Recently, three of the core personalities at Giant Bomb announced on the same day that they were leaving the site, effectively putting it on life support. I gave up on the site a couple of years ago but its impact on gaming media of all kinds is undeniable. In this casual port-mortem, I reflect on that, why I stopped following them and what I hope they are able to achieve in the future.

Six Days In Fallujah is a tactical first-person shooter set during a very controversial battle during the Iraq war. The game was originally set to release in the late 2000s, before being cancelled by its publisher and subsequently, having its developer go under. Now it's being brought back by a new developer and publisher and is still very controversial. This has escalated to the point where people in the games industry are calling for it to be censored by the government because it will lead to violence. Many of these same people also make violent games. Jack Thompson is back only the calls are now coming from inside the house. I discuss this.

I'd heard of Outriders but not much more than that before trying out its recently released demo. As someone pretty tired of the live service looter shooter genre, this surprised me in some very welcome ways.

A virtual uprising against Wall Street hedge funds has been taking place for the last week or so, thanks to a subreddit called Wall Street Bets. It's also showed just how rigged our financial system is as the companies that have been gambling with our economy for years without consequence are now working hard from all angles to shut this "free market" uprising down. They may succeed if people don't push back.

The sea shanty I use in the intro and outro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rejpDqQUcV0

Parler, an alternative to Twitter that had a mostly right-wing user base, was recently kicked off Google Play, the Apple App Store and Amazon Web Services in a suspiciously rapid and coordinated fashion. While I have no love for the platform, I think this coordinated assault by big tech companies to stamp out politically competing platforms, citing the same rules they turn a blind eye to the incumbents for breaking sets a very dangerous precedent. The problem is, I don't know how you properly deal with it either. I discuss that and would love to hear what you all think.

It's been happening for a while but especially with recent event, I've seen this growing trend of people online demanding that everyone use whatever platform they have to scream political opinions and that a failure to do so is tantamount to complicity and even somehow, an act of violence. I am sick of this and of entitled people daring to make demands of what I say. I go on a pretty decent rant about this subject.

2020 sucked hard but one bright spot was in video games. There was no shortage of amazing things to play while you were stuck at home. Rather than do a traditional top 10 this year, I decided to forgo talking about AAA games altogether and make an unordered list of 10 varied indie games from the year that I think are worth checking out. They're all different and they won't all be for everyone but I liked them and I think they're at least worth a look.

The music in the podcast is selections from the incredible soundtrack to Chicken Police. Check it out on Bandcamp here.

Here is the list with links to buy the PC versions. I highly recommend listening to the episode first and if you do decide to buy the PC version, please use the affiliate links in the titles to support me:

Streets of Rage 4 - Dotemu/Lizardcube/Guard Crush Games - PC/PS4/Xbox One/Switch - Indie Showcase Video

The Cyberpunk 2077 launch, burning their console partners and now the sudden backtracking on the release of Devotion on GOG has taken CD Projekt Group's formerly stellar reputation straight off a cliff in the last week. In my opinion, it's an unfortunate and unavoidable end of a creative company that's publicly traded. I discuss this theory and why it worries me that so many even smaller developers and publishers seem to be going public these days.

Cyberpunk 2077 has finally launched after numerous delays and while I think it's a great game, it also has a lot of problems and CD Projekt Red's stellar reputation has taken some significant damage. As someone who was incredibly hyped for the game, I believe a lot of those criticisms are warranted but some are also an example of the gaming community whipping itself into a frenzy of hype that could never be matched. I discuss that while also giving my impressions of the game after 25 hours of it streamed for Extra Life.

Twitch and some streamers on it are currently in the midst of a DMCA crackdown by the major record labels. Entire libraries of VODs and clips are being deleted in an attempt to prevent channels from being taken down and everyone's made about it. While they have a right to be, at the same time, everyone in this situation is also wrong in various ways. I go into detail about this and also why the talk about Twitch being shut down is utter nonsense.

The Tom Scott video on copyright I reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU