Gaming
The Games Done Quick for Houston Food Bank was the best one yet

When the Harvey Relief Done Quick (HRDQ) event finally ended this weekend, it had raised over $225,000 for people affected by Hurricane Harvey. Organised at the very last minute by Games Done Quick, the event brought together the speedrunning community in a suitably speedy way, with over 300 applications within a day of the event being announced.
All of the money raised by the event is being donated to The Houston Food Bank, which promises to “provide food and supplies in the short term and for many months to come to residents in southeast Texas who will struggle to rebuild their lives”.
What made this GDQ event better for me, aside from the excellent cause it benefited, was the way in which it was presented. Before I get into that, however, here’s some context.
In recent years, Games Done Quick has grown from a small band of streamers into something much bigger. With two main dates throughout the year, Awesome Games Done Quick and Summer Games Done Quick have become blockbuster events for both the speedrun community and the Twitch viewer base. Both events take on the form of a week-long marathon, with highly skilled players striving to finish popular (and sometimes unpopular) games incredibly quickly. While the games are often played by a single person, there is usually a couch of equally skilled runners explaining what exactly is happening during the run.
While the increased level of exposure that Games Done Quick has experienced is obviously excellent for the various organizations that benefit from the donations, it has meant that both AGDQ and SGDQ have grown into huge events focused in a single location. As runners and fans from across the globe converge on this one spot for several days, it’s not uncommon to see a single runner playing to hundreds of thousands of online viewers as well as a large live audience in the same room.
This places a huge amount of pressure on runners, who often have to perform frame-perfect tricks while the world (and perhaps, more importantly, Twitch Chat) watches on.
The increase in popularity also means that rules have become more stringent, with organizers and runners butting heads over what can and cannot happen. While this hasn’t stopped excellent runs from occurring (mention Bonesaw to anyone who caught SGDQ ’16), it has meant some fans believe the fun has been taken out of the event. As expected, the number of controversies has grown as more and more people become involved.
This all changed during HRDQ. With the impromptu nature of the event making it necessary to be up and running quickly, runners were instead streaming from their own home rather than a central location and it showed. Many of the runners were more natural, the commentary was smoother and setup times were reduced from minutes to seconds. Not everyone had a webcam but it wasn’t an issue, you still had the game stream and voice chat explaining what was happening. The bloated bits that inevitably come with organizing a large scale event had been trimmed away and Harvey Relief Done Quick took on a nostalgic quality, throwing back to the humble beginnings of GDQ.
I don’t expect this to be the format going forward and honestly, I do enjoy the grander spectacle and hype moments that a big crowd in one room can create. I think it’s important however that Games Done Quick look at how successful Harvey Relief Done Quick was and how the smaller scale, more intimate nature of the event helped contribute to something a little different to what we’re used to.
While I hope that the two main events continue to grow and smash total donation records, it’d be nice to see Games Done Quick running more events throughout the year, especially if they have the same heart and quality that HRDQ had.
Gaming
Sony Has a “Monopoly” on the High-End Japanese Gaming Market, According to a US Senator

The never-ending saga surrounding Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has a new participant. Today, Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from the state of Washington, said some things about the subject that were hard to understand.
The senator, whose remarks were reported on by ResetEra, spoke at a Senate finance committee hearing on “the president’s 2023 Trade Policy Plan,” which we are sure was quite interesting.
Senator Cantwell said that she had been told that Sony “controls a monopoly of 98% of the high-end game market” despite the fact that “Japan’s government has allowed Sony to engage in blatant anti-competitive conduct through exclusive deals and payments to game publishers, establishing games that are among the most popular in Japan.”
This 98% statistic is highly deceptive because it ignores PC, Nintendo, and mobile games and instead refers to Sony’s adoption rate over Microsoft in Sony’s native country of Japan, a fact that shouldn’t surprise anyone who is even somewhat familiar with the video game business.
What can we do to rectify these problems and create a level playing field, she said of US Trade Representative Katherine Tai after charging Japan’s Federal Trade Commission with improperly failing to look into this purported “exclusionary conduct”?
It is absurd to claim that Sony has a monopoly on the Japanese video game market, as Luke Plunkett of Kotaku correctly points out, “because Sony doesn’t even have a 98% share of the market for the God of War series, a title they own, as Steam is getting 30% of every sale on PC.”
It goes without saying that we can’t expect elected officials to be experts in every field, but this is a visible step at a time when the ongoing attempt to buy the company is at a very important point.
Is it significant that Microsoft, along with Nintendo, maintains its headquarters in Redmond, Washington—Senator Cantwell’s district—or that Microsoft has given Cantwell more than $500,000 over the past two decades? Let us leave that up to you.
Consoles
Eating trash, Pizza Possum destroys the PS5

Pizza Possum is an arcade action game in which you, a possum, attempt to consume as much trash as you can without being discovered. It is a web-based sequel to the anarchy simulator Untitled Goose Game.It will eventually be available on the PS5.
We couldn’t help but notice that the possum in the title doesn’t look like the cute Australian possum that comes out at night to visit people.On the other hand, it looks like the horrible North American opossums are the ones that will attack trash cans and cause general chaos.Even though we think the second choice was better in terms of theme, we prefer the first one and are happy to explain why.
Your thoughts on Pizza Possum? Does it possess the necessary mass appeal to successfully skitter along the back fenceline while setting the dog off in the process?
Consoles
The Mercenaries, a free piece of DLC for Resident Evil 4 Remake, launches on April 7

Resident Evil 4 is now out, and the excellent remake can be bought right away.Even though you probably plan to play it all this weekend, you can take comfort in the fact that The Mercenaries, Resident Evil’s almost-required challenge mode, will be available as free DLC on April 7.
The mode’s exact details are still unknown, but if it’s anything like previous versions, you can expect some pretty hard tasks to test your skills.
You’re stumped about something? If you are still debating whether to purchase Resident Evil 4 Remake, be sure to look at our exhaustive guide for the answer or our in-depth review. Are you spending this weekend playing Resident Evil 4? Are you anticipating The Mercenaries?
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