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Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget.<\/em><\/p>\n Please enjoy \u2014 and I’ll see you next week.<\/em><\/p>\n If I end up reading one more story about how fantastic Death Stranding 2<\/em> is so long as you skip the cutscenes<\/em>, I\u2019m gonna hurl. At what point during 10 hours of cinematic interstitials do we collectively put the controller down and say, actually, this isn\u2019t a great game? Not because the game parts aren\u2019t any good \u2014 they\u2019re pretty fabulous, in fact \u2014 but because a significant portion of the experience isn\u2019t actually interactive at all. When does it become more accurate to describe a Hideo Kojima project as a CGI movie with moments of interactivity, rather than as a video game first?<\/p>\n I\u2019m not actually attempting to solve the \u201cvideo game of Theseus\u201d riddle right now, but it\u2019s a conversation that\u2019s been on my mind, given recent headlines. Death Stranding 2<\/em> reviews are in, Neil Druckmann is out at HBO and returning to Naughty Dog<\/a> full-time, and Emmy nominations<\/a> arrived with 18 nods for video game adaptations. Meanwhile, layoffs are rocking the gaming industry yet again, with thousands fired at Xbox<\/a> this month, alongside multiple studio closures and game cancellations. One of the most surprising titles to get the ax was Project Blackbird, a promising-sounding MMO from Elder Scrolls studio ZeniMax Online. Blackbird was reportedly canceled<\/a> in favor of allocating resources to the development of Fallout 5<\/em>, a series with mainstream clout following the success of Amazon\u2019s Fallout<\/em> TV show in 2024.<\/p>\n The convergence of video games and Hollywood is not a new talking point \u2014 even<\/a> for me<\/a> \u2014 but it\u2019s only grown more relevant with time. Sony in particular is leaning hard into a cross-media strategy with notable investments in television<\/a>, anime<\/a> and film<\/a> adaptations of its video game franchises, and it just published Kojima Productions\u2019 Death Stranding 2<\/em>, which serves as a lightning rod for this entire conversation.<\/p>\n Kojima is easy to pick on because he\u2019s been so vocal about his desire to make movies, and fittingly, his games have only grown more cinematic over the years. Death Stranding<\/em> and its sequel are stacked with mainstream Hollywood actors (and Kojima\u2019s favorite directors) across hours of drawn-out, non-interactive cutscenes. His next two projects, OD<\/em><\/a> and Physint<\/em><\/a>, are both described as having A-list casts and \u201cblurring the boundaries between film and games.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m a big fan of experimental horror games, and I deeply appreciate Kojima\u2019s eye for building tension and sneaky action sequences, but I\u2019m hesitant to get excited about OD<\/em> and Physint<\/em>. The deeper Kojima dives into the world of Hollywood, the more he loses me. I don\u2019t download, install and boot up a video game to watch a movie instead, and I don\u2019t find it impressive when an interactive product is defined by cinematic terms. The constraints of filmmaking are vastly different than those of video game development, and it sucks to watch a talented creator try to force video games to conform to the boundaries of movies or TV, rather than exploring the mechanics that make interactive art so uniquely powerful. I feel like Kojima sees cinema as the goal, not video games specifically, and this perspective breaks my little pixelated heart.<\/p>\n It\u2019s particularly painful in an era of raging instability for the video game industry. It\u2019s difficult to see so much money and creative talent being thrown at projects that end up feeling more like movies than games, at a time when it\u2019s increasingly difficult for fresh and original AAA projects to make it to market. Video games have not been maxed out as an art form \u2014 there\u2019s far more to discover in terms of mechanics, visuals, haptics and immersive interaction systems, and there are more stories that can only be told with these specific tools. Viewing game development through the lens of filmmaking diminishes everything that makes this medium so powerful. The only Hollywood trait the games industry should imitate is its powerful and functional unions.<\/p>\n I enjoy things that exist in the gray space between definitions; in fact, I often prefer them. What I don\u2019t enjoy is misguided emulation that\u2019s sold to an audience as innovation. In the end, I guess what I\u2019m really saying is\u2026 I\u2019m still not over PT<\/em>.<\/p>\n One of the most eyebrow-raising details of Microsoft\u2019s sweeping layoffs<\/a> earlier this month was the fact that King, the studio behind Candy Crush<\/em>, was included in the firings<\/a>. King is historically a money-printing machine with high per-employee returns, which tends to insulate it from layoffs, but this time around at least 200 people were let go from the studio. As it turns out, a number of fired developers spent the past few years training AI systems to do their jobs, which just adds a layer of shittiness to an already crappy situation.<\/p>\n Has the FOMO gotten to you yet? After denying that you wanted a Switch 2 for a few noble and self-righteous weeks, have you cracked and admitted that you actually, really want one? Great \u2014 then get yourself to Best Buy on Thursday, July 17, when the company will restock its supply of Switch 2 consoles in all stores. This coincides with the release of Donkey Kong Banaza<\/em>, too.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve had my eye on Judas<\/em>, the BioShocky FPS from Ken Levine\u2019s Ghost Story Games, since it was revealed in 2022<\/a>, and I lowkey love how little we still know about it today. That said, I\u2019m happily devouring every bit of information about Judas<\/em>, and the latest nugget comes from Levine himself in an interview with classic game publisher Nightdive Studios. With Judas<\/em>, Ghost Story is focused on “telling the story and transporting the player somewhere,” rather than building live-service or microtransaction features, Levine said. As he put it, \u201cYou buy the game and you get the whole thing. There’s no online component. There’s no live service.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s also no release date for Judas<\/em> yet.<\/p>\nThe news<\/strong><\/h2>\n
King developers were the architects of their own demise<\/a><\/h3>\n
Best Buy will have more Switch 2 units on Thursday<\/a><\/h3>\n
A small update on Ken Levine\u2019s Judas<\/em> (sung like Lady Gaga)<\/a><\/h3>\n