I don’t. You are exposing children to those exact mechanics and normalizing that behaviour. Without further thought in the future they will go for increasingly scammy shit tactics.
Seriously, you played behind your mom’s back. As did I and everyone else. Be careful, talk to her about the shitty tactics. She has to be aware of them, spot them, and know how they work to be able to avoid them. The hardest part will be for her to actually believe it. Those life service shit uses the most disgusting psychological tricks.
Or she will spent all her money behind your back someday.
We all had our tricks, and children will always be cleverer than their parents.
We all know that decent games exist, somewhere. But the amount of effort it would take to wade through all the shovelware and gacha to try to find an even halfway passable game on Google Play simply isn't worth my time.
And with the mobile market being what it is, it arguably isn't worth it for developers to try and sell any serious game as mobile-first, because it's so difficult for those types of games to succeed when mobile gamers want gacha and those that don't simply aren't playing on mobile. If it's truly worth my time, it should be ported to other platforms.
Word of mouth is certainly a large part of it, yes. People talk about successful games. One way or another, the games I like make it onto my radar when I see buzz about them.
But what are the most successful games on mobile? What are the games mobile gamers talk about? Gacha. It's all gacha. Whatever else is out there, nobody's talking about it and I'm never going to see it. Nor do I have any reason to go searching through a toxic cesspit in the hopes that maybe I'll eventually find something, when it is far easier to look elsewhere, on platforms that haven't been thoroughly corrupted by the race to the bottom.
But again, the real takeaway I want to stress is that the market has been this way for long enough that both gamers and developers know the well is poisoned, and it will never be unpoisoned. The fact that mobile has become dominated by gacha has reinforced itself - everyone not interested in gacha has left the platform, and mobile developers will keep selling more gacha because that's what the remaining audience wants. They even know that the average mobile gamer won't spend money on a more ethical business model.
I know that developers know that I know that this is what mobile is. The way I see it, mobile itself has become a red flag. If a game is trying to be more than gacha trash, well why don't the developers have the sense to put it on other platforms where non-gacha gamers are? If not, they're shooting themselves in the foot and I have no pity.
Here’s where you and I differ: I don’t trust word of mouth. I don’t trust canons. I don’t trust marketing. And frankly, I don’t trust the so-called “gamers” who repeat the same tired narratives.
Instead, I dive deep—into the bowels of app stores, into archive.org, anywhere I can find games no one else has played or talked about. Then I judge for myself whether they’re worth a damn.
That’s how I’ve uncovered hidden gems, and why I know most of what passes for “good taste” is just groupthink dressed up as expertise.
The only people with real taste? The ones willing to seek things out and form their own opinions. Everything else is just noise.
So what, you just buy games at random and hope maybe you landed on something good? Without anything that would make for an informed purchase? Sounds like a horribly inefficient way of running headfirst into Sturgeon's Law.
But usually, I’m a deal hunter—I scour for discounts, read descriptions carefully, study screenshots, and watch gameplay footage. If it grabs my interest, I pull the trigger.
Surprisingly, most of the games that catch my eye turn out to be pretty good.
You should give it a shot. Ignore the hype, forget word of mouth and influencers. Dive into something completely new and different—you might just be pleasantly surprised.
I do. But to me, step one of filtering out Sturgeon's Law is looking in the right place - platforms that are not overflowing with so much poison that I already know I'm unlikely to ever find what I want.
Every game that ever gets released when you check gaming forums within the first month of a game’s release lol /s
Im joking. I get the sentiment that a finished product should be fully complete and inspected by a QA team before release. But still, the fuckin extreme hatred ill see for the game and its studio, regardless of the company’s history, is soooooo fuckin wild. And almost everytime when I get to the point of buying the game, ill check the steam reviews and it’ll be mostly positive after like one patch release.
I’ve been curious about this recently after seeing all the reviews for MindsEye. I’d never heard of it until a few days ago, yet all the reviewers I pay attention to are talking about how it’s the worst game ever, while the footage they show makes it look fine. I haven’t played it, so I can’t disagree with them, but the vitriol for something that appears to be completely average is surprising.
There’s a lot of videos and articles like this one discussing how Stage 1-1 of Super Mario Bros for the NES is a cleverly designed tutorial for the core game mechanics.
my hot take is that even though portal is a masterpiece this song is so cringe because i associate it with unfunny “the narwhal bacons at midnight” type redditors
the counterpoint to me not liking a song from a Video Game because it of its association with Internet Culture has to be something other than “get out more”
I feel like the association of Portal with that era and that type of person, even though I think most of them probably became different people with age, even though I was practically one of them, makes the song a little harder to enjoy. I am aware of Ellen McLain’s (GLaDOS voice actress) opera creds and think that’s super cool though.
Sorry to the composer, it is not your fault. Similarly, I think maybe the same thing happened with Undertale. I think I played before the fandom got a bad reputation, so it and its songs are not quite tainted in my mind, in fact I’m a big fan of the game’s use of leitmotifs (am I using the word right?) and really enjoy its music, but if I came in after I saw the fandom, I might like the work less through no fault of the composer.
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
There is another comment that says this, but for clarity there is a franchise called “Total War” that has multiple editions which is exactly what you are looking for. They also have the ability to control the specific battles on the field like an RTS or you can play it with the battles operating like Civ. I personally really like the Total War Warhammer 3 edition (but I’m a Warhammer fan).
Op, this is it. The franchise has been around for decades and covers many historical eras. Recently they got into fantasy and did well with it, though personally I prefer the historical titles with the dynamic dueling.
Like Dr_Nik said, battles are either RTS style that you can choose to control, let ai take over and observe the battle instead, or you can autoresolve and skip a battle entirely. The overall gameplay is similar across each game, but the mechanics and ai behavior vary wildly across titles. If you don’t like one game, pick up another and you’ll probably love it
I will throw in another vouch for this series. It is exactly what you’re looking for. I haven’t played any of the more recent entries but I’ve heard they’ve been received very well. Total War: Rome 2 is a classic, but for something more modern I’ve heard only good things about Three Kingdoms, though I haven’t played that one personally.
Agreed with this. Started in the CIV world with 5, then a buddy introduced me to Rome:Total War and it was like finding crack. I still like to take over all of Europe at some point once a year.
Just a heads up OP, the games are limited to regions of the world, it’s never the full globe.
Minecraft. You think that there’s no way to play Minecraft “wrong”, right up until you accidentally fall into the 4-block wide valley that I’ve cut through the entire map or walk into the liminal space that I’ve mined out just above bedrock. Fuck cutesy cottages and Minecraft in minecraft- let’s just build superstructures that disappear beyond the draw distance of the map. Fuck creative mode- let’s do it while we’re facing down mobs day and night. Fuck explosives- do that shit with a pick like a goddamn man. You haven’t really seen confused rage until your child discovers hundreds of unexplained and unexplainable brutalist towers extending into the distance like the gravestones of alien gods when they thought you were building a farm over the next hill.
Shit like this I have only seen in a Manga once, forgot the name, but basically bunch of robots that humanity made were let loose without humans(they died) and they kept building giant megastructures for no reason without stopping It’s just absolutely surreal and I just love it
There’s a great level of detail mod that can keep distant structures and terrain loaded in. I think it’s called Distant Horizons. That and a render performance improvement are the only mods that I play with, makes such a big difference.
It’s insane to me that people think they will somehow go braindead the minute they don’t have a job. Is that how they act once they get home after a long and exhausting day of labouring? Just sit down in the couch and die, staring at the white wallpaper until they collapse? From my only related experience with actually existing in this life, I fucking hate how I don’t have time for anything, ANYTHING, ever, because work work work, only to go home and work work work some more as an adult with actual responsibilities. Retirement ya, i might get a quarter of my shit in order, at best, but I’d probably just stock it with more responsibilities that I really don’t have time for, but a window of more time means a window of thinking about more shit that has been neglected or needs doing because things always do.
A decent amount of people really do just park their ass on the couch and cease existing. I’ve watched more than a few people retire and die shortly after from having nothing to live for.
I noticed over covid that many people were telling me that they were happy to be working again after being furloughed (temporarily paused employment in the UK) because they’d been losing their minds with nothing to do. I couldn’t understand it, I was busy and really happy.
Here in Canada we had a similar system and I had friends on CERB for some time. Many of them didn’t know what to do with themselves. The ones who took it well were already accustomed to finding their own fun in the world, and did everything from DIY renovations to prototyping products they want to sell.
I wouldn’t know personally, I was working the whole time. Longest I’ve been off for was 3 months and I was more concerned with survival than keeping busy. But I’d like to think I have a lot of projects to work on. I’d love to move out of the suburbs into the country proper and have a workshop. Making custom furniture and electronics is so fun but I barely have time for it.
Thanks for sharing. You’re definitely right about the divide. I just found that I had so much time I could do everything I needed and wanted to do (granted, within the confines of social distancing at the time). Housework was joyful because I could do a good job of it, and have time for hobbies, and have time to relax from both. Aside from all the suffering and madness in the world at the time, it was a genuinely satisfying experience at home.
I had a kid and was working at the office 5 days a week during COVID so my experience wasn’t nearly as peaceful lol. But I could see how much some people thrived from it and I hate so much that our societies have taken that back from them.
To be fair, that is exactly what I do some days after work because this shit is needlessly exhausting. I think I need like a year of sickly Victorian style bedrest because I have been so burned out for so long that I don’t really have much of a sense of self at this point.
Is that how they act once they get home after a long and exhausting day of labouring? Just sit down in the couch and die, staring at the white wallpaper until they collapse?
Replace the wallpaper with a television and this is awfully familiar in my neighborhood.
Your time in this world is one of your most valuable assets. If a game is incredibly boring to you, you should put it down and play something else that you enjoy.
The same goes for pretty much everything in life, not just games. It might suck in the short term, but just don’t put up with friends/partners/jobs you don’t like. Make a change
Tin Can is a space survival simulator, where you are trapped in an escape pod after the loss of your ship. There are a few systems in your escape pod, and each system has components you need to look after. Your pod regularly flies through astoroid fields & other space phenomena that break these component parts forcing you to repair, replace or do without the systems keeping you afloat.
I did mention in the rules, if it was good enough to actually be your game of the year, you can make an exception. (I’m trusting that doesn’t mean we see Baldur’s Gate 3 on top or something)
My point is that gaming could abandon “A/B” in favor of something more like an actual spectrum of Height, Weight, and Gender Presentation instead of just awkwardly renaming the binary? I wouldn’t get so up in arms about gender replacing body type.
Okay, but an in-depth character creation system that lets you pick and adjust individual features is a lot more work than just manually creating two models and asking the player to pick one. Adding that means something else gets cut.
Putting in half a dozen body types and a boob slider shouldn’t be a ton of work, but devs who only offer two player models to choose from in the first place probably aren’t putting that much thought into character creation.
Putting in half a dozen body types and a boob slider shouldn’t be a ton of work
Body types no but you also need armour and clothing for everything. You quickly get a combinatorial explosion which you can then reign in with shape keys (“sliders”) which make all assets harder to develop.
You can’t automate generation of shape keys. An artist needs to go over every single asset and make it work for every single extreme point on every slider, then make sure that the automatically derived in between points look good and fix those if required, in all slider combinations.
And it’s probably still going to clip during some animations because going over absolutely everything is just prohibitively expensive.
In the context of Runescape this is just a hellish mess, because its ultimately a codebase from the late 90s with graphics created everywhere from the early 00s to the mid 20s. Oh and as an MMORPG anyone who was a player but stops playing is a lost sale so no pressure at all
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