Social Platypus

Opinion Why we play games part 2; The ideal self By Josiah Sapp Everyone has something about themselves they would want to change. Whether it be physical, emotional or psychological there are pieces of ourselves that we wish could be different. On the flipside, we all have strengths that we can confidently claim as familiar territory. In the world of entertainment, pieces of content (movies, shows, games, books) are designed from the ground up to grab the attention of the widest group possible. Every show you watch or game you play, has a roster of characters that you may or may not identify with. The ones you don’t identify with tend to be the characters you care less about and aren’t worried if they’ll make it to another season or sequel. However, the characters we do identify with are the ones that we root for and are moved to tears when they make a heroic sacrifice. Why do we care so much about fictional characters? We know they’re not real and that we’re never going ...

Opinion Mods not microtransactions: How to keep players engaged. By Josiah Sapp     Players invest a lot of their time and money in games that they believe in. We want the best experience for the investment. Developers and publishers make a living because we spend money on their product and spend time in their creation. It’s a highly competitive market and the tactics are cut throat. If a studio isn’t on top of the gaming trends, they get shut down or reallocated elsewhere. That’s why we get stories like Visceral studios being disbanded and their projects getting canceled. What they were working on, in theory, wasn’t being developed in line with future trends of the marketplace. Studios want their customers to return to their game while spending money on extra content. The avenue in which developers have achieved this retention and spending is through paid DLC and microtransactions to varying degrees of success. It seems, however, that all games are doome...

Opinion Video games have stronger nostalgic driven experiences By Josiah Sapp     Nostalgia is a tricky thing to pin down. You don’t really know what it is about a specific memory that brings about a fond feeling. It could be a certain smell of perfume that brings you back to your grandma’s house or how a song has more weight depending on who you were with the first time you listened to it. Nostalgia is incredibly powerful and highly marketable. Just the other day, I was watching a football game with my family and a life insurance commercial came on playing some old school rock & roll. Once the commercial ended, my dad says that the product was directed straight at him because it was a song and style of music he used to listen to growing up. The commercial succeeded in grabbing his attention by playing nostalgic music. In video games, the main demographic are just now getting old enough to experience nostalgia . Game developers are exploiting that and they’v...

Review Destiny 2: Looks great from a distance but gets messy the closer you get. By Josiah Sapp     Destiny has prided itself on being a jack of all trades. So naturally there is a lot to do and lot to cover when you think about reviewing it. I’ve given this game a solid month of time to stew and settle into my brain as to what it’s trying to accomplish. Giving Destiny a final score only a week out from release seems too quick especially since Bungie released a road map showing a month’s worth of content. The raid, faction rally event, trials of the nine and iron banner were all released within a month. So here’s how my review of Destiny 2 is going to work; I’ve comprised three lists. What I enjoyed, tolerated and what frustrated me about the game. D2 gets a lot right upon entry into the world but once you get into the nitty gritty of the mechanics, it get’s messy really quick. Enjoyed     Let’s start off with some positivity! Des...

Opinion Video game graphics; Going backward is moving forward. By Josiah Sapp     When I was growing up, the main thing that told me if a game was good or not was what the game looked like. The more realistic the graphics the better. That proved to me that a game was going to be entertaining because it was a cool thing to look at. I remember bringing home a Sega Dreamcast and playing it for the first time. The realism was unbelieveable. It was so good that my grandpa sat down to a watch a football game and didn’t even realize that we were actually playing that year’s iteration of Madden. Recently, graphics have been taking a back seat to gameplay and storytelling. It seems like a step back but the industry is moving forward as a whole. Minecraft     The independent (indie) game scene has really exploded over the past ten years. You can’t look at a top ten games list without including an indie game or two. Whether it be for originality...