33 Immortals feels like a game that's going to need a lot of pre-release testing, and thankfully, that's exactly what developers at Thunder Lotus are setting up. Following a smaller alpha test, the closed beta for 33 Immortals will kick off on May 24 and run through June 2. Interested players can sign up to participate at the game's official site.
Aside from the Dante's Inferno-inspired landscape and retro-cartoony visuals, the unique draw of 33 Immortals is its raid size. The game features 33-player co-op with a cast of seven unique fighters, and each round lasts about 25 minutes. It's all raids, all the time, and felled players are able to be revived if another warrior takes the time to chase down their ghost.
UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith got his hands on 33 Immortals at Summer Game Fest 2023 and he saw the potential in Thunder Lotus' idea, writing, "With plenty of enemies on-screen, especially in the more challenging portal dungeons, it’s a lot of fun just chaotically spamming attacks, helping the rest of your team finish off mid-bosses, or picking off easier foes at a distance before they coordinate their attacks." And that was with just six players at once — now add 27 more, and that's the base chaos level of this game.
33 Immortals is due to enter early access on the Epic Games Store, Xbox Series X/S and PC via Xbox later this year, and it'll be available on Game Pass.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/massively-co-op-game-33-immortals-will-have-a-closed-beta-at-the-end-of-may-174022411.html?src=rss
33 Immortals feels like a game that's going to need a lot of pre-release testing, and thankfully, that's exactly what developers at Thunder Lotus are setting up. Following a smaller alpha test, the closed beta for 33 Immortals will kick off on May 24 and run through June 2. Interested players can sign up to participate at the game's official site.
Aside from the Dante's Inferno-inspired landscape and retro-cartoony visuals, the unique draw of 33 Immortals is its raid size. The game features 33-player co-op with a cast of seven unique fighters, and each round lasts about 25 minutes. It's all raids, all the time, and felled players are able to be revived if another warrior takes the time to chase down their ghost.
UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith got his hands on 33 Immortals at Summer Game Fest 2023 and he saw the potential in Thunder Lotus' idea, writing, "With plenty of enemies on-screen, especially in the more challenging portal dungeons, it’s a lot of fun just chaotically spamming attacks, helping the rest of your team finish off mid-bosses, or picking off easier foes at a distance before they coordinate their attacks." And that was with just six players at once — now add 27 more, and that's the base chaos level of this game.
33 Immortals is due to enter early access on the Epic Games Store, Xbox Series X/S and PC via Xbox later this year, and it'll be available on Game Pass.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/massively-co-op-game-33-immortals-will-have-a-closed-beta-at-the-end-of-may-174022411.html?src=rss
In a year packed with rad fishing sims, Dredgewas arguably the best. It came out in March 2023 and filled the wet, eldritch-horror-shaped hole in the year's gaming catalogue — and now, it's going to be a movie. Developer Black Salt Games and media company Story Kitchen are partnering to turn Dredge into a live-action feature film. The project's logline is, "Think The Sixth Sense on the water. A grounded atmospheric cosmic horror blend of HP Lovecraft and Ernest Hemingway." That's not not a description of Dredge as a video game, so it looks like we're off to a fine start.
As a film, Dredge will probably focus less on inventory management, boat upgrades and incessant seafloor dragging, and more on the game's Lovecraftian water monsters and moody, foggy atmosphere. Story Kitchen is the production company behind a number of in-progress video game adaptations, including the Sifulive-action movie and Vampire Survivors animated TV series. There's no word on a timeframe for the Dredge film, but it'll likely appear when we least expect it, rising suddenly from the metaphorical depths.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/indie-lovecraftian-fishing-game-dredge-is-gonna-be-a-movie-130029799.html?src=rss
In a year packed with rad fishing sims, Dredgewas arguably the best. It came out in March 2023 and filled the wet, eldritch-horror-shaped hole in the year's gaming catalogue — and now, it's going to be a movie. Developer Black Salt Games and media company Story Kitchen are partnering to turn Dredge into a live-action feature film. The project's logline is, "Think The Sixth Sense on the water. A grounded atmospheric cosmic horror blend of HP Lovecraft and Ernest Hemingway." That's not not a description of Dredge as a video game, so it looks like we're off to a fine start.
As a film, Dredge will probably focus less on inventory management, boat upgrades and incessant seafloor dragging, and more on the game's Lovecraftian water monsters and moody, foggy atmosphere. Story Kitchen is the production company behind a number of in-progress video game adaptations, including the Sifulive-action movie and Vampire Survivors animated TV series. There's no word on a timeframe for the Dredge film, but it'll likely appear when we least expect it, rising suddenly from the metaphorical depths.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/indie-lovecraftian-fishing-game-dredge-is-gonna-be-a-movie-130029799.html?src=rss
After nearly seven years of activity across PlayStation 4 and PS5, the PlayStation Tournaments platform is getting its first branded competition, and the name at the top of the screen is smothered in tomatillo-red chili salsa. The Chipotle Challenger Series featuring Tekken 8 will kick off on PS5 Tournaments with a qualifier round from April 15 to 26, open to anyone who wants to test their fighting-game skills — or just score some free snacks. All participants in the qualifier round will receive a code for free chips and guacamole from Chipotle. According to the company's official rules, the freebie must be redeemed alongside a full-priced entrée item, purchased online or in-app only. Also, the offer expires on May 31. But, hey, there's still a clear path to free chips and guac via Tekken 8 playtime here.
The Chipotle Challenger Series continues with the closed qualifier and finals on May 3 and 4. First place takes home $5,000 and a trip for two to Evo 2024 in Las Vegas from July 19 to 21, plus free Chipotle for a year. Looking closer, that offer "consists of Chipotle Rewards credits good for one free regular entrée item per week for a year, or a total of up to fifty-two regular entrée items," which actually sounds much healthier than literally eating Chipotle every day for a year like some of you weirdos were already fantasizing about.
Second place gets $3,500, a trip for two to Evo, and a $300 Chipotle gift card. Third place receives $2,500 plus a $250 gift card. Monetary payouts stop at 16th place ($475), but 17th through 1,250th (!) place will be awarded a free Chipotle entrée code.
There's also an official Tekken 8 Battle Bowl (which sounds like a just-fine chicken situation) that you can order from the Chipotle app or website to be automatically entered for a chance to win a Tekken 8 Premium Collector's Edition signed by director Katsuhiro Harada. This deal is live from April 8 to 16.
Technically, it feels possible to put together a whole-ass Chipotle order for free from these prizes, and the only requirement is that you play Tekken 8 through PlayStation Tournaments on PS5. You'll have to be better than 1,249 people to claim the full bounty, but that sounds worth a shot. Good luck, fighters.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/get-free-chipotle-chips-and-guac-by-playing-tekken-8-on-ps5-180239947.html?src=rss
After nearly seven years of activity across PlayStation 4 and PS5, the PlayStation Tournaments platform is getting its first branded competition, and the name at the top of the screen is smothered in tomatillo-red chili salsa. The Chipotle Challenger Series featuring Tekken 8 will kick off on PS5 Tournaments with a qualifier round from April 15 to 26, open to anyone who wants to test their fighting-game skills — or just score some free snacks. All participants in the qualifier round will receive a code for free chips and guacamole from Chipotle. According to the company's official rules, the freebie must be redeemed alongside a full-priced entrée item, purchased online or in-app only. Also, the offer expires on May 31. But, hey, there's still a clear path to free chips and guac via Tekken 8 playtime here.
The Chipotle Challenger Series continues with the closed qualifier and finals on May 3 and 4. First place takes home $5,000 and a trip for two to Evo 2024 in Las Vegas from July 19 to 21, plus free Chipotle for a year. Looking closer, that offer "consists of Chipotle Rewards credits good for one free regular entrée item per week for a year, or a total of up to fifty-two regular entrée items," which actually sounds much healthier than literally eating Chipotle every day for a year like some of you weirdos were already fantasizing about.
Second place gets $3,500, a trip for two to Evo, and a $300 Chipotle gift card. Third place receives $2,500 plus a $250 gift card. Monetary payouts stop at 16th place ($475), but 17th through 1,250th (!) place will be awarded a free Chipotle entrée code.
There's also an official Tekken 8 Battle Bowl (which sounds like a just-fine chicken situation) that you can order from the Chipotle app or website to be automatically entered for a chance to win a Tekken 8 Premium Collector's Edition signed by director Katsuhiro Harada. This deal is live from April 8 to 16.
Technically, it feels possible to put together a whole-ass Chipotle order for free from these prizes, and the only requirement is that you play Tekken 8 through PlayStation Tournaments on PS5. You'll have to be better than 1,249 people to claim the full bounty, but that sounds worth a shot. Good luck, fighters.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/get-free-chipotle-chips-and-guac-by-playing-tekken-8-on-ps5-180239947.html?src=rss
Open Roads is an easy game to get lost in. It tells a twisting tale about generational trauma — the tension, lies and love between mother and daughter — with all the comfort and warmth of an early 2000s network drama like Gilmore Girls or Charmed. As a former suburban teen myself, this game left me feeling equally exposed and understood.
Open Roads is set in 2003, and through environment and character design alone, it captures an authentic slice of life in this post-9/11, pre-Razr era. In the early aughts, I spent my teen years bouncing between Dad’s apartment on the outskirts of the city and Mom’s house in a dusty development site surrounded by grocery stores and Blockbuster Videos, and I had big dreams of escaping both. All this is to say, I relate to Open Roads' main character, Tess, who’s finishing up high school and planning a future in the hot new market of webpage design. Her parents are newly divorced and she’s been living with her mom, Opal, and grandma, Helen, outside of Detroit. Helen recently passed and her home is being sold against Opal’s wishes, so she and Tess are begrudgingly clearing it out and looking for a new place to stay.
Open Roads Team
The details of Tess’ family history are slowly exposed as she explores Grandma Helen’s home, told in old newspapers, photographs, books, postcards, heirlooms, phone calls and pottery-making materials. Tess and Opal eventually discover a suitcase hidden behind a false wall in the house, and it spurs them to embark on a road trip to long-lost locations from Opal’s past. Helen was a popular advice columnist and writer similar to Dear Abby, and her leftover letters, scattered around each environment, steadily peel back the layers of secrets that have enshrouded her, her daughter's and granddaughter's lives.
Every character in Open Roads has something to hide. I actually clocked the big twist about halfway through the game, but there was enough drama, doubt and emotional heft to keep me invested in the narrative regardless. Do yourself a favor and don’t look up any story spoilers — just enjoy the Open Roads ride.
Open Roads Team
This is exceedingly easy to do. Open Roads has expertly written dialogue, and its characters are infused with rich histories and complex motivations. The back and forth between Tess and Opal feels genuine for a teen daughter and her mother who’ve been trapped together in a car for hours on end: They quickly spark to anger and reconciliation, and just as easily act supremely silly around each other. A foundation of tenderness underlies their interactions. The voice acting, provided by mainstream television actors Keri Russell and Kaitlyn Dever, is superb, adding to the game’s immersive pull.
Open Roads uses a mix of 3D and 2D art — the backgrounds and interactable objects are 3D, while Tess and Opal are animated in hand-drawn 2D, moving in a floaty manner that reminds me of the early Disney classics. The styles work well together, for the most part. I found the visuals jarring in one section, when Tess and Opal were having a conversation in direct sunlight and the brightness of the scene made their 2D avatars look unfinished, unblended with the setting. Generally though, Open Roads is filled with engaging environments and beautiful details, with plenty of items to investigate and small puzzles to solve. The story unfurls naturally with every action prompt, and dialogue choices alter Tess and Opal’s trajectory throughout the game.
Open Roads Team
The sound design in Open Roads is particularly spectacular. Each object that Tess interacts with has a sound specific to its texture and weight. When Tess sets a cookie tin down on a kitchen countertop, it sounds like hollow metal scraping against wood; when she picks up a discarded cigar, the audio cues are soft and papery; Tess’ footsteps sound distinct on bare floorboards, carpet and rugs, with changes in density, bass and sharpness for each new material. Picking up Tess’ flip phone to text her BFF, I can hear the groaning of thick plastic hinges and the padded creaking as she rapidly presses down on the number pad. These sounds are crucial aspects of the game, louder than the bed of acoustic guitar or light synth that make up the soundtrack, and I’m entirely here for it. Open Roads is proof that ASMR exploration games should be a thing.
The features that will stick with me after finishing Open Roads are its sound design and its authenticity. There aren’t many games focused on the everyday lives and conversations of women, let alone mothers and daughters, and Open Roads is a testament to the power of these stories. The game oozes warmth and camaraderie, and its writing displays an abundance of respect toward the characters that drive its narrative. Every person with a voice in Open Roads is a woman, and Tess, Opal, Grandma Helen and Aunt August are each dynamic, sympathetic and flawed in unique ways. Considering the developers of this game broke free from a studio whose co-founder was reportedly hostile toward women, this accomplishment is even more significant.
My suggestion for fully enjoying Open Roads is to set aside a lazy afternoon, grab your favorite drink and some snacks, and make sure your headphones are on nice and tight. Turn up the volume so you can hear every plunk and tap of Tess’ world, and don’t try too hard to decipher the game’s secrets. Trust in the story and take it slow. This is a game worth savoring.
Open Roads is out now on consoles and PC, and it's part of the Xbox Game Pass library. It comes from Open Roads Team, published by Annapurna Interactive.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/open-roads-review-take-it-slow-and-savor-the-drama-160925576.html?src=rss
Open Roads is an easy game to get lost in. It tells a twisting tale about generational trauma — the tension, lies and love between mother and daughter — with all the comfort and warmth of an early 2000s network drama like Gilmore Girls or Charmed. As a former suburban teen myself, this game left me feeling equally exposed and understood.
Open Roads is set in 2003, and through environment and character design alone, it captures an authentic slice of life in this post-9/11, pre-Razr era. In the early aughts, I spent my teen years bouncing between Dad’s apartment on the outskirts of the city and Mom’s house in a dusty development site surrounded by grocery stores and Blockbuster Videos, and I had big dreams of escaping both. All this is to say, I relate to Open Roads' main character, Tess, who’s finishing up high school and planning a future in the hot new market of webpage design. Her parents are newly divorced and she’s been living with her mom, Opal, and grandma, Helen, outside of Detroit. Helen recently passed and her home is being sold against Opal’s wishes, so she and Tess are begrudgingly clearing it out and looking for a new place to stay.
Open Roads Team
The details of Tess’ family history are slowly exposed as she explores Grandma Helen’s home, told in old newspapers, photographs, books, postcards, heirlooms, phone calls and pottery-making materials. Tess and Opal eventually discover a suitcase hidden behind a false wall in the house, and it spurs them to embark on a road trip to long-lost locations from Opal’s past. Helen was a popular advice columnist and writer similar to Dear Abby, and her leftover letters, scattered around each environment, steadily peel back the layers of secrets that have enshrouded her, her daughter's and granddaughter's lives.
Every character in Open Roads has something to hide. I actually clocked the big twist about halfway through the game, but there was enough drama, doubt and emotional heft to keep me invested in the narrative regardless. Do yourself a favor and don’t look up any story spoilers — just enjoy the Open Roads ride.
Open Roads Team
This is exceedingly easy to do. Open Roads has expertly written dialogue, and its characters are infused with rich histories and complex motivations. The back and forth between Tess and Opal feels genuine for a teen daughter and her mother who’ve been trapped together in a car for hours on end: They quickly spark to anger and reconciliation, and just as easily act supremely silly around each other. A foundation of tenderness underlies their interactions. The voice acting, provided by mainstream television actors Keri Russell and Kaitlyn Dever, is superb, adding to the game’s immersive pull.
Open Roads uses a mix of 3D and 2D art — the backgrounds and interactable objects are 3D, while Tess and Opal are animated in hand-drawn 2D, moving in a floaty manner that reminds me of the early Disney classics. The styles work well together, for the most part. I found the visuals jarring in one section, when Tess and Opal were having a conversation in direct sunlight and the brightness of the scene made their 2D avatars look unfinished, unblended with the setting. Generally though, Open Roads is filled with engaging environments and beautiful details, with plenty of items to investigate and small puzzles to solve. The story unfurls naturally with every action prompt, and dialogue choices alter Tess and Opal’s trajectory throughout the game.
Open Roads Team
The sound design in Open Roads is particularly spectacular. Each object that Tess interacts with has a sound specific to its texture and weight. When Tess sets a cookie tin down on a kitchen countertop, it sounds like hollow metal scraping against wood; when she picks up a discarded cigar, the audio cues are soft and papery; Tess’ footsteps sound distinct on bare floorboards, carpet and rugs, with changes in density, bass and sharpness for each new material. Picking up Tess’ flip phone to text her BFF, I can hear the groaning of thick plastic hinges and the padded creaking as she rapidly presses down on the number pad. These sounds are crucial aspects of the game, louder than the bed of acoustic guitar or light synth that make up the soundtrack, and I’m entirely here for it. Open Roads is proof that ASMR exploration games should be a thing.
The features that will stick with me after finishing Open Roads are its sound design and its authenticity. There aren’t many games focused on the everyday lives and conversations of women, let alone mothers and daughters, and Open Roads is a testament to the power of these stories. The game oozes warmth and camaraderie, and its writing displays an abundance of respect toward the characters that drive its narrative. Every person with a voice in Open Roads is a woman, and Tess, Opal, Grandma Helen and Aunt August are each dynamic, sympathetic and flawed in unique ways. Considering the developers of this game broke free from a studio whose co-founder was reportedly hostile toward women, this accomplishment is even more significant.
My suggestion for fully enjoying Open Roads is to set aside a lazy afternoon, grab your favorite drink and some snacks, and make sure your headphones are on nice and tight. Turn up the volume so you can hear every plunk and tap of Tess’ world, and don’t try too hard to decipher the game’s secrets. Trust in the story and take it slow. This is a game worth savoring.
Open Roads is out now on consoles and PC, and it's part of the Xbox Game Pass library. It comes from Open Roads Team, published by Annapurna Interactive.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/open-roads-review-take-it-slow-and-savor-the-drama-160925576.html?src=rss
Hyper Light Breaker is a hoverboard sim. Technically, it’s a third-person roguelite adventure set in a luminous fantasy-cyberpunk universe, but after playing a 30-minute preview, it’s clear to me that Hyper Light Breaker is all about the hoverboard. Vicious beasts, secret alcoves and shiny weapons are secondary to the feeling of gliding over green hills and shallow waters on my glowing blue slab, finding joy in narrowly avoiding enemy encounters.
Intentionally skipping battles was probably the opposite of what lead animator Chris Bullock wanted me to do during the first public hands-on opportunity with Hyper Light Breaker — but if that were the case, then he shouldn’t have told me about the hoverboard.
Heart Machine
Hyper Light Breaker is set to go live in early access on Steam this summer, complete with three-player online co-op. Developers at Heart Machine are letting people play it for the first time at Day of the Devs: San Francisco Edition, which is held in conjunction with GDC this week. I played a remote preview of the game at home, solo style, while Bullock watched on Discord (and probably cringed a whole lot).
Breaker is an open-world game with a hub station called the Cursed Outpost, a futuristic strip mall with shops, upgrade stations and NPCs. I briefly explored the outpost, but the bulk of the game plays out in the Overgrowth, a landscape of ever-shifting biomes, and I focused on diving into these. Biomes in the Overgrowth are built with hand-crafted and procedurally generated elements so that players will never enter the same realm twice, and each one has a boss to defeat called a Crown. Despite my desire to peacefully hoverboard through the half-hour demo, I messed around with two loadouts, took out a few slime hordes and twice tried to slay one of those Crowns — a huge bipedal wolf warrior with a golden sword named Dro.
In both of my battles with Dro, she started attacking instantly and with incredible force, swinging her blade wildly as she leapt in a giant arc across a temple and directly onto my head. I dodged and attempted to fill up her stagger meter by landing basic attacks with my sword and firearm, but the wolf was relentless, especially compared with the basic enemies I easily dispatched around the biome.
Heart Machine
Dro defeated me twice. At the end of each fight, I heard the game’s siren song luring me in, making me believe I could beat the big bad wolf next time, if I just employed an updated strategy. Parrying was key in this fight, according to Bullock.
“Her first opening attack, you immediately went for the parry on that,” Bullock said as I prepared to fight the boss again. “I love that you picked that up right away; that was the intention on that one.”
The parry had been an accident on my part, but I’d immediately noticed how effective it was, giving me a half-second at the very beginning of the encounter to step back and strategize. What I’d experienced with the parry was a fury attack, Bullock explained. Some beasts in Hyper Light Breaker glow red and then perform big moves that have to be perfectly parried in order to cancel out the damage, reverse a projectile or stun the enemy. With a fury attack, a non-perfect parry will mitigate some damage only.
“That is definitely the design goal, to make the combat clear, know when you're doing something well,” Bullock said.
These moments of tactical clarity are exactly what makes a roguelike or roguelite addictive. I can see how to beat the boss; now I just have to get good enough at the game to implement those moves before I'm killed.
Heart Machine
There’s no dialogue in Hyper Light Breaker, much like its predecessor, Hyper Light Drifter. Drifter was an incredibly stylish 2D action RPG that came out in 2016 after a few years of crowdfunding and significant hype, and it solidified Heart Machine’s reputation as a stellar indie studio. Hyper Light Breaker is technically a prequel to Drifter, since it's set 15 years before the events of that game.
Drifter co-designer Teddy Dief went on to found Team OFK and release the musical visual novel We Are OFK, while lead developer Alx Preston stuck with Heart Machine and released Solar Ash in 2021. Much like Breaker, Solar Ash is set in the same general universe as Hyper Light Drifter, but it’s a vastly different game and it’s not a direct sequel. Solar Ash is a third-person action platformer built around an incredibly satisfying glide-step mechanic, and its world is filled with alien environments, massive monsters and vaguely threatening deities.
“Hyper Light was a way for me to get started, it was a way for me to be more grounded and put together a crew and understand, can I do this? Can I actually make games?” Preston told me in 2021, during the lead-up to Solar Ash’s release. “And so having answered that question, then the natural next step for me was something in 3D. Can I put something out there that really opens up the world and makes you feel like you can truly escape into something, a creation that is otherworldly, that you otherwise wouldn't have the experience of? A lot of my childhood was spent escaping into those bigger experiences.”
Heart Machine
Breaker feels like the perfect amalgamation of Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash. Replace the Solar Ash ice skates with a hoverboard, add some friends and you’re set. Developers at Heart Machine plan to keep Hyper Light Breaker in early access for about a year, though they noted that this timeline might change with player feedback.
The full release of Hyper Light Breaker will support up to three players in online co-op, and it will have a handful of characters to choose from, each with customizable loadouts. I tried out a basic, slashy blade and a hefty buster sword, plus a standard rifle and a shotgun-type firearm, and they each performed well, though I ran out of ammo quickly and often. The heavy sword was slower than the simple blade, but it moved smoothly and hit hard. In the Cursed Outpost before loading up a new biome, I was also able to select four abilities called Holobytes from about a dozen options, such as increased armor or faster healing. My favorite trait was the blooming corpse seed, which planted an exploding AOE flower on the bodies of slain enemies.
But once Bullock told me that hoverboarding was an option, it was all I wanted to do. I spent a good chunk of my Hyper Light Breaker demo time gliding along the bright green grass, landing small jumps and occasionally falling into a pond. I’m still itching to find Dro again and fine-tune my parrying abilities across a range of weapons (and corpse flowers). Mostly though, I’ll be dreaming of that bright blue board until Hyper Light Breaker hits early access this summer.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hyper-light-breaker-hands-on-im-here-for-the-hoverboard-210045970.html?src=rss
Former professional esports player Dennis Fong founded GGWP in 2022, more than a year before companies like Microsoft and Google debuted their natural-language search engines and the AI revolution officially gripped the globe. GGWP is an AI-powered moderation system that identifies and takes action against in-game harassment and hate speech, and after two years on the scene, it’s now integrated into titles at more than 25 studios.
Fong may be a veteran of the Doom and Quake esports scenes, but he’s interested in protecting players from abuse in every genre, especially as social features become easier to implement for studios of all sizes. GGWP is live in thatgamecompany’s social adventure title Sky: Children of the Light, the meditation app TRIPP VR, the kids-focused MMO Toontown Rewritten, the first-person MOBA Predecessor, Fatshark’s action shooter Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, the metaverse platform The Sandbox, and it powers Unity’s anti-abuse toolset.
These aren’t all gritty military sims or hardcore competitive franchises like Counter-Strike or League of Legends, where you might expect emotional outbursts and increased toxicity. One-third of the games that utilize GGWP are co-op and PvE experiences, rather than competitive PvP settings, according to Fong. Turns out, cozy games need moderation too.
“Cozy games tend to see a lot more chat activity when compared to competitive games, so naturally there tend to be far more incidents that are chat-related as compared to gameplay,” Fong said. “That said, users are clever and are always discovering new ways to turn something intended to be positive, like a ‘thank you’ emote, into something negative by using it after a player makes a mistake. We help companies understand what’s happening and then implement tools to help curb that behavior.”
GGWP’s Unity partnership is particularly notable, if only because of its potential scale. GGWP powers Unity’s Safe Text and Safe Voice products, including its Vivox voice chat system, and it’s integrated into the uDash dashboard. Unity developers can activate GGWP in their games with a click and have billing handled through their existing Unity partnerships.
Outside of Unity, it takes just a few lines of code to activate GGWP in a game. There’s a free tier that allows studios to try out the system, and a self-service portal for the truly independent developer. Custom contracts for larger titles aside, GGWP charges based on the volume of API calls a game generates.
"There are companies that do a subset of what we do, but we’re the only comprehensive platform for positive play," Fong said.
In-game moderation is a massive problem for any game with a social feature, and the bigger the audience, the more harassment there is to sift through. One studio executive told Fong in 2022 that their game received more than 200 million player-submitted reports in just one year, and this volume was common among popular online titles. During his research phase, Fong found that most AAA studios addressed just 0.1 percent of all reports they received annually, and some had anti-toxicity teams of fewer than 10 people.
GGWP exists because most game companies, even the largest ones, are awful at moderating their spaces. Clicking the “report” button in many games feels like sending a strongly worded letter to a trash incinerator inside a black hole. Here’s how Fong described it to Engadget in 2022:
“I'm not gonna name names, but some of the biggest games in the world were like, you know, honestly it does go nowhere. It goes to an inbox that no one looks at. You feel that as a gamer, right? You feel despondent because you’re like, I’ve reported the same guy 15 times and nothing’s happened.”
GGWP has successfully blocked hundreds of millions of abusive messages and it’s being used to protect billions of user interactions monthly. Games that use the system have seen a 65 percent reduction in toxic behavior and a 15 percent improvement in player retention — meaning, GGWP is preventing harassment from happening in the first place, and this helps players feel comfortable enough to keep coming back.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/even-cozy-games-can-get-toxic-184517894.html?src=rss