I Keep Having Kids

push to talk #14 // feat. new life and news links

My daughter (2) and son (4) meeting their baby brother (0) for the first time.

There’s no original article this week, but I have a good excuse: My third child was born. As penance I bring you the above pic.

Next week we’ll be back with a longform essay about comms strategy.

For now, get your regularly-scheduled dose of spicy gaming news links below.

Scuttlebutt and Slackery

The week’s most-shared, oft-Slacked, and spiciest games industry news links.

• Discord’s Foray Into Paid Advertising - A month ago Discord announced their intention to partner with game devs on “sponsored Quests,” and almost immediately followed up with an in-depth (and honestly, pretty cool?) campaign promoting VALORANT. Now the company seems to be dabbling in quests that specifically encourage players to play together. Many gamers have a natural and understandable “ads = bad” gut reaction to this sort of thing, but Discord’s approach here seems pretty well thought out. Will be fascinating to see how the community responds. (Ars Technica)

• The Death of a Gaming News Site - Just a few weeks ago we ran a piece examining the many challenges facing games media. Add another to the list: The owner of a once-bustling retro gaming news site says that Google’s September 2023 “Helpful Content Update” to its search algorithm sent his traffic into a death spiral, and that he’ll soon be forced to shut down. There’s now a debate between those saying Google penalized them unfairly versus other SEO-heads who say most websites should be doing fine after a March 2023 search algo update. (Retro Dodo)

• 60 Percent of Playtime in 2023 Went to 6-Year-Old or Older Games - The golden oldies stay winning. This headline, pulled from Newzoo’s annual report, is far from the wildest statistic—even I was surprised to see that the average top 10 game on PC is nearly a decade old. This quote is the biggest zinger, though: “Only 8 percent of video game playtime [in 2023] was spent on new, non-annual titles like Diablo IV or Baldur’s Gate III.” (Kotaku)

• Meet Xeonir, the Man with Over 100 VAC Bans - Everybody needs a hobby, and this guy—a normal dude who “has a girlfriend” and is “working on getting his bus driver’s license”—collects bans on Steam. Sometimes he earns his bans the hard way (cheating and getting caught) and sometimes he just politely messages devs and asks to be banned. From the piece: “His girlfriend now shares in his excitement when he lands a new ban, and even likes to watch him on occasion. And with the ultimate goal of 100 game bans in sight, they both know it’ll be over soon and Xeonir will be cemented as the most-banned player in all of Steam.” (Sports Illustrated)

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That’s it for this week. I’m gonna go change a diaper.

See you next Friday.