News: Infinite Bawfare

CoD to Claim Honor of Second Most Unpopular Video on Youtube

For a couple of months now the atrocity that is Paul Fieg’s Ghostbusters reboot has been attracting a lot of attention as the most unpopular trailer to have ever been released on Youtube – yet the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare reveal trailer has managed to obliterate this record almost immediately. Not only did the Infinite Warfare trailer become the most unpopular Youtube trailer ever almost as soon as it was posted, but by the time this newspost goes live [around ten days later] it will have edged out Rebecca Black’s Friday to become the second most disliked video in Youtube’s history. Friday currently sits at 567,289 likes to 2,080,828 dislikes, while Infinite Warfare has a paltry 346,075 likes to 2,080,745 dislikes. In terms of dislikes Infinite Warfare is sitting just behind Friday, yet in terms of likes Black’s infernal pop ditty already looks to be the credibly preferred video of the two. To make matters worse for Activision, EA chose to opportunistically release the reveal trailer for Battlefield 1 just four days after the Infinity Warfare trailer, and that was a massive success, quickly becoming the most popular trailer in Youtube’s history – accruing 1,495,812 likes to a mere 26,882 dislikes.

So what is going on here? Activision’s problem seems to derive from three main factors. Firstly, the game is still obviously running on the same old engine that Call of Duty has been using since at least Modern Warfare, so Infinite Warfare is not the current generation experience than many series fans have been looking for. Secondly, Activision has been largely ignoring the growing appetite that many series fans have for a return to the stock standard fundamentals of ‘boots on the ground’ conventional military shooter gameplay. In recent years Activision has pulled a ‘bait and switch’ with series fans by taking the series in a sci-fi direction with gimmicky movement systems which utilise such things as rocket packs and wall running – many fans feel that this impacts negatively on the multiplayer aspect of the game. Finally, Activision has been aware of this growing desire for ‘boots on the ground’ combat, and decided to throw these people a bone by developing Modern Warfare Remastered – yet they also decided to profit from this by limiting access to the game to people who buy Infinite Warfare‘s $80 collector’s edition. Many people only wanted access to Modern Warfare Remastered, and feel sorely exploited by Activision at having to purchase the expensive collector’s edition of a game the do not want just to gain access to the game they do want. On top of this there is also the inevitable influx of Battlefield fans and CoD-haters who are downvoting the video for shits and giggles, yet on the whole the downvoting of Infinite Warfare has been a process very much driven by longtime Call of Duty players. It is going to be genuinely fascinating to observe the game’s November release and see whether the direction of Infinite Warfare is actually unpopular enough to cause a redressing of the popularity delta between the Call of Duty and Battlefield series, or whether this controversy has been driven by a vocal minority of players.

Doubt Cast on Recent NX Rumours

Around five weeks ago a verified industry leak appeared on Reddit which suggested that the NX would move away from the Power PC CPU chips that Nintendo has been using since the GameCube, and would instead utilise x86 architecture – which would put it in line with the PS4 and Xbone. From this point there has been multiple reports over the last month reiterating this point, and often claiming that the hardware would exceed the base model of PS4, and may even rival the PS4 Neo. It is unclear how many of these subsequent rumours have been based on their own verified sources, and how many of them have simply been Chinese whispers combined with wishful thinking derived from the initial Reddit leak. Regardless, this week some significant doubt has been cast on these claims.

Emily Rogers is an industry insider who pretty much focuses exclusively on Nintendo, and she is generally regarded as having a fairly solid track record with her leaks. Moreover, in this instance Rogers claims to making her leak on the basis of seven independent sources, which sounds a little more solid than the say-so of some nameless Reddit cuck. Emily Rogers refutes last month’s rumours on two counts. Firstly, Rogers states that the NX will not come close to rivaling the base model of the PS4 in terms of power. The NX will be closer to the power of the Xbone, and even saying that is to exaggerate the system’s power:

“In terms of raw power, numerous sources tell me that NX is much closer to Xbox One than PlayStation 4. Even that might be stretching it a tiny bit. Anyone who is claiming that NX is “two times the power of PS4 GPU” is being misled by their sources. Based on what I’ve heard, I don’t believe the NX will compete directly with PS4 (Neo) / PS4K in raw power.”

Secondly, Rogers claims that the NX does not in fact run on x86 architecture, but in fact is powered by some very modern custom chips:

“NX is not using x86 architecture like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The NX has special, custom-made chips and the overall design of the hardware is very modern. The chips are industry leading because they are very modern chips, but having modern chips doesn’t necessarily mean Nintendo is aiming to create the most powerful hardware on the market. Furthermore, any NX rumors on “Polaris chips” and “Polaris architecture” are all wacky.”

The claim that the NX will not even be as powerful as the Xbone is obviously the most attention grabbing revelation here, yet the vastly more important detail is the claim that NX does not run on x86 architecture. So long as the NX is in the general ballpark of being as powerful as the Xbone then that will not be an impediment to it receiving third party ports, however if the NX runs on different CPU architecture to the PS4 and Xbone then that is pretty much any chance of it receiving third party HD ports done and dusted right here – at least in terms of Western third parties. The NX certainly seems to be powerful enough to run modern third party software, and given the likelihood that it is using an ARM-based CPU it even stands to have pretty good support with modern high performance game engines – however, the fact that third party ports will be possible and even relatively easy means nothing when talking about Nintendo. If Nintendo wanted the NX to have viable third party support beyond its launch period then producing NX ports really had to be easy enough that they could be made as afterthoughts. If the Emily Rogers leak proves true then this is probably no longer a possibility. Assuming that is the case, then Nintendo’s internal studios had best be preparing a veritable avalanche of first party content for NX, as another console that requires owners to wait upwards of six months between major releases will likely be the end of the line for Nintendo as a hardware manufacturer.

God of Baw

Kids are only young once, and growing up most will get one or possibly two shots at prom – and so many of them try to make something special of it. Last weekend a prom photo of a group of friends was posted online, which depicted a really cute prom idea. Each couple themed the colour of their vest and prom dress to match the colours of a particular super hero, and the guys had a super hero tshirt on underneath their shirts – in fact the actual picture can be viewed here. Most people would be happy for these clever kids. It made for a cute picture. Any sane person would agree that there was nothing offensive about this prom picture – either in concept or composition. Any sane person is not God of War‘s David Jaffe however, as he immediately slammed the kids on Twitter for being grossly sexist [because only the boys wore tshirts with super hero symbols on them], and went on to liken the children to the Ku Klux Klan.

“As a comicGeek,I so want 2 love this prom picture.But it’s so grossly unaware of how sexist it is that I just can’t.

The men as heroes, the women as subserviant. Not a single female hero. The men serious/in thought, the women only all smiles.”

This is David Jaffe, the man who created Kratos and God of War. This is David Jaffe, the man who said “if you play God of War your girlfriend will give you a blowjob! Who is David Jaffe to offer on behalf of any girl to give out blowjobs? That kind of sounds like *thunderclap* rape culture! One can scarcely imagine the levels of cognitive dissonance that must have been involved in this exchange, as Jaffe’s levels of hypocrisy are off the chart. Obviously it was not long before people noticed Jaffe’s Gaffe, and he was quickly challenged on his bullshit [which only saw him doubling down]:

@LAME_STREET: What about the goofy smile on Cap’s face?Maybe the girls were into it, maybe they enjoyed it,how would we know?

@davidscottjaffe: I’d imagine the Klan was ‘into it’ when they lynched people. Doesn’t make the act any less racist/horrific.

@mashxtowin: >prom photos are comparable to lynching

what a story mark

@davidscottjaffe: First off, what is a story mark? Secondly, the anaology is spot on. You are a poor debater :(.

Jaffe looks at a perfectly innocent picture and immediately reads into it the least charitable scenario that one ever possibly could. The girls are not wearing super hero insignias, because they are not wearing super hero tshirts, and from that information a sane person would intuit that the girls were not sold on the whole ‘wearing a tshirt under a strapless prom dress’ look. There is no mystery here, looking good at prom is likely high on any girls agenda, and those expensive prom dresses certainly do not lend themselves to covering tshirts. Beyond this, the girls may not even have been that into comic books, and were possibly just taking part in this geeky prom theme as a favour to their dates. Regardless, it flies in the face of parsimony for anyone to suggest that the most likely scenario here is that the girls are being degraded by the boys because of their gender. That interpretation sounds looney, and it is profoundly uncharitable. This meanness of spirit makes it all the funnier when Jaffe later looks to play the victim after the entire internet informed him that he was a cretin:

“AMAZED and actually kind of sad about how MEAN SPIRITED some people have been on my twitter feed tonite. I posted a thought on a prom pic

that I feel/felt was sexist and while there was SOME interesting discussion, so much of it was bile and hatred and cruel and so downright

People wud B surprised to learn I’d be fine if these kids were CONSEUNTIALLY FUCKING EACH OTHER in the prom picture. People so quick2attack.”

Wait… What?! As a publisher Sony should be concerned about their investment in Drawn to Death, because David Jaffe is clearly on drugs, and something has pushed him over the edge. At any rate, the disgusting hypocrite certainly owes these kids a pretty substantial apology for publicly smearing them in front of forty thousand Twitter followers. As Sargon’s Law states: any accusation that an SJW makes of a person is usually true of themselves, and this instance is no different. Jaffe has made a career of creating games that most SJWs would hold up as prime examples of misogyny in video games, and yet here he is throwing these kids under a bus in order to virtue signal to this San Fransisco clique – the man is downright cowardly.