Finally, I managed to tweak my first impressions post about Paralives... yay for adult life.

#Paralives #gaming #game #gamer #gamers #cosygame #cozygame #cosygames #cozygames #indiegame #lifesim #lifesimulator #alexmassé #review #opinionpiece #opinion #earlyaccess #gameplay #TheSims #Steam #Valve #review #gamedev #gamedeveloper #gamedevelopers

https://www.tumblr.com/cactustonic/820515751125532672/paralives-the-first-round?source=share

New blog post: NXT: Still a bit of a mixed bag, innit?

Rhodzy weighs in on the current state of WWE NXT, finding some genuinely good stuff but plenty of absolute bollocks too.

https://rhodzy.com/blog/nxt-still-a-bit-of-a-mixed-bag-innit

#wwenxt #prowrestling #wrestlingfan #sportsentertainment #britishwrestling #opinionpiece

GTA 6 Could Charge More Than $70, But Charging Less Would Be Much Funnier

Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders go live on June 25, and weirdly, one of the biggest questions still hanging over the biggest game in the world is also one of the simplest: how much is the damn thing actually going to cost?

Rockstar has confirmed the pre-order date. It has shown the cover art. It has told everyone to wishlist the game on PlayStation and Xbox. But unless I’ve missed it, there is still no official price. That is interesting because GTA 6 has become the game everyone points at when talking about the future of video game pricing. If any game could push the standard price beyond $70, surely it is Grand Theft Auto 6.

But the funny thing is that GTA 6 is also one of the only games that could do the exact opposite.

Before anyone starts sharpening their comment-section knives, no, I am not saying GTA 6 will cost $50. I am not saying it will cost $100. I am not saying Rockstar is secretly planning to save the industry, ruin the industry, or personally mail every player a crisp ten-dollar note and an apology for GTA Online loading times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQRLujxTm3c&t=1s

This is just a thought experiment, because GTA 6 is one of the few games where the thought experiment actually works.

Grand Theft Auto plays by its own rules. It is that big, that much of a behemoth in this industry, that it can do almost whatever it wants within reason. Obviously, there are limits. If Rockstar and Take-Two announced that every copy of GTA 6 would cost $200 and require a signed blood oath, there would probably be a problem. Although, let’s be honest, a depressing number of people would sign the contract, hand over the cash, and be causing chaos in Vice City by midnight.

But within the normal-ish world of video game pricing, GTA is different. There is no other GTA. There is no other game that carries quite the same cultural weight, the same mass-market appeal, the same ability to make people who have not touched a controller in years suddenly start asking whether they need a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X.

Most games have to find their place in the market. GTA is the market event. It does not launch so much as arrive, block out the sun, and make every other publisher quietly move its release date.

For god’s sake, this is a game so bloody enormous that the cover art reveal got its own trailer. A trailer for the box. That sounds like parody, but it is real, and Rockstar’s official cover art reveal video has already pulled more than 9 million views on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiQEBYDox_k

That is the level GTA operates on. Other games are out here desperately trying to convince people to watch ten minutes of gameplay. GTA can show everyone the rectangle it will eventually be printed on and still dominate the conversation.

That is why the price question is fascinating. GTA 6 could probably charge more than the standard $70 and still sell tens of millions of copies. Maybe not as many as it would at a lower price, obviously, but enough to make more money than most publishers see in their wildest shareholder dreams. If any game can convince people to swallow $80, $90, or even the dreaded $100, it is this one.

And yet, GTA 6 is also one of the few games where charging less could make a bizarre amount of sense.

Most games have to be priced carefully because their audience is limited. Sell 100,000 copies at $20 and you make one amount of money. Sell 50,000 copies at $30 and you make another. Drop too low and you leave money on the table. Go too high and you scare people away. Pricing is a dark art, mostly performed by exhausted people staring at spreadsheets while muttering about conversion rates. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong.

GTA 6 does not have a normal audience. It has a tidal wave wearing sunglasses. Its audience is… everyone?

Yes, the game’s budget is almost certainly obscene. I’ll be fucking baffled if it is not the most expensive video game ever made once you factor in development, marketing, support, online infrastructure, and however much money Rockstar spent making sure every puddle in Vice City reflects sadness correctly. Modern AAA budgets are already terrifying. GTA 6 is probably sitting somewhere above them, sipping a cocktail. In fact, I would not bat an eye if it were over $1 billion and counting. That is not a lot of money when Take-Two is expecting $8 billion+ in FY2027 net bookings.

This is Grand Theft Auto. GTA 5 is nearing 230 million copies sold in lifetime sales. The wider series has sold hundreds of millions of copies. GTA Online has been a money-printing machine for more than a decade. Whatever GTA 6 costs to make, it is not exactly limping into the market, hoping Dave from Huddersfield remembers to pre-order the deluxe edition.

That is what makes the cheaper-price scenario so funny. Just imagine, for a second, that you are another major publisher on GTA 6 pre-order day.

You are sitting in a meeting room. The air smells faintly of burnt coffee, expensive chairs, and terror. Your company has spent six years and $400 million making a AAA game. You have survived delays, reboots, focus tests, engine problems, market shifts, executives discovering the word “AI,” and at least three meetings where someone used the phrase “player engagement ecosystem” without being immediately fired out of a cannon.

Next week, you are supposed to announce that your game costs $70. Pre-orders will go live. Trailers will be uploaded. There might even be balloons. Somebody mentioned a cake.

Then the memo comes in.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is available to pre-order for $60.

Ten dollars less than the industry standard.

The room goes silent. Somewhere, a finance director drops a spreadsheet. A marketing executive starts quietly chewing through a pen. Someone from production begins staring into the middle distance, remembering all the weekends they will never get back. The volcano full of sacrificed programmers suddenly feels like a poor investment. That contract you signed that sold your firstborn’s soul to the Devil? Doesn’t look financially clever now.

Because how do you explain that? How do you walk out and tell people your game costs more than Grand Theft Auto 6? Not some tiny indie passion project. Not a remaster. Not a weird little experimental thing made by twelve people, a dog, and a dream. Grand Theft Auto bloody 6. The game that has been absorbing hype, money, and human attention like a luxury black hole for over a decade. You can’t compete with that. It doesn’t even matter if logically everyone understands that nobody could reasonably compete with that.

That is the hilarious, terrifying power Rockstar has here. GTA 6 could charge more and probably get away with it. But it could also charge less and make everyone else in the industry look like they have turned up to a knife fight with a PowerPoint presentation, and still make an obscene amount of money.

We saw a smaller, weirder version of this conversation recently with Hollow Knight: Silksong. When Team Cherry put that game out at a lower price than many people expected, some developers and commentators were not exactly thrilled, because Silksong is not a normal indie game. It already had a massive audience waiting for it. Team Cherry could afford to price it aggressively because the sheer number of people interested in buying it changed the maths. But by doing that, other publishers and developers felt it made them look bad because they were asking the same or more for their own games, which maybe did not look as good, or did not have as much content.

GTA 6 would be that scenario, except on nuclear-powered steroids.

If Rockstar launched GTA 6 at $50 or $60, it would not necessarily be charity. It would be dominance. A giant neon sign saying: “We can afford to do this. You can’t.”

And to be clear, I do not think Rockstar will do that. My boring, sensible guess is that GTA 6 lands at the standard $70, with several more expensive editions stacked on top because this is still the games industry and nobody leaves money on the table unless the table is on fire. And even then.

I also do not think Rockstar needs to be the company that normalises $100 games. Why take that PR hit? Why become the big evil face of rising game prices when you can charge the expected amount, sell an ungodly number of copies, and then make more money through whatever GTA Online becomes next? Rockstar and Take-Two can afford to sit above the carnage while someone else takes the punch. Unless the creeping shadow of greed manages to worm its way into Take-Two’s head, of course. And in this world, that is always on the table.

But that is what makes the whole debate interesting. GTA 6 could be the game that proves $100 releases are viable. It could also be the game that proves the biggest title on the planet does not need to charge more because scale is its own superpower.

And if another publisher tries to follow with a $100 game of its own? Good luck. Because the obvious response from a lot of players will be simple: you are not Grand Theft Auto.

That is the problem. Ubisoft cannot just slap $100 on the next Assassin’s Creed and expect everyone to salute. Xbox cannot do it with Gears. EA cannot do it with any random thing it drags out of the live-service mines. Most publishers are still trying to convince people their games are worth $70. GTA 6 is one of the few games that gets to ask whether $70 is even the most interesting number.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is not competing with other games in the normal sense. It is competing with itself, with impossible expectations, and with more than a decade of hype. Whether anything can actually live up to that is another question entirely, and possibly one best answered with strong drink and a locked comments section.

But on pricing, Rockstar is in a position almost nobody else gets to occupy. It could charge more. It could charge less. It could sit exactly where everyone expects and still make enough money to make accountants emotional.

Most publishers are trying to work out what players will tolerate. GTA 6 is one of the very few games that gets to ask a different question: what would be funniest? What if we just decided to set the entire industry on fire?

To quote the great Alfred, butler to Batman: some men just want to watch the world burn. Rockstar might be one of the few companies rich enough to buy the matches.

Republican 'family values' are destroying American families

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/opinion/gop-family-values-hypocrisy

The Most Interesting Thing About God of War: Laufey Isn’t Faye

God of War: Laufey was announced at State of Play and poses a lot of interesting questions, like can you have a God of War game without the god of war? Instead, We’re playing as Faye, Kratos’ badass wife and the original owner of the Leviathan axe. While Kratos is a hulking brute of a fighter in the new games, Faye is agile and fast and a little flashier than her husband. Do the fans even want this? Why is there a talking ribbon attached to a sword? Was Fraye the one who blew the horn in God of War 2018? If a god dies and Kratos wasn’t around to do it, does it even count?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upjpP54xDIc

All very important questions. All shall be answered in the fullness of time. But the most interesting aspect of what we saw isn’t Faye herself, or finally getting to see how skilled a fighter she is after all of the praise Kratos has heaped upon her over the years. No, it’s the Everywhen, the name given to the afterlife Faye finds herself trapped within. What happens when gods die? God of War: Laufey finally answers that question. They don’t truly disappear.

The first reason this is so interesting is that it allows Santa Monica Studio to blend mythologies together in a way the series has never done before. Previously, God of War largely focused on one mythology at a time. First it was Greek mythology, then Norse. The Everywhen changes that because it acts as the ultimate melting pot, a place where gods from every mythology eventually wind up when death comes calling.

According to Santa Monica, the Everywhen isn’t simply another location like Midgard or Helheim. Instead, it exists as “this transcendent place above the mortal world and the afterlife of humans.”

We see this almost immediately through two of the game’s major antagonists: Sekhmet, the Egyptian goddess of war and healing, and Begtse, a Mongolian god of war. Not only do these characters demonstrate how God of War: Laufey intends to mix different mythologies together, they’re also surprisingly deep cuts. Santa Monica could have reached for more recognisable names from Egyptian mythology, but instead seems determined to cast a wider net and explore cultures that haven’t traditionally received much attention in blockbuster games.

What’s particularly clever about the Everywhen is that it also solves a problem Santa Monica was eventually going to run into. Kratos has spent the better part of two decades treating pantheons like an all-you-can-eat buffet. By the end of the Greek saga, most of Olympus was dead. By the end of Ragnarök, the Norse gods weren’t exactly thriving either.

Until now, every new God of War game needed a new mythology to explore. Egypt. Japan. Celtic mythology. Wherever Kratos might wander next. The Everywhen changes that. Instead of moving sideways into another mythology, Santa Monica has created a place that sits above all of them. According to the developers, it’s where all magic returns and where gods go when they die. A single realm where every pantheon ultimately converges.

As Cory Barlog explained, the goal is that “it all connects to each other. It all influences each other.” Suddenly the Greek era, the Norse era, and whatever comes next no longer feel like separate stories. That means the franchise is no longer limited to telling Greek stories, Norse stories or Egyptian stories. It can tell all of them at once.

The real reason the Everywhen intrigues me, though, is because it’s exactly what it claims to be: an afterlife for the gods. All of them. Just take a second to think about that.

If the rules apply equally to every deity, then Zeus, Ares, Hades, Poseidon and a whole host of Kratos’ former enemies should be somewhere out there in the Everywhen.

“Thrusting all these gods into a singular space in which they cannot escape is this recipe, this powder keg,” Cory Barlog told IGN. That’s a lot of very big egos and a lot of old grudges.

Kratos may have accidentally become one of the Everywhen’s largest contributors. Zeus is there. Ares is there. Hades is there. Baldur is probably wandering around somewhere. Heimdall is undoubtedly still being insufferable. Depending on how the rules work, there could be enough former Kratos victims in the Everywhen to start their own support group.

“My name is Zeus, and Kratos killed me.”

“Hi Zeus.”

“My name is Baldur, and Kratos killed me.”

“Hi Baldur.”

“My name is Heimdall and…”

“Yeah, we know.”

It’s entirely possible that Faye never encounters any of them. The Everywhen sounds vast, and Santa Monica hasn’t hinted at any returning characters. Plus, the term “Everywhen” makes it sound like this place exists outside of regular space and time, sort of like the DVLA. But that seems almost impossible to imagine. When you’re developing a concept like this, one of the very first thoughts has to be: what happens when Kratos’ victims all end up in the same place?

To create a realm populated by dead gods and then never use it to revisit any of the franchise’s fallen legends would be like holding a fresh sugary doughnut in your hand and choosing not to eat it. Technically possible, I suppose. But also completely insane. Who would do that? What kind of maniac?

More importantly, though, the most interesting outcome isn’t seeing Zeus or Baldur return. It’s seeing what happens if they do.

Modern God of War has largely been about Kratos confronting the consequences of his actions and trying to become something better. He’s spent two games wrestling with his past, attempting to break the cycle of violence and teaching Atreus not to become the man he once was. Behind him is a trail of dead deities so wide that entire religious texts need edited so that the final line says, “And then fucking Kratos happened.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szwYBVY7FsU&t=5s

But what if the consequences finally catch up with him anyway? Only not through him. Through his wife.

Imagine introducing yourself as Laufey and watching the mood in the room change the moment somebody realises exactly who you’re married to. Imagine spending eternity trapped alongside gods whose only common bond is that your husband murdered them. Some deserved it. Many absolutely had it coming. But I suspect that distinction becomes less important when you’ve spent a few hundred years dead and angry. Gods tend to hold grudges in this franchise.

Kratos getting punched in the face by the consequences of his actions would feel almost expected. That’s the sort of tragedy he’s been carrying since the original game. Faye being forced to deal with them instead? That’s cruel. That’s personal. That’s exactly the kind of emotional gut punch modern God of War loves to deliver. That’s the kind of consequence that would drive the mighty Kratos to his knees.

The Everywhen feels like far more than a backdrop for Faye’s story. It feels like Santa Monica quietly building the future of the franchise. A place where every mythology can collide, every story can connect, and where the consequences of Kratos’ twenty-year-long rampage might finally catch up with him again.

The only difference is that Kratos might not be around when they do.

His wife will be.

She isn’t the God of War.

She just loved the God of War.

The Absolute Rage Induced by “K.”

https://jaimedavid.blog/2026/05/22/23/40/08/analysis/jaimedavid327/10962/the-absolute-rage-induced-by-k/

Apple’s New CEO Won’t Make Games—But He Might Make Macs Worth Gaming On

Apple has just made a pivotal move: John Ternus, the company’s hardware chief, has been announced as Apple’s next CEO. This is a big shakeup for a company that’s spent years pivoting toward services, but Ternus—closely associated with the era that brought the Mac’s transition to Apple silicon—could be the kind of leader who nudges Mac gaming forward. Let’s be clear: Apple isn’t about to dethrone PlayStation or Xbox. This isn’t a dramatic pivot into hardcore gaming. It isn’t going to be developing huge games, or running the latest Call of Duty at max settings. Instead, it’s about the fact that the Mac’s current foundation has been built during Ternus’ time leading hardware engineering—and that foundation could be a game-changer, even if we keep expectations firmly in check.

I’ve been using a Mac for the last couple of years—it’s become my go-to for writing, my day-to-day tasks, and all the work that demands a reliable, smooth machine. And for all that, I love it. But when it comes to gaming, it falls flat. I always end up back on my Windows machine, where compatibility is a given, performance is a known quantity, and I don’t have to second-guess every title. It’s not like I can’t game on on my Mac a little, but it kind of feels like trying to make a toaster run Doom. Doable? Sure! Kinda cool? Yes. A bit fucking stupid? Also yes.

That’s the gap Apple’s been trying—slowly, cautiously—to close. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a marked increase in big games supporting Mac. It’s not like every new major title is supporting Apple’s platform, but its trending upward.

During the period in which Ternus has led hardware engineering, that shift has started to take shape. When Apple moved the Mac to its own silicon—starting with the M1 chip—it wasn’t just a quiet efficiency bump. Apple silicon gave Macs a genuine uplift in GPU capability. Suddenly, you had systems capable of serious graphical workloads. Not gaming rigs, not in the traditional sense, but machines that at least make the conversation possible.

That doesn’t mean Ternus alone drove every part of that transition. But he’s been a key figure during the period where the Mac has become significantly more capable—and crucially, more viable as a platform that could support gaming in a meaningful way.

Apple’s recent gaming moves don’t feel random anymore. The Apple Games app is a start, even if it’s still a bit clunky. Then there’s the Game Porting Toolkit, now in its third iteration, which—while not a silver bullet—is a clear attempt to reduce the friction of bringing games to macOS. And Metal 4 continues to push Apple’s graphics API forward, slowly closing the gap between what Macs can do and what modern games expect.

Individually, none of these are game-changing. Together, they look like groundwork. A foundation. Hope.

And that’s where Ternus’ position starts to matter. He’s not coming in to “fix” gaming overnight, but he is stepping into the CEO role at a time when the Mac is more capable than it’s ever been, and when Apple is, quietly, putting the pieces in place. If Apple keeps trundling along in the direction it is already headed, Ternus’ history make him a prime candidate to nudge that direction a tiny bit more toward games, even if by accident.

I can’t stress this enough: this doesn’t guarantee a Mac gaming revolution. Apple still prioritises iPhone and iPad, and it’s not about to abandon that golden goose. Nor is it suddenly going to go head-to-head with Sony or Microsoft in the traditional gaming space.

But if the Mac does become a more credible gaming platform—maybe not a titan, but something you can actually recommend without caveats—it will be because of this steady, hardware-led evolution. And with someone like John Ternus now steering the wider company, there’s at least a reasonable argument that this direction doesn’t stall out.

Really, the hope is that we could open up Steam on a Mac and see a lot more games boasting macOS support. That’s the dream, right up there with my other dream: calorie free cakes that taste like the real thing. And let’s be honest, of those two dreams, the Mac one has the biggest chance of actually happening.

It’s not a revolution. It’s not even a guarantee. It’s just speculation and cope and a fair bit of hope.

Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/sometimes-powerful-people-just-do-dumb-shit/

#HackerNews #powerfulpeople #dumbdecisions #socialcommentary #viralnews #opinionpiece

I watched the Kid Rock Turning Point USA halftime show so you don't have to

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.advocate.com/opinion/kid-rock-halftime-tpusa-review