I think “mandatory physical versions” kinda misses the point of the issue, tbh. It’s bad digital rights laws that are the cause of the problems that you’ve mentioned, not a lack of physical media. DRM has been around a lot longer than digital downloads of games, and shutting down a game’s online services affects purchasers of physical disks just as much as digital downloaders.
Besides, mass-producing physical media is expensive, and I’d rather not give publishers another excuse to make games even more expensive than they already are.
Is there another meaning to “PSA” that isn’t “public service announcement”? It confuses me being in the title as this entire post is written as a suggestion / CTA, not a PSA.
M-DISC (Millennial Disc) is a write-once optical disc technology introduced in 2009 by Millenniata, Inc.[1] and available as DVD and Blu-ray discs.[2]
M-DISC’s design is intended to provide archival media longevity.[3][4] M-Disc claims that properly stored M-DISC DVD recordings will last up to 1000 years.[5] The M-DISC DVD looks like a standard disc, except it is almost transparent with later DVD and BD-R M-Disks having standard and inkjet printable labels.
Those will outlive you.
You can get an M-DISC-capable burner on Amazon for $35, and M-DISC media for about $3/pop, each of which will store 100GB.
GOG is probably more-suited than Steam for this, since it’s aimed around letting you download the installers, and they make a game being DRM-free a selling point and clearly indicate it in their store.
But you can just install a DRM-free Steam game — there are some games that don’t have any form of DRM on Steam, and don’t tie themselves to Steam running or anything, if you’re worried about Steam dying — and then archive and save the directory off somewhere. Might need a bit more effort if you’re on Linux and trying to save copies of Proton-using games, since there’s also a WINEPREFIX directory that needs to be saved. And then you can stuff that on whatever archival media you want.
Now, that’s not going to work if a game makes use of some kind of DRM, but you specified that you were looking for DRM-free titles, so should be okay on that front.
Is this a law that specifically only applies to AAAs, or are we just shutting down literally all of indie gaming? If the former, how do you legally draw the line between who is and isn't allowed to release digital-only titles? Even just basing it on the size of the company would effectively mean that large publishers may only release large projects and never smaller budget titles.
Right? I grew up in oblivion so when Skyrim came out with its dull brownish greys I was super disappointed, still can’t really get into the game that much. Then a miracle happened and the Witcher 3: blood and wine came out. Toussaint was such a breath of fresh air, it reminded me that why I loved fantasy games was to feel like I was in a fantasy
Fingers crossed this is just due to particular weather in the screenshots. The meshes and textures look great, but the post processing immediately threw me off. At least that’s something easy to fix via Reshade and mods.
Don’t go back. Geralt’s relationship is… complicated. Personally I’m a Yennifer fan, mostly because of Geralt’s history with Triss. Triss knew that Geralt’s memory was gone a while back and took advantage of that, even though she knew that Geralt really was with Yennifer. So… I was always salty.
That being said, this is a game I recommend playing again someday. So just choose Triss next time. Enjoy Yenn, IMO they compliment each other well vs Triss who is just obsessed. Triss’ relationship isn’t as healthy
For me Yennefer seemingly popped into existence at the end of the last game but even then it wasn’t clear what she was to Geralt. I guess that’s a way to interpret the “took advantage of” line but to me it sounded more like it was about how seemingly half the women in this world is trying to seduce Geralt and Triss succeeded… She didn’t strike as particularly obsessive neither. If that’s why Geralt is upset at her I don’t see why he’s not also upset at his other friends who turned a blind eye and didn’t mention Yennefer.
Anyways I’m more upset about the game seemingly overriding my choice with Triss than ultimately ending up with Yen. I’m not sure how to to roleplay a Geralt who up until this point didn’t care for Yen but suddenly divined that he fucked it up with Triss so she’s the only option left…
And I don’t know if I’ll ever fully replay this game, it’s simply too long
It’s too short for most games I play, because they backload their interest and gameplay excessively. The first two hours are generally the worst example of the actual game. Frustrates me that devs don’t have the sense to make a demo that showcases the game instead of either nothing or just the beginning, but if a dev does the beginning and lets you carry your save into the full game, you can use the demo as intro and then buy with two more hours to put it through its paces (or already know you won’t need to refund). Still not a smart way to sell your game when the early game is worse and a more focused demo would more effectively and efficiently engage potential players who don’t want to sink time into every demo, but it’s a compromise solution for people who will spend time with the demo and not wander away without buying into the game if they had a good time.
Also, anything with a character creator or other such lengthy setup to get playing just doesn’t work with only two hours of running time as the window.
I’m skeptical that there’s a filter like this over the whole game. If you look at the all of the leaked screenshots together none of the others are anywhere close to this dreary to my eye. Although some of the other images have different issues like extreme darkness/low gamma which makes me think some of them were never intended for the public. They have also since been pulled from the site (supposedly this was the original location). Maybe it was a look they were testing at some point and then scrapped, who knows.
I think a lot of these are going to be placeholder for a while until more generalized communities like this one see more growth. It’ll be a while before we even hit 100k subscribers here, and you need to have a subset of those people who are looking to talk about an even more specific interest in more depth.
In principle I agree with you, but it’s also a “chicken and egg” type problem. Many people aren’t going to switch to Lemmy if there isn’t a modicum of coverage for more specialized topics.
I think getting to somewhere beyond 100K MAU will have a transformative effective on activity in some more specialized communities.
On one hand I understand this, but on the other hand I’d like to post games I find that fit these subgenres or talk about that subgenre without making myself the biggest spammer in !games, and I think (time will tell!) I do have the stubbornness necessary to scream into the void until people come along. Maybe I should crosspost the ones I think are most likely to have mass appeal…
I feel if I spontaneously quit all my niche gaming communities and posted everything I’d post there on a general community instead, I’d annoy everyone with a bunch of Steam links for games they probably do not care about. People in the niche communities are more likely to care about a link to a game in a genre they already like. Also, for most of the small communities I’ve got at least one other poster sometimes, and that’s better than nobody! Despite all the trouble with incremental.social and federation, when I can get on there we do have a few regulars chatting there and that’s nice.
contains gender politicsThere’s also just fans of a certain genre being used to backlash from the wider gaming community. I did get mostly upvotes when I posted !otomegames, which is mostly romance visual novels for women who like men, to !newcommunities. I appreciate it. But I am not sure how posting these games to !games would go over, especially when I suspect Lemmy to be male-dominated. Visual novels already suffer from the “it’s all just hentai” stereotype. Now add the “media for women, especially romance media, is stupid and vapid and silly” prejudice. And even for those who just live and let live, I suspect most of the general !games community would be disinterested in otome game posts, which is fair because I’m disinterested in romance and/or sex visual novels aimed at men who want to date women (although they should definitely be allowed to exist and people should be allowed to like them in peace). So both to avoid any backlash, and to avoid annoying the wider community, I don’t want to post those games to this general community. I still want a space for it on Lemmy though, so I made that community. I have one other regular poster and sometimes people drop in and comment.
You could make the argument that I’m simply posting low-quality content, and I’d just have to raise the bar for !games to accept my posts, and that I just want my niches back, to which I say: fair. But unfortunately I’m no video game expert or connoisseur. I play and enjoy. The lovely guide and wiki makers usually get there before I can. I’m not too good at coming up with fun discussion questions that are better than what I’d consider low-tier engagement bait back on Reddit like “name one good thing about [noncontroversial character]”. So link posts it is, better some on-topic content than none at all. And even if I did write a wonderful in-depth review or guide, if it’s not for some big mainstream appeal game but something that only genre enthusiasts really like, not sure how well !games would take to it. So that’s my rationale for having these niche communities. You’re still very free to think I’m wrong ;) Thanks for contributing in earnest to !games!
You’re probably right, but most of these do exist already, so I figure not why not continue trying to use them (and to direct attention from this big community there)? Also probably doesn’t help a lot of instances have general games communities. We’re pretty splintered. Now that I think about it I should probably crosspost to some of the bigger ones.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne