Month: December 2024

Update: Following the publishing and removal of George R.R. Martin’s blog post, which is discussed below, HBO responded in a statement to Variety. It reads: “There are few greater fans of George R.R. Martin and his book Fire & Blood than the creative team on House of the Dragon, both in production and at HBO. Commonly, when adapting a book for the screen, with its own format and limitations, the showrunner ultimately is required to make difficult choices about the characters and stories the audience will follow. We believe that Ryan Condal and his team have done an extraordinary job and the millions of fans the series has amassed over the first two seasons will continue to enjoy it.”

In a recent blog post, George R.R. Martin voiced serious concerns about the latest season of HBO’s House of the Dragon. The author, who created the Fire & Blood series from which the show is adapted, sharply criticized the decision to exclude the character Maelor, a crucial figure in the book.

Martin’s post, which appears to have since been removed, expressed his dissatisfaction with changes introduced in the opening episodes of the second s…

Fanatics Holdings, Inc.’s online and retail sports betting division, Fanatics Betting and Gaming partnered up with the Cleveland Guardians to open a new retail sportsbook.

Huge success for the company:

The sportsbook will be situated at Progressive Field in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Ted Baugh, a Vice President of Corporate and Premium Partnerships of Cleveland Guardians, is satisfied with the partnership. He commented: “We’re very excited to partner with Fanatics Betting and Gaming to bring a retail sportsbook location, their first in Major League Baseball, outside Progressive Field in downtown Cleveland. This will provide our fans a very convenient in-person option to place bets.”

The ceremonial first bet was placed by a former pitcher of Cleveland Guardians, Paul Shuey. He was the first-round pick of Cleveland in 1992, as well as …

The many online and land-based sportsbooks in the American state of Indiana reportedly had a second consecutive record month in January after chalking up aggregated handle for the 31-day period of slightly over $500.1 million.

According to a Saturday report from the online news domain at PlayIndiana.com citing official information from the Indiana Gaming Commission, the January performance means that the Midwestern state has now set increasing all-time high handle figures in four of the last five months with January’s finishing tally being approximately 8% above the $463 million reckoning seen for December.

Annual advance:

Indiana is home to almost 6.8 million people and legalized retail sportsbetting in September of 2019 before subsequently allowing residents and visitors to place a wide range of online wagers. Last month’s handle figure reportedly also represented a rise of 43.6% year-on-year as this important benchmark exceeded the $500 million mark for the first time.

Main markets:

PlayIndiana.com reported that playoff action from the National Football League (NFL) helped to push the January handle figure to new heights by generating combine…

After walking off the job on October 17, 2023, around 2,100 workers at MotorCity Casino and Hollywood Casino at Greektown, Detroit have ratified a contract with the employers to end a 34-day strike at these two properties. However, the move has not been followed by the workers at MGM Grand Casino that have been on strike since the same date. As reported, they rejected the employer’s proposal and will continue to strike.

Council Voted To End Strike:

As The Detroit News reports, around 3,700 workers of these three casinos are represented by the Detroit Casino Council union. Still, the members from each of the three properties on strike voted separately on the offer. MotorCity Casino and Hollywood Casino members voted to ratify the five-year contract. These around 2,100 workers will reportedly instantly receive a $3 raise per hour to receive a total of a $5 raise per hour during the contract performance. The workers at the two casinos will reportedly also benefit from workload reductions, technology protections, and no health care cost increases.

The strike of the members of the Detroit Casino Council …

There’s no doubt in my mind that Baldur’s Gate 3 will have its own legacy, especially as we’ve just awarded it an extremely rare 97% in our review. But it’s also part of an existing lineage as the third game in a BioWare series dear to many longtime PC gamers. Baldur’s Gate 3’s lead writer Adam Smith tells us today during the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast that Larian never lost sight of the long shadow it was stepping into.

“It’s easy to forget because the game’s out there now, but when we first started working on [Baldur’s Gate 3], it was ‘shoulders of giants’ stuff. [Baldur’s Gate] was such a big shadow,” Smith says. “We were like, ‘Do we ever look okay in this shadow?’ There was anxiety about it.”

Smith repeats an appraisal he often heard during Baldur’s Gate 3’s early access: “It’s Divinity: Original Sin 3, not really Baldur’s Gate 3.” It’s not a totally unfounded assessment. Larian’s Divinity: Original Sin 2, also one of the best RPGs in recent years, was a bit bright and silly, and everything was constantly on fire, and Baldur’s Gate 3 does carry some of that Larian vibe.

It is, however, markedly darker and full of body horror. There a…

Even as a lover of RGB lighting, I admit that gamer lights have gotten kind of ridiculous, and it’s amazing. Sure you can use lighting to have a subtle splash of colour, but if I’m going to have an RGB lit battlestation then I want the works, and wow is Govee’s Evangelion themed kit exactly that.

The line includes two different kinds of anime aesthetic wall mount lights, as well as gaming light bars to splash colour all over your room. All together they create a package so over the top even Nerv would be jealous.

Each piece is available separately and comes in its own sealed black box with red imagery from Nerv, the company in the anime. Get past that and you get to the brighter purple packaging themed after Unit 01 with its vibrant green trimmings to match. Inside each set has a little envelope with more Nerv call backs including a QR code to scan to download exclusive themes for the lights in the Govee Home app. I usually prefer minimal packaging but exploring these lights as I opened each box was actually quite exciting. This is one of those products where opening it feels like a part of the experience.

The housings for each light are predominantly Unit 01…

If you’ve been in or around gaming Twitter or message boards for the past 15 years or so, you’ll have no doubt come across Wario64. Tirelessly compiling deals and news on games for years now, Wario64 has touched many of our lives, but it’s always been strange just how much they look like legendary Japanese game designer Goichi “Suda51” Suda.

Despite having nothing to do with the million-follower account, Suda51 has been the face of gaming deals for over a decade thanks to the mysterious info broker using his image as an avatar. This obviously hasn’t gone unnoticed—in 2013 Suda issued a challenge to Wario64 to prove to the world that they weren’t a bot. (My theory is they’re actually 64 Warios in an office, but the world isn’t ready for that).

In a recent interview with Suda51 about bringing back Shadows of the Damned, I asked how he feels about being the face of video game deals today. And did Wario64 ever pass a Voight-Kampff test and proved that they aren’t a robot once and for all?

“I probably met him about 10 years ago at E3,” Suda51 said. However, despite the potential sighting of this rare gaming cry…