Gaming

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Gaming Happy Birthday Skyrim: What you can expect from the anniversary edition

By Holly Jackson

In celebration of Skyrim’s 10 year anniversary, Bethesda have announced that they will be releasing a surprise edition of Skyrim, titled The Elder Scrolls V: Anniversary Edition on the 11th November.

Although what we’re all really waiting for is the next Elder Scrolls game in the series to come, some new content being added to the beloved Skyrim will keep us occupied in the meantime.

If you haven’t played Skyrim before, but enjoy quest-led adventure games, then this could be a great time to enter the world of Tamriel and experience what it’s like to be Dragonborn, as well as becoming a warrior, mage, or even a member of the Thieves’ Guild!

The anniversary edition will include the full game and the expansions (Dragonborn, Hearthfire and Dawnguard) and also feature over 500 new items which includes quests, weapons, armour, housing and more. Modding the game is a well-known, easy way to change your experience of the game, so this is certainly very exciting for Skyrim fanatics. Not only this, but the graphics have been remastered, making them better suited to newer consoles.

Players who already own the Special Edition can look forward to an upgrade released on the same day. Even if you choose not to purchase the upgrade, you can still look forward to some free content, including the option to go fishing.

Ashley Cheng, managing director of Bethesda admitted ‘You know what, I think ten years is a long time to wait but I think it’s worth it.’ and that ‘It’s one thing that I’ve always wanted to do in Skyrim.’ This new feature makes a change from having to dive under the water in the hope of retrieving something, and as proven by games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, virtual fishing can actually be somewhat therapeutic! Bethesda has also revealed that there will indeed be some fishing related quests.

Unfortunately, Bethesda have yet to confirm a price for the Anniversary Edition.

Bethesda have also invited fans to join in by sharing their Skyrim experience to celebrate with them via The Skyrim Museum by allowing you to submit fanart, pictures, videos and sharing the impact playing Skyrim has had on you through their website. Additionally, there will be a Skyrim concert at 7pm BST live on Bethesda’s official YouTube and Twitch, in which the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Voices Choir will be playing the iconic Skyrim soundtrack, which is the perfect way to reminisce on all the quests you have embarked upon.

So, whether you’re a big Skyrim fan looking for a way to breathe new life into your game, or someone who still has yet to play Skyrim, this upgrade is worth waiting for!

Should GTA be remastered?

By Holly Jackson

In August, several rumours were floating around suggesting that the original Grand Theft Auto trilogy could be seeing a remake. This includes GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas, which was originally released for Xbox, and later re-released on other platforms such as PlayStation 2 and 4, Windows and Mac Os X.

These rumours sparked from gaming website Kotaku, who seem fairly confident that the GTA trilogy will be remastered, stating they have sources from Rockstar Games that would suggest it may in fact be happening.

Initially, people suspected it would be released this Autumn, but this now seems unlikely. A lot of people expect it to come out in 2022. Tom Henderson predicts this will be a more accurate date, as it will not interfere with the release of GTA V’s upgrade, which is due on 11th November 2021.

The exciting news is that if all these speculations are true, then the trilogy is likely to become available on Nintendo Switch consoles, which is a great reason for the games to be remastered. So far, the GTA games are available on consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation, so to see it on a handheld, portable console would be great and make it much more convenient and accessible to play.

Not only this, but the trilogy was designed for older consoles, and whilst it is still accessible via backwards compatibility, this is reflected in their graphics. Hopefully, the re-release should resolve this as it is rumoured to be available on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox X and Series S, as well as PC, Nintendo Switch and Google Stadia. However, as an Xbox One owner, this does leave me wondering whether or not I will somehow be able to access the remaster, which is the only potential downfall I can see so far, as Xbox One is still very much a popular console, so we will have to wait and see!

I personally believe that a remaster of the trilogy would be brilliant as it would allow a lot more people to experience the three games by making them much more widely available. Additionally, those who owned the trilogy originally would be given a chance to replay it with much better graphics, which would seem like a more worthy investment than purchasing the older copies. The trilogy becoming available to play on Nintendo Switch is also an excellent idea, as whilst there are plenty of games available on the platform already, most of the ‘big’ titles on there include games such as Super Mario, more catered towards families, so this would make a great change.

How the pandemic has led to an increase in female gamers

By elizabeth woor

Gaming is often perceived as a hobby which is heavily dominated by men. This is especially true when thinking about heavy combat and sports games such as Call of Duty or Fifa.

However, according to a recently published study by Outform, a staggering 20% more women are gaming compared to pre-pandemic levels. The study collected data from over 1,000 gamers to help understand how gaming culture and player’s habits are changing. It may not be surprising that more women are gaming considering that the industry thrived during lockdowns, it’s the perfect Covid-19 safe hobby to distract from the outside world and pass time. However, what is surprising are the differences in male and female gaming habits.

Despite only a quarter of women identifying as ‘hardcore’ gamers compared to three quarters of men, women are actually more likely to spend long amounts of time researching and investing in paraphernalia that optimises their gaming experience. Furthermore, 49% of women are now likely to invest time in the action and adventure genre – a typically male sector of the gaming world.

So, why wasn’t gaming popular among women before the pandemic? Well, a lot of it is obviously due to an increase in free time. However, games that appealed to a larger proportion of female players were also released, such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Portable consoles like the Nintendo switch, which are perhaps more appealing to women gamers, also became popularised. There has also been a rise of female gaming YouTubers over the past two years, with female gamers such as iHasCupquake and SSSniperWolf receiving millions of views.

Traditionally gaming has been seen as a ‘male’ interest for a number of reasons. One of the most significant is that characters in games are far too often portrayed as stereotypes. The ‘sexy female gamer’ image is normalised in gaming, so it’s no wonder that some women might not want to partake in an activity that often overly sexualises their own gender. The lack of female input in creating these games might also relate to this issue, as well as to why many women do not feel welcomed by the gaming community. As it stands, only 24% of people working in the industry are women, which as Forbes pointed out, is an unusually low figure compared to other creative and cultural sectors.

The pandemic has given women the free time and opportunity to explore various types of games. This new fanbase can only help the gaming industry to continue to grow and improve its inclusivity standards. Hopefully, with this added push, we will continue to see more women joining gaming communities and possibly even wanting to work in the industry.

Gaming should, and can be, for everyone.

22 Celebrities you didn’t know were gamers

By Molly Phillips

Photo: Unsplash

While the likes of Pewdiepie became a celebrity through a passion for gaming, there are many celebrities who also happen to be gamers. Be it living vicariously through The Sims or screeching our way into 3rd place on Mario Kart, there is something us noncelebrities may have in common with these six game-fanatic stars...

1. Elected first at the age of 29, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman who has ever served in the US congress. She has an impressive social media presence, and did a twitch livestream playing Among Us in 2020 that was viewed by 439,000 people. The young congresswoman has an impressive gaming setup, too, and has even been known to pop over to people’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons islands and leave notes on their billboards.

2. Norwegian singer Aurora loves video games, in spite of owning a Macbook, which she proclaims is a ‘horrible gaming computer’. Nevertheless, she loves building houses and greenskinned Star Wars families in her Sims universe.

3. On The Graham Norton Show, actor Henry Cavill said that he discovered The Witcher through playing the franchise’s video games. The actor likes video games so much that, because he was in an important stage in World of Warcraft, he missed the call from Zack Snyder offering him the part of Superman. Unfortunately, he did lose the game, but he also gained a careerdefining role… so, you win some, you lose some...

4. Many creative people find the things they enjoy influence the work that they produce. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have often drawn on their interest in video games when creating their comedies. In Spaced, Jessica Hynes is seen to have an argument with Pegg’s character, which is staged as a physical fight in a video game. In addition, the director of Hot Fuzz has compared the structuring of the film’s final action sequence to completing the levels of a video game.

5. Season 3, Episode 20 of Community demonstrates the show’s creator, Dan Harmon, drawing on his passion for video game structure. The episode allegorises the story of Pierce (Chevy Chase) trying to claim his inheritance as an animated video game, seeing the characters overcome challenges along the way towards their goal. Community’s creator is also a huge Dungeons & Dragons fan (a game which also features in several episodes of the show) and has been known to name-drop games like Skyrim while discussing his love for the art form.

6. Samuel L. Jackson loves to play Grand Theft Auto, to the extent that he voiced a character in GTA: San Andreas. He also loves Call of Duty and even hosted The Spike TV Video Game Awards in four different years.