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Matt Morgans

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Posts posted by Matt Morgans

  1. Hi everyone, episode 17 of the VGR Weekly Recap is now available on YouTube!

    This week, we discuss Death Stranding, rumours that Call of Duty 2020 could be a Black Ops reboot, and a new plan among publishers to reveal lootbox drop rates (along with its potential flaws), and even more! As always, if you have any questions or feedback, let us know in the comments!

     

  2. In lieu of a podcast this week, Jacob and I are recording and releasing a recap video including our Top 3 picks for most exciting announcements for all five of the major E3 conferences. The first is for Microsoft, and you can check it out below - the rest will be coming very soon! What do you think of our picks for Top 3? Would you have picked differently? Let us know in the comments!

     

  3. 1 hour ago, killamch89 said:

    I agree to some extent with your point. However, there is also Elder Scrolls blade - a mobile game packed with microtransactions as well as the creation club which constantly breaks the regular Skyrim Special Edition every time it is updated just so that Bethesda can sell mods. There is also the merchandise such as the canvas bag and vault suit which costs hundreds of dollars. The part that concerns me is the fact that Todd Howard (CEO of Bethesda) admitted to releasing an unfinished game (Fallout 76) despite it not being in a playable condition and keeps trying to pass off Fallout 76 and the Elder Scrolls blade as huge successes. Todd also proceeded to defend the fact that they went back on their promise of cosmetic-only microtransactions in Fallout 76 and that is absolutely scummy behavior.

    Just to address some points there:

    - Merchandising is a very different thing to in-game microtransactions (not to mention, likely handled by a totally different department at Bethesda), so that doesn't concern me at all looking to Elder Scrolls 6. Bethesda totally bungling their Fallout 76 merchandising didn't actually make the game itself any better or worse or affect its development.

    - I agree that Creation Club needs something of a redesign, but again, I'm not concerned about that at all looking ahead to Elder Scrolls 6. Mods are totally optional, and not official content.

    - While Fallout 76 was definitely not a huge success, Blades arguably was - even if players are unhappy, the game got over a million downloads and made over $500,000 in its first week alone. (https://www.vgr.com/elder-scrolls-blades-million-downloads-first-week/). That's a huge success by any metric. Whether they can sustain that success is another matter, but I suspect that they probably will - they've already made several changes based on player feedback.

    - Finally, I personally have no qualms with the Fallout 76 repair kits, and I agree with Bethesda that they don't constitute pay-to-win - here's an analysis of why (https://www.vgr.com/bethesda-pay-to-win-criticism-fallout-76-repair-kits/). I didn't see any widespread criticism of repair kits from people who were actually active players of the game, only from people on social media who jumped to conclusions due to misleading headlines. In fact, Bethesda promised to remove them if the kits were found to provide a tangible advantage.

  4. 3 hours ago, killamch89 said:

    For all we know it could be taking place behind a Paywall! (knowing how Bethesda is, they'll try to squeeze a lot of microtransactions into it which is quite sad).

    To be fair to Bethesda, the studio really isn't known for microtransactions. In fact, it's really only Fallout 76 and their mobile titles which have had microtransactions at all - prior to that, they had none. I don't think the mobile titles represent any sort of see change, that's pretty much to be expected from a mobile game, and I think the studio saw a hefty backlash to them in Fallout 76. Moreover, I think the biggest reason why they're in that game specifically is because it's an online multiplayer game.

    I'd be quite surprised to see them put microtransactions into a proper single-player title, especially since recent big games like God of War have shown they really aren't necessary for such games. Even if they did, I expect they'd be fairly minimal, and likely as a trade-off to paid DLC, as we saw with Fallout 76 - fund DLC development through microtransaction sales. That's not such a bad business model.

  5. Hi everyone,

    Apologies for the delay this week, we had a software issue that delayed the podcast release to earlier today. Nonetheless, ep.9 of the podcast is now up, and this week Jacob and I discuss Death Stranding, Xbox Game Pass coming to PC, the issues with defining "gaming disorder," and more! As always, feel free to ask any questions you have or offer any feedback you think of!

     

  6. Thanks! With E3 on the horizon, we have a lot of interviews in the works, and a lot are with studios who are happy to provide us with review or early access codes. So, we had the idea to record gameplay videos which we could embed in the interview articles. PixARK is the first of these!

  7. Hi everyone,

    Jacob and I recorded a gameplay video in PixARK which went up earlier today on VGR's YouTube channel - I'll be interviewing the developers soon, and they were kind enough to provide codes for the game. If you're interested, please do check it out! Plus, we're working on a few other videos this weekend, so keep an eye on the channel early next week for more Three Kingdoms content!

    (If you're wondering about the title of this video, I recommend 27:40 - 29:15...)

     

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