@JohnnyCanuck is right in a bunch of important ways, but there is one additional factor to consider. The reason the Hollywood guild system works the way it does is because no one is contracted to any given studio. It used to be that actors and writers were required to have locked-in contracts - they couldn't work for anyone else - but that hasn't been true for a long time. (There are exceptions: writers and actors can choose to have multi-picture/script deals, in exchange for an up front wad of cash, but it's not the norm outside of the really heavy hitters.)
A standard union protects a worker's existing job, and helps that worker negotiate terms for an existing job.
A Hollywood guild protects a worker's future jobs - because the one they have now will absolutely not be the one they have in 2 years, a year, maybe even in 6 months. This is the nature of the Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA): it dictates minimum terms of employment. It's not designed to give writers/actors the best deal, it's designed to give them the least shitty deal the studios will agree to.
Why does this matter?
It matters because what most people think of as "Hollywood" is all the extremely pretty, extremely powerful, extremely prolific actors and writers who make lots of money and show up on magazine covers and in media podcasts. (No writer is showing up on a magazine, I don't care how pretty he is.) But the MBA is there for the day players, the low rung people, the staff writers, the gal who had one spec script produced in her career so far.
What the WGA managed to achieve recently with its negotiations is an absolutely phenomenal success. But it still only really impacts the MBA - the minimum basic agreement!
So... uh... why does this fucking matter?
The game industry doesn't really have superstars. It doesn't have the equivalent of Tom Cruise and John August. At least not at scale. And the ones who are that shiny are usually studio heads or creative directors, not "employees." So they wouldn't be covered by a union anyway (which cannot apply to managers - i.e. anyone who has authority over other workers).
Suggesting that the game industry adopt the Hollywood guild model is to suggest forcing a pear into a box shaped like an apple. The MBA protects low level employees in their future employment, and isn't really all that great - at least not the way most non-insiders think. It still results in a ridiculous number of workers making poverty wages.
Is that what you want a game voice actor to have? A minimum basic agreement for their future employment? A programmer? A graphic designer?
No. You want them to be in a union.[1] Which will protect their current jobs and create conditions for advancement, sufficient income at the lowest tiers and long term stability. None of which the Hollywood guilds really do.
[1] The distinction between a union and a guild isn't a "real" one in modern U.S. law, strictly speaking. But conceptually, as above, a union is for people in regular employment with a single employer, and a guild is for (effectively) contract workers. The terminology of "guild" came from the older, pre-industrial idea of "the X workers guild" (masonry, carpentry, bricklaying, etc.), which were really just social organizations that sorta kinda acquired enough power to flex their muscles against the people who were contracting them by having minimum demands in solidarity within the guild (does that sound familiar...?). Guilds eventually "became" unions in the modern sense, once people were working with single employers over a long term. Put simply (and a bit stupidly), unions make contracts between workers and companies; guilds make contracts between workers and their industry. Part of the reason gig workers (Uber/Lyft/etc.) in California have been more active about getting better terms is because that state is super familiar with how guilds work, which is exactly what gig workers need, since their employment is with the industry as a whole (they can work for more than one company), not so much with a specific company. (It's also why they're having a much harder time - because California employers are super familiar with all the shenanigans Hollywood studios use to suppress the guilds that feed into them.)
Maybe I misunderstood something in your explanation. But afaik, jobs in the videogame industry are very much like freelance jobs and the position you have today is going to be very different from whatever you will be doing in 2 years or whatever. Heck, you are lucky if your contract lasts more than six months. Same for VFX jobs.
Jobs in the video game industry (especially AAA) are mostly NOT freelance. Most are full time employee positions. Even non-AAA and specialized studios that do work-for-hire tend to have employees. Certain parts of the video game industry, like art and QA tend to be contracted or outsourced, but even then the contractors are often provided through a 3rd party company that employs and provides benefits. Contracts for engineers, designers, writers come into play for shorter periods to ramp up numbers during production and fill gaps. But that’s usually a small percentage of the team.
If the automatic refund was rejected, you can ask for a manual review.
But if you’ve really started that many runs, and put in enough hours to get that far, don’t be surprised if they deny a refund. You’ve already experienced most of the game. It’s like going to a restaurant, tasting your meal, saying it’s horrible, then continuing to eat it.
I requested a refund immediately upon realizing the game is too buggy for a proper playthrough. How is it my fault the game is longer than 2 hours so it doesn’t go under the requirements? Besides, there’s no request for manual review. All reviews are “manual”, but they seldom if ever consider anything besides playtime, for examples look at the trend of running entire game and then refunding. I work professionally as QA, so to me this is plain bullshit. With the amount of time I spent reporting bugs, I should have a second salary, not money spent on a game I cannot even properly complete.
They’re pretty lenient with refunds past two hours’ playtime, if it’s not that much more and you don’t have a history of requesting refunds. I’ve been refunded for games after like four hours, but I’ve also only done maybe two refunds tops.
Have you consider sending your collection of ticket and professional bug reports to Latina and properly get a 2nd job and earn your justified income?
Granted I haven’t finished my first run, but locking out contents/dialog/story path is part of the deal in crpg no? (Or, like if you killed some NPC and then later not be able to finish a side quest involving that dead guy is fairly normal.)
@Sprite@SheeEttin too buggy for a proper playthrough? I have like 300 hours. I don't know what you are doing that you can't play the game, but that is not the experience most people have.
When my kid was younger he had a “garbage games on tablet” phase as well. As others have said, paid games are the way to go (Play Pass sounds cool). Looking for indie games for Android, or PC games ported to Android gives some good results. Stardew Valley’s an obvious one. I haven’t played Ordia, but it looks gorgeous.
What worked really well for us was to teach him about some dark patterns in simple terms and spot them with him in the freemiums he was playing. “Fear of Missing Out” events/notifications and “Progression Paywalls” are typical ones. It made him realize the game wasn’t built to give him a good time as much as to frustrate him into endlessly spending real money in exchange for some phony currency. In the end he was happy to switch to saner games. It’s a good opportunity to work on their critical judgment basically.
I like the part about how it reminds me of Minecraft, but in space and with tools/weapons that never break and the ability to add more inventory slots. (There are less material options for building player housing though, but at least this limitation has led to some very creative community bases.) That, and I always find it rewarding to discover as many of a planet’s plant and animal species as possible to earn those chip things you can learn crafting recipes with, and many of the planets’ terrain looks pretty awesome since while it is all procedural copypasta, there are countless possible combinations of available ores, rock models/colors/usefulness, terrain color, animal appearances/traits, plant products, hazards, etc. You can use all of this to determine which planets near your spawnpoint are useful and which ones are useless, out of millions of possible planets. I also like how after coming back to that game after more than a year, I found that unearthing the buried tech things gives you 4 of that data thing you need to complete all the tech-trees in the early game instead of just 1. And unlike many games, they update all platforms at the same time, which is great since I find the console controls on the Switch edition easier to remember than the PC controls.
But I do wish the planets had more than just one climate and biome so they’d be more realistic and those 2 undiscovered rare polar animals keeping you from earning lots of nanites would be less painful to track down. My current home planet is a swamp world that has Florida-like temperatures even at the poles and on mountains.
If you want a true “Minecraft in space” experience, I recommend Space Engineers. Not as broad as NMS, but much deeper (especially with mods like WeaponCore, MES, and Aerodynamics).
It’s a game about exploring. There is a mystery. There are puzzles. Not much spoon feeding to even find either let alone ‘make progress’. The game expects you to explore to find answers. There is no penalty for dying (it is actually inevitable) other than the time it may take to get back somewhere.
I think I’m wondering if there is more story line or action at some point? I don’t need the story spoon fed to me, but a hint of which direction to go, what sort of thing to do next would be helpful. I guess I’ll just keep looming around and dying often and see if anything else happens.
Not sure what that would be like. Just standing still? When does the fun kick in? I’ve died and respawned about 20 times so far. I’m good to keep trying, if there’s some payoff eventually, as you said.
Well I guess knowledge is power, and power is kinda fun. There’s a reason many people say this game is special.
If you don’t feel the game right now, that’s ok, you can keep it on your list for later. But please avoid spoilers like the plague.
GaaS really fucks up basic game design. It’s like they intentionally are aiming to squeeze as much as possible out of a lime when they could just aim for a watermelon.
No idea how much always online server structure costs but it can’t be free. I wonder if the console manufacturers favor this type of game design as it brings them some cash in too.
Sci-Hub stopped adding new articles since its court case and Z-Lib had most of its domains seized by the US. I didn’t say they were dead, but tried to convey that they were attacked and forced to either cease their operations or shrink significantly.
I'm hoping for a Steam controller 2. I've been using a PS4 and PS5 controller ever since they discontinued the original Steam controller. The gyro on the PlayStation controllers works great, but the touchpad isn't useable (or even reachable) like the Steam controller's trackpads were.
I've been thinking that would be their next product ever since they released an official dock. Seems like the two make sense together.
edit: OK I just read the article and it's probably not a controller. :( It's something with a 5Ghz radio in it, meaning it connects to wifi. A controller with a wireless dongle would only be using 2.4Ghz.
Ik you edited your comment but I also really want a steam controller 2 The first controller is great although running into modern problems like micro usb being trash and rechargeable AA batteries get stuck in the battery compartment. But a new controller with dual thumb sticks would be fantastic! Even if it would make the controller a slight bit more bulky
I’ve got both a DualSense and a Steam Controller – they’re useful for different things. AAA titles with console ports are great with the DualSense (e.g. I’m also using it for Starfield). But the Steam Controller is the one you want for strategy games or anything that doesn’t support controllers at all.
It’s also surprisingly good for flight simming, so long as you can spend the time with customizing the scheme.
That's what I've been doing as well, only using the Steam Controller for strategy games. That means I don't use it much these days (which is too bad, since it's a great controller), but I since it can't be replaced now I figure I'll only use it for the games it really needs.
This should be the top answer. I’m also a person that can’t really enjoy a game unless it has a good story and Disco Elysium blew me away. The best game to come out since 2019 as far as I’m concerned
Impossible Creatures - an RTS where you slurp up DNA from local wildlife and use that to create weird hybrids of multiple animals, then produce those as units that you control to complete missions. Great concept but I think it ended up being a bit unbalanced.
Papers Please - pretty unique gameplay in that you had to literally read through paperwork and approve/reject people at a border crossing. Good social commentary.
It is exactly as shitty as I expected it to be. Another crappy bethesda game in a long line of garbage. I think the last game from them I truly enjoyed was Morrowind. I don’t think New Vegas counts. Fallout 4 was depressing being so close to good. Every moment in that game screams half baked. That quest where you help the robots out with their ship showed me just how possible it was to make the game good, but then it was the only good quests besides maybe the silver shroud one.
Remember Super Mario Maker 2? It included a mode where players could join an online room, whether with friends or strangers, to play courses among themselves. It’s also infamous for the constant slowdowns that players experienced during the courses. Why was this happening, you may wonder? Well, because the players needed to synchronize their state between each other, and since the game was not designed with modern network tools in mind such as rollback (which would probably be too heavy for the Switch), the only way to ensure everyone was on the same lane was to wait for everyone to receive the input data from all other players. And in a game with up to four players at a time, things are absolutely going to get messy.
Everything you stated has been solved in so many games in the past decade. People keep making excuses for it. Smash bros for example.
But the real reason? Nintendo just never really cared about multiplayer for Mario. Multiplayer’s not a big money maker for Mario, and they’ll implement just enough to hit whatever.
And I’m okay with that. Because I play Mario games solo or couch op.
Right? I kept hearing people say things like “it’s a precise physics game with player collision” and my only retort is “the fuck is a smash bros to you?” And that game worked way better even without rollback. Imagine a Mario with it.
I wish this style of subs was just baked into the media. I had the same issue with the Dany parts of GoT and also with parts of BCS (Spanish and German are fantasy languages, don’t @ me)
I have bazaar setup to pull full subtitles (and strip cc from them) but I have never gotten a release without forced subs I’m pretty sure. Maybe check where your pulling releases from, I find Usenet releases are good for including subs in the file.
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