GAMING NEWS PART DEUX

Some sad news in the world of gaming especially for the UK gaming scene as Microsoft have canceled Fable Legends and plan to close Lionhead which was one of MS game studios oldest first party teams.

I was a big fan of the first Fable on the OG Xbox, the only bright side is I've scene one of the high ups at Guerrilla Cambridge send Lionhead a tweet saying they've got vacancies, that members of the studio may find work.

Sad to hear of anyone losing their job. Hopefully, like you say, the team find work quickly. I'm sure Nintendo could do with a few more HD artists...

Seems it wasn't just Lionhead who was up to the chopping block as Denmark's Press Play Studios (Kalimba fame) have also been closed by Microsoft.

With these two closing MS now have in the form of first and second party

343 - Halo
Turn 10 - Forza Motorsport
RARE - Sea of Thieves, Lots of classics IP's
Mojang -  Minecraft which is Multiformat  
Coalition -Gears of War
BigPark - Kinect games
Undead Labs - State of Decay
Remedy - Quantum Break
Iron Galaxy - Killer Instinct
Vanguard Games - Halo: Spartan Assault
SkyBox Labs - Age of Empires
Frontier Developments - Elite Dangerous
Playground Games - Forza Horizon
Ruffian Games - Crackdown 2  
ReAgent Games - Crackdown 3

Seems this closer of Lionhead came out of nowhere


Also got this from GR
Now, while it probably wasn't a surprise for Xbox boss Phil Spencer, he was clearly not giving anything away at last week's Xbox Spring Showcase when we asked how Fable Legends was going, and if we'd ever see another numbered Fable?

His answer didn't suggest a dead game walking: "I think we could do many things with Fable. I think the world of Albion and the hero-based nature of that game could show up in many different spaces," was his reply. Although, yes, that is an oddly deflective answer as he talks about 'showing up in different spaces' and dodges saying how it's actually going.

He continues to say, "it's been in beta for a while, and we're watching the engagement numbers. The thing around Legends that I'm committed to is I want to make sure its release matches the expectations in terms of quality that our customers deserve. So it's not about releasing something because it's on a poster, because there was a date posted somewhere." Or, as it turns out, releasing it all.

For the studio itself, Lionhead, Phil stated that "the team's really committed to what they're doing with Fable right now," and referenced a "healthy turnover at the studio" as a reason why they couldn't do "a big single player RPG-driven thing like the Fable of old," because "that studio isn't that same studio," adding, "they've really crafted themselves around Fable Legends."

Gutted about Press Play, they were a brilliant studio. Kalimba is one of my fave titles on the One

Seems MS have also closed

BigPark - a Canadian developer responsible for Kinect Games
[Fun]tion studios - a 'medium size incubation team' working on Kinect and, more recently, Hololens stuff.
Good Science - another Kinect studio
Leap Experience Pioneers - also known as LXP, another studio working on Kinect
SOTA - otherwise known as State Of The Art with no known projects

These may have all likely made into one Hololens team from what is going around the net, even so there must be some people who may lose there jobs because of closures and reshuffles on what seems a large scale.

Let's hope they've been amalgamated, as opposed to deemed surplus to requirement, because there's a lot of "Kinect" in that list. And my thoughts whenever that comes up in a studio's job list is "did they choose to work on a Kinect project, or were they chosen?" There's a worrying trend among multi-armed publishers to move dev. teams onto clearly losing projects, and then destroying them for failing to perform miracles.

Anybody who played and loved the Hotel Dusk games on the DS (like m'self) should be excited to read this.

Oooooooh very exciting! I've got Hotel Dusk and Last Window waiting to be played, just waiting for the right quiet, melancholy evening.

Ooh! I've not played Last Window, but I'd love to jump into Kyle Hyde's world again.

Microsoft will be opening up the Xbox One to cross-network play with the first game being Rocket League meaning Xbox One owners will be able to play with PC gamers and open-invitation to other platforms.

So we could very well be looking at some point where we could all be playing the same game on different systems, of course will other platforms want to do it if the question.

At the moment you got the game Dreii: that will connect players across PS4, Vita, PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Wii U. I've got no idea how it does, could just be leaderboards. So from that you'd think Sony & Nintendo are open to cross-network but Pure Chess which does allow cross-network doesn't even between PlayStation systems but does on Nintendo.

The only other news from this is likes of FFXIV which hasn't come to Xbox One due to MS stubbornness about cross-network play, but it may now come to the system.

So apparently this alison rapp person was fired from the bin N for nudes or whatever and everyone is kicking up a stink over it assuming gender warfare like usual. Methinks I'll be sticking here for a couple of days till this blows over. Only mentioning it because apparently like gamergate everyone else seems to know who this is while I remained blissfully unaware until the name cropped up a while back and it therefore might constitute news for some.

Nudes? From what I can find she had two jobs, which is in contradiction with most office's policy. She says it's not in conflict with Nintendo's though.

And I reckon I've looked at enough on that subject! I agree that it sounds like one to steer well clear of.

Lot's of things about it, was it Gamergate or was it this second job which I hear was sort of nudes with maybe gaming products involved from I taking away from a few tweets including one from PlayAsia.

I've RT stuff and seen lot's about it, that I could do talk about but maybe better not to but a little disappointing from Nintendo either way from getting rid of fan favorite.

She was fired for having a "secondary job not in keeping with Nintendo's policies."

They don't have a policy against moonlighting in and of itself.

She was the subject of months of abuse and hatred from #MisogynyGate, for the crimes of being a woman and working in Nintendo's marketing department and translation team. Ironically, the same people who hated her for "censoring" games attacked her by referring to an essay she wrote in college about Japanese hentai not being all that bad because it isn't real children. (Let's not go into whether she was right or wrong in this issue, but also let's remember that you can't really judge anyone by the idiotic opinions they had at that age.)

As part of these attacks, her extra-curricular activities may or may not have been deliberately exposed to her employers. Nintendo denies that her termination is related to the abuse, though it seems a bit fishy.

These are just the facts, I'm not saying any more than this. The questions which should each ask ourselves:

1) Was her termination a result of deliberate doxxing and should Nintendo have done and be doing more to support her from the start?

2) Is it wrong for a pretty lady to sell pictures of herself to men who are willing to pay, and if she's doing it on her own time through secure, anonymous channels, is it any business of anyone else?

The whole thing is really concerning from whichever angle you look at it. The toxicity surrounding this poor woman is so intense it makes me quiver. I hope she finds a new role soon and that the #GamerHate dogs are called off soon.

Oh, look, a flying Ganon...

...yeah, it's as messy as I thought, and I really didn't want to know any more. Then Drunka comes and empties Pandora's Box all up in this thread!

Sad times. If Ninty were going to give her a PR role in the first place they should have protected her a bit better at that point.

I just think there's more to this than we'll know properly. I can't imagine Nintendo of America would fire an employee based on outside sources, 5 minutes' worth of research would point towards a vested interest.
Nintendo themselves are trying to - in a Nintendo-y way - promote gaming being for everyone (even the female everyone) - I remember thinking that when I saw this interview with Risa Tabata and Aya Kyogoku, which is indirectly saying "hey, look, women work in the game industry, and that's not actually a big deal".

Anyway, I laid awake last night thinking about this. I realise, like many of the world's problems, that it's too complicated for me to resolve. I'm full of curry and beer today, so no such problem should exist tonight.

Oh God. There's a follow-up that I'm intentionally not linking to, and NL has enabled comments. Ohgodohgod.

I seen, it's a interesting topic and it is interesting to see how different people have taken the news and views on it all.

Even if some of it is Ohgodohgod, but whatever we say and what our opinion is on it nothing is going to change what's happened.

masofdas wrote:

whatever we say and what our opinion is on it nothing is going to change what's happened.  

That is very true indeed. This is why I've become one of those people who turns off the News now, in the hope of blissful ignorance.

As a kid, I was never scared of horror movies or violent movies, but I didn't like being in the room while the news was on. Our world is so utterly fucked.

Jimbob wrote:

I just think there's more to this than we'll know properly.

or not lol

Still trying to stay clear of this but this whole affair is turning in to a bit of a comedy routine now.  Well, at least we know why Nintendo fired her!

Hmm see I saw those and other pictures (I was doing research) the other day and from what I could gather from the research and her tweets etc.

Was that she was one of this cam girl types and you could buy naughty pictures of her, if you wished.

Drunka even says something about it in a post of his. Now if these articles which seem to all be from the same source are true is a whole other ball game also it says escort and not all give a good time also I've got no issue with that and really it should be legalised in my opinion .

The funny thing is I saw her tweet a RT from someone saying they would pay good money for a good time and she put something like LMAO but it may very well be true.

But still did gamergate lot need to snop around of someone's personal life just because she's a girl and they didn't like her for censorship that she didn't even do.

Maybe there snopping brought all this to attention to Nintendo, who knows but seen she was offered a job in already that she be back on her feet at somepoint.

If this is the case, there's an argument that Nintendo may have been correct to fire her (I'm not going to get into a discussions about the ethics of sex work).
That decision doesn't exist in a vacuum, though. They were still in the wrong when they utterly failed to support an employee who was being harassed.

That said, I'm typing this on a laptop made with conflict minerals, probably in a sweatshop employing child labourers, produced by a company that pays employees peanuts while the top level management get rich and avoid taxes. Nintendo is a big company, which is inherently evil. It is important to be aware of and discuss this, but also to separate in your mind the company and the artists producing the products. I refer you to my earlier statement:

Drunkalilly wrote:

Our world is so utterly fucked.

I remember Axis posting something about Nintendo years ago on how they were paying peanuts for people to make the systems or something like that.

Like you say all big companies are like it and the world is utterly fucked as how you put it.

I've added a bit to my first post in response to Athruns post, I reckon your views on sex work is similar to mine Drunka, if you do want to talk about it.