And these fuckers were trying to “celebrate” the Rare anniversary on social media recently like they didn’t just cancel Perfect Dark and have done nothing with any of the other properties in years.
Luckily sounds like they aren’t gutting Ghost Story Games, also owned by Take-Two. That’s the BioShock director’s new studio, they’re making a game called Judas. Looks very Bioshock-like.
Anyone who played Hollow Knight and knows Team Cherry does not need to read this article (but you might still have some fun reading some of the details!). The answer is exactly what you think it is - they are a small team and they made a new game as big as or bigger than the original Hollow Knight. There was never a dev hell moment. They just bit off a lot and never stopped chewing.
You’re both wrong though, just because there are 93% more games than 2020 doesn’t mean they’re following the same end goal as other games, it’s like comparing fanfics on wattpad to published books.
The end goal for all of them, unlike fanfics, is to sell enough copies to make their development costs back and be able to make another game. Even if you discount the stuff that no one has heard of, the point of the article is that there’s so much competition that even making a game that does well critically isn’t enough to save it; and it used to.
Going to need a global wave of union organization to at least get royalties on sales determined for contribution levels. That’s unlikely to be incredible money but anything is better than nothing as you age towards their elder years
Besides that, no real solution. It’s happened to every art industry. It turns out there’s probably been an incredible amount of artistic talent every year throughout the millenniums but it’s just the last couple decades where it didn’t require super levels of luck and financial backing to make it
I believe Gearbox has always done this royalty situation union-less. But that doesn’t spread out sales to other games that need customers. There are still going to be plenty of games that just don’t move a lot of copies because other games suck the oxygen out of the room.
Let’s not toot Gearbox’s horn. While Borderlands 3 was their biggest success when it launched the people working on it got less royalties (per person) than they got for Borderlands 2. Meanwhile Pitchford bargained himself a 12 million bonus before the game was even released. Oh and when people complained about getting less royalties Pitchford said, like the asshole he is, they’re free to quit. Gearbox does royalty situation union-less (as I know 40% of the royalties are split between the employees), but that comes at the cost of having to put to with one the biggest assholes in the industry who will tell you to eat shit if you don’t like something.
It also comes at the cost of being paid less than the industry average, which isn’t high. But it wasn’t so much tooting Gearbox’s horn as it was pointing out that it doesn’t solve the problem stated in the article. It wasn’t about how well the employees at a successful studio are paid but rather how many studios are unsuccessful because of how much competition there is. The industry might generate absurd amounts of money, but a large percentage of that is still just going to a handful of games that gather all the attention rather than being spread around more uniformly, and I don’t think there’s really a way to spread it around.
Absolutely. I agree that royalties aren’t the solution here and I agree with what the problem is. Your previous comment just kinda came across (at least to me) like giving some praise to Gearbox for giving out royalties when IMO it doesn’t really deserve praise when those royalties don’t meet the expectations of the people actually doing the work. Especially when the owners get to set their own special deals with guaranteed payouts.
I’m sure it looked great when they made Borderlands 2, but they also made Battleborne. Borderlands 2 devs still get royalties to this day. And hey, Gearbox still gets some stuff right sometimes. The entire Borderlands series still supports LAN, which even the people who manage the Steam pages don’t seem to care about. They can be good in some ways and shitty in others. Life is rarely so simple.
It’s one thing if a reviewer says it’s good. His livelyhood relies on the video game industry thriveing. If you stop buying this game, the studio won’t make the next game. If the studio won’t make the next game, the reviewer can’t review the next game. If the reviewer can’t review the next game, then where does their paycheck come from?
So I’m not saying they knowingly artificially raise scores and sell games. I’m just saying maybe a 7 gets reviewed as an 8 just so the reviewer won’t feel awkward when meeting with industry folk at the next industry get together.
But when gamers collectively band together, and say itxs 10/10, and game of the year, I feel rest assured that Elden Ring is as good as people say.
I have not bought Elden Ring. I have not played Elden Ring. In all honesty, I probably won’t. Why?
BECAUSE YOU DON’T NEED TO PLAY EVERY SINGLE GAME JUST BECAUSE IT’S AMAZING!!! YOU CAN JUST NOOOOOT PLAY IT!
Don’t blame too many games. Don’t blame reviewers. Don’t blame anything. This is only a problem if you let it control your life. Variety is good for everybody. Some games you can just let others enjoy. I’m glad Elden Ring is so great. I don’t feel bad I missed it. I’m happy for you if you loved it.
Isn’t that so much healthier of an attitude to have?
The article is about how so many games are coming out that many of the companies making them are going under even when they make games that are evaluated as being good or great. I provided an anecdote about myself that probably contributes to it. I didn’t really share it to be about my attitude toward being able to play these games. I’ll be just fine.
The overabundance of games is killing great games.
Can’t tell you how many fantastic multiplayer games I’ve bought only to find out they’re ghost towns or become ghost towns soon after purchasing. And it’s because players are so spread out over so many games. 20 years ago these games would have been major successes with a huge player base for years, but they’re dead on arrival or within a few months. It’s a real bummer.
That being said, I’m going to plug Mycopunk. Just got it and it’s great. Like Deep Rock Galactic and Risk of Rain 2 had a baby. We need more players though. Came out in July. Currently on sale. But base price is cheap.
Multiplayer games 20 years ago were also built to be more scalable to different numbers of players, and they mostly had bots and such, too. I might push back on how long they sustained huge player bases though. Those games were often sequeled very quickly, and most of the players would move to the next one, leaving behind a small percentage. At least the old game was always still playable for those who bought it, though.
There are multiplayer games from 30 years ago that still have 30 people who play on the first Friday night of each month, and they will put that in their calendar and keep the game alive.
The idea that multiplayer games need huge communities of players otherwise they are “dead” is what is killing multiplayer games.
I mean I get what you’re saying. I’ve been playing Sven-Coop for 26 years and counting. People are still playing. People are still making new levels for it.
But it’s mostly people on the older side and it’s because it was a mod for a HUGELY popular game and the mod itself used to have a ton of players.
But a lot of these new, good games never get that big following that allow for a small fan base decades later. Or even months later. Because there’s so many other options spreading gamers out.
Active enough that I can queue at any time of day and find opponents close to my skill level with good ping
Active enough that I can queue at peak hours and find opponents
Need to schedule games via Discord matchmaking
If I really love the game enough, I'll put up with jumping through hoops to play it, but it does get frustrating when the games I like are a lot more convenient to play than the games I love.
It’s great. It’s early access, so it needs some polishing, but it’s already pretty solid. It can be a little overwhelming at first, so make sure you’re doing one of the easier difficulties. Get your weapons and character leveled up and it starts becoming more engaging. Try out different weapons too. I was struggling until I started branching out. And keep in mind that the enemies are made up of various parts and you can blow those parts off and then other enemies can pick those parts up and use them. So learning how to take off limbs and then make sure the limbs are destroyed so they can’t be re-used is important.
Oh, and it allows gifs in the in-game chat. Something I’ve never seen in a game before. Type “/gif” followed by any keyword and it tosses an appropriate gif into the chat. It’s a lot of fun to mess around with.
Love it so far. My only complaint is that I’ve accidentals melted several mods I wanted to keep because I forget which key does what. Wish there was an unlock button and trash you could drag to instead of just two keys. Other than that its great.
Back when I was on Reddit years ago, one of my favorite subs was the Patient Gamers one. There are a couple of similar ones on different Lemmy instances but they’re nowhere near as active.
I remember friends of mine assuring me I absolutely HAVE to get games like Atomic Heart, High on Life, Avowed, the Oblivion remaster, Starfield, Prey, the Outer Worlds, and many more. There are series that I have enjoyed in the last that have way too many entries to keep up with- 3D Sonic, Assassin’s Creed, Monster Hunter, Yakuza (with all it’s spinoff games like Judgement and others). I’m sure a lot of those games are great, but I just don’t have the time to play then all. And with hundreds of games in my backlog already, these games need to be on sale for dirt cheap and without anti-features like DRM and micro transactions and online requirements in order to get me to buy them.
So I think it’s worth asking- are there enough whales willing to buy these games for $70 or even $80 to subsidize people like me picking them up for $10 in five years? If not, perhaps these developers and publishers will need to move to a different business model. Maybe there are simply too many devs and too many games getting made.
I have a friend that insists on getting games at launch. When I get the games years later though I notice they haven’t even played them for a hour while I go on to actually finish them.
So I think some people buy because of the hype than to actually play the game, since the act of purchasing gives them the high.
That's an answer for you as a consumer, but the article is from the perspective of the industry. If no one ever bought new games, game development would not be sustainable.
Considering the hours you put in a good building game just about every one of them is “free”. But yeah, OpenTTD is great and a lot of fun. TTDX was my first PC game which was an instant buy (before I even had a computer but was getting one in a couple of months) after I saw a review on TV. The 90s was something else.
Yeah, i bought it too when it came to steam but also donated about 50 dollars back around 2009 I think. It is worth it even if I don’t really play it any more.
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