Weird Gaming News, March 2020 - Article
by Patrick Day-Childs , posted on 01 April 2020 / 2,546 Views
Well, that was quite a month! All I really know for certain, though, is that my Animal Crossing island is booming. The constant play has somewhat caused reality to blend into the digital world for me, but there was some interesting news this month nevertheless! Of course, it’s more or less all related to Covid-19.
Introducing the Customizable Gaming Bed
At a high point of my life I set up my PC next to my bed. I didn’t have to get up; I just rolled over and played RuneScape all day. The days were glorious and ran into one. Some 12 years later and a company has finally created a gamer bed.
With a little creativity and research you could design your own bedsore pit and save money in the process, of course. But the company behind the bed, Bauhutte, have such a large range of options and accessories that you can easily build the perfect gamer bed that works for you.
Via PC Gamer
Corrupted Blood Scientist Now Studying Coronavirus
Just like that, we're into Coronavirus news! Yay. Back in 2005 a plague swept across World of WarCraft. Referred to as Corrupted Blood, it became world renown. Some scientists even wrote a paper on it. Dr. Lofgren contributed to that paper and is now working on understanding how Covid-19 will impact the US healthcare system.
At first glance, you'd think it would be fair to assume that there won’t be many connections. However, Dr. Lofgren explained some the similarities to PCGamer:
"To pull it back to a Corrupted Blood analogy, and something I've been thinking about—one of the critiques we got from a lot of people, both gamers and scientists, was over this idea of griefing. How griefing isn't really analogous to anything that takes place in the real world. People aren't intentionally getting people sick. And they might not be intentionally getting people sick, but willfully ignoring your potential to get people sick is pretty close to that. You start to see people like 'oh this isn't a big deal, I'm not going to change my behavior. I'm going to the concert and then going to see my elderly grandma anyway.' Maybe don't do that. That's a big takeaway. Epidemics are a social problem... Minimizing the seriousness of something is sort of real-world griefing."
Via PC Gamer
Thailand Uses Pokemon to Promote Hand-Washing
Over in Thailand a fairly novel way of getting the word out about washing your hands was deployed, with a mini-march featuring two giant Pikachus and an Eevee.
It resulted in an adorable photo of one of the giant Pikachus getting its temperature taken, as shown above.
Via Nintendo Soup
Bandai Namco Calls Animal Crossing an 'Unpleasant Experience'
Now, briefly, something other than Coronavirus news. Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched, to wide acclaim and expectedly huge commercial success, although there were some oversights (mass crafting jumps to mind).
Someone who oversees Bandai Namco’s Twitter account had a complaint of their own. Unfortunately, they accidentally published the complaint from Bandai Namco’s official account, tagging Nintendo in the process and causing a bit of a media storm.
Via Nintendo Life
Italian Breaks Lockdown to Hunt Pokemon
More Pokemon news. Over in locked-down Italy shops are closed, travel requires police permission, socializing is prohibited, and various other measures have been deployed to combat the spread of Coronavirus. Most people are abiding by them, but one Italian had a mission that he thought granted him immunity from the lockdown: he had to catch Pokemon.
According to Business Insider, the Pokemon Go Player was stopped by police and charged for breaking the lockdown. Apparently "I have to hunt Pokemon" isn’t deemed a good enough reason to be out and about during a national lockdown. Who would've thought it?
That’s all for this month. There were, exceptionally, a lot of other unique gaming news stories, but they were all related to Covid-19. Hopefully April will bring with it some different news! In the meantime feel free to check out February’s Weird Gaming News article here.
