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Monday, September 11th, 2023
| Time | Event |
| 8:20a | Bethesda plan official Starfield mod support for release in 2024  Bethesda are adding official support for Starfield mods in 2024, Bethesda Games Studios top banana Todd Howard has told Famitsu in a Japanese language interview. People are already modding Starfield, of course - the options range from "Potato Mode" functionality for lower-spec computers, through somewhat controversial Starfield DLSS mods, to the all-important Starfield script extender, which lets other modders add "scripting capabilities and functionality" to the game. But Bethesda have yet to release proper in-house tools, aka Creation Kit 2. |
| 12:19p | Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is a warped D&D spin on Blackjack, with an enjoyable demo  There was a time back in my school days when cardgames were all the rage. Everybody had a deck of playing cards in their pocket for cheeky 15 minute rounds of Texas Hold 'Em between lessons, with Milky Way segments and Niknaks wagered in place of chips. Yes, I'm aware I'm starting to sound like Grandpa Simpson, and no, this wasn't from some murky era before the invention of videogames. It was the heyday of the Gameboy Advance! I'm not sure what we were thinking. But two things: 1) decks of playing cards are cheaper than game consoles, and 2) part of the fun, possibly, was that nobody really knew how to play the ostensibly well-known cardgames we were playing. With the benefit of hindsight, I suspect there may have been creative liberties taken with the rules at times. I knew hair-pulling wasn't a legal move in professional poker. Anyway, I'm reminded of all this by Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, a warped and mildly satirical, 90s-styled take on Blackjack from Purple Moss Collectors. |
| 2:41p | The art of the pause  Hitting pause in a video game is like dropping a wall across it. On one side of the wall lies what is called the diegetic space of the game, aka the fictitious world, which is generally the aspect that receives the most interest, the aspect that tends to attract the weasel word "immersive". On the other side of the wall lie menus, settings and other features that form a non-diegetic layer of bald operator functions - technical conveniences and lists of things to tweak or customise, from graphics modes to character inventory, that are cut adrift in a vacuum outside of time. In theory, the pause screen and its contents are not truly part of the game. There is no temporality, no sense of place, no threat, no possibility of play, no character or narrative, no save the princess, no press X to Jason or pay respects, no gather your party before travelling forth. As the scholar Madison Schmalzer points out in the paper I'm wonkily paraphrasing here, "the language of the menu itself emphasizes the menu's position as outside of gameplay by labeling the option to continue as 'resume game.' The game world is always privileged as the site that gameplay happens." |
| 3:44p | Screenshot Saturday Mondays: Grappling lines and grappling tongues  Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by cool fog, several grappling lines, and honestly just a great moody first-person animation for sitting down in an immersive sim. Check out these attractive and interesting indie games! |
| 4:30p | Starfield rockets past Skyrim’s concurrent players record on Steam  Having already surpassed Skyrim and Fallout by becoming Bethesda’s biggest launch to date - with over six million players, according to the developer - Starfield has now smashed another of its predecessor’s records. |
| 5:26p | Overwatch 2 has banned over 250,000 cheaters since it launched  Overwatch 2 has banned a quarter of a million cheaters since it launched last October, Blizzard has revealed as they outlined incoming improvements aimed at cracking down on “disruptive behaviour”. |
| 5:38p | Borderlands devs Gearbox could reportedly be sold off by Embracer, sources claim  Following the sudden closure of veteran Saints Row devs Volition earlier this month, the next storied video game studio owned by mega-conglomerate Embraver Group to be facing an uncertain future is Borderlands makers Gearbox Entertainment, a new report claims. |
| 6:13p | Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag can’t be bought on Steam due to a “technical issue”, not an incoming remake, Ubisoft insists  Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag’s unexpected disappearance from the Steam store is down to nothing more exciting than a tech bug - and definitely isn’t a sign of an upcoming remake for the pirate entry in the stealth-action franchise. |
| 8:03p | This RTX 4060 Lenovo Legion gaming laptop is down to £1150 with this discount code  Lenovo's Legion laptop line looks lovely, and today the Legion 5 Slim gaming laptop with an RTX 4060 graphics card and Ryzen 7 7840HS processor has been discounted from £1500 to £1150 with code MEGADEAL111. That's one of the best prices we've seen for this spec - if not the outright best; that's reserved for Black Friday - and well worth considering if you're in the market for a high-end gaming laptop. |
| 8:22p | SteelSeries's excellent Apex Pro TKL mechanical keyboard has dropped by $70 at Amazon US  The SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL is an outstanding gaming and typing keyboard - and now it's $70 off MSRP at Amazon in the US. Over at Eurogamer, this is our runner-up 'best gaming keyboard' pick - and there are strong arguments that it should be our number one option if you prefer a more compact design! |
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