Category: Gaming

I’ve been thinking about it a while, in fact. But I’m not sure if anybody would be interested or how to go about the research it would require.

For a while it’s fascinated me how, since I started gaming back in the 1980s, how the method of game payments has changed – how the companies have made the money from them. Everything from a one-off price for a game (No Man’s Sky) to loot boxes (Overwatch), season passes (Call of Duty) and beyond.

I’d love to write about them – what they all are, how they work and the pros and cons of them, along with the controversies. And all with discussion from insiders across the decades who’ve had first hand experience.

And some crystal ball-gazing too, trying to predict where this is going in the future.

I’ve been thinking about this all for a while but Jon Bentley’s Autopia: The Future of Cars has inspired me further.

I bought into No Man’s Sky quite early on and have slowly watched it be vastly improved since that early release. As a result, every time I go back to it I find myself restarting it from the beginning as it’s so vastly changed from before.

One thing it does now have is multiplayer, giving you the ability to play online, cross-platform, with friends.

So, last weekend I decided to give it a try, roping in my good friend Barry Collins. He on Xbox and I on PS4 set off to explore strange new worlds…