Some Thoughts on Some Things

The Celtics just got bumped from the Eastern Conference Finals for the third time in four years, this time by the Miami Heat. Going into the series it seemed like this might be the year they finally overcame that hump and made it to the finals. Yet, here we are, always the bridesmaid. For many franchises, three conference finals losses might warrant a reset, but for this young Celtics squad, it still felt like they were a year too early to compete with LeBron and the Lakers out west. The first reaction from many fans is to blow the team up if they don’t win immediately—championship windows are typically very short. This Celtics team, however, was never built to contend now. The fact that Tatum and Brown have been so ahead of schedule has allowed Boston’s front office to go get pieces (Kemba Walker & Gordon Hayward) that give them the chance to make deep playoff runs. Their best players, however, are 22 and 23 years old, and they have a litany of prospects that should continue to im...

          When Pokémon Go was released in 2016, it was a cultural phenomenon, breaking the Guiness World Record for highest first month revenue of any mobile game ever by bringing in $207 million. (Swatman, 2016). It was truly the summer of Pokémon. But summer soon gave way to winter, and Pokémon Go’s meteoric rise was followed by an equally dramatic fall. By December 2016, Pokémon Go’s United States playerbase had fallen from 28.5 million in July to just 5 million trainers (Farooqui, 2017). This was due to the fact that the game had little to offer upon its release aside from actually catching Pokémon. There were gyms where you could battle, but aside from that there wasn’t much to do with your collection of monsters. There was no system for trading with friends or battling other trainers. In addition, players could only catch the original 151 Pokémon at the time. The game was largely forgotten to the general public, but for game developer Niantic and the ...

              Console gamers take heed, Microsoft has made a major move in the console arms race. At 6:00 am on September 21 st , the company announced via their Xbox Wire publication that they had purchased ZeniMax Media, the parent company of game developer Bethesda Softworks, for 7.5 billion dollars. For perspective, Disney’s 2012 purchase of the ‘Star Wars’ franchise cost them just $4 billion. This acquisition could represent a major shift in the console wars as Bethesda is responsible for major titles such as Fallout , Elder Scrolls , and Doom .             This purchase brings with it the possibility that all of these titles could become Xbox exclusives in the next generation. This would give Microsoft a huge boost in the exclusive titles battle, which was previously dominated by Sony with PlayStation exclusives like Spider-man , God of War , Ghost of Tsushima , a...

                 Ever since the release of the ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ (Philosopher’s Stone if you’re not from North America) video game for Gameboy and PlayStation in 2001, fans of JK Rowling’s ubiquitous Harry Potter series have been clamoring for the chance to truly feel like they’re in the wizarding world. What we’ve gotten instead has been a string of mediocre to awful film adaptation games with janky combat mechanisms and little to no options for exploration. One notable exception was the 2003 game ‘Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup’, which was essentially magical FIFA. While it was undoubtedly a fun game, it captured but a fraction of the complex imaginativeness that is the hallmark of Rowling’s universe, and struggled with the same lack of exploration as other games. When one immerses themselves into the wizarding world, or any fantasy world for that matter, they want to feel like they’re really there—that they ...