ShadowZone on youtube has a pretty good analysis of what we know, what we don’t know, and lays out some possible (and realistic) scenarios as to what’s going on.
My personal (un)educated guess regarding the lack of official news is due to the fact that T2 will be releasing an earnings report shortly, and needs to keep things quiet. I hope the release more detailed statements once the quarterly is done.
It is! You can go to the Steam store > New & Noteworthy > Most Played to see current player counts for the top 100 games. Hades II is currently #6, ahead of Helldivers even!
I am actually ok with micro transactions in multiplayer competitive games for cosmetic skins.
I am not saying that most games that do this aren’t extremely toxic in their design but the idea of players of a popular competitive game continually paying small amounts of money to artists to create new riffs on the same player models and weapons that those players can use to express themselves is potentially a wonderful direct connection between 3D modeling artists and players that continually values those 3D modeling artists far after the initial game development is over (and a game company could potentially have no work for a 3D modeler when just maintaining a multiplayer game with small updates).
The problem is that the type of people who are most likely to spend money on loot boxes are exploited heavily, and then shamed by everyone around them into not revealing how much they spent on video game call of duty mobile skins.
None of this even remotely works when you talk about singleplayer games though, basically nobody dresses to the nines to just go for a walk in the woods where nobody can see them… the direct link between 3D modeling artists and players expressing themselves in view of other players is gone. Players may spend hours dressing their singleplayer character and enjoy that part of the game but it just isn’t the same thing as your multiplayer competitive game character you have spent countless hours playing in multiplayer matches interacting with countless people with. It is the difference between taking a freeing walk in the woods and taking a walk in a city in view of a crowd of other artists.
I guess what I am trying to say is that micro transactions are really only okay when they are “micro” because they are a direct interaction between a player and an artist in the way buying a single song from an album might be.
Of course, my entire point is subsumed by the fact that most of the big companies probably treat the 3D modelers making their skins like trash and are probably going to replace literally all of them with AI as quietly but as quickly as possible in the next couple of months.
If they want to sell skins that are purely cosmetic I don’t have an issue with that. Some people have money to drop on stuff like that and it helps fund the game.
Loot boxes on the other hand can absolutely get fucked. It’s gambling, plain and simple. It has no place in games.
Except Bethesda is also one of the few companies that releases full on expansions to their games. Horse armour was the worst (and thus cheapest) of Oblivions addons, but Shivering Isles was an entire new full area and plotline.
Nuance exists. And ignoring it allows a lot of good to get caught in the crossfire
Real good take, I couldn’t agree more. I also sold a dota2 skin that I got randomly for a couple hundred dollars like 8 years ago and it funded my PC purchases for a couple years so I might be biased 😉
In my comment I attempted to point out that yes the profit from micro transactions never really goes to the artists and developers, but if it did in theory I would actually be really supportive of artist run cosmetic stores for multiplayer competitive games.
I want 3D modeling artists to be valued, and competitive multiplayer games providing a canvas in which artists can continually express themselves and create outfits/skins for players and items in game is an incredible opportunity to reaffirm the value of the labor of 3D modeling artists.
The opportunity is currently totally captured and subverted by shitty corporate control, but in theory it is still there.
For singleplayer games, no horse armor crap is lame, I just want developers working on expansion content.
I don’t know if anybody knows this, but Nintendo’s aggressive tirade on emulators and fangames is a symptom of Japan’s strict copyright laws, given that it’s a Japanese company and one of those that follow it to its words.
That’s why Sega was so notorious for shutting down fan projects as well in the past (they have since softened their stance however, provided projects are non-commercial), although I don’t think it’s the entire story. Sony lost against the groundbreaking Bleem! emulator back in the PS1 days and I’m not aware of them being litigious in this regard since.
This isn't "The Director from L4D", this is the human touch of direct influence of game balance globally without the need to release a patch or even a hotfix, and way beyond just how many bots drop at a time. If you want to compare it to something, it might be The Wizard from Oz, pulling the cranks to drive the facade.
If The Director wasn't dumping enough zombies in general, Valve would have to patch The Director to make it do so because it's restricted to its coding limitations. A human Game Master can run it only limited to the variables the devs give him. Open new planets for plundering, change the weather, accuracy of your calldowns, the options are as limited as imagination and time.
Saying this, I don't know why they would leave this all up to Joel, you'd think there'd be a team of 3 to bounce ideas off or something.
I’m currently playing Elden Ring and it’s so freaking massive. It’s incredible what From soft choice to include. There’s whole areas that are completely gated for a hard-to-find side quest, that you’ll only discover if you happen to follow a guide.
Any other company would have chopped the content and put it in a DLC.
Ah yes, in-game currency is fiction. That’s why it costs real money, and publishers mandate developers lock down the game as much as possible to ensure no one circumvents the ‘fiction.’ The mind boggling profits they bring must also be fictional.
Article title isn’t super clear, but this is for video game developers who have either been laid off themselves OR others on their team have been impacted. It’s still bad, but the 35% quoted as impacted in the article is not actually a percentage of layoffs.
According to the report, while 54 percent of developers canvassed said there had been no layoffs at their company over the last year, 35 percent said either they or their colleagues had lost their jobs.
Yeah, its 35% of the people canvassed for this report. Even then, not all those people were laid off - some of them are people who know somebody who was impacted.
I’m tentatively interested, but I can’t remember the last open world game I played that wasn’t just a reskin of something I’ve already played before. Sure, a game doesn’t have to be innovative to be fun. But it sure helps. Especially in a genre that can feel like doing chores, rather than playing, if it’s not done well.
Try Rodina. Very unique and interesting seamless “open solar system” game made by a single developer. Comes with a fun ship interior builder. It looks very bland and dated on screenshots, but feels awe-inspiring to play, creating a sense of scale that I have not seen anywhere else. It feels almost 3D even on a flat screen.
Rodina does not have a ton of actual content, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Also, you can propel yourself around space with a fire extinguisher, which automatically makes this the best space game in history.
Yaaaawn. I like how game journalists think they can change the world by talking about the issues and that’s it. I mean those same websites that doom-monger about state of game industry, review and hype the big moneymakers of those corporations.
We as the customers and players are on the receiving end of their rant (this cascade of articles been going for a couple of months), but guess what capitalism will always win against powerless and meaningless virtue signalling in the form of these opinion pieces. This is bigger than video games or entertainment industry. Unless people go out on the streets and truly revolt against the corporations, NOTHING will change. Equal distribution of wealth and fair rights for workers don’t happen because we talk about it. We need to fight for it.
Do you really think they can? Are you certain that in 5, 10 or at least 15 years things will change for the better? I hope so. But think about climate change. Years of reporting, warning, shouting from the rooftops. Nothing. Nothing changed because we cannot do anything when people in power don’t see the need to change.
Yes, we have hundreds of years of examples of journalists changing the world by talking about things. It’s kind of what they do. It’s so wild to see someone make this claim really.
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