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THIS JUST IN: TOM SAYS “KRAMPUS” MOVIE WAS GOOD.
Granted, “Krampus” sounds like an STI one might receive from having sex with a mountain goat but the actual legend is much more frightening.
Winter is a magical time. A time when families get together and try to find ways to like each other, the snow blankets the roadways and causes potentially life threatening crashes, and everyone is sick all the time. Truly, winter is a miracle bestowed on most of the nation and it’s so great to be able to experience the f*cking magic for ourselves. Truly a lucky bunch we are to be living in anywhere but the south and west coast. One good thing about this winter season is the box office. Movies such as the last Bond movie, the final installment of the Hunger Games, and the latest Rocky movie were all released in a relatively short time frame, yet none of them are truly movies that encompass the true meaning of the holiday season… well except one.
German folklore weaves a tale of a benevolent spirit that comes around Christmas time to punish the wicked children. Apparently Germans weren’t as cushy with their punishments for misbehavior (who would have guessed). Instead of receiving a lump of coal in the stocking like in the tradition of American Christmas, bad kids are kidnapped and taken to a lair in the underworld by a being known as Krampus. Granted, “Krampus” sounds like an STI one might receive from having sex with a mountain goat but the actual legend is much more frightening. Krampus visits the houses of those on the naughty list and snatches the children up. He is always depicted as having large goat horns and resembling what many people believe Satan to look like. Luckily for Americans, we finally have a full-on introduction to the evil Christmas devil in a movie entitled, “Krampus”. It’s pretty self-explanatory, yes.
The story centers around a family that have lost touch with each other. During the Christmas season a family gets together but every year they actually grow further and further apart. The kids become nastier and the adults become bitter. The main character is a boy named Max who makes his Christmas list not for himself but for his family. Instead of asking for toys or iPads, he asks for good fortune for his aunt and uncle and for a closer friendship with his older sister. Truly touching stuff, until his dilweed cousins take his letter and read it out loud to the family to make fun of him. Max gets the letter back and shreds it, tossing it out his window which immediately triggers a massive snowstorm and the horror begins… kinda.
Krampus is a horror comedy, though it’s not particularly funny for the most part. Many of the jokes featured were relatively predictable in nature and did not quite having me laughing audibly. The cast does a good job at delivering the jokes and lines they are given, they just aren’t necessarily very funny, which is completely okay because that’s not the main focal point of the film. The movie is much more of a creature feature than a comedy, so jokes weren’t really particularly important. While Krampus is off causing havoc in other parts of the neighborhood, he drops off his minions to do a large portion of the work for him. With evil incarnations of holiday and winter icons, it’s easy to have a great time when the carnage begins. Things like psychotic Christmas cookies, a veracious teddy bear, maniacal robot toy, a terrifying jack-in-the-box, and a demented Christmas tree angel are all employed to ruin this family’s Christmas once and for all.
Where the movie stands out is in the cinematography and the art direction. The evil renditions on such joyous icons are all fleshed out in a wonderfully twisted manner. What are normally seen as bringing happiness to children now bring death to all and it’s beautiful. At one point the audience is introduced to Krampus “elves” as they erupt through the window in the living room to storm the family and they all wear unsettling masks that set them apart from one another with faces like porcelain dolls or masks reminiscent of plague doctors. They terrorize the family for a moment before being signaled back to Krampus camp. Camp Krampus. Whatever you wanna call it.
The above is an example of the concept.
Another great thing about the film is its pacing. Many horror movies have a hard time with pacing, either they rush to the action or they take too long and the viewer begins to lose interest. “Krampus” paces well by giving the audience snippets of the oncoming terror as creepy snowmen start to appear in their lawn, to everyone in the neighborhood being missing, to finally getting a glimpse at the evil Santa for a moment as he leaps across the rooftops of the surrounding homes while Max’s sister runs for her life in the winter hellscape. The attacks from the toys let the audience know that Krampus is coming to town and you can cry and pout all you want but he always gets what he wants. When finally given a full reveal of the Christmas bastard, his face resembles what Santa would look like if he was beaten to death with a tree trunk and it’s unsettling. The utter deconstruction of holiday joy in this movie is enough to make up for its short comings as far as weak comedic relief and relatively low scare factor.
Although the movie itself is not terrifying (though not much really is) the setting and tone give off a very strong feeling of dread, knowing that the end is imminent to the viewer but not to the characters in the movie. The outside is dark, the inside of the house is dark, it’s below zero and they’re all alone and the audience can feel that sense of unease throughout the movie. It’s not so much “scary” as it is unsettling, not knowing what demonized Christmas theme is going to appear next to pick the family apart. Implementing so much dread and discomfort in a time of happy music and family joy makes the viewer and the main character, Max, more appreciative of what Christmas really means.
No.
All in all, “Krampus” is a fun distraction from all the actual horrors occurring in the world as well as all that “joy and love” bullshit that normally hits theaters around this time. With a terrific art direction and cinematography to make up for mediocre comedic value, this movie is a blast from start to finish. If you’re a fan of satirical Christmas horror-comedies then this might be your favorite movie, but mainly because that’s a really narrow interest. If you never really thought about satirical Christmas horror-comedies, then it’s time to learn you something good with “Krampus”. It’s a fun, evil, dreadful, and wholesome creature feature with great practical effects and disturbing monsters. If that sounds like something you’re interested in then “Krampus” is the movie for you.
Matthew Adams, on the other hand, says the “Krampus” was total crap. Check out his review linked below!
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5 AAA Games and Their Budgets: How much was spent, how much was made, and was it worth it
5 AAA Games and Their Budgets: How much was spent, how much was made, and was it worth it in the end.
In the videogame community, it’s impossible to have never heard of an AAA game (commonly pronounced Triple-A game), either during the marketing phase or thrown around amongst gamers. At some point in time, you’ve probably picked one up yourself. The term AAA game is commonly used by big publishers and developers simply as a marketing tactic to deem their game as “better” or “innovative,” but most of the differences between AAA games and indie games simply comes down to the budget and production team behind the scenes. While indie games or smaller developments will have much smaller budgets, AAA games can have an average development budget of around $60 million to $80 million, but many have been known to double, triple, or even quadruple that budget. Some of these games required thousands of employees ranging from programmers, developers, artists, composers, writers, and more, with even more extensive marketing campaigns as well.
However, once a game is created and released, many fans don’t consider the budget that went into creation when purchasing, but many will know whether or not it was deemed as an AAA game during its marketing campaign. The question comes in whether or not a game is truly worth being deemed an AAA game. Is it just the budget that deems whether or not a game is AAA? Is it simply just a tool used by big developers to hype their game up? Or is there something more nitty gritty about the details of development that causes a game to become an AAA game. To analyze these questions, here’s a list of 5 AAA games and their budgets–how much might have been spent creating the game, how much was made, and if fans deemed it to be worthy of that praise.
1.) Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
Budget: Not concretely stated, but Odyssey was reportedly around $500 million
Earnings: Around $1 billion at release
Released in November of 2020, most players seem to have enjoyed this installment in the long-standing Assassin’s Creed franchise. Valhalla takes place in a viking-era Norway, following the main character Eivor who seeks revenge against the man who killed their parents and slaughtered their town. During the narrative, Eivor also deals with the political affairs of enemy kingdoms, prophetic visions, and the titular assassins the franchise is known for. Through Eivor, the player engages in snappy, fast-paced combat and a well-written story. According to Google, players seem to have enjoyed this installment, as 89% of Google users liked AC: Valhalla. Although the budget hasn’t been concretely stated, a similar AC project of this size, Odyssey, reportedly had a budget of around an eye-popping $500 million. While that may seem like an unreasonable budget, upon release, AC: Valhalla sold around 17 million copies at $60. Therefore, at around $1.02 billion, AC: Valhalla broke even on release, even with a potentially enormous budget. According to Ubisoft, Valhalla set a record-breaking number of sales, quickly becoming the company’s top-selling PC launch ever recorded. In this case, both the players and the company agree that this AAA game’s large budget was worth it in the end.
2.) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Budget: $100 million
Earnings: $620 million
Released in 2011, Skyrim was the fifth installment in the long-standing and well-known Elder Scrolls series. While the previous installment, Oblivion, also had an impressive revenue count of around $280 million, Skyrim more than doubles that at around $620 million. Set in a nordic inspired fantasy country called Skyrim, 200 years after the events of Oblivion, the player takes on the role as the dragonborn, a mythical human with the ability to learn shouts. The player takes on the quest to defeat Alduin, a dragon that is prophesied to end the world. With an open-world and a heavy emphasis on adventure and roleplay, Skyrim follows the theme of playing the game the way you want, the same way all the installments of the Elder Scrolls series seem to play out. Although the game reportedly cost around $100 million to develop, it seems the fans believe it was worth it. According to Google, around 96% of Google users liked the game and upon release the game received critical acclaim. Years later, Skyrim still remains relevant primarily due to the thanks of modders and DLC content that remasters the game and keeps it fun years after release. Despite the impressive success and revenue, fans are still waiting for the sixth installment in the Elder Scrolls series ten years later, primarily due to the fact that Bethesda seems to be focusing on Elder Scrolls: Online in the meantime. As of right now, the only hope fans have seen for Elder Scrolls VI was a small teaser trailer released in 2018.
3.) Cyberpunk 2077
Budget: Roughly $316 million
Earnings: $563 million
Although Cyberpunk 2077’s launch was widely regarded, in the kindest terms, as a shitshow, CD Projekt Red still managed to pull in around $563 in sales revenue after spending around $316 million in budget. The largest concern around Cyberpunk 2077 was the marketing. At first, the game was marketed as an innovative, open-world RPG set in a mature and futuristic cyberpunk world, with the player’s main stomping ground Night City. However, somewhere during the development of the game, the genre was changed from RPG to action-adventure, leaving many fans scratching their heads. Upon release, the game was riddled with hilarious game-breaking bugs, the main-story campaign was ridiculously short, and the graphics and gameplay was optimized only for new-gen consoles, leaving those with older consoles playing on choppy, low-quality graphics. According to Google, however, around 71% of Google users liked the game. While that may seem like a pretty decent average when considering the launch the game had, in comparison to other averages on this list the game performed very poorly. With media and reviews also displaying player dissatisfaction, in this case the Triple-A eye-popping budget was not worth it for most. However, it can be easy to blame the developers when it comes to Cyberpunk 2077’s downfall. However, the amount of times the game’s release was delayed, along with the pandemic happening at the time, it was clear that the development team was crunching hours on a game that just simply needed more time to be developed. But that wasn’t the team’s fault, per se. The truth of the matter is that due to the budget and due to the marketing and hype surrounding the game, those at the corporate level likely pushed the game to be released when it wasn’t ready. Many gamers can vouch, though, that most would like a game to be bug-free and optimized before release, and with a well-paid, well-rested, and no-crunch studio behind it, too.
4.) Red Dead Redemption 2
Budget: $80 to $100 million, while some sources reporting as high as $300-$500 million
Earnings: Around $1 billion
The long awaited prequel and second installment to Red Dead Redemption was released in 2018 and received universal acclaim from critics and fans alike, making it an extremely well-received sequel. Although it had expectations to live up to, both as the prequel to the first game and with a budget of up to $100 million, RDR 2 seemed to live up to the hype. Set in a fictional recreation of the Old West in 1899, RDR 2 centers around the story of Arthur Morgan and the notorious Van der Linde gang. After a robbery goes wrong, the gang is thrown into turmoil and decline as they deal with lawmen, rival gangs, and… swamp zombies. With a stunning open-world and an immersive, well-crafted story, Red Dead Redemption 2 was worth both the wait and the budget, for Rockstar Games and fans alike. According to Google, 96% of Google users liked the game. For a Triple-A game, this one seemed to be worth both the marketing and budget.
5.) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Budget: $81 million
Earnings: $200 million
Are AAA games worth it in the end?
Another CD Projekt Red game for the list, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt had a much better reception than Cyberpunk 2077. The Witcher series is the game franchise that threw CD Projekt Red into becoming a major league development studio. Originating as a book series written by Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher franchise follows the story of Geralt of Rivia, a white-haired legendary witcher who is thrown into a story of fate, family, magic, and lots and lots of monster-fighting. Marketed as an action role-playing game, the third installment in the series, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt follows the story of Geralt as he aims to protect his adopted daughter, Ciri, who is running from a mythological Wild Hunt. With dynamic environments and advanced artificial intelligence, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was a game that set the expectations for CD Projekt Red. However, this game performed much better than Cyberpunk 2077, according to Google around 95% of Google users liked The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, making its impressive budget seem worth it in the end. With the success of The Witcher 3 and the fail of Cyberpunk 2077, it calls into question the validity of marketing a game as AAA. While both had impressive budgets, one was clearly more polished and ready for release than the other, but both had the expectation of being a well-developed, well-funded game.
With this list in mind, we can see that there are some games with high budgets that tend to perform better than others. However, all are marketed as Triple-A games, leaving consumers to decide whether or not the game is worth purchasing in the end. However, with such large budgets and strategic marketing, AAA games tend to be pricier than indie games and many will even take some form of pre-ordering into account. For some games, this pre-order works out if the released, final product lives up to consumers’ expectations. However, in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, many felt duped that this AAA game was marketed to be amazing, innovative, open-world, immersive and ended up pre-ordering a game that did not live up to their expectations. With Cyberpunk, the case is more severe than other disappointing games, since some bugs upon release were entirely game-breaking. Still, as I personally had finished playing the main campaign in all of ten to twelve hours while still playing side missions and roaming around, I felt that the game’s steep price just simply wasn’t worth it.
For me, this makes the culture and hype surrounding AAA games a bit trickier. While the marketing and budget are there to back the hype up, these games tend to have a harmful environment surrounding them both with consumers and developers. While consumers may be duped into pre-ordering an expensive game that doesn’t live up to the hype, developers, artists, writers, and programmers are forced to work overtime and “crunch” to make these games presentable for release. With such steep budgets, one would think that these developers would be able to sustain a reasonable work schedule, but many are overworked, underappreciated, and underpaid. This leaves one to wonder if AAA means anything at all when labeling a game, or if it’s simply a way for big videogame corporations to market their game as “innovative” and “better,” while mistreating their development team to get there. As is commonly the case, a bigger budget does not necessarily mean a better game, as many critically acclaimed indie games such as Stardew Valley or OneShot were created with little to no budget. Therefore, it’s important to take a look at the culture and expectations surrounding AAA games. What really makes an AAA game different from the others? Is it marketing, budget, or the development team behind it? More importantly, we should analyze the culture behind AAA games to realize that, sometimes, the pressure and the hype of creating an amazing game can leave unfair expectations on the team behind the scenes, leaving many developers underappreciated and overworked. If bigger budget games means mistreating workers to the point of exhaustion, AAA games might simply just not be worth it in the end.
From the very beginning of esports, games have commonly been dominated by men on the competitive scene, a trend that has continued through time to the present day. And yet, as we see a shift for inclusivity on a global scale, the gaming community is also marching toward more inclusivity for women and marginalized genders.
But not without the help from the community.
In the recently released and increasingly popular game VALORANT, one of these community-run organizations is Galorants–something that started as a Discord server, but grew to be far more important.
Beginning as a looking-for-group Discord server spawned from the VALORANT subreddit, Galorants grew at a pace that no one could have predicted. What began as a safe space for women to support each other away from the toxicity they often face in gaming communities, the server had grown to be much more. Within the first week, the server had grown to 600 members. By the second week, 1,000. And now, a server that is less than a year old, they are close to reaching 10,000 members, a quick and massive expansion for a Discover server–all consisting of women or marginalized genders.
“We knew by the second week of creation that this server would be huge and we wanted to make sure we made a lasting impact on the female-gaming community.” – Nicci Barker, Owner of Galorants
And with this power in numbers comes the ability to support. The amazing staff behind Galorants and the owner, Nicci, have taken advantage of their growth to provide opportunities and support for women and marginalized genders within the gaming community. Whether that be providing a platform to make friends and support each other, to help women grow in esports, or by hosting women-centered esports tournaments, Galorants looks to change the game for women and marginalized genders in the VALORANT community.
To support Galorants and their endeavors, consider following them on Twitter here.
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