Calendars

Been a minute, huh? We’re here to post the typical “we swear we’re not dead post!”, only we really mean it!

First the new and good stuff:

We’ve updated the calendar for the entire year! Right now for instance GDQ is celebrating Black History Month with the Back in Black event. And there’s every Steam sale you could possible care about, and GDC!

We have also been adding cool games in cooperation with other community managers (and some we just like). And as always we have some upcoming features we can’t wait to show off.

We’re hoping to snag some more interviews and bring back reflections this year as well, but no promises yet!

Alright now for the lame part:

Sorry for the lack of a Playback.dem post the last two months, we plan on doing a two-for-one sometime this month. The reason for the break is a little bit of burnout but also we are re-evaluating what we cover. The industry and world has changed so much in the last few years alone. To describe this decade so far would be complicated, but a good summary would be “absolutely awful”. We’ve been keeping ourselves distracted doing other work though you will see the results of soon enough.

We don’t want the Playback.dem posts to be the “monthly misery reminder” from this point forward, as we are also facing another jarring reality:

AAA as we knew it is truly dead. It left us a while ago, but any chance of itself redeeming are gone as the big investments are no longer there.

All the major entertainment industries, including games, are experiencing radical shifts not seen in decades. We need to accept that indie games and mods are where the real investment of creativity will be coming from.

One can point to many culprits, but a big oversight can now be rectified: Games can now go back to playing to the strengths of the platforms they are made for. All of us may end up playing an important part in steering the ship in the right direction. There’s hope for optimism, I suppose.