Indeed. Its sad to see a reputable name go before something far less reputable, like Kotaku for example.
I guess it must be true, hate clicks and outrage do generate more revenue than real, genuine gaming articles written with pretty good journalistic integrity.
eh, kotaku has some solid articles and reporting as well. gaming journalism in general is incestuous shit but most of the anti-kotaku sentiment comes from goonergate shit
The hilarious thing about you getting downvotes immediately is Kotaku led the reporting on this news this morning. Link is in the posted article, y’all.
Of course Kotaku is going to report on it. They want in on the outrage of companies firing employees that has been happening lately.
They were throwing temper tantrums over the owner of Kotaku telling them that they needed to write more gaming guides/articles instead of the social culture outrage garbage they had been spewing that tarnished their reputation. Imagine working for a gaming media outlet, and then getting mad when the owner tells you that you need to focus on gaming articles.
They were throwing temper tantrums over the owner of Kotaku telling them that they needed to write more gaming guides/articles instead of the social culture outrage garbage they had been spewing that tarnished their reputation.
Nah, Kotaku had a shit reputation for years before gamergate got shat into existence. Their reporting was sloppy and often wrong, most of them sucked at the games they were reviewing, they spammed out vapid clickbait articles about nothing to farm ad rev. The only reason people respect them now is because they were positioned opposite gamergate, as if two things can’t both suck.
they were wholly owned by gamestop. their magazine was a lever to drive gamestop subscriptions and upsells. y’all worried about kotaku crack me up, if there were real ethics in game journalism a supposedly independent publication reviewing the products wouldn’t be owned by the largest vendor of the products.
If you actually read their interviews and reviews you will see that it is way more in-depth than any YouTube essays or twitch streams. It sucks that those things attract more people because I get way more informed at an objective level with GI articles and similar podcasts.
I wouldn’t say better, if you didn’t like them in their earlier days then I doubt you would like them now. To me, they just provided more thorough insights into the games than random YouTuber or Reddit comment section.
that’s fair. I suspect their relationship with gamestop, which had it’s own mini-e3 for a while, led to a ton of great content discovery that many journalists didn’t get access to back in the day.
Would be nice indeed. Cheaper than what a Deckard will likely be (almost certainly in the 4 digit range) and no Facebook garbage. Though the wording in the article is kinda weird and almost sounds like you still require a PS5.
Probably. Sony provided upstream Linux with drivers for their controllers, and have been for a while now. The controllers arguably work better on Linux than they do on Windows without third party software/drivers.
I’m 70% sure that Sony just ported their drivers almost directly from Orbis (the PS4/5 OS) since Orbis is based on FreeBSD, which is POSIX-compliant. Windows is not POSIX-compliant, so they’d need to do more work porting it over.
This wouldn’t be a steam deck competitor. At least less directly than it is a switch competitor. And Sony tends to do hardware well, they just don’t have the best pricing track record as of late.
They also don’t have enough games for their last generation to justify a new console, it’s a lot of work populating a library and their ex-exclusives are now playable on Deck. Which, even if it didn’t have thousands of games out of the gate, would actually be a cool mobile PC with guaranteed Linux drivers.
I guess I’m saying folks who are interested in a console handheld are probably not also looking at the deck since it is literally a computer. I don’t disagree on the lack of first party and exclusives. I think they can make a great device, it’s just gonna have a huge lack of content much like the psvr2.
That being said I think there’s a chance they go the route of psvr2 and somehow make the handheld compatible with steam so they don’t have to curate a library given the high cost of game development these days.
Nah it’s never gonna be able to play steam games as Sony is making money on the games it’s selling and not the hardware.
I think the advantage it would have over the Steam Deck is that you wouldn’t have to tinker to get games playing as it’d just be a normal console.
Personally, as a console gamer, I feel more and more attracted by Linux gaming, but I don’t think I’ll make the jump until physical games are gone for good.
This is actually hilarious. Never trusted them for a minute, but didn’t expect the rugpull to happen after just a few days. Wonder if Steam will refund everyone.
I remember absolutely being a fanboy in the 90s. It was so much better than it’s rivals like EGM and GamePro.
But around 2005, either I aged out of it or the magazine got worse. Then I remember GameStop giving it for free at some point. I just remember it being a shell of a shell of a magazine, as the rest of the gaming industry moved to gaming blogs.
The Gamestop deal would have been 2002-ish. I actually hadn’t heard of the magazine before we started pushing it in the store. With Game Informer’s features mirroring our store marketing, it was the first time I realized how incestuous the industry was (easy to see the signs of it now when looking back at even older mags). The bizarre amount of coverage it had on the PS2 game State of Emergency was one example from the time. It’s wild to me to hear it being called reputable here and elsewhere today when it had such a fundamental conflict of interest for the vast majority of its run.
I was in middle school when I had fond memories of gaming mags, and that’s probably when I was the most infatuated by the publications.
And by high school (2000s) it was getting weird and slowly dropping off.
At some point was the whole Kotaku gamergate BS and completely checked out of gaming news because it wasn’t just weird, but then it got real racist/sexist.
I’m kind of in the same boat as you. My mainstay for the longest time was RockPaperShotgun, probably from 2008–2016 or thereabouts. Once the old guard left the quality of the site drastically changed, and it became significant shallower in terms of reviews. Not really sure where to get the same kind of journalism these days.
This is really disappointing. The game does give off GOTY vibes until you realize big issues like only having one save file you can fully control, intentially vague dialogue for key quest details, and bad AI. All of which just happens to encourage mistakes that can only be fixed using items which are very limited without microtransactions. Its like an MBA took over in the final phase of development and made it a sleazy moneygrab. The fact that it is a hit means we can expect more developers to adopt this tactic and take it further. Capcom has become EA.
Thankfully I was able to get a refund on Dragons Dogma and used that money to buy Rise of the Ronin. Was not disappointed. They are very similar games but Rise of the Ronin has all the QoL features gamers have come to expect like unlimitted fast travel and saves.
It absolutely is. Wakestones are limited without microtransactions and there are plenty of poorly explained quests where one could easily kill something they shouldn’t. It happened to me. I even saved right before to try and be safe only for the game to autosave over the second the npc attacked me. The only save you have full control over is your second save tied to the inns, which are expensive and inferior to camping due to the buffs camping provides.
But not that limited, you can find the shards and even wakestones from playing the game. Even the MTX alone you can only buy 5 max, which isn’t enough to ever make a difference in the game.
One neat thing about wakestones is that you can use them to revive NPCs that have been killed. This is cool, but also means that I have honestly used Wake stones just as much to revive NPCs as I have on myself. The main city in the first area actually has a massive morgue that presumably fills up with the bodies of dead NPCs so you can find them easier.
While occasionally I wish I could save scum when I make a mistake, I’ve gotten through rough patches. I will say the performance is lacking sometimes, hopefully that will iron out in time. One save file can be a pain, but you can rebuild your character in any way you’d like throughout the game, and there is NG+. But I have 10 wake stones and 20+ ferry stones. They aren’t THAT limited without buying them. This just encourages me to explore more and think about my combat a little more thoroughly. I’ve run the same roads over 10 times and I’ll still find a new path to a seekers medallion or a cave I hadn’t gone through on the 11th time. I’ve only used 1 wakestone and that was because I fell a half a mile and ended up somewhere I hadn’t explored yet.
The game is not bad, it’s just built different. GOTY? I don’t know about that yet. But to be ‘disappointed’ that a game you didn’t like is selling well is nonsense. The micros are irrelevant as far as I can see with the stockpile of those items I have, and while I don’t like the idea of them being slid in there, it’s not predatory like lootboxes in some games.
I appreciate the reasoned response. Maybe by the end of the game the pay items don’t feel limited, but they did in the first 20 hours I played before returning it.
If I was disappointed solely at the sales compared to my dislike then you’re right to think its nonsense. What I’m disappointed in is a business I have loyally and regularly purchased from for over 30 years compromising their product and making it worse to try and fleece more money. I also worry deeply that the game selling well despite the flak means every major developer will find their own way to follow suit and refine the tactic until it becomes the norm.
The game is designed so they feel like a limited resource, so that you don’t rely on them. The game is so much more enjoyable when both wakestones and ferrystones are a limited resource, you learn of carts, having to get away from the cart when fighting goblins in the way, fighting accordingly and avoiding npc deaths… Of course they felt limited in the first 20 hours, they are supposed to be a precious resource.
Revivas and teleports on key moments feel way better than having them around, honestly.
I don’t really get how you are disappointed in Capcom about the mtx, when is not something new at all about their products to offer mtx revivals and such. You can be against it of course but to be disappointed because it’s something new? It’s not.
Yeah, but you’re tolerating it. which is good enough for greedy publishers.
If you want it to stop, don’t buy it. It’s the only option. Otherwise you allow publishers to make your game experience worse for profit.
The reason people like me are disappointed it is selling well is that these anti-consumer practices are not a deal-breaker for most people thus it allows these practices to persist in the game market. That is hardly “nonsense” as you put it.
I’m sure I’ll get a lot of “tolerating” people commenting that these “can be easily ignored”, but I doubt I will get a single person that says their experience was enhanced by these microtransactions, which could have simply been a cheat code instead.
My experience is not enhanced but also not diminished, so it’s fine. The moment I have a worse experience, then I’ll complain, but right now, it’s complaining about theoreticals.
Ah. The “I’ll just tolerate this until it gets worse” mindset. Never backfires!
Surely even you can admit that slipping this in on release was a scummy move.
It’s “theoretical” only because there is no non-monetised version. They could have created a cheat shop with the items for free. Even if you choose not to use them having that option means it is a better experience, so it would still be a “diminished experience”.
If someone can pay extra money to get a different game experience from you then the publishers have denied you the chance at that experience which is “diminished”.
This isn’t even mentioning the performance issues on lunch that would be tolerated because “surely they’ll fix it later!”.
Sure you don’t care. Many people don’t care. And surely someone is going to try and highlight this apathy as a virtue somehow. And so publishers get to continue experimenting with how to milk franchises for every dollar it can instead of making an optimal game experience, overall making the game industry worse.
Problem is that these will always be a thing because of whales. Am I supposed to not buy a game because of a micro like this? So basically quit gaming? Because they’re everywhere now, and as long as whales exist, micros will exist. You need to pick your battles. I stopped buying multi-player games all together. I’m not limiting myself on single player games because of a minor micro that changes nothing about my single player experience.
Everyone could boycott this game except for the whales, and that handful would still be considered a win for them. Don’t be disappointed in a single games sales, be disappointed in the current state of gaming.
Let’s do some theoretical scenarios for microtransactions:
-apathy with whales: “we need to ensure a good monetisation model to extract value from the whales, even if the normal players are missing out”
-apathy without whales: “let’s try adding microtransactions to extract more value per player, it won’t hurt our sales!”
-No apathy with whales: “no one is buying our game! And our whales have no one to play with! Are the whales even enough to fund this on its own? We got to undo the microtransactions soon!”
-No apathy no whales: “why did we even add microtransactions! Every business knows that only quality games and good marketing can help sales!”
It isn’t about tolerating it. I haven’t even found the microtransactions yet. I’m not tolerating them at all, they just aren’t a part of the game that I’m playing.
But to be ‘disappointed’ that a game you didn’t like is selling well is nonsense.
I’m not disappointed because it’s just not my cup of tea, that would be nonsense. I actually want to play the game, but won’t because of the state it’s in.
It’s disappointing that it sold so well because it shows that people don’t care about shitty business practices.
Funny, I’ve been playing the game since the day it hit retail and haven’t even found the ability to use microtransactions, let alone ran into any game breaking problem that needed me to buy something. Sure, I’m not very far in the game, but it sounds like you didn’t get very far in the game either and somehow found all these problems I haven’t found.
I’m at level 25, and I also have yet to find out how to actually use microtransactions. I assume if I go looking for them through the PSN interface I could find them, but I haven’t seen anything in-game so far.
oh it was great. I used to try and get in the magazine by drawing on the envelopes and mailing them in. EGM and I think GamePro used to have artwork that people mailed in.
Also prior to the Internet this was THE way to get cheats for games. every time a new issue came out I always checked the back to see if there were cheats for a game I just got.
At this point I think our best option may be a spiritual successor by a different, but passionate, dev team. Not that Rockstar couldn’t knock it out of the park, its just that it feels like Rockstar is interested in proven money makers than doing anything real different.
GameStop has sucked for a very long time and I’m astounded that so many people holding out hope for a meme stock to GO TO THE MOOOON again think it’s going to last.
That’s fair! I was part of the initial explosion of the stock, and sold the same day. The cult of GameStop loonies is still holding out hope to this day… it’s wild.
When a business is closing many of its stores and shutting down a subsidiary that has been around for 30+ years with a pretty reputable name (instead of selling it, for example), thats usually a sign that the business is going to go bye bye in the near future.
the mag has been a loss leader used to drive traffic into the stores for preorders. it was always pretty slanted, I suspect it’s just been too expensive (as have all printed magazines lately) with too few subscribers to justify the outlay.
gematsu.com
Ważne