Jank Mail: Everybody hates Carl
Hello, enjoyers of Jank. I am informed there are a lot of new readers among you, swamping through the gates thanks to a brutal takedown of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Come in, come in, warm yourself by the burning effigy of Ernest Cline. I think you're going to like it here.
This newsletter is normally scribbled by Jonty. But this week he's missing, presumed on holiday. I'll do my best to fill your eyes with games industry newsbits in his absence. This will be difficult. I've been distracted because I have only this week learned of Jimothy, a creature which is either a raccoon in Seattle with shortened spine syndrome, or the latest cryptid stalking America, depending on who you ask. Anyway, I'll try. Onto the videogames.
The Oatmeal
Here at Jank
We began the week with a brawl. The season finale of Character Select (in which we pit game characters against one another) saw Max Payne, Octodad, Dog from Half-Life 2, the Flood from Halo, and SkiFree's Yeti having a free-for-all fight. The winner is yet to be decided.
Jay Castello reviewed The Incident At Galley House. a murder mystery detective game that is based on cult interactive fiction piece Type Help. It is almost guaranteed to be this year's The Roottrees Are Dead, and not just because it is made by the same developer. Here's some of Jay's words.
The game is constantly making you feel smart... I feel like someone might come and put their hand on my shoulder in real life while I'm focused on my monitor, but I also feel like I'd be genre savvy enough to survive the ensuing horror movie.
Here's a fun new browser tool that lets you make collage art from old magazines on the Internet Archive. I used it to make a very professional advert for Jank.
Ryan Hill
In a much-anticipated article, Alice Bell eviscerated Dungeon Crawler Carl and boosted our subscriber numbers by an unholy amount in the process. Turns out a lot of you dislike bad writing. My favourite dunk is when Alice describes the book as an "extended Reddit post". But there are many other passages to enjoy. Here's a snippet.
More than that, it's dead. Nothing comes alive, adjectives are rare and a vanishing few of them are sensory. The dungeon is "dark" and "big". Goblins turn up a lot in this book, and the first Carl meets look "much like they did in movies and video games." Masterful stuff.
For the Total Playtime podcast this week, Nate and Jonty workshopped potential Alien Isolation sequels. I haven't listened to this yet but I'm sure it was a very serious discussion.
Graham went camping, but not before he gave everyone three more game recommendations to play over the weekend.
And finally, I got annoyed at Microsoft.
That was all our work. Now, let's rubberneck at the rest of the games media and see what they've been reporting.
Vivian McCall
Above all, do no Sharma
Let's start with the choicest meat. Microsoft is still in a tailspin of bad press due to its ongoing layoffs. It is trying to recover from this deadly plummet with numerous PR escapades. For example, the director of Doom at id put his head above the parapet to reject the assertion that the studio is in a bad state, which is exactly what your manager would say after giving 50% of your colleagues the boot. To get the perspective of those actually affected, Chris Kerr at Game Developer spoke to some of the developers who've been laid off.
"Does Microsoft care? Absolutely not. And they seem to actually put some level of effort and care into making it as painful as possible," added one source impacted by the cuts at id Software.
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft is ignoring their bloodbath and have simply told Xbox to tell Bethesda to tell you that they are making the game you would have already guessed they are making. This is how Fallout 5 got panic-announced, alongside remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, and a new Fallout from Obsidian. But there is nothing of those games to actually show you, and there might not be for some time, seeing as the studios now have far fewer people to work on them.
This gormless "look over here!" did not distract Rebekah Valentine at Kotaku for long, who summarised the company's desperate distraction techniques as "shaking keys at us, as if we were toddlers."
Look at the sparkly, jangling games! Watch the big IP! We’re doing things that are so popular and good, you don’t need to worry about the thousands of lives being upended by rich people’s poor decision making! The games are good. That’s all that matters.
Ethan M. Aldridge
"It's important that it looks like shit"
Here's some other little stories from the week, starting with the funniest and quickly descending into despair.
Slay The Spire 2 developers spoke to Gamespot about why they intentionally choose to put in rubbish MS Paint placeholder art instead of using awful generative AI placeholders. "If we use art that looks nearly complete," said studio co-founder Casey Yano, "then people would think that that’s going to be the final art. It has to look like shit. It’s important that it looks like shit."
As if the paycheck massacre at Microsoft wasn't painful enough, ZA/UM is also laying off a third of its workers just months after releasing their (pretty good) follow-up to Disco Elysium. I'm sure people will be entirely normal about this.
Valve say the memory and component crisis is "still getting worse", which means no cheapening of the Steam Machine any time soon. That's okay. I was more likely to buy PlayStation's fighting stick, but, ah, that is also now postponed due to "unexpected production delays" and also it costs £180, so actually fuck that.
Marathon game director Joe Ziegler is leaving Bungie. That's ominous.
Speaking of Bungie cast-offs, an unconfirmed multiplayer Halo game has been cancelled, according to a YouTuber who spoke to staff at Halo Studios. Rumour has it the game was going to be "big team battle" inspired, and players could fight as both Spartans and the alien Covenant Elites. Many Jank readers may give anything between zero and one figs about this, but I have always liked a Halo shootout. So, boooo.
The Washington Post selected Doom as one of the most influential pieces of U.S culture, alongside Moby Dick and Levi's jeans. Should somebody tell Xbox? Why bother. As friend of Jank Nic Reuben says in his review for Doom: The Dark Ages' Revelations (the latest DLC for the medieval shooter):
For the last decade, Id have made Doom from a place of willing uncertainty. They’ve defied common wisdom and trends and made their own path, and in doing so have made both fumbles and some of the best and most important shooters of the modern era. This was not enough for Microsoft and Xbox, because Microsoft and Xbox do not care whether they’re in the business of games, or corn, or cigarettes, or paintbrushes, or selling tech to the Israeli military, or silkworm farming. They are, like so many that own great swathes of culture, in the business of infinite growth, and great art is wholly irrelevant. Revelations is fucking great art.
That's your lot
Summer has engulfed Ireland like a wave of boiling lobster water into a gutter outside a fancy restaurant. I am extremely warm. This is making me cranky and I no longer wish to type. Normal Jonty business will resume next week, and all you sweet newbies will see just how dense with links that man can make these newsletters.
May Jimothy have mercy on your soul.
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