Daily Briefing: Wednesday 29th September (Patreon)

Netflix step up gaming investment with Night School Studio acquisition

The studio, which is best known for developing narrative-driven titles like Oxenfree, will create original gaming content for Netflix's own foray into gaming. Writing in a blog post confirming the acquisition, Night School Studio founder Sean Krankel said that the Netflix move will not affect the development of Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals, which is currently slated for an early 2022 release on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

• This makes Night School Studio the first studio to join Netflix's new gaming initiative, and Krankel wants his studio to make the most of the opportunity to "stretch [its] narrative and design aspirations across distinctive, original games with heart." This is an interesting development for Netflix's own gaming aspirations which, despite recent reconfirmations of intent, remained rather nebulous. Now that we know that wholesale studio acquisitions aren't out of the question, who will Netflix go after next? And does this sound like Google Stadia to anyone else?

Is there a Horizon-verse multiplayer game on the way?

The idea comes courtesy of a number of new job vacancies advertised on developer Guerrilla Games' website. These posts are looking for someone "with a passion for player communities and social features" who can "explore creative ways players can connect with others in game." There's not a lot of concrete detail in the adverts but, considering Guerrilla games are best known for Horizon Zero Dawn and are currently hard at work on its sequel, it sure sounds a lot like a multiplayer spin-off of sorts.

• The listing reads that the successful applicant will "engage layers in social interactions to create lasting relationships, and where compatible players can create Guild-like groups to explore together." A separate vacancy for a senior game writer is looking for someone with "extensive knowledge of stories and narrative design in open-world RPG games, online games, and MMORPGs." Interesting.

Has New World finally delivered Amazon's first gaming hit?

After numerous delays and several rounds of incorporating player feedback, Amazon's MMO New World has finally launched and things seem to be going pretty well. The game peaked at a massive 770K concurrent players on Steam on launch day, landing New World the fifth spot in Steam's most-played games of all time, just ahead of Valheim and just behind Cyberpunk 2077. The game also posted nearly one million concurrent viewers on Twitch, but the launch also wasn't without its issues.

• As much as it's becoming old hat for the launch of a major new online-focused game these days, New World suffered from some serious server issues. Tens of thousands of players in different regions around the world were left queueing to be let into one of New World's 2,000 capacity player islands, resulting of wait times in the tens of hours. Amazon responded quickly enough, pledging to continue adding more servers and offering a one-off server migration for players who want to get started on a quieter one before moving to their preferred server once the issues settle down. It was an alright move, actually, but some Steam reviews still have some scathing words for Amazon, which they'll have to pay close attention to if they want to maintain the first semblance of momentum they've ever earned in the gaming space.