Jank Mail: NVIDIA, corporate comedy and Elder Scrolls

This weeks’ newsletter arrives late, with apologies: I thought I would be able to write it during my journey back from America, but overestimated the efficacy of in-flight WiFi and my own energy levels after slogging through two airports, three rail lines and a last-mile cab ride. You get the benefit of something written in the fuzzy-head/itchy eyeballs state of jetlag, rather than the exhausted-to-the-point-of-incomprehensibility one, and I hope you’ll be able to tell the difference.

Jank has rudely persisted in my absence. Brendy admitted he was wrong about Slay The Spire 2 and celebrated its co-op mode, Graham reviewed the videos he watched while playing Lost and Found and my podcasting partner/nemesis Alice Bell reviewed Esoteric Ebb. She made do without me for this week’s Total Playtime, which addressed the main issues of the week before pivoting to endorse furry art.

Chief among the former was NVIDIA’s debut of DLSS 5. This tricks out existing games to give “photo-realistic” visuals through the magic of aftermarket gen-AI and was loved by Digital Foundry and hated by almost everybody else, including a number of developers whose work was featured in the announcement. NVIDIA’s CEO said that they were wrong, one of NVIDIA’s technical evangelists said they were technically right, and there was a lot of impassioned Discourse although it’s highly plausible most players will probably leave it on as default and it’ll just be something for connoisseurs to complain about. Another monkeys-paw moment for those who wished for games to be treated like film.

Elsewhere in Discourse, Crimson Desert came out and it’s just okay, which was enough for a big row about reviewers although it seems to be doing just fine so expect the coverage to continue until traffic levels improve. It may also contain AI which people are unhappy about, which is bad news for those people and every other game with AAA pretensions that ships this year. Marathon is also doing just fine although the relative shortage of reviews suggests that people are still making up their minds about it, perhaps because it’s extremely mean. 

The latest step in the battle of Subnautica 2 developers vs their employers is a slap-fight over whether the game is ready for Early Access. The whole ChatGPT-brained situation is clearly deeply unpleasant for those affected but is regrettably also quite funny, as is the formal confirmation that Meta is shutting down its terrible VR platform after wasting billions of dollars and renaming the company to reflect it. Ultimately this is laughing at rich people so it's always morally correct.

Tom Clancy’s Studio Layoffs contains less neocon action than the title implies and is mostly about the death of the VR market in general and Ubisoft expansionism in particular. Remedy stopped making new stuff for Firebreak and cut its price, which technically resulted in a player surge but not one that challenges the decision overall. The flame still burns for Guitar Hero. The people working on CD Projekt RED’s Project Hadar have “established the foundation of this entirely new IP” without specifying anything or even naming it, which sounds like a great way to be paid for attending brainstorming sessions without actually delivering anything. I’m not mad, just jealous.

Cities Skylines 2 went sideways because the developers elected to believe the Unity feature roadmap, although they're still using the platform for their next game. Todd Howard asks that you forget that Elder Scrolls 6 was ever announced but we are forced to carry the cursed knowledge onwards, and he is cursed to say that he can’t comment on it (at least for now). Being cast in a Resident Evil game goes exactly how you’d expect it to. 

That’s it for this week. See you in six days for a debrief on the next one, hopefully with less melatonin involved.