This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: Remember When PC Gaming “Died”?
- Did Nintendo or Monolith Just Acquire Xenosaga? (No, But I Wanted to Talk About This Topic)
- What Do People Want From Gaming Third Spaces? (Natalie Talks About Skokie Real Estate)
- Obligatory Mention of DragonSword: Awakening (I Love It When Gacha Games Get Un-Gacha’d)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Remember When PC Gaming “Died”?
So, here’s something that I have never really talked about in great detail— at least I don’t think so— and it’s when PC gaming died back in the mid-2000s.
This was always a hyperbolic and absurd statement that less reflects actual reality and more the sentiment that was wafting throughout the air at the time. Like how Japanese RPGs were done and bad from 2007 to 2017, because handheld games were a lesser class of game and Square Enix is the only ones who make JRPGs, right?
Or how survival horror was dead circa 2008 to… uh, when we got the first big wave of indie horror games. Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010), Slender: The Eight Pages (2012), Five Nights At Freddy’s (2014). …B-But those weren’t Silent Hill or Resident Evil!
Or, my favorite, how adventure games died after the release of Grim Fandango (1998), even though loads of acclaimed adventure games were coming out, but they weren’t BIG games. Now, Telltale’s The Walking Dead (2012), an episodic downloadable release that cost like $25? That was a big one though!
Shit, we’re seeing a “GAMING IS DEAD” trend at the moment! Though, this instance is somewhat true, if by gaming you mean jobs in gaming, because those are dead! And if people aren’t making games, where will they come from? The DIRT?
There is a level of understood irrationality and hyperbole in discussing the death of something in video games, and I’m not exempt from this bad habit. I eat, shit, sleep, and cum like the rest of you people. What we call death often means decline, and in the go-go world of video games, a decline can feel like a crash landing. However, there are definitely areas where that decline was more extreme, and it felt like an avenue was just closed. And PC gaming in the mid-2000s, per my understanding, was one such instance.
People were, and will, always making games for personal computer. Even before graphics were a thing, computer games were a thing. Though their legacy is not as captivating as home consoles, they persisted through the 80s and 90s delivering some absolutely excellent titles. Many were RPGs, adventure, and simulation games released on everything from DOS to the Amiga to the PC-98. This was all until PC action games really came into their own with a genre made specifically for these newfangled computer mice, the first-person shooter. …And RTS, I suppose.
Throughout the 90s, there were certain things computers were simply better equipped to do than home consoles, and these genres flourished in parallel with the PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Saturn, and Dreamcast. You could put Diablo on PlayStation, Half-Life on Dreamcast, SimCity 2000 on Saturn, and… Daikatana on N64… which they did. But they were largely compromised due to how different the specs were for PCs and consoles of the era. Many exceptional games of the late 90s were PC games, and only PC games, due to this reason, and nobody wanted a compromised port that lost what made a game good in the first place. Console to PC ports were not unheard of, but that’s not what I want to really talk about.
What I want to talk about is the mid 2000s and how PC gaming seemed to be on the decline during this era. Now, calling any broad era seems a bit silly, especially when it’s home to legendary games like The Sims 2 (2004), World of Warcraft (2004), Civilization IV (2005), The Witcher (2007) Crysis (2007).
The truth of the matter is that PC gaming never went away or died out. Even the mid-2000s were full of heavy hitter classics like The Sims 2 (2004), World of Warcraft (2004), Civilization IV (2005), The Witcher (2007) Crysis (2007). However, there absolutely was a series of events that culminated in a market shift around the world and led certain PC game profits to slump. These independent yet related events that caused people, namely investors/analysts/asshats, to look at PC gaming and declare that it’s dead.
Reason Why PC Gaming Declined in the 2000s #1: Microsoft and the Xbox
Throughout the 90s, Microsoft put a good deal of resources into the PC gaming scene. They made Windows 95, developed DirectX to make game development on the platform easier, published plenty of games, and used games to sell their operating system and other software. However, that changed when Microsoft began work on the Xbox project, as they saw it as a way to expand their influence past the computer room and into the living room. To facilitate this, they invested billions into the project, buying studios, publishing games, funding who knows how many projects, and developing the hardware.
This put a limit on the amount of resources Microsoft was willing to put into their own PC games. DirectX was still being developed, along with oodles of software suites, but they published few PC games during the era while shoving sequels and successors onto their consoles. Crimson Skies? Xbox only sequel! MechWarrior? It became MechAssault on Xbox. Halo? PC only got the first game, none of the sequels until over a decade later. They published 8 Xbox games in 2004, while PC only got Zoo Tycoon 2.
This also meant that Microsoft’s gaming budget wasn’t going toward the gaming features of Windows or into marketing PC games. Microsoft COULD have brought many of these games to PC through delayed ports, like they did with Mass Effect and Jade Empire, but they did not want to.
Reason Why PC Gaming Declined in the 2000s #2: Gaming PCs Are Expensive
Throughout the 1990s, home computer sales were bustin’, physical software sales were regular, and after making this investment, regular people were not looking to upgrade. They have spent upwards of a thousand dollars and could go online, write some documents, do spreadsheets, and maybe even play some games. These were seen as big ticket items and by the early 2000s, having a computer at home was like having a TV in the 1970s. If you didn’t have one, you were either poor or a weirdo. But people weren’t exactly jumping to upgrade every few years or buy them up by the bushel.
This meant that many people, especially casual users, did not want to upgrade and wanted to use their computer until it stopped working or stopped working effectively. This was pretty bad for PC gaming as a whole, given how limited a lot of this generation of Windows 95 machines were, especially when it came to 3D. Lower end machines were catered for throughout the 90s, with many PC games being 2D or featuring low poly 3D assets. You didn’t need a Pentium III and Voodoo card for Diablo II. However, big budget 2D games became less common as more complete 3D games rose in prominence. You went from Baldur’s Gate 2 to Knights of the Old Republic in three years, and to play it… you would need a new PC.
Many looked at this, at the $1,000 price tag for a new PC (components were less universal back then) and decided that they would just not upgrade, even if it meant skipping out on the game. Now, many did just buy a new PC so they could get on Windows XP and not deal with everything being ass-slow. But PC tech was rapidly evolving back then, and keeping up with this could be crazy expensive, as you’d need to replace something every few years. You could have built a PC matching WoW’s recommended specs, but that wasn’t enough to play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006).
This made it harder for people to become invested in PC gaming, looking at games they wanted but could not buy, leading some to feel that PC gaming had left them behind. A $50 game is one thing, but a new CPU and 4 GB on a 24 GB hard drive? I’m sure many just said no thanks.
Reason Why PC Gaming Declined in the 2000s #3: Cheap Consoles Dominated
In the PS1 generation, approximately 150 million consoles were moved. In the PS2 generation, approximately 200 million units were moved. This meant that console gaming was a growth sector, with people all over the world picking up a console and hungry for games to play on them. PC game developers took notice of this, and many began looking for ways to bring games to this new frontier. The consoles were dramatically more powerful than the last generation, more powerful than a typical PC in some respects, and represented a growing, young, and eager user base. Publishers wanted to bring games to consoles, so they did.
Developers like Blizzard looking into the console with StarCraft: Ghost. Bioware games started targeting consoles first, and Oblivion was arguably a bigger deal on Xbox 360 as its first BIG RPG of the generation. (I would be able to answer that if I had sales data, but alas…). Hell, “consolized” sequels like Deus Ex 2: Invisible War and Thief 3: Deadly Shadows sent the message that PC developers were going to target consoles first and just give PC plebs a prettier version of the same game.
For the customer, there were several benefits consoles had in this era over PC gaming. Console games would just work right out of the box, and you would not need to deal with driver incompatibility or other guff. Console games had bigger pushes behind them, supported by Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, meaning if you wanted to be on the forefront of gaming, consoles would be sufficient. You could buy a console at a Walmart, but you couldn’t buy a whole-ass gaming PC there in the 2000s.
However, the most important benefit was the money. Circa mid-2002, the GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 were all $200 USD. Buying a damn DVD writer for your computer could cost more than buying any of these consoles, and they could also play DVD movies. Well, except for the stinky GameCube. Compared to consoles, PC gaming just seemed like a RAW DEAL.
OH! And you could rent and buy used console games! Could you do that with PC games? After 2005? Not really, no. Maybe at Disc Replay, but how many Disc Replays were there in 2007? 13!
Akumako: “…The fuck’s a Disc Replay?”
It’s where I bought Knights of the Old Republic for Xbox in 2009!
Akumako: “That doesn’t answer my question!”
Reason Why PC Gaming Declined in the 2000s #4: Piracy and DRM
Piracy has always been a problem with PC gaming— or a boon depending on your politics. But for businesses, this was an issue that they fought dating back to the 1980s with copy protection, propaganda, keys hidden in the manual, and multiple discs, or disks. However, piracy still thrived. Unauthorized copies were sold for the cost of the disc(s)/disk(s) plus a buck, and not a penny went back to the publishers. This only became easier with the advent of the internet and file-sharing services like my beloved LimeWire! (I used it once to watch Zone Fighter, then my dad uninstalled it from my Educational Mac.)
Pirating PC games was a breeze— cops couldn’t do nuthin’ to stop it— and this meant many publishers were not making money off of their PC games. Piracy does not always mean a loss of a sale, but it sometimes does. This was actually such a common practice that many countries’ retail game market shut down, such as China and South Korea, where “packaged games” were replaced with online games due to rampant piracy. People did not care so long as they got to play the game.
This is where online gaming really took off by the way. Asian markets that combatted piracy by making MMOs and other online games we don’t care about in the Anglosphere. Why? Because of rampant racism! Like, how many times did they talk about classic hood banger Ragnarok Online in PC Gamer? In fact, I know! The answer is ZERO TIMES outside of ads! Thank you VGHF! Glad I gave you $500!
Akumako: “…Does giving money to a video game charity count as spending money on video games?”
No, you boob!
Certain executives looked at this online solution and began reacting accordingly. They funded MMOs— most of which would fail after a few years. They devised ways to use the internet to ensure players were using legitimate copies— namely in the form of DRM. Yes, this was the advent of games requiring that you check in online so you could play your legal copy of a game you bought. Meanwhile, companies like Valve, Microsoft, and Ubisoft used their own proprietary account system to launch games or play them online. Steam’s been pretty good so far while Games for Windows Live did SO MUCH damage to so many PC games.
All of this garbage made players feel like second class citizens by trying to follow the law. With consoles so capable, with so many games targeting consoles, for some this was a reason to pivot. For others, this dismal state made piracy, which cut out DRM many times, the better option. Hell, sometimes the pirated copy was objectively better.
Reason Why PC Gaming Declined in the 2000s #5: Browser, Flash, and Emulated Games
Some of the most popular PC games in the 90s were smaller games. Solitaire, Minesweeper, that one darn pinball game, and lighter less action-heavy games. It was a way to play something on the computer that would get them interested in playing other games for the computer, that could run on it. However, as the internet matured, the packaged PC games industry now had to contend with the fact that there were a million free games online. Hell, ones that did not even need to be installed, you just needed an internet connection and know how to ask Jeeves “where da Flash games at?”
NeoPets, Maple Story, Gaia Online, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, NewGrounds, CoolMathGamez, sites that just let you play NES games in the browser. If all you had was a computer, you could play hella games for free, without leaving a trace beyond your browser history. This is how a lot of people of my generation played games, how they got exposed to them in a meaningful way. Who needs to BUY games when you can play oodles of browser-based games?
This did a lot to pull the interest in children and broke-asses who just wanted a quick and easy game, and they simply WERE PC games for a lot of people during this era. They did not need packaged games because they had free games. And if they wanted something more substantial, that’s what ZSNES was for.
You could play a RICH library of games on your computer during this era without spending a penny or creating an account. While this worked out in the long-term by normalizing the computer as a gaming device, it meant demand for premium software was low. You can’t compete with free, and you also cannot compete with something you can access from a URL with a retail store.
Reason Why PC Gaming Declined in the 2000s #6: Physical Media
By the advent of the 2000s, every recreational PC was online. However, software still came on discs, at least for major stuff, and download speeds were slow. This would seemingly make installation discs for games a great boon, but they kind of weren’t. Unlike with consoles, PC games always had to be installed to be used, take up hard drive space, and require dealing with an installer. It was often pretty streamlined, but kind of a pain in the ass, making every game installation a process before it could be played. Then came the patches, not included on the disc, that would need to be manually downloaded, applied, and used to fix the game.
This process made it harder to jump into a PC game, especially multi-CD games, and especially multi-DVD games. Yet, in order to do any of this, you had to get the game, which was harder than it was for console games. Many stores of the era had limited PC game shelf space. I remember a GameStop in downtown Evanston having, like, one rack of them circa 2007. And if you wanted something a bit more obscure, it could be a pain in the ass to find it.
You had to do so much work to get a game up and running and ready to play. It sucked. There is a REASON why PC gamers wanted to just use Steam, where you press a button and bam, it’s all installed for you. No installer shenanigans, no listening to your disc drive cry out for mercy as it extracted gigabytes of data, no figuring out you need to install NET Framework or this or that driver.
Physical media was not bad on PC, and if you timed it, a disc-based installation was faster than a downloaded installation circa the median 2005… human. However, the platform lacked the immediacy, availability, and simplicity of a console, with relatively few benefits other than… PC discs were easier to rip and copy?
Reason Why PC Gaming Declined in the 2000s #7: Fewer Resources
This is more of a vague reason, but in the early 2000s, PC troubleshooting was a lot harder due to a lack of information. You didn’t have the PC Gaming Wiki or Steam forums, or videos showing you how to get a game to run properly or modify its settings. You were often on your own with regards to both hardware and software. This, in turn, added friction to the gaming experience and discouraged many from investing in PC gaming. How do I figure out if this video card is compatible with my PC? How do I replace a CPU without straight biffin’ it? How do I check what type of RAM I am using, and what does this mean?
Information like this seems basic nowadays, but the technological infrastructure of 2004 did not make this information as accessible as it is now. Now, you can figure out pretty much any issue with ease, and there are eager communities happy to help out with this process. It’s a cultural shift, but a very important one that I know made me more eager to check out certain games back when I first started PC gaming it up in 2013.
Reason Why PC Gaming Declined in the 2000s #8: Hardware Limitations
One of the issues a lot of PC games were facing, games in general really, was on the CPU level, as they only had a single core. This was a bottleneck for several titles in the mid-2000s, but that all began to change when multicore processors hit the scene in 2005. It was a great innovation, but also one that has its own growing pains. Devs had to learn how to make games for multiple processors, multi-processer cores were worse at running certain intensive single core games, and it represented a costly and intensive upgrade for many PC game players.
Combined with the still rapidly advancing hardware of the time, and this meant that getting the best performance out of games was often a challenge. I would say that 2005 to 2007 was an adjustment period for pretty much everyone. …Also, people were transitioning to widescreen monitors, but that’s largely unrelated.
Anyway, those are my reasons why there was a narrative that PC gaming died. It really didn’t. It just went a slight decline during a transitional period and was up and kicking like nobody’s business come 2010. I specifically cite 2010 because it’s shortly after when Windows 7 came out, where it would go on to be the OS of choice for a lot of diehard PC players for a decade. Digital storefronts like GOG and Steam would have been firmly established as THE place to buy games.
Several key online games, like League of Legends and StarCraft II were attracting players like crazy, with no console version in sight. PC knowledge was widespread and accessible enough for even laypersons to get into PC gaming. Also, consoles were showing their age. Many were starting to get tired of 720p 30 fps gaming, wanting to play their games with stable frame rates and higher resolutions, so they upgraded.
The PC gaming audience eventually became large, diverse, and profitable enough that just about any game that was hitting PS3 and Xbox 360 was at least eyeballing the PC thinking “maybe.” Every indie game with half a soul wanted to be on PC, because that’s where they were born. Then came the PS4 and Xbox One generation, where both systems used straight up PC components and x86 PC infrastructure.
Any argument about PCs being substantially different from consoles on a technical level stopped being true. Valve pushed controller support and a console-like experience a lot more. And now… now we’re fresh from the era where console games of most colors found their way onto Steam, and maybe GOG.
I’d end this by saying “and now everything’s great, and it’s almost my 38th birthday” but, one, not everybody is familiar with that vocal stim and two, Sony and Microsoft are both trying to destroy gaming.
Why they always gotta wreck shit from the top down?
Did Nintendo or Monolith Just Acquire Xenosaga?
(No, But I Wanted to Talk About This Topic)
So, here’s a topic I wanted to SPLURGE on for funsies. Last week, Nintendo revealed more succulent details about the new content added in The Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Nintendo Switch Edition Game (2026). This includes a new mode where you can play as the many Blade familiars in the game, like Pyra, and also a returning character from the Xenosaga series, Momo. Now, this is not too shocking, as the original XB2 featured KOS-MOS, the Xenosaga girl, but that was in 2017, when the rights for the Xenosaga IP were firmly with the original publisher, Bandai Namco. …But are they still?
Web sleuths have noticed that Xenosaga is no longer listed as a license owned by Bandai Namco on their official licenses page. It was there in early 2025, but it left there before the end of the year. …And the same thing happened to Baten Kaitos, an RPG duology created by developer Monolith Soft.
Could this all mean something is going on with the rights for Xenosaga (and Baten Kaitos)? Well, maybe. We actually did get a Xenosaga re-release earlier this year with the Japan only feature phone game, Xenosaga: Pied Piper, which was a Bandai Namco and G-Mode joint. However, that could be a quirk with the re-release, they just don’t update the rights information.
…But per the release of The Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Nintendo Switch Edition Game (2026), the answer looks to be a big fat NO. Which is not surprising, as why would the IP hound that is Bandai Namco ever sell anything?
However, this is as good a time to discuss Xenosaga as any, and I have not talked about it in… how long? Seven years? Yeah, that ain’t no time in the Grand Scale, but I figured I should and could give a refresher on the series.
The Xeno series can be thought of as the brainchild of various Squaresoft staggers who worked on Xenogears (1998). There’s a certain genre of PS1 fan who will NOT shut up about Xenogears, how great, grand, and ambitious it was, and how we were robbed when it released in a clearly unfinished state.
While the first half of Xenogears was cohesive, the second half of this grand scale sci-fi epic was full of scenes where the game effectively tells you about cut content before jumping over to a chunk of the scenario they actually finished. Combined with the details only included in the Perfect Works companion book, only released in Japan, and a decently shocking ending, it earned a reputation among those who played it, and almost a million did. People have wanted it to come back, to actualize its concepts, and have largely accepted that there would never be a direct sequel… because we’ve gotten like seven spiritual follow-ups.
Square Enix is keeping an iron grip on Xenogears as it does NOTHING with the game. Well, nothing but glorified cameos that I think exist just to annoy the maintainers of fan wikis. Fans WANT the game to come back, but I think the game is in a murky middle ground. It has fan modifications and alterations that aim to fill in the gaps and make the game a bit easier to play, less grinding and such. I have also seen it crop up in discussions of re-whatevers, yet I cannot determine what form it would take. A thoughtful remastering would be swell, but the same is true for basically every game, but I’d wager these fans want something more ambitious. Would it work as an HD-2D remake? Sure, it has a 3D world and 2D characters, so that could be neat. But remaking a game that was too ambitious to be completed on PS1 is… daunting.
After Xenogears failed to meet the arbitrary one million units sales targets by Squaresoft, the planned sequel was not greenlit, leading to one of the MANY great Squaresoft exoduses of the late 90s as da Xeno boyz buddied up with Namco to make Monolith Soft, with the goal of producing a soft sequel/successor to Xenogears, which became Xenosaga.
The development of Xenosaga is long and complicated. I read this comprehensive article years ago, but the gist is this: Both Monolith and Namco wanted Xenosaga to be BIG, arguably a complimentary series to their Tales of RPGs. Spin-offs, an anime adaptation, and oodles of Japanese only merch all happened around the series, which was meant to be a six episode epic. If that sounds crazy… it is. However, it was possible in the PS2 era. CyberConnect2 and Bandai’s Dot Hack series moved four entries in JUST ONE YEAR, saw a low scale MMO spin-off, and then got a sequel trilogy, just for yucks. Which is before counting all the anime, movies, OVAs, and other guff.
Anyway, Xenosaga was a grand space RPG that stood out in its era for, one, it’s setting, but also its heavy ties to mythology, philosophy, and grander ambitions than many other PS2 RPGs. …That being said, it was still some, and I say this with love, primo weeb shit. The first game’s subtitle comes from Nietzsche, but it also has a robot catgirl as a central character. That sort of thing is normal nowadays, but it wasn’t in 2002. The games did not invent this kind of eclectic kitbashing, but it definitely helped popularize it.
Now, I tend to refer to Xenosaga as one game, as they are three narratively connected sequels and you’re kind of expected to go through all of them to get a complete story. However, the three games had a fairly rocky development that resulted in several pivots and changes between entries.
The first entry was well received and strongly regarded, but it absolutely has some of that early PS2 jank. Developers were still adjusting to fully 3D realistic characters, trying to make them look like anime characters without looking like plastic dolls, and try to optimize fidelity with pacing. They made a fully 3D world with high quality character models, but a lot of the game is kind of empty, a bit slow, and fixated on establishing a lot. Getting the groundwork done and laying a foundation was the important part, and they succeeded. Critics were captivated by the story, and this was an era where any fully 3D RPG with full voice acting was still wicked impressive.
Xenosaga Episode II was considered a messy sequel that radically changed the art direction and did not deliver on the narrative promised by the prior title. You can tell it’s a sequel, but characters were often redesigned so radically that they would not look like the same people if not for their outfits. Fans did not care for it, sales reflected this, and Namco looked at this situation deciding to change the trajectory for the series. They allowed a remake of the first two games for DS, where some issues were addressed… while robbing the games of their cinematic grandeur, but told Monolith to wrap things up in a final entry, Episode III.
Xenosaga Episode III is pretty beloved by fans, full of emotional highs and fulfilling payoffs that cap off the story pretty well considering it was wrapping up four games worth of ideas into a single package. Just skimming through a longplay, I can see why it gets that reputation, as it seems far more complete than the prior two games, with more diverse environments, smaller voiced conversations that supplement cutscenes, combat that looks more visually dynamic, and visuals that thread the needle between the two prior games to look semi-realistic yet just stylized enough to not look uncanny. Also, the lighting system is better, and that does a LOT to change how a game looks.
This marked an end for the series, and Monolith Soft eventually found themselves under the ownership of Nintendo, while still making the odd game for Bandai Namco— Super Robot Wars OG Saga and Project X Zone mostly. Under Nintendo, they spread their creative winds with the stellar Disaster: Day of Crisis, which is basically Disaster Report: The Movie: The Game (complimentary) and Soma Bringer, which was never localized. (Which is a shame, considering it’s a unique DS action RPG that had a strong multiplayer emphasis. It was never going to make Dragon Quest IX fetch happen in Japan, let alone America, but it is a nifty game.)
However, Monolith made it big with the Xenoblade series, which Nintendo of America DID NOT want to release, inspiring Operation Rainfall, a movement to get PAL exclusive games released in America. It sounds so STUPID in retrospect, but NoA circa 2011 was overly conservative with a lot of things. I did my part, writing two letters for each game part of the movement, and eventually bought… two of them. I played Xenoblade, got 60% of the way through once, 80% of the way through a second time, and never actually finished it, despite putting in over 150 cumulative hours. Still, I consider it one of the most impressive RPGs of its era, creating a truly massive world full of deep history, countless characters, and absolutely majestic that few games have ever matched, let alone exceeded.
From there, the series prospered as a core part of Nintendo’s line-up, and Monolith has been The Xenoblade Guys for the past 15 years.
So, that’s the basic history of the Xeno series, skipping out the recent bits.
…Now let’s talk about the idea of a Xenosaga remaster. The original games were uneven, flawed, and had many kinks that were worked out over subsequent titles. Just getting these games on modern hardware through official Christian means would be a great thing, as they would be easier to access and maintain in the current digital ecosystem.
A basic re-release would not be too hard. However, much like with Xenogears, I think what many fans want is… for the games to be generally reconstructed to the standards of Episode III. Basically… given the Mass Effect Legendary Edition treatment. Though, knowing how Monolith is, they probably would want to give all three games a complete facelift so they look more “appropriate” on modern hardware. See their re-whatever of Xenoblade 1.
Do I think this will be a profitable venture? Oh, GOD NO! Are you kidding me? Xenosaga is not a prime IP, its anime didn’t do big numbers, and the games were hella limited in North America. They also never received a European release, aside from Episode II, so at that point, you basically NEED to do a full re-translation for English, Chinese, Chinese Pro, Korean, French, Italian, German, and Fake Spanish. Meaning the English VO would need to be scrapped, just like with Baten Kaitos!
Also, who would even develop this? Monolith is busy wrapping up Xenoblade Genesis for release next year, and I doubt anybody else would be capable of digging through decades old code in a proprietary engine. Well, Logicalbeat Co., Ltd. has worked on the Baten Kaitos remasters, and did work on the Switch 2 upgrade for Xenoblade 1: Definitive Edition. Maybe they could do it. But are they even capable of revisions that extensive?
Don’t know, and if this does actually happen… I’m still going to be shocked.
What Do People Want From Gaming Third Spaces?
(Natalie Talks About Skokie Real Estate)
With all of this physical game hoopla being a rightfully hot topic for a lot of people, I got to thinking about these much coveted third places that gamers say they want for games. However, I always struggle to see the viability of these places. Most people are accustomed to playing games with friends via the internet, via Discord, VC, or in-game chat, and this allows them to be social while being in their environment letting them perform at their level. Yes, lag, latency, and general vile can crop up under this approach, but the fact it’s free and easy (unless you’re paying console rent), makes it harder to justify going out and spending money someplace.
That is the real thing hurting third places. The fact you don’t need them for shopping or socialization nowadays. You got that shit on your phone!
However, let’s continue with this thought experiment. What would a good gaming third space actually look like? Well, you would probably want to cover your corners as well as you could. So you would want retail, food, social spaces, play spaces, and private spaces.
Retail is tricky when physical games aren’t really going to be a thing beyond Nintendo in about 18 months— Microsoft, end disc production, NOW— so selling new games isn’t the best idea. Gaming peripherals— controllers, accessories, that sort of thing— makes sense, along with all amount of gaming related merchandise, much of which is admittedly impulse-driven tat. It is tempting to say retro gaming should be a pillar of future gaming retail, but I don’t necessarily agree with that. A lot of people treat older games as things to be collected, and with the way the collector market has gone, building up a store’s inventory isn’t easy or cheap. Anybody getting into the scene now will need to face some serious investment for inventory that does not move quickly. Now, modern retro consoles? Those would be a great item to include.
Food is food and petty easy to grasp. You need permits to sell it and to build out a kitchen. Any expansive third space with sense would have its own food section, as the markup on convenient comfort food is high, and it keeps people in the space for longer. You don’t need me to tell you that coffee, fountain drinks, vending machine fodder, tempting sweets, and basic fast greasy food are good ways to make easy money.
Socialization is an absolute must in a third space, and it’s something that has largely been phased out from a lot of retail. There isn’t a place to sit, an area to chat, you are expected to be mobile in a user hostile approach. This was not always the case, more a result of aggressive rents, shelf space, and retail psychology. Yet, if you want people to come back for the space, it is necessary to create an environment where they feel they can u. Where they can chat with a friend, someone they meet there, and form a connection without feeling pressured to leave. All of which can be achieved by just throwing in some decent chairs and tables, giving them a place to be social, and enough room where they don’t feel cramped.
Play spaces are obvious as if you are going to a video game place, you need a place for people to play video games. Game stores used to be pretty good at this. Even Walmart used to have demo kiosks where kids could try out games while their mom bought clothes or whatever. But the ability to play video games was largely phased out as they took up space and required maintenance. However, that phased away, and trying a game/console for free sort of faded away.
(Which IS a significant loss. I still remember being 6, or 7, and playing Sonic 2 at my dentist’s office as a kid in 2002. I was butts at the game, but just moving around, seeing the bright colors, listening to the music, that kind of stuff can really impact a kid. It can introduce them to video games in a more meaningful way than some exploitative live service on their parents’ iPad.)
Now, there are many solutions to this. Just setting up a console as a demo unit to try something out would be a nice feature, but that’s not really what most people want. They don’t just want demos, they want meaningful experiences. This could be achieved by hooking up a console, throwing some games onto it, put a couch or chairs in front of it, and let people rent that space for however long. Or you could just try to replicate the lost luster of arcades, which have undergone a slight resurgence as it became easier to share the fact they exist and buy cheaper good enough reproduction machines. Having games you can actually play is kind of a must, but you would also want to retain the social space element.
By that, I mean you would want to let people bring their own games, own systems, and let them use the space here to play games. Emphasis on games, not just video games. Give some people a table, and they can play Switch multiplayer with each other, a TCG, even do a D&D game if it’s during slower business hours. Be a place for people to play games, while giving them the opportunity to buy something related to what they’re doing.
Next… you just need private spaces, you need event spaces that people can rent out for a party or get-together. While some people enjoy being around crowds, in the breadth of people, and the barrage of sounds and lights that is unique to a busy place full of screens, that’s a turn-off for many people. If people want to go some place with their friends, or have a more personal experience, a venue like this should accommodate that, and the easiest way to achieve that is to… just build some rooms for rent.
You could easily have a console in there, letting people sit down and play games for two hours or so to their heart’s content. Peripheral games that require a lot of set up or noise are kind of made for this sort of thing. They could just have a quiet place to bring their own games— handheld, console, or table-top. Hell, you could just throw in a darn karaoke machine without breaking the bank, and that’s a sort of game if you think about it but also don’t. Plus, you could put a tablet in the rooms, so people can order food and drink while in there.
None of what I am saying is a unique or interesting idea. This is all just an amalgamation of stuff I saw visiting Chuck E. Cheese, Crown Theater, Nickel City, and Old Orchard’s EBX as a kid. And from my purview, this is something that simply exists.
I actually live a five-minute walk away from one of these gaming third places, called Ignite Arcade, formerly Ignite Gaming Lounge. It was originally a place where people could corral, gather, and play a wide variety of console and PC games, with a regularly updating list. However, after the pandemic and some restructuring, it just became a barcade. This is arguably just the thing I am describing, but I often find the prospects of a barcade to be… less desirable.
How to phrase this? I could try to extrapolate why I specifically don’t like barcades, but the funnier version is that I’m a drug-free straight edge and racist against drunk people. …Only when they’re drunk though, so it’s the non-racist type of racism..
I have no problem with a place serving alcohol, but I don’t want to go to a place that sells itself as a bar first, and features a lot of the more gimmicky arcade games. Skee-Ball, air hockey, pool, that mini basketball thing, and fake DDR StepManiaX. Yeah, these are games, but they are more the kind of stuff you would expect from a Dave and Busters. They do have some arcade classics like Mortal Kombat II, Marvel vs Capcom 2, The Simpsons, Metal Slug, Time Crisis 5, Guitar Hero Arcade, Street Fighter II Turbo, and Mario Kart Arcade DX. But that’s the clear minority of the arcade stuff on offer here.
You can rent out console booths, emphasis on booths, as they are pretty slim, just a huge TV and couch. They have Rock Band set-ups, which are absolutely the sort of fixture you should have in places like this. They also have dozens of PC set-ups with headsets that… make sense as an inclusion. These PCs are the first thing you see when you walk in, and make this a pretty good choice for any sort of LAN party. Now, $6 an hour would probably make any net café regular go aye-yai-yai, same with the lack of privacy, but that and a $25 unlimited PC day pass is not bad in this economy.
They do trivia nights, host some FCG locals, and I can tell they are trying to appeal to fans of games. …But this is also a place that is clearly being designed in a Chuck E. Cheese mold with its focus on the arcade and food as the main attractions. They want to appeal to a broad group of people, I get that, I respect that, and I’m glad they are a part of my community. However, I also wish that it was more of a place where you are meant to hang out, and not a place to party. Partying is fleeting, but hanging out is where true connections are made.
…All of which I say without ever actually going to the place, just from their online presence, in what has to be a legendary example of missing the point.
Strangely, I think a slightly more interesting example, also a five-minute walk from where I live, would be RJBreaks, a card shop that mostly peddles Pokémon cards, and is a nice if cluttered establishment. They have oodles of inventory in the back, along their walls, between packs, box sets, and a good mount of older stuff, even if the spread is like 67% Pokémon and 33% literally anything else.
They had tables to play cards, pleasant window art they cycle out periodically, and while it is a bit hard to move around in there, it does have the feeling of a place where people can hang out. There’s just not enough space for them in their current location, as it is a hole in the wall. If they could move over to the unit next door, which shut down a year ago, that would be something. Hell, they put up window art as a way to sorta claim their stake on that location, which would be big enough to host local tournaments and stuff.
Unfortunately, this kind of highlights a problem that comes from trying to make ANY third space. The greatest evil in the known world: real estate.
The 2008 recession, COVID-19 pandemic, and deluge of innovations that happened in the interim really hurt commercial real estate, and there are plenty of abandoned building, vacant lots, and places with nothing across the United States. My hometown of Skokie is no exception to this, as it has had its share of vacancies for as long as I can remember.
The entire stretch of retail where Ignite is planted was among the saddest chunk of retail in all of Skokie for a couple years. There used to be a furniture shop, second-hand shop, pet store, interior design place, an auto repair shop, and an office building across the street. However, everything but the auto repair shop has been closed since 2008/2009, and the abandoned buildings were left standing for a DECADE before the village finally said “screw it, let’s make them empty lots!”
Places like that are not uncommon in Skokie, and sometimes it takes decades for them to be filled. For example, I think there used to be an old downtown bowling alley that was torn down before I was born, I think in the 80s. I only ever knew it as gravel and a parking lot, with a few trees. Then in 2021/2022, they made it into an 11-story mixed used “luxury apartments” with retail space that still hasn’t been leased, four years later.
None of this is remarkable in 2026 America, but something is wrong here. There should not be so few places for people to hang out and just exist, and so much vacant space. Sure, there is plenty of outside space. Skokie has a bunch of parks (over 40!) that you can use at your leisure. Most of them have proper tables and benches. But when it comes to indoor spaces, areas where you can just lounge around with a couple of friends, it’s Americanly strict.
The Skokie Park District has a lot of rooms you can rent across town, but they are mostly geared towards large capacity parties and events, with prices that just run the gamut. I’m not going to say that paying $324 an hour for a 300 person capacity auditorium is a bad deal. It isn’t, same with getting a tech person on standby only cost $26 an hour. But the idea of renting a 25 person meeting room for $99 an hour is bonkers. Especially when a 50 person meeting room a kilometer away costs nothing, because it’s at the darn library.
Skokie’s library is excellent, and one of the best features of the village. It’s full of resources, amenities, and media aplenty. Books, movies, music, a whole child section for families to enrich kids’ development. There’s a theater for performances and speaking arrangements, 3D printers, sewing kits, craft stations, a computer lab, study rooms, courtyards, and a mini “café.”
During the summer, there are weekly live music performances outside the library, and you routinely see dozens of people gather around, set up chairs, and enjoy the music. Its grounds are home to the annual bomb-ass local end of summer party, the Backlot Bash, which is naturally free, and sees over a thousand attendants. Oh, and it has free-to-use meeting rooms that hold up to 50 people and can be booked for up to three hours, no fee.
…Why does the library not charge anything for renting rooms to fit up to 50 people while the same thing would cost $120 an hour in another government building a kilometer away? I don’t know! I guess it’s because the library is more selective with what they host. You can’t host a party in the library— it’s a library— and many of the prices quoted are based on the assumption that these will be party venues with food, noise, and potential messes to be cleaned.
Actually, the library does charge you 10¢ to 25¢ to print a page from the library printers, as printer ink’s expensive. And you do need to pay for things at the café. But the 3D printing center? You have daily limits on materials, but that’s complimentary! Same with using its guitars in the music studio, and renting out laptops, it’s free.
…But if you want to hang out with like 12 people and play some goldarn video games together? Well, I guess that’s what houses are for!
Akumako: “…What was your point with all this?”
My point was that the rules, structure, and pricing around third places is deeply arbitrary, inconsistent, and often overly expensive. Existing in a place should not need to cost this much, but it does, and that is going to be a problem with any sort of third space establishment. If it’s government run third space, then the government needs to fund the maintenance of it somehow. If it’s a corporate run third space, then you need to be the product somehow.
A third space can be built around providing a good time first and a product second, and that may be preferred, but achieving this heavily depends on economic factors such as rent, construction, utilities, and general cost of living. (Also culture, which we don’t have in America. Unless you count rape, racism, and guns to be cultural affects.) While governments CAN just make things free, or set their own prices, decades of vilification of taxes by the rich have skewed what even government workers think the government can or should do.
In other words, we could have nice things, and we can absolutely get part of the way there, but the systems of the world make it difficult to achieve this.
…But what would I know? I don’t even have a second place. All I know is the Aldi, the post office, the library, and my home.
Obligatory Mention of DragonSword: Awakening
(I Love It When Gacha Games Get Un-Gacha’d)
For those new to the site, I have a rather skewed history with gacha games. I tried them as a lark when I first got a smartphone in 2019 (I needed 2FA for work), but wound up getting hooked to Dragalia Lost, which pretty much became my game for the next three years before it underwent End of Service in 2022, and I still miss her to this day. (I was actually listening to the soundtrack, by happenstance, while writing this.) I was never a fan of live services before this, thinking they were simply BAD for the world of gaming, and that gacha is bad civilization.
My reasons to dislike live services are many: The games abuse the vulnerable, neurodivergent, and impulsive via macro-transactions that these games depend on to survive. They are time vampires that limit one’s exposure to other games while throwing them on a hamster wheel of daily busywork. Live services soak up the mindshare, eyeballs, and money that could go to any number of other or smaller games. They create a natural oligopoly as a few giants lead the industry, soaking up the air and profits while other games are left to rot. And they are the antithesis of game preservation, being always on always shifting games with no way to roll anything back and ones that will inevitably die someday, somehow.
As for why I got hooked onto Dragalia… it’s because I liked the story, characters, gameplay, progression, and community of the title, and wanted to see it through to the end. I did so, and while I adore Dragalia, I also never want anybody to go through the same years-long daily dependency, and loss. I want gacha games to go away, but I know that won’t ever happen unless the law forced them to shut down. Which I also don’t want, as that’s exactly like demolishing a library— including books and all assets— because it has a roach problem.
Instead, the idea I became obsessed with leading up to Dragalia’s death was “how could this game be turned info an offline single-player title.” In fact, I was SO obsessed with this idea that I spent 250+ hours making a needlessly thorough design document.
Needless to say, I have a bit of a fascination— a fetish if you will— with the prospect of taking an online gacha game and making it an offline single-player title. Of which… there have been some examples.
Mega Man X Dive Offline took an odd Taiwanese Maga Man gacha and turned it into a clunky yet “interesting” title that contained the lion’s share of the original’s content. Well, barring some moddable collabs. It was not balanced, and the economy was a MESS, but it was a way to preserve years of work in a completely playable manner.
Octopath Traveler 0 was built from the guts of Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent and reworked it in what might be the best game in the entire series, simply being a successor to the two prior titles without many notable appendages from its gacha origins. At least, none that I saw highlighted across reviews.
Another Eden Begins is slated to bring the first arc of the ongoing title while the gacha is still going, which I personally think is HILARIOUS. It’s a way to rack up sales on a packaged game that would cost peanuts to make and would attract new players to the live service. Kinda wish it was trialed with a less 2010s-looking-ass mobile-looking-ass game though.
Final Fantasy Resonance has a good amount of hype behind it for adapting the initial arc of Brave Exvius, but is less a recreation or port and more a full-on remake of the original with clear creative deviations.
Touhou Danmaku Kagura Phantasia Lost is apparently a resurrected gacha game, but I leave all Touhou matters to Rain, and I leave all rhythm game matters to the freaks.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete was the platonic ideal in a sense, as it took the original phone game and just made it a $20 phone game, no fuss, no problems, you keep all your save data. …Wait, did I ever actually play that after I bought it? I did not… and I guess I forgot to STORE my save data? What? You had to opt-in to back it up? Dastards!
Brave Nine: Brown Dust is a strange one in that it was not delisted or anything, but rather replaced with a standalone version of the game that does not cost anything. Meaning it went from free-to-play to just free. However… they kind of made it a bad way to play the game. If you start, you will start with 283 max level fully upgraded characters and oodles of things to equip to them. You don’t earn things and I don’t even think there IS an item economy anymore. While this works, while it does preserve the game, it robs it of the same strategy, gaminess, and general usability as it otherwise would. Very strange move, I do not like it. I played it for 30 minutes, and it felt like playing with a zombie. 5/10.
Metal Slug Attack Reloaded was a de-gacha-fication of a game that I remember being lambasted when it first came out, as it turned Metal Slug into a “tower defense” game with the expected level of RPG-ification. I won’t thank Saudi Arabia for okaying this. Saudi Arabia would need to give me, personally, $10,000 or more in goods or fiat (NOT SERVICES) before I thank them for anything.
Akumako: “Damn, your morals are cheap.”
No, my thank yous are cheap. I’ll say thank you, several times, just for someone letting me walk past them in a store.
…So, there are not a lot of these games, and I don’t count memorial apps that just let you view the story or whatever. Those are better than nothing, but… are they even better than archived videos of the game? Maybe, but not by much.
Anyhow, this is all a preamble to the actual subject here—
Akumako: “You really need to stop these thousand word introductions. What do you think you are? A video essayist?”
No, I’m worse. A blogger.
Ahem. The actual subject here is DragonSword: Awakening, and this game’s story is rather curious. From Hound13, a studio led by the former developers of the formative Korean gacha Dragon’s Nest, Dragon Sword was a Genshin-like gacha game that launched in South Korea in January 2026, but quickly fell into some issues with the publisher, Webzen. According to Hound13, Webzen promised them a minimum guarantee payment a month after the game launched, but Webzen never made the payment.
This lead Hound13 to end their contract and relaunch their game as a standalone $30 PC exclusive title a few months later. This saw Dragon Sword become DragonSword: Awakening, and it launched on Steam on July 22, 2026. Was this even legal? Well, that’s for the courts to decide! Since its release, DSA has sold over 200,000 copies, which is not a bad launch for a PC only launch that only had three months of proper hype leading up to it. It’s not great either though.
At $30, that’s only $6 million in revenue, $4.2 million after Steam’s cut, and probably less than that when accounting for regional pricing. Sure, they have other DLC to supplement things, but I doubt this made more than $3 million. Which, in South Korea, is significant, as the median wage is under $2,000, so that’s maybe a bit over a year of operations for 100 people.
Akumako: “Back of the envelope math!”
Still, Hound13 seems happy with this release and has a flurry of plans to support the title going forward with DLC expansions, the pricing model of which is still to be determined.
Now, because I WANT to see this happen, and want games like DSA to be a success, I decided to support the game by buying it and decided to give it a whirl to see if it is good. …But doing so required me to accept that the game used AI for its in-game translation, due to some publisher meddling. This is likely a temporary measure, as the developer indicated they plan on improving the translation, i.e., hiring people to actually translate the game.
Machine translations are crummy, and while I will accept it as a plug-in for some doujin game or comic— by virtue of being better than nothing— it should not be accepted as part of an official release. This game is under odd circumstances though, as this is potentially a ship it now or we go bankrupt scenario, so… screw it. Goody-good beat baddy-bad this round.
I gave DSA 100 minutes Wednesday night and… it’s just a Genshin derivative with some hints of Zenless Zone Zero thrown in with the party swapping combos. It still seems pretty grindy, and is so Genshin-like in some respects it HURTS in several respects. However, it is the full game, playable offline, at your leisure, with no gacha crap thrown in. And that is most of what I want from these games. I want more careful design, of course, but I will take this any day.
Will I be playing DragonSword: Awakening for a review? Nah! It would not be an interesting review to write, read, or engage with, as I would the game at its core is fine, but pretty shallow in many regards. Nothing about the story or systems seem unique, but I’d rather it exist than just not exist.
…It just occurred to me that if MiHoYo ever decided to make offline versions of their titles, I would ABSOLUTELY need to play through Honkai: Star Rail and Honkai: 3rd Impact. Why? Because those are Cassie games, and I would no longer have a good excuse to not experience ELYSIA and DEMIURGE in their rawest form.
Progress Report 2026-08-02
Hey, so I know that I said I was going to review Beast of Reincarnation, but I am going to coward out and specify that I will wait until I have seen the reviews and tried playing the game myself. I forgot that this was a full PS5 era title, and need to make sure my 2021 computer can run it properly, and that it’s not a mess at launch. If it’s a mess, I’ll do something else.
2026-07-26: Very busy day. Watched Back to the Future Part II and III with my 2/5ths of my trans girl friends. Had to partake in a family obligation meal, where we had BBQ steaks, except for me, I just had some mediocre chicken breast, except it was 30° C, and I was sitting out in the sun. I am so White I’m RED, you can see veins in my FACE! Why would you put ME out in the sun?! Then I had to help my sister unclog a drain, as it was backed up BADLY, and needed to be fiddled with. Took forever, because that drain was always a PITA, but I got her moving GOOD! Then since I was already beaten, I did my 30 minute workout of sit-ups, weights, and exercise bike before showing. Afterwards, I was DEAD. Played more AITSF 1.5, going through an escape room section and replaying a section for silly reasons. Not sure how to feel about the game right now. Then I decided to FINALLY start writing TSF Series #019, writing the first 1,000 words for the prologue sequence.
2026-07-27: Dedicated my free time to AITSF 1.5, getting to the epilogue, and the overall story this time around… is not very good. Like, I don’t know how this got through the drafts type issues, which is very unfortunate, as it nailed the characterization.
2026-07-28: Spent WAY too much time on a 2,700 word ramble about what a good gaming third place would be, and wound up falling down the rabbit hole of Skokie room rentals. Got to everything but the novels in AITSF 1.5. This game is what the team gets up to without their leader, and I’m sorry to put it that way. It gets everything right EXCEPT the long-term storytelling.
2026-07-29: Worked late, wrote the 1,600 word piece on Dragon the Sword, played some of Dragon the Sword, FINISHED Kaname Date Takes A Nap.
2026-07-30: AITSF 1.5 review was written, currently a svelte 3,500 words including an intro, this Rundown was edited, and tomorrow shall be the day it is edited. Meaning I will have no choice but to actually work on TSF Series #019 soon. Yay!
2026-07-31: Edited AITSF 1.5 review, nice to get that done, studied for stuff until like 19:00, because studying for this section was a DRAG. Got back to TSF Series #019, and wrote 2,700 words. Yeah, this is going to be a slow burn, but that’s okay with me.
2026-08-01: Did my chores, worked about 2.5 hours with the bossman, played around for nearly three hours with Cassie, watching some Star Trek: The Next Generation. Never watched the series, but I can tell it’s a good show. The type of television many people crave in the modern era. Then I decided that “damn, I should read Devilman” and read the first two volumes. It owns! Also wrote 2,800 words for TSF Series #019. Slow and steady progress!
Natalie.TF 2026 Progress Report
- 2026-08-05:
Natalie Rambles About Monkey ManDONE - 2026-08-12:
AI: The Somnium Files 1.5: No Sleep For Kaname DateDONE - 2026-08-26 TSF Series #019: An Exchange of Flesh
- 2026-??-??: Beast of Reincarnation Review
- 2026-??-??: re:Dreamer Review #6
- 2026-??-??: Coffee Buns Review (TSF Game)
- 2026-??-??: Fate Stay Night Remastered Review (Shiba & Rain Request)
- 2026-??-??: A Mirror’s Curse Review (TSF Game)
- 2026-??-??: Thread – A Tale of Identity, Monsters, and College Review (TSF Game)
- 2026-??-??: TSF Showcase 2026-01: Chronicstuss (Ouran Request)
- 2026-11-18: TSF Series #020: Chateau del Bitz
- 2026-12-29: Natalie Rambles About 2026
… Wait, I’ve got it! They should make a Video Game Love Hotel!
That’s one way for gamers to get laid… By paying for sex!