[Update 2:45 pm]: The FCC has officially called for a review of Disney and ABC’s broadcast licenses. ” The FCC determines that calling in Disney’s ABC licenses for early renewal, at this time, under the Communications Act’s public interest standard is essential within the meaning of agency regulations,” wrote FCC Media Bureau chief David J. Brown in a filing. The document says that ABC has to file renewals for all its licensed stations by May 28.
Gerry Conway has died. As the co-creator of Punisher and author of “The Night Gwen Stacy Died,” the legendary comic book writer had an outsized impact on the medium, with storylines and characters that remain cornerstones of the world’s most popular and successful titles. Marvel confirmed Conway’s death but did not report a cause. He was 73.
“Gerry Conway brought real stakes to his writing, able to weave together sensational super heroics with the human and relatable, and in doing so created some of the most memorable stories and characters of all time,” said Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige in a statement. “His writing has been hugely impactful across our comics, but it has also inspired so much of what we’ve done on screen, from Werewolf By Night to Daredevil to Spider-Man and Punisher. Gerry was a wonderful collaborator and friend to so many and will be dearly missed.”
Anybody who cares about games should take the Seumus McNally Grand Prize seriously. The top award given out at GDC’s Independent Games Festival has gone to some of the best games of the century, games like Outer Wilds, Return Of The Obra Dinn, and A Short Hike. In 2012 Fez somehow beat out Spelunky, FTL, and Dear Esther; the year before that an obscure little game called Minecraft reeled it in. There are too many awards handed out to games every year to keep track of, but this is the one you most need to pay attention to if you care about games beyond their commercial potential. And this year’s winner, AP Thomson’s Titanium Court, absolutely earns it.
Titanium Court is a strategy game, a match-3 puzzler, and a tower defense game wrapped into a single package, and there’s surprisingly little tension between the three. It squeezes them together snugly and smoothly in a way that feels so natural and so obvious that it’s hard to believe there isn’t already a long history of this type of game. Here’s how it works: Every encounter has two halves. Your map is made up of tiles with various types of terrain on them, like the hex map of a wargame (only these tiles are squares); your court, which you have to protect, is usually on the center tile. During the first half you slide those tiles to make matches of three or more; the matched tiles disappear, the tiles above them fall deeper into the column, and new tiles appear to fill the open space on the map. There’s a meter to the left of the map decreasing every time you make a move, and most matches earn you a resource based on the kind of tile; forests get you wood, fields get you bread, hills get you stone, and water gets you, uh, water. If you match more than three tiles at once, you get extra resources; if you string multiple matches in a row, with tiles matching up and clearing out as they cascade down after an initial match, you’ll not only get a lot of resources but also add time back to the meter. Various enemy tiles also appear. Some are enemy courts, little pink castles that can generate different classes of warriors that will attack your court during the second phase. You also have to watch out for catapults, volcanoes, and the occasional angry goat. You can clear out enemies during the first phase by matching three of their tiles, or move your court’s tile one space at a time to put it in a better defensive position; you don’t get any resources when you do either one, though, so you’re constantly weighing the opportunity cost of every decision.
Those resources are vital in the second phase. This is when you prepare for the actual battle. You’ll use your resources to spawn your own units—some defend your court, others go out to attack enemy courts, and various worker units can collect more resources for you—or use spells and other skills to help in the fight. Once you’re done prepping, you can start the battle, which runs automatically in a tower defense style. If you withstand the assault, you’ll move onto the next skirmish, working your way through several maps toward a boss fight with a dragon, a kraken, or some other mystical beast. (Or sometimes a whole team of angry goats.) And when you fail to slay the monster again and again, you’ll see a fourth genre poking through, the roguelite, as you lose all the resources and units you’ve acquired during the run and restart from scratch the next time.
Like many of the other promoters at CinemaCon last week, The Ankler columnist Richard Rushfield was handing out free swag. It was nothing fancy, just a pin that read “Block The Merger,” referring to the monumental unification of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery that is coming up for a vote this Thursday. But Paramount didn’t appreciate the gesture, and instead of ignoring it, pulled its advertising from The Ankler and told talent not to speak to their reporters. All that for a pin.
For decades, economists gave short shrift to the idea of monopsony — a power employers can have to suppress wages. Now a wave of research suggests it's everywhere, and a new book argues it's key to understanding today's inequality.
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