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The Verge
5 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a glimpse at Nintendo's online future
Tiger Borgia, a content creator focused on cozy games, has been pulling weeds in Animal Crossing: New Horizons for over five years. Given the current landscape in which game developers constantly release new updates to vie for the attention of audiences, Borgia's dedication to New Horizons can come across as admirable. Nintendo has not released a major update to New Horizons since the Happy Home Paradise DLC in 2021. (Just this week the game was patched in advance of the Switch 2.) The version of New Horizons Borgia plays today — the one where she pulls weeds and fishes each day — is more or less the same game that the company released in the spring of 2020. At a time when seemingly every publisher is trying to capture a piece of the lucrative live-service boom, New Horizons showed Nintendo slowly inching its way into the space with more than a year's worth of regular updates after launch. And that expansion into live service is something that could become an even larger part of Nintendo's future with the Switch 2. Speaking to The Verge, Borgia explains that two years ago she would have said yes to having more content in New Horizons, but her opinion has since changed. 'Now I feel like the game should be left as is,' Borgia says via email. ' New Horizons already had its moment. I would be open to the next Animal Crossing title being a live-service game, but I would be skeptical about paywalls and subscription fees.' Since the release of Fortnite and PUBG: Battlegrounds in 2017, live-service games have become a core pillar of modern gaming. Live-service games — or what some call 'games as a service' — don't have a clear start and end. Instead, developers release a base game and continue to put out updates that add new characters, game modes, and other content to try and get people to play as much as possible. The model has become a massively popular way to monetize games. Industry analyst Mat Piscatella published data saying more than 40 percent of all time spent playing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles in the US in the month of January was spent playing the top 10 live-service games. And the trend has hit the developer side too: a 2025 survey from the Game Developers Conference found that roughly 30 percent of all 'AAA' developers are working on a live-service game. Despite all the big numbers, Nintendo has been selective with the live-service games it develops. Creating a live-service game isn't as easy as flipping a switch, and even major companies like Sony have struggled to enter the space; it recently shut down development on two such projects. However, some fans are wondering if that could change with the Switch 2. Previous titles like Splatoon 3 have already gotten live-esque service with regular updates and events — even if the earlier entries in the series were ultimately shut down. And New Horizons received a steady stream of updates initially. New features, like the Switch 2's Discord-like social tool GameChat, could benefit live-service games that rely on online communication and logging in with friends regularly to play. Additionally, leaks from an October playtest suggested that Nintendo could be working on some sort of MMO for the Switch 2, which could also fall under the umbrella of a live-service game. But here is the most compelling argument that a shift could be on the horizon: Nintendo has already been investing in live-service games for years. If you look at Nintendo's mobile games, entries like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp already used a free-to-play model with in-game transactions at launch. Some Animal Crossing fans welcome the possibility of adapting the mainline games to a live-service model. New Horizons is really good for people who like to get creative and design an island, but the game can run out of new content after players complete certain tasks and storylines. Tom, an artist who played the game for more than two years, tells The Verge a live-service version of the game could have kept him playing even longer. 'More updates would have made it way more likely that I'd have kept going, especially because it would keep friends coming back too,' he says. Additionally, the gameplay and structure of New Horizons could be the perfect fit for a live-service game, since it has seasonal events depending on the time of year and the region you play in. However, some of the fans I spoke to expressed skepticism. 'I was never expecting to get infinite content from Animal Crossing honestly,' Christi Kerr, a player who spent more than 700 hours playing New Horizons, tells The Verge. 'I was used to old AC games where all the content came out at once, and you play it until you feel like you've done all you want. I thought the updates to New Horizons were fun, but also kind of frustrating as a New Leaf player.' That's not to say that players The Verge spoke to are completely closed off to the live-service model with the next mainline Animal Crossing game; it just needs to be done in a way that feels respectful to players' time, money, and attention. Today, even beloved live-service games are regularly criticized by fans for requiring too much time to level up a battle pass or for poorly designed events. 'If Animal Crossing were to consider a live-service approach, I really hope that they would focus on seasonal events and quality-of-life updates,' Borgia says. 'I would be nervous to say I hope for continuous new content like furniture and clothing, because that can easily turn into a microtransaction nightmare. I'd love to have more seasonal celebrations, challenges, and temporary NPC visitors.' So far, Nintendo has shown a measured approach to live-service games. In the case of Pocket Camp, Nintendo ended up rereleasing it as a standalone game free of microtransactions. Now, people who missed the boat on playing Pocket Camp initially and don't like in-app purchases can still play the same game. For the fans we spoke to, this is good enough. Animal Crossing doesn't need to be some sort of never-ending forever game that trudges on like a zombie throughout the years. As Kerr put it, it's totally fine to have a game start and end, and then get a new one down the line. 'I would've been delighted to see updates like a live service game. [...] But like I said, I'm not bothered if the next Animal Crossing game sustains my interest for a while and then I'm done.'
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pope Leo's Election Is a Victory for the Constitution
I still cannot quite believe that there is an American pope. Two hundred and sixty-seven men have served as the bishop of Rome over the last two thousand years. There have been Medici popes and Borgia popes, warrior popes and scholar popes, wise ones and venal ones—and now, there is one from Chicago. Leo XIV, formerly Robert Prevost, is now the spiritual head of roughly 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide. He is the most powerful American in history who was not elected to the White House. And while Leo was the bishop of a Peruvian diocese, not an American one, his elevation is still a triumph for American Catholics who have often been regarded with suspicion and skepticism by the church's leadership. For the United States itself, this is an unqualified triumph of religious pluralism. Leo XIV is the first pontiff to hail from a country that is not majority-Catholic since the emergence of the modern nation-state. The election of an American pope—and the nation's warm reaction to it—is also a fitting coda to two centuries of anti-Catholic animus in American society. I am also not surprised that baseball, the great pluralizer of the nation, played a role in this story. Two or three generations ago, the election of an American pope would have led to protests and perhaps even riots. In 2025, it instead led to frenzied speculation about his Chicago sports affiliations. In the initial wave of reports, some outlets made a mistake. 'Whoever said Cubs on the radio got it wrong,' his brother John told an NBC Chicago reporter. 'It's Sox.' Journalists and social-media commentators knew what that meant: this is a pope who knows what suffering looks like. The Chicago White Sox is one of baseball's oldest clubs—and among its least successful. Even their victories do not lend themselves to boasting and braggadocio. The uninspiring 1906 roster that won the Sox's first World Series title became known as the 'Hitless Wonders' for their poor batting average. They prevailed in six games only because their opponents, the cross-town rival Cubs, somehow fared even worse. The Sox's second title in 1917 against the New York Giants brought a little more respectability to the club. So did emerging stars like 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson, who returned from service in World War I to post a .350 batting average in 1919. But their glory was soon overshadowed in popular memory by the tragedy of that year's World Series, where a group of Sox players, underpaid by their penny-pinching owner Charles Comiskey, conspired with gamblers to throw the series to the Cincinnati Reds. The scheme worked, but the resulting scandal changed baseball forever. Owners responded to universal public dismay by creating a commissioner's office to oversee both the American and National Leagues, investing it with near-dictatorial power over players, managers, and clubs. Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the first high priest of the national pastime, immediately excommunicated Jackson and seven other 'Black Sox' players from baseball for the rest of their lives. Baseball has a thing about curses and championship droughts. The Red Sox kept falling short because they shipped Babe Ruth—who credited his hitting style to the Xaverian teacher who introduced him to the sport at his Catholic boy's school—off to the rival Yankees in December of 1919. The Cubs went 108 years without a championship because, it was said, of some dust-up involving a local tavern owner and his goat. For the White Sox, however, the 'curse' seemed to come not from some disaffected former player or disgruntled local figure, but from their own team's sins against baseball itself. So it was perhaps fitting that the future pope was there on October 22nd when the White Sox won the first game of the 2005 World Series, eventually sweeping the Houston Astros in four games. It was not the greatest curse broken this century: the Red Sox's 2004 victory was even more stunning, and the Cubs' 2016 championship even more historic. But it was just as cathartic, giving the long-suffering franchise something to venerate whenever the team struggled and ownership, as always, refused to spend. (Good luck moving the team to Nashville now, Jerry Reinsdorf.) As a native son of Chicago's South Side, Leo was undoubtedly familiar with the inequalities that Catholic social teachings oppose. Baseball could only have sharpened it. No other American sport reflects the contradictions and fissures of modern life: the perpetual struggle between hard-won merit and unequal wealth, the brow-sweat of labor and the idle vanity of ownership, the national pastime that excluded part of the nation for decades. It is often described as a game of failure, where the best batters often fail to reach first base and the best pitchers rarely throw shutouts. It holds a sacred status in American life that endures despite the many sins of its past: gambling and bigotry, cheating and theft. Augustine of Hippo would have probably loved it. What could be more appropriate for and representative of, he might say, this fallen, failed world? Perhaps that is why when popes come to the United States to hold large open-air masses, they tend to borrow our cathedrals. Paul VI, the first pontiff to visit America, celebrated Mass with 100,000 attendees at Yankee Stadium, baseball's de facto national basilica, in 1965. The Archdiocese of New York even paid rent to avoid a church-state separation issue with its use of the stadium. (Like Old St. Peter's, the House that Ruth Built was later razed to make way for its current, more grandiose replacement, which hosted Benedict XVI in 2008.) When John Paul II came to Los Angeles in 1987, he celebrated Mass at two separate stadiums. At the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum it was reportedly a grim, troubled affair. Football gridirons are centers of strife and dominance; a Hail Mary pass is typically the only instance of piety during a game. 100,000 ticket-holders waited in hours-long lines to gain entry. People collapsed from stress and heat exhaustion, and fights reportedly came close to breaking out. But Dodger Stadium had a more euphoric atmosphere where, as The Los Angeles Times reported, the spirit was 'not deference but joy.' The ballpark had already been nicknamed 'Blue Heaven on Earth' by Tommy Lasorda, the team's voluble longtime manager and a devout Catholic who had priests celebrate Mass on-site for players before Sunday games. The name stuck for aesthetic reasons, but is also fitting for theological ones. Baseball, more than anything else, is about going home. The United States has always been home to Catholics, but it has not always been friendly to them. Many colonial Americans inherited the prejudices of their early modern English forebears, who associated the Catholic faith with religious strife, foreign subversion, and continental adversaries like France and Spain. Stuart-era reforms to the Church of England, for example, prompted thousands of English Puritans to resettle in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. By the time of the revolution, American leaders had embraced religious freedom and church-state separation as an antidote to the religious conflicts that had riven Europe for the previous two centuries. Though the new nation was largely Protestant, early presidents treated Catholics with respect. 'I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their revolution, and the establishment of their government,' George Washington wrote to American Catholics in 1790, 'or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed.' But the 19th century proved that anti-Catholicism could still be a potent political force in American life. It fueled the Know-Nothings of the 1840s and 1850s, who claimed that new immigrants would be more faithful to Rome than to the Constitution, subverting and supplanting the existing Protestant majority. It influenced Republicans in the 1870s and 1880s who opposed parochial schools, where American children would supposedly be taught an alien and un-American ethos. The Catholic Church had its own skepticism of the United States as well. The revolutions and radical movements of 19th-century Europe put the church's leaders on a conservative, defensive footing—sometimes literally, as when Italian nationalists invaded and annexed the Papal States in 1870. Modernism, liberalism, and secularism were denounced as adversaries to the church's teachings and its privileged place in countries like France, Italy, and many of the smaller states that would become Germany. Pope Leo XIII, the current pontiff's namesake, praised Americans' 'well-ordered republic' in a 1895 letter to the U.S. bishops for allowing Catholics to 'live and act without hindrance.' At the same time, he warned it would be 'very erroneous to draw the conclusion' that American civil secularism was 'the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced.' European bishops, in other words, better not get any funny ideas from the New World. That skepticism, for lack of a better word, manifested itself in the church's approach to its American brethren. American Catholics were often perceived to be more liberal, more open-minded, and more questioning than their overseas counterparts. The common belief among Vaticanologists, at least until two weeks ago, was that an American would never become pope because cardinals from other countries thought that the United States already held too much power on the world stage. Anti-Catholicism peaked in America in the 1920s, when the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan marched in public without fear and Al Smith, the first Catholic major-party presidential candidate, lost the 1928 election amid smears that he would make Washington subordinate to Rome. The Vatican reconciled itself with the United States more formally in the 1930s as the world war neared, but signs of the old arm's-length treatment remained. There would not be an American ambassador to the Holy See, for example, until 1984. Political, social, and religious realignments in this country have since made organized and overt anti-Catholicism untenable. Christianity's various denominations now believe that they have more in common with each other than with secularism, as shown by the rise of the religious right in the 1980s. For the first half of this decade there was simultaneously a Catholic president, a Catholic speaker of the House, and a Catholic majority on the Supreme Court. Few noticed and no one really cared. The Constitution endured. Leo's approach to theological and pastoral questions—on engaging with LGBTQ and divorced Catholics, on synodality and the role of women and the laity in the church, on far-right leaders like Donald Trump and extreme concentrations of wealth—will emerge more fully with time. For now, the nation is content to speculate about the pope's views on the designated hitter and the infield-fly rule. In a time when the American constitutional order is under constant threat, the demise of an ancient prejudice—and a victory for American pluralism—is worth celebrating.
eNCA
02-05-2025
- Politics
- eNCA
Orgies, murder and intrigue, the demons of the Holy See
Sexual predators, crooked financiers, spies and a spattering of murderers: while the Vatican may appear an earthly garden watched over by its beloved saints, it also has its demons. "The Church is holy, but made up of sinners," summed up historian Martin Dumont, quoting a homily by Pope Benedict XVI. Today, clerical sexual abuse against minors and nuns is hands down the most serious crime facing the Catholic Church, despite the efforts made by Pope Francis, whose death last month has renewed world focus on the ancient institution. The late Argentine pontiff, following in the footsteps of his German predecessor Benedict, also attacked other forms of depravity -- particularly financial crimes. While not the only defendant convicted in 2023 after a massive fraud, embezzlement and money-laundering trial, one man at the Vatican symbolises those efforts to clean house: Cardinal Angelo Becciu. The most senior cleric ever to be convicted by the Vatican's criminal court, the former adviser to Francis is appealing. But for many he embodies the sins of venality and corruption that for centuries have plagued the Roman Curia governing the Church, whose overflowing coffers often went unchecked. AFP | Gabriel BOUYS After a dispute over whether Francis had barred him from the conclave, Becciu this week agreed not to take part. Whoever is elected pope at next week's secret ballot, much remains to be done. Against the resistance he is bound to encounter, he may remember the words of Francis -- that reforming the Curia was like "cleaning the Sphinx of Egypt with a toothbrush". - Wedding orgy - Ambition and money -- even murder -- are woven through the Vatican's dark history. Since its origins 2,000 years ago, the Church of Rome has experienced "some truly scandalous periods in terms of morality", a senior prelate told AFP on condition of anonymity. They are so numerous that only a few of the most emblematic need be mentioned. Nestled in the heart of the Italian capital whose hills bear silent witness to the most decadent customs throughout the ages, the Vatican is the city-state governed by the Holy See where the pope, heir to the throne of Peter, exerts his power. The smallest state in the world, it is made up of the Curia -- the government of the Church -- countless departments, institutes, and museums, religious and lay people, and the Swiss Guard, responsible for the security of the sovereign pontiff and his territory. A simple human community, made up of good and bad. While the pope is the spiritual guide for the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, he and his legions of flesh and blood are not infallible. In the 10th century Pope John XII is said to have turned the Lateran Palace in Rome into a harem. Five centuries later, the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, organised an orgy for his daughter's wedding. - Hanging from Blackfriars Bridge - History or legend, it matters little. AFP | GABRIEL BOUYS "The popes of the Renaissance were not great role models. Above all, they were warriors, people who defended a territory," explained the prelate. The papal dynasties -- Medici, Pamphili, Borgia -- were immensely wealthy, granting their relatives honorary positions and vast estates. "Nepotism was one of the cancers of the Church at that time," when the pontiffs were remembered as 'pope-kings'," the prelate said. "The first thing a pope did when he came to power was to enrich his family and impoverish others -- when he didn't kill them." Fast forward a few centuries later, and money was again at the root of a major scandal over the Banco Ambrosiano -- majority owned by the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), or the Vatican bank. It collapsed in 1982 amid accusations of money-laundering mafia money while its director, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging that same year from London's Blackfriars Bridge. A commander of the Swiss Guards, Alois Estermann, also met with an unfortunate fate. In 1998, he and his wife were shot dead in their Vatican flat by one of his men, who then committed suicide. The desperate act of a bullied soldier? A foreign spy service's blunder? An infidelity drama? The mystery remains unsolved. Whatever their nature, whatever their era, the depravities of past popes and their Curia collided with the "demanding" moral teachings of the Church -- with the result of "displacing" some of them, said religion historian Dumont. Those consequences are sometimes drastic. Reformer Martin Luther, whose denounced the Church as "Babylon" with its sale of indulgences, initiated the schism with Rome that began the Protestant Reformation. By Gaël Branchereau
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Orgies, murder and intrigue, the demons of the Holy See
Sexual predators, crooked financiers, spies and a spattering of murderers: while the Vatican may appear an earthly garden watched over by its beloved saints, it also has its demons. "The Church is holy, but made up of sinners," summed up historian Martin Dumont, quoting a homily by Pope Benedict XVI. Today, clerical sexual abuse against minors and nuns is hands down the most serious crime facing the Catholic Church, despite the efforts made by Pope Francis, whose death last month has renewed world focus on the ancient institution. The late Argentine pontiff, following in the footsteps of his German predecessor Benedict, also attacked other forms of depravity -- particularly financial crimes. While not the only defendant convicted in 2023 after a massive fraud, embezzlement and money-laundering trial, one man at the Vatican symbolises those efforts to clean house: Cardinal Angelo Becciu. The most senior cleric ever to be convicted by the Vatican's criminal court, the former adviser to Francis is appealing. But for many he embodies the sins of venality and corruption that for centuries have plagued the Roman Curia governing the Church, whose overflowing coffers often went unchecked. After a dispute over whether Francis had barred him from the conclave, Becciu this week agreed not to take part. Whoever is elected pope at next week's secret ballot, much remains to be done. Against the resistance he is bound to encounter, he may remember the words of Francis -- that reforming the Curia was like "cleaning the Sphinx of Egypt with a toothbrush". - Wedding orgy - Ambition and money -- even murder -- are woven through the Vatican's dark history. Since its origins 2,000 years ago, the Church of Rome has experienced "some truly scandalous periods in terms of morality", a senior prelate told AFP on condition of anonymity. They are so numerous that only a few of the most emblematic need be mentioned. Nestled in the heart of the Italian capital whose hills bear silent witness to the most decadent customs throughout the ages, the Vatican is the city-state governed by the Holy See where the pope, heir to the throne of Peter, exerts his power. The smallest state in the world, it is made up of the Curia -- the government of the Church -- countless departments, institutes, and museums, religious and lay people, and the Swiss Guard, responsible for the security of the sovereign pontiff and his territory. A simple human community, made up of good and bad. While the pope is the spiritual guide for the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, he and his legions of flesh and blood are not infallible. In the 10th century Pope John XII is said to have turned the Lateran Palace in Rome into a harem. Five centuries later, the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, organised an orgy for his daughter's wedding. - Hanging from Blackfriars Bridge - History or legend, it matters little. "The popes of the Renaissance were not great role models. Above all, they were warriors, people who defended a territory," explained the prelate. The papal dynasties -- Medici, Pamphili, Borgia -- were immensely wealthy, granting their relatives honorary positions and vast estates. "Nepotism was one of the cancers of the Church at that time," when the pontiffs were remembered as 'pope-kings'," the prelate said. "The first thing a pope did when he came to power was to enrich his family and impoverish others -- when he didn't kill them." Fast forward a few centuries later, and money was again at the root of a major scandal over the Banco Ambrosiano -- majority owned by the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), or the Vatican bank. It collapsed in 1982 amid accusations of money-laundering mafia money while its director, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging that same year from London's Blackfriars Bridge. A commander of the Swiss Guards, Alois Estermann, also met with an unfortunate fate. In 1998, he and his wife were shot dead in their Vatican flat by one of his men, who then committed suicide. The desperate act of a bullied soldier? A foreign spy service's blunder? An infidelity drama? The mystery remains unsolved. Whatever their nature, whatever their era, the depravities of past popes and their Curia collided with the "demanding" moral teachings of the Church -- with the result of "displacing" some of them, said religion historian Dumont. Those consequences are sometimes drastic. Reformer Martin Luther, whose denounced the Church as "Babylon" with its sale of indulgences, initiated the schism with Rome that began the Protestant Reformation. gab/ams/ar/phz
