Tbf I’ve read that they missed their third deadline for an early access release. I was interested in the game but if what you have after like 5 years still isn’t enough for even early gameplay scrutiny, maaaaybe some major mistakes were made. And then never addressed. For half a decade.
I’ll hate on big companies and executives alllllll day, but I’m an equal opportunity hater whenever it’s warranted.
It’s all on the executives right? All responsibility lays with them. The workers just do their job. If the product fails, it’s the executives responsibility.
In another post you also say that executive pay is too high.
I’m tired of these super generalized polarizing comments. “These bad guys up there” and all of that. Just stop that bs, there is no Karma here.
True for most screw-ups in gaming, yes, but not this time. The studio in question, Paradox Tectonic missed three Early Access deadlines. It sounds like Tectonic bit off more than they could chew. I like bashing execs as much as the next guy, but if you miss three deadlines at any job, you’re probably getting the axe.
Even ignoring the workers’ solidarity aspect of it:
It is actually a really good practice to break those login/usage streaks with ALL services. I read a lot of ebooks and I generally will have a “streak” of even two or three years with amazon kindle since I try to read for at least 20 minutes every night. Over the past year or so I’ve started to migrate out of the amazon ecosystem to better support authors and… I definitely find myself hesitating when picking my next book because I COULD read this non-kindle book or… I could read this other book I have via kindle (the prices ARE good) and make number go up. And Amazon realized that we don’t always have an internet connection so they’ll log that to prevent the old streak breaking that came from not bothering to connect to the hotel wifi.
And the same happens with games. I dip my toe into ESO once or twice a year and it always amuses me how much of that is geared up to make you log-in every single day for a month.
It’s garbage for learning a language but it’s phenomenal for memorizing and gameifying learning nouns and verbs. I’ve been going through the Japanese lessons one jump at a time and it’s been great to brush up on all the words I’ve forgotten.
Yeah, half-heartedly doing French in Duolingo for a few years meant that I knew a bunch of words and could read stuff okay, but communicating and thinking in French was incredibly difficult. I took a couple of classes IRL to fill in those other skills, so now I can actually get by as long as people are a bit patient with me. It was easier for me to learn that stuff than other people in my classes because I had Duolingo experience, but Duolingo definitely isn’t enough on its own.
I briefly wrote articles for an oldschool PC hardware outlet (HardOCP if anyone remembers)… And I’m surprised any such sites are still alive. Mine shut down, and not because they wanted to.
Why?
Who reads written text over their favorite YouTube personality, or the SEO garbage that pops up first on their search, or first party articles/recs on steam, and so on? No one, except me apparently, as their journalistic integrity aside, I’m way too impatient for youtube videos, and am apparently the only person on the planet that believes influencers as far as I can throw them.
And that was before Discord, Tiktok, and ChatGPT really started eating everything. And before a whole generation barely knew what a website is.
They cited Eurogamer as an offender here, and thats an outstanding/upstanding site. I’m surprised they can even afford to pay that much as a business.
And I’m not sure what anyone is supposed to do about it.
This article was written by Luke Plunkett, who used to work at Kotaku. Some of his past articles include real whiz-bangers like: “Oh No, There Are Women In Battlefield”, and “There Is No Saving Cyberpunk 2077.” That pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
Sensationalist e-begging for clicks with ragebait articles. Nothing new from a former Kotaku employee.
And our site was like the opposite. Uh… let’s just say many Lemmy users wouldn’t like its editor, but he did not hold back gut punches, and refused to watch his site turn into a clickbait farm.
Hey man, I was a Hardforum user for as long as I can Remember and Kyle was a straight shooter. Even when he jumped to Intel, nobody gave a second thought about his honesty! The problem is that for every Kyle, we have 10 Ryan Shrouts. He was (unlike kyle) one of these writers that was consistently on a high horse talking down to the peasants. Kyle had a short fuse but you always knew where he was coming from. I don’t think lemmy users would dislike Kyle at all.
Off topic: Kyle was one of the few CPU testers besides Ian of Anandtech (much later) that recognized the Utility of running benches at 720p to remove GPU bottlenecks. HardOCP is missed to this day.
Off topic: Kyle was one of the few CPU testers besides Ian of Anandtech (much later) that recognized the Utility of running benches at 720p to remove GPU bottlenecks. HardOCP is missed to this day.
This sounds so logical today it’s mind boggling that others didn’t come to this conclusion.
only casually read stuff on hardocp around the sandy/ivy bridge generation. but yes a good chunk of it died to video coverage of the content. its why for example Gamers Nexus has the reverse approach where the video content is their main priority (and audience) and they maintain their own website because thats what they wanted to do.
From the reader’s experience, sites like IGN became completely unusable without ad blockers; I still remember the X-Men (2? Origins: Wolverine?) ad where Wolverine slashed through the page in a flash animation that prevented you from clicking on the thing you wanted to read underneath it. Then the information that you wanted could have been communicated in a headline, and it just becomes frustrating. That said, I’ll still reviews if they didn’t annoy me too much on my way there. I’ll still read Schreier when it isn’t paywalled. I read NY Times articles like the one they just did on Alexey Pajitnov. Rebekah Valentine and Jordan Middler do great work. In a lot of other cases, opinionated essays on video games benefit greatly from supporting footage in video format, and even without ad blockers, the YouTube experience is far less annoying on average.
You can tune out and do something passive while the ad plays, and eventually the information you wanted will appear, as opposed to trying desperately to find your article as you scroll and having pop ups and other things interrupt you as you read. Perhaps this is all just a matter of perspective though.
Who reads written text over their favorite YouTube personality, or the SEO garbage that pops up first on their search, or first party articles/recs on steam, and so on?
Few layers to that.
SEO still heavily favors sites like IGN and Eurogamer. Most people aren’t looking at the by-line to see who actually wrote the article.
The other much more insidious aspect? A lot of the legacy influencer outlets ARE still using contractors.
Remap (formerly Waypoint) is awesome and are generally well regarded for having great rates for both written and on-air content. They are also a very “lean” org consiting of three people but pay Janet Garcia to show up for a podcast every week and even a stream or two a month. Janet is ALSO a “cohort” on MinnMax where it is less clear who are contractors and who are core staff.
And, to clarify, I don’t have a (significant) problem with that. It is how you get a broader range of voices out there. But it is still similar to having most of your writing team be contractors (… also, Remap contracts out a decent number of articles).’
But then you look at other outlets. Gamespot spent years HEAVILY dependent on “reaction” content. If you ever watched Jonathan Ferguson talk about guns in video games, that was Dave Jewitt’s work. And… they fired Dave two-ish weeks ago. Haven’t heard if Jonathan plans to still do reaction content for them but you can bet they can find other contractors (like the douche bag who rants about armor).
And… on the other side of the Fandom family you have Giant Bomb. Who have outright fired two core staff members (Voidburger and Jason Oestreicher) as well as a regular collaborator from Fandom proper (Bayley) all so they could repurpose that funding for contractors. And… at this point there are good arguments that Mike Miniotti is in more content than most of the core staff.
So the influencer based outlets are rapidly doing the same. Some of it is just the necessity of working in a dying industry where funding is mostly dependent on whether fans “vibe” with you. But it is only a matter of time until we have the same content farms. Hell, I want to say that is exactly what Fandom DID until they bought cnet gaming.
Are you sure about Giant Bomb? AFAIK Jess, Jason, and Bailey were all laid off by Fandom. The GB crew even spoke about being caught off-guard both times, and how bad they thought those layoff decisions were.
So yes. Giant Bomb laid off two staff and replaced them with contractors.
The various editors at the blog sites generally don’t want to do mass layoffs either. But the end result is the same. People lose their jobs so someone can get paid much less and have no benefits do that job instead.
Damn I actually like the firearms series, and the “douchebag” who rants about armor. I really like when they have Dave Rawlings (the sword guy) and the armor guy together and they’re just needing out over their passions.
Yeah, Rawlings is awesome. I forget if Matt Easton ever did anything for GS or if he only does Insider (and scholagladiatoria) or what.
For me it is mostly that everyone else has fun and does the “Okay, this wouldn’t work but it is really cool. It might be inspired by XYZ”. Whereas the armor guy just gets incredibly smug and complains that the armor on that Ork isn’t historically accurate.
And yeah. Had a bad feeling when they skipped the week after the Fandom layouts were announced. And last week (the ArmA 3 DLC one) has a note from Dave saying that is the final episode because he was fired.
For what its worth, Jonathan and the rest of the Royal Armouries do weekly-ish shows. Less video game oriented but the same gun nerd logic and the discussion of historical context.
the only person on the planet that believes influencers as far as I can throw them.
This phrase doesn’t work though. Unless you’re some body builder type, and can throw them really really far.
But even that doesn’t make sense either. Because if you said
“I only trust this guy 18 feet…”
the other person would say
“…18 feet? What? What does THAT mean???”
And you would say “What??? You think you can throw a man 19 feet??? Ok. Go grab him. Go. Go grab that man, and throw him 19 feet. Show me.”
At about this time I think they would just call the cops, assuming you have mental problems, and violent tendancies.
Which to be fair…yeah. You’re over here talking about how far you can pick another man up against their will, and how far you can throw them.
Although, how have we never made that an olympic event? You get a bunch of fat guys in a bar, and some body builder muscleheads, and see who wins. If the fat guy can escape, his time to escape is measured. Fastest fat guy gets the medal. Or, if he gets thrown, farthest throw distance wins the medal.
That read exactly as a footnote on a Terry Pratchett book, if you have never read Discworld you should, it has the same sense of humor that you do. For example another popular saying being bastardized:
Give a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life."
Does Japan not have… like… an anti monopoly board. This is an insane merger to even consider. It would make an entity so large it could dominate multiple media industries.
At RPS we like Alices. When somebody comes along with the name “Alice” you don’t just say “oh hi” like some insolent rube. You nod with solemn respect and you say, “Alice”. An Alice is someone you should not take lightly, nor take for granted, nor leave unmonitored. For they will destroy worlds and build better ones while you are not looking. This is dangerous and exciting. Alices are a force to be reckoned with. To treat an Alice poorly is to invite shame, dishonour, and contempt. Here are some of the best Alices in video games!
But that’s it, readers. That’s literally ALL the Alices we can possibly think of. What about you? Can you think of any Alices who deserve to be celebrated?
Guys job will probably fall off a window after this, but God he probably felt awesome when publishing
Small, weak people need an excuse for why they feel so small. One that deflects the blame from where it truly belongs–on them, for lacking the strength and courage to be better than they are. For lacking the spine to take a more difficult, more noble road.
So just believe it’s not your fault, it’s some mighty shadowy conspiracy thing of great darkness. Not just you being a coward and weakling. Much more preferable.
Yeah. Xbox should be running a division that looks very similar to Steam. Hell, I have an alt history in my head where Microsoft pushes streaming forward by years using the Xbox for leverage.
Looking at an unfinished game is the equivalent of looking at an unfinished painting, your seeing the first brush strokes maybe some sketches but you have no realistic idea what the end result will be like.
Looking at leaks is a pontless waste of time, the fact they included personal information just makes the “hackers” scummy
Buying out competition and throwing out the workers confident that investors won’t back a small dog against a big one
In an investor run economy, competition means you might lose a bet. For an investor its better to reduce competition than lose bets. This is originally why anti trust legislation was created: The market needs to be forced to compete or it will amalgamate into a giant blob of noncompeting assets.
High taxes exist to reduce accumulation of assets and slow down the snowballing effect of huge investors. This is what the trump tax cuts look like.
This is originally why anti trust legislation was created
If you look at the history of anti-trust legislation, some of its first uses and biggest targets were labor organizers. Under the Sherman Antitrust Act, one of the first and most notable cases was the US lawsuit against the Workingmen’s Amalgamated Council (also known as the “Triple Alliance” of teamsters, scalesmen, and packers) over what was then the largest labor action in US history.
It wasn’t until the 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act that unions were granted safe harbor from anti-trust provisions. And it took until 1941 for the courts to finally fully decriminalize labor actions - a process that was ultimately reversed starting in the 1960s under Nixon, and extended under Ford, Carter, and then Reagan.
High taxes exist to reduce accumulation of assets and slow down the snowballing effect of huge investors.
That’s the Keynesian approach, certainly. But the Chicago School that came to dominate US economics during the Volcker Era suggested instead that we can adjust the Federal Funds rate to keep malinvestment from derailing an economy. And that this strategy means asset accumulation is now safe and profitable for large corporate interests.
Large investment banks are actually good, because they give us a steady and constant flow of price information on a private market. And since price discovery is the real goal of regulation, the advent of these mega-banks means we can let the institutions regulate themselves without any conceivable downsi- sound of the 2008 market crash
Having other areas of your field with better pay/conditions/benefits can put more pressure on even non union places. Since there will be better contions elsewhere, there will be an expectation of a level of compensation/more people looking at those union places, requiring even the non union locations to at least increase something to compete for talent.
Decades and decades of no consequences for their actions. If your bonus gets bigger despite every meaningful kpi you aren’t are great CEO, you are a capitalist exploiting your resources.
Let me share my Xbox experience? I’m mid-40s. Owned Xboxes since literally the OG Xbox 1.
I originally bought this thing to play with my brother split screen. Nowadays I want to play split screen with my son.
Yet somehow there’s no fucking split screen games anymore. The last two or three AAA games I purchased I played for a few hours and then never loaded again.
And the other day when I loaded up call of duty Black ops 3 to play zombies (this is like a 10 year old game now) I found that because I let my Xbox Gold live whatever the fuck subscription expire, I can’t play “online” and use my unlocked items even though I’m doing local play.
So from this guy what in the fucking fuck xbox. This is some kind of device designed to clean out my wallet for eternity and not deliver what I actually want.
I pretty much exclusively use my Xbox as a YouTube player now.
You might be right, probably worth looking into. I just have so little time to invest in new titles or any learning curve or really any game that takes a ton of grinding before it’s fun
You can but don’t need to grind any of the Borderlands games until super late finished the game 3 times with the same character already end game, and by that time it’s fun to just start a new character of a different class. Handsome collection, playing 2 in particular is the best. And that collection works for up to 4 player locally
I’m having a similar experience with the PS5. Been playing since Gran Turismo on the PS1 and have it in the living room with multiple controllers. Thing is…like you said there’s no couch coop anymore, if 3 of us want to shoot zombies on the same map it just can’t but 2 player is there…with giant black bars on the sides to make it 4:3 on my 65” tv.
We’ve spent more time playing Balatro than COD the last few weeks, smaller cheaper games are simply a better deal right now with the price tag and all the mtx
That really sucks. Consoles these days are just pcs with expensive libraries. If you can muster playing on pc with your son, the games are cheaper and I highly recommend it. On steam, you can filter by local coop and hook up two controllers to get a similar experience. You can even try emulating older games like on the ps2.
But on a serious note, something as obvious as “Managed Democracy” and quitting your job by signing up for “Early Biovat Reprocessing” and the characters literally saying things like “HELLDIVERS NEVER DIE!” Before being obliterated by a 380? It’s satire. Satire is funny. Like hahaha look at stupid Facist regime, I’ll role play along to get into the mood of the game because the idea is so fucking dumb it’s funny with amazing gameplay.
It’s willful ignorance at some point. I don’t think media literacy has much to do with it. It’s simply listening for what they want to hear, then ignoring the rest, just as real facists desire.
I mean, yeah. It’s an industry that has a near-unlimited supply of starry-eyed fresh college grads to throw into the meat grinder, and the executives of these companies absolutely love to take advantage of that. Maybe if enough devs leave the industry they might finally have to start respecting the people who work for them out of necessity.
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