At first glance, this week’s offerings in the new hip-hop department look slim. After all, the music industry is still spooling back up after a long holiday, making January a traditionally quiet period for new releases. However, there are still some noteworthy projects dropping if you know where to look, and this week, in particular, brings something we don’t see all the time in hip-hop: A new movie produced by a record label.

Griselda Records is already known for putting out a plethora of new projects in any given year, but this year sees the Buffalo-based indie branching out beyond its usual proliferation. Putting out a feature-length film is nothing to shake a stick at, so the Griselda gang deserves big props for joining hip-hop’s continuum of underground labels taking pains to make more than just music.

Meanwhile, many new artists are utilizing the “dead zone” to rack up streams for their new singles and views for their latest videos, hoping to make an impact before the big names return to take up all the space. Fortunately for them, they only have to compete with one huge single this week: Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion’s first on-record connection on the raunchy remix to pop star Ariana Grande’s “34+35” single. Let’s see how the Republicans react to this one.

Here is the best of hip-hop this week ending January 15, 2021

Albums/EPs/Mixtapes

Fredo Bang — Still Most Hated

Def Jam’s Baton Rouge signee arrived with a splash last year thanks to his April album Most Hated. Now, he’s capitalizing on the momentum from that project and the popularity of its single “Trust Issues” to keep his wave building with a follow-up including 10 tracks with features from Lil Durk, Moneybagg Yo, Rylo Rodriguez, and Sada Baby.

K.A.A.N. — Long Time No See

A ludicrously productive underground presence, K.A.A.N. has long been one of those rappers who flies way under the radar, doing whatever he wants whenever he wants to and earning a loyal, engaged fanbase as a result. He’s a rapper’s rapper, with an M16-on-full-auto flow and a willingness to tackle a broad spectrum of subjects. Long Time No See continues the trend, while also begging the question: How does this man make Griselda Records look downright lackadaisical?

Nyck Caution — Anywhere But Here

It has been more than four years since the Pro Era product’s last full-length, but that time has been well-spent. Following his Brooklyn brothers Aaron Rose, CJ Fly, and Dessy Hinds in returning from a long hiatus, Nyck shows off his artistic growth while remaining anchored to the lyrical style that set his crew apart when they arrived fresh out of high school in 2012. There’s a smooth instinct here, but Nyck and guests Joey Badass, Denzel Curry, and Kota The Architect (among others) dabble in drill, trap, and more.

Films

Conflicted

There’s a strong tradition in hip-hop of labels releasing films that could best be described as “hood classics.” Packed to the gills with quotable scenes, relatable narratives, and familiar characters, these gritty street crime dramas usually don’t move mainstream needles or satisfy critics, but they more than exceed expectations for the labels’ fans. Conflicted is one such movie; the technical craft on display isn’t what you’d call “professional” and it’s quirky as all hell (the best-scripted dialogue comes from side characters in mundane day jobs), but it gets the job done and has one of the most unintentionally hilarious endings I have ever seen in one of these things.

Singles/Videos

Ariana Grande Feat. Doja Cat & Megan Thee Stallion — “34+35 (Remix)”

While the original tickled pop fans’ sensibilities with its unabashed dirty talk, the remix tweaks the knob up a few notches, and Doja Cat utterly slays her verse, proving those LA rap cipher chops are never going to go to waste.

Bobby Sessions – “Made A Way Remix” Feat. Lecrae

Dallas rapper Bobby Sessions remixes the single from his debut RVLTN (Chapter 3): The Price Of Freedom with veteran rapper Lecrae, pairing the song with a visual celebrating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s historic election win.

EST Gee — “Members Only” Feat. 42 Dugg

Louisville’s EST Gee made a splash on his Kentucky comrade Jack Harlow’s debut album late last year but gets back on his grizzly to start 2021 with a sound familiar to fans of the driving Midwest sound popularized by Dugg and his Detroit ilk.

Joey Trap — “Spicy”

The San Diego rapper takes on the West Coast ratchet sound for an irreverent party rap from his Playlist For The End Of The World deluxe edition.

LNDN DRGS — “Drills” Feat. El Camino

Jay Worthy’s deadpan flow plays havoc over Sean House’s wobbly symphonic sample.

Metro Marrs — “Nonchalant”

17-year-old Metro Marrs is the newest signee to Atlanta’s Quality Control Music and he comes out with a bang. Slurry trap&B reminiscent of early Post Malone marks Metro’s new single, while QC helps bring polish to its simple video.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The end of the James Harden era in Houston has been a painful one, there’s no doubt about that. That’s often the case when a star player leaves an organization with what feels like unfinished business left on the table. It’s especially true when the situation devolves to the point of trade demands and ugly losses and weeks of rumors and cross words.

It’s debatable how much of that drama is necessary to hasten the conclusion, but regardless, there’s going to be some hard feelings involved. That’s just how fandom, and breakups, work. Still, it’s nice when one side at least tries to take the high road. That’s what Harden did with his latest social media post thanking the city of Houston for taking a chance on him.

And he has a lot to be grateful for. It’s true that few could’ve predicted that Harden would turn in to one of the most lethal scorers of all time just based on his first few seasons in OKC, and both the city and organization embraced him from the start and have stuck with him through all the ups and downs.

James Harden thanks Houston pic.twitter.com/WOpYWbfgnP

— Undefeated without Harden (@DreamShakeSBN) January 15, 2021

But for a certain segment of Rockets fan, these sentiments will always ring somewhat hollow. It’ll be hard to erase the memory of the ugly playoff losses during which he failed to rise to the occasion. Harden acknowledges in his message that he fell short of his ultimate goal of bringing a championship to the city, but it’s a debt that he won’t soon payoff, unless somewhere down the line he decided to return to Houston for one more shot. After all, he says it’s “far from a goodbye.”

Still, the message brings finality to his time in Houston and opens the door on a new chapter in Brooklyn, where he’ll rejoin one of his former teammates in OKC and instantly become the favorites to win the East. Time will tell if he can accomplish there what he was never able to do in Houston.

While Finneas’ best-known work (the songs we writes with/for his sister Billie Eilish) skews more alternative and pop, one of his strongest 2020 solo singles, “Can’t Wait To Be Dead,” goes more into soaring rock territory. It’s a big tune that served him well when he performed it for his debut The Late Show appearance last night.

Like most late-night TV performances these days, Finneas’ was pre-taped and filmed remotely, which has the drawback of no audience interaction but the benefit of more creative set design possibilities. For “Can’t Wait To Be Dead,” Finneas and his band took to a giant warehouse. The video was filmed as a single shot, and in it, they perform under a gigantic American flag, making for a striking and nicely shot visual.

Finneas previously said of the song, “I’m happy for this song to mean anything to anyone who listens to it but to me, it’s a song about my relationship with the internet. Especially in an election year. Especially during a pandemic. Sometimes, the internet makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me cry, sometimes it makes me hopeful. But sometimes, it really makes me wanna be dead.”

Meanwhile, Finneas was recently a part of chart history, as Kid Cudi’s “Beautiful Trip” (on which Finneas is a co-writer and co-producer) became the shortest song to ever grace the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Watch Finneas perform “Can’t Wait To Be Dead” above.

After a lengthy break from the Nets, an NBA investigation, and endless speculation about what might come next, Kyrie Irving has been cleared to return to the Brooklyn roster as soon as Saturday, assuming he continues to show negative COVID-19 tests until then.

This all was announced Friday morning by the NBA, in addition to details of the $50,000 fine Irving will face for breaking protocols. This matches James Harden’s fine as a first-time rule breaker. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the expectation is that Irving will return to the team on Saturday.

But unlike his new teammate, who ended up getting somewhat lucky that a separate incident from other Rockets players forced the league to postpone their opening-night game and allowed Harden to avoid missing any games, Irving will also be subject to the forfeiture of his salary for four missed games.

To be clear, Irving has already missed five straight games for the Nets, even if he is cleared to return in time for Saturday’s home matchup against the Magic. The league has determined that only the four most recent games were missed specifically because he would not have been available due to breaking the NBA health and safety protocol. Irving missed the other games for “personal reasons,” according to the team.

Earlier this week, the NBA began investigating footage showing Irving maskless in a public setting while celebrating his sister’s birthday. The investigation seemingly deemed that interaction relatively low risk, so now as long as Irving continues to test negative, he can rejoin the suddenly even more fascinating Nets, who just pulled off a mega-trade for Harden.

Sometimes, talent just runs in your family. Hip-hop is filled with family groups like Clipse, Pop Smoke’s brother does a spooky good impression of the late rapper, and even Juice WRLD turned out to be related to Young Dolph, which the latter only learned after his Chicago cousin passed. Fortunately, another set of hip-hop cousins didn’t have to wait until losing each other to find out their connection. Despite growing up 1,200 miles away from each other, Florida rapper Denzel Curry and St. Lous MC Smino recently discovered they are cousins through a shared uncle and posted their reactions on Twitter.

“boi why @denzelcurry my cousin in real life,” Smino wondered upon discovering the connection. Curry had the same sentiment, although he was quick to point out the smooth St Louisan gave him a good-natured ribbing long before they learned their relation. “I found out me and @Smino got the same uncle,” Denzel marveled. “And to think this n**** roasted the f*ck out me when we first met.” He elaborated that Smino is “on the Curry side of the family.”

Now that they’re aware, though, fans have already begun pestering them for a collaboration, which they have had yet to do. Perhaps they’ll be able to get together at a future family reunion and this time, Denzel can have a few roasts pre-written for his Midwestern cousin.

One doesn’t need to do too much reading between the lines to know that Melania Trump’s more than ready to leave the White House. That’s the case even though New York City is largely cutting ties with the inciter of the MAGA insurrectionists, and Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago neighbors really don’t want him around either, so who knows where they’ll ultimately land. Still, Melania is attempting to head out with something of a legacy, beyond making the U.S. Capitol riot all about herself, and her attempt to paint the portrait of an enthused First Lady is going over about as well.

As everyone’s aware by now, Donald Trump has been banned by Twitter and nearly every other online platform out there. That’s making things super awkward because Melania’s attempting to salute the “legacy of #BeBest,” which is her already much-dragged anti-bullying initiative, given that her husband’s one of the biggest bullies out there. Still, Melania tweeted, “[W]e must continue to give a voice to our Nation’s children & the issues that impact their lives. It’s the values & spirit of the American people that inspired Be Best & it’s those values that will carry on its mission.”

Melania can’t put a happy face on her Christmas ornaments or swanky tennis pavilion renovation, and it’s not working too well here, either. Especially after her husband incited a deadly insurrection on the U.S. Capitol., people are calling her out for a husband that’s been banned for social media while she’s always looked the other way. Melania might not care too much, since she’s nearly left the building, but people are pointing out a lot of hypocrisy in her words.

Not only is there the matter of President Trump’s perpetual bullying on the table here, but also one user’s stark inquiry on the administration’s harsh immigration stance and how it affects children: “[W]here were you when the children separated from their parents under your name sakes administration needed a voice? Where were your values then? Where are their parents?” They’re fair inquiries, as are the remarks on the Trump bans.

And as this user points out, #BeBest is about to be #BeGone.

Search Party is a show whose identity has been as fluid and changeable as its morally dubious millennial protagonists. It’s been trying on genres the way one would try on shoes, picking whichever gave its story – the exploration of a generation’s psyche – room to grow, evolve, and maybe one day, step over the threshold into something resembling adulthood.

What began as a story about a young woman in search of meaning and purpose (and a brief acquaintance she met in college named Chantal Witherbottom) has matured into a retrospective on identity and the importance of knowing oneself that feels oddly relevant, despite this latest season being filmed in tandem with last year’s excellent third installment. But burdening the show with cultural baggage feels wrong, somehow. It’s not a series really “made for these times,” a critical catch-all that’s been stamped on so many pieces of art right now.

Instead, Search Party is and always has been, a show about millennials, for millennials, and for the people who find a sick kind of pleasure in watching them f*ck things up. That’s true in Season 4, which lands on HBO Max on January 14th. We’re still watching lanky, loveable Drew (John Paul Reynolds) struggle to move on after the events of the trial and the implosion of his relationship with his murderous ex-girlfriend. We’re still watching ditzy, starved-for-attention Portia (Meredith Hagner) try to extend her time in the spotlight. And we’re still watching fame-hungry, narcissistic Eliot (John Early) exchange his principles and values in the name of greed and popularity. But we’re watching all of that while also being trapped alongside Dory (Alia Shawkat), who should be enjoying her ill-gained freedom this season but instead is being held prisoner by the Twink.

It’s a jarring juxtaposition and one that causes the show to drag in places during it’s first few episodes. The chemistry of the four leads is what elevates Search Party satirical edge but there’s no way the show can tap into it with Dory now captive inside a padded cell meant to resemble her own apartment, being fed peanut-oil-fried chicken nuggets by a deranged psychopath named Chip (Cole Escola), the Twink who soaked Portia in honey and tried to get rats to eat her alive last season.

Chip’s insane to the Norman Bates’ degree, and we learn more about his colorful family life as the season goes on. Still, his many psychological issues are only meant to inform how we view Dory, and how she views herself post-trial. She’s killed two people now, escaped jail time for both murders, and was seemingly drunk on her new infamy before being thrown into Chip’s trunk following Eliot’s disastrous wedding. As her friends debate whether throwing a “Glad You’re Not Guilty” party is tacky, Dory’s chained to a chair, head shaved, as Chip tries to brainwash her into forgetting her old life and bad friends.

The back-and-forth between Dory’s stagnant storyline of failed escape plots and the rest of “the gang’s” momentum-driven arcs disturbs the pacing somewhat, but never the humor. Search Party is still a whip-smart series that finds clever ways to poke fun at its character’s worst eccentricities and make them feel uncomfortably relatable. Drew’s in search of happiness while sweating underneath a fur suit playing a theme park mascot. Portia’s answering casting calls to play herself in a Lifetime-esque riff on Dory’s murder case. And Eliot wants to “heal the nation” with a political talk show that eventually convinces him to cosplay as a conservative right-wing Republican with his own line of glitter-covered guns. They clue into the weird timing of Dory’s disappearance early in the season and it’s when they join forces to half-heartedly search for their friend that the comedy kicks into full gear. There are car chases in a roundabout and trips to a honey bun factory and a bleakly funny funeral that give each actor time to shine, though Early and Hagner feel like standouts this season. Really, why aren’t these two in more things?

But Search Party is still mainly concerned with Dory’s journey, sometimes to its detriment. The season’s decidedly dark, quite deadly turn makes it infinitely more interesting than part runs but Dory, as Eliot can attest, is not a likable character. In fact, she’s spent season after season making terribly selfish, terribly stupid decisions and roping her friends into paying the price for them. So yes, it’s awful what she goes through — the torture, the captivity, the brainwashing — but even the worst of it struggles to stir up any empathy for a young woman who’s left so much destruction in her wake. What does make Dory’s storyline worth watching though is Shawkat’s performance. The girl’s got range, and it’s on full display as Dory finally stops fighting her constraints and start reexamining herself. All of Season 4 is essentially one big, unethical therapy session for Dory, and we see the effects of it plainly in the way Shawkat uses her physicality and facial expressions to breathe life into this broken shell of a human being.

By the end, we’re left weirdly rooting for Drew and Portia and Eliot while still laughing at their flaws, their inherent quirks, and ignorant outlooks that probably won’t change. They’re not bad people, they’re just self-centered and vain, by-products of the time they’re living in. But Dory, she’s something else. A woman both consumed by and afraid of her inner darkness who’s still figuring out what she’s capable of, how far down the rabbit hole she’d go for what she wants. Whether she deserves forgiveness or a second chance isn’t so much the question as whether she’ll actually afford herself either of those things. The show has an answer, though you’ll have to wait until its final episode to know what it is. Until then, there are twists and turns you won’t see coming, and some surprisingly thoughtful commentary hidden behind the sharp satirical jabs and situational humor that Search Party does so well. It’s hard to believe it’s still such an under-the-radar comedy.

‘Search Party’ Season 4 is now streaming on HBO Max.

It seems hard to believe that Rico Nasty is only just making her television debut after dropping her debut album Nightmare Vacation, but that’s exactly what happened on the latest episode of The Tonight Show. Rico turned in an exaggerated, elegant performance of her album single “OHFR?” dressed up in yet another elaborate costume. This time, she was inspired by Marie Antoinette, decked out with a massive beehive and Victorian-era gown and flanked by ladies in waiting, providing a stark contrast to her raspy, rebellious lyrics and thundering soundtrack.

Interestingly, although last night was her first television performance, she’s actually been on TV before, in a roundabout way. Keen-eyed fans caught a slick visual reference to Rico in the latest season of Big Mouth, where a Rico Nasty poster adorns the walls of Missy’s cousins, Lena and Quinta, along with City Girls, SZA, and more. Rico’s music was also featured on the Insecure soundtrack and in the animated Scooby-Doo reboot movie Scoob!

Watch Rico Nasty’s elegant performance of “OHFR?” on The Tonight Show above.

Nightmare Vacation is out now via Atlantic Records. Get it here.

Rico Nasty is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Conflicted, the debut film from indie Buffalo rap label Griselda Records, is not an example of great cinema. To its credit, it isn’t really trying to be. It is a fairly standard tale of street life, following the pattern set by the label’s music from rappers Benny The Butcher, Conway The Machine, and Westside Gunn. It’s also a relatively serviceable vehicle for the group’s music via the film’s soundtrack, which plays over about half its scenes, showcasing crew’s collaborations with artists and producers from outside their usual, self-contained circle. They even sport their own merchandise in the movie, despite two of the three core members actually starring in it as pivotal drivers of the plot.

In that way, though, Conflicted is more than just a two-hour long commercial for Griselda’s latest compilation. It’s a part of a proud tradition within hip-hop of rap labels independently producing their own films, just because they can and just to say they did it. Cash Money Records, No Limit, and Roc-A-Fella Records have all bypassed the major studio system and Hollywood itself in order to put people in the producers, directors, and actors’ chairs who might never ordinarily be afforded the opportunity to say they made a movie. While the quality of these films varies wildly, in their own ways they are classics to those of us who grew up looking up to these rappers, producers, and flashy music executives who came up in the places we did and told stories that were familiar to us, if not extravagantly crafted.

When Master P and No Limit Records released I’m Bout It in 1997, no independent rap label had ever attempted anything like it before. While there had certainly been films about hip-hop and starring rappers, such as 1985’s Krush Groove and Run-DMC’s Tougher Than Leather in 1988, these films were produced by professional film studios (Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, respectively). They starred rappers and told stories similar to those of the artists’ music, and they were made with relatively big budgets and distributed via traditional means, screening in theaters nationwide as a way to recoup what ultimately amounted to elaborate marketing campaigns for the artists featured therein. They even both feature extended performance sequences, making them more like musicals or even super-extended music videos designed more to show off the music than any of the featured players’ acting chops.

This isn’t to say that when I’m Bout It hit the streets, it was hailed as a cinematic masterpiece. The film barely has a Rotten Tomatoes page to this day as it garnered few if any professional reviews and released directly to video, preventing it from making a splash at the box office. But, as noted in a 2017 retrospective in the Houston Press, it was an achievement for other reasons. The audacity of Master P’s gamble — creating a low-budget, feature-length film, written, starring, and directed by what was effectively a bunch of amateurs — paid huge dividends when it came to brand building. Suddenly, No Limit Records wasn’t just an underground rap label from New Orleans. It was a bonafide multimedia conglomerate — at least, in the eyes of the rap media who covered the film and the fans who ate up the $20 copies of the VHS tape at record and video stores upon its release.

I’m Bout It proved that it could be done and that there were benefits behind doing it. While sales figures for the film are nonexistent, it almost certainly turned a profit; today, it can be found in the Turner Classic Movies library and streamed in the “Black films” sections of streaming services like Tubi. Licensing the rights to the film is undoubtedly lucrative when compared to its obviously minuscule budget, but more importantly, it’s fondly remembered by a generation of hip-hop fans as our own, hood Criterion Classic. Not only was No Limit able to follow up the success of I’m Bout It with a string of similarly low-budget releases throughout the late ‘90s and early 2000s, but the proof of concept was also enough to get one of those films, 1998’s I Got The Hook Up, a theatrical release through Dimension Films. It grossed over $10 million at the box office on a budget of just $3 million. It’s also important because it was the wedge that opened the door for other rap labels, while the promise of similar successes tantalized them to follow suit.

Soon, Roc-A-Fella Records, the then-burgeoning brainchild of Dame Dash, Jay-Z, and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, had its own string of cheaply-made crime dramas out in the world, beginning with 1998’s Streets Is Watching. While that film strung together Jay’s music videos into a tenuous plot, the group truly nailed narrative storytelling with a spate of movies released over the course of the early 2000s. With State Property, Paper Soldiers (the film debut of Kevin Hart), and the label’s magnum opus, Paid In Full, Roc-A-Fella proved that low-budget didn’t have to mean low-quality. That isn’t to say that all those films were “good,” per se, but they made money, added prestige to the label’s slick presentation as a big-budget, well-rounded enterprise, and continued to put independent filmmakers to work without waiting for a say-so from a Spielberg or a Bruckheimer. The stories were ones that spoke to the inner-city experience, from the perspective of people who lived it. And one of those stories became the standard against which plenty of these narratives are compared to this day.

Paid In Full, the 1980s crack-era period film Roc-A-Fella released in 2002, is the very definition of a cult classic. It was also the moment the Roc put it all together and made a movie that could stand the test of time. Directed by Drumline’s Charles Stone III, the film displays a polish that critical favorite hood classics before it had while maintaining the grit and realism of its indie rap label-produced forebears. It also smartly put established actors in the lead roles, with Mekhi Phifer and Wood Harris depicting Mitch and Ace, the twin cores of the film, and relegating its sole rapper, Cam’ron, to a supporting role that made the best use of his talents. Rather than demanding drama or stoicism, Cam is allowed to be funny, to show off the personality that made him such a charismatic figure of aughties rap.

The laughs here were intentional, unlike in many other hood movies, making them a modern-day fixture of social media meme-ology. With endless quotables now seemingly on the tips of hip-hop fans’ tongues at a moment’s notice (my personal favorite: “N****s get shot every day, b”), Paid In Full occupies a unique position in the continuum of hip-hop’s everlasting flirtation with the silver screen. It was a lesson Roc-A-Fella took into its State Property sequel a few years later, allowing Beanie Sigel to play up the funny and N.O.R.E. to portray a character named — I shit you not — El Pollo Loco. It’s a lesson more of these films could stand to learn. A little levity lightens up the grim fare and allows rappers to be entertaining, bringing the charm that makes us fall in love with them on records to the screen.

So, where does Conflicted land within this continuum? Look, it’s no Goodfellas. More of the movie is given over to the characters delivering wooden, on-the-nose dialogue about their emotional states and the film’s themes than actually showing us these things. The music, while meeting the usual Griselda standards, isn’t very well utilized, either blaring over montage sequences just randomly blasting in the backgrounds of scenes where no dialogue needs to be heard (and it’s pretty on-the-nose too). And there’s a truly ill-advised rape scene that could have been left on the cutting room floor along with a lot of filler shots. But the point isn’t to make great art, despite the protestations of Westside Gunn (if you’re reading this, please, no smoke is required) and the rest of the Buffalo cohort. The point is that they made a movie that showed the world Buffalo in all its glory and downfall, right down to their consonant-mangling accents (hearing one character refer to her business card, then the library discombobulated my brain for a full thirty seconds). It’s a story that couldn’t and wouldn’t be told any other way. It’s the story, for better or worse, of Griselda Records, and in that, it’s a triumph.

After 2020 was rather tumultuous year for video games, with situations in the world forcing studios everywhere to figure out how to remotely create something fantastic, there was some hope that 2021 would lead to a more normal year. Early signs, unfortunately, point to no, serving as a stark reminder that the waves of 2020 are going to be felt well beyond last year in the gaming industry.

We’re already starting to see some of it from what was supposed to be a major 2021 release. Hogwarts Legacy, the highly-anticipated Harry Potter RPG, is now going to come out in 2022. This is presumably to make up for all the time they lost in 2020 adjusting to changing landscapes.

Video games are incredibly difficult to make, especially in the modern age. It’s in many ways a miracle that any video game comes out at all with the constant moving parts, changes in scope, absurd work hours, bugs, quality analysis for those bugs, internal reviews, polishing, and everything else that goes into the process. It’s all held together with duct tape and staples, which was enough until the last decade or so. Yes, video games have never been perfect, but generally, a video game would come out and work. How much you enjoyed it was generally more due to artistic vision than if the game itself worked.

As video games have grown, the industry itself has struggled to adapt to the new technology. Simply getting by on hopes and prayers doesn’t work the way it used to, and the results have been mixed. Masterpieces still come out every year, but they’re frequently the result of endless crunching with absurdly high budgets. Over the last 10 years, the new video game norm is to crunch as much as possible, hope the game works, and even if it doesn’t, you’ll just send out patches until it does work while hoping it was rated high enough in critic review scores that you can get a bonus for the endless crunching. If you’re lucky, you got overtime pay for your work.

None of this is to sound like an old man and say video games were better in the old days. Crunch always existed, releases have always been imperfect, and some bugs would get fixed in follow-up prints of games depending on when you bought the disc. The industry has never been perfect, but it has felt like it has been reaching a critical mass as of late, one that a year like 2020 put on full display in all the wrong ways.

No better example of that was Cyberpunk 2077, a game that was originally teased all the way back in 2012, promised developers and fans they wouldn’t crunch to make it, did that anyway, and the result was a broken mess that PlayStation removed from its shop because developer CD Projekt issued refunds since the game was so broken. None of this is to say that the only reason Cyberpunk was bad was because of 2020 — a game that broken has deep systemic issues from the start of development — but it is a great example of how a modern game can fail when it follows modern development standards.

Now take that kind of production cycle and apply it to any other studio in 2020. If video games are that hard to make in general, when you add a worldwide pandemic on top of that, it’s pretty surprising that they’re still coming out at all. This is why it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone when games are being delayed in 2021. Hogwarts Legacy is the first major release to be delayed, and I strongly suspect it will not be the last. Developers essentially lost an entire year of normal development time for their games, and 2021 is going to be a mulligan year that gives them their time back.

We’re still going to have games this year, don’t worry. However, let’s cut the devs a little slack when the inevitable delays start. They didn’t want to delay it. They just want to make you the video game possible.