You might want to remember that there are also working grunts in that food chain. They already got paid to make the game, yes, but that was in the expectation of profit. If the game crashes, those execs will look for scapegoats.
Buying games feeds the vampires, but also the devs (even if only in scraps). In our current world, there’s not a whole lot of options outside of “only buy indie games” to both support developers and avoid filling the pockets of execs and investors.
A few people pirating games instead of paying for them isn’t a big deal, but it eventually turns into a “tragedy of the commons” issue like other forms of theft. Either the suppliers won’t be able to stay in business or they’ll work out ever more comprehensive (and invasive) prevention mechanisms. Remember when games were just the program on the disk and you didn’t need keys and an online connection to activate your copy?
If you’re buying games that are more than 3 months old, they do not. Bonuses are given for metacritic scores and launch quarter sales. They’re never given royalties.
there’s not a whole lot of options outside of “only buy indie games” to both support developers and avoid filling the pockets of execs and investors.
What’s wrong with telling people to buy indie games and pirate anything made at the directive of blood-sucking vampires?
Remember when games were just the program on the disk and you didn’t need keys and an online connection to activate your copy?
Remember when games were just some free software on Usenet that someone made because they thought it’d be cool, and shared because they were proud of it?
I didn’t say they were getting paid directly, but indirectly. Their employment and income - like all other working class grunts’ - depends on their ability to generate profit for their employer. If we deny the employer their profit, the employer will take that out on their grunts. Conversely, if we pay them, that money likely will end up sponsoring further developments which - guess what? - pays the developers for developing more stuff.
Much of our modern economy is centered around credit and debt. The developers are effectively paid as a credit, in the expectation that the profits will pay the debt. If it doesn’t, that will affect further credits.
And no, I don’t remember Usenet, but it sounds like that was a good time then. How do they compare to modern games in terms of entertainment?
Almost none of the profit made off AAA games goes to the people actually creating the game. They don’t get a bonus if the new Madden makes $10 mil more than the old one. You’re tossing hundreds at the CEOs and saying it’s worth it if the devs get a few pennies.
Many of them probably aren’t even at the same studio anymore by the time you’re buying the game.
Did you actually read my comment? They don’t get the profit from the old game. The success pays for them to develop new games.
Asked the other way round, if the game’s profit doesn’t pay the devs, what does?
The company employing them
Why does the company employ them?
To make money
So what happens if the company stops making money? A game’s profit doesn’t pay the past developers, but it does affect their future employment and income.
I’m not defending the exploitative system that bleeds us dry for the privilege of getting to temporarily benefit from the wealth they’ve already extracted. I’m not opposing piracy. I’m very much in support of OP’s strategy.
All I’m saying is that piracy won’t fix that system, because the ones most dependent on the game’s success aren’t the exec’s that’ll be hired elsewhere nor the investors that’ll extract their wealth elsewhere, but the devs whose employment and existence depends on their capacity to generate that wealth.
Attack the system at the top, but don’t drop the bottom.
I’m enjoying it. I’ve remembered that I’m terrible at building cities, but I’m having fun while coming to that realization again! Performance is mid 50fps with about 5000 people at 1080p with a 2080 super and a ryzen 3600x.
I turned down a few graphic settings but honestly thoughly playable. Looking forward to performance patches so I can turn some of the eye candy back on
With how directly Control tied into the Alan Wake universe with their DLC being completely centered around it I’d be really surprised if they wouldn’t go even further now
I understand you have a lot of demos to cover, though I can’t help but feel there’s some dishonesty about the Robocop demo. First mission gets you used to killing gangsters in simple corridors, though after that the demo actually gives a lot of focus on side quests, and very traditional “community policing”, including detective work, and many occasions of trying to find the best balance between community lenience and upholding justice. I even managed to avoid a gunfight in one case by finding clues and negotiating some of the gangsters down.
Maybe you played all that part and it just didn’t feel significant. I admit, it just felt pleasantly unexpected to me.
Agree with others that length/price ratio doesn’t really reflect how much I enjoy a game.
If I like it, I like it. The hours are irrelevant to me. I can get just as much enjoyment out of a six hour game with zero replayability as I can with a dozens-of-hours-long replayable RPG. It’s the experience, not the time.
Also, with Game Pass and the fact that I buy everything on sale, there’s no real good answer if I did approach it that way.
That said, the only two games I’ve bought at full price in the last decade or so were Breath of the Wild and Spider-Man PS4.
Massively fun and I didn’t feel like I had wasted any money.
I like sandbox games and I end up getting so much Value. For factorio I got it for $40 and so every 1000 hours I buy a copy and gift it to someone. Since they have no dlc or any other way to support. Also do the same with rimworld and age of empires 3 DE the main games I have lots of hours in. For league of legends I have 1000s of hours but I won’t give them a fucken cent cause I hate the game.
This comment is why more devs should understand the impact selling a game fairly can have on their bottom line. I’m close to 1k in myself, maybe its time to buy the dlc.
Vampire Survivors: still really addicting, my save files was deleted, so I started all over. As soon as I reach library level, then it’s all about farming / grinding.
I played several games last week,
The Secret of Monkey Island: is still a really funny game
Call of the Sea: dropped it after first hour, the first person camera is making me nauseous. I had the same issue while playing Maquette, weirdly I don’t have much issue when playing FPS (but I don’t play them often)
TMNT Shredder’s Revenge: it’s an okay game, playing it solo is kinda annoying, since enemies tend to knock you back, and there’s a recovery time.
Hi-Fi Rush had me going back to play through the Devil May Cry series earlier this year, and I didn't finish them before 2023 releases started popping off, but I left off at DMC4. I seem to remember the impressions of it back in the day being so-so, but I really enjoyed what I've played of it so far, and it feels the most like what Hi-Fi Rush became out of the series thus far. 1 and 3 were great, but 4 seemingly keeps what made those good without as many rough edges.
I’ve finished 1 - 3 recently, and I wanted to finish the entire DMC series including DmC.
I’m not a good DMC player, tend to mash buttons bit too often. After all the DMC games, I wanna start with Ninja Gaiden, properly learning the blocking based on a YT guide I’ve seen.
I've been playing some Mario Wonder too (both co-op and single player). I'm not the biggest 2D platformer fan, but I think it does a pretty good job. I'm surprised at how difficult some of the levels have gotten so far (4 and 5 star difficulty levels ain't no joke). I'm not sure if I'll finish it, but there's fun to be had for sure.
I'm also closing in on finishing Chrono Trigger for the first time. I'm enjoying it, though I think the PS1 and PS2 era JRPGs are more up my alley. This game definitely oozes charm though, and I can see why many consider it a classic. After I beat it I'll probably try Chrono Cross again, though last time I tried playing it the game froze twice early on just talking to people...
I think so, though there are some optional levels they may struggle with. If they play as Yoshi they won't take any damage, which might help. Alternatively, someone more experienced could play as Yoshi and the kid could ride the Yoshi through some of the more challenging spots.
I helped co-found a guild back when WOW was new - I was the guild webmaster. The guild never really got that big or active, but here it is 20 years later and I still occasionally get credit card offers in the mail for “The Blackrazor Brotherhood.”
Some of my favorite gaming memories are from my time in a guild called The Sylvan Guard on an EverQuest server around 1998 or so. It was a small guild but the last time I saw a question similar to this posted, on Reddit a few years ago, I checked in and so did a former guild-mate I hadn’t spoken with in decades.
Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive all had to be paid for. Only the original mod (1.5 and under) and Global Offensive/CS2 have been available freely (and in GO’s case, it came later just like TF2 and RL).
I was livid about 1.6 going retail back in the day. I had been playing the same game for free, as a mod, for at least 2 years prior to that.
Even if you take my spending (which was in the hundreds) on Warframe into account, it was still worth the thousands of hours I put into the game. It’s really just a matter of whether you enjoy the game enough to justify the spending.
I know the occasional game has released a demo here and there every other year or so, but I think I remember the last demo I played was Skate 3’s back in 2010.
That’s… pretty on-you, I have to say. Something like 2/3 of my gaming time is free demos off steam or the nintendo eshop. Steam just had their yearly Next Fest, with over 900 games dropping demos this month.
It's mostly AAA games that don't bother. A lot of smaller games do, because they know it's worth it unless you're riding a crazy hype train with wild expectations.
And even if they don’t have a demo, Steam’s refund system makes basically any game a demo; since you can refund for any reason in the first 2 hours, you can play the first ~90 minutes for free
My point is that you implied it’s that the game industry isn’t putting out demos. “The occasional game here and there every other year or so”. But that’s a false statement, the lack of demos in your life is your own doing
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