I wanted to say Outer Wilds too simply to have OP join us in our search for that high of another player experiencing this game for the first time. Nothing quite like seeing the game “click” when they finally get those big plot points.
I’m happy to see that all around the games industry and the surrounding areas like game journalism the value of unions is rediscovered. Work to rule is very effective against these insidious tactics of one layoff round after another while announcing record profits, because if noone cares that work piles up because of not enough hands, it hurts the owners in the only way they understand - in their finances.
This greedy thinking of only next quarter’s numbers must end.
I suspect that tech management & executive culture has learned & become accustomed to exploit the mental health of their employees. Software and tech are stereotypically jobs well suited to neurodiversity and ADHD, and those people are prone to hyperfocus & long hours and may benefit from tight timelines. If management just gets used to recruiting for autism/adhd, then develops management strategies that work well with that population, it’s going to be difficult as the field matures and attracts more neurotypical people.
I used to tell my mentees that no one was going to explicitly tell them that 10, 12, 14 hour days were mandatory. That long hours were not a metric for success. It was that they would be competing for jobs with people who really did want their life to be their job and would happily spend that much time working, because that’s all they want to do. It’s only when the pool of available jobs grows beyond the number of those obsessive workaholics that they have to start hiring people who have any interest in work-life balance or collective bargaining.
Tough times for that. Every interview or recruiter I’ve spoken with lately, I say the words “PTO” and/or “work life balance” and they act like I said a dirty word.
I wish there were more games that had NSFW stuff, but not as the main focus. BG3, Cyberpunk, The Witcher, etc all have nudity, but the sex scenes are short, cropped, and half assed because they are embarrassed.
There needs to be quicktime events, better cinematics, and werewolves (BG3, Elder Scrolls, Witcher) during erotic scenes. Bring back A/O games. Many of these shouldn’t be even remotely aimed at anyone below 18 anyways.
Hell, the last genuinely fun game with kink in it was Saints Row 3, and that was for comedic effect.
Buttknight was a really good arcade scroller shooter. The unlockable scenes weren’t interractive, but actually unlocking them was a ton of fun. Short game too.
You will never see 18+ only games that comes close to Cyberpunk or BG3 in scope. Because most retailers won’t stock A/O games, and these publishers still get a significant portion of revenue from these retailers selling physical games. And these games are simply too expensive to make to ignore those retailers.
I played it with coop mates (via game pass IIRC), all EGS fans since Oblivion, well after 76 was released and patched up, and it was just… boring. And grindy. Yet kept trying to upsell us stuff. I kinda get how some like the game with those BGS environments, but that was still a shock to me.
Starfield did nothing either. I watched YT story videos/tried the intro out of a friend’s Steam library instead of buying and felt like I was looking at a AI slop Skyrim mod, both technically and in terms of writing. Again, I’m a hardcore fan going way back, warts, glitches and all.
It’s remarkable the studio has fallen so far, without basically changing anything, yet still has such a loyal following. How is that even possible?
Fallout 1 - exceptional world-building, fantastic game, great character writing, superbly replayable RPG. Your build is instrumental to what you can do; decisions affect the world. Held together by jank and bugs, alas, but generally superb.
Fallout 2 - fixes most of the jank and bugs and has a much bigger and deeper world, but not quite as well-integrated a story. Worthy sequel, though.
Fallout 3 - “Oblivion with guns”, but has a pretty decent story, lots of interesting side quests. Seems like Bethesda misunderstood the point of the setting a bit, but very promising. Has some RPG replayability - different builds and different choices change what’s available in the world.
Fallout New Vegas - best game in the whole series. Good plot, great sidequests, great characters, reactive world. Actually makes it seem like the Creation engine can be used for ‘proper’ RPGs - everything by Bethesda tended to be a mile wide and an inch deep up till then. Obsidian actually understand the setting, which is not surprising since they had a lot of original Black Isle devs in their team. Held together by jank and bugs, which I’m going to pretend was a callback to Fallout 1.
Fallout 4 - just what the fuck. Plot that you can barely believe is as stupid as it is. One-note, irritating characters. Dreadful writing. Gives up being an RPG in favour of crafting and base-building. “Talking” interface which was the butt of jokes at the time and an insult to the history of the series. Barely any decision is of consequence, you could save near the “final decision” point, see all the endings, and miss nothing of consequence. All of Bethesda’s worst habits, given free rein.
Not going to be spending money with Bethesda again unless the reviews turn up exceptional. After F4, I was expecting nothing from 76, and was not surprised. Was expecting nothing from Starfield, and was not surprised. Am expecting Elder Scrolls 5 to be a bag of shite as well - am whatever the complete opposite of ‘hyped’ is for it.
I think the rose tinted glasses effect is strong. Fallout 4 wasn’t that bad and had some neat characters and sidequests. I played heavily modded NV too, and while great, has plenty of missed beats and slow quests.
Also, making a (mostly) top down, tight text game is very different than producing a voice acted, sprawling 3D world. It’s like trying to compare the writing quality of a novel vs a 2 part blockbuster movie.
Not that I disagree with the decline, but I think that’s putting it too strong and ignoring huge differences.
For me the technical and artistic of aspects are factors too. Starfield would’ve been unreal if it came out in 2012… but look at its contemporaries. CP2077? KCD2? Even ME Andromeda utterly trounces it in artistic creativity, animation quality, graphics, scripting, performance, HDR quality, combat, even some voice acting; I could go on and on. And it’s basically the same premise.
Yet Starfield feels like modded Skyrim, looks only superficially better, and runs at like a tenth the speed.
One thing that really threw me off FO4 was the voiced main character. They had to simplify the dialogue options significantly, and I just don’t need my character to have a voice, my imagination can sort that out just fine. That way I can make up my own mind about how my character sounds in my head, have more detailed dialogue options (like FO:NV), and not have a locked in boring voice with boring dialogue options. Lots of cool additions in FO4, but it just seemed so shallow, I stopped playing quite early.
Feels like we’ve hit the point of diminishing returns where the console cycle stops making sense. Does anyone really expect to ever play a PS6 game they just flat out couldn’t make at all on the PS5?
This gen gave me the kick to leave consoles. Neither Sony or Nintendo seem that interested with me being a customer, constant paywalls and upsells while getting less and less in return. I’ll get the next 8-10 years of games through the ps5 after that I imagine everything will be on pc. VR is not my thing, neither is online or live service so I can get all the emulators without a monthly cost.
They offer a sub! Ever dreamed of paying monthly to use an alternative launcher that does the same stuff than the already FOSS existing launcher? Now you can! 🤦
I’m not very inclined to take at face value what a studio founder has to say about a service that might make them less money, and might save their customers money.
Nobody is forcing studios or publishers at gunpoint to release on a subscription service.
Nobody is forcing studios or publishers at gunpoint to release on a subscription service.
Except for the hilarious number of studios owned by Microsoft. One would hope Microsoft takes the effect of Game Pass into account when they’re reviewing sales figures and shutting down studios. One would hope…
There’s no industry pressure to be on Gamepass, yet.
Microsoft doesn’t willingly lose money on something unless they think they can make it into a market distorting rent extraction hellscape. something very profitable later.
A) it’s already profitable, as per Phil. Unless you think he’s misleading shareholders there’s no reason to doubt that claim. B) they would never be able to buy enough studios to create industry pressure to be on GP, it’s just not possible and the service would crumble under its own weight
I kinda hate the guy so it’s hard for me to keep the tone neutral but I’ll try my best.
Long story short: He’s a popular streamer that had a few controversies that caused many people labelled him as arrogant or egotistical.
The latest one is his take on the “stop killing games” initiative that he was against. He had a video a few months ago were he misrepresentated the movement and spread misinformation (whether or not this was intentional or misinformed is up for debate) and caused a significant drop in the momentum of the movement, refusing to accept any criticism and doubling down on things. That was until recently were the initiative was in the last month and a half before the big deadline at only around 50% of the required signatures, but then huge momentum sprung up with a lot of people marking him as the “villain” of the movement and because of his controversy before it wasn’t long before word spread.
This has obviously led to harassment of the guy(which I feel is too far personally) which he responded to by tripling down on his opinion causing further being labelled as the villain. Eventually the momentum carried it over the finish and people are happy that he didn’t get his way.
whether or not this was intentional or misinformed is up for debate
It’s not, in his response to the initial controversy he cut out the part of Ross’ video that directly contradicted his misrepresentation, he’s a lying piece of shit.
Almost, but not quite. A portion of those signatures will turn out to be invalid, so we have to keep going past 1 million if this thing is going to fly. Aiming for 1.4 million might be wise.
Yoshi’s Story. Yeah it’s short, and level unlocking is weird as all outdoors, but people really hating on it for being too easy? Bro, it’s a YOSHI game. That’s a quarter of the appeal! It’s a game you can get younger kids involved in, or you can play after a hard day when you want to turn your brain off partially.
Plus almost everything in that game is adorable. And 64 bit sprite art is goated
Its the context and expectations. The last “Yoshi” game was a mainline Super Mario World 2, and people expected similar scope and challenge but in 64 bits. Super Mario 64 had further primed people for crazy genetlrational leaps. Yoshi’s Story was a fine game, but it wasnt SMW3 by a longshot.
Exactly this. Yoshi’s Story was a follow up to Yoshi’s Island, often considered one of the greatest 2d platformers of all time. I spent weeks if not months completing Yoshi’s Island. Then when Yoshi’s Story came out, I rented it and completed it over the weekend.
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