I could look up the etymology of the term in the last panel, but I can't imagine why I would. What a fucking delight! Why would I ever want to know the specifics? Every moment I turn it over in my mind reveals rich new contours.

Insomniac's Wolverine is completely bizarre. After the success of Spider-Man - arguably, Spider-Men - it never occurred to me that the game wouldn't ball. That it would not occupy the halls of Elite Ball Knowledge. Except it's goofy as fuck. Faces look goony. There's a motorcycle section. Quick-Time Events don't require timing, and the game is not only oppressively linear but you follow a literal line.

Insomniac is one of the Great Old Houses. One of my "special interests" - joining Battle Rap, Tformers, and Sherlock Holmes - is the idea that games have lineage. I talk about it too much, arguably. They are not organisms, I guess. The people make them are, though, and in concert they constitute a kind of meta-organism. When I look at Wolverine, it doesn't seem like a game from Insomniac. It seems like a game from someone else. Is it a Ship of Theseus situation? It can't possibly just be the loss of Ted Price. What environmental pressures, internal to the company, affected this output? Sony has been the inarguable master of first-party system movers for a generation or two.

What happened?

(CW)TB out.