Skip to main content

Jetsetter: FIFA players vie for Scottish soccer team manager’s job

Image used with permission by copyright holder

One would think that thanks to the Internet, memes, trends, and brands would be global experiences all the time. We assume that because “Gangam Style” got huge in Korea, then huge in the United States, that it’s also huge in Estonia. The World Wide Web may extend its tendrils into every inch of the world, but culture is still regional. Video games demonstrate it nicely. Sailor Moon hasn’t been big in Japan or the US since the 1990s, but Italy’s so enamored with the evil fighting schoolgirls that it released a Sailor Moon DS game just last year. That’s why there’s Jetsetter.

Recommended Videos

Welcome back to Jetsetter, Digital Trends’ weekly column looking at the international world of video games. People in the US like their Madden NFL and Call of Duty. You already know that. But do you know about the German development house still making Neo-Geo games? We’ve got your back.

* 75% of applications for Scottish soccer team manager job are from FIFA players.

It’s kind of like The Last Starfighter, but with hooliganism and football instead of aliens! The Dumbarton Sons, a Scottish soccer team, recently fired its manager Alan Adamson. Sons chief exectuive Gilbert Lawrie told The Daily Mail that many people have already applied for the job, but the majority of them only have management experience in EA’s hugely popular FIFA games. “I can tell you I’ve had dozens and dozens of applications and it takes a while to sift through the CVs of people who have won the Champions League on FIFA 12. Probably 75 percent of the applications so far are from people who taken a team from a low ebb to great heights on a computer screen, which is a great achievement for them but perhaps not what we are looking for at this time.” Back to Xbox Live with the lot of you!

* Video game museum opens in Italy.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do and celebrate video game history by visiting Vigamus, Italy’s newest gaming museum. The museum opened for business just one week ago on Oct. 20. “We have problems here recognizing the cultural and artistic value of games,” Vigamus director Marco Accordi Rackards told Edge, “In Italy we don’t have a very solid industry, as developers; we have a strong market, but that doesn’t help very much because people think of video games just as toys—something you buy, sell, promote, not a cultural industry where you create. We want to push the cultural value of video games, to educate those familiar with games and those who aren’t.”

 

* Managing Director of Disney India’s interactive division resigns.

Disney’s been bulking up its video game development in India, acquiring Indiagames and its shareholder UTV back in March. While Disney brought many of the developers and executives at those companies into the newly formed Disney UTV Digital, an exodus of employees are is starting within the company. Medianama reported this week that Disney UTV managing director Samir Bangara, one of the chief architects of Indiagames, has resigned. More are expected to follow his lead. For anyone in the west unfamiliar, Indiagames is that nation’s equivalent of Ubisoft subsidiary Gameloft, pumping out a number of popular iPhone and iPad titles like its series Cricket Fever.

Anthony John Agnello
Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…
You may have access to hundreds of free games you’re not taking advantage of
Living room with Microsoft Xbox Series X (L) and Sony PlayStation 5 home video game consoles alongside a television and soundbar.

Ever since Nintendo was the first to breach the $80 threshold for games with Mario Kart World, the concerns over game prices have been top of mind across the industry. Between tariffs, inflation, cost of living, and what appears to be an inevitable recession right around the corner, I have already been preparing for how I can be a more discerning consumer of games.

There are tons of ways to be more thrifty with our favorite hobby. You can wait for sales, trade and borrow games, rely more on subscription services like PlayStation Plus and Game Pass, or just stick to the wealth of free-to-play games. But there's one resource I never see brought up that could give you access to a huge library of major titles for free: your local library.

Read more
In a sea of giant games, Rematch’s simplicity is a gift
A screenshot of players celebrating in Rematch.

There are a lot of words I’d use to describe Rematch, the new multiplayer soccer game from Sifu developer Sloclap. It’s fun, it’s approachable, it’s elegant. But there’s one word I wouldn't use: ambitious. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way; in fact, that’s exactly what I love about it.

Rematch needs little setup or explanation to get across what it is, which separates it from so many modern, formula-twisting video games. It’s an online multiplayer soccer game where teams of three to five, depending on the playlist, compete in six minute matches. The teams are dropped on a basic pitch, the only notable twist of which is that all the sides are walled off. Players pass, block, and shoot and the team with the most points at the end wins. There are no gimmicks, no tricks, and no flourishes like flying cars that make for a cool sales pitch. It’s just soccer.

Read more
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach review: gripping sequel weighs the cost of connection
Sam holds Lou in Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.

There may never be a video game as prophetic as Death Stranding. In 2019, Hideo Kojima painted a picture of an already politically divided United States forced into isolation as a plague swept through the country. It pushed the need for human connection in society, urging its players to come together in moments of darkness rather than splintering. That message would become hauntingly urgent just one year later when a real world pandemic shut the world indoors. Death Stranding retroactively became the first great work of Covid-19 art, offering up a hopeful message about strengthening social ties that bond us all together.

Everything has changed since then. The rise of digital communication that was necessitated by a pandemic has backfired. Online communities have become a hotbed for alt right radicalization. Social media platforms like X have been reshaped into misinformation pits built to manipulate the outcomes of elections. The rise of generative AI has made it easier than ever to mislead trusting suckers into believing anything they see. The mass connection that Death Stranding advocated for has shown its dark underbelly and there are some days where I wish we could go back and undo it all.

Read more