re writing together on a whiteboard or we’re sculpting together. And we are experimenting with those things.”

Affording Chaos

But with experimentation comes a whole host of technical challenges. The physical space has to be believable not just with one person running around in it and interacting with objects, but multiple. Eiche calls it a “technical nightmare, but worth solving.”

“The things that make console games great are not the things that make VR games great,” he continues. “VR games just tend to work best when you get sand boxing and you get explorative as a core feature and not explorative in the ‘going through a Zelda world’ exploration. But explorative as in, I’m messing with the environment.”

Which is where hand tracking comes in. Eiche tells me that hand tracking is great technology for exploring interactions with worlds that controllers can’t accomplish. A controller can give you a button to pick up an object, and maybe do a single interaction with it, then get rid of it. But what a controller can’t do is what Eiche calls “affordances,” or secondary interactions. Extra stuff that a person might want to do with an object in a world that might be extraneous or even silly. Like clicking a pen.

“Spraying a spray bottle, squeezing a sponge, those are all things that controllers don’t do well because they’re so binary in their state,” he says. “Even with analog controls, it never feels right. But you can do a soft pickup with hand tracking and then squeeze. Eggs were the best. Because you pick up an egg. And then you’re like, ‘Ah, an egg.’ And you squeeze as hard as you can and it crushes and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I did that.’

“We used to say the water bottle on the table is the worst. If you have a water bottle on the table and you reach through it, that disappoints people. So then you pick it up and the next thing is, I should be able to uncap it and then I should be able to drink it. I should be able to pour it. I should be able to…affordances is what we talk about a lot.”

The pair tells me when they playtest, the only time they speak to the playtester is during those moments when the tester tries to do something with an object, nothing happens, and they momentarily look dismayed. Eiche will then ask them what they expected to happen in that moment, and write it down. Often, these are affordances they decide to add later.

But affordances also seem like an infinite rabbit hole of adding features, which seems like it could lead to scope creep quite easily. Eiche says that the team is quite adventuring internally, often supporting developers who preface sentences with “Okay, this is a really bad idea, but…” in whatever harebrained ideas they want to try out. But Eiche also keeps a pretty strict philosophy on cutting content.

“Once you’ve conceptualized the cut, so once you’ve thought about it and you’re like, ‘I think that if we had to cut this we could,’ it’s now your moral obligation to do that cut. Because once you’ve conceptualized it, you’ve already solved the hardest problem. So your game will be better if you just see that through…So developers are a little bit more gun shy to come up to me and be like, ‘I’ve thought of this cut.’ Because I’ll immediately be like, ‘Yes, do it now. Go cut.’ But I’ve never encountered a situation where somebody hasn’t walked through the steps and the game has not been better on the other side…We throw 90% of stuff away. And it’s just, that’s the nature of it.”

Hand tracking isn’t the only other VR tech that Eiche and Reimer are excited about. Face tracking is another big one, because of the level of emotional depth they hope it will allow players to express in virtual spaces, especially cooperatively. And Reimer was thrilled that Sony committed to putting a rumble in the head of its PSVR2 headset, in no small part due to a very specific interaction in Job Simulator.

“In the kitchen there’s a blender and if you turn on the blender and then you stick your face in it down to the blades, there’s haptics in the headsets and the headsets like this,” he holds his hands up to his head and vibrates for a moment. “And it cracks me up so much.”

Eiche adds: “Sony was the only group crazy enough to do it because every time we’d ask another headset manufacturer, they’re like, ‘Are you kidding me? We have trouble enough getting it on the head. Right? We’re not going to shake their face.’”

The Wrong MetaVRse

One technological concept that they’re a little less high on is the metaverse. Reimer likes the word, but says it’s been ruined.

“A lot of people think of the Metaverse as a space where we dump 10,000 people into the same location and they’re doing stuff together,” he says. “And I don’t think that’s going to work.”

Eiche chimes in: “Once a year we go to GDC I’m like, ‘Wow, this is what 10,000 people looks like. And then we’re like, I got to get the fuck out of here.”

Reimer notes that even in a space like a big conference, you don’t hang out with all 10,000 people. You find small groups of friends and spend time with them. That’s closer to what he thinks a “metaverse” might end up being successful at.

“I think they’re always solving the wrong problem,” Eiche continues. “You’re solving the tech problem. And it’s a content problem. And I read a tweet that I just love, which is, ‘It’s easier to create a pen and paper than it is to write Ulysses.’ And over and over again, each metaverse creates a pen and paper…So every time somebody talks about it and they’re like, ‘We’ll have so many users generate this content.’ It’s like you’re making the pen and paper again and hoping that some genius writer shows up and creates the world that you wanted in there. And I mean, Roblox existed for, what, 15 years before it became popular? Anyone thinking about embarking in the Metaverse should look at that and go, holy shit, we have a content problem, not a tech problem.”

Eiche does believe that VR is a likely component of a metaverse idea, and in fact is already a part of it, because it’s already part of an online society. But he doesn’t want VR to be “put in a box.”

“VR can do a lot more than just this thing that you’re trying to shove it into because you read a lot of Neil Stephenson and you think it’s super cool. And it is super cool…But those worlds were also dystopias, right? Ready Player One, they lived in stacks of trailers and everybody went to the Oasis to hide from reality. And then you see people get on stage, they go, we’re building the oasis. And it’s like, are you building both sides of it? Because I don’t like that.”

As Reimer departs, he’s happy with what he’s built and the space he’s helped carve out for Owlchemy in the VR market, especially given that they started at a time when many questioned if VR was about to die for good. Now, there’s no question VR is here to stay, and it’s on Eiche to think about Owlchemy’s place in defining its future. He wants to get the VR industry to move toward the vision Owlchemy has of VR spaces as instinctive, inventive playgrounds that aren’t dependent on current ideas of what a video game should be.

Eiche explains that when games are dependent on controllers, they tend to gravitate toward specific kinds of verbs in their gameplay: shoot, throw, things that are easily mapped to buttons. But with VR, you can bypass all that and conceivably remove most limitations from what a person could do in a virtual space. Why, then, would the VR industry need to keep making video games like the console industry? Why spend investment money on trying to translate another AAA shooter into VR when there are so many other possibilities?

“I think it would be a failure of VR if Job Simulator is still [one of the top VR games] in five years,” Eiche says. “It’s like Wii Sports, right? You need to get past that. We need the industry to move on. Financially we’d love it if we’re in the top 10 forever. But is that healthy for the industry?”

Reimer adds: “Any individual studio, including Owlchemy, is only successful if other studios are also making awesome stuff.”

Rebekah Valentine is a reporter at IGN.

With the highly anticipated remake for Resident Evil 4 releasing in a few weeks, Capcom has shed a new trailer for the upcoming title, including when the demo will be available.

Announced today during the Capcom Spotlight event, the “Chainsaw Demo” is available starting today and will allow players to play an early portion of the game where Leon enters the village. The demo will have no time limit and is available on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, and Steam.

Ahead of the event, the developer released a new teaser website for Resident Evil 4 Remake, which contains riddles, puzzles, and a ton of backstory for the game.

Resident Evil 4 Remake will launch on March 24 for PC, PS5, PS4, and Xbox Series X/S. A free VR mode for PS VR2 is also in development. For more information, including changes coming to Resident Evil 4 Remake, check out our full interview with director Yasuhiro Ampo and Capcom producer Yoshiaki Harabayashi and our separate breakout, where the developers explain the hurdles they faced while trying to recreate the iconic chainsaw controller.

Resident Evil 4 Remake’s Chainsaw Demo was one of a handful of announcements unveiled at Capcom’s Spotlight event. Check out our everything announced post for a roundup of all the latest news from Capcom’s upcoming projects.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.