Jirard was asked essentially that by Mutahar and Karl and he said that the foundation was “looking for the right place to donate it to that aligns with our values”, and that when he found out, there was internal conflict within the foundation about when and where to donate, with Jirard himself, by his own account, being in favor of getting the money out sooner than later. Unfortunately, that just led to further delays. Just terrible incompetence by all parties involved.
Jirard has never come across as the type of guy who would knowingly just sit on something like this. Another video and thread here seems to imply his brother is running the account and Jirard didn’t know until last year that the money hadn’t been donated, so the brother may be the one primarily at fault? The fact that it was just sitting there unused also implies to me more incompetence or negligence instead of bad intent, so I do want to give them at least a bit of BOTD. That said, that still leaves a whole year where both brothers were just sitting on the money. If they really are looking for “the right place” to donate the money to, they’d better pick a place/places fast and get that money out. Either way they’re probably gonna see a lot fewer donations in the future. If they’re just collecting money from their followers and donating it somewhere else, they may as well just do what a bunch of other content creators do (and what I think they do for their other charitable stuff IIRC) and just do marathon videos/streams with links to just donate to the charities directly in the chat/comments. Cuts out the middleman and keeps them out of this kind of trouble.
Gamers say they want parents to actually get involved and monitor the content kids interact with in games. A parent actually does monitor what their kids play, and suddenly gamers lose their minds.
I hate it when developers make what they say are side games in a series essential to canon, especially when they don’t tell you they’re doing it or when they go into the side game not planning to make it canon and then decide it’s canon during or after development.
Or I should say, I hate it when developers make the next main series game assuming you’ve played the essential “side” game and leave out or half-ass their catch-up for people who haven’t played it. I call it “Chain of Memories syndrome” after when Kingdom Hearts made Chain of Memories essential to fully understanding KH2.
Allot yourself a certain time of the day to play them. Basically, schedule your play time and only play during that play time. That’s what I do. I play at a certain time of the evening, for 2 hours maximum. Otherwise I don’t really touch my games. If I’m doing something else at that time that I feel takes priority (such as working on something or doing something else with friends or family) then I’m probably just not going to play that night. That’s basically how my friends and I helped get one of our group out of a gaming addiction: hanging around with his brother at their place doing other stuff. Over the course of a few months he slowly would come out and make his way closer to us or hang around in the doorway of his room watching us for increasingly longer periods of time, until he eventually would actually log off the game and join in our activities. We just consistently got together at the same time every week. Nothing more to it.
If anything, they are too afraid of litigation in any way. I know protecting your IP is important for running your business and controlling your brand, and I respect Nintendo’s hands-off stance on any sort of outside issues and not wanting to be associated with anything that could damage it, but Nintendo’s IP attorneys really need to learn to chill a bit. You have to get permission to stream the tournament for spectators and can’t even use the game’s name or logo in tournament publications? Really? You can hold a tournament but can’t even tell other people what game it’s for without permission?
That said, I would guess that the scandals/fiascos that hit the Smash Bros tournament scene a few years ago were the big impetus for this (on top of wanting $). As mentioned above, Nintendo is notorious for guarding its image and avoiding any sort of outside controversy whatsoever, to the point that they’re even willing to kill off any kind of grassroots tourney scene to avoid it. Many of their execs still see Nintendo as a kids’ toy company and run it as such.
Sonic (just about every game in the series): even during the “dark age of Sonic” ('06 through Unleashed) and in flops like Forces, the one thing the series has consistently gotten right is the music. Jun Senoe will rarely steer you wrong.
Ace Attorney (also the whole series): has it all - some fun melodies, tracks that fit the mood whatever it might be, great character themes, and just about every Pursuit theme is an awesome hype track.
Octopath Traveler (the original): I love the instrumentation, more wonderful themes for characters as well as locations, and the Battle II music has to be my favorite battle music in any JRPG ever. I’m a sucker for good string music.
That’s the one thing I would really appreciate about Souls-likes: no RNG, less being forced to grind for better stats/gear, if I want to beat the challenge I have to improve my own skills and legit “git gud”, as they say. When you finally beat it, it feels so much more satisfying. So I appreciate the genre from a design standpoint. That said, the frustration of the hours to days it would take me to do that is enough to keep me from playing them myself. That, and the super-dark art and aesthetic of so many of them turns me off from them too. I prefer brighter, more colorful games.
Addiction, compulsion, whatever you want to call it, it’s well known a lot of games have mechanics intended to keep people playing a long time, and for some it can be a serious problem. I’ve had friends (yes, more than one) addicted to MMOs who would play for 48+ hours literally non-stop. That’s not healthy, especially if real life responsibilities and connections are being neglected for it. Skinner box mechanics can be as bad for players as loot box mechanics.
BotW and TotK are a very different type of game from OoT. As others have pointed out, there are a lot of environmental mechanics to learn as well as how to find and use different types of weapons due to weapon durability. It’s a much more open ended game than OoT where exploration is much more of a focus, whereas OoT is more story focused and has a more specific order to do things (which isn’t 100% set in stone, as the whole Spirit vs Shadow Temple debate proves) that’s still more straightforward than the newer games. I like both types of games, especially for both OoT and BotW/TotK being gaming masterpieces for their time, and the three of them are my top 3 Zelda games for sure. But if you don’t like one or more of them that’s perfectly fine. Not every game will appeal to everyone.
It was rather surprising to see how much the following two games ret-conned from Apollo’s first game. Apollo’s back story was completely changed, the idea of jury/lay judge trials never went anywhere (ironically until the prequel series which takes place in the UK instead of Japan-erica - and I am aware it was shoehorned in AJ as Takumi advocating for jury trials in Japan), Apollo seeming to have a falling out with Phoenix off-screen then reconciling almost instantly, they just seemed to only carry over Apollo, Trucy and Klavier, and Trucy and Klavier didn’t even necessarily need Apollo to be there to be relevant. Fortunately the ret-cons worked out for the better for his character. I would imagine any future AA7 will feature at least one case in his office in Khura’in, and Athena will take over Apollo’s former role as Phoenix’s main protege/successor.
Nintendo understanding this market is a big part of how they’ve been outselling MS and Sony in the Wii and Switch generations despite being behind on hardware power.