Community Chronicle: 15/12/13

As the end of the year rapidly approaches, the gaming news is dying away and we’ll be turning our focus on TSA towards your usual end of year content.

Maybe for the last time this year, then, we head into a look at this week’s hot topics of discussion.

It wouldn’t be a week in the games industry without some nonsense going on, and Aran took on the VGX awards show for their nonsense being decidedly unamusing. Joel McHale’s deadpan attempts at wit fell flat at best, and at worst offended and stereotyped.

While many agreed with his thoughts, Mini-Lipscombe, AKA Kris’ brother, had the following counterpoint:

Looks like I’m on my own then, as Joel had me laughing out loud a lot and didn’t really think he insulted gamers. But I don’t think he was the best fit, as he didn’t seem to know what was going on and you can see how they switched focus around the first hour from Joel to Geoff.

I didn’t enjoy Joel in a lot of the interviews though, he derailed them for jokes that weren’t funny and being quite rude to the developers a lot made for very awkward moments. I felt that it may have been better for Joel to not be in the interviews at all. But to be presenting the segments.

Nor did I enjoy the the Smosh video or the gamer bros one. I only saw about 2 hours of it, but enjoyed most of what I saw.

Perhaps with some slightly different organisation and a change in tone, more of us could have seen it in this light.

Of course, I think that everyone can agree that Zavvi’s terrible customer services in the wake of their Tearaway error have wrecked any good reputation they had. They’re almost certainly in the legal right here, but the heavy-handed manner in which they’ve gone about things has been unpleasant from all accounts I’ve seen.

DavidSmythe was just one voice of many, when he said, “I’m going to boycott Zavvi because of these stupid threats. Not that I used them that much anyway, but I won’t be using them now.”

Finally, EA’s rough time with Battlefield 4 bugs is spilling over to affect their stocks. Not only have they seen a bit of a dip, but one law firm has decided to investigate whether or not they can sue EA for misleading investors.

When Gazzagb questioned whether or not they were realistically able be sued, Scythegpd stepped in with his highly summarised explanation of the issue:

The core issue will be how they presented the investment potential of the product versus the final product provided.

Stock price is based on the expected future performance of the company, which is based on the information available to investors.
In the last few investor calls EA made certain claims about BF4 and it’s expected performance and quality.

If they can prove EA misled investors with this information, which in turn increased the investor confidence, then they would have a case to answer. As essentially EA misled the investors about the future strength of the company based on misleading product information.

Will it go any further than this investigation? Probably not. The game’s metacritic score is roughly equivalent to BF3’s, while it will still have sold by the million across several platforms, raking in the profits which will keep investors happy when it’s time for the quartely reports. This is merely a set back in the grander scheme of things.

On the achievements front, Youles has polished off the single player trophies on Call of Duty: Ghosts, though he personally found this quite underwhelming. Still, he’s straight on to Extermination to try and get that platinum as soon as he can.

Vallon’s been very busy with his PS4 this week, as he finished his first run through of the Need for Speed: Rivals career. He’s been playing as a Racer, and is mopping up the alternate upgrade paths before switching to the blue team, for a second run through. He also nipped through Sound Shapes, before attempting the aptly named Death Mode challenges, and finished off his first play of Knack.

R1MJAW is miles ahead though, as he’s already earned himself the platinum for Knack in record time. He also won the one in Tearaway, joining McProley in that regard, who said, “I was actually sad when I got the plat as it meant I didn’t have to play it anymore.”

Same here. Though I still went back and mucked about a bit more!

Lyts985 has staked his claim to the Resogun record, but sadly he was too slow. At least he’s got himself the platinum trophy anyway, as did BadBoyBoogie, though BBB had successful claims for Battlefield 4 (PS4) and WRC 4 (PS3). Blackredyellow also took a record and his first PS4 platinum with FIFA 14 (PS4), to go with his more pedestrian platinum for Guacamelee.

Elsewhere, RudeAwakening has beaten Killzone: Shadow Fall on Medium, starting it now on the hardest difficutly, all before he hops into the online mode. But we finish off by returning to BadBoyBoogie, who has reported on earning platinums for Diablo 3, Payday: The Heist, LBP Karting and GTA V.

Don’t worry that wasn’t all in the last week, he’s been saving those up while the forums were down!

We’re nearly done, but you can head over to page two for the full trophy leaderboards. To finish off this page, we have the usual submission form for photos and accomplishments.

If people want to keep sending photos in, I’ll be happy to post them, but gaming places is no longer a regular feature. If you fancy it, just use the submission form below, get in touch with me on Twitter at @teflon, or just send me an email out of the blue to [email protected].