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Editor: Hamish Inglisgames@theboar.org

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Games24

Editor: Hamish Inglisgames@theboar.org

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GamesAlternative Christmas Day games

Google Stadia got off to what could be generously called ‘a rough start’. The streaming ‘console’ launched unfin-

ished with an inadequate library of games, but as the holidays draw near, is this still a present to be on the lookout for? When we send off our letters to Santa demanding the greatest gifts, should Stadia be on there or is it just coal to fill a gamer’s stocking?

Stadia is not a physical entity. It is a streaming service, a kind of weird cross be-tween Amazon Prime and Xbox Games with Gold. Once you have an account you can just pay for and play the games you want from their catalogue or subscribe to Stadia Pro for a monthly fee. With Pro you receive a free title every month to play and can access the 4K streams of your library whilst subscribed. If you want something under your tree the ‘Premiere Edition’ from the Google Store includes a Chromecast Ultra, a Stadia Con-troller and three months of Stadia Pro. But is this plastic useful?

Firstly the main draw of streaming services is the portability they should offer. Unfortu-nately, Stadia is only playable through either the Chromecast Ultra, the Chrome browser on a tablet or computer, or the Stadia app on Pixel phones (specifically Pixel 2 onwards). Laptops are certainly an option, as you will have to carry a controller anyway but the phone limitations are disappointing. I have a Pixel 3A so am capable of using the app but, given the Pixel’s low predicted sales, very few other people can. Stadia is not good enough to attract new Pixel users and so for most people, the draw of playing anywhere instantly becomes harder as they are forced to lug heavier equipment.

Stadia Pro is not up to par with its com-petition. No-one else operates in this space in quite the same way but Pro does not pres-ent good value given what players are used to. Pro should either behave more like Xbox Games Pass (A Netflix for games) and have a larger library or take the Xbox Gold route and let you keep and play the games perma-nently, rather than locking you out. Other-wise, once my free subscription lapses I will have nothing to play and, if Stadia has not

improved, I can see myself discarding it and returning to my physical consoles.

Finally the streaming itself is often pretty poor. This is a WiFi issue, but in both my own and my girlfriend’s student houses the quality is not always the best and so you are unlikely to find it much better. The video can stutter and blur, the audio can have troubles, and overall the experience is not good. I also found these problems persisted on most pub-lic WiFi too. The only place that worked consistently well, in my experience was at university. I was able to drop in a few hours here and there between lectures and these moments all felt fantastic.

When it works, Stadia really blows me away. I can see this brilliant future for portable gaming. Everyone that saw Stadia at its best seemed excited to try it for themselves but too often it trips up and induces a strong regret in me that is hard to ig-nore. So honestly I cannot recommend it. Too many oth-er, better options

exist to meet the needs Stadia fulfills. The Nintendo Switch or Switch Lite are perfect for portable gaming, more expensive but consistent, and Apple Arcade offers a decent selection of games at a great price on your phone. Maybe in a year or so Stadia will be better, but for now it might be better to ask Saint Nick for it another Christmas.

Google Stadia: Perfect present or Christmas coal?Hamish Inglis

When it works, Stadia really blows me away

Lily Thwaites

» Image: Unsplash

Stadia is not good enough to attract new Pixel users

In my family, like many on Christmas day, it is pretty much tradition to whip some games out in the evening. After many

years of family feuds over Monopoly (no it is not okay to steal from your seven-year-old nephew when he has gone to the toilet) and when Scrabble is looking a bit too much like my English degree (struggling to spell and quickly falling behind), here are a few games to spice things up.

Cards Against HumanityBecause Christmas is a time where portion control does not exist and sobriety is disre-garded with a 'f**k it, it's Christmas', there is a high chance that a fair few people have been on the drink. That bucks fizz in the morning, progressing to wine at lunch and dinner, and now some after-dinner cocktails or some whiskey as we are starting to whip out the evening entertainment. By that, I mean some good old, not so family friendly games. Cards Against Humanity anyone? Now, hear me out. Maybe it is not the most PC game out there, but what is more fun than watching prim and proper Auntie Sarah making jokes about BDSM and bleached arseholes? Perhaps it is not one for when your little cousins are up, but once they have all settled down, it is a sure fire way to have a good night and get some not-so-flattering stories to tell every-one at the next family gathering.

PsychAnother game that is a lot more entertaining

after a few drinks, or under the glowing haze of Christmas when you can get away with far more than you ever normally would, is Psych. Maybe you have played it at pre-drinks be-fore, or with your mates, but I can guaran-tee that once you have hit eighteen, playing games like this with your family are ten times more entertaining. The game is an app, so as long as your relatives all have smart phones (or partner up with someone who does) you are ready to proceed. Everyone joins a game and questions come up, like "What is Vanessa hiding?" or "What is Charlie's su-perpower?". Everyone, including the person the question is about, secretly come up with an answer and submit it, and then everyone chooses their favourite answer. The winner is the person with the most chosen answers af-ter X amount of rounds. The aim of the game is to get people to choose your answer, so a sense of humour and some light-heartedness are necessary. I tend to find this can easily be coaxed out of most people with a few drinks or some late-night hilarity.

Shithead If you are like me, fiercely competitive, but with the basic games understanding of a child, it all gets a bit intimidating when peo-ple whip out a pack of cards. In times like this, Shithead is a great option. Shithead is a fairly straight forward card game, that does not require much skill and the aim is to get rid of all your cards, with the loser being the titular ‘shithead’. If you are a family who pop down to the pub during Christmas, make the shithead buy the next round of drinks, or tally up who loses the most and put them

in charge of making the next day’s hangover breakfast. Even if you are not into drinking, or you are playing with kids, 'poo head' is definitely going to cause some giggles, and if competition is not enough to get people riled up, let everyone except the 'poo head' have a Celebration from the obligatory Christmas chocolate tin. If you are a bit more advanced in card games than me, poker with chocolate coins can also be a lot of fun, especially with younger members of the family. If you get your children/siblings/cousins good at poker, maybe they could bring home some bigger, less edible dollars when they are older. Just kidding.

Bitch BingoWhen I told my housemate I was writing this article, she explained to me a cruel – and yet very funny – game she plays every year with her family that definitely deserves a mention. Bitch Bingo. Everyone brings a gift, wrapped, so no one knows what it is. A Poundland candle could be in a massive wrapped shoebox and a £20 Topshop vouch-er in a little box. They all go in the middle and then you play bingo. Whenever some-one completes a line, they get to choose a gift from the pile. The game continues, but once all of the presents have been taken, you can start stealing them. In my housemate’s words, "it is really funny when we all take them off our little cousins to teach them a lesson." It sound like a delight right? When all the numbers have been called out, the game ends and you get all the gifts you collected (if you have any left). This sounds like a great way to spend an evening, as well as bring in a bit of

gift giving with a twist. And let us be hon-est, what is Christmas without a bit of family drama after you have taken a gift off some-one that turned out to be that limited edition gin they were desperate for!A slightly less savage way to play this, to make sure everyone gets a prize, is to play it more like Secret Santa, where there are cost boundaries. Everyone brings a gift, and everyone opens the present they choose once they get their first line in bingo. If you then proceed to get more lines in bingo, you can choose to stick with your gift, switch it with an unopened one that is left in the middle and put your open one back into the middle, or choose to switch with someone else’s gift. You will know what everyone’s gifts are be-cause they will have to open them when they get them, so if you see one you really want in your mum’s hands, and you get a line, you can steal hers and pass over the less desired present. Again, the game runs until all the numbers have been called, but at least this time you all leave with something – although maybe not the something you were hoping for!Ultimately, playing games at Christmas is a way to connect with your loved ones and those around you and face it, not many of us play games with others like this many times during the year, so if you have a free evening, why not spend it celebrating with one of these games? There is nothing like a bit of competition to make you regret spending so much time in close proximity to your rela-tives!

» Image: Google

Warwick. Warwick never changes. The buses always run to their de-layed beat, the Humanities build-

ing stands tall, a perpetual blot on the sky-line, and The Dirty Duck remains as the only crude pub to feature faeces on its signage. In 2019, the University of Warwick might not have developed much since he wandered campus as a fresher, but Ali Jones, the recent-ly hired news editor at Kotaku UK, definitely has. Ali has only just taken up shop as Kotaku UK’s news editor, having spent a few years writing for PCGamesN. In his daily routine he endeavours to find information that reso-nates with audiences. Not wanting to recycle the same dreary press releases we can all read ourselves, he delves into gaming news and updates that engulfs the community of play-ers, personalities and developers alike.

Ali’s experience of Warwick is not that dissimilar to the one we have all experienced here. His time as a fresher may have been before the pre-term ‘Week 0’ existed but he still found himself forging early, lasting bonds with his flatmates and through socie-ties which made his university experience as good as it could be. Though unlike the usual image of students, they quickly realised that big nights out were not for them.

“I remember in my fresher’s week one of my flatmates saying, 'I feel like we are not the massive party group that people always expect of freshers', though we did go out sometimes and we were still a very close knit group.”

And this more insular crowd did have its benefits. They were always able to find friends to hang out with in the kitchen, enjoying their time in Cryfield, the more cramped and less glamorous halls of resi-dence on offer. Many of them were humani-ties students, Ali himself studied English and they found the lack of contact hours provided them with some downtime between reading to relax and bond. This included going online in multiplayer titles like League of Legends (LoL) and Speed Runners. The games also allowed him to keep in touch with his school friends and not experience the FOMO that single-player narratives can induce when you know your flatmates are free. Even six years later, LoL is still a huge part of Ali’s life and helps him keep in contact with his old friends, a fact he believes his university self would be pleasantly surprised with.

“We didn’t play a lot of big stuff together because we just couldn’t afford it and I also

wouldn’t have been able to run it with my laptop. Over time, I needed a seperate key-board, screen and a cooling pad underneath it all. The only games I could run were free or indie but they were enough”.

Towards the end of his first year Ali also decided to reach outside of this group and take part in more of what Warwick had to offer. The freetime he was afforded by his degree would still be spent with friends but would also be devoted to this paper’s Games section that he would come to write and edit for.

“One of the reasons I started doing The Boar at all was that I realised that if anybody asked what I did with my time at universi-ty I would have to say ‘I hang out with my friends, we go to the pub’ and that was about it. It wasn’t a decision to push a career thing but a sense of ‘Oh God, you haven’t done an-ything other than academia’. It was time to find something to do.”

In the summer following the first year of his course, Ali took up the opportunity The Boar provided on his doorstep and started to write about video games. When video gam-ing at university does not necessarily “fill the social headlines” that other sections like Life-style and News can, the inclusion of a section dedicated to Ali’s hobby drew him in.

“I appreciate and have always thought [that] The Boar does some great journalistic work, in a traditional news sense, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to do this specific type of entertainment journal-ism and if that hadn’t been there it would never have crossed my mind in joining”.

However Ali did not initially see his in-volvement progressing past being a writer. It was not until he realised that the then editor would be stepping down going into her final year that he thought to throw his hat into the ring. He did not have high hopes, with strong competition facing him at elections, but after they all wound up in other roles Ali found himself standing unopposed and victorious. Though that is not to suggest he did not de-serve his position. Ali worked to ensure the issues of the paper under his reign provided readers a reason to check out what The Boar Games had to say. When games news can be so volatile, with releases pushed back at the

last minute on occasion, he wanted to give people a brief overview of the weeks ahead, to find something to be excited by in upcom-ing developments.

“My approach was very newsy. I had a col-umn dedicated to what was going to hap-pen in the two weeks before the next issue would be published, what games would be coming out, what events would be going on. I wanted people, who maybe weren’t paying attention to the games industry all the time, to find something that appealed to them and to know what was happening. It might not have always worked but I was and am proud of how it came together”.

This drive, to keep people up to date and write regularly continued when Ali found himself unsure of what to do next. “I left Warwick in the middle of 2016 and really had no plan whatsoever. I went home for the summer, just kinda treated it as a normal holiday and then moved back up to Coven-try and got a job at The Duck for a bit. It was fine because it was enough for me to pay rent and then I managed to work for a bit doing data entry for the company that runs Unitemps”.

“This started to give me time and income to be able to play new stuff and to write too. I made an effort to write everyday. I had a blog which I had shared with a handful of people but it was basi-cally for me to practice. I would write about what games I had played, the films and TV I had watched, really just an-ything. Sometimes it would be 1500 words, others it would get to 11:55 pm and I would quickly write a short paragraph about what had happened to me that day. I think in all of 2017 I missed about eight days, four of which were because I was on holiday which I think is fair”.

Ali used these articles not only as a demonstra-tion of his drive and writ-ing ability but as an oppor-tunity to develop his voice.

This exercise would help him secure a job at PC Games N, showing that success and op-

portunities in the career of your dreams can come even a year after your university experi-ence has ended. Given this strategy’s success with him it is no surprise that Ali’s first piece of advice to aspiring artists is: “Make”.

“It doesn’t have to be writing it can be vid-eo, it can be audio, just have something to show for it. If you want a full time job the best thing you can do is show that you aren’t just applying because you think it is a cool thing. Everyone is interested in games, you have to show you really want to be a writer or video editor, you have to be able to show that you care about this thing you want to do”.

With his second piece of advice being to follow this passion for what you want to do by finding your niche based on what you en-joy playing.

“There are so many games out there that have huge audiences but no one covers them because they don’t know how to. People will always be available to write about Death Stranding and Destiny 2 but maybe for games like World of Warcraft or Final Fan-tasy XIV, there are not necessarily the same people that are in those communities deep enough to understand and write about them. But if you do then your coverage will be bet-ter and appreciated more by readers."

If you want to see more of Ali Jones, you can find him on Twitter, @ali_jones94, or at Kotaku.co.uk.

The Game Awards(19 December 2019)

Find out which of 2019's biggest games will be taking home the top prize in Geoff Keighley's gaming award show. This is a great chance to celebrate the past year and every-one's achievements, from development tems to eSports players to gaming personalities. We might get a few cool previews of 2020 too!

Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training (Nintendo Switch)

(3 January 2020)Check out the latest iteration in the series of easily the best DS game, Brain Training. Dr Kawashima is back to once again tell us how old our brains by testing us in a series of challeneges from basic maths to rock, paper scissors. I for one cannot wait!

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne DLC (PC)( January 9, 2020)

Having come out a few months ago on console this huge update for the 2018 hit is finally heading onto PC. Get ready to visit new locations, earn exciting rewards, master the latest weapons and hunt down the mys-terious icy Velkhana!

GAMES | 39

How they levelled up: Alistair JonesHamish Inglis finds out how the Warwick graduate went from editor for

The Boar Games to the recently hired Kotaku UK news editor

We didn’t play a lot of big stuff together because we just

couldn’t afford itAli Jones

The inclusion of a section dedicated to Ali's hobby drew

him in

I made an effort to write everyday

Ali Jones

Everyone is interested in games, you have to show you

really want to be a writerAli Jones

B(ef)oar next

time...

40 | GAMES

"Gamers rise up!" This cringe-induc-ing rallying cry has in recent times gained new meaning and impor-

tance in the politics of gaming. However, this politics is not one about the content of the games themselves but instead surrounds the developmental process of our favourite art form.

Unionisation, a terrifying or exciting term (depending on which side of the picket line you are on), has recenly banded around game development, particularly since the release of Red Dead Redemption 2. The game was widely praised for its attention to detail and stunning graphics, but these qualities came at a cost. Rockstar employees experienced a great deal of stress within the development of the title experiencing an extreme increase in working hours, emotional manipulation and unreasonable expectations. More than 85% of video game developers have admit-ted to being pressured into working beyond

agreed contract hours, with some accusing their bosses of enforcing 100 hour working weeks. This is emblematic of a deep-rooted problem in developing, the dramatic decline in working conditions during ‘crunch’, when the weeks coming up to release become a nightmare for those working on the project. Long hours, extremely low job security and a lack of potential for promotion can lead to intensely high stress which can take a toll on workers.

Game Workers Unite, one of a number of recent game developer’s unions, formed in order to “connect pro-union activists, ex-ploited workers, and allies across disciplines, classes, and countries in the name of build-ing a unionized game industry”. By collective bargaining unions hope to improve not only working conditions but also obtain a strong-er voice in spreading the issues that many game developers experience. Perhaps long overdue, this banding together of those who have been ignored for a long time can rep-resent a hopeful uptick in treatment. So far, the movement has been relatively successful, pressuring developers such as Respawn to put more emphasis on the well-being of their employees, following their hectic post-devel-opment workings with Apex Legends prompt-ing one employee to decry that “we are never doing this again”.

However, there have been questions about

what this unionisation will do for the con-sumers in the gaming industry, how will this affect us gamer girls and guys and the hobby that unites us all? Critics of the move-ment would draw focus to the potential for increased prices, lower quality or delayed release. Whilst these issues may seem petty when one looks at the pressures games work-ers face, in all fairness one could see an issue. Increasing the price of AAA titles could only serve to push those of us on the fringe out of the market, severely damaging the gaming industry as a whole in the long term.

Nevertheless, to this I would say that working fewer hours does not necessarily lead to lower quality or even reduced output. As seen with experiments around the poten-tial of a four-day working week, productivity significantly increased when the hours are decreased to a reasonable level. We can de-bate about the finer nuances of productivity and hours for far longer than I could fit into this article but all of that would ignore the

crucial point about the exploitation and the abuse of workers and their rights leading to severe mental health and physical health is-sues for those involved.

It is important for us, as fans of gaming, to stay mindful of what those who create our fa-vourite entertainment have to go through in order for us to cry about campers or celebrate our high scores. I would recommend that an-yone who appreciates developers and what they do check out Game Workers Unite for themselves, and consider helping them any-way we can, so that the gaming industry will not only work for us and for publishers, but for the developers as well. Many people now-adays complain about the lack of passion in video game creation, well perhaps by giving them the space to exercise creativity and fo-cus on making something they are proud of, we will be able to have more pride over what we enjoy.

Hugh Smiley

When hours are decreased to a reasonable level productivity

significantly increased

Will unionisation improve the games industry?

Rather than BBC, ITV and Sky hosting political debates (which are not the most entertaining), I suggest that leaders should instead compete in a game of Mario Party.

To win at Mario Party, you must have a similar skillset to that of a Prime Minister. A large amount of carefully craft-ed planning, thinking, and strategizing goes into the game, as players must decide the best possible strategy into getting stars. This corresponds to the skills a successful PM needs, who must make substantial plans and strategies to get their legislation through Parliament, which they can exhibit through this Nin-tendo classic.

Politicians can also show off their personality during a game of Mario Party. Which character would Boris Johnson or Jere-my Corbyn pick? Do you pick a more traditional, ‘safe’ charac-ter such as Mario, an underdog like Shy Guy or the villainous Bowser? The public would also judge politicians on how they behave during the game, forcing politicians to choose between whether to ruthlessly steal coins and stars to win, or instead acting more restrained in their attacks on fellow players.

Indeed, the minigames in Mario Party offer the chance to use the practical skills they rarely get to show off. Co-operative minigames would give politicians an opportunity to work as a team to gain coins, which, given the possibility of a hung parliament, could be a necessary skill.

Overall, including a game of Mario Party in the election cycle

would act as a bit of much-needed fun in politics. It would be a good way to get young

people involved even further, and hopeful-

ly show politicians working in less familiar situations, where speechwrit-ers and spin doctors cannot help them.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King is a spin-off from the Final Fantasy series that, unsurprisingly, casts you as the ruler of a small

town. You have the power to conjure up buildings but doing so uses your supply of elementite. To gain more supplies, you need to build houses to find adventur-ers and ensure that they are properly equipped to face enemies outside the town walls. The stronger they are, the more resources they will bring back, and the larger your town becomes.

Like any town management game, the king is forced to look at what the town needs to prosper – the relevance of this to our politicians should be immedi-ately obvious. If you want your town to have skilled warriors, for example, you need to fund the academies that will train them. And, as a monarch, there is no opposition leader to get in your way. That means any success or failure is your responsibility, and taking re-sponsibility is something our politicians need to learn to do.

Because your town is encased within a very tiny boundary, it feels like a community. You grow to

know the buildings in your town and actually feel attached to the people that live there. As you stroll through the town, you can chat with your townsfolk, finding out their needs and desires, leaving you wanting to raise their morale with festivals and holidays. If you acknowledge your people and aim to cater to them, it makes them happier and more engaged – as difficult as politicians make this seem, it is not rocket science

Whilst you are the king, your leader-ship is only as strong as the people that follow you, and it is through the

people that your town can thrive. That is a lesson many of our

politicians could do with re-membering. Although they have power, that power is contingent on the people.

Tropico throws you into the role of ‘el Presidente’, leader of an idyllic island nation yet to estab-lish itself on the international political stage. Its

story mode requires you to complete an array of mis-sions in developing your regime from a modest colony into a recognised global power. Along the way you will need to appease the desires of a variety of political fac-tions, which can prove challenging if you are unable to adapt to the rules of the game’s economy.

The greatest joy any politician will find in Tropico, however, is in the game’s fully customisable sandbox mode. In Tropico the magic money tree does exist and you are able to exploit it in a range of imaginative ways. Long gone are the days of worrying about whether your manifesto is fully costed or not, or if that new nu-clear missile project requires you cut public sector pay cuts in half. Tropico is a paradise, and tedious financial matters need not restrain your political ambition.

Part of the appeal of the Tropico series is its ability to cater to a plurality of political opinions. Dream of communist utopias? Go ahead, comrade, the humble farmers of Tropico will sing your praises with their CEO level wage. Or perhaps you’d rather turn your banana republic into a ruthless military dictatorship, executing dissidents while smoking a cigar from your palace balcony? I won’t stop you. (But I might suggest a friend to have a word).

Tropico may not provide a great ex-ample for our governments to emulate, but in an increasingly confusing and divided world, politicians could benefit from an escape to a sunny island paradise. Perhaps we could even learn a thing or two from how our representatives choose to act in a world without re-straints. Probably best not knowing to be fair.

Games that every politician should playGames we recommend to budding Prime Ministers ahead of the General Election

Potential for increased prices, lower quality or delayed

release

» Images: US Department of State, Nintendo, SEGA, IGDB, GamesPress

Owen Fisher - Tropico Oliver Barsby - Mario Party Reece Goodall - My Life as a King

This banding together of those who have been ignored for a long time can represent a hopeful uptick in treatment