By Anant Sidhu on November 5, 2019
Super nostalgic being able to play ‘modern warfare’ once again.
Forbes called it:
‘The Best ‘Call Of Duty’ In A Decade’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/games/2019/11/05/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-review-the-best-call-of-duty-in-a-decade/#778ae7176f97
I got the chance to play it a few times and it lives up to the hype that is circulating around it. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare is half prequel, half reboot to the Modern Warfare franchise. For the multiplayer, they opened up the maps making it way bigger than before. This obviously has its repercussions because players are more inclined to ‘camp’ and play the long game. The old Call of Duty games (as I remember) involved a lot of ‘run and gun’ play that frowned upon campers but in this game its almost as if you have to camp.
Activision announced that its first three days on the market were the best for any game in the series this console generation, and it has also become the top-selling new game release of 2019. Gamers already brought in more than $600 million in worldwide sell-through and topped PS4 digital pre-orders and three-day digital sales records. And to top it all off, you now can play against friends on other platforms. For the first time, Call Of Duty is launching with crossplay between PC, PS4 and Xbox One, with a variety of options to make sure you’re not going up against mouse-and-keyboard players with a controller if you don’t want to. That means you can play with your friends who don’t own a console, or with your brother who owns an Xbox One instead of a PS4 like you. It’s terrific.
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By alexander tatti on November 2, 2019
As the Gaming industry has grown and developed, the level of interconnectivity and involvement has changed. Far from the simple days of “Pong” flashing on screens, Video Games are driving technological advancements and innovation while at the same time representing a trigger point for social impacts and consumption of entertainment. While gaming has had a long-standing reputation of controversy and debate, the current status of Video Games is now giving rise to more contentious topics. Gaming may have a place for positive characteristics such as freedom of speech, artistic expression and educational tools, but we must also see concern in the perpetuation of negative attitudes and behaviours.
On Wednesday, November 6th, our group will be presenting on the topic of Social Effects and Influences within Video Games and the Video Game Industry. More specifically, we will be working to explore subtopics of Negative Behaviours and their involvement in gaming.
We will be discussing the following points:
- Toxic and Anti-Social Behaviour;
- Misogyny in the Gaming Community;
- Virtual Crime with a focus on Sexual Assault by Avatars;
- Racism in Video Games;
- Video Game Violence and its Impact;
- Desensitization of Violence and Negative Behaviours;
Here are some links relating to our topics:
Thanks!
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By julie wong on October 30, 2019
Valve has shut down the ability for players to buy and re-sell keys to access in-game loot boxes in the popular game Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) in a bid to combat money laundering.
Only recently, the company announced in a blog post that the online marketplace has been taken over by large fraud networks who exploit video game loot boxes to liquidate their gains.
In CS:GO, players can pay Valve real money for a key to unlock loot boxes. However, players can also buy keys and sell them to others online for profit. Although the amount paid for keys are small, this anonymous system of commerce has allowed criminals to launder dirty money using micro-transactions.
As a result, Valve has open announced that newly purchased keys will not be tradeable or marketable.
Resources
Valve’s original blog post: https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2019/10/26113/
News articles:
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By alexander tatti on October 30, 2019
If you haven’t heard, TeamTrees charity drive is attempting to raise money for the Arbor Day Foundation in order to plant 20 million trees at $1/tree. This charity drive was organized by a known YouTuber known as “MrBeart”, who donated $100,000 himself.
One cool Videogame-based response is Seán William “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin, who held a Minecraft stream on his channel and raised a whopping $153,000 to plant trees.
Another significant response came from a Fortnite streamer known as “Loserfruit”, who held her own stream to raise money. In comparison to the Jacksepticeye stream, Loserfruit’s stream only made $10,500. However, MrBeast ended up re-tweeting Loserfruit’s tweet, which caught attention of Elon Musk, who ended up donating $1 million to the charity with a tweet stating “Ok, sounds legit, will donate 1M trees”.
It’s also pretty funny that Elon’s donation note was “For Treebeard” – if you don’t know who that is, Treebeard is an Ent/Tree Person from the Lord of the Rings Franchise. Elon has also changed his Twitter Name to “Treelon” and his avatar is now an image of a forest. I’ve included some screenshots showing the responses.
If you would like to read more, I’ve included two links below that provide more information on both the Videogame story and the wider Youtuber story.
https://ca.ign.com/articles/2019/10/30/elon-musk-has-donated-1-million-trees-to-fortnite-players-raising-money-to-plant-trees
https://www.newsweek.com/youtubers-come-together-fundraise-team-trees-help-combat-climate-change-1468219
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By jakob dolmer on October 29, 2019
Louis Vuitton has just unveiled their newly designed skins for League of Legends. Louis Vuitton’s involvement in designing skins has ben known for a while, but the first skin is now official.
This shows the development in the industri and its commercialisation on a whole new level.
Link for the skin and the history behind:
Highsnobiety
Polygon
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By Jon Festinger on October 27, 2019
On Tuesday October 22, 2019, the UBC Vancouver Alma Mater Society, the VP Academic and Provost, and the UBC Library held a reception to congratulate faculty and staff for being nominated as UBC Open Education Resource Champions. An open education champion was defined as someone who has made a significant contribution to the use of open educational resources (OER) at UBC Vancouver.
That I was among the ranks of those nominated has a great deal to do with many others (some of whom, fortunately, who were also nominated). Will Engle, Novak Rogic, and Richard Tape of UBC CTLT have been absolutely integral to every “open” initiative I’ve ever been involved with, beginning with the creation and ongoing stewardship of this open website (as well as several others for other courses over the years). It was then Associate Dean Benjamin Goold who first suggested I get together with UBC CTLT, and who was the first to support the fruits of that partnership. I will always be indebted to him for the suggestion and the vision embodied within it.
Most of all though, I am thankful for all the students who (mostly) enthusiastically embraced, posted, commented, and engaged with every “open” experiment, and patiently put up with glitches, mistakes, and failures. Gratitude is much too weak a word for what I feel.
A list of all the Champions can be found here: UBC Open Education Resource Champions
Jon
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By Andrija Maksic on October 25, 2019
Dear Class,
We would like to briefly inform you about the topic of our presentation next Wednesday.
We will discuss the very current and important decision from France in the matter of UFC Que Choisir v. S.A.R.L. Valve. The topic is the resale of digital video games by customers of the Steam platform. According to the Subscriber Agreement of Steam which prohibits the resale of games bought on the platform on the market. With this revolutionary decision, Steam has now been ordered to revoke this prohibition. Our presentation will look at how this decision came about, on what legal grounds it is based, what the differences are between a digital and a physical object and how this decision could have an impact in the future.
In addition we will discuss another very relevant issue around Valve’s Steam platform. This concerns the antitrust investigation that was initiated against this company by the European Competition Authority. Valve and 5 other companies are accused of an illegal agreement by which they prevented consumers from using video games and buying them cheaper in other EU countries.
The main topics addressed in our presentation are the following:
- Overview of the case
- EU / Canadian / US Law of the “principle of exhaustion”
- Digital v. Physical Property
- Consequences / Outlook for the future
- Geoblocking in Video Game Industry
If you would like to know more about this topic, you can find the court decision and a few articles about it here:
See you next Wednesday! 🙂
Cassie, Alice, Julie and Andrija
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