Spilled Tea: Switch 2, Warhammer, and AI…

…Oh my!

The Principle of Credulity is a philosophical axiom by Thomas Reid that suggest we have “a disposition to confide in the veracity of others, and believe what they tell us”.


Everyday on the internet leads me to believe this is very true

Today is all about about gossip and rumor here on ATE , as there seems to be quite an awful lot of it swirling around gaming news sources as of late, so what the hell? Let’s spill some tea. Before we begin, I just wanted to mention that throughout my day, I always have a hundred little conversations with myself that I think “hey, this would make an interesting aside for one of my ATE articles”. I think that share is possibly one of the first times I actually remembered to retain said kind of conversation, and we are all technically worse off for it. Not because the share was inane or valueless, mind you, but as a reminder of all the times I was unable to remember the rest of them. I really got to start carrying around a tape recorder ala Coop from Twin Peaks to record my thoughts, as every time you read a write up, it is only one of a very large number of permutations we both could have delighted in, had things just turned out differently.


Strange how it all works out

With multiversal shenanigans now in play as a relevant topic of interest, we shift our focus to a peculiar happening that timeextension brought to revelatory light, with a delightful little article going in-depth about how some Capcom staff were initially resistant to the whole idea of crossover fighters involving the Street Fighter crew from very early on. Apparently, due to the lack of sales of X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes in Japan, many at Capcom were silently hoping X-Men vs Street Fighter would die a quiet, quick death. This gave the team a lot of wiggle room to over deliver when the time came, and the break out success of the title would go on to eventually spawn the Marvel vs Capcom series, which has stood the test of popular time, as evidenced by the recent release of Marvel vs Capcom: Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics release.


As I always say: set lower expectations and then over deliver

Continuing on with the theme of what is old is new again, it looks as if Nintendo’s lawyer have finally caught wind of Palworld, an open-world multiplayer survival game, which has designs reminiscent of the big N’s own critically acclaimed Pokémon series, and are ready to mount a legal battle over copyright infringement claims. I’m surprised Nintendo’s legal ninjas took so much time getting around to this one, as this sucker has been making lots of noise since earlier this year, and is even an official release on multiple platforms, and not even a fan made dealie. Ultimately, time will tell if Nintendo wins out with the legal disputes involving the developers of the game Pocketpair, but Nintendo has historically been quite grumpy about this kind of thing for a long time now, and regularly geared towards legal actions in the course of their own history. They even took Blockbuster to task for copyright infringement over their manuals for Christ’s sake. I might love their games, but the Pokémon company has had a stick up their ass over petty frivolities for awhile now, so I hope this just blows up in their face.


How Chinpokomon flew under the radar all these years I
will never know

Staying on the topic of Nintendo, potential images of the follow up to the Switch have “leaked”, according to a number of rampant shares on the internet, which I surmised were all pulled from the same dodgy ass source on the internet that no one bothered to check the legitimacy of….or at least I thought as much, and then I read a piece from Eurogamer commenting on the whole affair. The article mentions how the models do seem to correspond with data that has leaked in the past about Nintendo’s next console, but they did come from a 3D modeler’s post on a Chinese social media website, who as since deleted the posts. Like most leaks: dubious at best, and what took someone possibly two hours to make is now going to be discussed for two weeks with endless pissing competitions involving the veracity of the claims themselves. No news from Nintendo on the matter (big surprise).


Everyone knows the Switch 2 is just going to be 16 Gamecubes
duct-taped together, what are we even speculating for?

In another moment of interesting hearsay, IGN reported about a bizarre happening involving recently released shooter 40,000: Space Marine 2, in a story that allegedly has the CEO of Saber, Matthew Karch, commenting on a Youtube video by user Asmongold about the quality of the title. The gist of the posit which was *allegedly* Karch, has the CEO going on about other devs “imposing morals on gamers”, reinforcing games should be about the design itself and not beating the brow of gamers with some kind of overt messaging muddying the waters. Putting aside for a second just how broad of a declaration that is to even confront, the comment hasn’t even been officially verified as the actual CEO, and a comment which could potentially be some kind of windup from a rando impersonating him, trying to create a fuss in the comments section on a Youtube video in a silly attempt at fanning the flames in the name of some obtuse culture war nonsense. I guess, regardless of whether or not it is actually the CEO of the company hanging out in a Youtube comment section (why would he?) giving praise to their own game (why wouldn’t they?), a good game is a good game regardless of messaging. Don’t worry about what other people are playing, do what you want.


To quote a modern day prophet

And finally, to wrap our daily tea spilling as we are nearing an empty pot, EA decided to remind people why they were voted worst company in the US two years in a row, by deciding to make generative AI as their main talking point in a recent investors day presentation, much to the surprise of no one who is use to EA’s bullshit. They went on to assure onlookers that AI is not a buzzword, and is a core element at the heart of their game development strategy. Read the room guys: with so many negative news stories coming out weekly about foot in mouth comments involving AI, to other very real impacts the practice of using AI has had on workers within the industry, you’d think EA would avoid saying the quiet part out-loud and just keep the fuck quiet about their internal machinations, just to save some face in the name of good PR alone.


A picture of EA’s new PR manager

Cheers for joining me in spilling some tea. Until our next party, then…

~Pashford