gamesradar.com

IsThisAnAI, (edited ) do games w Ken Levine says BioShock nearly went nowhere and was almost canceled: "We can't make those games because they don't sell"

Nah modern game development is fantastic. Y’all just dont remember getting 2 good titles a year and the rest being garbage. There are more great games out there than ever before.

grrgyle,

I actually agree. If you don’t just focus on the tippy-top AAA/AAAA live service / gambling simulators / hi-fi vapid adventure, then there are some incredible games coming out all the time.

Arguably, the “triple-I” Indies and AA mid studios have taken over the culture/price-range/innovation niche vacated by the big studios climbing over each other to impress shareholders.

ColeSloth,

Name a year that only had two AAA games come out that were any good.

Now, we just have great access to a bunch of lower budget indie games that put gameplay over graphics, so they can take more risks and some of those games are fantastic. But there hasn’t been “just two” good games a year in the past 30 years.

sailingbythelee,

You are totally right. We are living in a golden age of not only video games, but entertainment in general, thanks to ridiculously powerful computers and the internet. People with video game nostalgia remember how those old games made them feel, because the games were new and exciting and they were young. But video games (and board games) have done nothing but improve over the years as developers figure what works and what doesn’t.

Nowadays there is just of ton of…everything. We are spoiled for choice. There are so many excellent games at every price point, and also tons of crap, and yes, too much shovelware and too many rehashed franchise games. But here’s the thing: these things aren’t mutually exclusive. We have all of it, all at once, and reviews and advice are everywhere. If someone is tired of rehashed AAA franchise games, they can spend the rest of their lives playing clever indie games and they’ll still barely scratch the surface of what’s available.

Cethin, do games w EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"

And I mean, that’s maybe where the problems lie. This game is all jank and all generics, with no specific thing to present except “OMG LOOK AT OUR GRAPHICS!!!”.

This is exactly what AAA gaming is. Some guys in suits dictate projects to make money. There’s no passion behind them. They can’t do anything unique or interesting because it may not make money. They just make safe games, and they’re generic and boring as hell.

Jaysyn, do games w EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"
@Jaysyn@kbin.social avatar

Or maybe EA is just a garbage corporation that aren't actually good at making video games?

Psythik, do games w Cities: Skylines 2 "absolutely cannot" have the decade of DLC features that the original game added | GamesRadar+

Why not? The constant updates are what kept me playing for so many years!

InterSynth,
@InterSynth@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I think the developer meant they can’t have a decade of C:S DLC included in vanilla C:S2.

jpeps,

100%, the comments have been infuriating to read. This is the obvious interpretation.

pete_the_cat, do games w Cities: Skylines 2 "absolutely cannot" have the decade of DLC features that the original game added | GamesRadar+

I haven’t played Cities: Skylines in years, this looks great but hopefully they fixed the stupid traffic AI. I hated that when you built a wider road to decrease congestion half of the cars would ignore the opened lanes and still pile up in the original ones.

snooggums,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

Sounds realistic though.

iAmTheTot,
@iAmTheTot@kbin.social avatar

That is one of the areas of the game they specifically worked on to improve. There's dev diaries about how they improved it.

pete_the_cat,

Nice, I remember that being a huge issue in the original with many people complaining about it

Psythik,

You could fix it somewhat with mods, by forcing cars to take specific lanes. Didn’t solve the problem, but it helped. Can’t wait to try the new traffic AI in the sequel.

Goodtoknow, (edited )
@Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca avatar

Widening roads is never a good answer in game or real life, it induces new demand and will eventually become more congested. Need to build a train line instead

chunkystyles,

I understand what you’re getting at, but even cities with lots of public transit get choked with traffic in CS1. The traffic AI is abysmal.

Goodtoknow,
@Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca avatar

Have you tried the expansion pack where you can be car free with Plazas and places?

chunkystyles,

Yes. Still choked with traffic. You can’t get rid of cars completely.

Swedneck,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

do you actually think just adding lanes will infinitely increase the capacity of roads?

pete_the_cat,

Yeah… That’s how these things work ya know. A 4 lane road has higher capacity than a 2 lane road assuming there arent any choke points.

sigh,
@sigh@lemmy.world avatar

just 1 more lane bro

Swedneck,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

yeah uh, i think you’ll find that you need junctions, which create chokepoints?

even with highways you get chokepoints at the ramps, and they are extremely absurdly costly.

stankmut,

It does increase the capacity of roads. Two lanes holds twice as many cars as one lane. Four lanes hold twice as many cars as two lanes.

You’re probably thinking of induced demand, but that’s related to traffic congestion and not capacity. More lanes ultimately means more cars are getting places, but any individual car will see that congestion is just as bad as it used to be.

Swedneck,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

yeah see what’s happening here is that you’re completely ignoring junctions: even in the ideal case of a completely straight road you still need junctions to get on and off the road, which will put a hard limit on throughput.

This is why traffic in america is miserable, the traffic engineers fail to recognize that you can’t just put businesses right next to roads as that will cause stupendous amounts of choking every time someone wants to pop in for some mcdonalds.

3 lanes in each direction is about the most you’ll ever need, which is what you’ll tend to see on big highways in europe. And really most of the time you’ll do just fine with 2 lanes.

stankmut,

I actually had a whole paragraph about junctions being a limit and then deleted it since i didn’t feel like it added to my point. I also was going to add a point about how much space the lanes take up and that even if more lanes added capacity, it didn’t necessarily mean they were the right option.

SwampYankee,

This is why traffic in america is miserable, the traffic engineers fail to recognize that you can’t just put businesses right next to roads as that will cause stupendous amounts of choking every time someone wants to pop in for some mcdonalds.

Yeah, fuckin’ Americans, putting their McDonald’s right next to roads… I mean, just look at this. What a disgrace.

https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/58b13ec1-a34d-410f-ad28-c5342a44255a.png

Swedneck,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

yeah uh, you do realize stockholm is infamous for having shit traffic, right? Precisely because it took a lot of the road design from the US.

Your example only proves my point.

SwampYankee,

I’m just struggling to imagine where you would put a business except for next to a road, regardless of whether there are cars on that road or not.

Swedneck,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

there’s a difference between a road and a street, a road is meant for quick throughfare and streets are destinations.

what happens a lot especially in america is trying to do both at once, which results in a street that is incredibly stressful to try and enter/leave and is miserable to be near outside of a car, and yet doesn’t allow traffic to flow smoothly and quickly.

These are commonly referred to as “stroads”, and the solution is to decide whether you want a street or a road and design it as such. In dense areas this means you have to bite the sour apple and accept that not everything can be a dedicated throughfare, the best solution is a backbone network of throughfares with streets branching off.
In less dense areas you can have the best of both worlds by simply putting a street on the side of the road, with some greenery between them so people have somewhat of an enjoyable view, and then connect the streets to the road at either end.

Psythik,

This article on their website goes into detail on exactly how they’re planning on fixing the traffic issues. The AI will actually change lanes this time!

stevedidWHAT, do games w Starfield's lead quest designer leaves Bethesda to join other RPG veterans making a new open-world game
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

What happened man I thought I just needed a new GPU man, surely Bethesda isn’t being run by a fuck wit.

Surely the last set of games and Bethesdas trajectory is solely the fault of the devs despite being across several game universes and still somehow pumping out the same shit you’ve been playing for 20 years now LOL.

Bottom of the barrel is all that’s left, sleep tight Bethesda, you had a good run

echodot,

They just need to update their game engine to something more modern. Like Quake or something

Astroturfed, do xbox w Starfield surpasses 6 million players to become Bethesda's best launch yet, beating Skyrim and Fallout

It’s on gamepass right? I wonder how these numbers would compare if it wasn’t…

WereCat,

I mean, peak on Steam is still lower than Baldurs Gate 3 daily count after over a month since release. So I don’t think it’s THAT successful, though the numbers are not bad for a single player game.

derekabutton,

But for anybody on both game pass and steam, it’s cheaper to just play on game pass. That skews the data quite a bit. I’ll play it for “free” now and then buy it on steam in 5 years on sale if I ever get the inclination.

dreadgoat, do games w The Metal Gear Solid Collection is so true to Hideo Kojima's "original vision" that it needed a new content warning
@dreadgoat@kbin.social avatar

This seems like a marketing move. When the Parental Advisory Label was created for the music industry, some bands and labels went out of their way to make sure they got it put on their albums, sometimes even altering their content just for that purpose, because it would actually drive sales. Of course every kid listening to rock and rap wanted "the real shit."

Here again we are being promised "the real shit" by a meaningless content warning.

It also helps Konami keep its distance from Kojima, which is probably what both of them want.

ThatWeirdGuy1001,
@ThatWeirdGuy1001@sh.itjust.works avatar

I really wish game company owners weren’t so easily miffed.

PT would’ve been epic if it went well the way.

theodewere, do games w After 27,000+ Steam reviews, Overwatch 2 is graded as 'Overwhelmingly Negative'
@theodewere@kbin.social avatar

unlike Baldur's Gate 3, absolutely everything about this game was designed specifically with microtrans in mind

Bizarroland,
@Bizarroland@kbin.social avatar

Oh my God, you can't just say microtrans. The proper terminology is "gender dysphoric little person"

yeather,

Actually that’s the wrong use of that word in this context. It’s actually a “queer questioning point of sale system” he’s talking about.

theodewere,
@theodewere@kbin.social avatar

could be short for microtransient, and then we're talking about little hobos.. and who doesn't want to talk about little hobos..

vaultdweller013,

No no no thats also wrong, it stands for micro transmission. Ya know for small vehicles.

kostel_thecreed,

Even you got it wrong! They were talking about the micro figurines for transformers! How you could miss that!!!

1984,

pcgamer.com/how-blizzards-reputation-collapsed-in…

Blizzard used to be great. Now they are awful.

arefx,

They’ve been awful since Activision got involved. I knew that was the end the day the news broke, people told me I was wrong. I wish.

Also they sexually harassed an employee to suicide. That tells you all you need to know.

Omega_Jimes,

Blizzard has been on a downward trend for a lot longer than 3 years.

sunbeam60, do gaming w Nintendo has filed over 30 Tears of the Kingdom patents, registering things you wouldn't even notice in the game

This just ain’t how patent law works.

Nintendo has IP lawyers. They have to, at their scale, because they will constantly be bombarded by patent trolls, licensing companies etc. trying to extract profit out of Nintendo. So, like any other large business, they hire IP lawyers to protect themselves.

Most patent disagreements are resolved by cross-licensing. That’s where one business says, in response to a law suit, “oh, but you’re actually using 6 of our patents, so maybe we can come to an agreement”. A patent is both a shield and a sword. Even against trolls they can be useful, as they can be used to argue against troll arguments, if it gets to court, or pull in other business to the defense, if helpful.

IP lawyers know this. So they extract every patent they can out of everything a company does, as a way to build up the IP bank.

So, I highly doubt “Nintendo wants to prevent others” bla bla. It’s just IP lawyers doing their job.

I’ve sat in MANY discovery sessions with IP lawyers where they push and prod at software I, or my team, have written. “So, what you’ve effectively done is written a unique data structure to connect elements in memory?!”, “no, it’s a linked list, next question please”.

some_designer_dude, do games w Red Dead Redemption 2 overtakes Mario Kart 8 as the 4th best-selling video game of all time, boasting 79 million sales

I rage quit this game after a bunch of hours. Pretty annoying how pretty much every action gets a bounty put on you and then you’re bankrupted trying to pay it off so you can just get back to playing the fucking game without being harassed by every NPC.

Pretty, though.

vikingtons,
@vikingtons@lemmy.world avatar

My exact experience with it down to a T. Can definitely appreciate it for the technological marvel it is.

PalmTreeIsBestTree,

I never had that problem

Jumpropegazing, do games w GTA 6 dev Rockstar says recent firings were due to leaks of "confidential information" and were "in no way related to people's right to join a union"

this is not very rockstar of them

RightHandOfIkaros, do games w Assassin's Creed is a "forever brand" because Ubisoft supported huge risks with it, ex director says: "Whereas, say, EA, you get these awful execs and they never made games and they came from toothpaste companies"

Most self-aware Ubisoft employee quoted in post title

Brkdncr, do games w Xbox ditching hardware and exclusive games "makes sense," former Microsoft exec and Blizzard boss says, as "only a moron would continue" making consoles as games go third party

Open source “Xbox”:

  • Peg the performance requirements and a utility to verify them.
  • Allow devs to build games with those specs in mind.
  • filter in the store for games built for that spec.
Truscape,

"We have steam deck verification at home"

  • Microsoft (in a year)
ShinkanTrain, do games w Xbox ditching hardware and exclusive games "makes sense," former Microsoft exec and Blizzard boss says, as "only a moron would continue" making consoles as games go third party
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