Ubisoft is largely run by one family, the Guillemots. What seems to be important to them, above and beyond everything else, is running a company called “Ubisoft”. Their company has a lot more value if someone else can run it, but they won’t budge on that, so their stock has tanked over the past number of years, as they keep making bad decisions. They tried to partner with Tencent to take Ubisoft private, which basically means buying out all of their investors, but Tencent also wanted the Guillemots gone, which wasn’t happening. So instead, they made this new company that Tencent can have more control over, which gets the best parts of Ubisoft’s portfolio as well as a lot of the debts, but Tencent has enough sway to flip off the Guillemots and make decisions they think are better. Meanwhile, the Guillemots still get to run a company called Ubisoft into the ground, but they get to start fresh with less (or zero?) debt, so they don’t have to dig themselves out of a hole first.
There could have been games where there was just a brilliant idea for a game that keeps having engaging content on an ongoing basis with passionate devs.
But live service so an exec could check a box for their quarterly shareholder call was always going to be DOA.
The game they killed 3 days after release might have been good but i haven’t seen a single gameplay video or have any idea of what the game was about. Are they that scared of releasing a shit game and keeping it playable but dead for a while?
I mean, they spent what 400 millions on developing it and they won’t spend 10k - 100k to keep that game running for a while? Like “NO NOT A SINGLE CENT MORE SPENT ON THAT SHIT GAME!” XD
Well, yeah. If it’s clearly never going to recover, why keep spending money on it? They already took it as a total loss by refunding everyone, so that was probably cheaper than holding out for a recovery that wasn’t going to happen.
I don’t know what the market at large wants, but I suspect its failure is based at least in part on the fact that the purchase has zero value if other people don’t also value it, so the customer is now more reserved with their time and money unless a game seems like it’s going to take off, which would theoretically make nearly every a game a huge success or total failure. What I want is for a scalable multiplayer shooter that gracefully handles 1-X players, and I hardly care what X is as long as it’s more than 3. Let me host it on a LAN and play split-screen, and give me a deathmatch mode, among other things. We used to get this kind of shooter all the time, and now I’m starving for one, to the point that I’d happily have picked up Concord if it was that game, even with its wonky-ass character designs.
I played a dead MMO where i was the only person in the game. They where shutting down the servers soon and it was an interesting experience. The game wasn’t bad honestly. As a single player experience at least. Maybe that was the issue.
It had matchmaking so if there weren’t enough players it would take a long time and you’d end up in the same lobbies with the same players every time, if you could even get in apparently. Not like you could play solo even if you wanted to.
Keeping engaging content on an ongoing basis seems to be such an unreachable target for most devs and game designs that it’s undoing large swaths of the industry.
Yes, they’re a publisher. They supposedly have/had a small team working on a Blade Runner game, but they have yet to release a game they developed on their own. Publishing is their thing, so Annapurna Interactive is kinda fucked. I mean, jeez, it looks bad, I mean they all walked out.
They are employing almost 30 concept artists, their art style is extremely unique. Just look at the Elves in DOS2.
They use the tools available to them. If quick iteration of the “foundations” of ideas is improved by the use of GenAI, why not use it? It’s already integrated into the products they’re paying for (like Photoshop).
It’s like saying “they shouldn’t be using Google Images or artbooks when developing concept art”, it’s just silly.
The concepting stage is a really crucial and foundational stage in terms of design, but it can also influence writing, gameplay, etc. as an artist explores the thing they’re concepting.
I don’t like genAI, and think that using it at such an important stage will invariably mean it ends up influencing the game. I want to play games or experience media made with intention by people, not bland products shat out by a chatbot.
You: “The exercise at the gym stage is really crucial to building muscles. I don’t like cars and think that using it at such an important stage will inevitably mean it ends up influencing the training”.
I mean, if you just want to invent and imagine things and then get angry at them, go ahead.
I’m just trying to tell you that Larian isn’t replacing anything or anyone with AI, they’re using it to help with the foundational stage of some processes, which is how it’s supposed to be used. Throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, then work off of that.
Like… It’s hilarious to complain about their use of AI like that in the context of the fact that they currently employ 27 concept artists and are hiring more.
I think maybe you’re having a different argument than me? I didn’t say they were replacing anyone or anything with AI.
What I have expressed an issue with is exactly what you described:
they’re using it to help with the foundational stage of some processes, which is how it’s supposed to be used. Throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, then work off of that.
And you dismissively and incorrectly compared that to driving to the gym.
I think maybe try a different LLM to come up with your arguments, maybe Claude? Because the one you’ve got thinking for you right now doesn’t seem to be working lad.
I think what they’ve said is that they’ll be using it in the ideation stage, which is part of the process of creating concept art. They’ve also said they often use it to “develop concept art”, which could well just be a slip of the tongue by management rather than a clear statement by somebody involved in the process.
But they’re using GenAI in the ideation stage of concepting, which is something I have a problem with, and you don’t (which is fine, by the way). I feel like we’ve come back to the beginning of this argument, lol
I feel like replacing low-quality, quick-and-dirty doodles (often by non-artist members of the team) with medium-quality AI is fine and doesn’t pose a threat to the job security of concept artists (as exemplified by Larian currently hiring more concept artists).
If you’re just against any use of GenAI, then I get it - it is controversial due to the way it’s trained, and I’d prefer if they weren’t using it, but at least in terms of “AI replacing humans” it’s a non-issue in this case.
I need some piece of LLM generated code to make it into some critical TCP library that’s used for the internet everywhere.
Maybe then I can get some peace from the individuals that cry when a company mentions they used LLMs.
Aside: This looks like a proper use of LLMs - we’re not displacing artists with something trained on stolen art. Maybe it impacts some interns that needed to create PowerPoints.
Edit: Fine. I’m wrong. Vote with your wallet and don’t buy the game.
Except for the “developing concept art” bit. That’s not some unimportant intern’s work and does have the potential to displace artists. And while no AI-generated content may make it into the game, it does suggest that there will be art in the game that’s based on the AI-generated content. That’s what concept art is for, after all.
To add to this, concept art is one of the places I would least like AI to be used in. It utterly fails at being creative and actually creating something fundamentally NEW and the more we use it the more our media will just devolve into remixed homogeneity.
I liked it a lot. It’s engrossing enough to make you just want to keep going to the next episode, and it’s beautifully animated. Other than the story stuff, the gameplay loop is just This is the Police, and I think this improves both the Telltale design and the design of This is the Police by way of pacing. It did still leave me wanting more as a video game, but as a story and a comedy, I loved it.
Just finished Chapter 3 of 8. It has some very classic Telltale foibles. Sometimes the script seems to assume you made a decisions that you didn’t make and it makes the dialogue feel awkward. Other times, the sarcastic tone in a written dialogue choice isn’t clear when you select the option and the resulting scene isn’t at all what you thought you were suggesting. I suspect by the time I am done, I’ll have the general sense of “oh, my decisions didn’t ACTUALLY matter,” as is Telltale tradition, but I’m not far enough to judge in that space yet
Despite these fairly common for Telltale problems, it’s an incredibly witty and entertaining piece of entertainment, and perhaps one of better “no, seriously, there’s a game in here” Telltale products. The “dispatch” mechanic is, imo, a fun management game, and they tie it into the narrative in ways that feel clever. Everyone is at each others throats because of a story beat? People are actively sabotaging each other on the job and it’s making your job as their dispatcher harder. As a comedy and near-film, the writing is laugh-out-loud funny, the voice acting and character animation is top notch, and there’s an interesting story and world holding it all together. I’m sure people will argue that it’s a better movie than it is a game, and, as much as I enjoy the corporate dispatcher half of the game, I am sure many will agree, as the dialogue writing is truly the stand-out element of the game.
It’s very good. Not perfect, but very good, and compared to the older Telltale games, a real home-run.
Interesting that you felt the game assumed you made choices you didn’t, I hadn’t ran into that despite very frequently picking the less popular options. I won’t ask for specifics for obvious reasons, but that does make me curious whether there was a bug or a gap in logic. Definitely not a flawless game as gamepad is a very flawed input option when things get hectic, but damn the writing and action sequences had me hooked immediately.
Still can’t believe my first time through was only 7.5 hours. Can’t wait to go through with different choices.
I think they mean how the suggested responses were summarised, sometimes when you choose that dialogue option it doesn’t always say the thing it suggested in exactly the way you were expecting,. Personally I found it on point and did fit within the parameters of the summarisation. My 17yo son played it and loved it so much he made me sit and play it with him, and I noticed that he didn’t pick up on what some of the dialog summaries meant. Whereas old and ancient me, whose been around the block a fair bit, understood the nuances behind them all.
I’m going to spoiler it and talk about it, because I am genuinely interested in other people’s opinion/experiences on this.
Spoilers for late chapter 1, early chapter 2This is mostly centered around the kiss. Save the “proposition” innuendo, it became pretty clear that Blonde Blazer’s whole schtick was to recruit Robert. Even in the moment when she moved close to him, she kind of sizes him up like someone looking at a horses teeth as opposed to someone losing themselves in the eyes of a prospective lover, so I didn’t kiss her, and save making a joke on the “proposition” comment, didn’t say anything overly romantic of flirty. This made the whole conversation the next day feel weird and out of place. It was toned like Robert DID kiss her, as Blazer just constantly apologized, and the responses I had options for (“I don’t think it was a mistake” met with “it was, for reasons I’ll explain later”) kept that same awkward connotation. Blonde Blazer acted like she did something incredibly inappropriate in… being slightly drunk when she offered Robert a job? But as a result of my options, there really was nothing to act like this about. But the conversation HAD to be toned this way, otherwise Invisigirl overhearing and responding with “what, you two fuck?” wouldn’t make any sense. The game didn’t “assume I made choices I didn’t” as much as they clearly wrote it with an expectation in mind, but my choices didn’t meet those expectations, leaving the whole section flowing weird.
Oh okay I see what you’re saying, but I took it as more than just that.
spoiler for the same eventShe was being flirty with him while not just on the job but also in a relationship, and for some that’s enough for them to feel guilty. Yes, at this point Robert didn’t know about the relationship at this point, but from his POV he’d still read that guilt for what he saw might have been a signal he missed.
I’m sure you probably have more than just that one example, but in this instance I didn’t see it as being off from my decisions I guess. Overall, I felt the writing was pretty well done across the board.
Gameplay - quick time events weren’t super annoying (I wasn’t a fan of telltale batman quick time events), I personally liked the hacking minigame (though not everyone did), and the actual “dispatch” segments were tons of fun.
The story was excellent - I kept expecting a “twist” like we’ve seen in a lot of superhero media recently, and there weren’t any big twists. I think this was a good thing, it’s nice to see more of a “reconstruction” of good guy vs bad guy.
Spoilers - ::: spoiler spoiler If there is a twist, it’s that Shroud’s actually kinda stupid with common sense things - no grand plot, he’s just good at math and let it get to his head. Letting Robert live since he was “unimportant” really was just Shroud missing an opportunity. Not having Toxic kill him in the first scene really was just shitty planning, and probably the need to be a drama queen in the warehouse and the need to defeat Mecha Man, not some “I am your father” type moment like some theories were suggesting.
I enjoyed this a lot, even though it meant a lot of theories around the game didn’t pan out.:::
This isn’t a problem. For the first time in a very long time, I actually have a queue of games I want to play and din’t just mindlessly scroll steam store or wait for big releases. In fact, I no longer follow game releases, there is something at any given time I can find to play
Statistically, if more than half of a random sample of steam games are rated to be good, the standards for evaluation are shit.
And the people that were supposed to let us know if a game is good or not, the “professionals”, have a median score around ~75% according to open critic data, otherwise they wouldn’t have a job because sponsors would gfo.
We’re on our own shifting through a pile of de facto shovelware to find anything of worth nowadays.
It’s a problem not exclusive to games, mind you. Music, scientific publishing and other content for profit industries have the exact same issue: Vetting quality requires work so for profit institutions offload the vetting to the user.
The things getting reviewed already have a selection bias that makes them more likely to review well. It’s not a problem that reviewers focus their time on the games that their audience is most interested in, as opposed to reviewing every asset flip published to Steam.
I’m sure Kane and Lynch are audience favorites. No reason not to think only the best games get reviewed and thus, shifting the mean 25% in the favor of the companies that just so happen to be the ones paying for advertising. It’s more likely outlets, on average, only review good games, that sounds more reasonable.
It does shift review coverage, generally, toward the ones with the most advertising. Kane & Lynch is a weird one to pull out to support your argument, because despite the advertising, they got fairly poor reviews. (Also, as someone who’s played Kane & Lynch, those games are underrated.) The games with the big advertising budgets typically have a degree of confidence behind that spend, which again creates selection bias toward games more likely to review well, but that doesn’t mean that Redfall and Suicide Squad still can’t happen and review poorly.
It does shift review coverage, generally, toward the ones with the most advertising
but that doesn’t mean that Redfall and Suicide Squad still can’t happen and review poorly
Thank you for arguing in my favour. Both Redfall and Suicide Squad reviewed well above 50%. For people on Lemmy arguing about statistics it’s obvious the mean is shifted so anything around 75% is mediocre, however, to the average consumer, that is not the case. Furthermore, I mentioned Kane and Lynch because that game was the reason giant bomb exists and everyone nowadays knows big publishers strong-arm outlets.
Above 50%, but do you have any idea how much lower the bar can be for a bad video game than Redfall and Suicide Squad? Those are the games that typically aren’t getting coverage. Redfall and Suicide Squad, again, had some confidence behind them. When that much money is thrown behind a game and there’s no confidence in it, it usually doesn’t even come out.
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