I’m digging indie titles taking some risks and trying new stuff. They’re usually decently cheap and fun with some friends. As AAA titles begin to adopt the new $80-85 price tags, indies have a time to shine.
i like your positivity. it’s true, except that the landscape for indies is also v grim rn. The kind of investors that fueled indie games of the past have dried up. Kickstarters for games still happen, but it isn’t the like the glory days. And discoverability is a nightmare, releasing an indie game these days is a bit like playing the lottery. But I’ll tell you, when a $20 or under indie game catches my attention, i’m pretty inclined to impulse buy. They are more enticing than the $80 games, for sure.
Fr. This year seemed like it was going to be pretty shit in regards to new releases, with the only things to catch my interest being the DLCs for rimworld, bannerlord, and Rogue Trader, and Arma Reforger.
But games like Beta Decay seem to be holding the torch for innovation. Can’t wait for that to be released.
I was playing Peak with my friends groups and one of us suddenly just said: “Is this the golden age of online Coop multiplayer?” And I have to agree.
We’ve been playing together for around 10 years. We’ve played legendary games like Left 4 Dead 2, Vermintide 2, overcooked 2, Portal 2 (a lot of sequels in this list), but lately had to search harder for similar quality experiences. Then we bought and installed Lethal Company on a whim and from the first second we were having so much fun. Something about the first person camera combined with directional voice chat makes this game incredibly immersive. We almost never roleplay, but in this game it only took a few minutes for us to start inhabiting our characters and screaming / joking as if we were them.
After playing this for tens of hours, our eye fell on R.E.P.O., a game with a similar conceit and fantastic reviews, and the added bonus of moving mouths. We took the jump, and again it was a slam dunk. Just checked and have been playing it for 18 hours already, and it seems like we just started. A similar feeling was had with Peak.
What all these games share, is an incredibly well designed gameplay loop that leaves enough freedom and space for creativity while still giving you a clear goal to work towards. In all cases everything is extremely immersive and tactile, forcing each of you to become your character in a way that other games fail to achieve.
They might seem basic or simple, but each successful case is so because of extremely intelligent design decisions. We’re looking forward to the new innovations still ahead of us in this space!
I like the term. It’s punchy, memorable, can be used jokingly and with sympathy, or in critical way to refer to the formulaic/generic side of a certain game.
The article is kinda lame. There is no breeding in any form. Check Conception games, that’s breeding.
Anyway, the game is great and fun. I saw many people saying “either stay F2P or go whale” and I agree. There is no reason to spend money on it. Progression speed is fine in my opinion.
I don’t even watch real horse racing and now I see why some people enjoy it. Horse-girls are more fun though, since it has a lot of story elements.
It feels like companies like this eventually become vehicles for like 5 people to make lots of money. You can't let go the guy making these mistakes - lining his pocket is the purpose of the company! It'd be ridiculous to fire him! Unless some of the other 4 people making money decide he's keeping them from lining their pockets.
No common folk is getting rich thanks to the stock market. Maybe richer if they’re lucky, but let’s not pretend it’s a tool for social mobility. It’s the opposite.
What incentive does a rich billionaire have for starting a business? Money? They have billions.
The only business they start are for themselves / the benefit of other businesses they own. Their wealth accumulates, and it is spent only to perpetuate its growth. It does not find its way into new businesses. It does not create new sector growth.
However, the people that want billions and don’t have it have a hell of an incentive to start a business and run it well.
It’s funny because companies are using AI for job listing’s and are simultaneously getting swamped by hundreds or thousands of applications due to AI as well. AI is completely messing up the job application process. Not like the process was any better prior to AI but now it’s an even bigger mess
I may be in the minority here, but I still like Phil Spencer… I feel like he’s a good dude who has been hamstrung by Microsoft from a larger overall management angle.
He’s certainly better than Don Mattrick, but admittedly Xbox has continued to suffer even after Don left.
Every time I saw an interview with Phil, he was amicable, seemed to actually understand game dev and the challenges, and he pushed to do things like Game Pass which have largely been successful.
Meanwhile Don was the guy who tried to copy off Nintendo’s motion gaming, pushed for making the Xbox do TV shit moreso than be a fun gaming console, and essentially said “get a 360” when people complained about lack of reliable internet access potentially preventing their ability to play any XB1 game.
Just because Don was bad, doesn’t make Phil good. He did a lot right at the start, but in the last few years he has basically driven Xbox as a brand into the ground. He’s the one that has pushed “everything is an Xbox” which basically means they have no product. Even the Xbox handheld is just a product from a different company with an Xbox logo slapped on.
He also pushed the primary focus of the company into a subscription service, rather than being a platform to play games. Not to mention, Microsoft has spent the last couple of years buying up a ton of competitors, only to shut down a ton of them and lay off the devs. Ultimately, I think he puts on this persona of being a “gamer” like you. But it’s clear by the actions of the company that he’s just another suit destroying the industry for profit.
True that no matter what - Phil IS a CEO, which means he’s not a good dude… but I guess I just look at it as shades of gray.
I think Microsoft decided it doesn’t want to do ANY kind of hardware, because of how poorly they did both in the X era, and in international markets like Japan…
And like you said - if Xbox becomes a brand rather than an actual piece of hardware, then there’s no reason to buy an Xbox. I had a 360 starting right before Halo 3 came out in 2007, but with every single one of their games being fully multi-platform with ZERO exclusives I never had a reason to get any of their systems after my original Elite.
Don Mattrick left Xbox in 2013. It was more than a decade ago. He may have ruined the XOne launch, but Spencer has had all the time and money in the world to rectify his mistakes and, so far, has only worsened them to the point that most doubt that a new Xbox will exist at all. Nintendo was on the brink of disaster after the Wii U, and managed to turn their fates around in half the time and with a fraction of the money. Why couldn’t Spencer?
In all these years, Spencer’s legacy has been of failed deals, shutting down/letting go multiple studios, and moronic attempts at building AAA and GAAS games on the back of seasonal contractors. We should stop blaming Mattrick for things that happened a decade after he left the company.
Don Mattrick left Xbox in 2013. It was more than a decade ago. He may have ruined the XOne launch, but Spencer has had all the time and money in the world to rectify his mistakes and, so far, has only worsened them to the point that most doubt that a new Xbox will exist at all.
Xbox’s brand was one that gained all of its clout basically as a result of Halo for the original console, and then pretty much almost the entirety of the 360 era. Damaging a brand is easy to do, and the consequences are long-standing. True that plenty of time has passed… but I still think that the main issue is that Microsoft is still pulling the strings that damage the Xbox brand.
Nintendo was on the brink of disaster after the Wii U, and managed to turn their fates around in half the time and with a fraction of the money. Why couldn’t Spencer?
Because Nintendo is completely independent, and is controlled wholly by their own CEO… they are not a division of a larger shitty company interested in Copilot and Window 11 subscriptions.
In all these years, Spencer’s legacy has been of failed deals, shutting down/letting go multiple studios, and moronic attempts at building AAA and GAAS games on the back of seasonal contractors. We should stop blaming Mattrick for things that happened a decade after he left the company.
I’m not blaming Mattrick DIRECTLY for anything that’s happened in the last 10 years… but I AM blaming Microsoft as a whole probably forcing Phil’s hands, based on the interviews I watched with both Mattrick and Phil back in the day.
I really do think Phil likes games and is basically having to fly a plane that Microsoft keeps taking away parts from. I don’t think someone who actually worked on games like Phil did early in his career wanted to close the studio that made HiFi Rush.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d love to see some evidence showing Phil coming across as even half as bad as ANY interview or stage presentation with Mattrick.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is bigger than 1 good dude. Remember when this one executive threatened to pull MS out of an entire nation because the CMA had an objection regarding the ABK merger? For every one Phil, there are probably 9 of these rich pricks.
Either he’s been selling the AI kool aid for so long that he actually believes his own bullshit, or he’s just stuck in “must sell AI for all things at all times always” mode. Either way it’s a new level of depravity for these exec assholes.
he’s been selling the AI kool aid for so long that he actually believes his own bullshit
I worked for an Internet startup in the ‘90s and at one point we were sucking up to R. J. Reynolds’ venture capital division for more funding. This tobacco company had so much fucking money they had actually branched out into venture capitalism to do something with it. The VCs came to visit us one day; we were in a non-smoking office and these assholes spent the entire day literally chain-smoking in the meeting room. We had not much ventilation and the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see to the end of the hallway. I kept walking past the meeting room and loudly coughing and my bosses eventually sent me home.
We ended up not getting any money from them. The only good part of this story is that these guys have all surely died horrible deaths from cancer or emphysema by now. But in order to sell the lie that cigarettes aren’t harmful, these R. J. Reynolds executives had first convinced themselves of it. The human capacity for self-delusion is truly remarkable.
aftermath.site
Aktywne