Okay, I should have looked a little more I was just looking at the years. It sounded like the original release years. That’s what I get for half assidly googling while I work lol.
So it’s like when Rockstar turned the GTA remasters over to the phone people and we ended up with a clusterfuck.
Aspyr’s KotOR port was considered pretty good, I believe. I was disappointed in their Civilization series ports for Linux because their netcode was incompatible with the Windows versions, which is baffling to me, considering Linux users are already siloed so much in other ways. But the games ran okay, so it wasn’t all bad.
But yeah, I haven’t really heard any good updates or news come out of Aspyr for a while. If I recall correctly, they were the original devs for the KotOR remake, which was going to be their first game from the ground up from a technical perspective. But they had that taken away from them after working on it for a year or two, which is crazy. It must’ve truly been awful.
Man this is a shame. Slightly related… How’s the switch port? I have a friend who’s obsessed with Star wars and just got her first switch and I was going to tell her to get that
KotOR’s console controls can be a bit awkward at times. I haven’t played it on Switch, but I originally played it when it released on the OG Xbox. I assume the control scheme is similar. And the graphics are going to be dated, but that’s a given for a game from '03. But other than that, I’m sure it’ll be a fantastic experience, especially for a die-hard Star Wars fan. It’s still my top game of all time, and if you can play it on PC with some graphical enhancement mods, it still holds up really well nowadays.
The original was not EA. It was Pandemic Studios, who released Battlefront 1 and 2 both before they were acquired by Electronic Arts between 2007- 2009.
Ah, thanks for correcting me there. I knew that EA were involved at some level and I didn’t think to research that part of the post I was replying to, so I stand corrected, but I think the main point I was making is still valid, that the team that initially developed the game weren’t behind this re-release.
Embracer, actually, and while I do suspect that the blame for a lot of these problems lies with them (especially the lack of servers, which was almost certainly down to Embracer cheaping out), it’s hard to blame this particular failure on anyone but Aspyr. While Embracer almost certainly created the conditions by not giving them enough time and resources to deliver good work, it’s still on Aspyr that they used someone’s work without permission. There’s no real justification for that, even if you’re in a bind.
I mean, it is pretty amazing. It’s funny if they’re ironic upvotes and it’s wild if they’re upvotes of agreement because it is complete misinformation.
Yeah EA has lots of bad rep and yeah they made a couple of games in the series. But the game the article is about, as well as the original game it is remaking were nothing to do with EA.
Sony finally remembered that Bloodborne existed at the worst possible time. Still, at least the game isn't being outright canceled and judging from the Micolash redesign, it looks like the creator is making the best of it. I do wonder if there's a possibility the creator could sell the game now, since it's now a legally distinct gothic kart racing game and not a Bloodborne fan game.
Wouldn't be surprised if mod tools never come at all.
If there's one thing I learned, it's that gaming companies will promise you anything to get on your good side. Take statements like these with the biggest grain of salt.
True but Bugthesda has got to know that mods and modders are the backbone of the longevity of their games by now, right? Without mods their games tend to be unplayable.
So people play it on console because it's a good game without mods, which would mean it's not unplayable. There's also little reason beyond just general cynicism to believe mod tools aren't coming when their past several offline games got mod tools a handful of months after release, including Skyrim. As far as I can tell, it's quite normal for mod tools to come several months after release for non-Bethesda games as well. I don't think the longevity of mods has anything to do with whether or not a game is unplayable.
If the game is so riddled with bugs it famously needs modders to create mods for the sake of fixing the product, there is quite the significant tie between longevity of an unplayable game and mods. See, the problem is your wording sees the cause and effect the wrong way around. Hopefully this helps you to understand.
Oh and yiu ask about people continuing to play Bugthesda’s games on console, I’ll happily point out you’re asking fir a logical answer from a market that proliferated child gambling, standardised season passes and the standard of the complete version of a game release costing 100 bucks before the industry still found an excuse to increase the usual price of 60 bucks up to 70. It’s not because something is bad that idiots won’t buy it.
I've played Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, and Fallout 4, the latter two at launch. I've never installed mods for any of these games, and I rarely install mods in general. Skyrim had a rough launch, where it would crash for me frequently, but that problem was resolved within a few weeks, tops. They're all very playable, and I never felt like I needed mods to fix them, which is why they also sell well on consoles.
and the standard of the complete version of a game release costing 100 bucks before the industry still found an excuse to increase the usual price of 60 bucks up to 70
Inflation is a fact of life, and prices were going to increase somehow, especially since a lot of AAA games these days are recklessly large, including Bethesda games. There's a lot more at play with the way DLC works and the pricing around them than just trying to sneak a price increase by you, but the short answer is: I don't think it's a big deal to have an entry level price for a game and another price for the game and expansion content.
I missed Oblivion so I can’t weigh in on that one. However, every game since has brought some kind of issue that prevented me from finishing the game to a satisfying level of completion. I will be including New Vegas in this because, although it was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, there were enough caveats included in the creation - including their god-awful game engine - that Bugthesda might as well have made it themselves, and thus suffered from the exact same game-breaking problem Fallout 3 did.
Fallout 3 & New Vegas: If you owned the original disc versions of the games and bought the DLC (how dare we), there was a glitch where the save game would become large enough the game would cease to run properly, gradually getting laggier and laggier until the game would struggle to manage a whole 5fps in a built-up environment like the Bethesda Ruins. This same bug would occur without the DLC during the natural progression of the game once the player heads into Red Rock Canyon although that particular iteration fixed itself as soon as the player bruteforced their way into one of the rabbithole buildings. I can’t say for the RRC version but the one that would lead to basically dead saves was fixed by buying the GOTY/Complete editions respectively and only with a fresh save. All old saves were still borked. To highlight the difference in the developers, the parts of New Vegas that get praise are the parts Obsidian were left to their own devices.
Skyrim: 70+ hours in, I personally encountered two game-breaking glitches that locked me out of the Companions and Blades quest lines respectively.
Fallout 4: After a game patch, I loaded up the game to find my 110-hour save hardlocked from loading (permanent black loading screen). Reaching out to Bugthesda gave me the solution of “completely reinstall the game and DLC and just start a new save”. Naturally, I wasn’t too impressed with their “help” considering this was also back when I had 8Mb/s internet so spending another week redownloading wasn’t inconsequential either.
All of these previous games were on console. From here, both I and the friend to be mentioned had already swapped from console to master race.
Fallout 76: After the lackluster release, I had zero desire to play the game, let alone pay for the (dis)pleasure but a couple of years after further development (which should have been done prior to release but the true mark of a money-grubbing company is convincing your playerbase to pay you for the privilege of beta testing for you. We’ll be coming back to the corporate practices you want to excuse later, don’t worry) my best friend - the person who introduced me to the game series - decided he wanted to play 76 and wanted company for the endeavor so he bought me a copy of the game. Much to my surprise, the experience started well. There were the usual hallmarks of a GaaS product such as the daily grind-a-thon quests, the multiple currencies - one of which could only be obtained by paying - and the walled garden of desirable cosmetic items conveniently tied to the premium currency as well as other niggles in that vein but it was overall enjoyable so we got a couple of hundred hours of it… until they updated the game and I suddenly found myself with a lighting glitch that prevented me from seeing anything in buildings (the overworld kind, not the rabbithole kind). Naturally, I reported the issue and got a canned response; reinstall, blah blah blah. Didn’t fix it. So I waited patiently for the next patch, then the next update and the inevitable patch to follow. Still borked. Eventually, I just removed the blight from my hard drive since it was only taking up more and more space to keep hoping Bugthesda would actually fix their game (something I should have already learnt was a good punchline instead of even wishful thinking by that point).
Starfield: Now for this pile of crap, I refused to watch any trailers, listen to anything anybody was saying about it before the release, genuinely skipped segments of podcasts to avoid hearing any amount of hype about it. Just didn’t care for it. Naturally, cultural osmosis being what it is, I still ended up hearing bits and bobs including when release time came around and all of Dear Todd’s Molyneux-isms (see: false advertising) came to light too. A buddy hooked me up so I got to find out how bad it was for myself. Despite meeting required specs by some margin for 1080 high settings and being installed on undeserved SSD real estate, I encountered constant lag spikes despite how slow movement speed is in the game and generally empty environments. All problems that reek of minimal optimization at best.
Games like Dishonored, DOOM, and Deathloop prove Bethesda has an eye for quality and make for one hell of a AAA publisher but as a developer, they’re subpar on a good day and depend on unpaid modders to put the other cheek in their half-assed jobs. Personally, I don’t care for The Elder Scrolls - fantasy just isn’t typically my bag but I really like the premise of Fallout and I genuinely think the only way we’re going to ever get a genuinely good one, the overlords of Microsoft need to micro-manage enough to see Obsidian in charge of the next release. Their choice of team, story and most importantly, get rid of that massively out-of-date and unfit-for-purpose engine Bugthesda insists on repolishing.
Inflation is a fact of life
Sadly, that’s where you’re actually right. However, the excuse of inflation only goes as far as explaining why the real release of the game costing $100 until recently. And even then, that’s when being extremely generous. You refer to the bloated size of games - most of which isn’t needed and often drags would-be great games down - as a reason for increased cost but something people tend to fail to mention is how much bigger the market is than when $60 became the norm. There are more players than ever before and the industry is bragging bigger profits year after year. You see, the problem there is that one and one doesn’t make three. If the cost was rising equal to all of these different price hikes, why are profits not comparable to how they’ve always been? Instead, what we see is exponential growth in profits. That’s profits, not net worth. Those two are very different and should not be confused.
Now, I’m not opposed to expansions, they aren’t a new concept by a long shot but they need to add value. I, and many others, think of The Witcher 3’s expansions as valuable. They scratch the itch for more of the same product while being easier for the developers to bring to market than a full game. Win-win. Not every expansion can be on that same level, I will give you but there’s also a massive difference between a Blood & Wine and all the nickel-and-diming bull excrement companies like Ubisoft, EA, Activision and Konami - for the sake of pointing out it’s not just North American companies who are guilty - have become infamous for.
A company has won when they can convince their customers they’re getting a bargain for ultimately giving them nothing. By the way you’re buying and reselling the regurgitated excuses, you have clearly lost to them like many, many others and I’m genuinely dreading what my favorite hobby is going to look like in five years time because of those people and their ever-increasing tolerance to getting screwed and expected to be grateful.
but something people tend to fail to mention is how much bigger the market is than when $60 became the norm.
No, people mention it a lot, but it's got a fundamental flaw in its rationale in that the larger market is not spread anywhere near evenly across the industry. Grand Theft Auto will outsell Starfield 10:1, and Starfield is an elite position to sell more copies than the vast majority of games out there. When we talk about how much bigger the market is than it was when prices increased to $60 (which was itself lower than prices had been 10-20 years earlier), we're capturing the sales of games that blow their next closest competitors out of the water. The same goes for profits, which are going to heavily favor an industry with Shark Cards and Ultimate Team loot boxes compared to a game that just sells a base game and an expansion pack via season pass for a total of $100. A rising tide does lift all boats, but it lifts a select few way higher than just about everyone else.
By the way you’re buying and reselling the regurgitated excuses, you have clearly lost to them like many, many others and I’m genuinely dreading what my favorite hobby is going to look like in five years time because of those people and their ever-increasing tolerance to getting screwed and expected to be grateful.
Buy the stuff you like and don't buy the stuff you don't like. Loot boxes and battle passes prey on impulses wired into people at an instinctual level that makes that more than just a free market scenario, but you like Witcher 3 expansions. Starfield is offering the same business model as that. Buy it or don't, depending on how much trust you have in that product to be good. I'm content to buy a $100 version of Street Fighter or Guilty Gear or Mortal Kombat but not so much Tekken (remember Street Fighter II cost $70 in 1992 money, $150 adjusting for inflation, offering far less than we get today). I feel like I got a bargain on Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3, but if they had something to upsell me on, I'd likely be a happy customer to pay for that too.
As for the game-breaking glitches you ran into, I fully believe that you encountered them, and that sucks. I also believe that sheer law of averages would indicate it's not the norm, and that the vast majority of people are able to play these games without mods, or they would not do as well as they do, critically and commercially.
But it’s not for the benefit of modders anymore. It’s because of how they can monetize them like they did with Skyrim and Fallout’s “Creation Club”.
Get modders to make what’s essentially some minor DLC for you and offer it at a “small price” or with a “Special Edition upgrade” while those same modders are actually making waaaaay better mods and releasing them for free on Nexus or wherever (this is basically the state of Skyrim AE; some very notable modders did some cool stuff for CC, but their other mods were way fucking beyond those in terms of quality).
I would argue the mods they don’t directly make money from still increases their profits. People aren’t still playing Skyrim for the Creation Club content, which is pretty much all garbage and actually makes the game worse.
Different people have different priorities. Sure, pay and benefits is a factor that just about everyone considers. The difference lies in the weight that factor holds for them compared to other factors such as a genuine enjoyment from their work, wishing to avoid taking from the strike fund, or any other factor that matters to them.
For most people, the consideration works out in favor of a strike. In a large enough population, though, it won’t for some people. 95%+ is really good. Let’s take it and not alienate those that didn’t vote for it. That leads to attrition of the union.
Thanks for the genuine reply. I thought union members trust their union to manage the strike fund well and decide when an actual strike is necessary, but that’s apparently not the case.
Because they can’t just strike whenever they’re slightly upset. Strikes are the weapon you use when the negotiations go nowhere and all other options are off the table. And a strike won’t work with people who aren’t fully committed to lay down the work to fight for a cause. So you’d vote against a strike when you don’t think that the cause is so important that it warrants a strike.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted for asking a simple question.
Could be a number of things. Some people are begrudgingly in unions. They kind of need to be in the union to get the job, but they might not like the idea of organized labor.
Some people might be tight on cash and might also need their regular wages at the moment.
I understand why you’re getting down voted, so I’ll explain a bit: although union members are able to leverage protest for a variety of reasons, that’s usually the last thing anyone wants to do. Negotiations are always the first step so that actors or whomever can still get paid, since while on strike that’s not paid labor.
“Okay, I know you weren’t too happy about my plan to retroactively charge you for every mile you drive in the car I already sold you… What if I told you, I’ll only charge you for a maximum of… uh… 30,000 miles per year?”
Could he have timed the announcement around his sales, or would that be something that legal would have to have ensured wasn’t happening?
If this was ongoing and regular for years then yeah it’s nothing. If there are protections in place to ensure announcements aren’t timed around the schedule then that’s even more nothing (as long as it can be proven that procedure was followed).
It still seems like a system that can easily be manipulated, but yeah if it’s legal then it’s legal and there really can’t be any punishment regardless of ethics or optics…
Damn that’s a good question. I honestly don’t have an answer. I’m not high enough level to that type of validation. Basically I have enough knowledge to insider trade but not enough to influence a decision such as changes in pricing or when something will launch.
I have windows in much I can sell and have to schedule my sales in those windows six months in advance.
It’s really stupid since I’m trading small dollar amount. 20k a year give or take but the company I work for takes it seriously.
Yep, a disgusting habit the big gaming studios have gotten into. At this point there’s no reason to get games like these as soon as they drop. Better to wait like a year or so for the collection to come out for 20 bucks. I’m finally getting bl3 just now and I’m sure my experience will be somewhat improved having all the bug fixes and updates. It really is a shame but I for one don’t ever see myself paying 60 dollars for a game just to be sucker punched with the rest of it released as dlc. It’s so unfair and they should be losing sleep at night. Sorry for the rant.
They’ve confirmed there won’t be a battlepass. And I’m not going to complain about them offering more content down the road for anyone willing to pay, especially considering it’ll likely get a massive discount at some point.
I’ll take this traditional DLC model over a battle pass model any day.
Honestly I don't trust any game info that comes from creators anymore since cyberpunk. Until I see a review video I take everything with a massive grain of salt.
She says we’ve gotta hold on to what we’ve got
It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not
We’ve got each other and that’s a lot for love
We’ll give it a shot
I initially suspected we were just looking at simple TAA on PS5, but the options menu indicates that FSR2 is actually in use here - AMD’s popular temporal upsampling and anti-aliasing solution. The weird thing is that every shot on both PS4 Pro and PS5 seems to resolve to a full 4K resolution, meaning the FSR2 is providing anti-aliasing coverage without a performance benefit, as the game is already running at native resolution. There’s a possibility dynamic res is in place, but I didn’t spot any evidence of it in my testing. It’s unusual for sure, but that seems to be the situation. So, in effect, developer Double Eleven is using FSR2 as a temporal super-sampler - and the benefits are obvious. Xbox consoles retain the 2x MSAA of Xbox 360 and while it’s still impressive on One X and Series X in particular, PlayStation just looks smoother and cleaner.
Its unusual for FSR. But the upscaling tech roots in anti aliasing. DLSS was originally designed to be an anti aliasing tech, quite litterally in the name (Deep Learning Super Sampling), so it isnt out of the picture that FSR could be used for the same. It was only later marketed to get more performance at lower resolutions afterword. (Im aware the post is not your thoughts, just more of a response to the specific segment you pointed out)
"the company had appointed advisors to review and pursue various transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders".
Companies should focus on extracting the best value for consumers not stakeholders... when it was created the stoke market was supposed to be disconnected from real economy to prevent that situation where companies tries to give priority to the stakeholders (who don't produce anything and don't increase GDP) over consumers. When that rule started being ignored in the beginning of the XX century and provocked the 1929 krack they should have take it at a warning and stop doing that instead of continuing that heresy.
The private equity that would control it after it goes private, in all likelihood, would be the same family who controls it today and always has controlled it. They’re not interested in stripping it for parts, but they’re also not interested in scaling their operations down and learning some hard lessons to make a sustainable video game company.
While he comes off as a jerk, and possibly is one, I can understand the sentiment, having spent a few years of my life among ethnically Chinese people in Asia. There is this drive and aspiration to be recognized by leading brands in the West as equals, perhaps even betters. Due to a history of subservience and shame and a strong nationalistic current seeking to undo that.
This game is one of the most ambitious and accomplished to come out of China and they’re hungering for that kind of recognition. So it is likely that fans of the game feel it was ‘stolen’ from them and he seems to be responding to that sentiment. To us it looks petty, but to some of the game’s most ardent Chinese fans this may have been an appropriate response. Not sure how this was received in China though, just speculating.
The last three weeks or so of Chinese video game reporting has basically been:
“They’ll never shortlist us for GotY. They’ll never choose a Chinese game for GotY. It’s all a Western ploy to denigrate and deny Chinese achievement because They are jealous that the first Chinese AAA game is so good.”
It’s been tiring.
Edit: just opened up my Chinese feeds, and I’m glad to report that the first one I found was criticising netizens for review bombing BG3 and defending the Larian speech, and giving it a more detailed translation.
THAT actually probably was a translation error (unlike “oh, he is not a disgusting misogynistic piece of shit. You are just racist and so is google translate”).
Swen’s speech was (paraphrasing) about how an oracle told him that the future GOTYs will all be games made because they are games the studios wanted to make and were allowed to make without fear of layoffs (which is why it was ironic that a studio that came out of Sony gutting Team Japan won…).
But a lot of chuds and CCP mouthpieces keyed in on the “An oracle told me” narrative framing as an indication that it was all rigged. In large part because they are fucking morons who don’t realize they were voting on a different category when they rushed that vote harder than a gamefaqs poll with Aeris in it.
And Swen is head (?) of Larian who made Baldurs Gate 3.
Also: BG3 is, in scientific terms, gay as all fuck. So the chuds who were already focusing on BMWukong because “it understand that women should be sexy” and whatever other “anti-DEI” bullshit they are radicalizing people with, saw an opportunity to pick a fight now that the mass support of BG3 is somewhat waning.
Not going to lie, despite loving the stories about the monkey king, I skipped it entirely because of the notes they sent to content creators. Which would also be why I skip movies and games that take the US’ DoD money. I’m glad it got passed over.
I like the concept of the playdate. I even like the little gimmicky crank. I don’t like the non-backlit screen. And the price is a deal breaking barrier to entry for me.
Make this thing $60, and put a decent color screen on it, and I’m sold.
“Since the beginning, the number one question from Playdate owners has been: ‘When will there be another Season?’” says Greg Maletic, Playdate project lead.
I’m pretty sure it was ‘why is it so damn expensive’.
Because it has a library of interesting and innovative exclusives, making use of an unusual control input. Whether that makes it worth it or not is personal preference, but you can’t disagree that it offers something unique.
Because they are different devices serving different purposes. The r36s is a portable emulator that'll run games from different consoles; the playdate is a portable console that runs games made specifically for the playdate.
The original designer of Dead Cells, Sébastien Benard, formed a new studio and has a new roguelike game on the way called Tenjutsu in which players take the role of a renegade yakuza.
Earlier this year, Benard called the decision to end Dead Cells development “the worst imaginable asshole move”.
I’m curious about how others feel about this. I think Dead Cells is an incredible game, but the amount of continued DLC releases has actually turned me off of the game somewhat. I’m actually glad development has ended in a way, so that I can rebuy the “complete” game and have everything.
The game already had tons of content, I don’t think it needs perpetual new content additions.
I am becoming the same way. Maybe I am just old, but I miss the days of buying something and having a finished product. Instead, we have games like this and Stardew Valley that release in an incomplete state and are still receiving major content updates almost a decade later.
Stardew doesn’t bother me because the updates are free. As soon as there’s more content for the game, I have it. If I feel like playing Stardew again, the new content is a reason to jump back in to playing it again.
However with Dead Cells, whenever I think about going back and playing it I think about all the new content that I haven’t bought for it. It feels like my options are spend money for the current complete game, play an incomplete version, or just don’t play it right now. I’ve been deciding on “don’t play it right now” for years now.
My issue with Stardew Valley content updates is that they change how the game works. It is not just adding extra postgame missions or something. The content updates tend to fundamentally change how some things work. Your possible/preferred routes to reach endgame today are much different than they were in 2016. It makes it feel like perpetual Early Access.
Dead Cells released in a state that felt pretty complete to me, so I just appreciate all the extra content, especially the free updates. It's a game that's so good I'm glad it got such loving support, because the core is so fantastic that I really did just want some more levels and items to increase replayability.
I think it's okay for it to end now. I'd also think it was okay if the devs kept going, but it's in a place where it's got enough content that it can end here and I'm okay with that.
Reading the full statement, it sounds to me like there was more to it than just the game’s development coming to an end. It sounds like it might have been a very sudden decision by the publisher, with possible negative consequences for the development team.
In principle I agree though, there is no issue with a game just being finished at some point, especially a single player one. But I also don’t mind continued updates and/or DLC.
We’ll see how Seekers of the Storm will be on the 27th, but honestly it likely won’t be bad. Bringing back the character Chef from ROR1 is something we’ve been wanting and so unless SotS changes a bunch of things for the worse, I’m not sure this update will really have any reason to show the future of ROR2.
I imagine we’ll get this and it’ll be done for a while as sales determine whether they want to do another one or not.
I feel this with Terraria. Yeah the updates are free and they try many ways to freshen the game up. But, I'm almost begging for the game to land itself in a comfortable level of finishing itself and just polish it off. It is a radically different game when I try it than when I first did back in 2015.
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