To comment on previous press conferences, hit me up on twitter @TheMadSpin.

7:49 PST:

Uncharted 4. I’m good with that. Not a terrible way to end the event–sort of like the Last of Us announcement from a few years ago.

7:43 PST:

Moments after House says, “I’m not finished yet,” he brings out Batman: Arkham Knight footage complete with Batmobile.

Slingshotting out of the Batmobile at full speed–it just looks like amazing fun.

7:39 PST:

Ok, so there’s a new Rockstar announcement. Probably GTA 5 remastered. I wonder if those of us who bought the PSN version will get a discount upgrade.

UPDATE: No word on a discount, but PS3 and XBox 360 players can migrate their saves to PS4.

7:35 PST:

New Metal Gear Solid 5 trailer, same as the old leaked trailer.

There’s a buzzard in the beginning–which is how clean my bones would feel if I was one of the people who spent 30 bucks on the “demo” and then had to drop another 60 on the full game.

I also assume the writing is still terrible?

7:33 PST:

Don’t really care about a Ratchet and Clank movie, but I’m obviously excited about the Last of Us remaster.

7:25 PST:

Holy crap. A Powers series? I’m down.

7:22 PST:

I missed some stuff about Vib Ribbon and now Mortal Kombat is smashing what little I did hear about it into a pulp.

If they don’t release a Sackboy that you can gut the stuffing out of, I refuse to buy this.

7:19 PST:

I think he paused expecting a huge roar at “1,000 games available at launch” but it didn’t happen.

Still, Playstation TV for 100 bucks is a pretty good deal if you have a reliable high-speed connection.

Sony better either fight hard for Net Neutrality, or they’d better start greasing the pockets of cable companies.

7:16 PST:

Remote play, PS Now, Vita. I sort of glazed over.

7:12 PST:

A look at the free-to-play stuff coming to PSN. It certainly runs the table, from puzzle games, to RPGs, to shooters, to music games. Someone can find at least one free game they’ll want to play, and might already have one sitting in the playstation store waiting on them right now.

The offerings are across all three platforms.

Of note: You can’t say “Free to play is free to play” when the slide everyone sees tells you, “some of this shit ain’t free.”

7:07 PST:

Just a quick note, I thought LittleBigPlanet 3 was a new Media Molecule title, but it’s actually being developed by Sumo Digital. Thanks to Jeff Posey @morehashtags on twitter for the tip.

7:05 PST:

A little swipe at Microsoft and its shrinking support for Kinect.

Plus, some stuff about Morpheus–which is in the E3 booth. I really hope Morpheus is awesome.

6:59 PST:

No Man’s Sky looks pretty great, especially when you consider the crap that team went through this year due to a natural disaster.

6:56 PST:

Oh, so we’re going from Suda-51’s exclusive title “Crazy Fuck Riot” to the follow-up to Journey?

Nothing manic about that.

6:51 PST:

Here comes that DoubleFine announcement. I predicted it. I can’t believe I predicted this. I am a national treasure.

Grim Fandango. YUSSSS.

6:48 PST:

Saddest Magika wizard turned cat-lady. Now my friend Zak can murder me in Magika on a whole new console.

Magika 2 with totally not vampires.

6:43 PST:

Dead Island 2 is a huge announcement for me. I was just hassling a friend of mine about Dead Island 2 this week and she didn’t give me any hint that it was coming.

6:40 PST:

Wow. The Co-Op portions of FarCry 4? Free for your friends. You can invite your friends to join you even if they don’t own FarCry 4. So that makes my previous wish even more viable.

So far, Sony is winning the day, and they’ve barely gotten started.

6:27 PST:

The co-op trend in gaming is exciting for me. I hate competitive multiplayer, but I LOVE cooperative multiplayer. The more of that in my life, the more time I’ll spend talking to my in-laws.

6:34 PST:

Interesting that we’re getting gameplay footage of FarCry 4 during the Sony presser, when we only got a cut scene at Ubisoft’s own press conference. Clearly that was probably part of the arrangement for the day.

6:30 PST:

Bloodborne is gruesome looking. I don’t know what’s happening with the gameplay though, so I once again remind conference folk: show me gameplay or leave me alone. It’s the gamer equivalent of pics or it didn’t happen.

6:29 PST:

Big announcement for Little Big Planet 3? All of the previously created levels from Little Big Planet 2–playable in LBP3. Neat.

6:20 PST:

I just squealed loudly when I saw the Little Big Planet 3 reveal. I’d predicted this, but then Media Molecule reported that they weren’t showing anything this year, so I didn’t get hyped up.

Also of note: Infamous Second Son DLC following the Black Flag/Liberty City Stories model and allowing players to play the DLC with or without the full game. Cool.

6:19 PST:

Entwined is available right now for 9.99 and it’s cross-buy. This might be the first game of the day that included a day-one reveal-to-market moment.

We’re used to seeing companies like Microsoft or Sony reveal new console models and day-of deals, but today hadn’t had anything like that until Entwined.

That might be more interesting than the game itself.

6:17 PST:

An indie developer made up of recent graduates of two game design programs making a game that looks like ThatGameCompany made it–proving that university graduates only know how to make games like this.

6:13 PST:

I missed a lot of the Destiny stuff hoping for the UStream. feed to clear up. It didn’t, so I’ve moved to YouTube. So far so good–Unless you’re UStream.

UPDATE: Destiny Alpha beginning this week and the Beta in July. That’s pretty cool.

 6:08 PST:

Andrew House takes the stage. Here we go.

6:05 PST:

Opening cinematic trailer for Destiny. I assume this because the narrator leaned on the word “destiny” so hard that he nearly broke its scaffolding.

Also, that sounds like John De Lancie in that companion cube.

6:00 PST:

The press conference should start any moment now. The lack of Jack Tretton this year already makes 2013 a tough act to follow for Sony. Plus, it’s just gonna be weird.

5:40 PST:

DoubleFine’s Justin Bailey just made the following tweet, which can probably give us SOME clue about what to expect tonight.

I also encourage PS4 owners to check out the PS4 E3 app. It’s an interesting idea, and I’ll be exploring it while I wait for the conference to start.

UPDATE:

Greg Rice got into the DoubleFine fun just a moment ago:

Meanwhile, Tim Schaefer posted that he’s “Really excited about reconnecting with old friends at E3,” and Justin Bailey retweeted my guess that they’re about to announce something big.

I’m now crossing my fingers for a sequel to something like Psychonauts or the discovery that they somehow got the rights to Grim Fandango.

This is the closest thing I’ve ever done to real journalism and now I’m exhausted.

Share your thoughts with me on twitter via @TheMadSpin.

6:00 PST:

Ubisoft closes out the conference with Rainbow Six: Siege.

Then Aisha gets way more excited about it than anyone actually should be.

The game looks fine, but it does not look good enough to make a professional entertainer pretend to cry from excitement. When you try to convince me you’re that excited, I just feel insulted.

I also feel like the condescending “random” people from the crowd bit is a terrible way to close things out. I can’t watch anymore.

I’ll close by saying: we don’t need another game where a bunch of soldiers have to rescue a helpless female.

3:55 PST:

He says, “One last game,” and the crowd goes crazy. I thought this was going to be Beyond Good and Evil 2, so I was excited. Now it’s another multiplayer tactical shooter.

I’m not really interested–but I do like the fact that the walls can be destroyed and that the players are cavalier about losing their hostage.

3:49 PST:

Valiant Hearts is a really charming looking game. The UbiArt Framework continues to be a bastion for interesting ideas. They don’t always hit, but they all really have character. I hope this game is fantastic.

Aisha just said, “we laughed, we cried.”

Nobody cried. There’s been nothing emotionally charged enough to make anyone cry today. Maybe that’s the problem with Ubisoft’s writing process–they think the tears from our eye rolling for tears of emotion.

3:45 PST:

There is no way I’m ever playing this game without putting on a fake goatee when I compete against myself.

3:44 PST:

I’m actually convinced that this game could take the place of annoying aerobic classes. I wanted to be skeptical–but it actually looks like something that could find a place in my quickly improving heart.

3:41 PST:

I feel like Aisha just vaguely tied the haptic feedback of her controller to the Hitachi Magic Wand.

That or one of the sleazy writers did it for her.

All of that as the introduction to a new fitness game from Ubisoft. In the game you punch asteroids. Aerosmith will cash that check.

3:38 PST:

I’ve really enjoyed the evolution of the stealth aspects of the Assassin’s Creed series. It’s definitely on display during this gameplay session. Also on display: enormous crowds.

I love the idea of huge crowds, but only if it leads to a naturally elevated sense of anonymity. If guards can spot the player just as easily in giant crowds, I’m not going to enjoy myself. Especially since it means more people to get in the way when I have to take off running.

3:35 PST:

Now we’re looking at actual gameplay. The fluidity of movement, especially the acrobatics, is gorgeous.

We’re right back to a traditional “tackle the guy running” situation–but the player detours to take what looks to be a dynamic revenge quest.

Now the “deadliest assassin ever” is struggling in a one-on-one fight. Looks good doing it though.

3:30 PST:

This version of Everybody Wants to Rule the World is pretty cool. Why was the soundtrack for Watch Dogs so awful? They clearly understand how to find interesting music.

The trailer itself isn’t as interesting as just watching someone play the game.

3:28 PST:

Aisha calls out shitty writers for their shitty segue. Bad news for all of us: They are probably the same people writing the plot points for Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs 2, and The Division.

Still, I’m always fond of Assassin’s Creed information, so here I sit, rapt.

3:23 PST:

Like every car commercial, I’m more interested in the single playing during this trailer for The Crew.

I’ll also make my prediction that this is all geared up for Ubisoft to announce the third installment next year and call it Th3 Cr3w.

3:16 PST:

The Division non-interactive trailer. An attempt to give context to a world that I cared more about before they tried to convince me to care about it.

The game isn’t happening for a long time, but when it does I’ll be ready.

Just don’t make me pretend to care about this story you’re weaving so far.

3:15 PST:

Who had the hair first, Petter Mannerfelt or the villain from Far Cry 4?

3:12 PST:

And now, to talk about dancing: A guy who has never danced in his life. I assume that he’s about to prove me wrong on stage.

3:10 PST:

Just Dance is first up–so I don’t care, but I can’t stop being shocked that Aisha Tyler is actually doing a good job. The internet may be “full of bullshit,” but sometimes we’re right, and so far it looks like Ubisoft listened.

I will say that I’m not sure you want to claim you “Start big, then go bigger” by transitioning from Far Cry to a niche dance title that most people can’t even play.

3:06 PST:

You have to hang-glide through the jungle to disable all the hair stylists.

I’m looking forward to this game. Farcry never handles human beings well, but they always make fun toy boxes to play in.

Now we get Aisha Tyler again. I hope things are more natural today. So far so good. She’s actually endearing herself to me this year.

3:03 PST:

So yes, it’s Farcry 4. This guy is a monster–and that’s mostly based on his haircut.

3:00 PST:

The official start of the presser looks like Farcry 4 so far.

2:57 PST:

I’ll say this, Ubisoft has had the best hold music so far. However, they’re already showing us Rabbids and shenanigans to start out–unlike everyone else who started with games and adult voices.

12:54 PST:

OK, it’s cool that they’re launching a BETA for Battlefield Hardline today. If you’re into it, this has got to be great news.

12:44 PST:

Why are people screeching at the press conference? If EA hired them, it makes EA look stupid. If those are just normal people in the audience acting like morons, someone should ask them to stop.

I’m interested in seeing Visceral work in a universe that doesn’t involve a single supernatural creature, but I’m not exactly floored by another game where people shoot at people in a city.

I mean, I’ll play a couple of those next year and love them, but I won’t play them all–and so far this game doesn’t stand out.

12:40 PST:

FIFA 2015–EA has just announced that they’ve left Landon Donovan off the in-game roster.

Look, I don’t even enjoy watching Soccer (Euro-football if you must), but even I think FIFA is a terrific series. If they’ve found a way to make it better, I’m interested–even if they do pronounce it “Feefer.”

12:37 PST:

DICE is up again, this time for some information on the long awaited Mirror’s Edge sequel.

If you need a great title to hold you for now, check out Mirror’s Edge for iOS. It’s a terrific game.

If you can’t wait, you should run through your town leaping from building to building. This doesn’t work if you live in a small fishing village.

12:33 PST:

I’m exhausted with MOBAs, but at least we’ve finally ended our run of games that promote encephalitis. Normally I’d have assumed golf was concussion free–but did you guys see the battleship? Remember that?!

I may not like the genre, but the team is endearing.

12:31 PST:

Madden: If it’s in the game from last year, it’s still in the game this year.

The day they finally deliver on the promise of better defensive control is the day I’ll finally buy a copy of Madden again.

12:28 PST:

Cam looks a lot like a blond Phil Spencer. I guess this is the new uniform in the game industry?

Oh, now let’s talk about golf. Remember that time Tiger Woods launched a fireball over a battleship?

Please tell me Happy Gilmore is a playable character, and I’m in.

12:25 PST:

He likes his games the way he likes his women: 60 dollars each with out of the box day one DLC.

Seriously though, Criterion makes killer games–though they’ve lost some of their creative core, I don’t expect that to change.

They’re talking about their new office experience–which sounds a bit like the culture at Valve (agile space, open-minded work environment).

12:22 PST:

Now on to NHL 15–the common thread right now: Concussions.

The music EA chose for that NHL clip was very counter intuitive.

12:20 PST:

Bruce Lee in the new UFC game. If I was still an 11 year old kid, I’d have lost my mind with excitement at this announcement.

12:15 PST:

And now we’re talking about the Sims 4. I’m totally tuned out. The obnoxious sounds from the Sims, a canned speech, crappy music track. How many terrible things do I have to listen to at once?

As a poet, I must admit that I respect Gladis more.

12:14 PST:

A new IP from Bioware–some of it looks like it’s part of the modern age rather than ancient or future. That would make sense. Touchstones for human imagination across multiple generations.

12:12 PST:

Hey, Bioware–I’m nearly done with my Masters degree in creative writing, plus I have 30 hours of graduate work in game design. Please hire me.

What? This isn’t the place for that? Didn’t I tell you guys to shut up for a minute? I’m talking to Bioware.

12:10 PST:

I love the tactical options for DA:I

I don’t know that I’ll ever use them on the console–but the option to play either way is a huge nod to the varied player types Bioware has cultivated over the last decade.

12:05 PST:

Everybody shut up, you shut the hell up. It’s Dragon Age followed by other stuff from Bioware. You guys mean nothing to me right now!

12:01 PST:

Andrew Wilson kicking things off with a haircut/mic combo he stole from Vanilla Ice.

He says they’re doing things differently this year. He says the common thread is to put players first. That would be different.

11:58 PST:

The camera is doing a sickly flyover–now it’s panning to the DICE offices to talk Star Wars. I now understand the weird flyover.

I’m not a huge Battlefield fan, but I respect DICE and I’m excited for a new Star Wars game–especially assuming they’re using Frostbite 4.

11:51 PST:

There’s a big countdown on the EA website. Says the show starts in just under nine minutes. I’m hoping for an hour of Dragon Age footage.

11:30 PST:

The conference starts at 12 PST (I originally read 11:30 and there was a countdown and everything).

Let me warn everyone that it’s raining pretty heavily where I am, and the power just flickered. If I lose connection, just imagine a bunch of snarky stuff about the new Peggle MMO, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

11:00 PST:

The EA Press Conference pre-show starts in about 30 minutes.

(The most recent post appears at the top (with a helpful timestamp), while the oldest post is continually pushed down, down, down into lonely oblivion.)

12:58 PST:

Phil Spencer is back to close out the conference. So far there has been almost no new IP and maybe three references to Kinect (which wasn’t even on the stage during Alex’s segment). Looks like they’re closing the show with B-Roll footage of the same games we’ve already seen. I was hoping for an Apple Style “one last thing” but right now it doesn’t look like it.

Just a lot of Nintendo styled announcements that they’re bringing back a bunch of old games/characters.

Conker, Halo, Crackdown, etc.

I’d love to hear how Xbox Fans feel about this conference.

12:56 PST:

Hey, a return to Pacific City. I loved Crackdown. Didn’t really enjoy Crackdown 2 as much–but Saints Row 4 proves that type of game is a lot of fun. If they don’t plop us into the same city for a third time, I think it’ll be a terrific title. See, I’m not always cynical.

12:53 PST:

The guy wearing his headphones like a hipster, but his hair like Eminem: Next gen.

It’s called Scalebound. Clearly a pun. I’m not sure exactly why I should care about it. If you show me a new IP without any actual gameplay, I tune out.

12:44 PST:

Ryan Barnard from Massive to talk about how many more times he plans to delay The Division.

Kidding, the footage still looks great, I still want to play it. I’m angry because I want it.

12:40 PST:

As a guy with two high-end PCs (including my Alienware workstation that I’m working from right now), this entire section of the Microsoft conference is fun, but not really useful. I’m going to play Massive Chalice, Tomb Raider and Witcher 3 on my PC, regardless of console availability.

With the development tools for Witcher 3, there’s no way I’d buy a console version.

That doesn’t mean this footage isn’t fun. It looks fantastic.

12:37 PST:

I see they’re bringing Massive Chalice to XBox One. I hope it’s also coming to PS4. Oh look, a backer email telling me more information AS I’m typing this.

12:30 PST:

A new IP from Playdead. Looks pretty cool. You can tell these guys made Limbo.

12:24 PST:

As they clumsily hinted at during the pre-show, we’re getting new Halo that’s made out of old Halo.

We also found out that the Halo team has an dissociative identity disorder.

12:19 PST:

This 2D game looks like something made with UbiArt, but it’s apparently not. I’m slightly piqued. I missed the title, so I crowd sourced the information: Ori and the Blind Forest. Looks nice.

Now we’re watching Halo footage. We’re also listening to the sweet and sexy voice of Keith David. Great if you’re into that.

12:17 PST:

Project Spark looks pretty cool, and I’m glad to know it’s coming to the PC. I can’t imagine that it’s going to be a lot of fun building with a control pad.

Plus, I’m a pretty big Conker nerd–so that reveal may or may not turn into something exciting for me.

Still waiting for something completely new today.

12:12 PST:

A multiplayer Fable game–not just co-op, but also a sort of Tecmo’s Deception sort of thing, where the player can step into the role of villain and set up traps and enemies to challenge other players.

The game looks pretty good too. The leaves are very leaf-like.

12:08 PST:

Alex is the first person to mention Kinect at all today and we’re nearly 40 minutes in.

12:05 PST:

Ok, new drinking game–if someone’s arm is severed, take a shot.

By the way, I was partially wrong–the game doesn’t look like a traditional shooter at all. It looks very much like the gameplay from Infamous 1 and 2, but with a giant paint bucket.

12:01 PST:

Oh, thank god. It’d been several minutes since a guy in military camo fired a weapon at something.

P.S. I like that Insomniac–a team that built tons of traditional shooters in the vein of First Person Gears of War–is making fun of traditional shooters. Let’s pretend that guns and grenades are different if you have a wacky color palette and a meta sense of humor.

11:59 PST:

Ok, everybody shut the hell up. This is clearly Dragon Age, and I won’t listen to anyone about anything for the next few minutes.

11:52 PST:

I love Assassin’s Creed, and so does my wife. The chance to play with her is something that might actually be exciting. The footage looks cool–but I imagine we’ll talk more about this during the Ubisoft conference at 2:30 PST.

11:50 PST:

When I saw: From the Makers of Left 4 Dead, someone finally had my attention. Once I saw it was just another shooter, they lost it again.

9:48 PST:

Footage of the new Forza game looks a lot like a Cinemax late-night movie. Also, I’m calling off the Drivatar drinking game. I think I’m four shots in already and I still have a lot of sitting here typing stuff to do.

9:45 PST:

First use of the word “Drivatar”. Everybody drink.

9:40 PST:

We’re still watching the CoD gameplay stuff. Biggest news seems to be that all DLC is headed to Microsoft consoles first. Snark aside, I’m enjoying the verticality. There’s not much of it so far, but it’s still far more than we’ve seen in a Call of Duty game in a decade. Sadly, the video ends with a very familiar “shocking death and injury” moment. They’ve been trying for years to recapture the poignance of that nuke scene from Call of Duty 4.

9:32 PST:

Phil Spencer looks so much like every generic hero from the PS3/XBox 360 era. I think he’s cosplaying right now. So far he’s talking about games as a growing and evolving industry. Now he’s throwing it to Call of Duty as the show opener. It’s like we’re still in 2004.

9:30 PST:

Starting now I’ll simply use E3 California time to save myself some hassle. The Microsoft presser is about to start. I’ll bet we hear a lot about how Kinect isn’t dead, it’s just sleeping.

9:17 PST/11:17 Central:

Ah, the joys of effortlessly pretending they didn’t rehearse all of this stuff and that Larry is spoiling stuff. If he smugly asks “are you gonna be on the show floor revealing this thing, wink, wink” too many more times, I’m just gonna take a nap during the press conference.

9:08 PST/11:08 Central:

I don’t get all of my predictions right–but we get our first sighting of the #myfavoritegame campaign I predicted earlier.

9:06 PST/11:05 Central:

Alex Rigopulos (Harmonix CEO) had to grit his way through that interview with Larry without mentioning that Microsoft boned them with the Kinect decoupling. Great restraint.

9:02 PST/11:02 Central:

Graham is wearing the same shirt Joe Don Baker stole from Chuck Norris for the never filmed Final Justice sequel.

9:00 PST/11:00 Central:

According to this countdown we’re about 20 seconds until pre-show starts. The Mayans thought of everything.

Oh, what’s the opposite of reverent? That’s what most of this will be.

8:56 PST/10:56 Central:

Microsoft is about to start their own pre-show coverage. This is often a collection of trailers and interviews. I’d guess we see some version of the “what’s your favorite game” campaign the X-Box team has been circulating on social media this week.

True, although there were 5 million or so Playstation 4 users not invited to the event.

The only alternative PS4 users have to fall back on right now is their own “Beta” access to Final Fantasy XIV—which is neutered a bit by the fact that the game is already out for PS3 and PC.  Next month we can debate (loudly) whether or not the PS4 exclusive titles stack up to the likes of Titanfall, but for now we can say, for certain, that while the PS4 had a lot of sales this month, they’re way behind in the “collective gaming events” category.

But, this isn’t a question of whether or not Sony got it wrong. It’s a flat accusation that the entire game industry missed an opportunity in February. When a demo, essentially a cardboard cutout of a game, out-performs full releases, something has gone wrong. There are only twelve months in a year and January wasn’t too much better than February. As an industry we’ve just wasted 15 percent of our calendar spinning our wheels in the mud.

People were logging onto eBay to pay 5, 10, even 35 dollars for Titanfall Beta codes. Read that again. Gamers were so desperate for a new experience in February, that some paid nearly 40 dollars to get access to a glorified demo that they knew would last only a weekend.

I’m not sure when developers or publishers decided that February was a dead month for pocketbooks, but clearly gamers want to spend money, they want to pay for compelling new content, and they want to pay a premium for it—even if that premium is an overpriced Beta. At least Titanfall had something going for it.

1. It was a new property, with new ideas.

2. It existed. At all.

The problem, of course, is that even though EA and Respawn won’t  regret the way they handled the Beta, they still lost something here. None of the money from sold codes make it into the hands of developers—just into the paypal accounts of greedy gamers that signed up for an experience, were granted early access, and then leveraged that privilege in a predatory way.

In his article, Colin calls Titanfall the return of the “old-fashioned demo giveaway.” First, let me say that I balked at this, because I forgot that I’m getting old. I told my wife, “I don’t remember demos showing up on consoles until the original Playstation came packed with a little disc.” Then I remembered that the original Playstation launched about twenty years ago, and took a baby aspirin for my heart.

Still, even during the days of the Playstation, companies were smarter about the way they leveraged their demos. I’d never have owned a copy of Square’s Tobal No. 1 if it hadn’t come packaged with the Final Fantasy VII demo. Likewise, when Konami launched Zone of Enders, plenty of us rushed out to buy a copy just to get our hands on the robust Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty demo.

The Final Fantasy VII demo was a huge event. The Metal Gear Solid 2 demo was an even bigger event, because it allowed fans an opportunity to get their names on in-game dog tags. Unlike Titanfall, these demos were huge events that also helped push sales elsewhere, and to draw attention to titles that might not otherwise get the attention they deserved.

So what did we gain from the Titanfall Beta? Obviously, EA proved they could get lots of people together online without their servers exploding, so it may have eased the concerns of those who preordered. We got a lot of people talking about games for a day or two, and I’m sure more than one developer out there took note of the verticality in Titanfall and recognized that consumer expectation might soon evolve.

But, we also surrendered something. We were so unprepared to showcase new ideas, that it was almost too easy for a demo to be the most important thing in gaming during January and February. How many gamers would’ve ponied up money for new games in February if they’d had the option? How many of those people wasted their cash on relatively worthless Beta codes instead? When the floodgates open in March, how many games will collect dust on the shelves because gamers will go from no options, to too many options? Remember what happened to Captain Marvel?

We already know Titanfall hits shelves in March. Thief is the last big title of February (my copy is sitting in my PS4 waiting for me to finish this column so that I can go play). Let’s run through a quick list of stuff coming out in March just to contrast it to what we’ve seen so far in 2014:

• South Park: The Stick of Truth
• Dark Souls II
• Titanfall
• Yoshi’s New Island
• Final Fantasy X and X-2 HD (for Vita and PS3)
• Metal Gear Solid V
• Infamous: Second Son
• Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
• Minecraft: PS4 Edition
• (Plus a new episode of Telltale’s Walking Dead: Season 2 and the last piece of Bioshock: Infinite DLC—which looms heavier after last week)

Anybody got 450 bucks for all those games? I certainly don’t have it. Those are just the games I found most compelling. There’s a list twice as long (that ignores smaller releases from Steam, PSN or XBLA) that some might pick and choose from (I hear Dynasty Warriors has a following).

It’s hard to believe that none of those games was ready for a February launch (especially Final Fantasy X/X-2, which launched in Japan in December—and must’ve been translated long ago). These are all core games, targeted directly at the core gamer. It’s unusual to see so many titles elbowing one another for the same eyes, at the same time.

I have only a vague prediction—that projected sales for many of these titles will not be met. I can’t predict which titles survive unscathed (though South Park hits early, and is long anticipated, so it and Titanfall will probably be fine). It’ll be a while before we see the sales data on some of these games—and March still stands to be a huge month for the industry as a whole—but as always, a few huge titles may prop up the false notion that the industry is booming, while dozens of other titles bleed revenue quietly.

If Ken Levine ever heard the adage that you bury bad news in a busy cycle, he certainly didn’t adhere to it this week. Maybe you didn’t notice, but February isn’t a hotbed month for videogames. The big titles get pushed out the door for the holiday season, and companies ride that wave through January, as new systems get populated with new games. Then, in February, we crunch the numbers, lick our wounds, and wait.

In case you’re counting, the biggest titles of February so far are a graphically upgraded Tomb Raider title, a graphically upgraded Fable title, and a handful of DLC and episodic content. I’ll grant you, the new Thief game (a series with Ken’s influence all over it, by the way) hits shelves on February 25^th, but it’s so close to March that any responsible human being (so I don’t count) won’t have time to dig in until the weekend anyway—which, you guessed it, puts us in March.

Quick aside:

Some might argue that the biggest game of February wasn’t a full release at all, but instead the Beta for Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall. In fact, I’m planning an entire article on that Beta in a few days, so I’ll say only this: The demand for the Titanfall beta was so high that keys were going for 35-40 dollars on eBay.

Which brings us back to the top. Ken Levine, with what is only perfect timing if you’re going for a pratfall, announced the dissolution of Irrational Games, “as [we] know it.” You can read the press release, but the basic premise is simple: Most of the 110-120 staff members at Irrational are out of a job, the reins to the Bioshock franchise are in the hands of 2K Games, and Ken is creatively huddling with about 15-20 hand-picked staffers to do something smaller, and more meaningful.

This is exactly what many critics have been calling for from our luminaries for years. A creative mind who’s willing to step back from the AAA development cycle and deliver something a little less flashy, but a little more substantive. Obviously, we don’t know for sure that Ken’s new adventure is going to turn into success—but neither were we sure about Bioshock: Infinite after years of delays, and that turned out pretty well.

In fact, some of the surprise of this announcement is that Bioshock: Infinite, rightly or not, is carting home award after award from the gaming press. Even people who have quibbles about the game’s narrative, or its ludonarrative dissonance, tend to heap mostly praise on what has turned into, perhaps ironically, a swan song.

I spoke with an industry friend yesterday, and there is some perception of Levine as “Ken the control freak”, unwilling to leave his masterpiece in the hands of others, so he tore it down like one of the characters in his universe (I’m embellishing some). However, in his goodbye letter, he says clearly that Bioshock is going to continue in the hands of 2K Games—so control freak or not, I don’t see him white-knuckling his baby on the way out. In fact, Irrational belongs to 2K Games, and they—not Ken—write the paychecks.

If 2K is keeping the franchise, why in the world would they fire the team most comfortable and familiar with its moving pieces? There’s been an outcry, especially in the hipsterverse of the gaming community, that Ken gets to keep doing what he loves at the expense of a lot of people he cast aside. These are the same people, by the way, that ridicule Ubisoft for releasing an annual Assassin’s Creed game, or moan about HD Remakes. You know, the kinds of games that turn a quicker profit, keep people employed, gamers happy, and the industry afloat?

We can’t have it both ways.

Either we push for an auteur driven medium and recognize that an auteur driven medium naturally recedes in scope, or we push for a place where all 50,000 game industry professionals get to keep building modular corridors to pay their bills. I imagine we can have a little of both—but we have to stop setting up each side as the straw-man in our news cycles.

This industry, ladies and gentlemen, is a madhouse. There are journalists out there acting like social watchdogs, trying to keep the big-bad game developer in check, when those developers probably make less money to build games than many pundits do to critique them.

Bioshock: Infinite was relatively successful, selling around 4 million units, but that doesn’t take into consideration that it hit shelves in 2013—six years after Irrational Game’s last title, the original Bioshock—which sold about 3 million copies. Bioshock was revealed in 2004 and launched in 2007. That means Irrational Games shipped 7 million units during its last 6 or 7 years of development.

Beyond that, they struggled to get Bioshock: Infinite out the door at all. They lost director Tim Gerritsen, eventually replaced him with a mercenary job from Epic’s Rod Fergusson, and then spent a full year after release struggling to push out two pieces of relatively tiny DLC.

Financially, this isn’t a company that could afford to sit around, 120 people strong, and wait for Ken to come up with something to do. I’ll admit that’s disappointing. I’ll admit that I’d rather every person in development keep their jobs, and that more jobs opened up for rookies like me. But, the secret concussion problem of the game dev world is that almost no one is safe.

We poke our heads up and lament firings at companies like 38 Studios, or LucasArts—but we tend to ignore the brutality of most of the industry. We forcefeed readers cynical narratives when a company with great intentions and ideas, like DoubleFine, slip a deadline, or try to get creative with revenue streams.

There is a segment of our community that seems to revel in the Schadenfreude of a failed Kickstarter project. The joy of writing or reading a snarky review has somehow replaced the solidarity of enjoying something together. Ken Levine has  never produced a flop.  Even when he was still at Looking Glass he was making great games.

Still, the voices rolled out during the long development cycle to tell us that Bioshock: Infinite was sure to fail. Wrong again. But, it doesn’t change the underlying issues of the industry. It’s hard to keep a  120 person machine rolling. It’s harder when you don’t have a giant project full of set pieces for those people to put together. When you add the no-win pressure of impatient fans and critics, there’s little incentive at all to open your arms to that grind over and over again.

This industry chews people up. Spits them out. There are no unions to protect all the people who got fired this week. That’s the problem. Not that one guy wanted to step away and make games on his own terms again. Not that we have people with the clout to make AAA titles who are willing to, instead, take a shot at true artistry. The problem is an industry that perpetuates the NEED for cold-blooded severance.

It’s got to be a pretty slow news cycle to take the story of Ken Levine taking a small team off into the proverbial woods to make great content, and twist it into a tale of a man so beset with hubris that he fired 100 people to get his way. If he’d walked away from EA this industry would call him a hero. If he’d announced a new Bioshock title too quickly, we’d have called him lazy, and out of ideas. Then we’d have questioned whether we need another Bioshock game so soon after the last one.

There’s plenty of hubris in our industry. I’m just not sure we ought to pin it all on Ken Levine—even if his timing is terrible.

That said, I will not be joining the people of GamerFitNation in their Online Shooters Ceasefire event. In fact, though shooters are not my primary genre of choice, I might actually do a 24-hour live stream on my PS4, as a sort of reverse-protest in the name of logic.

The idea behind the even, which I’ve taken directly from the event’s facebook page , reads as follows:

“On December 14, 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School experienced a tragic act of gun violence, which took the lives of 26 people. In support of the families of the victims and in remembrance of all victims of gun violence, GamerfitNation asks online shooter gamers to step away from their digital firearms and cease fire from Saturday, December 21st, 2013 at 12AM to Sunday morning at 12AM.”

It’s such a condescending idea. “Hey, gamers who had nothing to do with this terrible shooting, step away from a thing that brings you joy, and which does not cause you to be insane or cruel, and make a complicit link between what you do for fun, and the brutal execution of children.”

GamerFitNation is aware of these types of detractions. Antwand Pearman, one of the event’s organizers, told Polygon: “I’m not worried or concerned. I feel like we should just do something because it’s right, not because it’s politically-correct.” He also claims that it’s just about, “gamers coming together to do something positive.”

Image from GamerFitNation

I disagree. In fact, I think it’s a dangerous way to congratulate people for doing nothing. And that’s literally what they’re doing. They aren’t encouraging gamers to take action, they’re simply asking them to, for one day, take an inactive role in fake violence—you know—for the victims.

I used to get together with my grad school buddies, drink too much, and complain about, as we put it, “all this Facebook bullshit!” One of our biggest complaints came in the form of the cryptic breast cancer campaigns, and any other similar fake activism. We, despite our years of training, went with a simple pun: Slacktivism. The opportunity to allow thousands of people feel great about themselves because they posted a shit status update, while never actually leaving their desk.

Masturbate with one hand, update your newsfeed and twitter with the other, feel two kinds of self-satisfied. Pretty good deal. Unless you actually are a victim. Unless you suffer from cancer. Unless your goal is some sort of actual progress or goodness.

We’re trading sentimentality for action. We assume that people who lost their kids are going to be more moved by the temporary cessation of a virtual combat, than they would be in stricter gun control laws. It’s a lot like posting about the hungry instead of feeding them.

Yes, I’m a gamer, so I’m also insulted by the constant reinforcement, even within our own ranks, that we owe an apology for the actions of psychopaths. I just got finished playing an Assassin’s Creed game that took place during the age of pirates and slavery. We don’t need media to raise the human capacity for abomination. Long before XBox Live, we humans had already perfected the art of homicide.

One of the first stories in the Old Testament (whether you take it as fact or fiction) was the story of one brother murdering another. Has anyone orchestrated a day where we all agree to put away our violent bibles in memory of the dead? I’ll bet I can draw a more convincing line between the violence of the world and the violence of that particular media.

So, December 21^st, if you want to do something helpful, then do something at all. Don’t settle for a sentimental and condescending inaction. Don’t insert yourself into the narrative that virtual guns owe more apology than the real ones. Instead, let’s get a game together, let’s shoot fake guns, let’s be eloquent and friendly while we do it, and let’s help idiots realign the difference between fact and fiction.

The guys over at Rocksteady set this franchise up to be sex in a deep black cowl. They spent half a decade making guys like me feel like a billionaire ass-kicking vigilante. They’re off working on some secret project, ostensibly next gen, potentially Justice League related—likely to kick the doors down from fifty feet away and make us beg for mercy—or more.

So, for now, the Batman franchise remains rooted in the death throes of the dying console generation, and  strangled at the hands of Warner Bros. Montreal. Yes, I’m being melodramatic—just like the unkempt dialogue, and the way I wanted to throw my computer after my save file corrupted—but man this game went wrong.

Full disclosure: I didn’t finish Arkham Origins before I started this review. I probably got about 20% of the way into the game before I lost my save file—but it’s enough to know that the game was more mess than promising. When I still had a save file I often had to walk away for a few hours, cleanse the nasty taste in my mouth, forget about the clumsy design, the bugs, the dialogue.

But, to the credit of the foundation the game was built upon—I always wanted to come back. Even when I was kicked out of my game without warning because I lost my internet connection for 10 seconds, even when I fell through a place where a texture existed, but BSP/collision did not (and fell forever), and even when I got caught in a fast-travel screen for 10 minutes, gave up, and lost my progress, I’d take a deep breath, pace my apartment, and come back for more.  The same thing that keeps the institutionalized criminal in their cycle of crime and incarceration is what kept me going back for more: the inside was easier to understand than the outside—and on the outside I just dropped 50 bucks on a game that refused to be worth it.

The technical issues aren’t even the worst parts. The game looks better than ever, the game even feels good a lot of the time—it’s not as if they broke the engine into its component parts and then reconstructed it—but the world they built around Batman is loose, lazy and the wrong kind of effortless.

Gamers have grown accustomed to waist-high cover as an automatic cue that combat is about to start, but Origins replaces that with unrealistic open lobbies. It got to the point that if I saw a big empty space, apropos of nothing, I knew the game was about to throw 20 guys at me at once. It’s uninspired stuff too. Where previous iterations of the game let you spend a lot of time feeling like a predator, using the shadows, quietly disabling your opponents, Arkham Origins takes the opposite tact: attrition and lots of it.

The city is devoid of life, the streets are empty of cars, people or any sign that this game is more than an Alpha build that never quite took the next step. With the snow covering the ground and the near lack of personality, it’s too poignant a pun to call this game a whitebox hub that leads to corridor action sequences.

Collision boxes are drawn in mid-air. Sometimes, if you zip-line in the right places, you can watch Batman hit these invisible barriers and scrape along them in mid air. Batman, trooper that he is, still slingshots to his destination.

At another point, the collision around the ice floes near a boat in the harbor was several feet above the textures.

Other times, ledges allow Batman to climb on top from one direction, but not the other, or to grapple from one side, but not the other. It is possible that this is a glitch, but the scarier notion is that it was a deliberate game design choice. Often, these moments where the game refuses to let you grapple up to an obvious ledge correspond with a time when it would give Batman a combat advantage in a room of 16 enemies.

The “real” Batman uses these strategic advantages as his bread and butter—so do quality gamers—but Arkham Origins makes the mistake of demanding that the player eschew all paths but those the designers deemed “critical.” It’s their way, or nothing, and so I pace some more.

I hear the developer is very apologetic about these problems. I hear they’ve already patched the game with ferocity. I hear that these issues are being taken very seriously. But, even if they hammer out the technical issues, it would take a miracle to remedy the condescending way this Batman game presents itself. Batman, world’s greatest detective, held by the hand, dragged through a mundane world, and punished for improvisation.

But hey, at least they found a way to bring the Joker back, right?

Ok, so not that simple.

Over the years, the people at Telltale have become masters of remediation. They’ve transferred comics, television shows, and feature film series into interactive experiences. The Walking Dead was the perfect culmination of the lessons learned with each success and misstep. For those of us who weathered Jurassic Park, it was a relief. Unfortunately, Fables seems to be as similar to Jurassic Park as it is to Walking Dead—and that makes for an uneven experience.

It’s tough to talk about games that are remediated from other content. If the game is terrible, like Superman 64, then you’ve got less to worry about. You can put a big fat F on the paper, and toss it aside, never worrying about things like thematic consistency, character arcs, or even art direction. Bad is bad.

On the other hand, if a game is good, then you have to start thinking about the deeper questions. Are these characters right? Is the core mechanic fun, or simply a passable means of bouncing from scene to scene? In the case of Fables, “Would I be having a different experience if I hadn’t read the comic books?”

Telltale, above all else, has nailed what a Fables game should look like. Yes, the contrast of the game is a bit higher than the book, colors are more vibrant, darks are darker and lights are lighter—but all in a positive way.  I had to go look at one of my trades just to confirm there was a difference at all. It’s a rare moment when I wish the original media looked more like the remediated form, but my comics now look somehow dulled in retrospect. I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone build entire comics using screenshots of the game and Photoshop. Even the non-diegetic information graces the screen at just the right moments, giving the game that traditional comic book feel. Even simple gestures,  like the  you get a text overlay when you arrive at a new location, feels perfectly in stride with the source material.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the way the characters behave or interact. I know this story is a prequel, but there’s something lacking in the way the characters express themselves on screen. I’m avoiding spoilers in earnest, but there seems to be a number of winks at the comic audience, and many of those winks are ill placed. Comic fans can get a little rabid and unforgiving about continuity errors. There are a number of scenes in this first episode that take characters out of their personalities, and place them in a space regular readers might expect from a dozen—or even five-dozen—issues in. After a while, this attempt to build sympathy and tension swerves from good storytelling and into the realm of the disingenuous and manipulative.

Now, I don’t think Telltale ever gets all the way to manipulative here, and I’d even venture to say that for gamers who’ve never read one of the comics, these scenes likely play out as very subtle and understated—but it sometimes feels more like an alternate reality Fables story, rather than a prequel to a world we’ve invested in.

Beyond that, some of the old Telltale complaints rise up. Forgive me, but the Telltale Tool is starting to get a little long in the tooth. The aspects that might once have been considered gameplay have come under a lot of fire over the last half decade, including an evisceration of Telltale’s own Jurassic Park series. Why in the world am I still playing through quick-time events to progress through meaningful moments?

I know it sounds like whining, but the notion that Bigby parleyed all of his hundreds of years of experience into “wiggle that stick into place then mash the R2 button” is laughable. This sort of gameplay was outdated during the Playstation 2’s lifecycle. I actually mashed the wrong button on purpose a couple of times and never failed an event, nor saw any meaningful recrimination for my actions.

In The Walking Dead, the thing Telltale did best was make me feel that my actions had meaning. In Fables, so far, I don’t feel that my actions are important at all—and the quick time events simply drag me from the story I’m watching—not draw me into the game I’m playing.

The biggest question about Fables isn’t, “is it good?” Because it is. It’s incredible. The production value, the dialogue, and even the voice work, while sometimes forgettable, is never bad. No, the real question is, “Are we still playing a game?”  I don’t know that we are. Not really.

If we are, then the core mechanic of Fables is either the quick-time event, the dialogue tree, or simply watching scenes unfold without input. The scenes we get to watch are so well enacted, it’s difficult to complain, but even iPad releases like Infinity Blade offer more player interaction than Fables has so far.

In the past, an amazing narrative was more than enough to carry a game, right now it’s just enough, but I think we’re nearing a crossroads in interactive media where even the best narrative can’t carry such uninspired gameplay.  That sounds like I’m down on the title, but I’m not. I’d still recommend people pick it up, especially at such a low cost of entry, but be aware of what you’re getting. It’s not so much a game as a slightly interactive movie (think Space Ace or Dragon’s Lair). If you’re ok with that, you’ll find Fables is among the best of that type of game on the market.

Look, I’m in no great hurry to become typecast as the Grand Theft Auto V guy, but if you’re paying attention, you’ve probably heard that Grand Theft Auto Online “launched” on October 1st. I put launched in quotes because, as is often the case with recent online launches, things started off with a whimper rather than all the bangs that GTA fans have come to expect. The whimpers, meanwhile, came en masse from twitter, facebook and talkback forums (all the places I visit all day instead of being a productive member of society).

I know that it’s frustrating when a game or feature that you’re excited about doesn’t work right out of the gate, and I know that it’s easy to feel cheated when developers launch something that winds up being unfinished. As someone who’s been on both the gamer side (Diablo III, World of Warcraft Expansions) and the developer side (a game I did in college called Deathball), I can tell you that both parties are frustrated. The difference, of course, is that the gamer side is grumpy and the developer side is panicking that they won’t get their project finished.

With Deathball, everything worked perfectly during testing, but we’d forgotten some networking code, so our game didn’t communicate properly peer-to-peer. Luckily we tested this the night before a milestone presentation, panicked, then our programmer spent a few hours repairing the problem. This isn’t an easy task, but it’s certainly simpler for a 5 on 5 game of robot soccer than it is for a game like GTA V, which sports over 15 million potential users.

So, my first bit of advice in situations like these is to be a little more patient. Obvious right?

Consider that if a 200 person development team playtested their game every day for 3 years, non-stop, that would equate to  1.75 million test hours. Now consider that if every single person who owns GTA V tried to sign-in to GTA Online during the first day. They’d need to spend only 15 minutes each to outdo that entire test cycle. Keep in mind, my man-hour estimate is based on a huge team dropping everything, and somehow mythically playing GTA V and GTA Online for 24 hours a day, three years in a row.

Usability just doesn’t get that kind of budget. Humans can’t function that way. Obviously, when the game is flooded with 15 million new minds to concoct insanity, to stress servers, and to throw different internet and system configurations at the game–yes, there will be a day one glitch. The game makers aren’t out to get you, they want their game to be amazing, and anyone who’s played games to this point ought to know better than to get snarky fifteen minutes into a new online experience.

The Other Side of the Coin:

I read a tweet this week from a gaming personality that said: “Can I just say: it is kinda bullshit that some gamers are giving Rockstar a pass on server issues but raked EA over the coals for Sim City.”

First of all, I don’t think GTA V is getting a free pass. I think there’s been a pretty remarkable level of “how dare they” in the winds when it comes to the rocky October 1st launch. But it is worth noting why GTA Online and Rockstar Games ought to get a free-er pass, at least when comparing them to games like Diablo III  or SimCity.

When SimCity‘s online component didn’t work, SimCity didn’t work. You were less sixty dollars, but you couldn’t access any aspect of the game. Likewise, when Diablo III didn’t work, that didn’t just mean you couldn’t play online with your friends, or use the auction house, it meant you couldn’t play the game at all. Anyone there for the first couple of days of the Diablo III launch will remember this image:

Wisely, Blizzard removed the online-only requirements when Diablo III relaunched for consoles, so even if the PSN or XBLN crash, owners can still fire up a game with their friends or spouse at home, and continue earning new loot.

The same is true of GTA V and GTA Online. In fact, the “Online” part of Grand Theft Auto V was sort of a late discussion point. While online doesn’t function, GTA V still does. Many people pre ordered their copies of the game (either literally or emotionally) the moment they knew it existed. The online component for a GTA title has never been what moved that franchise to the top of the heap, so it’s a little irresponsible for anyone, especially a member of the media, to make such erstwhile analogies. We ought to do a BETTER job of offering context, not a more reckless one.

So, here’s the context you ought to take from this: GTA Online is an added feature for GTA V. Whether it works or not, you can still play GTA V‘s robust single player. Finally, and possibly most important, Rockstar warned people that they sold more copies that they’d dreamed of during the launch window. They told us all that the first day of GTA Online would be uneven, that they weren’t sure what kinds of problems they’d run into. They did their best to be transparent and manage gamers’ expectations. By the time you read this, they’ll likely have delivered their first major patch to the online experience.

None of this is to say that GTA Online will be a success, or that it will even be fun. My vote is still way out on that one. But, if or when we wind up hating GTA Online let’s do it because it isn’t very good, or because it costs too much in micro-transactions, or because our friends keep shooting up our hoopties. Let’s not hate it because we’ve misapplied “fair-is-fair.”