Sunday is dedicated to the first lie-in of the month. No traveling to visit family, no waking up in unfamiliar beds and, best of all, no having to wait for guests to get up before you can start breakfast. I will sleep soundly in my own mattress before grabbing a plate of toast and scrambled eggs at whatever time I see fit.
Once everything is settled, I’ll go back to bed with a new cup of coffee and read the best writing of the week at my leisure.
What is this? Do you want me to share? GOOD. You can read them when I’m finished.
Papers, Please is a game born from developer Lucas Pope’s time spent in immigration lines during his travels in Asia and the United States. Every interaction with a border agent becomes an exercise in defining you, verifying you, and proving that your existence is recognized. It’s an experience many of us can relate to, but in an essay for Deleted Saves, Micaela Deitz finds new poignancy in the game.
As a trans-American without proper documentation, I danced to the tune of a government that wanted to keep me moving – uncertain and afraid – until I died. They controlled the tempo, the rhythm, the melody, the duration of the song: I could rest under their orders. I could only hope that the woman behind the DMV desk, the de jure maestro, wasn’t transphobic or feeling crushed by the rules and regulations of the bureaucracy. I handed over my documents, passport included, with trembling hands. “The passport and the license have different genders, but the license is the real one,” I stammered.
She nodded but didn’t seem to hear. She looked at the documents, my words spinning through her brain. I saw them click, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Are they different?” » It was a statement that turned into a question.
*Holds up a soft piece of paper* Well, this East a sorry excuse for a post, isn’t it. Someone called *looks closely* at Graham, er, Smith, writing for *reports greasy, shoddy paper* Jonk? Played Gunman Contracts, a new VR game that falls on all the weaknesses of so many other VR games.
John Wick never died because he couldn’t access the gun on his belt because his belt was hanging on the ground while he was crouching. Neither does Jack Reacher. Jack Reacher never died because his reality shifted to a living room because his head got too close to an Ikea Strandmon ottoman. Jim Wicker never died because when he tried to remove an empty cartridge from a gun with his offhand hand, that hand kept slamming on the grip with the biting magnetism of a Switch 2 Joy-Con.
I felt all of the above frustration and more in an hour of Gunman Contracts – and I still don’t think the game is bad. He’s not optimized and his ragdoll physics are a bit light, but these are minor complaints. When you achieve a brief moment of synchronicity with him as software, you glimpse the kind of experience he wants you to have when you shoot a goon in the head, blow up a second by firing a gas canister, then grab your knife – on purpose this time! – and throws it on the chest of a third. I’m John Woo.
Ah, that’s better *slaps paper against knee to demonstrate structural integrity*. Connor Makar of Eurogamer was talk to The Coalition developers on their prospects after the release of E-Day. As a first-party Xbox studio working on a first-party game in a series that could potentially be called the console’s flagship, the team understandably expects to be fired upon launch. This is what Xbox is doing now. An additional insult to the developers is that it is unclear whether they will receive their bonuses if they are fired immediately after E-Day’s release.
The existence of this bonus system in itself is not irregular; Metacritic bonuses tied to a game’s critical reception have been an established practice in game development studios for years. Likewise, the stipulations involved are standard. An internal email, verified by Eurogamer, confirms the existence of this bonus and its relatively typical nature.
However, given the threat of ongoing Xbox discounts, one aspect of this Metacritic bonus has become concerning. In order to be eligible for the bonus, developers must be full-time employees at the time of payment. Studio management has communicated to The Coalition developers that this payment date “should be near the end of October”, as indicated by a source.
As a result, it’s unclear to developers still at the studio and who recently left the studio whether those like Juan Vaca, who were recently laid off by Xbox and are therefore no longer employed at The Coalition – but who will technically still be on the payroll when it comes time to pay at the end of October – will receive this bonus if the game meets its goals. Eurogamer understands that despite concerns, those recently affected, like Vaca, will still receive their bonuses if targets are met.
What remains uncertain, however – and this is crucial for The Coalition developers today – is the question of what will happen to the bonuses of current staff if they are laid off immediately after the release of Gears of War: E-Day, as some now fear. For now, it is still unclear whether these developers will receive their Metacritic bonus.
Last month saw a series of layoffs across sports media. One of the main reasons for these layoffs is Google’s continued push to create AI previews, which remove work from websites and stick it at the top of search results, thereby depriving them of the revenue they would have earned from visitors. Sites that have relied heavily on Google as their primary traffic source suffer the most. Many of the writers currently fired from these sites will have been told in previous years by the infinitely wise businessmen who own the sites that they needed to optimize their work for Google (optimizations which turned out to make it easier for Google to harvest their work). So it was with a fascination for the gallows that I read Malin Hay’s essay for the LRB on Hollywood flopsso many of which were the result of a leader chasing a fad.
Of course, no producer wants sixty crew members hospitalized, just like no studio wants to finance a film that makes no money. Robey points out that the instinct to hoard money is sometimes counterproductive: “before their downfall”, films that failed were “often wrongly imagined as sure things, by a behind-the-scenes calculation derived from everything the box office is supposed to teach us”. His decision to order the chapters chronologically gives a sense of the fashions that came and went in Hollywood over the course of the century. In the silent film era, audiences favored grand historical epics and tearjerkers, leading to fiascos such as Queen Kelly, in which Gloria Swanson plays a convent schoolgirl seduced and disgraced by a Teutonic prince. The film was scuttled because of the “provocative overspending” of the director, Erich von Stroheim, who “dwelled and dwelled on the smallest details,” in Swanson’s words, but failed to notice that talkies had arrived. Swanson footed the bill and the film was never released commercially in the United States.
Earlier this week, Mark shared the work of a local artist who writes messages on the walls of underground passages not far from his home. It’s all low-stakes gossip, from ‘Rita Ora has the Lidl Plus app’ to ‘Anneka Rice builds forts with B&M cushions’. GOOD, Radge Magazine managed to track down the artist for an interview:
RADGE: What made you start spray-painting British B-listers in dire straits on the sides of buildings?
A: With all due respect, I’m from the area and West Denton isn’t exactly ruined by it; on the contrary, it improves it (stop your nonsense, you know it’s true). Really, we’ve been at a loss ever since Vanessa Feltz’s show was canceled by Channel 5. We used to spend our time wreaking havoc during her phone-in segments until, once again, the press got wind of it and they pulled the plug, it’s just a bit of fun!
There’s something so nice about reading about the local Facebook group, which gets up in arms about it and plays along like some sort of neurodivergent Batman with a sordid secret. Responding to a busy person with “What possessed them to write that? I have no idea, and it certainly wouldn’t bring anyone any closer; it was… I can’t explain it; maybe you’d be better off asking someone else, but I just think it was absolutely ridiculous” is such a rush! Basically, it’s a bit of fun, isn’t it? Brightens people’s day on their cruel commute to work. That being said, I’m not sure if Annie Lennox gets a boiled egg in her meal plan, but good luck if she does; I hope she makes a few bobs and does a good job! And like I said, the places themselves aren’t in ruins, they’re filthy, they stink.
In a profile for The Guardian last month, Jason Okundaye interviews musician Michael Kiwanuka. Little had been heard from the artist since he pulled out of a festival in July last year. In the article, Kiwanuka revealed that he suffered a stroke and was still recovering. So, for music this week, here’s the RAK Studios session of Love & Hate:
