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ALT Gaming consultants have a remarkable talent for making video games sound boring. And NARRATIFY might have just given us our favorite example yet. Welcome back to Psycho-Babble! 🦇 This week, We react to Mickaël Newton of NARRATIFY and his Games for Change presentation, "From Extraction to Transmission: Building Authentic African Narratives." We've covered NARRATIFY before, particularly its promotion of Relooted, but this time we're sitting through its ideas about authentic storytelling, cultural representation, narrative consulting, and the role consultants should play in video game development. Along the way, we discuss Ubisoft, Resident Evil 5, Sweet Baby Inc., Relooted, cultural consultants becoming decision-makers, and whether these presentations have lost sight of what makes games entertaining in the first place. There's also a strange hypothetical walking simulator, an unfortunate-looking island, an unexpected glue-related mythology lesson, and plenty of increasingly sleep-d
ALT Spider-Man: Brand New Day starts as a darker, more mature Peter Parker story, then collapses in an ending that abandons accountability and the core lesson of great power and great responsibility. This spoiler review breaks down Tom Holland’s strongest material, the body-jumping Jean Grey reveal, the wasted Scorpion and Yelena appearances, Peter’s unstable mutation, the universal power inhibitor, Frank Castle’s role, and why the third act turns a promising Spider-Man movie into setup for Avengers: Doomsday and Battleworld. TDS gives the film a 6/10. Raven gives it a 5/10.
ALT Black Sailors: Bay of All Saints put an Afro on the Jolly Roger, called itself a “decolonial game,” and then spent most of its developer presentation explaining why the story matters before finally getting to the gameplay. Yes, this is completely serious. We react to the official Black Sailors trailer and developer presentation from NARRATIFY’s Afro Game Showcase. The game follows formerly enslaved Africans who seize a ship, become pirates, and fight Portuguese colonial forces in an alternative version of Brazilian history. The presentation promises turn-based naval combat, crew management, ship upgrades, and tactical planning. But before explaining how any of that actually works, the developers spend most of their time discussing colonial history, cultural representation, backlash, and why the story is important. Then there is the flag. An Afro. On the Jolly Roger.
ALT Black Sailors: Bay of All Saints put an Afro on the Jolly Roger, called itself a “decolonial game,” and then spent most of its developer presentation explaining why the story matters before finally getting to the gameplay. Yes, this is completely serious. We react to the official Black Sailors trailer and developer presentation from NARRATIFY’s Afro Game Showcase. The game follows formerly enslaved Africans who seize a ship, become pirates, and fight Portuguese colonial forces in an alternative version of Brazilian history. The presentation promises turn-based naval combat, crew management, ship upgrades, and tactical planning. But before explaining how any of that actually works, the developers spend most of their time discussing colonial history, cultural representation, backlash, and why the story is important. Then there is the flag. An Afro. On the Jolly Roger.
ALT Relooted peaked at just 57 concurrent players. Now the company that marketed it is using the game as proof that its strategy worked. NARRATIFY published an entire Relooted case study celebrating the campaign, complete with panels, cosplay, a DJ set, public testing and something called a “playformance.” What it does not publish is sales, revenue, attendance, wishlist growth, reach, conversion or player growth. NARRATIFY now sells sensitivity review, cultural consulting, PR and marketing support, workshops, and events, with Relooted used as a public reference for the agency. So we ask the question their own case study avoids: what exactly was successful?
ALT Narratify is calling its Relooted campaign a success, but the Hall of Receipts has one question: where are the actual metrics? The stream examines the game’s Sweet Baby Inc. connection, its reported 57-player Steam peak, and a case study filled with praise but no published sales, attendance, conversion, reach, or engagement numbers. Prime Video’s God of War series is also facing a costly reset after Ryan Hurst tore his bicep during a stunt. With Kratos being recast and four completed episodes reportedly needing reshoots, the production chose its schedule over waiting for its transformed lead actor to recover. Finally, George Lucas says AI is inevitable, compares its critics to people clinging to the horse and buggy, and argues that it could make filmmaking easier. The technology may be advancing, but humans still decide how it is built, used, and accepted.
