Although somewhat unrelated, I thought this excerpt from the article was interesting and sad.
Asked in an interview if he regrets Balatro’s success, he replied: "Honestly, yeah. Don’t get me wrong - this has changed my life in a lot of amazing ways. I’m so grateful. But I do miss that time before. It was just a hobby that recharged my batteries. Sometimes I think, ‘Maybe I would’ve been happier if I had never released this game to the public.’
The guy has all the resources to rekindle that flame by organizing game jams for example. I am sure he‘ll think much more positively about the whole thing a couple years from now when he realized opportunities granted by his success. Either that or he’ll go down the Notch route but I don’t think he’ll be that kind of stupid rich.
Yeah, but his way to relax and get away from stress was to code. Organizing game jams is a whole other world of stress. The different level of stress is like that Mitchell Hedburg joke, “You’re a great chef! Can you farm?”
If you remain fixated on the idea that your way to relax is gone, you’ll never be able to find a new way. Life changes, for good and bad. It’s on us to make the best of it.
Don’t feel sad for them! They have now reached a point in life where they get to ask these kind of what if questions and no longer need to work. I love the game they built, and hopefully if they still feel down they have to time and resources now to seek help (i.e. therapy).
Eh, EA can certainly be a problem, but it’s also an incredibly useful resource for devs operating in good faith, opening up the field for talent that would otherwise be priced out of making a game at all. Personally, I’m ok ignoring money grabs if it means the barrier of entry for resource starved talent is lowered.
Manor Lords is early access. At least one patch is to be expected. And of course the publisher is absolutely right. If my memory serves me well one dev developed the game all on his own so far and the challenge of meeting expectations after being a massive success is huge. Hiring more people to get developments going is likely necessary but expanding takes time. Some players have unrealistic expectations in general but even more so when it comes to small indie productions.
I just had flashbacks to Dead State. It was a AA title written by one of the guys from Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines so I was watching it closely during development.
Suddenly, it went from EA to full release. I was surprised, but picked it up without reading many reviews.
I enjoyed the game and put maybe 15 hours into it, but then I had to move and had to pack up my PC for a few weeks. By the time I got settled and booted it up, it had gotten a massive patch which fixed a ton of bugs, filled in missing content like item descriptions and a bunch of other polish that would typically be done during pre-launch.
Meanwhile, one of the devs had gotten into a high profile pissing match with the community over accusations they had rushed it out the door. I normally try to sympathize with devs over a reactive community, but I couldn’t help feel like I got punished for buying the game at launch and experiencing those relatively non-replayable opening hours in a non-optimal (Dead) state.
Hahahaha, wow, what a bunch of wet noodles. If you don’t want negative discourse, maybe don’t be misogynistic. Or don’t publish your work in countries where free speech and personal freedoms are more abundant. No one is forcing you to publish here, so please keep your demands in your pants. Pffft, I was really interested in this game, now it’s such an easy pass!
Out of curiosity, since I’m out of the loop, what is the misogynistic discourse around the game or studio? Is it based on themes of the books/mythology the game is based on? Or is it some other thing the devs went too far with eastern culture wise?
I read some articles from 2020 that touched on the culture @ Game Science, but it doesn’t even really matter. It’s just the way they single out stuff that feels really put of touch, pretty (ignorant) boomer attitude. I’ve only heard the word “feminist propaganda” from folks who are misogynistic, it’s not something I associate with caring about inequality. Can you imagine being a woman influencer that got this message? I would think 3 times before partnering up with a party that gave me this dos and don’t list.
It’s probably something that can be attributed to cultural differences, but that doesn’t mean that much to me. You move in a culture, but you are still responsible for you actions and words.
Thank you. I mainly wanted to know what the talking points are so I can have effective conversations with the people around. This one semi popped out of nowhere for me and I felt I missed something.
Agreed, the term “feminist propaganda” alone here is enough to make me question the studio/publisher leadership group.
@Chee_Koala, I’ve read your other comment on this post and I agree with you. Going to pass on the game. It’s the reality of today. If we want things to improve we have to vote with our democratic right to vote if we have it or we vote with our money. This type of topic pops up a lot in media, big tech and most other large companies that somewhat dominate an industry. There are enough options out there where we can’t always make the perfect moral decision, but we can at least try to choose on the lesser of many evils in our shopping and media consumption based on the information we have.
Thanks a lot, I can imagine! It’s moot for me, sadly. Google maps is amazing too but I’m not on board with choices they are making so, can’t use that either. There’s enough games to take my mind of of missing this title. Have fun though!
With no context, completely in isolation, yeah Overwatch 2 isn’t the worst. But for a lot of players, it’s not just about what Overwatch 2 is, but also about what it did and what it means. That factors into players’ feelings about the game.
Spot on. I dont give a single fuck about shovelware, but I absolutely care about OW and how Blizzard managed to turn me off a game I was pretty much addicted to.
It depends on what metrics do you use. In general, lowest-rated stuff on sites are not the worst by objective terms, but because of propaganda or other stuff that pisses off people.
Braid was a solid game all its own, and a remaster certainly wasn’t needed (yet or at all). The Witness was freaking phenomenal, and I hope there will be other iterations of games like it to come. Blow can go blow away though. He’s an anti-vaxxer and Covid conspiracy theorist, and that is something I can write off as anyone worth acknowledging. Plenty of other amazing games in the sea.
I appreciate letting me know about the anti-vaxxer conspiracy stuff. Makes me feel better about never finishing The Witness (not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because whatever filters were on there, it made me cripplingly motion sick for hours every time I played it).
I never finished The Witness either, but I kinda wished I would have, as the philosophical nature and puzzles were both very engrossing, such a unique take on the “walking simulator” style of game. Granted, it was much more than that, and I’d actually compare it closer to Myst and Obduction than such. The puzzles were repetitive but just incentive enough to be engaging and twisted in just the right way, though they got devilishly difficult later on. Sucks about the motion sickness though. Wonder if there was an .ini swing which could’ve turned the filter off?
Though, all in all, this was definitely a difficult “separate the art from the artist” scenario.
Yeah, I had the same reaction - The puzzles were definitely “learn how to think a new way,” my favorite kind. I ended my play on one perspective-shifting pattern puzzle that I was so close to beating, so I kept pushing myself through the motion sickness, and just ended up disabled on the bed feeling ill and unable to move for two hours (without completing the puzzle).
I tried a bunch of things - permanent reticle in center of screen, disabling walk shake, etc. I still play high-motion FPS shooters with no issue. It’s just some games (The Forest was another). I am guessing it’s a middleware-introduced visual filter that adds 15-25ms delay to screen latency, just enough to mess with inner ear visual/motion sync in sensitive people.
Steam deck hello this is gabe newel you just purchased a steam deck version more than 2 and less than 4 please email me on GabeN@valvesoftware.com to talk about your game purchases on the steam deck.
Exactly what Nintendo was hoping for. I can’t blame the developers, though. But this sucks.
Old ass game systems where it’s practically impossible or expensive to get the physical games anymore, let alone the console, with some titles locked to those systems, never to be enjoyed again except through emulation.
Old ass game systems where it’s practically impossible or expensive to get the physical games anymore, let alone the console, with some titles locked to those systems
And if you do manage to acquire a physical copy Nintendo isn’t go to see any of the money you spent on it anyway
It’s the classic thing that happens to all these movies and TV shows that are written by people who purposely avoid the source material and brag about “we didn’t play the game or read the books” like that somehow is going to make the content better?
Offhand I can only think of one movie (and sequels) where “didn’t read the book” made the movie significantly better: The Bourne Identity. Those books really were awful!
Not only that, they probably would have been better off not using the original 4 playable characters since every game comes with a new set. Just make sure the side characters are done well and you keep the same feel as the games and it should have been an easy win
Workers rights absolutely. Pay your human workers even while using ai to make a great product. AI didn’t do anything to me, it’s how the companies decide to use it.
Oh yeah I’m sure they will use the ai to pay human workers as well. You definitely know that if they are allowed to use ai they won’t use it in a way that means they can stop paying humans and can just have ais generate everything all whist delivering a lower quality product to the customer.
It’s a win win, as long as you are an executive or a shareholder.
I am potentially okay with this. The entertainment industry has been creatively bankrupt for too long. Actors will move to more independent work, more interesting and experimental content will get made, corporate will advance AI technology. Win-win?
Or more Ai as a cash incentive. It’s already an industry that creates npc’s, Ai will improve this, Indy’s might just sit there and craft perfect Ai actors and license them out.
Hey voice actors, take this five bucks today so we can make your job vanish tomorrow, it’s a win win! For us. Not you. This guy thinks you should do it though because we already… make npcs? That you currently voice.
I just think it’s inevitable that we will see fully voiced and interactive ai npc companions. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, I’m in a union and I’m pro worker but this is tech and I think tech is gonna tech.
It’s inevitable if you give up and let companies do whatever they want yes. It’s not if you get them to sign papers and lobby for regulation to protect workers.
I don’t understand this defeatist mentality at all sorry.
If you are bad at your job, you lose your job. If the CEO is bad at their job, you lose your job. If the CEO is REALLY bad at their job, they get a golden parachute.
These stories are so dumb/intentionally misleading/outrage bait.
Executives have predefined stock sale schedules at regular intervals. This allows them to convert their equity to cash and avoid conflicts of interest. That is, it’s hard to gain an advantage over the market when you sell exactly the same amount every month for the next 4 years.
Where was everyone’s outrage the other 99% of times this guy sold exactly the same amount of stock?
Seems like if they wanted to avoid this sort of suspicion, they’d time the announcement for either right before or nowhere near when the scheduled sale would take place.
But then they wouldn’t get to feel like a Bond villain, so…
Yes, hypothetically the CEO could influence the date an announcement is made for their own personal gain, but it’s not worth it and there will be many more sell events in the future.
Long run, trying to scheme an announcement to gain more at 1/100 sales isn’t worth it.
CEO John Riccitiello shifted 2000 shares last week on 6th September, … part of a trend over the past year where the exec has sold more than 50,000 shares in total and bought none.
This is a drop in his equity bucket and any gains this article implies are due to “insider trading” will disappear in subsequent events.
eurogamer.net
Ważne