In middle school, I was always 
hunting for more games to add 
to my collection. Spending $60 
on a new title was a luxury that 
I could only afford once or twice 
a year, so I would always peruse 
the Xbox 360 game market for 
cheap or free games to play. Most 
of what was available were demos 
or knockoffs of other titles that 
I’d delete within a few minutes, 
disappointed and bored yet again.
Today, that problem doesn’t 
exist. My middle school self 
would have been in a gaming 
paradise with all of the free-to-
play titles that have been coming 
out — and quality ones at that. A 
wave of free games has taken over 
the industry in the last five years, 
with some of the biggest names in 
gaming joining in. Epic has been 
one of the biggest players in this 
new trend: The massive success 
of “Fortnite” aside, they have also 
recently purchased “Fall Guys” 
and “Rocket League,” turning 
them into free-to-play games as 
well. Even some of the biggest 
game franchises, such as Halo, 
Destiny and Call of Duty, have 
become, in part, free-to-play. 
Whether it be through the sale 
of battle passes, cosmetics such 
as skins and emotes or items like 
XP boosts that give the player a 
helping hand, these games have 
become what can best be termed 
“freemium.” 
This 
freemium 
model is insanely profitable for 
games like Fortnite, but that 
success has started a troubling 
trend within the gaming industry.
The trajectory of the mobile 
game market over the last decade 
is a good, albeit simplified, 
metaphor for the way big-budget 
games have been approaching 
the freemium model as of late. 
The early 2010s saw the release 
of some of the most iconic mobile 

games, including “Angry Birds,” 
“Cut The Rope” and “Plants vs. 
Zombies.” These all began as 
premium titles that required 
a one-time purchase of a few 
dollars to play. Sure, there may 
have been extra ways to spend 
your money in these games, but 
for the most part they focused on 
giving you a full game experience 
for the price you paid up front. 
However, upon seeing the success 
of freemium titles such as “Clash 
of Clans” or “Candy Crush” on 
the mobile market, these games 
adjusted their gameplay models 
for 
their 
respective 
sequels. 
“Angry Birds 2” implemented an 
energy system, meaning that after 
five attempts players must either 
wait 30 minutes, watch an ad or 
pay for another go. “Plants vs. 
Zombies 2” slowed its progression 
system by making players collect 
a certain amount of stars from a 
series of levels before allowing 
them to move to the next area, 
unlike the first title where beating 
a level meant moving right onto 
the next one. Of course, this can 
be made easier by straight up 
paying your way to the next area, 
saving you from having to perfect 
some of the game’s particularly 
(and suspiciously) hard levels.
Both of these games saw 
fundamental changes to their 
gameplay 
formulas 
and 
are 
arguably worse for it. It’s not fun 
to have to wait to play or have to 
pointlessly grind through a level, 
especially when previous titles 
had none of these cash-grabbing 
techniques. Even though they 
may be free to play, unlike their 
predecessors, core parts of these 
games were sacrificed in the name 
of a freemium model. Now we are 
seeing a similar shift take place 
in some of the gaming industry 
giants, with results that are just as 
troubling as seen in their mobile 
brethren. 
My worries about this trend 
started when Halo — a pillar of 

the Xbox brand and one of my 
favorite game series — announced 
that the multiplayer in their next 
title, “Halo Infinite,” would be 
free while the campaign would 
cost the standard $60. This was a 
departure from the way mainline 
Halo games had been sold for the 
last 20 years, with campaign and 
multiplayer bundled together as 
a single, paid package. Although 
the release date for “Infinite” 
was set for December 2021, the 
multiplayer portion was given a 
surprise release in November — 
smack dab in the middle of the 
release of “Call of Duty: Vanguard” 
and “Battlefield: 2042,” two major 
(paid) multiplayer games. This 
was an obvious smack in the face 
for the other two major franchises 
— Battlefield’s parent company, 
EA, has allegedly blamed the 
game’s poor reception on Halo — 
but since that initial moment of 
success it has become clear that 
this move to free-to-play has had 
a major impact on the game’s core 
elements.
Like many of its first-person 
shooter 
compatriots, 
Halo 
is 
built around glory. Players are 
commended for their skill in each 
game — how well they are able to 
pull off things such as headshots 
or multikills. Traditionally these 

things rewarded players with 
postgame accommodations that 
would boost their player level. 
As their level increased, so did 
players’ 
access 
to 
cosmetics, 
namely 
different 
pieces 
of 
armor to equip their character 
with. “Halo Infinite” does away 
with 
the 
performance-based 
experience 
system, 
instead 
making players complete certain 
weekly objectives to earn XP 
points. Working to get to the top 
of the scoreboard or pulling off 
an insane killstreak feels empty 
to me now. “Infinite” seems to 
promote the idea that your time 
could be better spent focusing 
on specific tasks such as getting 
assists or dealing damage with 
certain weapons rather than 
playing the game how you want to 
play it. Of course, these challenges 
are all optional, as they only serve 
to unlock armor from a paid battle 
pass. But when matches are filled 
with people rushing for certain 
guns or just leaving the game 
idle so they can reach a certain 
number of rounds played, it feels 
lame to try and compete and play 
the game the way it’s meant to 
be played — or at least, the way it 
used to be.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts

From 
an 
eerie, 
middle-of-
nowhere ranch created in the mind 
of Jordan Peele, “Nope” is born. 
Peele’s third film, after “Get Out” 
and “Us,” stars Daniel Kaluuya 
(“Judas and the Black Messiah”) 
from Peele’s first film, and Keke 
Palmer (“Lightyear”), a striking 
addition to the cast. The pair 
play OJ and Emerald Haywood, 
brother and sister horse wranglers 
who are descendants of the first 
Black animal trainer and actor in 
film. Human-eating UFOs, a killer 
chimpanzee and dead horses make 
their way into a confusing but 
intriguing plot. Somehow it feels 
like there’s too much and nothing 
going on at the same time. While 
the plot’s premise doesn’t deviate 
much from Peele’s other films, the 
movie itself is a slight letdown in 
comparison because of it.
The film takes place in inland 
California, where OJ and Emerald 
train Hollywood show horses on 
their spacious, secluded ranch. 
Things begin heating up when 
they 
notice 
sinister, 
almost 
supernatural behavior in the skies 
above — frequent power outages 
followed by horses disappearing 
in plain sight. A neighboring 
theme park owner (Steven Yeun, 
“Minari”) 
also 
observes 
this 
unnatural activity.
The two storylines emphasize 
the danger of what happens when 
trying to tame the beast versus 
letting it roam free. It feels as 
though Peele is trying to convey an 
overarching theme of how animals 
— or creatures — should not be 
manipulated for human benefit. 
He does this through his use of 
the siblings’ horses, a persistent 
UFO and a largely unnerving 
chimpanzee from the park owner’s 
past, all retaliating against efforts 

to control them.
After 
seeing 
Kaluuya 
and 
Palmer introduce “Nope” live at a 
premiere of the film, and knowing 
Peele’s stellar reputation, I did my 
best to fully comprehend and love 
this movie. For two hours and 15 
minutes, I stared at the screen 
with my brows furrowed, trying 
to make sense of it, but my efforts 
were lost in the confusion of the 
various plot points. A UFO as the 
movie’s main predator felt played 
out and frankly, slightly ridiculous. 
One of this movie’s greatest faults 
concerning its confusing plot is 
the sudden, frequent flashbacks 
and 
flash-forwards. 
With 
no 
transition, we travel from the 
Hayworth house to a memory 
from the park owner’s past. I was 
constantly trying to figure out the 
movie’s timeline, all to no avail. 
The many eerie scenes added to the 
fear factor, but the link between 
them was often faint. I was left 
distraught over a violent scene of 
the young park owner witnessing 
a chimpanzee brutally murdering 
a little girl, but the connection 
between that and real-time scenes 
of the UFO was weak. Peele left 
much unexplained, and a little 
clarity definitely could’ve helped 
convey the theme more strongly 
for an increased impact on the 
audience. The overall themes were 
illustrated well, but the plot wasn’t 
so much a fluid story as a collection 
of moments and memories.
That said, the cinematography 
was striking. The film, shot on 
65mm in IMAX, rivaled, if not 
surpassed, 
the 
camera 
work 
of Peele’s previous movies. I 
appreciated the beauty of the 
desert, which seemed like a 
stylistic choice meant to showcase 
the natural environment where 
the predators belong and should 
peacefully remain.

I was rooting for 
Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’

Wednesday, September 21, 2022 — 5

Design by Leilani Baylis-Washington

ZARA MANNA
Daily Arts Writer

‘The Room’: putting the 
cult in cult classic

I had seen “The Room” a couple 
of times, but never in a theater 
full of people. I understood the 
absurdity of the film and how 
truly terrible it is — so terrible that 
it inspired a memoir and movie 
adaptation called “The Disaster 
Artist” that explores the movie’s 
troubled production. I had seen 
both “The Room” and “The Disaster 
Artist” before, tricking myself 
into believing that I understood 
the fandom that surrounded “The 
Room.” But I was not ready for the 
experience that is seeing a late-
night showing in a theater jam-
packed with enthusiastic fans.
“The Room” stars the writer, 
director and executive producer 
Tommy Wiseau (“Best F(r)iends”) 
as a man named Johnny in a 
turbulent relationship with his 
fiancee Lisa (Juliette Danielle, 
“Dead Kansas”) and his best friend 
Mark (Greg Sestero, “Best F(r)
iends”). Lisa has fallen out of love 
with Johnny and starts an affair 
with Mark. Much of the movie 
focuses on characters unrelated to 
the main storyline, an attempt to 
show a slice of life that results in a 
majority of the movie distracting 
from the main characters. One 
such character is Denny (Philip 
Haldiman, “Room Full of Spoons”), 
a college student who is financially 
supported by Johnny, and who 
has a violent encounter with a 
drug dealer, only for it to never be 
brought up again. It is hard to follow 
the plot of the movie, as characters 
have wild changes in their mood 
without warning. One notable 
example is Mark attempting to 
kill his friend Peter (Kyle Vogt, 
“Monarch of the Moon”), quickly 
followed by an apology and the two 
acting as if nothing happened. The 
unfortunate byproduct of this is a 
movie that is often described as the 
worst ever made.
I learned about the bizarre 
traditions for group viewings of 
“The Room” just hours before 
seeing the movie, leaving me 
woefully 
unprepared 
for 
the 
ridiculousness. I knew maybe a 
handful of the many famous quotes 
but had no idea when scenes tied to 
specific traditions would occur and 
did not bring any spoons to throw 
at the screen — my years cleaning 
movie theaters in high school made 

me feel guilty about the idea of 
creating such a mess. These feelings 
of guilt were quickly alleviated 
when an announcement was made 
to throw the spoons up in the air 
instead of at the screen in order to 
not damage the screen itself, giving 
an indirect confirmation from the 
Michigan Theater staff that they 
understood the atmosphere of the 
event.
Before the film, Sestero was 
in the lobby meeting fans and 
throwing around a football, a 
reference to the fact that Mark 
and Johnny will often play catch 
at 
seemingly 
random 
times 
throughout the movie. I felt bad for 
Sestero at first, worrying that he 
was tired of hearing the same jokes 
repeated endlessly, but he had a 
sense of humor about the situation. 
I expected an old man exhausted 
from decades talking about the 
same movie, but I was met with an 
actor who still loved to talk about 
his passion: making movies. His 
precursor Q&A is when I realized 
just how hardcore some fans of “The 
Room” are. One audience member 
had such a spot-on impression of 
Johnny that I have to believe he 
spent hours rehearsing it. Using his 
own Johnny impression that would 
give the audience member a run for 
his money, Sestero talked about how 
Wiseau would constantly replace 
the production staff and forget 
his own lines for hours on end. He 
was feeding off of the energy from 
the crowd, performing something 
similar to a stand-up comedy 
routine based on his experiences 
making the film.

ZACH LOVEALL
Daily Arts Writer

Is the future of gaming free?

HUNTER BISHOP
Daily Arts Writer

Design by Emily Schwartz

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

By Bonnie Eisenman
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/21/22

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Patti Varol and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/21/22

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, September 21, 2022

ACROSS
1 Thwack
5 Informed (of)
10 Compensation
14 Tuck out of view
15 Wrinkled
16 Many a univ. 
donor
17 365 days
18 Rub ingredient
19 HBO political 
satire starring 
Julia Louis-
Dreyfus
20 Impractical way 
to get dressed?
23 Barack and 
Michelle’s eldest 
daughter
26 Family room
27 Impatient
28 Lives
30 Cookie fruit
31 Planning meeting 
for the costume 
department?
35 “Stop filming!”
38 Broody sorts?
39 Sir or sri
40 More than dislike
41 Donkey
42 Disappointing 
sign on a 
store selling 
warm-weather 
garments?
44 GPS display
45 Small village
46 Food cart snacks 
in South Asia
49 Texting letters
52 Swerves
53 Really pulls off a 
jacket?
56 Initial poker bet
57 Japanese noodle 
dish
58 Carried debt
62 Appear to be
63 “You __ kidding!”
64 Grow tiresome
65 Jekyll’s 
counterpart
66 Basil-based 
sauce
67 Yields, as a profit

DOWN
1 Bashful
2 Blip on a 
polygraph, maybe
3 Hugo-nominated 
novelist Palmer

4 Continues
5 “One more 
thing ... ”
6 Totally beat
7 Ouzo flavoring
8 Scouting mission, 
briefly
9 Garden with 
forbidden fruit
10 Fluttering in the 
wind
11 Warning signal
12 Ballpark figure
13 Like cans in a 
recycling bin, 
hopefully
21 Doth own
22 Fall flat
23 Anime genre 
featuring giant 
robots
24 Wheel-
connecting rods
25 NFL team whose 
mascot is named 
Roary
29 Punchline lead-in
30 __ and blood
32 “Pull up a chair”
33 Corp. computer 
exec
34 Fuzzy sitcom star 
of the 1980s

35 “The Grouchy 
Ladybug” writer/
illustrator
36 Out-and-out
37 Tries, as one’s 
patience
40 Place of origin
42 Cheerios grains
43 “__ Nagila”: 
Israeli folk song
44 Defiant retort
46 Cymbal sound
47 Bee product

48 Performed
49 Open up, in a 
way
50 Fast-spreading 
social media 
posts
51 Fragrance
54 Hip hop genre
55 “I’m __ your 
tricks!”
59 Pint-size
60 “Mangia!”
61 Many profs

SUDOKU

By Lisa Senzel & Christina Iverson
©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/14/22

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Patti Varol and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/14/22

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, September 14, 2022

ACROSS
1 Spanish tennis 
great Nadal, 
familiarly
5 Upgrade, as 
machinery
10 Uncertain
14 Cabbage buy
15 Glazer of “The 
Afterparty”
16 Skating 
commentator 
Lipinski
17 Analogy words
18 Bridal path flower 
piece
19 Stash, as gear
20 Japanese drama
21 Cookbook 
contents
23 Author Rand
24 Genre for 
composer 
Terence 
Blanchard
26 Informal “You’re 
oversharing”
27 Caramel candies
29 Like some 
dangerous 
isotopes
32 Curry of the NBA
34 Bike part
35 Quintet for most 
starfish
38 Prefix for a 
lifesaving “Pen”
39 Not so big
41 Knock
42 Try to hit
44 Tell it like it isn’t
45 Speed skater 
Ohno
47 Act parts
49 Past the point of 
caring
50 Michelle of “Crazy 
Rich Asians”
52 Neighborhood
53 *Secretive email 
option
60 Uncommon
61 Assertion
62 Cookie used as a 
12-Down topping
63 Admit frankly
64 Omit in speech
65 Spreadsheet unit
66 Soaks up the sun
67 Calf-roping event
68 Diet that’s high 
in fats and low 
in carbs, as 
illustrated by 
parts of the 
answers to the 
starred clues

DOWN
1 Safari herbivore
2 Fabulous writer?
3 *Figure often 
depicted with a 
scythe and an 
hourglass
4 Hubbub
5 Ready for 
picking
6 __ college
7 *Pakistani-born 
chef who was 
posthumously 
honored with a 
James Beard 
Award
8 Up the creek
9 Story
10 Part of FWIW
11 *Serious 
software 
problem
12 Dessert from 
16 Handles, 
familiarly
13 Signs of 
boredom
21 “Wicked!”
22 __ Lanka
25 Sidelines cheer
28 Fertility lab cells
30 Maker of the 
Deep Blue chess 
computer
31 Workout top

32 Bodies of water
33 __ fail
36 Timbuktu’s land
37 Predicament
39 Fine horse
40 Black bird
43 “What’s the 
latest?”
46 NBC symbol
48 Abby Wambach’s 
sport
49 Juliet’s cry
51 Winnie-the-Pooh 
greeting

52 Tolerate
53 Sassy kid
54 Chocolate 
__ cake
55 Waffle maker
56 “Kills bugs 
dead!” spray
57 Hockey Hall 
of Famer 
Willie
58 Hit, as with 
snowballs
59 “Seize the day” 
initialism

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