In an interview with Japanese magazine Famitsu, Insomniac stated that its sequel will give players the options between a 4K / 30 FPS mode and a “lower resolution” 60 FPS mode. The answer doesn’t specify how much lower the higher frame rate mode will be, suggesting that Insomniac might still be trying to find the right balance between stability and raw pixel density.
This is similar to the two modes that will be present in Insomniac’s other announced PS5 title, Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It will also feature two modes that target 30 FPS and 60 FPS respectively, with the difference being that both will still aim for 4K as a resolution, too. It’s likely that the difference here is which additional effects each mode will present players to allow for the additional smoothness.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart closed out the two-hour Opening Night Live showcase that kicked off Gamescom this week, with an extended look at the demo initially shown off during the PS5’s reveal event. If you missed it, check out our full recap of the biggest announcements from the show.
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In the interview, Famitsu asks about the “supported frame rates and resolutions” for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, with Daly responding that the game will offer two separate modes for players to pick from to balance comfortable gameplay with beautiful graphics. “One is 30 FPS at 4K resolution and the other is lower resolution at 60 FPS,” the translation reads.
Later in the same interview, the interpreter mentions that the Ratchet and Clank series ditched the 60 FPS benchmark set by the PS2 games in favour of 30 FPS and better graphics for PS3 and PS4 players. With the PS5 release, it appears that they’re now giving players the choice between these two different styles.
COVID-19 may continue to impact movie theaters and the film industry overall, but a move by AMC indicates there is still confidence both will rebound. The theater chain, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is seeking to acquire 10 theaters operating in nine states that have been struggling financially.
But technically, these are theaters that previously belonged to AMC. Seeking regulatory approval for a $1.2 billion bid in 2016 to acquire rival Carmike Cinemas, AMC divested itself of theaters in 15 markets. Four years and one global pandemic ravaging the film business later, AMC is seeking to reclaim what it was before compelled to liquidate–re-activating an antitrust case that has been inactive in D.C. federal court.
AMC’s motion, which argues that the ability to negotiate leases and operate theaters is in the public interest, reads: “The degree of economic hardship currently being experienced by… the entire theatre exhibition industry is a unique changed circumstance that could not have been anticipated at the time the Final Judgment was entered.”
The motion is currently unopposed as of this week, which has also been full of other optimistic news for filmgoers and filmmakers alike: Russell Crowe’s psychological thriller Unhinged helped invigorate US box office last weekend to the tune of $4 million, and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet will finally–after many, many delays–be in stateside theaters starting September 3. You can read our review of Tenet here. Meanwhile, the similarly long-delayed superhero film New Mutants, is coming to theaters (and drive-ins) today.
Image credit: AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/Getty Images
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NBC revealed that Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 8 has been pushed back to 2021, as the network announced its Fall 2020 TV schedule.
The official Brooklyn Nine-Nine Twitter account shared the updated release window for the show’s Season 8 premiere in a tweet that also featured NBC’s 2020 TV line-up for September through to November, which includes new seasons Law & Order: SVU and The Blacklist, together with One Chicago.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine was originally expected to debut this fall, however, the finished episodes of the new season were officially scrapped in June, as showrunner Dan Goor announced that they had to “start over” after having some deep conversations about the Black Lives Matter movement.
Terry Crews, who plays Lieutenant Terry Jeffords on the show, explained that the writing team had decided to return to the scripting stage in an effort to amplify themes coming out of the movement, though he didn’t elaborate on the storylines of the episodes that won’t make it to air.
“We’ve had a lot of somber talks about it and deep conversations and we hope through this we’re going to make something that will be truly groundbreaking this year. We have an opportunity and we plan to use it in the best way possible,” Crews said. “Right now we don’t know which direction it’s going to go in.”
Barring any future casting changes, we’re expecting the full regular cast to return for Season 8, which includes Andy Samberg, Andre Braugher, Stephanie Beatriz, Terry Crews, Melissa Fumero, Joe Lo Truglio, Joel McKinnon Miller and Dirk Blocker.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning, the remastered version of the 2012 action-RPG, is just weeks away now. A new trailer outlines one of the three combat paths you can utilize. The spotlight here is on Finesse, which focuses on stealth, traps, and long-range combat.
Finesse lets you use daggers, Fae-Blades, and bows against your enemies, along with equipment like traps, bombs, and poison. You can sneak up behind enemies with stealth and deliver critical hits, poison them from the shadows, or snipe them from afar.
The other two combat paths are Might and Sorcery, so we can probably expect individual trailers outlining those in the lead-up to release as well. As their names imply, those focus on being a burly bruiser or unleashing magic on your foes.
As Tenet begins its release in international markets, we’re taking a look back at filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s entire feature-length filmography, exploring each of his films one day at a time. Today we continue with his fourth feature, and his first Batman film, Batman Begins. Read about Nolan’s Following and “Doodlebug” here or Memento here or Insomnia here.
Full spoilers for Batman Begins follow.
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Christopher Nolan’s films up to this point — Following, Memento, and a remake of Insomnia — might not have screamed “Batman” to the average viewer, but the caped crusader would prove to fit comfortably in his wheelhouse. Nolan’s winding, non-linear stories informed the film’s structure, allowing for a deeper dive into the pop icon’s psyche. Meanwhile, Nolan’s penchant for broken men chasing obsessions and constructing identities would prove the perfect platform to remix the character’s mythology.
For better or worse, Batman Begins kicked off a trend of “grounded” and “realistic” re-imaginings of otherwise jovial IP — among them, DC’s own Man of Steel. But many of these adaptations seem to have missed the soul at the center of Nolan’s superhero outing (not to mention, the fun). For all its focus on realistic detail, Batman Begins still leans towards formalist aesthetics, an explosion of opposites drawn from a wide variety of sources, spread across time and geographical origin. As we continue our analysis of Nolan’s oeuvre, today we journey to Gotham City… and beyond.
Downtown Gotham is shot in modern Chicago, but it’s augmented with Art Deco elements layered with CGI; the end results resemble Fritz Lang’s expressionistic German classic Metropolis (1927). The city’s downtrodden neighborhood The Narrows is a cluttered creation built in an air hangar; it looks like a classic Will Eisner comic sketch of New York City brought to life, a la A Contract With God (1978). Spatially, this Narrows set was based on modern Kowloon, an urban area of Hong Kong, but its gothic gaslight wash — like urine sprayed through London fog — makes it feel sickly. This mix of aesthetics — past-and-present, east-and-west — takes hold in the narrative too.
The film’s Gotham City is augmented with Art Deco elements and resembles Fritz Lang’s expressionistic German classic Metropolis.
The villains employ hallucinogens which conjure nightmarish visions of the past, shot subjectively, as time and space collapse, expand and vibrate with uncertainty. The film, after all, is about fear (Batman is even introduced like a horror movie monster, attacking from off-screen). And though these shadowy moments are sparse, they’re complemented by the ways in which light interacts with surfaces, whether during Bruce’s solitary confinement early on, or in the halls of Wayne Manor. The Batcave was built of sheeting molded from actual rocks, but using a much more reflective material; “realistic” as this lair might seem, its function is clarity — of the mind, and of the soul.
The film’s biggest aesthetic success, however, is its editing. Spearheaded by Lee Smith, with whom Nolan would collaborate six more times, Batman Begins opens in flashback (in this case, a dream sequence) and cuts frequently to the childhood and teenage years of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), a man now lost halfway around the world. As with Memento and Insomnia, the memories in Batman Begins initially manifest as jarring, jolting bursts of sensory input. Only here, Nolan eventually lets each memory play out in full, rather than as mere flashes, drawing us into the world that once was for Bruce Wayne. In a reversal of Nolan’s prior films, it’s the present that feels fleeting, rather than the memories.
While each flashback has room to breathe, the present moments feel in free-fall, tumbling from beat to beat. One result of this approach is the occasional obfuscation of drama in the current timeline; for instance, despite the potent imagery of Bruce conquering his fear amidst a swarm of bats, the scene unfolds far too quickly to be effective. However, the sped-up nature of these anchoring scenes also creates a unique relationship between past and present. Dramatic beats in the flashbacks, and therefore the flashbacks themselves, seem to last longer, as if Bruce is wandering through memories. He’s a man who has trouble existing in the present, so he gets lost in the past.
The impulses drawing Bruce into each flashback deal directly with his trauma and fear (fittingly, several of these transitions are accompanied by the sounds of screeching bats). Sometimes, these memories appear out of nowhere; during some combination of bat swarms, unexpected violence or fear-inducing gas, the film cuts away abruptly, snapping Bruce back to his childhood. Other times, these memories fade in slowly, after being brought on by questions from Bruce’s mentor, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), who investigates not only Bruce’s fear, but his festering rage — the impetus for his journey.
These slow fades from present to past begin to replace the sudden cuts, representing Bruce gaining control over his fears. They only return to their jarring form late in the film when he’s hit by a concentrated dose of fear gas by Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), a dark mirror to Batman who hopes to exploit fear, rather than control it.
Fear isn’t just central to the film’s characters. It’s also vital to building its backdrop, and this interplay between character and setting takes a distinctly modern form.
Adapting Batman for the 21st Century
“Theatricality and deception,” as Ducard puts it, form the backbone of Bruce’s alter-ego. Adopting a symbol that represents his childhood fears wasn’t an invention of the film — in the 1989 comic The Man Who Falls, a young Bruce Wayne tumbles down a well and is swarmed by bats — but Batman Begins helped solidify it as a key facet of his mythology. This focus on Bruce’s fears also led to a key change in origin, which magnified not only his survivor’s guilt, but the way he fits into the larger premise of a world torn apart by economic strife.
No longer are Bruce’s parents murdered after a screening of The Mark of Zorro (1940), a film from which Bruce draws inspiration for Batman. Instead, they’re murdered outside the opera, during a performance of Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele. The bat-like creatures on stage terrify young Bruce, who begs his parents to leave. When they’re subsequently shot, he blames himself.
Mefistofele is a good-versus-evil story about Faust being tempted by the Devil — or rather, by the Devil’s demonic representative Mefistofele, who lays claim over Faust’s soul, mirroring the training scenes against which these opera flashbacks are set. The first hour of the film sees Bruce finding a new father figure in Ducard, who claims to speak on behalf of Ra’s al Ghul (in Arabic: “the demon’s head”) and attempts to lure Bruce toward his retributive form of justice. However, the changed setting of the Waynes’ murder doesn’t just function as winking intertext.
The opera is a symbol of affluence, and its doors lead directly to a downtrodden alley; in Gotham, the rich and the poor live nearly shoulder to shoulder, but are separated by doors which only the rich may enter. In this alley, a desperate Joe Chill (Richard Brake) kills Bruce’s parents in a mugging gone wrong. In other versions of the story, the Waynes’ killer has been everything from a nefarious hitman to, well, The Joker, but here he represents an inevitable outcome of vast economic disparity. This theme is universal, but when a college-aged Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City for Chill’s release hearing, it places specifically American symbolism in its crosshairs, evoking events that followed the assassination of John F. Kennedy — specifically, the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
In Batman Begins, a desperate Joe Chill kills Bruce’s parents in a mugging gone wrong.
In a heartbreaking courtroom scene years after the Waynes’ deaths, the camera remains fixed on a remorseful Joe Chill, even as Bruce storms out of the building in soft focus, far in the background. Outside, Bruce conceals a pistol with the intent of exacting blood — his rage and his desire for vengeance bubble to the surface — but the prior courtroom moments attach us not to Bruce’s perspective, but to Chill’s. It’s the first of several scenes in which we’re forced to reckon with the difference between justice and revenge. When Chill is escorted out, Bruce’s own attempt at retribution is cut short as Chill is assassinated, shot in the stomach at point-blank range (the camera, again, remains fixed on Chill’s face as Bruce watches him die). The scene calls back to the death of Oswald, who after being accused of killing Kennedy in 1963 was himself shot dead by Jack Ruby while being escorted in police custody.
Jack Ruby and Joe Chill’s motives differed — Ruby allegedly wanted to avenge Kennedy, while Chill was killed by a woman working for Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson), a mob boss whom Chill had been an informant on — but the visual similarities speak to a similar impulse for Bruce, whose idea of responding to tragedy was lethal force. By sheer chance, Bruce was spared from becoming a Jack Ruby — or, in the parlance of Nolan’s own films, a Leonard Shelby (a la Memento), forever trapped in a cycle of vengeance and death.
Bruce would, of course, eventually forego this instinct en route to becoming Batman. Years later, when Ducard presents him with a sword with which to behead a murderer (a farmer who, like Chill, turned violent out of desperation), Bruce would rather burn down the League of Shadows monastery than become an executioner. Where he once saw Chill as nothing more than a killer, he now sees humanity even in the worst of people (although his decision to let Ducard die at the end of the film, rather than saving him like he did before, feels like a half-baked narrative decision).
The focus on Bruce’s near-encounter with Chill, and its similarity to Oswald’s killing, also speaks to the larger backdrop of Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Batman Begins followed the much goofier Batman and Robin, and the two films were notably separated by the events of September 11, 2001. The JFK imagery speaks to a similar mindset of national mourning and the desire for justice (or in Jack Ruby’s case, vengeance) following 9/11. The day’s event had placed, in the American consciousness, questions of what exactly “justice” ought to look like. For some, it was violent payback in the form of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. For others, militaristic violence was a step too far toward injustice.
This dynamic, the pull and push between the impulses for justice and vengeance, became central to a story of a highly-militarized Batman and how he responded to tragedy. In flashback, when Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes) implores Bruce to differentiate between justice and revenge, he tells her, “Sometimes they’re the same.” However, when he travels east, living on scraps and stealing to survive, he loses his “assumptions about the simple nature of right and wrong,” and his outlook on justice is re-forged while training with the League of Shadows. During this time, he’s made to introspect on the nature of his fears.
Fear was the impetus for several cultural responses to September 11th — whether racist hate crimes or violent military incursion — and so a mainstream genre film tapping into fear as a fuel for violence was nothing if not timely. It also laid the groundwork for the series’ future explorations, of a world defined by “the war on terror,” though Batman Begins’ approach focused less on the wartime specifics and more on the psychology of a man defined by tragedy, desperate to lash out.
Creating Batman
In Nolan’s film, Bruce Wayne is an artist of sorts. He attempts to turn his pain and his fears into something tangible in order to create a specific emotional response in his criminal audience. He wants them to fear the symbol of the bat, the way he does. His weapons are products of the American military-industrial complex — leftover projects that would better protect soldiers, but that the U.S. government didn’t want to spend money on — while his appearance as Batman is a sketched-out combination of parts ordered from Singapore and China, and spiked gauntlets fashioned after his training gear in Bhutan. He is a product of both east and west. The film’s sound design speaks to these varied influences; the score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard uses a combination of western strings and eastern drums — they’re separate at first, but as Batman emerges, they overlap harmoniously.
But the film also fleshes out the emptiness Bruce tries to fill with his mission. It opens with young Bruce falling down a well, only for his father (Linus Roache) to reach down and rescue him a few scenes later. And though his mother (Sara Stewart) is barely featured — a strangely common trope in superhero origin tales — Thomas Wayne’s presence in Bruce’s life, and his subsequent absence, are as defining as his fear of bats. His last words to Bruce? “Don’t be afraid.”
After his parents’ death, Bruce searches high and low for father figures to guide him. Alfred (Michael Caine) and Gordon (Gary Oldman) comfort him in childhood — Gordon even places his father’s jacket around his shoulders, like a cape — and both men later become his allies, as does Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). But Bruce has no one to teach him to control his fear the way his father once did. He therefore sees Ducard as a mentor who might be able to fill this role, but eventually Ducard’s own grief — turned outward, into violent culling — proves to be too destructive for Bruce.
And so Bruce’s constructed identity — like the personas adopted by prior Nolan characters — springs from a desire to feel whole. In Following, the anonymous lead adopts the persona of his mentor Cobb, a debonair, Bond-like figure. In Memento, widower Leonard Shelby fashions a narrative in which he’s on a righteous quest for justice. In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne creates dual alter-egos that feel influenced by both these leading men. On one hand, Batman is a crusader against crime; on the other, the public-facing Bruce Wayne is a suave playboy, seen wearing suits, driving fancy cars and accompanied by supermodels on each arm.
The proximity of these two identities — three, if you count the real man behind both masks — feels inherently destructive. Not only through actions that result in his home being burned down, but in moments of quiet, personal devastation, like when a recently returned Bruce (now playing the part of an obnoxious, ultra-wealthy womanizer) runs into Rachel Dawes for the first time in seven years. The camera interrogates the shame on Bruce’s face, and the disappointment on Rachel’s, as he desperately tries to reassure her: “This isn’t me. Underneath, I am more.”
In Nolan’s series, Batman and Bruce Wayne cannot coexist, setting up a three-film story across which the search for a replacement, and the shelving of the cape and cowl, becomes an integral part of the journey. Unlike his comic counterpart, there’s no glory in being Batman for perpetuity.
Similar to the Scarecrow’s weaponized gas, Batman Begins is like a concentrated dose of fear and guilt, wrapped up in a superhero story. It’s a film in which Batman remains tethered to the past, perhaps too strongly. He’s shackled by one of the most potent recurring themes in Nolan’s work: a fear of the past, in all its pain, guilt and trauma — a fear that the forward march of time may not be enough to heal.
NBA 2K21 is one of the many upcoming 2020 titles that will be released for both the current generation of consoles as well as the new systems from Sony and Microsoft. So, basketball fans might naturally be wondering about things like crossplay between different platforms and generations of consoles. The developers of NBA 2K21 have now offered some clarity on how this will work for their game.
In a recent roundtable interview, the studio confirmed that “cross-gen” gameplay–that is, people on PS5 playing against those on PS4 or Xbox Series X and Xbox One– is “definitely a no.”
“Cross-gen is definitely a no, because the next-gen experience is a new game built from the ground up,” the studio said. “You couldn’t have Halo 4 play Halo 5 online. That just wouldn’t make any sense. We’re in that same boat here.”
The developer also cleared up the situation for cross-play, and this also will not be supported. “As far as cross-platform play, we are not supporting that in NBA 2K21,” the company said.
While there is no cross-play or cross-gen gameplay, everything from the MyTeam mode will carry forward to next-gen if you decide to upgrade within the same console family. This includes gameplay progress as well as virtual currency. Progress from the MyCareer mode, however, will not carry forward to next-gen due in part to how MyCareer is a “different beast” on PS5 and Xbox Series X, the developer teased. “There’s a really good reason why that’s not going to carry over,” the company said.
Also during the interview, the NBA 2K developers spoke about the feedback surrounding the recently released NBA 2K21 demo. Specifically, this demo gave users a first chance to try out the game’s new pro stick controls, which represent a huge change for the series. The studio said it expected some friction to the new controls, but company observed that some players who were initially hesitant about the changes have now warmed up to them.
“The feedback has actually been really positive. We’re happy about that. I think anytime you choose new controls it’s a little bit scary from a developer’s standpoint to see how people accept it or don’t accept it. And I think there is always an initial learning curve,” the company said. “People are really enjoying dribbling, too; I think that’s a big win to be able to create some different things on the sticks they weren’t able to before [with chaining skill moves together with the new pro stick controls].”
2K also stressed that NBA 2K21’s demo represents a dated version of the game due to how game development works. For the final version, players can expect lots of bug fixes, changes, and polish, the studio said.
Aragami was a solid tribute to the stealth-action genre, particularly influenced by games like Tenchu: Stealth Assassins and Dishonored. Playing as a resurrected warrior, Aragami focused on using the shadows–both figuratively and literally–to face off against a light-wielding army and seek vengeance against those that wronged you in your past life. A sequel, Aragami 2, has been revealed at Gamescom 2020. The next game aims to build upon the foundations of the original, bringing the stealth-action gameplay further into the realm of an open-ended action-RPG.
Set 100 years after the original game’s ending, Aragami 2 focuses on a new assassin born from shadows, who, like their predecessor, can manipulate the darkness to strike at their foes. While the original game had a linear, narrative-based structure, the next game plans to feature open-ended levels that present you with more options in the rules of engagement. Within a new player hub, you can craft and upgrade your skills, talk with NPC characters, and set out on missions solo or in groups of three with other assassins online.
In the days leading up to the reveal, GameSpot spoke with game director David Leon about the making of Aragami 2. Following the strong response and success of the original game, the developers formulated their plans to make a sequel that not only stayed true to the stealth-action focus but also expanded upon the original in a meaningful way.
“We really didn’t want just to make the same game,” said Leon. “After the game launched, we worked on the Nightfall DLC for the game, and we decided that we wanted to expand the universe and story of the game. It was a bit crazy, but we had to make a new game from scratch. It’s a very different kind of sequel. While it’s the same world, and it’s still a stealth game, so much has changed in the sense of how this character moves around the environment, the new combat mechanics, and the multiplayer. The scope is especially larger, and it’s very much a different kind of beast of a game. It’s somewhat of a semi-open-world structure. With that said, we’re still an indie studio, and we’re building in the way that feels right for us and the Aragami IP. This sequel is much closer to the vision we had in mind for the original.”
While Aragami 2 still sticks close to its stealth-action roots, allowing you to stay in the shadows to teleport and conjure up shadow constructs, the sequel opens up to incorporate more of a focus on customization and combat. The original didn’t feature combat in the traditional sense–when an enemy discovered you, one strike from their sword would kill the protagonist, sending you back to the previous checkpoint. While this did limit your options when confronting your enemies, it ended up highlighting the solid stealth-action dynamic of manipulating your opponents and the environment to overcome the challenges.
In the sequel, combat is now one of the core parts of the game, with players being able to strike, dodge, and use different shadow powers in engagements with foes. Citing games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Bloodborne, the game’s new combat system focuses on fast reflexes and poking at the enemy’s vulnerabilities to succeed in a duel. With the expanded co-op, you can bring in up to two other players to help you in the game’s larger suite of levels. Co-op proved to be popular with fans of the original, and it was something the developers leaned into further with the follow-up.
“We wanted to rethink multiplayer from scratch, and we wanted to make it one of the game’s main pillars,” said Leon. “We looked at how people played in the original game, especially with online play, and we heard a lot of players tell us that they loved it because it was one of the few stealth-action games you could play with friends. The sequel is still a stealth game, but we’ve opened things up more to focus on things like action and interacting with many side-characters as you do the main story and the smaller missions in the game.”
What made the original game a fun send-up to classic stealth-action games was its versatility. Aragami featured many familiar set-ups and skills for a game of its genre, including executing aerial kills and silent ranged attacks, and setting up creative distractions. Yet, it also allowed you to take an entirely non-lethal approach in its levels. Despite its linear structure, it offered many ways to experiment with your abilities, and from our talk with the developers at Lince Works, it sounds like that is something that the sequel will focus on as well.
The latest trailer revealed during Gamescom 2020 offers a solid look at what’s to come with Aragami 2. From our chat with Leon, it looks like Aragami 2 is still staying true to the original game’s approach to stealth–which was a product of its smaller scope–while still going for something more ambitious. The original game came from humble beginnings, and it’s exciting to see that its success led to a thoughtful approach for the sequel.
For more on Aragami 2 and the other reveals from Gamescom 2020, check out our hub page for the show.
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This week’s IGN UK Podcast is fueled by BDE. Yes, Big Dafoe Energy. Master actor Willem Dafoe is, of course, part of the cast of 12 Minutes, just one of the games we discuss in our rundown of Gamescom’s Opening Night Live. We’ve also got chat from Cardy, Joe, and Matt on DC FanDome for all your Batman, Suicide Squad, and Gotham Knights needs.
Plus there’s some feedback. No Endless Search this week, though. But, be honest, do you need another one after last’s weeks incredible scenes?
Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, please do: [email protected].
Steam users will soon be able to have more control over their conversations, as Valve has begun testing out new private chat filters that can block offensive language, slurs, and other strong profanity from the platform and in certain games. Currently being tested out as a Steam Labs Experiment, Valve says that the chat filters will give users the option to filtrate colorful language based on their own preferences.
“With chat filtering, we’ve obscured the most offensive language shared on Steam,” Valve explained in a blog post. “You can alter your settings to control whether profanity and slurs are displayed, and because each player’s tolerance for difficult words is unique, we’ve included the ability to add or remove words to form your personal filter.”
Valve says that users will be able to upload lists of words and phrases from other sources to the filter, which will help groups define what language is offensive to them. This level of control was designed with the constant evolution of language in mind, and even references how marginalized groups have reclaimed language for themselves and reappropriated slurs into their own vernacular.
“Some of the time, people have negative experiences on Steam due to their encounters with, in the worst case, bad actors, or simply with others whose tolerance for various forms of language differ from their own,” Valve said. “A playful match can quickly turn to a heated competition full of emotion and expression, some of which crosses a line. But where is that line? We’ve found the answer is different for everyone.”
Steam’s new chat filters will eventually roll out to all users, but if you’re curious you can try it out right now for yourself. Simply click your profile icon, navigate to preferences and check the option under community content preferences to join the Text Filtering experiment to make your Steam account chats family friendly.
There have been a few other additions to Steam lately, such as a playtest button for developers looking to invite players to try their games in beta and a new front page display for community reviews.
