eurogamer.net

TheFeatureCreature, do games w Looks like Dragon Age: The Veilguard just received its final major update
@TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world avatar

This comes shortly after news that EA lost several billion in market value and Veilguard underperformed, so not surprising at all.

yesman, do games w Looks like Horizon's unannounced MMO has been quietly cancelled

Sony had like 10 subscription/ live service games in the pipe when Concord flopped. All canceled now.

Evey games developer want’s a fortnite but they can’t understand that multiple games designed to maximize player investment and dominate their time can’t coexist.

daddy32,

Well they don’t need them to coexist, they need just one of them to succeed.

Katana314, do games w Beyond Good & Evil 2's troubled development due to "passionate managers" not getting along, says creator Michel Ancel

Managerial bloat seems to be an issue at a lot of large companies. Only so many people are actually needed to do the thing.

Sylvartas,

Conversely, lack of proper management is also an issue on a lot of videogames projects. Probably has never happened at Ubisoft but I’ve seen it firsthand in small studios

lustyargonian, do games w EA makes more patents public in commitment to improve gaming accessibility

EA lost its reputation but objectively they’ve been trying to undo that. Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor, while stuttery, had no micro transactions or online requirements, Dead Space remake was as simple as possible, Dragon Age ditched live service plan and was released in a very polished state, NFS Unbound just got a new update and has been well supported. The games may not be 10/10 or exactly what gamers wanted, but they’ve been trying to put their head down and do the work.

Jumi,

As long as they can keep milking sport gamers normal people can get okay games I guess.

averyminya, do gaming w The world is ending but here's a side quest - will RPGs ever solve their urgency problem?

I agree with the other user who said it’s a writing problem e.g. choosing the immediacy of end of the world plot device. Unless it’s done with very specific circumstances, like Overcooked 1 where the first level is the Spaghetti Monster Apocalypse and then you jump back in time through a portal. I think Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a good example of this exact problem the article raises though. It’s a relatively short game, but there is no end of the world. There are 2 major events, your destiny as the Arisen to fight the dragon that killed you, and the in-world politics of a government and some corrupt individuals working to prevent this event for their own plan.

I mention this game primarily because it uses a mechanic that many completionists tend to dislike - there are “timed” quests. Not all of them, usually ones that make sense to run out of time on (but again, not all of them.) So for example, at one point there is a quest to attend a masquerade ball, which is a permanent main story quest until you choose to attend. This is the exact issue the premise of the article brings up, where time is infinite until you decide to continue.

And yet, at the same time, there are a few quests where you may encounter a random NPC who is asking for help for someone who goes missing, and if too many in game days pass by, well… They die.

Ultimately I had other pacing issues with the story, but I did really enjoy how it goes about “solving” urgency when an in-game world timer exists. I’ve never been the biggest fan of time-managed items, (for example, raw potato, ripened potato, rotten potato over the course of 1-3 days), but Dragon’s Dogma 1 and 2 both did it fairly well since the items that do expire 1) make sense, it’s food, and 2) are in fair abundance. It helps solve the hoarding of your items, gives you a little extra money if you sell it as the right phase, and allows for varied item combinations as well (raw+item = curative, ripe+item = stamina, rotten+rotten = oil for lantern or status effect combinations).

I think really the issue just comes down to what is fun gameplay mechanics? Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu for PS2/Gamecube had timed levels, a mechanic that makes sense for a game centered around saving people before they kill hostages. Star Ocean had an in game timer matched to clocks, so the only way to stop the timer was to turn off the game. After (24?) hours, it’s game over. Quite frankly… timed mechanics are usually seen as gimmicky and are not very popular - they may have moments of appreciation, but I’m not sure if it’s a beloved mechanic.

Which in turn results in, “I have you now Spider-Man! In just 8 hours my bomb will blow New York to high heavens!” And then the player goes to help every child get their balloon back before the main story progresses.

smeg, do gaming w Sony shuts down Concord developer Firewalk Studios, game will remain permanently offline

“Certain aspects of Concord were exceptional,” Hulst continued, “but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline. We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options [and] after much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio.”

But why? Did they actually think it was going to cost more money to keep the servers running than it would bring in? What’s the opposite of the sunk cost fallacy?

SweetCitrusBuzz,
@SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org avatar

An opportunity cost is the opposite of a sunk cost apparently: …stackexchange.com/…/what-is-the-opposite-of-a-su…

p3e7,

Matchmaking took upwards of 10 minutes. Maybe they could capture a core audience but all that waiting would alienate even more people. Increasing the wait time even more. They could have invested more money and re-release it, but how much money would it take to overhaul the game. And there is no guarantee, that a 2.0 would be played more. So giving it up is probably the best solution, not burning even more money. Keep in mind, it costed about 400 million $ to make.

millie, (edited )

These companies really need to learn the private server model. How is your game ever going to get up enough players to be popular when you’re financially incentivized to bail as soon as possible? Put up some public servers for players to hop on, put out a private server, and let people do their own thing. You can still monetize DLCs or even go the route TF2 went and release paid items and loot crates.

People are still playing TF2 and still spending money in the item shop. They definitely wouldn’t be if Valve had bailed on it entirely the first time they had a slump in their playerbase.

AndrasKrigare,

That’s kinda a weird take, since the private server model was the only model until 10 years ago or so. Companies definitely know it. It’s just not financially efficient comparing to benefiting from economies of scale with hosting. Plus you don’t lose a ton of money or piss of players if you over or under estimate how popular the game will be.

Had they gone with private servers here, they would have lost even more money than they already have. The problem here is they spent too much money on a game no one wanted to play, chasing a fad that ended before it launched.

millie,

How exactly are you presuming to accurately estimate future sales that don’t exist yet? They increased their cost of operation substantially by relying solely on servers they themselves host, and tie the future viability of their product to hosting those servers. That means there’s a clock on how long it makes sense to make the game available to the public.

If they allowed for private servers, that small initial batch of players could potentially grow. Especially if they build in the extensibility of allowing players to mod the game. As it stands, the game now won’t make them any more money, and creating the opportunity for it to ever make them money had a continuous cost. There would be no incentive to shut down access to the game itself if it didn’t carry a cost to the company.

If they happened to be one of the few successful games in their genre, then sure, hosting their own servers exclusively is a potential means of revenue. But if they’re not? It makes much more sense to leave the thing out there for people to fool around with. You never know when one streamer with a following might pick up a game and decide they like it. Can’t happen if it doesn’t exist though.

AndrasKrigare,

Oh shit, I’m sorry. I misunderstood what you were saying, I thought you were referring to them purchasing and running their own physical server hardware as opposed to running their servers off of a cloud platform.

smeg,

I was keeping in mind that they put that much money in, surely all that money has made something playable that would make some money, whereas throwing it all away makes nothing at all, right?

bjoern_tantau, do games w Alien: Isolation sequel in early development, with original director returning
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

Nice! Recently started playing the first one again.

Hope they manage to include a proper VR mode this time. The Mother VR mod is great but unfortunately it cannot work on Linux.

Honytawk, do games w Crypto bros have discovered idle games, and the results are incredibly boring

Nobody would ever pay you to play a game. There is no way there isn’t an alternative motive.

CeruleanRuin, do gaming w Nintendo officially places Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom outside series' established timeline

Headline is misleading. There is no canon timeline and never has been, regardless of what officially-licensed book it was published in.

The game designers have said many times that they don’t take any sort of timeline into account when designing a new Zelda game. They nail down the mechanics, and the story comes next, and if it happens to match up thematically in relation to another game, that’s just a bonus.

chloyster, (edited )

I mean that’s one way to look at it I suppose. However I don’t think the story being secondary to gameplay means we have to discount what is there available to us. Like if you want to ignore it that’s fine but I don’t think you can say it’s wholesale not canon.

zeldadungeon.net/dont_misinterpret_aonumas_words_…

Edit: also want to say I am not taking this link as gospel, but just showing how the words can be interpreted many ways.

Also the newest timeline is on display at the official Nintendo live event in Sydney, which I would argue is more legit than a licensed book

Regardless it’s not really that important, so if people like the timeline, who cares? Nintendo clearly acknowledges it, and the devs don’t use it when making new games. Both can be true

Kichae,

The canon is anything that appears in the games. There are clear timelines between many of the games, asserted within the game text or game subtext.

Producers have gone on record echoing what’s states in the HH, both before and after it was published.

Do not mistake the canon for something the producers and designers feel in any way bound by. That’s not what the term means when discussing media.

Passerby6497, do gaming w Borderlands is failing already.

Eli Roth

I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise. Has Roth made a good movie?

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@kbin.run avatar

I thought the Green Inferno was perfectly cromulent. I can't remember much of it, but I didn't despise it.

Don_Dickle,

I kind of like Hostel.

Passerby6497,

Nah, I saw that piece of shit in theaters and still wish I would have walked out. I know what he was going for, but like every other roth movie I’ve seen (doubly for anything he’s written), it’s just not well done outside of the cinematography. And frankly, well shot porno and gore scenes don’t make for a compelling movie on their own.

Katana314, do games w Braid: Anniversary Edition "sold like dog s***", says creator Jonathan Blow

Unfortunately, I feel like only console developers that long ago released their games for arcane bi-flagonal deprucified CPUs get to put out expensive anniversary editions. Everyone who owns Steam copies can still run it just fine.

(Yes, those words are made up)

vasus, do games w Devs should not be "forced to run on a treadmill until their mental or physical health breaks", says publisher of Manor Lords, citing how gamers seem to be trained to expect endless content work now

Very reasonable, I hope the dev sticks to his guns and keeps a manageable pace. I feel that it’s right to expect content updates coming in if the game is marked early access, but so long as you don’t pull a Valheim, people shouldn’t be mad at you

AlexWIWA,

God I wish valheim had been finished

Kecessa,

Isn’t it still being worked on?

Zahille7,

It is. It’s just slow, and you know how G*mers are about slow dev cycles.

“Dead game! Dead game!” Then how come they just released a huge update for it with the next entire biome a few weeks ago?

AlexWIWA,

It’s been four years and all of my friends moved on. I still enjoy it but there’s only so much fun to be had solo

AlexWIWA,

I think it’s going to be like 7 Days to Die and just never be completed. I’m hoping they’ll eventually do one big announcement or final release that will get my friends to log back in

makyo,

I guess I’m OOTL - what happened with Valheim?

simple,

Nothing that bad, but the updates are insanely slow and the roadmap of things they promised in 2021 took 3-4 years instead of one. At this rate the game could spend a decade in early access.

Zahille7,

True, but it is still being worked on.

Another EA game that I was really into a couple years ago until they abandoned, and now they’re starting back up on it again, is Starbase.

Someonelol, do gaming w Capcom's slapstick zombie mall adventure Dead Rising is being remastered
@Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Maybe buy the original on Steam soon just in case they pull a Rockstar.

DarkThoughts,

All but DR4 are banned here. lol

DudeImMacGyver, do games w Images leak of Valve's next game, and it's an Overwatch-style hero shooter
@DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works avatar

Fuck it, I’m down (unless it’s a moba, then no thanks)

Coelacanth, do games w Images leak of Valve's next game, and it's an Overwatch-style hero shooter
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

I had a lot of good times and even more bad times with DotA over the years, until I finally freed myself from it years ago.

IceFrog being behind this backed by Valve bodes well, and I think the premise of an FPS/MOBA hybrid has promise, despite the market being insanely oversaturated already.

I’m not really interested in competitive games these days, but I hope it’ll be good to watch at least. Following The International was fun even after I quit DotA.

PopOfAfrica,

Trust me the market could use some competition. The only thing that really comes close to OW is Paladins.

Sasquatch58,

My first thought was that Valve was basically making a Paladins clone.

micka190,

Was gonna say. How is the hero shooter market over-saturated? There’s like 3 games that people actually know about, and like 2 of those are good/decent.

Coelacanth,
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

I could be mistaken, as I don’t really play competitive games anymore. I thought between Overwatch, Valorant, Apex, The Finals and what have you there was lots of stiff competition.

  • Wszystkie
  • Subskrybowane
  • Moderowane
  • Ulubione
  • rowery
  • muzyka
  • fediversum
  • Technologia
  • esport
  • test1
  • NomadOffgrid
  • slask
  • retro
  • Spoleczenstwo
  • krakow
  • giereczkowo
  • MiddleEast
  • Blogi
  • sport
  • Gaming
  • Pozytywnie
  • tech
  • informasi
  • Psychologia
  • FromSilesiaToPolesia
  • niusy
  • Cyfryzacja
  • lieratura
  • ERP
  • kino
  • shophiajons
  • warnersteve
  • Wszystkie magazyny