Blizzard Entertainment Cancels BlizzCon Due to Pandemic
Blizzard is working to host an online version of the annual BlizzCon trade show but admitted that would be new territory
by Samson AmoreBlizzard Entertainment canceled its annual BlizzCon conference for this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the game developer said Tuesday.
“Ultimately, after considering our options, we’ve come to the very difficult decision to not have BlizzCon this year,” BlizzCon executive producer Saralyn Smith wrote in a blog post.
While last year’s conference took place in early November at the Anaheim Convention Center, Blizzard had refrained from announcing a specific show date for the 2020 event, noting in April that organizing the show might not be feasible in the middle of a pandemic.
“We’re feeling deeply disappointed about this decision, and imagine many of you will feel the same. I truly love BlizzCon, and I know that’s a sentiment shared by everyone at Blizzard,” Smith added. “We will sorely miss connecting with so many of you at the convention and ‘recharging our geek batteries’ this fall.”
Since 2005, BlizzCon has taken place each fall in Anaheim, and it’s an important event for Blizzard’s parent company, Activision Blizzard. In a regular events cycle, BlizzCon is one of only a handful of regional gaming conventions. It’s a key way for fans to network and for the publisher to gauge feedback on new games. Flagship Activision Blizzard titles like “Overwatch,” “World of Warcraft” and “Hearthstone” are some of the games that fans flock to the convention for — whether it’s live esports competitions, merchandise drops or new game releases.
BlizzCon was established prior to Blizzard Entertainment’s merge with Activision, which was finalized in 2008 — and was originally leveraged to capitalize on the success of its popular online multiplayer game “World of Warcraft”. Though Blizzard is now a subsidiary of Activision, it still uses the name of the popular convention.
Smith said Blizzard is working to produce an online version of BlizzCon that will still provide fans with live esports competitions and updates on Blizzard games. “We’d want to do this as soon as we could, but given that this is new-ish territory and the different factors involved, it will most likely be sometime early next year,” Smith said. “BlizzCon is also a stage for big esports events in Blizzard games each year, so we’re also looking into alternatives for supporting some of the high-level competition that would normally take place at the show.”
This game, which is available for PC and Mac, has been one of my favorites for a long time. I just turn on one of the European pop radio streams available in the game, and drive around. I pretty much only do jobs so I'll have a destination -- you could just not do them if you'd rather just wander.
It's like "Euro Truck Simulator," but in places that mostly just have dirt roads that are covered in snow. The other night I spent an hour slowly pulling my truck out of a mud puddle and I loved every second of it.
These games are about rolling up garbage into a giant ball. They're cute, and nice, and upbeat. The most recent of these, "Katamari Damacy Reroll," is a remake of the original game for Switch and PC. If you've got an Xbox 360 or PS3 lying around you can play some of the older games too.
This game, which you can get as a digital download on any recent PlayStation device or on PC, is so chill and therapeutic. You're just a flower petal floating on the wind drifting around with other flower petals. It'll make you feel good.
It's got a novel brand of puzzles, as well as a similar, though less crass, sense of humor to "Saints Row." The story is overall almost nihilistic, and it's got plenty of jokes about giant corporations exploiting people in horrible ways. It feels just about right.
You probably know all about this series a this point, so let this simply serve as a reminder.
This online "Star Wars" game is free for anybody with an ok gaming PC (it came out in 2011, so it's not super demanding), and it's very easy and chill to get into after nearly a decade of quality-of-life improvements. But the real reason you should play it is because it's got the best "Star Wars" stories from the past ten years.
The main stories in these games are overwrought Japanese melodrama, but the real fun is the wacky shenanigans that gangster Kiryu Kazuma gets into in his every day life. That juxtoposition hits the sweet spot. You can get these for PlayStation or PC.
It's another 3D puzzle game in the vein of "Portal," but instead of cracking jokes it's more about musing about the nature of humanity, which has long since gone extinct. That may sound upsetting, but honestly it's pretty calming. It's like going to therapy, but in a puzzle game that's available on every platform, including mobile devices.
It's kinda like Sim City, but I like this one much more just because it's generally less complicated and annoying. Even better: you can get it on PC, Mac, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch, which is unusual for a game like this.
So when you're playing a shooter game, you tend to leave a lot of corpses behind as you move to each new area. But in this game, which is available on Steam for PC and Mac, you're not the one doing the shooting -- you're the one who cleans up all the bodies and mops up and blood. Some people enjoy cleaning their homes to chill, and this is like that but you don't have to stand up.
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Like all "Final Fantasy" games, the plot here is ludicrous. But the appeal of this game for me has always been as a sort of road trip simulator. You roll around the country with your bros, stopping every once in a while to get gas, kill some monsters, go camping, or climb to the top of a volcano to take down a giant bird so you can take its giant eggs and eat them with cup noodles. It's nice.
This may be the dumbest game ever made. It's not a real "simulator" in the normal sense -- it's actually just a goofy physics game where you like strap a jetpack on your goat or whatever. It's available on pretty much every platform you might use for gaming so you should probably just go for it.
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This is your reminder that any app store you have on your phone is absolutely full of free puzzle apps, like word searches or crosswords or whatever. My phone go-to is sudoku, but almost certainly you can get whatever your preferred puzzle time-waster is without having to pay anything.
There are plenty of relaxing video games you can enjoy while there’s nothing to do outside your home
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