Club PA Newsletter #78 (Patreon)

We couldn't make heads or tails of these "gamescom" awards.  Before you write in, yes, for some reason it's all in lowercase officially.  I don't know why.  That's just how they write it!  Maybe it exudes an air of humility.  

Some of the awards I don't mind.  There's some real weird shit like KeyWe in there, I think that demo is still out and you can go get it - you play two soft Kiwi birds who have to jump on a keyboard to send messages.  It won best Family Game or something, no problem with this.  Operation: Tango won best multiplayer, I find that a little surprising, but you can grab this demo and see for yourself.  It's essentially a communication test, like the best co-op games, and it has some unique interactions but it's also very short.  

It starts to get weirder elsewhere.  They have award categories broken down at the Platform level, like…  Best Xbox Game and Best Playstation game, and the best Xbox Game was Tell Me Why which strikes me as unlikely but I like their vibe so it's fine, but the best Playstation Game was the multiplatform title Cyberpunk 2077, a multiplatform title also available for the Xbox.        

I don't really pay attention to awards in general simply because their true provenance is always challenging to ascertain, but the thing that put any of this on my radar was the granting of Best Simulation to Project Cars 3, which aside from not being a simulator, isn't even the best racer in the last three months.  It was odd enough to make a strip about.  If you want to talk about sims, even if it came out in 2008, the fact that a real life sport was made impossible by COVID-19 and then was ported to iRacing with many of its personalities and rivalries intact is one of the most startling technology and culture stories of all time.    

I understand that an array of questions have been extracted from the robust Club PA community for PAX Online purposes, and to this end we'll be filming our energetic responses… well, our responses at any rate.  Not lethargic, but also not, like…  truly mobile.  There's also a separate piece that I'm doing myself with a little bonus thingie baked in.  I don't know!  It just seemed like something you'd like.     

(CW)TB