I was on the road all last week, traveling to San Francisco for Game Developers Conference and then to Boston to gaze at PAX East and piles of snow. While I was gallivanting around, Kotaku ran some good stories. My favorites:
I Tried VR Porn, And It Was Weird | Virtual reality was a big deal at last weekâs Game Developers Conference, and we dutifully covered the big VR announcements. Reporter Nathan Grayson used Valveâs much-praised VR system. I tried Sonyâs. We got the same demos of that tech that other reporters did, though I think we were able to make our takes stand out.
Still, our most interesting VR story wound up being Nathanâs unexpected reporting about what itâs like to use VR for porn, a story greatly improved by the fact that Nathan went beyond filing a safe-for-work I-just-tried-VR-porn-in-an-office/tradeshow-somewhere report and actually talked to someone who used VR porn for sexual pleasure. The result: some surprising insights about VRâs potential for simulating intimate interactions between the user and a not-quite-real second person.
Helldivers Is Like A Video Game Version Of Starship Troopers | Collectively, the Kotaku team plays a lot of games, but it can be strangely difficult to get readers to be as excited about some of them as we are. There really is no replacement for playing a cool new game yourself, but, in lieu of that, I think impressions like the ones features editor Kirk Hamilton wrote about Helldivers, do the trick. Superb use of GIFs by Kirk, too. I also greatly enjoyed editor Luke Plunkettâs smartly-angled video preview of the forthcomingKingdom Come Deliverance and reporter Patrick Klepekâs surprise discovery of White Night
How Big Is No Manâs Sky? | A proper skeweringâin part self-directedâat those of us in the gaming press whoâve been running the same story repeatedly. Semi-related: Hideo Kojima might be done with Metal Gear, everyone!
Holy Shit I Just Played Final Fantasy XV | A thorough preview of a game a lot of people are excited about, though this oneâs also notable because, as regular readers my have noticed, I recently told our writers that I was okay with them cursing in headlines. We strive to write about games the way people actually talk about games. Sometimes some profanity in a headline helps accomplish that goal. Best used sparingly, I think.
Everything We Know About Five Nights at Freddyâs 3 | Five Nights at Freddyâs seemed to come out of nowhere. No big publisher backs it. No PR people hyped it to us. I donât think weâve ever gotten the developer to respond to an e-mail. It emerged as a hit on Steam, and reporter Patricia Hernandez noticed it. She became captivated by the game and has been covering the hell out of it since. Last week, Five Nights at Freddyâs 3 suddenly appeared. Patricia was on the case, and owned coverage of the game. Her stories about the series and the shock sequel are what Iâm looking for as we put more energy into covering games people can actually play right now. Because, sure, previews of Final Fantasy XV and the like are cool, but coverage of released gamesâincreasingly the most interesting thing we can tell you about or show youâis where itâs at.
Another week in the books!
Got thoughts about what we published last week or about stories youâd like to see on the site? Let me know.
To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo. Top image via some post Kirk wrote.
