Yeah, it looks pretty bad from that list. It may not be quite as bad in practice - some of them may have their name attached because, for instance, they co-own a production company where only person is involved but all three co-owners get their names on the credits. And some of them may be involved on the technical side, some for the story side, some just for financing, etc.
But even so, that looks like far too many names to have any kind of coherent vision.
Huh, the games did phenomenally well in America. Weird. /s
We're in an age of knee-jerk finger pointing, with the problem getting worse the higher you get in society. It's just one giant game of blame hot-potato.
Here's the thing: The producers don't owe the fans shit. They don't owe the fans an explanation even. They owe the investors an explanation. The fans are just there, that's the reality of being a fan of something. We don't get a say, we just can choose to watch or not, and then decide to trash it or praise it online if we want to.
So while there's a problem going up the ladder of the blame game, there's another one coming back down the ladder, and it's entitlement. For some odd reason there's an air of "we deserve this content, exactly to our specifications" and it permeates games, movies, music, all of the entertainment content we have been inundated with as a society. And I think the culture generally leans towards encouraging it because it keeps the culture thriving. But it also keeps us in the exact status quo we're in as a society, beholden to these billionaire publishers we all rail on daily.
Because let's face it: We as a society spend an enormous amount of energy and as such, destroy a lot of the planet, on all this entertainment. If we can't accept that as a fact then we're fucking doomed.
Fans are very important. I think you may be on to something that we as a society are starting to feel entitled when it comes to media, but downplaying the importance of the fans and saying they don’t matter is a bit too much.
In recent memory I can think of a few examples where fans had a major effect on the entertainment content we received.
The response to the first Sonic trailer was abysmal and much of the internet called them out for Sonic’s design. The studio listened… the artist who designed Sonic’s look even went to Twitter to thank people for all of the feedback. Then they went back, redesigned his look throughout the film and we got a pretty solid film out of that.
The entirety of #ReleaseTheSnyderCut managed to convince WB to bring Snyder back and let him finish his vision.
I mean even in comics, the fans mattered. How many times have comics held contests or write-ins to vote on decisions for certain characters or directions to take the story. The big one that comes to mind is the death of Jason Todd. People hated his Robin and voted to kill him off. Eventually he was brought back as Red Hood, but none of this would have occurred without the fans.
Oh and who could possibly forget Morbius getting rereleased because Sony mistakenly thought people loved it since there was so much online discussion and memes regarding the movie. For better or worse, fans (consumers) did that.
There's a difference between choosing and listening to fans (critics) to improve and being made to feel obligated to do so. This society literally harasses people over being upset at fictional portrayals of cartoons. Sometimes harassed right out of their chosen career. Game devs know this very well.
Content creators have no obligations to the consumers of the content, period. No more than Picasso had an obligation to paint landscapes. He didn't care to so he didn't.
Content creators, publishers, etc: they're free to make schlock we don't like, and we're free to express our disdain for it, and I'm free to point out that the folks wasting their energy complaining are indeed, wasting their energy. And cringey to boot. There's a line crossed when you start insisting and making personal commentary at all. A publisher's interests and the fan's interests are not always aligned. That's fine. You can deal with it, I promise. You bring up the snyder cut: Know who probably drove that whole push? The studio. Yeah, every one of those "fans" got played. This kind of shit is unacceptable. Period.
we're free to express our disdain for it, and I'm free to point out that the folks wasting their energy complaining are indeed, wasting their energy complaining are indeed, wasting their energy. And cringey to boot.
Oh, so you're free to complain, but when others do it it's cringey? Got it.
Declaring "I shall not be purchasing [thing] because [reason]" in public is yes, very cringey. You just, don't buy the thing. That's all. No look-at-me-i'm-important declaration necessary.
My complaint isn't the same as that bullshit. Try again.
So... the supply side matters but the demand side does not? Pfft.
If you make a thing that has an established fan base, and the fans are not happy, you screwed up. This isn't a problem with fans, it's a you problem. So how do you NOT screw up? You listen to the fans. Ideally, you hire people who are fans themselves.
Let's analogize: say carrots are in high demand - people can't get enough of them. And you tell everyone you have a big shipment of carrots coming in. And you set up a store called "Jim-Bob's Carrot Emporium", and people are lined up around the block... but it turns out the only thing you sell are potatoes... yeah, people are going to be pissed, and they will be justified, because you sold them a lie.
How? Aren't they the ones in charge? American audiences have as much influence on the product they chose to deliver as Americans did for Dark. Great show by the way.
Finally! I haven't played an Assassin's Creed game for Years because they were too long, repetitive, and filled with boring timesinks. And I used to be a huge AC fanboy back in the day. Starting from 1, I played each release every year until Revelations + 3 burned me out. Took me years to recover enough to play AC 4 and Rogue. Never even touched Unity, barely tried Syndicate (and only because I got it for free), and all the new ultra-long ones starting with Origins I didn't even bother starting, except for Valhalla during a free play weekend on Steam. Valhalla annoyed me enough over that weekend that I just didn't bother buying.
I've been waiting for a "back to basics" game like Mirage for a while now, and the fact that it has callbacks to the gameplay and setting of AC 1 is a big plus for me. I'll wait for reviews, but it's the most interested I've been in an AC game for a long time.
During what I still consider the golden age of gaming, which is 1997-2004, most single player games were aiming for 30-35 hours. That has been my sweet spot ever since but it doesn't mean a game can't be satisfying with less than that.
I personally don't find anything shorter than 10 hours enough of an experience. 25-30 sounds very reasonable.
Man I remember interviewing to work on this game back in 2017. That was back when hardsuit labs was working on this game. How many studios has this passed through at this point?
It was just Hardsuit and The Chinese Room, until hardsuit was eventually removed from the project. The game did however get delayed a handful of times. Let’s just hope that whatever concept they have of the game now is strong enough to ship this time.
I would change the difficulty and then regret it later, which I did with Furi and Jedi fallen order.
Furi’s combat is so good, and the easy mode is well designed too (still challenging, enemies just have less complex movesets and possibly fewer phases), but I wish I had taken a break and fought through the game properly. Now that I’ve finished the game on easy and seen the ending, I don’t think I ever will revisit it.
Yo I’m NGL I’m usually really passionate when I feel my rights are infringed but I do not feel like my rights are being infringed. This isn’t the same thing as requiring ID to view NSFW content; this issue is not a legal one.
It’s not even like porn is js inacessible now, most of it is found on Patreon, which is both unaffected and literally accepts cryptocurrency. I will admit im suprised to see itch.io take action cos it has a reputation as a porn service, but who tf consumes porn on steam? I do not believe “what they define as NSFW will expand!” Or “next, games featuring a gay character will be banned!”, either. You are fucking bugging if you think Valve would let that happen. All they would need to do is lean heavier into steam giftcards, potentially selling them digitally, and start accepting crypto 'till the processors wanna play ball.
I don’t understand why people are bitching that the companies that they choose to use have so much power over their purchasing decisions. “First this, next sex toys! Then contraceptives!” Like Jesus fuck bro have you not heard of cash?
Your point is sound because I usually use a credit card for this, but most of my Steam purchases come from buying gift cards. However, I could easily buy those gift cards with cash.
So it requires the effort and capability to go to a place that happens to have those cards. In some areas, that is more difficult and unlikely than others, and can be more difficult for the less financially fortunate.
Thus there’s added utility cost to the person when otherwise the existing digital payment model would be more accessible.
i.e. it’s a regressive solution and less ideal.
I liken it to the utility or economic tax that is attempting to vote in some areas where they make it more difficult to actually do it.
In Australia at least, those cards are everywhere in populated areas. Supermarkets and department stores pretty-much all stock them. I’d say that over 90% of Australians live within 3km of a store that sells Steam cards and takes cash. Most of us even closer than that.
No one will lament the removal of No Mercy from sale on Steam, but whenever a net like this is thrown over an entire area of perceived problematic content, there will be well-intentioned games caught in the net too. Specifically, LGBTQ+ games are under threat - games that don’t align with the Christian values underpinning the pressure group Collective Shout.
I do not believe “what they define as NSFW will expand!”
And that’s the core of your problem, puritan activists don’t generally have the capacity to think “actually, the thing i wanted other people to not be able to see is gone, i think I’ll leave it there” because the censorship isn’t the goal, the goal is control.
It’s even worse with organised puritans , because even if a few hang it up you’ll always find a few willing to just go a little further or have differing opinions on what is “acceptable”.
I would lay good money on this not actually being as far as they originally wanted, it was just what they could get for now.
I don’t understand why people are bitching that the companies that they choose to use have so much power over their purchasing decisions. “First this, next sex toys! Then contraceptives!” Like Jesus fuck bro have you not heard of cash?
Firstly, it’s the payment processors, you know the monopoly of companies that you need to take payments from regular people.
Secondly, payment processors can and will stop providing payment services for shops that carry physical goods they deem unacceptable.
(yes crypto exists, no it’s not equivalent yet) (yes steam cards exist, no it’s not equivalent and unless i’ve missed something itch.io doesn’t have an card system)
As far as cash goes, is there a new slot where you can put the cash monies directly in to the pc/console and it credits your account ?
Or do you mean, go to the store and buy a physical copy of the hundreds of thousands of games that don’t have physical editions ?
Yes, I understand that if these people could have it their way, any kind of mature content would be completely illegal. The reason I don’t feel strongly about this is strictly because this isn’t a legal threat, and I don’t think it has that capacity to become one. Lobbying is expensive, and I don’t believe that an Australian organization has the capacity to seriously affect global/western culture more than this. Quite frankly, its impressive they were able to pull this much off, and I fully expect ts to blow over in 3 years tops.
Don’t get me wrong- its not that I don’t care about censorship, its that I don’t really view this as censorship because the consumption and purchasing of the “censored” product is still completely possible. Contrarily, if this were signed into law I would have a big fucking problem with it.
With regards to the “companies they choose to use” point I made, I was in fact referring to payment processors, hence why I proposed crypto, cash and giftcards; as in purchasing a steam giftcard with cash from a store. Obviously I don’t expect people to not have credit cards, but the anonymity and security cash provides is almost never used because people find it less convenient.
The reason I brought this up is because I have seen it proposed that this issue will expand beyond the scope of digital marketplaces, which I find downright laughable. People WILL stop using visa cards if you can’t use it to buy condoms and there’s an ATM in the gas station.
I firmly believe that if this issue is pressed further, at the very least Valve will js stop accepting payment directly through payment processors.
I’d argue that it not being a legal threat doesn’t matter too much in this case because they aren’t looking for legal control, so much as “effective” control.
If they can stop you without needing for it to be signed in to law, then they’ll take that, if they can get a law as well, then I’m sure they’ll take that too.
Don’t get me wrong- its not that I don’t care about censorship, its that I don’t really view this as censorship because the consumption and purchasing of the “censored” product is still completely possible. Contrarily, if this were signed into law I would have a big fucking problem with it.
Censorship isn’t a binary, but we can agree to disagree on that one i suppose.
To this part though
purchasing of the “censored” product is still completely possible
Not really, there are numerous titles available exclusively on itch.io and steam, those are effectively censored by your rationale as you can no longer purchase them at all.
Honestly steam gift cards don’t work at all here because it’s not a ban on buying the games using a card, it’s a ban on steam listing the titles at all, on threat of losing the payment services.
Crypto cash and gift-cards are great if you have effective access to them.
Crypto is out for most people for obvious reasons (technical knowledge, dearth of places that actually accept crypto)
Cash works until it doesn’t and governments and big tech are trying their hardest to make it as difficult as possible, there is a big push to go cashless.
It’s not that people find cash less convenient because they are lazy (some are i suppose), it’s because it’s being purposely deprecated as much as possible, or just straight up doesn’t apply to the paradigm, such as online purchases.
The reason I brought this up is because I have seen it proposed that this issue will expand beyond the scope of digital marketplaces, which I find downright laughable.
As i said, this already happens, it’s weird in how it’s applied tbh, but that’s neither here nor there.
Mastercard just says : “brand-damaging Transactions” and doesn’t elaborate, at a quick glance.
A good example of this is casino’s and other gambling related physical locations, there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get a payment processor to work with gambling, assuming they even give you the time of day.
People WILL stop using visa cards if you can’t use it to buy condoms and there’s an ATM in the gas station.
Sure for that specific thing, hard to pay cash at amazon or other online only retailers.
I firmly believe that if this issue is pressed further, at the very least Valve will js stop accepting payment directly through payment processors.
That i’d be interested to see tbh, because as i said there isn’t an equally available alternative to card payment processors (and it’s not even close).
If they did go crypto only for instance, there’d be a big move to crypto for some, but that’d be a significant loss to take on principle alone.
I don’t understand why people are bitching that the companies that they choose to use have so much power over their purchasing decisions. “First this, next sex toys! Then contraceptives!” Like Jesus fuck bro have you not heard of cash?
Because that’s what groups like Collective Shout do, sparky. They think just acknowledging that LGBT people exist is “too adult”.
When was the last time you paid cash for a Steam game?
the Stasi are never gonna stop at the particular marginalized group you dislike. plus nobody’s offending shit, being a freak isn’t illegal (yet). acting like it is certainly helps move the overton window that way though
I might not have worded it correctly, but if your aim is to keep women safe from sexual assault, then removing an outlet for people who want to do that, while also removing a potential indicator for that kind of behaviour its a double screw over.
Im well aware that its nothing to do with safety or decency and is just a motte and Bailey attack on our freedoms.
gotcha, my whole issue was with the whole state surveillance of “dangerous people” part of it, because trans people are gonna end up on that list just for existing
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