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UncategorizedCrafting In Games Feels Less Like A Chore Now
For many players, video games are a chance to escape from work. You hop into a game, sliding into a fantasy role as a dragon slayer or superhero, setting aside the mundanities of day-to-day labor.But as I hop from monster hunting to military sneaking missions, I’ve found that my personal play time is filling up…
By Heather Alexandra Published October 3, 2019 -
CultureApex Legends Players Are Trying An In-Game Recipe For Pork Chops In Their Own Kitchens
Apex Legends players have uncovered a new secret in the game’s lore: a family recipe for Mirage’s pork chops. One of the battle pass rewards for the third season of Apex Legends, which began yesterday, are new loading screens. Players have noticed that one of Mirage’s loading screens, which you can earn with the free…
By Gita Jackson Published October 3, 2019 -
CultureHigh School Redesigns Shouldn’t Remind You Of Taking Cover In Gears Of War
Play enough video games, and eventually you can tell when you’re entering an area where a digital shootout is about to happen. It’s kind of a joke at this point: see an abundance of chest-high walls for you to conveniently crouch behind? Walls that make zero architectural sense? An elevated vantage point or two? Odds…
By Joshua Rivera Published October 3, 2019 -
CultureWhy Online Game Launches Are Often A Mess
Just after 4 pm ET on Tuesday, Destiny 2 players began to see a warning message. A red line stretched across the bottom of their screens, and the text below it stated: “Attention: contacting Destiny 2 servers.” Minutes later, huge numbers of players got booted from the massively-multiplayer online sci-fi shooter. At Kotaku, we lost…
By Stephen Totilo Published October 3, 2019 -
CultureKotaku Game DiaryThe Bite-Sized Link’s Awakening Is The Perfect Follow-Up To Breath Of The Wild
How do you create a follow-up to Breath of the Wild? The Switch launch game was a massive rethinking of the Legend of Zelda series, a colossal non-linear open world in which players could create their own journey. As it turns out, the perfect way to follow that was with a Zelda that is as…
By Chris Kohler Published October 3, 2019 -
UncategorizedUnion Accuses Game Studio Of “Union-Busting”; Studio Denies Employee Was Disciplined For Activism
The UK’s Independent Workers Union accused Monument Valley and Assemble With Care studio Ustwo Games of “union-busting” in a statement today. Threatening legal action, the report alleges that senior Ustwo programmer Austin Kelmore—also the branch chair and founding member of the union’s Game Workers Unite branch—suffered “victimization” and “unfair dismissal” because of his union actions.…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published October 3, 2019 -
UncategorizedApex Legends Challenge Rewards Players For Thanking Others
Apex Legends Season 3 brings a new slate of daily and weekly challenges. Among the dictates to get headshots or play as certain characters, there’s a daily challenge that honors any gamer’s most important quality: politeness. A new daily challenge rewards players for thanking three teammates. A player on Redditnoticed the challenge shortly after Season…
By Riley MacLeod Published October 3, 2019 -
CultureSilicon Valley And ‘Skepticism For Disruption’ Inspired This Futuristic Taxi Game
Patrick Ewing, creative lead for indie game Neo Cab, told me a story about how he once got an Amazon package delivered by a person with the license plate “Uber God.” The Uber God had actually been fired from Uber that week, he told Ewing, after five years and over 19,000 rides, following an anonymous…
By Riley MacLeod Published October 3, 2019 -
CultureIf You Like Comics, You Should Read Marvel’s House of X and Powers of X
For the past 11 weeks, I have eagerly awaited Wednesday mornings in a way I haven’t in a very long time. I’m a longtime comic book reader, and since Wednesdays are when new comics come out, I’m always a little excited—but this has been different. There’s something special going on in the world of X-Men…
By Joshua Rivera Published October 3, 2019 -
UncategorizedDo Not Underestimate The Power Of The PlayStation Lunch Box
In Japan, there is an official PlayStation 1 lunch box. It’s a crane game prize and comes in packaging that looks like the cardboard box for the first PlayStation. How cool is it? Very cool! While you might think here’s a difference in nuance between “lunch box” and “bento box,” the packaging reads ランチボックス (ranchi…
By Brian Ashcraft Published October 3, 2019 -
Kotaku EastK-Pop Pick Of The Day: Wuthering Heights
As we slide our way into October, and the true beginnings of fall begin to coalesce, it feels only right to listen to a moody track today. Enter Wuthering Heights Lucia (real name Sim Kyu Seon) is a long-running artist who debuted in 2010 with Cat Waltz. She might be most familiar to mainstream K-Pop…
By Seung Park Published October 3, 2019 -
UncategorizedReturn of the Obra Dinn will be out on PS4, Xbox One and Switch on October 18.
By Luke Plunkett Published October 2, 2019 -
UncategorizedActual Space Mission Picks Sonic The Hedgehog As An Official Mascot
In June 2022, a rocket will launch carrying the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, a spacecraft made by the European Space Agency and Airbus. And as it hurtles through the cosmos on its mission to study Jupiter’s moons, it will carry with it the blessing of…Sonic the Hedgehog. One of the instruments onboard was developed in…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 2, 2019 -
UncategorizedBlizzard Really Wants Overwatch Characters In Smash
With Overwatch due out on the Switch next week, it’s obviously time for fans to start incessantly calling for characters like Pharah and Mercy to make an appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The loudest voice among them, though, will belong to Blizzard themselves. In an interview with IGN, Blizzard’s Jeff Kaplan was asked which…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 2, 2019 -
UncategorizedPlayers Are Recreating Famous Album Covers In Fallout 76
Aside from playing, some Fallout 76 players have spent the last few days working on a project where they recreate famous album covers using the game’s photo mode. And they’ve done a pretty good job! Originally starting on the @ArtF76 twitter account, it’s since moved over to the hashtag #F76AlbumCovers. Here are some of the…
By Luke Plunkett Published October 2, 2019 -
OpinionImpressionsThe Diversity In 80 Days Shocked Me, In A Good Way
80 Days, a game based on Jules Verne’s novel Around The World In 80 Days, is now available on Switch. Revisiting the game has allowed me to see myself and my culture in ways that aren’t always visible to me in video games. I am mixed race, with an Indian mother and a black father.…
By Gita Jackson Published October 2, 2019 -
UncategorizedA Secret Boss Was Hidden In The Division 2 For Months, Until The Developers Teased It
Game developer Trick Dempsey recently started Googling to see if anyone had found a secret boss encounter in The Division 2, the giant Ubisoft game he helps make. “I was just like: I don’t [see] a video guide for finding this dude,” he said on today’s State of the Game developer stream. “There’s just nothing.”…
By Stephen Totilo Published October 2, 2019 -
UncategorizedYou Can Fight Ghost Recon Breakpoint‘s Main Villain Right Away, If You’re Foolish Enough
I’ll be blunt: Playing Ghost Recon Breakpoint has been a drag. My initial ambivalence has given way to outright frustration as I trudge through generic military gameplay and the tangled web of pointless microtransactions. But Breakpoint has a twist that also offers a unique challenge. If you want, you can search and find the location…
By Heather Alexandra Published October 2, 2019
