Destructoid Checkpoint: A most wonderful time of year

This is not a yearly retrospective; I just want to take a moment to point out that this year we have talked about games, the folks who make them, the companies that sell them, and the people who play them. We have discussed the murky possibilities of the future and the rose-tinted depths of the past. 

Games, like all art, are a wonderful thing, but you don’t need to be told that, do you? You likely love them just as much as I do. Have you had a wonderful year in gaming? I hope so. I hope you’ve found new games to love, adding them to the cherished games of old and carrying them with you in your heart over the coming years…

…but, for now…

Goddamn Nvidia

As predicted two weeks ago when we discussed the upcoming Steam Machine and the likelihood that it is cursed, reports indicate that Nvidia will drastically reduce RTX 50-series output next year due to RAM shortages. When a major player looks like it is pulling back the flagship product that it is currently using to milk the consumer market, and they don’t plan on replacing that range until the following year, it lets you know just how small the consumer market is right now.

AI continues to hoover up power, chips, RAM, and investment. Venture Capital dorks and sovereign funds are desperate to get fleeced by hucksters pushing Artificial Intelligence as the next big thing, with OpenAI leading the way, reportedly looking for a $100 billion warchest, and an $830 billion valuation. OpenAI is losing twice as much money as it currently makes. The long-term appeal of the company for investors is that they will become part of the machine that solves the wage problem. Nvidia plans on riding this wave, and similar companies, as hard as possible, which is why their share price took a tumble when Google announced its plans to become hardware independent, shedding the yoke of Jensen Huang’s overpriced green brand. 

That’s somewhat annoying to Nvidia, which has been enjoying its position as the primary supplier of cards to AI companies. Google doesn’t plan on just taking care of itself, however, and appears to wish to supply hardware to others. A solid plan for Nvidia is to double down on their ability to supply those companies right now, ensuring that, at the very least, Google must always be in a position where they need to supply competitive, compatible options. 

The disaster for Nvidia in the long term is if Google can provide something cheap, that works better, is easy to work with from a software side, and is worth retrofitting entire data centers for. To counter that, they need to get as much of their hardware into the ecosystem as they can, and selling you a GPU so you can play Battlefield 7 on max settings means nothing compared to that. 

Marathon loses its art director

I am nurturing a deep well of sadness about Marathon that I plan to dip into when the game launches. Sadly, being let down by Bungie’s next title feels like a sure thing for me. I find the game interesting in every way, except one…it is an extraction shooter.

One of the very appealing things about the game to me is the art style, which is striking and intriguing and (plagiarism issues with Antireal aside) is doing something very interesting. An odd occurrence is that Joseph Cross, the game's art director, appears to have left the studio. Cross has been with Bungie for a very long time, over 13 years, and did a multitude of work across Destiny and now Marathon that I loved.

You can read a lot into when someone leaves a studio, and why, but the simple fact is that life rarely falls into perfect narratives, and people have all kinds of reasons to leave a job. 

I am choosing to believe that Jason left because he, like me, is just not that big a fan of extraction shooters. Either way, we get to play Marathon in March of next year, so I guess we shall wait and see how it plays out.

League of Legends is planning on dying just yet

I used to play a lot of League of Legends, and I watched the competitive scene religiously. Broadcasts from regions that happened at silly o’clock in the morning for me would always be watched the following morning. I wasn’t really good at League of Legends, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. 

Then one day, I suspect like millions of other people over the years, I just stopped watching, and I stopped playing. I couldn’t give you an exact reason why, but I think an endless dip of changes to the game, disrespect toward the audience, and apparent disdain toward the folks who worked so hard to make the competitive scene engaging just drop me away.

I have often wondered if League of Legends can become the type of game that just stops existing one day. Riot might just have that same thought in mind, as they are planning big changes in 2027. A new client, visual overhauls, changes to some important systems, and an improved player experience are all touted as the big things they are working on. 

The problem for the League long-term is that I don’t think any of this is enough to matter. Young kids, the true required resource to keep games alive, don’t seem to really care about competitive gaming that much these days. They want to watch streamers, and their cohort of hangers-on and orbiters, enjoy social lives that they themselves will never experience. 

I’m curious to see if Riot can get new players to jump into League of Legends, where they can enjoy watching their Warwick jungle dive half the enemy team in a lane you were losing already, but that is now gonna snowball like a Nunu main on meth.

I am betting they can’t.