Yep, big budget games from megacorporations are usually terrible because their purpose is to make money, not to be a great game that people love. Even when there’s a team of dedicated devs that genuinely want to make something great, they have to fight hard for it in many companies, often losing their vision to their employer’s drive to make money.
This problem would likely be solved if we simply implemented a new economic system in the USA revolving around employee ownership of companies. Having stockholders is what really kills passion and innovation at big companies. The only focus is to please the stockholders drive the stock value up, return on investment, stuff like that. There is zero incentive for these big companies to give anything back to the developers, so there’s also zero loyalty. Why would these developers put their heart and soul into something That requires them to work 60 hours a week, and provides almost nothing in return to them? That’s what I’m hoping to see soon, gaming studios that are for profit, with all profits being used to cover salary of the hard workers
Maybe, but only if you made it mandatory for all companies. And how would you decide how many shares someone in particular owns without stifiling creation of companies? The person who created the company in the first place will be taking on more responsibilty, and should have more incentive to stick around if the health and growth of the company depends on them.
Even your indie LLC has stockholders, as every corporation in existence has stock created at inception. Owener ship of that private stock can be one person, multiple people, or all employees as mentioned. I’ve participated in private companies with all three of these. In private companies you can also have profit bonuses given to all employees regardless of holding stock or not (I was an employee at such a company and they did very well - so well they ended up being sold to a public company at an extremely high EBITA multiple)
This can exist even in public company structures, like WestJet, where all employees were shareholders (No longer the case as of 2019, as the company was sold and taken private)
Without enforcing employee ownership people are just going to people, and when they are anonymous and can easily buy and sell shares without care about the long term or how it affects others that’s where the problem comes in. The “I got mine” mentality.
Not sure I have a point, other then its not that simple.
I’ll wait for some more performance reviews and maybe even a few patches, but this sounds promising. Was looking forward to this game so I’m glad it seems like it delivers.
Having played most of these indie games already, I agree with you completely. Indie gaming is awesome, and I can’t wait to see what new games are developed. I’m also hoping to develop my own title, but I have first hand experience with development, and it’s a crazy amount of work. It’s going to take me at least 12 months Just to even get the first town or area in my game done because of how much learning I have to do, how much design and development, then coding. Truly astounding how much work goes into creating something incredibly small scale. These big massive companies with billion-dollar equity behind them, They have all these crazy resources to Create these games absurdly fast. They can just plop down a resource generated set of walls and textures, and in days, You have an entire town created. I’ve seen it done, makes me kind of jealous and hope that indie developers can get this kind of stuff later on
I also have a harder time with older games, but RDR1 is definitely an exception. It’s worth playing for sure, and RDR2 is probably the best game I’ve ever played. It’s worth the time.
Although I’m still mad, the remade the whole damn RDR1 map inside RDR2 for future online stuff and they didn’t bother to just remaster RDR1 as a DLC? So fucking stupid. Would have been just a pure profit generator
If you don’t get the mail, this is probably due to playtest schedule, they may give you access when the playtest is open, after that you can always play vs bots
I’d love an invite! ~~steamcommunity.com/id/demonictaco~~. Thank you so much! Please let me know if link doesn’t work. I’m at work so I can’t go on steam haha. They have the website blocked.
Shovelware demos are useless.
I remember the time I played the demo for farming sim and DOA:Dimensions to death on my 3DS. Those were actually good demos.
Yeah it doesn’t compare to old-school demos like stuff that came on discs with magazines, but at least it’s a lot better getting the option to try something instead of buying and refunding everything. And at least some bigger studios and indi games are picking up on this as well.
For sure. But I hope they use the Steam Demo feature (same game page with a demo install button) instead of doing a free and premium type of publishing like they do with phone apps
I mean… Aoe3 always had some sort of a demo version. Even the original base game had it. In fact, this is actually better, as now you are able to use 3 rotating civs, not just the English and the French, which you were forced to use before.
I am not sure what demos you mention in particular but the one I recently played is news tower and I am hooked. Just waiting for a good sale to snag the game and even stopped posting the demo mid way. I for one appreciate all the demos being put out even if it is short. Their only purpose is to showcase the full game and they do a decent job of that.
It’s the current Steam publishing meta. A free demo will create traffic for the newly created Steam page of your game, resulting in more Wishlistings, which is usually the only way to be featured and seen anywhere before release for indie developers. And that’s how your Wishlistings really explode and you make a lot of sales. Getting a demo out is by far highest priority for game publishing in 2024.
The thing is, we don’t need a demo trending page all that much. Since you says will find the demos only game store page, they ain’t looking at the trending list to find them
Unpopular opinion but I preferred Mafia 3 over 2. I don’t think any of them are great games, just solid ones.
Mafia 2’s story is good, but the game started to feel pretty repetitive for me quickly. “Get in car, drive somewhere listening to a conversation to move the story forward, shoot some people, repeat until game is over.”
Mafia 3 also feels repetitive, and can definitely start to feel grindy. But I think the main missions are better designed than 2, and the combat overall also feels better and more fun. So it’s a trade off: it’s an open world game so it’s got more filler to make it longer, but when it’s good it’s better than its predecessor (IMHO).
If they had added fast travel, it would have been a really solid game (to me, at least). The excruciatingly-long driving sessions were interminable, and it was this that made me abandon the game in the end, even though I was already about 2/3 of the way through it. The characters, acting and story were really good.
It’s quite repetitive, but no more than any other middling open world game. I happen to enjoy stealthily murdering people with a giant combat knife, so the repetition didn’t bother me. The constant criss-crossing around the map to go to/from objectives bothered me a lot. 90% of the checkpoints in each quest could have been a phone call.
I wonder if there’s a mod that lets you teleport to map markers 🤔 If so, I would play the game again.
I’ve played both. Quality of life is way better in the remake (who thought Reload should be bound to L?), and IIRC you can adjust the driving physics so you can decide whether you want a realistic or more arcade experience.
In either event, good luck with the race car missions
People keep paying for it so why put more effort into it? When they do it doesn’t seem to pay off. The last game I bought from a big publisher was Hi Fi Rush. It was fantastic, original, clearly had more thought and effort out into it than the average AAA game, and look what happened to them. Hopefully their transition to a new owner turns out to be a positive one, but considering the industry trends I’m not holding my breath on that one.
This is why I do the patient gamers thing. I almost always wait for sales, bundles, etc. Most of my games come in at a deep discount, and the only ones I grab at a slight discount are because it’s got stellar reviews, had enough time to see how the updates, MTX bullshit, or servers played out, and is clearly still interesting enough to be worth both my money and time.
Isthereanydeal.com is my best friend for this. Gog.com is also great. Humblebundle.com is still occasionally worth looking at.
It’s a retribution by the mob because of what he did in the first game. I’ll put it in spoilers just in case:
Mafia 1 spoilersThe whole premise of the first game is that Tommy talks to the police to get out of crime life. He ends up testifying against the Salieri family, receives lower sentence and enters witness protection program with his family.
Yeah I can’t wait to try some new games today! Usually it’s impossible to find a good F2P game unless it’s really popular. Like Once Human, for example. I see why it’s popular but the gameplay loop isn’t for me. Too much gathering/crafting, and dungeons aren’t fun as a solo player. I was bored after 2 days.
Thanks to this new category, now I can just go down the list until I find something I can enjoy.
This is a shameless self-plug but I post a lot of free games in !freegames. They’re primarily limited-time giveaways, but I also tag some with [Forever-Free Friday] which might be more what you’re looking for.
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