Luke Plunkett

@lukeplunkett.com

32919 Followers 640 Following

Co-founder of @aftermath.site. 📍Canberra, Australia. DMs open. Email: lukeATaftermathDOTsite www.aftermath.site https://www.lukeplunkett.com/

As bad as it is, and inevitable as it is, it's still a huge bummer, because while I've never really enjoyed a Neill Blomkamp movie, I've been a huge fan of the art that went into them. Every combat arm or flying car or talking robot that went into District 9, Elysium (which I did a whole showcase on at Kotaku that, sadly, has had its images wiped) or Chappie was designed and modelled and animated and painted and shot by real people, and it was work that I really respected. It sucks that the guy responsible for those movies doesn't have the same respect.
The nation that invented the sport and gave it to the world, that is home to the Premier League, that has repeatedly fielded star-studded lineups featuring some of the world's best players, has won nothing. Not a fuckin thing. England hasn't won a major international trophy since 1966. Indeed things have been so grim for most of my life--my earliest memories of supporting the team are at Italia 90--that it took until 2021 for them to even reach another final. Which they lost. Then they made another one this week! And lost it too. The wait goes on. Thirty Years Of Hurt is itself about to turn 30. I get that for the rest of the world this is something of a punchline, or at the very least a source of amusement, and I completely understand why that is, but I'm not the rest of the world. I'm just sitting here wondering, as the years and decades roll on, and heartbreak piles atop disappointment atop heartbreak, when does Gil get a lick? Maybe never! Maybe this is England's destiny. To wander the wilderness forever cursed, always thirsty and never able to drink, reaching semis and finals only to come up short every single time. If so, then so be it. I've had 44 years of practice, I am hardened to it now, if England go the rest of my life without winning something that will simply be how the biscuit has crumbled. Being a fan of a team like this is frustrating because you feel so helpless. Trapped in a room you can't get out of, bound to a set of events that continually upset you but which you can't escape. To support England is to know that every two years, as the World Cup and Euros rotate, you are going to get your heart broken.
The specialist retail space is disappearing. The end of games being printed on discs will damage player numbers as it erases sharing, borrowing and pre-owned sales. The touchstones we associate with AAA (and GTA) releases, things like lavish physical editions and midnight launches, are now consigned to the history books. Console prices keep escalating while the people making their games live in constant peril. Everything is different now, and Grand Theft Auto VI landing right in the middle of it all, same as it always has, feels almost perverse. It's a game, and a release ordeal, from another age, like Dutch begging Arthur for one more big score. To look past GTA's release, among the crumbling walls and poisoned air of the AAA space, it's almost impossible to conceive of any future video game being this, or doing this, in the same way ever again.
The specialist retail space is disappearing. The end of games being printed on discs will damage player numbers as it erases sharing, borrowing and pre-owned sales. The touchstones we associate with AAA (and GTA) releases, things like lavish physical editions and midnight launches, are now consigned to the history books. Console prices keep escalating while the people making their games live in constant peril. Everything is different now, and Grand Theft Auto VI landing right in the middle of it all, same as it always has, feels almost perverse. It's a game, and a release ordeal, from another age, like Dutch begging Arthur for one more big score. To look past GTA's release, among the crumbling walls and poisoned air of the AAA space, it's almost impossible to conceive of any future video game being this, or doing this, in the same way ever again.