This kind of makes sense they have been using the term uncontested for a decade now.

Its surprising they haven’t taken the trademark earlier.

They’ve opened up the licence lately.

Over the last 5 years we’ve seen games developed not just by Traveller’s Tales but also Red Games Co, Gameloft, ClockStone Studio, Visual Concepts, Epic Games and now Guerrilla Games / Studio Gobo.

Not at random retailers anywhere in the world, but yes, if you get the same quality story for a third of the launch price, that matters.

I was comparing the Australian PSN prices, I assume ratios are probably similar across other regions but couldn’t be bothered checking.

I’m a bargain hunter as much as the next person but I want the annual Narrative award to go to the game with a 9/10 story, not the game with a 8/10 story and 4/10 price.

Last year the nominations for Best Narrative were:

• Alan Wake 2
• Baldur’s Gate 3
• Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
• Final Fantasy XVI
• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

On my local digital shop front Phantom Liberty was au$45 while Spider-Man was au$125. Should Phantom Liberty be given an advantage because it is priced at only 36% of its competition? I feel like those commercial value considerations might be appropriate for a review but for an annual Best Narrative award I want it to go to the Narrative that is actually Best.

That said if they added a best value in gaming award I would would be happy for them to consider games or hardware that offer significantly more value than their price would imply.

The Game Awards aims to recognize the best creative and technical work each year, irrespective of the format of that content’s release. Expansion packs, new game seasons, DLCs, remakes and remasters are eligible in all categories, if the jury deems the new creative and technical work to be worthy of a nomination. Factors such as the newness of the content and its price/value should be taken into consideration.

https://thegameawards.com/faq

Its a bit weird but I can understand their starting argument that they are reviewing works on their creative and technical merits (the actual format is incidental) but then they shoot it all down by saying price/value is taken into consideration.

If rockstar and grove street games are distancing from each other the latter probably needs to rebrand.

It had different names depending on publisher/region:

Little Big Adventure […] was published in Europe by Electronic Arts, and by Activision in North America, Asia and Oceania under the name Relentless: Twinsen’s Adventure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Big_Adventure

Its out? Its out!!

Now I know what I’m doing tonight.

This sounds like a jump the shark moment

Middle of the pack

I’m not sure “in a 3D space” qualifies as an “inventive step” these days.

It definitely feels like something a person with ordinary skill in the art to which the invention pertains could easily have made on the basis of an invention or inventions that are already known.

Co-optimous has the best db of co-op features.

For couch co-op they list:

• PS1 - 85 titles
• PS2 - 212 titles
• PS3 - 500 titles
• PS4 - 1207 titles
• PS5 - 393 titles

These numbers place the PS4 couch co-op library as larger than all the preceding PS generations combined. (At the moment you could group PS5 in with them too but that won’t be true for long.)

Edit: thinking about this a bit more the interesting pattern is that each of PS2, PS3, and PS4 more than doubled their preceding generation’s figure. We don’t know how long the PS5 generation will stick around but we are probably half way though and its unlikely it reaches 2400 co-op titles.

This ones probably more current.

https://youtu.be/UtG11pmBe3U

Admittedly my understanding of patents is pretty rudimentary but I thought you had to apply before releasing the idea into the world.

If that was right the general concept of a container that you throw at a creature to capture it would be considered unpatentable after Pocket Monsters Red and Green released in February 1997. Of course they could trademark the specific markings of the pokeball but the general mechanic would be fair game.

It looks like these guys have you covered:

https://retrobadge.co.uk/retrobadge/slogans-sayings-badges/normal-small-retro-badge/

A great example, immersion held a patent and blocked the competition.

However if Sony (or anyone else) had developed and released a product (or even published a design) using the same technical implementation before 1996 then that would have established prior art and no one would be able to patent it.

Is a crappy situation but patents don’t enable the patent holder to make a product, after all you can make the product without claiming a patent. Instead they stop people who are not the patent holder from making that product.

So if we put on our tinfoil hats its likely that some “just in case” patents are really just stopping their competition from heading in that direction.

This needs to be killed as we have prior art (Emulators, Braid, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, heaps of racing games, etc).

If their only significant addition is “we a have a button for it” then we need to ask if a button qualifies as “inventive” in 2024?

Edit:

Announcer: Will he succumb to the maddening urge to eradicate history? At the MERE PUSH of a SINGLE BUTTON! The beeyootiful shiny button! The jolly candy-like button! Will he hold out, folks? CAN he hold out?

- Space Madness (1991)

I would like to play a reimagining with only the two factions and not two many unit types. If they updated with modern QoL but kept the actual mechanics simple it would make a nice casual game.

But what do I know, I think that Anno on Wii is the best Anno.

I doubt they want comparisons to Leisure Suit Larry.