Blind Hate

FEB 17

Hey y’all, what a nice week to talk about small gaming teams making bank, publishers not understanding NFTs, new dope collabs, and much more. Let’s hit it.

Made by Franco

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📈 Stats of the Week: SUPERCELL
These guys ain’t fucking around, that's for sure. You might think they are since the team is very small, but as time goes by we are learning that the smaller teams are the ones performing the best. Everything about them is here. But here you have the juicy numbers as well:

Valued at $11B.
340 employees, $32M per employee lol.
$2.24B in revenue for 2021, $852M before-tax profits.
The company only has 5 published titles.

🦮 Blind Hate
Nintendo executives said that they are interested in NFTs but they don’t know how to make them fun yet. Bro, games have been making NFTs for as long as I can remember. The difference is that those were centralized digital assets that if the game dies today all those assets go to the grave with it. An NFT is the exact same thing, but decentralized, so it still exists no matter what and not only that, you can sell it, buy it or exchange it… because it is yours.

Why gamers hate NFTs? A lot of things to unpack here, but two things to have in mind:

If you buy an NFT, it means that you’re an investor, not just a consumer anymore. That concept is difficult because generally speaking, gamers fucking hate publishers. The friction is instant.
On the other hand, publishers haven’t spent the time on Discord rooms or projects to understand the community and the industry. How are they supposed to release a successful NFT project if they have no clue about their own community?

All industries are filled with bad projects, until the first one shines, and then the other ones follow. Nothing wrong about being a sheep here, unless you follow the trend for the wrong reasons. Some publishers are making that mistake right now.

💣 New Games & Trailers
HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST — Cinematic Trailer
DUNE: SPICE WARS — Gameplay Trailer
DEMON SLAYER — Nintendo Switch Teaser

🎞️ Gaming x Film Hub

Netflix, 2K and Take-Two are partnering to produce a BioShock film.
The Halo TV show is already renewed for a second season.
Sega announces that the third Sony cinematic movie is in the works.

📖 Read of the Week
Does Intentional Friction Work in Video games? by Josh Bycer.

🦾 Cyberpunk 2077, but this time foreal
After a long list of memes about Cyberpunk’s release, bugs and everything; we can say that we are now looking at Cyberpunk’s real release. A 30 min gameplay showcase for PS5 and Xbox Series X.

Tell you what man… we believe in second chances, we do. Don’t approach the game with your head on what happened last year. Imagine this is a fresh new start, because I think good things are coming for this title.

📽️ Video of the Week
PlayStation’s new intro animation.

🤨 Emm…
The OWL’s fifth season returns in May. I’m speechless. Are you honestly telling me that not a single person in that meeting room said “emm.. guys, should we maybe move on from this game?”.

🏆 Esports Highlights

Cloud9 wins HCS Anaheim 2022.
Everything about F1 Esports Challengers.
Everything about CDL 2022.

❗ Can we grow up, please?
In a few words: Maxis releases a new expansion for The Sims about weddings, it contains people from the same sex who like each other, surprise. Since Russia has laws against that, Maxis decides not to distribute the game in Russia. Then, the Russian LGBTQ+ community gets upset because they can't even have freedom in games.

For how long do gay people have to suffer? Foreal though, let me know. This shit is so crazy to me that I can’t even grasp it. The reality is that Russia is pissing outside of the bucket here and since The Sims clearly won’t change their mindset, there's not a lot Maxis can do.

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