Confucius joining Hololive wasn’t on my bingo card but hey, they do have an eye for talent.

I’ve been waiting for something like this ever since medical gameplay was introduced. I assume the issue for now has to do with unfinished work on the planetary on-foot navigation for NPCs but who knows. For now I just huff hopium considering navigation tasks are semi-regularly mentioned in monthly reports so… one day.

You’re in luck then, they just released an exploration event! Seriously though, my hopes towards exploration are about as high as those towards medical gameplay. I hope I’m wrong though.

Tony is retired - you can find him with the title of “Game Director Emeritus” on CIG’s About Page.

As for the economy sim… officially it’s still coming, with the last excuse we got (or at least the one I can remember) for it not being ready being server meshing. With this year’ focus on quality of life and polishing Squadron I’d say it’s the usual “2 more years”.

This definitely sucks but at least it seems like they had a good enough schedule to finish the season before airing. So… not a completely bad news?

Yeah, that tracks - it’s a business organisation first and foremost. And yeah, we definitely do.

I’m back on the villainess train, this time with two titles I found completely at random - both being decent finds too.

• Kill the Villainess

I initially thought it will be a less interesting version of Villains Are Destined to Die, it turned out to be probably the most sombre (without being edgy) villainess themed series I’ve wrote about here so far.
The premise is nothing original: woman is pulled into the body of a villainess from a book and has to die to go back to real world. Guess what? She tried. Multiple times. Before the story even began.
There’s no easy way out and she has to play the part of a bad guy according to the original novel, whether she likes it or not.

It’s a pretty solid choice if you’re in a mood for a less quirky story in this genre.

• Behold the True Villainess

A complete whiplash of emotions when paired with the first one as this is a pure comedy.

This one is also an isekai story but here the soft and timid noble girl gets taken over by someone who doesn’t let herself get pushed around by anyone. She bails from a temple she was sent to, stirs trouble, gets people addicted to modernised (well, properly spiced) cuisine and spreads real world slang among the nobles (often misrepresenting what it actually means).

It’s silly, it’s light-hearted and it’s full of pretty good jokes (visual or otherwise).

It’s a group representing the biggest publishers in the industry, used as a front to pretend they’re able to self-regulate when it comes to consumer laws vs business wants. So no, not a governing body but more of a cartel or lobbying group, I guess? One with A LOT of money on the line and enough lobbying power to push against things like the Stop Killing Games campaign the moment they feel threatened.

Either way it’s pure speculation considering something truly massive would have to happen for Steam to even get to this point.

I might be reading too much into this but I think they’re going for an anthology feel with the show and if there’s ever Cyberpunk Edgerunners 3 it would once again focus on yet another group of characters. That’s just how I interpreted Sztybor’s words though.

I think that to some extent this comes down to a simple fact that for many people, like yourself, Edgerunners was their first into the world of anime - depending on one’s media literacy and experience this might sway their opinion one way or another. Besides, that’s not just a problem with Edgerunners, you could say the same about folks for whom Cyberpunk 2077 was their first experience with cyberpunk as a genre.

While not perfect, it’s a solid show overall and if it serves as a gateway deeper into the rabbit hole then I’d say it’s worth the praise.

He did say something similar years ago if I recall correctly but we never got any details and it was so long ago it’s hard to guess whether that’s still the plan. Reassurance or update on that wouldn’t be unwelcome, that’s for sure.

Here are the board members of this organisation in case someone is curious about their relevancy/neutrality on the matter:

• Hester Woodliffe – Chair (Warner Bros. Games)
• Canon Pence (Epic Games)
• Kerry Hopkins (Electronic Arts)
• Ian Mattingly (Activision)
• Klemens Kundratitz (Embracer)
• Qumar Jamil (Microsoft)
• Clemens Mayer-Wegelin (Nintendo of Europe)
• Cinnamon Rogers (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
• Matt Spencer (Take 2)
• Alain Corre (Ubisoft)
• Alberto Gonzalez-Lorca (Bandai Namco Entertainment)
• Karine Parker (Square Enix)
• Mark Maslowicz (Level Infinite)
• Felix Falk (game)
• Nicolas Vignolles (SELL)
• David Verbruggen (VGFB)
• Nick Poole (UKIE)

You know, the people who “ensured that the voice of a responsible games ecosystem is heard and understood” (direct quote from their website).

Writer was pretty clear about David’s fate in the article and mentioned wanting to tell more stories with “many interesting characters”. Besides, season 2 is described as a standalone story so more than likely.

Fresh update video from Ross about the campaign.

TL;DW:

• There’s a chance many of the signatures for the EU petition aren’t real. Keep signing to build up a safety margin. Official suggestions are: 10% more minimum, 20% pretty OK, up to 40% more for an actual safety net.
• Some countries had problems with signing using the digital ID system - suggests to use the manual method (instructions on the campaign page) or try again later.
• Someone not related with the campaign released a SKG crypto. Don’t touch it, obviously.
• Ross heard about people harassing Pirate Software, asks to stop.
• He’s got a lot of messages to reply to, prioritises ones important to the campaign for now.
• UK petition cleared 100k signatures. Number is most likely more reliable than the EU one.
• Link about contacting UK MP’s for those who want to do more than just sign a petition.

That’s actually one of the most annoying parts about the whole thing. SKG campaign has been running for what, a year now? Barely anyone with an audience cared enough to even look into it, let alone spread the news. Now that things came close to failing suddenly everyone thinks it’s an important topic and scrambled to make videos/posts/whatever. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt but I just don’t have that in me any more…
We could’ve been in so much better place with awareness, petitions and general sentiment if people in the industry actually cared about these things from the start.

Better late than never, I guess. I just hope there’s enough time to push through the EU petition as well.

No prob, knowing you didn’t read much gives us something to work with for the future. Have fun!

I have no more excuses not to get it, don’t I? Thanks for the share.

After Ross announced the campaign is dead a bunch of YouTubers (and media, I think?) picked up the topic and started spreading the word far and wide. This is the result.

It’s kinda hard to suggest anything without knowing what you’ve already read. I’ll go with some popular and safe choices for now.

• If you don’t mind long winded mystery novels with lots of slice of life moments then Higurashi and Umineko series are always a decent choice.
• VA-11 HALL-A is a great low stakes story set in a cyberpunk future.
• Go! Go! Nippon! has a tiny bit of romance depending on your choices but is mostly about visiting famous Japanese sightseeing spots.
• I haven’t played it myself but I’ve heard a lot of good things about Slay the Princess. It’s more of a meta story with things changing each time you play.
• The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is a short but fun mystery story if you like the series. It’s free too.