The Queue: Pokemon Go-ing to the polls

I’m not sure what it is about summer that always makes me want to fire up Pokemon Go again. It’s not like I enjoy spending time out there — I’m firmly a cool, crisp autumn girly. Part of it is that I’m looking for something for my veal-calf-like children to do, and Pokemon Go is basically a cheat code for fun little outings in the nearest half mile or so. Libraries, parks, even silly little statues outside restaurants are all charted out for me. The other part is that I’m always looking for iced coffee, and thanks to a marketing tie-in, every single Starbucks is marked as a Pokestop. Sometimes capitalism is good, actually? Mm, let me think on that one for a sec.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us the questions and we provide the answers, just let me catch this Ekans first. Darn. Darn. …Darn.

I almost always see games do this during their release windows, to the extent that I wonder whether it’s something the devs/publishers set, or if Steam just does it for them. While I don’t necessarily want to insist that there must be a good reason for it — sometimes reading the algorithm is like trying to read tea leaves with the same reliability of telling the future — but it’s definitely not outside the norm.

Were I to guess, it would be more to incentivize people to buy now rather than waiting, in the hopes that those few extra purchases would bump it up the Steam charts. The Steam charts really help visibility, especially if you’re a small indie with a teeny little marketing budget.

Anyway, I’ve heard great things about Moonstone Island, though I haven’t played it myself. Cute, cozy, all that jazz.

Terra Nil is pretty decent! It plays less like a builder per se, and more like a puzzle game. Use your doodad to increase humidity to promote healthy, unpolluted plant growth, and then use your geegaw to decrease humidity to entice animals to move in, stuff like that. And yes, there’s definitely a bit of an allegory in there, though it’s pretty obvious just from the blurb.

I do think there’s a sandbox mode that’s more of a builder-style game, but like all puzzle games, once you run out of dev-crafted puzzles, though you can go back in an attempt to 100% the scenarios, solve them quickly for the achieves, etc, that’s pretty much it. That isn’t a bad thing, but if your main criteria is time played per dollar, it’s not a survival crafter or PVP FPS. But even if you’re on board with that, you may want to check the historical data on steamdb, because I’m pretty sure this isn’t the lowest the price has been slashed.

I freaking love the Olympics! I’m not the hugest fan of sports like football and baseball, but I love swimming in particular, and I rarely get a chance to watch it, so I’ll be binging it at ungodly early o’clock. It always strikes me as funny that we have competitions in all these sports going on all the time, and yet they only get airtime every four years. Sports like basketball seem like afterthoughts in comparison to gymnastics during the Olympics, despite the fact that the US is incredibly dominant in them. Sure, they’re on and all, but if you asked me who started last go around I’d have zero idea, while on the other hand, Simone Biles.

I’ve always had a soft spot for people excelling and doing the slightly offbeat thing, though. See: Farm Sim League, also kicking off next month!

There will always be leaks and clout seekers chasing them. From the “oh, oops, we forgot we gave that dude access to the spreadsheet” leaks to “oh, oops, directTV started showing the dev b-roll with the new logo in the background an hour before the announcement,” stuff really can just kinda happen sometimes.

What has become far more dicey is the ramifications for the leakers, specifically the ability of these megacorps to track them down and figuratively give them the ol cement shoes for their troubles. I know I personally have heard a rumor here and there that I could have presented, but it’s truly not worth the risk to me, either on my end or from my source’s. I’d rather just sip an iced coffee while I wait — if I have the info, other reporters definitely will too, anyway.