It is a tough time to be online right now. We are watching as a whole race rises up against the systematic oppression they have experienced for years. It is hard not to be upset and the urge to help is strong. If you are in Australia you may feel like helping is too hard, the distance too great. Player 2 would like to remind you all though that Australia is by no means innocent. Indigenous Australians have been victimised and silenced by ingrained systemic racism and police brutality for generations. We, as a nation, have treated them in such a bad way for so long their voice is no longer even acknowledged let alone heard. So helping starts at home. Write to your local state or federal MP. Donate or assist a charity that works with the Aboriginal community. Educate yourself about the traditional owners of the land you are now sitting on. These are just some of the small but important steps each and every one of us needs to take to make Australia and, by extension, the world a better place. Player 2 would also like to say it is important to recognise all marginalised voices in this country, from the LGQBT+ community to disabled Australians to other minority ethnic and refugee groups, and work together to make this a truly equal place to live.
Need for Speed Heating Up Crossplay
So it seems out of nowhere the team at Criterion Games has put out an update that enables crossplay between PC and consoles for the most recent entry in the long-running Need for Speed franchise. Anyone who installs the update for NFS Heat released on Tuesday will be able to activate crossplay and join their friends cruising around Palm City no matter what platform they choose, with NFS Heat releasing onto Steam on June 16.
That was not the only news though, as a blog post from Criterion Games GM Matt Webster, announced that the team at Criterion are currently developing the next instalment in the Need for Speed franchise and that crossplay capability is something the dev team believes in. It is highly likely that we will see crossplay compatibility right from the start line of the next game in the series.
What this means for EA as a whole though currently unknown. While it is a good start at removing the restrictions that stop people playing with their friends over different ecosystems, if we start to see crossplay introduced in other EA games then EA will have to address the issues of people making use of cheating hacks on PC and throwing out the balance of a game, especially in online shooter games like Battlefield and Battlefront.
