A List of News That You Should Be Aware Of
The most notable news in the past seven days is as follows. We'll keep looking hour by hour, to find the most exciting content for you.
The Sims creator Will Wright is Making a Blockchain Game.
Wright's Gallium Studios are developing Voxverse in collaboration with Gala Games, which is also developing an NFT game with Peter Molyneux.
Will Wright, the acclaimed designer of SimCity, The Sims, and Raid on Bungeling Bay, hasn't been heard from in a long time, recently announced what he's working on these days, which is a blockchain game called Voxverse. However, Voxverse is a novel concept. Gallium Studios, a developer, co-founded by Wright and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego co-creator Lauren Elliott, is working on this game. Gallium is also working on an AI simulation game for smartphones called Proxi, but it has been around for a while—we first heard about it five years ago.
"Almost everything in this world is going to be constructed by the players," Wright said in a video introducing the game. "We'll have straightforward tools for the players to construct buildings, objects, vehicles, etc. There'll be a whole economy, resources you can mine, plots you can own, plus a social side of the game where you build a social network [with] the other Voxes you meet. We'll allow people to create a business, employ other Voxes, or work in a job. One of the interesting things here is that even when you're offline, your Vox will still be online as an NPC, so when I'm offline, my Vox can still be working at a job and earning me money."
Ownership and economics are undoubtedly crucial to the experience. Still, Wright told Axios(opens in new tab) that he's "far more interested in recruiting a million free-to-play people than, you know, 10,000 rich whales, although those rich whales may be useful." (In free-to-play parlance, "whales" are gamers who spend a lot of money on a game.)
Wright stated he did not want to be "in the business of selling NFTs." Voxverse is being created in collaboration with Gala Games, which distributes "Vox" NFTs based on licensed properties and manages other blockchain-based games, including Peter Molyneux's NFT Project Legacy. Voxes will be included as characters in Voxverse, as well as "a location for other games to live," with portals to other Gala games that will be compatible with your Vox NFTs.
"I don't care how you do it," he stated flatly. "I want safe transactions for content providers."
Downplaying the significance of NFTs in the Voxverse while emphasizing the necessity for "safe transactions" are fundamentally contradictory viewpoints. Although Wright may have some fascinating ideas for a metaverse, much of what he's saying here seems like The Sims with a real-world 9-to-5 grind.
Steam hits a new record by having 30 million users online simultaneously.
Steam has smashed its previous records, with 30,012,957 people. That is about the population of Ghana, the world's 48th most populated country. Steam has been increasing for a long time but has increased significantly since 2020 when Covid lockdowns skyrocketed numbers in large waves. While it's hard to know without complete research, some people's gaming addictions have lasted considerably longer than predicted.
So, you are correct in your interest in games and gamers; this trend will continue for a long time.
Konami Announces Bloober Team's Silent Hill 2 Remake.
Konami revealed the remake of Silent Hill 2, the most renowned game in the series and one of the finest horror games ever produced. Still, they mistakenly published 35 minutes of Silent Hill Transmission material before the news could spread.
(You can see it in the above video.) Bloober Team, the Polish company behind The Medium, Blair Witch, and Layers of Fear, will recreate the thriller, which will involve concept designer Masahiro Ito and sound designer/composer Akira Yamaoka. Bloober Team collaborated with Yamaoka on The Medium, a Silent Hill-inspired game dubbed "one of the finest third-person horror games."
Silent Hill 2 Remake will be restricted to PlayStation for the first year, but according to the teaser, it will "also come to PC," but no release date has been mentioned. The Silent Hill 2 teaser featured various scenes from the first game in better quality and redesigned form. However, we also observed James strolling from behind, implying a current third-person view rather than the original game's fixed camera perspective. Bloober Team's creative director and principal designer, Mateusz Lenart, confirmed this in a message on the PlayStation Blog:
"The use of an over-the-shoulder camera is one of the new components shown in the teaser. We hope this modification will draw players further into the game, making them feel like they're a part of this surreal universe, and provide a more visceral experience in every way."
While Bloober Team's last game, The Medium, had a fixed camera, it's no surprise that the Silent Hill 2 remake takes a Resident Evil 2 remake-style perspective. Of course, that isn't the only difference. "One alteration frequently leads to another," explains Lenart:
"We're rewriting the fighting system and some set pieces, among other things, with a fresh viewpoint. We can discover new methods to keep the gamer on their toes now that you can see what James sees."
The Resident Evil 4 Remake Will Last Just As Long As The Original (Almost)
When Capcom rebuilt Resident Evil 2 in 2019, everyone liked it, but the Resident Evil 3 Remake, released in 2020, was not as well received. Many gamers grumbled about how short and linear it was compared to RE2 Remake, even observing that some aspects of the PS1 game were deleted. Resident Evil 4 is a long game by current action standards, with a 1.5-times more extended plot than RE2. So, how will Capcom react this time? Hirabayashi responded to this question as follows:
"When we started producing RE4, we looked at what people thought was excellent [about the remakes of RE2 and RE3] and what they believed could be done better, and one of the demands we recognized is that RE4's gameplay should be virtually identical to the original game."
Hirabayashi's remark leaves many questions unanswered: Even if the overall duration remains relatively the same, the atmosphere of RE4 may experience considerable alterations. The Mercenaries mini-game and the "Separate Ways" feature, which allows you to play as Ada Wong after completing the primary campaign, may not be included in the remake. However, based on how similar the game's beginning is to the original RE4, we believe Capcom treats this game with great care. Aaaaaaand respect.
About Troy
Troy is trying to promote web3 games, NFTs, initiatives, and possibilities in the GameFi world to gamers of all ages, genders, and regions in Turkey as Turkey's first and largest Gaming DAO. Our objective is to present web3 to all gamers who have had fun and learned from conventional games, to bring them together with the most significant projects, and to make everything more straightforward and accessible by clearing the obstacles in their path. Thank you for stopping by.
