| Welcome back to the WIRED Games newsletter, friends! Have you ever played a game and thought the game was great, and then when you look at the game's community you reel back in horror wondering why everyone's so angry? That's generally how I feel about Destiny 2. The team at Bungie published their "State of the Game" last week, and the overwhelming sentiment I saw coming from Destiny-related content creators, YouTubers, and other outlets was one of massive disappointment. I can see some of their concerns, but I actually thought it wasn't that bad, considering we're heading into a big event later this month (a showcase that's almost certainly going to be a hype-fest). I know plenty of game companies care little for their players, but I don't get that read here, so I don't really understand the vitriol. Could just be me? If you're a Destiny 2 player and have strong feelings, share them with me—maybe I'm missing something: games@WIRED.com. Anyway, let's get started. First off, check out Geoffrey Bunting's piece on how developer Aggro Crab is making moves with its upcoming game, Another Crab's Treasure, that Elden Ring developer FromSoftware could only dream of—at least in the accessibility space. Bunting sat down with the team at Aggro Crab to talk about how you make a purposefully challenging and balanced game without outright rejecting players who may want to approach your title. We tried to ask FromSoftware for their take, but they never got back to us. Next up, remember that viral Reddit thread from a game designer lamenting what Midjourney was doing to her job? Fernanda Seavon got in touch with that developer—and a bunch of other developers, executives, and researchers in game dev—to talk about the promise, and problems, of artificial intelligence in game development and design. And make no mistake, there's plenty to go around. For a deeper dive on the topic, check out Geoffrey Bunting's look at how AI could be used responsibly to improve gaming—but the key word there is "responsibly." Chris Stokel-Walker also sat down with Jordi Van Den Bussche, whom readers here may know better as YouTube star Kwebbelkop, about how he wants to train an AI on his own data and have it replace him. I suppose that's one way to solve the whole "there's not enough of me to go around" problem. Check out the full interview; it's a truly unique perspective on an idea that probably wouldn't work for most of us. Next up, Justin Pot shows us how we can play our old favorite Flash games even though Flash is dead. It's all thanks to a plug-in called Ruffle, which can play all of them in-browser, securely, for free. Best of all, the websites with the games are the ones that install Ruffle. You can install it yourself, but you don't need to unless you want to download those flash games for offline play. Did you know that phone manufacturer OnePlus makes mechanical keyboards? It's okay, you can be forgiven for not knowing. They do have one, though: the OnePlus Keyboard 81 Pro, a collaboration between the phone manufacturer and keyboard manufacturer Keychron. Eric Ravenscraft took it for a spin, and reports that it's a pretty solid device with room for improvement, which makes sense for a first outing. He gives it a solid 7/10, and notes that it has tons of customization options. The keyboard build is like a tank (which is a pro and a con, since it can be pretty heavy), and it'll set you back $219. On that note, I think it's about time for me to swap keyboards. I have a bunch here that I can try out, so I'll report back on whatever I end up using. I'm a big proponent of swapping in a new keyboard and/or mouse whenever you want to refresh your computer—no better way to make it feel new than to get new peripherals, you know? I'll see you back here next week! |
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