Plastic cases, discs, etc are expensive and degrade over time. Consoles will break down. 50 years from now there’ll be too much history to keep making copies of everything worth saving. If we do want a video game preservation law, make it digital.
Emulation and piracy should be legal for games older than ~20 years, or if the parent company goes under. Online games should be required to make an offline mode patch before shutting down.
As a related example, my parents have a bunch of bookshelves packed with everything they bought over the years. And as a kid I never touched any of it because the books had become all gross and yellowed. Physical game archives will last a couple decades longer but in the end it’ll be the same result.
didnt even think about that… but how do university libraries for example then keep up their valuable - or even more interesting - their non valuable old inventory? Never thought that degration was THAT potent
CDs and DVDs are digital media. There is no degradation of the content when you convert a fragile physical disk into a dumped ISO, and the dumped ISO can be stored on an arbitrarily large number of devices. Stuff like physical books or analog media (vinyl records, for example) are worth caring about physical degradation for, but a “physical copy” of a PC software disc is just a more fragile way to store the exact same ones and zeroes that can be stored on actually resilient media.
Yes, the two hour limit affects game design. Based on what I’ve read about Blue Prince, it probably didn’t affect that one much at all. The business model always affects the game design. When games were expecting to be rentals, the first few levels would be front loaded with the best that the game had to offer, and then later levels would be more phoned in. In the arcades, games would be louder to catch more attention, they’d be harder to make you put in another quarter, they’d reduce downtime to get the next person on the machine, etc.
When games were expecting to be rentals, the first few levels would be front loaded with the best that the game had to offer, and then later levels would be more phoned in
Still happens today. First impressions matter, budgets are finite, and sometimes reviewers only play the first few parts.
sometimes reviewers only play the first few parts.
Not just the reviewers unfortunately, games shed players at every step, it's why most games are front-loaded and fall off the further you get into them.
I always find it interesting to see the percentages drop on Steam achievements when you progress through a game. The drop-off curve is very different from game to game. I always wonder about the people who drop off just before finishing the game.
I always wonder about the people who drop off just before finishing the game.
They probably don't want the game to end, there's a certain finality that comes with an ending. I've had this happen to me for a few games and books but i usually power through.
Yeah, the theory if front-loaded design is just reality of game development reality. No, D2 Ac4 wasn’t limited because of rentals - it was bad,because one year of crunch and still nit enough time does this to a product.
Halo1 last third is bad, because they did not have enough time, nit because they cared about rentals.
Game content dev generally starts at the beginning.
I want to thank people who were talking about Blue Prince because I was able to recommend it to a friend who loves puzzles. she’s enjoying it a lot.
I’ve been doing stuff in both Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, but on the non-gacha front, I’ve started Disco Elysium. I haven’t gotten very far but I’m really enjoying it even if not knowing how bad I’m messing up makes me a bit anxious. I picked Inland Empire as my main skill(?) too.
otherwise, I’m planning on playing more Fields of Mistria, now that they’ve updated again. I love that game with a passion, and I can’t wait to see what more they add to it. I thought Stardew Valley was as good as it got, and while Fields of Mistria doesn’t have multiplayer (and that’s okay!) it ticks so many boxes for me, like for example, the shoujo laughs from Juniper spark so much joy. I don’t enjoy the mines in SDV, but in FoM, I definitely do!
Its a fun sandbox roguelike with an actually explorable world on the surface. One thing that is dumb is theres no moon on shared worlds. So you can’t do anything with the Essences you find. The Works is still accessible though and getting to hell itself is always a fun challenge.
Way too much Pokemon Rejuvenation. Basically the overwhelming majority of what I’ve been playing that isn’t PVZ Reflourished and fire emblem heroes on my phone on the bus too and from college.
I’ve been digging fucking deep with disco elysium this long weekend, started fresh after having dipped my toes in a tiny bit some years ago. 20 hours logged this weekend with more to come today.
The writing, worldbuilding, and atmosphere are actually just obnoxiously good.
It is the best written video game ever and it’s not particularly close either. It’s one of the best written pieces of media I’ve ever had the pleasure of consuming.
I’ve been playing Under Night In-Birth II. I had bought it last year but never actually played it. After this first week of matches I’d say it’s my favorite in this latest “generation” of figthing games.
I randomly bought Azure Striker Gunvolt on Switch, since I rememberd hearing good things about it when it came out, but it’s not much fun to play. It feels really unpolished, the levels and bosses are a bit on the annoying side and the combat gimmick, where you need to tag enemies with projectiles to be able to damage them, feels really bad to use as it’s slow and unsatisfying.
Everyone playing Blue Prince reminded me of La-Mulana, which I’ve been playing in the last few days. I’m a bit conflicted on it, since I like most of what the game does except for the combat which I find rather bad and unfairly punishing when considering how imprecise it is. I am enjoying the game, although I’m a bit worried it might be too long.
The puzzle part feels like Outer Wilds, but without the log to help you and it’s also a bit less linear, which I’m personally enjoying but I can see why it could be boring.
The platforming/navigation is a bit janky but usable after a while.
The combat is IMO absolute garbage (the bosses in particular are pretty bad fights that waste your time and the hitboxes are terrible) and wouldn’t be surprised if this is what makes most people quit.
For now at least, the exploration and puzzles overshadow the negatives, but they are pretty big negatives that are hard to ignore.
I wanted to love La-Mulana a lot. And I do love it for building some of the foundation that some huge greats like Fez and Tunic and Outer Wilds stand upon. But holy shit, the game doesn’t want you to love it. The combat and movement are so punishing in an entirely unfun way. I stopped playing after getting what I understand to be like 70-80% of the way through the content the game has to offer and by the last ~20% of that I was dreading playing.
It is a game I have to thank for making way for the existence of some of my favourite games, but I hate it nonetheless.
Something about it seems just so weirdly self-promotional, instead of “normal” engagement with the community. I never pay attention to usernames but I have noticed this kind of content from the guy on this community several times, and just checked his posts and it’s all YouTube promotion (although I admit the ones mentioning “Dani” might not be his, not 100% sure). No regular engagement with the community as just another gamer. I suspect that’s why the community does not seem to generally like these posts. It is why I certainly don’t. The vibes I get from the posts are way less “hey I am a game dev, I’d love some feedback on my game!” and more “SMASH that subscribe button” but from an English language learner who has not learned the tricks of clickbait titles and the ways people grow those channels, so instead we get these constant posts for their YouTube on Lemmy. Of course, my judgment could be off, I’m certainly not actually clicking the videos to confirm whether my suspicions are right or wrong. For all I know that video has a misleading title and is a tutorial on how to paint a ceiling.
However, it is on topic and I don’t make the rules, and there’s something to be said for unpopular stuff still being allowed. I’d personally want this gone as the self-promotion type of spam but hey, not my community, and I could have judged them wrong.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne