Sophia Coppola and Kristen Sheridan have both got new movies out about a group of attractive young teenagers who break into the houses of rich people.
Dollhouse
The Bling Ring
Is there something to be read into this? Is this a subject that especially appeals to daughters of directors past their prime? Should we expect Jennifer Lynch to complete the trifecta? Or is this just one of those things, like A Bug’s Life and Antz landing at the same time? I don’t know. Do I care? No. I’m just killing time here.
Dead End Thrills is a lovely blog that takes screenshots of beautiful games and presents them as best they can. For example, to generate this lovely image from Stalker, they used nine graphical mods. These are things you can add to the game to make it look even prettier. To produce the image from Kentucky Route Zero above? None. Just a bit of offline antialiasing in Photoshop to smooth some of the lines.
“The next and much bigger piece [of the business] is microtransactions within games,” he revealed. “We’re building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business.”
It’s a shame, because the game itself could be great. It features some of the most impressive mobile graphics we’ve ever seen, the list of cars and courses is endless, and the way it integrates your friends’ lap times into your races for a pseudo-multiplayer experience makes it all the more immersive. The problem is that it all just feels so cheapened by the business model; while it’s possible to play the game a little each day without forking out money … the constant nagging for cash grates.
There’s a good game somewhere within Real Racing 3 - and there are plenty of free-to-play games that prove this model can work successfully while respecting the player. Firemonkeys, and perhaps more pertinently EA, have got that balance horribly, horribly wrong, to an extent where the business model becomes the game - with gut-wrenching results.
johnke.me
