I play a LOT of ESO; I have three nights a week that I group with others to do PvP in Cyrodiil. Beyond that, I help out with a large trials Discord that runs ~3-5 trials a week, depending on schedules. I can sign up for those as needed.
Even with only doing PvP 3 nights a week, we generally only run ~2-3 hours, and there are enough people that if someone misses, it isn't a big deal, and a sub can usually be pulled into the role. If not? We just deal with it. People have lives, they're gonna miss. I routinely take breaks from the scheduled stuff, because I don't like having things planned out. With football and basketball season coming up, I'll likely step away for a bit to do other things I like.
ESO is nice, in that once you're at level cap, you're done doing that grind. New sets aren't too hard to get once you get sorted, and non-meta builds are viable through most end-game content. Being in the large trials discords makes it really easy to slot in when I want. Additionally, the Discords themselves makes it easy to stay connected without the commitment of the game required.
As for friends that don't play, anytime I'm playing Rocket League or CoD or whatever other games, I'll send something in the group chat to see if others wanna join. Most the time I don't get any takers, but putting the invite out there is enough. It's hard to stay connected through the years, an invite at least let's friends know you are thinking of them in the moment.
Podcast wise: Rebel FM, though after all these years it’s more just to catch up with them than the actual talking points, but always enjoyable.
For deep dives into specific games Cane & Rinse (full disclosure I have met and consider friends some of the guys involved).
For Indie Games, The Sausage Factory by Chris O’Regan, which these days is hosted by Cane And Rinse is a great way to hear directly from the game devs themselves.
I get all my news from Lyle Rath on Pregame Discharge. He’s told me it’s the only videogame show, so I’m surprised to hear about all these other shows.
I'm on Linux, so if I buy from GOG, I don't get cloud saves or automatic updates. If we had Galaxy on Linux, it would be my default store. But it's not on Linux, so I shop on Steam.
Neither are guaranteed by the seller though. They could change their API tomorrow and break compatibility. Unlikely though that is, if they want my sale, they can do the work themselves rather than relying on an unofficial project with hooks into their store.
I enjoy listening to these podcasts more for their entertainment value than just trying to get the best information.
Podquisition - The hosts are very entertaining as they go over the games they've played as well as news in the industry. Laura also does a great job at reporting news leaks.
What's Good Games - Industry veterans who run a little too high energy go over gaming news as well as games they've played and often get hands-on impressions for upcoming titles.
The Inverted Castle - Fun retrospectives on Metroidvania games of old.
Square Roots - A Let's Play on classic RPGs that goes into great detail on each game across multiple episodes featuring the hosts thoughts and opinions on the games as they play through each section together.
Not trying to be rude, but the fact that you are asking this question demonstrates the fact that you shouldn’t.
If you want to contribute to free and open information, set up a VPN, bind QBitorrent or another FOSS torrenting software to it, and seed as much as you can.
Help digital archivists and data horders if you have the storage.
Spread accurate information on this stuff to help others.
If you really want to help build out the grey and black market infrastructure for data and digital goods, you need to learn advanced infosec and programming skills and that takes a long time and lots of study.
I don’t really. Exception is Tape to Tape, best game this year no contest. Fast to pick up and play and super fun with friends. Also has couch coop so I just bring a controller over to a buddy.
I use to play multiplayer games in the office with co-workers many many years ago. Then when everybody scattered to the four corners of the earth, I’ve mainly just been jumping into single player games that I can pick up and drop easily. I then started getting back into multiplayer sessions with my kids, but they soon transitioned through that period where their studies or other hobbies take precedence to our occasional DRG sessions. So I’ve now been going on Deep Rock runs with strangers. On the one hand, it’s a nice quick fix, but as most users seem to use the text chat if at all, it’s not as much of a social event as it was when I was playing with my kids and we all had open mics. You can get on the DRG Discord to try to team up with regular players, and I may try that some day to see if there are older players who don’t mind shooting the breeze while riding Doretta. But for now, I’ll have to make do with jamming that V key.
I’m in the UK, so some of this might be UK centric:
Podcasts
Digital Foundry Weekly, Weekly podcast discussing gaming news/hardware etc (If you know DF you know what this is)
The Crate and Crowbar, PCGamerUK used to have a podcast and these guys move to this. Few friends talking about games and it’s decent (not overly technical or in depth, more just mates chatting).
IGN UK Podcast, absolutely love the personalities on this, it seems more like some mates chatting with a bit of structure (less like the IGN ethos of pushing as much out as possible).
VGC, Again a few mates chatting about games, good production values and I value their opinions.
RSS feeds
Eurogamer.net features, similar to DF, but they cover decent articles about games.
Uppercut - Features, doesn’t post often but has well thought out articles about games and they’re a joy to read.
Polygon - Feature, interesting articles about films/games. I don’t read them all just ones interesting or relevant to me.
Rock Paper Shotgun features, PC Gaming articles that explores interesting questions about newer/popular games.
IGN Feed, All the feeds above are features where it’s not just regurgitated news that spams your feed, they’re well thought out. Well IGN isn’t features, it’s just gaming news. I hardly read the artcles, just scroll the titles.
A bit related but do you like using RSS? I've never used it before because it never seemed like it was worth setting up. Do you recommend it/ is it worth it?
Pick all your favourite news/content/podcasts/youtube and set them up in an RSS app.
Then it’s all in one place, no visiting multiple apps/websites. It’s just there ready to go. You can then easily keep track of what you’ve read, haven’t read and saved.
first off, beautiful formatting! Jeff Grubb of current Giant Bomb has Andy Robinson from VGC on his morning show pretty frequently, I enjoy him. I do catch DF content and pods time to time as well.
I’ve never set up an RSS feed but might look into it, something to scroll on the can/ when i have a few mins of downtime would be nice. google’s served articles arent cutting it. Left the thing that previously filled this gap behind a few months ago.
Honestly I'm so lazy and deep into the ecosystem now if if it's not on Steam I just won't play it. There's too many things to play, and I don't care enough to bother with multiple launchers and accounts
This is exactly why I buy from both. I don’t want to be one of those people who is so invested in one platform that they can’t afford not to spend their money there.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne