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Did you know AMC makes video games? The television network responsible for Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead has a full-blown publishing label for video games, and it’s shepherded four titles to market since 2020. Its first was a real-time flight simulator from the NYU Game Center Incubator called Airplane Mode, which trapped players in the window seat of a commercial airliner for six literal hours, complete with the small luxuries and major annoyances of actually flying coach. AMC’s IFC channel even produced the in-flight safety video for that game.

So, yeah, AMC publishes video games. Its latest project is a collaboration with Shudder, the network’s horror-focused streaming service, and it’s developed by Fictiorama Studios, the team behind 2018’s Do Not Feed the Monkeys. Their new title is called The Fabulous Fear Machine and it’s a cheeky real-time strategy game about using terror to gain ultimate power. It’s a heady topic presented in a pulp art style, with a magical fortune-telling automaton, exaggerated stakes and dramatic noir dialogue softening the narrative’s serious edge. Think Tales from the Crypt, but with propaganda and disinformation as the target subject. It’s kitsch, it’s camp, and at times it makes you pause and say, huh. Put simply, I adore it.

The Fabulous Fear Machine is a dense game that responds to your decisions moment-to-moment and then collects your story in the pages of an old-school comic book. The fortune teller, encased in glass and lights, uses this comic to fuel its own supernatural whims, but all of that is secondary to your personal quests for control, wealth and power. The game features multiple Masters of the Machine, each with a unique goal, and it kicks off with a brilliant, sociopathic scientist who wants to conquer the corporate world through a pharmaceutical company. As a Mistress of the Machine, she first sows seeds of panic and paranoia across the United Kingdom and Scotland.

Gameplay takes place on a bright world map, zoomed in to the appropriate locations. After planting a seed of terror in one spot, players help it spread by dispatching agents to major cities, collecting information, and then dropping Legends cards there, cultivating dark myths and conspiracy theories based on local beliefs. Players set a goal for each region; for the pharmaceutical baron, this could be implanting the dogma that natural medicines are harmful, or that generic drugs don’t work.

There are four psychic centers that the Masters of the Machine can target: The Power, The Form, The Passions and The Occult. There are two sub-categories for each psychic center. Terror of Conspiracy and Terror of the Future fall under The Power, Decrepitude and Pain are part of The Form, Violence and Death are in The Passions, and the Irrational and the Unknown are subsets of The Occult. Specific cards are tied to these sub-categories, and the stories on these cards evolve as they’re played on the map and upgraded.

Cards include scenarios like The Ultimate Virus, The Toaster is Listening, The Climate Machine, The Boogeyman and The Homicidal Nurse — conspiracies, myths and anxieties that can be exacerbated with the proper messaging. Spreading these terrors is a game of asset management and intuition, feeding the appropriate fears in the right regions.

Things get complicated quickly, though. With the help of agents on the ground, players have to mine resources, generate and maintain fuel for propagating their fear campaigns, and also fend off counter-attacks from activists and rival companies. Upgrading cards progresses the amount of unrest they invoke and involves selecting related terms from a word cloud. The cards tell their own little stories as they’re upgraded, and these evolve from whisper campaigns, to regional talk-radio topics, to headlines on major news programs. Rival companies and peace organizations pop up along the way, attempting to thwart your efforts, and they have to be infiltrated and dispatched by any means necessary.

Every action requires the appropriate element, which players can mine from cities they’ve discovered. Mining takes time, as does infiltration, intelligence-gathering and fuel cultivation, and deciding what to focus on at any moment drives the game’s tension. Be warned: It gets very difficult.

The Fabulous Fear Machine is available on Steam for $18, just in time for the spookiest season. Input-wise, it would make for a fantastic mobile game, but the amount of fine detail and on-screen writing might explain why it’s only on PC, at least for now.

Turns out, taking over the world with terror alone is complex, strangely funny and filled with dead ends. At least in The Fabulous Fear Machine, it’s also entirely fictional — and supremely stylish.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-fabulous-fear-machine-review-delicious-pulp-game-about-the-horrors-of-propaganda-141529423.html?src=rss 

The biggest acquisition in gaming history and one of the largest in the tech industry is in the books. Twenty-one months after the deal was announced, Microsoft has bought Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the largest acquisition in the company’s history. CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer has asked Activision CEO Bobby Kotick to stay on until the end of 2023, at which point he’ll be leaving the company. It’s been a long road filled with plenty of twists and turns to get to this point.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) initially blocked the deal in April, though it and the companies agreed to pause Microsoft’s appeal to try and resolve the regulator’s reservations over the merger’s impact on the cloud gaming industry. An appeal tribunal approved a request to delay the proceedings. 

In an attempt to win over the UK regulator, Microsoft agreed to sell the cloud gaming rights for Activision Blizzard titles to Ubisoft. That means that not only should Activision Blizzard’s games be on Xbox Game Pass, but they’ll land on Ubisoft+ and any other game-streaming service Ubisoft decides to work with. Concerns about competition in the cloud gaming market was the CMA’s reasoning for initially blocking Microsoft’s takeover of Activision, but the watchdog said in September that the Ubisoft concession “opens the door to the deal being cleared.” A few weeks later, the CMA has rubberstamped the merger.

Microsoft also signed 10-year agreements with Nintendo and several cloud-gaming companies to offer its titles on their platforms. Those moves led to the European Union giving the merger the green light. The bloc’s competition officials reportedly didn’t see anything in the amended merger agreement (with the Ubisoft plan factored in) that would prompt a fresh antitrust investigation. 

The Federal Trade Commission’s attempts to stop the deal over competition concerns haven’t panned out. The agency sued to block it in December and an evidentiary hearing in that case was slated to take place on August 2nd. The FTC tried to temporarily block the merger with a preliminary injunction ahead of its administrative trial, but a judge denied that effort. 

The FTC still plans to challenge the merger. If that effort is successful, Microsoft could be forced to divest some or all of Activision Blizzard.

But for now, the deal is done. It means, among other things, that Activision Blizzard titles will be available on cloud gaming platforms for the first time since the publisher pulled its titles from GeForce Now in early 2020. Its games will surely join Game Pass in the coming months, including on Xbox Cloud Gaming, and they’ll pop up on Ubisoft+ and other platforms Ubisoft works with.

Those waiting for Activision Blizzard’s two biggest games of 2023 to hit Game Pass will certainly need to remain patient, though. The publisher has said Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Diablo IV won’t hit the service until next year.

Meanwhile, Blizzard games are already coming to Steam rather than being siloed on the Battle.net launcher. We’ll probably see them appearing on Xbox’s PC app too. For what it’s worth, in court filings, Microsoft called Activision’s strategy of releasing PC versions of Call of Duty titles exclusively on Battle.net in a bid to grow the platform a “resounding failure.”

One of the key reasons Microsoft gave for pursuing the deal was to accelerate its aim of becoming a major player in the mobile gaming market. With Activision Blizzard pulling in $1.9 billion in mobile revenue in the first six months of 2023 alone, it will achieve that goal practically overnight. 

King, which is behind the hugely successful Candy Crush franchise, generated more revenue ($1.49 billion) than Activision ($1.15 billion) in the first half of this year. Thanks largely to the massive success of Diablo IV, Blizzard brought in the most of the three units during that period with a hair over $1.5 billion. Still, King had 238 million monthly active users as of June 30th, just over twice as many as Activision and Blizzard combined. It recently emerged that Candy Crush Saga has generated over $20 billion in lifetime revenue.

Blizzard has also been making a push into mobile gaming with the likes of Diablo Immortal. Activision, meanwhile, has Call of Duty Mobile in its portfolio and Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is on the way. The company said in its most recent earnings report Call of Duty has around 90 million monthly players, “with over half of all engagement on the mobile platform.”

As for exclusivity of future projects, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has promised to “do whatever it takes” to keep shipping Call of Duty games on PlayStation. After months of refusing to do so, Sony eventually signed a 10-year pact just before the initial merger deadline of July 18th to keep that particular franchise on PlayStation, conceding defeat in its efforts to halt the acquisition. However, Microsoft will likely opt to keep other Activision Blizzard games off of PlayStation platforms, as it has done with ZeniMax/Bethesda titles Redfall and Starfield, as well as MachineGames’ upcoming Indiana Jones project.

Meanwhile, many observers hope that Microsoft will help stamp out the alleged toxic workplace culture at Activision Blizzard. Earlier this year, Activision Blizzard paid $35 million to settle SEC charges related to how it handled employees’ workplace misconduct complaints.

In 2021, the California Civil Rights Department (formerly the Department of Fair Employment and Housing) sued the company and accused it of fostering a “frat boy” culture in which female employees were harassed and discriminated against. Activision Blizzard countersued the CRD in December. The case hasn’t been resolved. In fact, the CRD’s lawsuit (which, along with other events, sent Activision’s stock tumbling) set the ball rolling on Microsoft’s acquisition of the company in the first place.

Spencer hinted at efforts to improve the publisher’s workplace culture. “Today is a good day to play. We officially welcome Activision Blizzard King to Team Xbox,” he wrote on X. “Together, we’ll create stories and experiences that bring players together, in a culture empowering everyone to do their best work and celebrate diverse perspectives.” Spencer added that “whether you play on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, PC or mobile, you’re always welcome here — even if Xbox isn’t where you play your favorite franchise. Because when everyone plays, we all win.”

Now that the acquisition has closed, a labor neutrality agreement between Microsoft and the Communications Workers of America will go into effect for Activision Blizzard workers in 60 days. That should make it easier for more of the publisher’s employees to unionize. Some of Activision Blizzard’s quality assurance (QA) workers have already formed unions. Earlier this year, hundreds of QA workers at ZeniMax Studios, a Microsoft subsidiary, voted to unionize with the CWA.

Update, October 10, 2023, 9:34AM ET: This story has been updated to include comments from Phil Spencer, and to add context about the labor neutrality agreement and unionization efforts at Activision Blizzard and Microsoft.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/activision-blizzard-now-officially-belongs-to-microsoft-125053787.html?src=rss 

Netflix is reportedly planning to open several bricks-and-mortar venues, called Netflix House. The stores will sell merchandise for hit Netflix shows, hopefully of a higher quality than that Target Squid Game tee you sleep in. Talking of Squid Game, the two initial locations will reportedly feature obstacle courses based on the hit show, entirely missing the point of the show’s scathing view of modern capitalism.

There will also be rotating hit-show art installations and live performances to excite fans. Additionally, an in-house restaurant will serve themed cuisine and drinks from Netflix’s food-based reality shows. I can’t get enough of themed restaurants, so count me in. The first two will be in the US, but more will appear across the world.

Netflix has dabbled in real-world events and venues before. It opened pop-up experiences across the planet to celebrate shows like Stranger Things and many of its reality shows. In the UK, Netflix’s Stranger Things: The First Shadow theater production will begin performances at the Phoenix Theatre in London this November.

— Mat Smith

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That was the last major roadblock for the merger.

The UK’s antitrust regulator has given Microsoft the green light to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. The regulator called Microsoft’s concession to sell cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft a “gamechanger that will promote competition.” With the last major obstacle out of the way, the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) has now largely cleared the path for the companies to close the biggest merger in gaming history. The decision was widely expected after the watchdog said in September the company’s revised merger agreement “substantially addresses previous concerns and opens the door to the deal being cleared.”

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Comcast starts squeezing higher internet speeds through old coaxial cables

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Comcast is upgrading its residential cable internet service to offer upload and download speeds of up to 2 Gbps through decades-old coaxial cables. The company says it’s the first ISP in the world to offer multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds to customers through DOCSIS 4.0 technology, which it’s powering through the Xfinity 10G network. Comcast has been working on this technology for several years, and it aims to offer 2 Gbps symmetrical service in more than 50 million homes by the end of 2025.

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We were wrong: Coin flips don’t have 50/50 odds after all

Finally, some groundbreaking science.

A global team of researchers investigating the statistical and physical nuances of coin tosses worldwide concluded that a coin is 50.8% likely to land on the same side it started on. The authors of the new paper conducted 350,757 flips, using different coins from 46 currencies to eliminate a heads–tails bias between coin designs. (They also used a variety of people to rule out biased flipping techniques.) Regardless of the coin type, the same-side outcome could be predicted at 0.508, which rounds up to 49/51 odds.

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Stockholm bans most combustion engine cars from its city center

The Swedish capital joins other low-emission zones in Europe.

While we wait for electric vehicles to be the dominant engines on the road, some areas have taken it upon themselves to solve the issue of air pollution related to combustion engines. Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, just announced a ban on diesel and petrol-powered vehicles throughout its city center, starting in 2025. The ban doesn’t impact the entire capital city, only the 20-block city center.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-netflixs-next-big-thing-is-branded-retail-stores-111551264.html?src=rss