It’s about time women got more accurate representation in games. How many games have you play as a man compared to playing as a woman? Technically it should be 50/50 to more accurately represent the real world.
I don’t think representation is the main issue, it is more about how they are presented.
Striding for a perfect 50/50, doesn’t really sense if they are all just stereotypes and sexual objectified. Also there are many other underrepresented population groups.
IMO, it is more important to focus good well written and complex characters, that represent real circumstances right.
I don’t complain that AAA studios have gone ‘woke’ because they now include choices to select from marginalized groups, I complain about them because they are often do not offer a deeper perspective of people in that group and are just different skins.
In some way, I can understand, games often happen in a Fantasy world, but I would wish that selecting different characters would do more than just exchanging the player mesh, texture and voice pack.
The well written part is my concern. Or we will get the same quality as a lot of recent movies and shows. Where the characters are stereotypes, poorly written, poorly developed. With plot points that are just randomly forced into the story, and that plot point has nothing to do with the rest of the story. You know the ones, where something has been added to the story and has no reason or meaning or benefit to being part of the story.
Unless you are also complaining about it when white male characters are also surface-level, 2-D, copy-and-paste characters then all you are saying is “Only white male characters are allowed to be simple or a stereotype/trope.” Lets be honest, not every game needs a complex and well written character, and that is fine. If they choose to go that route it doesn’t matter what race, religion, or gender the character is in the first place. So it doesn’t matter if they are a white male, a latina woman, or a black non-binary person.
Now I’m also not gonna shut down your solution without being constructive and providing my own solution, cause I don’t think quotas are the answer either. Instead we should be uplifting and empowering marginalized creators and game designers so that they can make more characters that they want to make. Which is generally characters they can relate to. If people want more characters that are women, then the game industry needs to become a safe space for women and empower them so they can provide more representation for characters. Same thing for any other demographic. That will make sure that these characters are being made in an aethentic and organic way, and not just being pumped out to meet a quota, but also isn’t restricting when marginalized demographics can be used as characters.
Unless you are also complaining about it when white male characters are also surface-level, 2-D, copy-and-paste characters then all you are saying is “Only white male characters are allowed to be simple or a stereotype/trope.”
What? Where am I saying that?
Yes I would complain about all kind of stereotypes. Even the “white muscular tough guy” could be considered sexual objectification. IMO CoD is sometimes pretty gay coded.
Lets be honest, not every game needs a complex and well written character, and that is fine. If they choose to go that route it doesn’t matter what race, religion, or gender the character is in the first place. So it doesn’t matter if they are a white male, a latina woman, or a black non-binary person.
I wasn’t saying that. You can have games without a single character. Or where the character doesn’t really matter, because it just an empty shell you are driving around and not more.
But IMO I mostly play story driven RPGs, where you are someone, and where you want the environment to react to you. It would be awesome if when you run around with colorful hair or tattoos, it would slightly change the disposition of the NPCs or cause them to comment on your appearance. Don’t let this stuff be just cosmetics, it should be more meaningful, and embedded into the game world.
That’s why the trailer has me so hyped for this game. It looks like the game is going to be different because Ciri is the protagonist. Her experience, reactions, and approach to saving a young woman from being sacrificed are totally different than what Geralt’s would be. I hate it when games like Mass Effect are like “Oh! You can play as FemShep! That totally counts as representation!” even though it changes literally nothing about the story.
I want more games that actually address the real and significant differences in the experiences and perspectives of different characters. I’m always disappointed when there’s a “female” option that’s just a re-skin of the male character with no changes in how the character interacts with the world and the story. (This happens a lot in non-video game media too.)
Video games are not the real world. They do not have to follow the rules of the real world. Even if parts or all of the game model the real world, video games are artwork, and artwork invents its own rules. Trying to enforce rules onto art has not worked well in the past, and will likely not work well in the future either.
What I love about being a broke bitch retro gamer is that I own my games. I have a Tetris cartridge that is older than I am and still works. The batteries on some of my GB and GBA carts have died, but that’s something I can fix. No one can send a stealth update to my Sega Genesis that forces me to create on an account to play or even bricks it somehow. There’s no room for human shit behavior, just a war against the realities of mechanical decay. (And it’s easy to rip ROMs in case of the inevitable.)
Older generations of gaming are well preserved. I don’t think the past ten years or the future will be. “Games as a service” is too big a draw - the goal is to turn everything into a subscription model because why make money once when you can make it forever?
GamesRadar has been pushing these “but where gam?” articles for some time. It started right after silksong was delayed past the original hollow knight dev time. They seem utterly convinced silksong will be vaporware, or (more likely) it drives plenty of clicks complaining.
It was way more obvious back when team cherry went radio silence (circa 2022?) - and on some level I can understand “we’re game journalists, no one gets a pass” targeting a heavily delayed game, but I’m admittedly one of those fans that have no problem giving Cherry whatever time they need. I’m in no rush.
All dictated by management with zero input from anyone else. I get sad for developer’s working for EA. Having zero influence on the games they make. I believe that everyone can have a great idea or a solution to a problem no matter what department they’re in.
Lots of developers have overlapping skills from making they’re own games that aren’t being utilised.
Working under EA is probably alot like working for McDonald’s, yeah if they did it ‘this way’ they would sell more burgers but good luck getting your voice heard.
$30 cosmetic microtransactions are reasonable in Path of Exile, imho. But it’s free-to-play, and most of their MTX are purely cosmetic.
To get the “full” experience, I suppose you’ll want to drop a retail-box-price on a supporter pack to get some stash tabs, but you can reasonably play the game to end game content (30+ hours of play time for the first time for a new player, I’d guess?) without spending a cent.
But MTX in a game that’s over $100CAD on release? ಠ_ಠ
Reasonable? Big pass from me chief. Grinding Gear Games isn’t some indie studio that needs every penny anymore, they just used the inertia to get people used to dropping 300$ on a game
I haven’t played much since before Ascendancy Classes were added to the game, so I’m well out of the loop (although I do keep up with some of the news), so maybe I’m still emotionally attached to the studio I started following in alpha.
That said, I don’t really have a problem with their business model. They need to get paid, and they don’t sell game-breaking MTX, beyond needing a map tab, a currency tab, and a premium quad tab. I don’t regret the money I spent on supporter packs; I got over a thousand hours out of the game.
$300? I’ve met people that buy the highest supporter pack tier every year plus the highest supporter pack from the seasons. That can add up to over $1k/year.
I think at this point I probably have more than $300 in MTX too, but I paid much more than that to FFXIV sub since 2014.
There's no such thing. It's just milking people who are crazy enough to fall into the trap of buying them.
$30 is not a microtransaction, thats a macrotransaction, thats an entire other video game.
Free to play doesnt give a game a pass on predatory business tactics, they are free to play for one reason only... to sell you worthless pixels for ridiculous prices. F2P games are designed for that purpose and that purpose only.
But I agree that any paid game should have zero MTX, cosmetic or not. Industry is killing its creative aspect with all this monetisation shit.
I spent about the same on a couple of stash tabs during a sale. I don't regret it. The game gave me a couple of hundred hours of fun. That's more than most games
Like with any skill, the yt videos feature the 1% of the time when they get to show off progress. But of course the other 99% of the time is spent on the struggle bus. And like with any skill, if you can learn how to slog through the lows, the highs can be a very rewarding experience.
There’s really nothing like seeing someone play your game for the first time. I assume it’s similar to a musician showing off their music, or a director showing off their film. But that interactive element is very unique; getting to see how people interact and respond emotionally to this thing you built. Actually, maybe it’s like being a toy maker.
50,000 reviews now. It’s a shame, I used to play OW1 a lot even after they stopped providing new content for it. Came to OW2 and I just couldn’t be arsed to grind for characters I don’t have unlocked. You need to win 35 games, and since there’s a basically forced 50% winrate that means you need to play 70 games to unlock a character each time. Wanted to play Ramattra, saw he’s locked, uninstalled and didn’t look back. The monetization is terrible. The balance feels worse than it’s ever been.
This wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t literally SHUT DOWN OVERWATCH 1 to shove people into the cash shop grind sequel
I know next to nothing about neither Ow1 or OW2, but from the sound of it they turned OW2 into a game focused on grinding, where you can pay to skip (part of) the grind. Is my assessment correct? If so they must’ve looked at War Thunder and taken that idea.
Yes. OW1 cost money, but you got all the content. The only paid service was cosmetic outfits for the different characters. You could buy loot boxes for cosmetics. But you had all of the characters, maps, game modes, etc available to begin with. You got the whole game, then could grind for cosmetics.
OW2 takes that and flips it on its head. The game is free, but each character costs money. The problem is that they shut down OW1, so now the players who owned 1 are having to grind for everything. They’ve also had some weird server bugs, with players getting indefinitely locked out of characters they already own.
Wait. I bought overwatch 1 but stopped playing a few years ago. If I go back into overwatch I would have to grind for characters that I used to previously have access to?
Yeah, but honestly I don‘t think it ruins the game. Sure, it’s not the best idea, but I don‘t care too much. I actually care more about the fact that the gameplay currently sucks and is completely different to Overwatch 1. 5v5 and the overall balancing sucks.
That’s not the balance, that’s the gameplay. There are still balance problems like the era of Mercy damage amping.
And while they’ve solved the CC and barriers problem, they’ve made teamfights too swingy. With only 5v5 and a single op tank, teamfights are often basically over after a single death or a single Rez. Especially for the tank. That’s just too much pressure, so nobody wants to tank anymore.
So don’t? You get the new hero like a month or so later then. I haven’t put a dime into ow since I bought it. You don’t need the cosmetics. Let the dumb whales fund the game.
It’s important to understand that Angel1c (Jade) and Baj were the only two players with the skill level who could have possibly had a chance to beat unmodded, unseeded 64 heat. They already beat 64 heat runs with mods or seeds, so it was a matter of getting that insanely luck RNG to reach the goal.
If you assume 25% of player will buy at 80, 50% will buy at $50, and 25% will buy at $20. Per 100 buyers they stand to make $5,000. However if they start at $50 with 75% of buys buying at that price, they will make $4,250. This is about maximizing profit by selling to fans with deep pockets first then discounting latter to captured the rest of the player base.
That tactic would work if it was a multiplayer game or a major franchise but with a single player cookie cutter game there’s no urgency for me to get started and no FOMO. It just isn’t that interesting of an IP
People still will, because lots of people spoil, some like watching streaming etc. When new stuff comes out and I’m not ready to start it, it often also involves stop visiting certain communities, discords, etc.
right, so that would put you into the 50% or the lower 25%, but there are people that will buy higher price, and as long as there is 1% willing to buy before the first sale it is worth it for them.
But what they don’t take into account is that 75% all at once creates an excitement buzz around the game that ends up causing even more sales then would ever happen otherwise. Look at games like Pokémon go or PalWorld that generated so much buzz. I tried both of them because of the hype and I normally wouldn’t have bothered otherwise.
With a game like there has probably been existence market research to account for how much buzz the game will get. They may even be counting on the buzz to sell more copies at full price.
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