A media franchise, also known as a multimedia franchise, is a collection of related media in which several derivative works have been produced from an original creative work of fiction, such as a film, a work of literature, a television program, or a video game. Bob Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, defined the word franchise as "something that creates value across multiple businesses and across multiple territories over a long period of time."[1]
My understanding is that’s deliberate. The Wacowskis were done with The Matrix, the original trilogy (+ Animatrix) was the complete package. But the powers that be demanded more to milk the franchise, and when the Wacowskis tried to push back, the higher-ups said they would do it with or without them. So the Wacowskis are deliberately sabotaging the sequels, and good on em.
The fourth movie was written by one of the Wachowskis as a metaphor for their own transition, as a creative outlet during a grieving period after the death of their parents.
As I recall them saying, they felt that way maybe in retrospect? They hadn’t transitioned in real life by then, so that’s getting pretty subconscious at that point. At the time, the metaphors that were clear were about dreams, the savior allegory, a sense of not mattering as a cog in the machine, and so forth.
I did. Its cynicism about making another Matrix movie is well-noted and some of the most fascinating things about that movie, but it’s also a protagonist swap between Neo and Trinity, which makes a ton of sense for the trans metaphor. It can be cynical about the realities of making the movie and still not be sabotage. And also it was only written by one of the two Wachowskis.
Cancellation like this aren’t always bad. Especially given BG3 as a whole, sometimes it’s good to just ship a complete product, and move onto newer things. They earned a break
Yeah I don’t think so – Sequels are the thing you’re supposed to have I think. Everyone drooling over having subscriptions since MMOs sucks and it really looks like the whole culture of the industry is pretty shitty in a lot of ways
E: I guess expansions can be good so you don’t have to be an EA sports franchise if you’re not changing the engine a bunch. Other than EUIV though, whose expansions are a money grab way to make the game cost 150 bucks, I haven’t ever played DLC I can think of.
Unless the sequel is using way better tech and requires a new engine or massive engine tweaks, a sequel that comes shortly after the original release could be done better, faster and cheaper as an expansion pack.
Other than EUIV though, whose expansions are a money grab way to make the game cost 150 bucks, I haven’t ever played DLC I can think of.
Well there ya go. Paradox DLC is just bullshit. Most of them just add like 1-2 units or characters or factions which mostly boil down to an aesthetic change. Most big games get real additions via DLC that can add up to 50% more game.
The non cosmetic Paradox DLCs fundamentally change the games so if you want to actually play the latest version of the game with all the mechanics you have to get them all. You can get them on steam sale usually for like 50 bucks a couple times a year.
I’m not defending it – It is what colors me most against DLCs.
I still just don’t like the idea of it – Why not do a DLC for movies and paintings and books? It feels wrong to fork a work of art or say “Oh sorry I didn’t actually make it all here’s the other 20%”
Come to think of it – Movie sequels are kind of like that these days where it’s just one story broken up instead of multiple separate stories. I wish we just did 4 hour movies with intermission but I’m sure I’m alone there.
Just a few dlc/expansion packs that were totally worth their money
All Rimworld expansions. Diablo 3 reaper of souls/ D2 lord of destruction The witcher Ballad of gay tony Star craft ones Red alert yuris revenge Horizon zero dawn frozen wilds
Etc… There are good expansions that are totally worth their money and add to the overall game.
That being said, I’m not a huge dlc fan and rarely spend money on them if they don’t really add to the game. More partial to spend on dlc for smaller studio games rather than large ones.
I didn’t even buy the Rimworld DLCs and I have 500+ hours! I did look at them but didn’t buy. Now that DF is graphical I mostly just play that now tbh.
DF is a great example – 15+ years updates no DLCs unless you count the steam release.
In what world is paying 40usd for a game and 3x 30usd for 500h of entertainment not a good deal? (not particularly aimed at you, but at dlc haters in general)
I am glad when they release a dlc. I get more great content. They get some more financial support.
I am 100% against cheap cash grabs. I am 100% pro multiple well made extentions for a game that allow me to support the studio.
They didn’t add all that many units, two per race. But they did have a great impact on the game (mostly).
Also, new campaigns for each race was awesome. The level editor not only brought many fun custom maps (I still think about that weird 300 map I played when I was 16), but ensured longevity of the game until this day by enabling new maps to be played in regular games.
I miss getting all this stuff with a game or expansion too.
web.archive.org/web/20230924045050/…/PureDarkHe started hiding his count but he was at 11k last week and his most popular/cheapest tier is $5 USD so he makes 55k a month. So basically 660k+ a year.
They do more Linux and Mac porting than any other company I know. Back in the day I believe they were actually game developer, but they seem to have become specialized in porting games specifically.
What makes you think that? It’s possible that they did it in-house, of course, but there’s no precedent for it. No previous Civ had a linux version done in-house.
Patch 5 also improves inventory access, letting players manage the inventory of all companions from one single UI, regardless of whether or not they’re currently in your party.
YES. I was just looking for a mod to do this but it’s so much better when the devs build out a highly-requested feature like this.
While at camp, you can now access and manage the inventories of companions who aren’t in your active party.
Sounds like it’s not possible everywhere just at camp, also, the main thing I want is official autosorting containers, I use the mod but it can be janky at times, inventory management has put me off playing and I really want to I just got sick of organising loot and marking as items to sell and splitting stacks etc etc
You know I was trying to figure out why I lost interest in Chapter 3 and started playing Total War, and I think this is it (also a dialogue bug that made companions start spoiling the plot…)
I’ve never been a huge fan of inventory management and after a while it gets very tedious in BG3.
Jokes on me though, I’m playing Thorek in Warhammer 2 rn and he’s a crafting lord so I turned a semi-RTS into an inventory management game anyways.
The inventory management in the game is shockingly bad.
“Oh, I got a new companion. I wonder what I can equip them with.”
Good luck, because the gear is scattered among your inactive companions, or the chests that might be locked to you in co-op.
“I need to take a potion mid combat”
It’s somewhere in those 20 inventory wheels!
The whole inventory weight is kind of pointless as well, since you can send to camp at any point, and there’s very few places where you can’t just go back and get something. It’s just inconvenience kept for the sake of following some arbitrary rules.
Gear especially should just be kept in a separate place from consumables and quest items, with maybe some quick swap wardrobe feature for e.g. switching to a bludgeoning weapon for smashing walls.
Good luck, because the gear is scattered among your inactive companions, or the chests that might be locked to you in co-op.
This has explicitly been changed this patch.
It’s just inconvenience kept for the sake of following some arbitrary rules.
It’s on one hand a BG throwback and more.importantly a minor impediment to the time-tested tactic in Larian games of “barrelmancy.” Look up some Telekinesis runs on Divinity:Original Sin to see why.
Can’t wait for major story spoilers to show up full-screen on the background of the homescreen because clickbaiters on YouTube are fucking assholes.
Also really don’t need product placement on the home, I am on my PS5 to play games, not to fucking buy stuff. It’s a console, not a goddamn webshop.
This really needs an option to get disabled.
Edit: Reading again it just seems to get worse. Looking at the alternative game ads, offers and promotions when selecting a game seems borderline against consumer laws, at least in EU. Especially kids could be easily targeted and triggered by this. Also most of these examples make it look like you’re starting up an entirely different game, it’s just such a awful update all together. No self-respecting interface designer would come up with this, it’s 100% corporate predatory marketing cunts that came up with this kind of stuff.
I heard from another lemmy user that his new Xbox required him to click an ad to finish booting up. So with a grain of salt MS’ consoles are even worse. If this continues and i don’t see why it won’t, PC gaming gonna be the only viable one soon. Thank God steamdeck and valve Linux collab are now a thing
God, that’s awful. Is it connected to the Internet or are they internal ads? I suppose you’ve already looked into a piratefix firmware update or something? I have a big roku tv that i keep away from my wifi lest ads sneak into my experience too
I’d kill Internet to it if my wife didn’t leave on random free streaming shit like Pluto to play for the dogs when we leave. The steps it takes for me to get to streamio are nuts. Boot on TV -> close ad and navigation to Fire stick -> listen to auto play ad while piece of shit fire stick loads UI -> finally get to watch what I want.
Ugh I love Steam but when I click on a new game, sometimes it’s like WATCH THIS STREAMER STREAM and it’s in the middle of the game like I WANT GO INTO IT BLIND GIVE ME AN OPTION TO DISABLE THIS
Sure thing, if I were in front of my pc I’d have given you more precise instructions but yeah I was elated when I found that setting as I don’t enjoy livestreams even if it’s not a spoiler.
Console makers see them as one and the same. This being Lemmy I have to advise that the only solution is to own your own machine, so best build your own hardware, install Linux, and compile all the games you want to play yourself.
I have a PC, with Windows though, I can’t be bothered with the limited Linux support and hardware woes that come with it.
I only played a few exclusives on the PS5 before, most recently Astro Bot, but since everything else is basically coming to PC I recently upgraded it anyway. It’s becoming less and less appealing to even bother with consoles anymore. Even Nintendo seems to barely bother to dare anything innovating.
My Linux gaming machine is a Steam Deck, it’s been a pretty positive experience and you only really need to tinker if you’re straying off the golden path.
I imagine we’ll see some new Nintendo innovation with the Switch 2, they are at least good for throwing in a load of wacky ideas with new consoles.
To be fair the Steam Deck is similar to consoles, it is only one piece of hardware that people can’t alter (or aren’t meant to) that natively runs on a Linux system and is entirely designed to work as such. I think the Steam Deck is an interesting concept, but I don’t believe it can be compared to custom built computers, as well as the idea of supported games on any choice of Linux distribution. Support is significantly better than it used to be, but it’s still such a long way off.
While it defaults to a console-like experience it is meant to be altered, they give you a full desktop environment as standard and even provide instructions to install Windows if you really want.
Like the driver for controlling one vendor’s LED lights had a generic PCI FW updater (or something similar) included that it exposed to user space. This meant a) changing the LED colours or parameters required a firmware update rather than the firmware handling input from the system to adjust colours without new code, and b) other software could use this and just change the bus id of the target to update other firmware willy nilly.
It also had to compete for bus time and sending a full firmware update takes more time than a few colour update parameters. Average case might be ok, but it would make worst case scenarios worse, like OS wants to page in from disk 1 while a game needs to read shader code from disk 2 that it needs to immediately send to the GPU but the led controller decides it’s time to switch to the next theme in the list oh and there’s some packets that just came in over the network and the audio buffer is getting low. GPU ends up missing a frame deadline for the display engine and your screen goes black for a second while it re-establishes the connection between GPU and monitor.
They only need to make sure it’s difficult enough the average user can’t be bothered to figure out the workaround. I’m sure without looking they made a considerate sum from the neglected children market.
You know the cosmetics things that you could unlock using cheat codes 20 years ago in single player games ? You now have to pay for it. And they bloat your OS kernel to ensure that you don’t get those valuables skins without actually paying for it.
Sorry we cannot afford to pay the DRM licensing fee. As a result we will no longer be able to inconvenience our customers or prevent people who were never going to pay for our game anyway from playing.
It’s twice as funny in this game because they added Denuvo a year after release. Meaning all pirates got the game DRM free on day one while paying customers got Denuvo patched in.
I suppose they only did it now due to some license agreement expiring?
Yep, if I understand it right, Denuvo charges an annual fee to be used. That's why you always see it getting removed after the game loses relevance, when sales aren't enough to justify paying for Denuvo anymore.
Kind of weird how, because Bethesda (and other publishers) are Denuvo's consumer, this particular anti-consumer license agreement is actually benefiting the players, haha.
Arbitrary limits on information just mean you have something to hide
And even if that’s not the case for a specific game, normalizing this shit means that once you have something to hide, it’s no longer raising eyebrows.
The idea that only having a €15M budget is what caused this game's issues is ridiculous. It's not a game that had good ideas and just failed to execute them properly; it's fundamentally bad on a conceptual level.
The setting and story concept are bad. When the game was first announced, I don't think I heard or saw a single discussion where someone was excited to experience playing through the story of Gollum in that time period in the story. Or even playing as Gollum at all - he's a great secondary character in the books and films, but he's hardly a character you want to play as in a video game. There's no room for character development either.
The game design is bad. It's just bad. No amount of time, money or polish is going to fix the terrible basic design principles the game is built on. And even if they had 10x the budget and hired a world-class lead game designer from the start, it still would have the issues with the story and character.
The whole project is one that shouldn't have left the brainstorming session it was conceived in.
I have no better source than the person I replied to. I was on Reddit when the game was announced and it was clear that the game was about being gollum. Plenty of people were excited.
You can go back on reddit and look. Calling it revisionist is a bit of a stretch. The temperature on this game was very much mid to uninterested. Sure there were people who were excited, but it wasn’t a majority at all.
I was excited when it was first announced. I was hoping for a stealth game with gameplay like souls games or the shadow of mordor games. Sadly the game wasn’t even close to that so I didn’t buy it.
Those were your go-tos for gameplay expectations for sneaking around as a pretty weak little goblin man? I would’ve gone for Styx instead, a game about sneaking around as a little goblin man. (Which I think actually belongs to the same publisher)
Obviously combat would have to be balanced for Gollums powers. 1v1 an orc could have been fine but anything else would overpower him. I didn’t play Styx so I can’t compare it. I played the Splinter Cell Series and Dishonored, but both offered technology and weapons with range to help with sneaking. So I opted for games with a high fantasy setting. A game with controls like Souls, balanced for sneaking and ambushes as a focus, using the environment as your asset? Feels to me like it could work. Well, nothing like Souls, Shadow or Styx happened and we got whatever the Gollum game was.
I only played one for maybe like 2 hours, but they seem like pretty good games, you could probably pick one up for cheap on sale.
Also when I think of Soulslike Gollum, all I see in my mind is this gormless little creature wielding a 6 foot axe or something and that just makes me laugh.
Anyway, yeah, Nacon/Daedelic had several studios that had more experience making stealth-action games. I mean, besides the guys that made Styx, they also have the Shadow Tactics guys. Isometric tactical stealth could’ve been another option.
It’s honestly like they just made the absolute wrong decision for all things during development.
I could have seen it as a Stardew valley-esque Hobbit farming Sim, you start with simple farming, interacting with lore accurate villagers, fishing, cave gathering as Smeagol.
Then after a certain point of the game in a quest you find the Ring and your memories start getting hazy and your farming skill starts deteriorating and your cave gathering skills improve and the Ring blanks out part of your days and suddenly you find Deagols body and get flashbacks to what happened.
In the epilogue you start your usual day in the cave ‘bed’ instead of your Hobbit hole bed and you go gathering and meet Bilbo. Then cut to black
What was released was a disaster that hadn’t had anywhere near enough thought and consideration put into it. However, frankly if you don’t think a gollum game couldn’t be good I’d have to blame it on a lack of imagination.
CD Projekt announced on October 5 that the expansion starring Idris Elba cost a hefty 275 million Polish Zloty (around $62.7 million) to develop and approximately 95 million Polish Zloty (around $21.6 million) to market.
I’m not saying repairing and adding missing functionality isn’t a good size portion of that cost, but calling it a $125 million cost based on the cost of the expansion and marketing which were already planned regardless of how well the initial release did is miss-leading at best.
Yeah this headline should really just say the ~$41m they actually spent improving the game because that’s still an incredibly impressive number (2/3 the amount of a full expansion). I hate when there’s a good story to tell but they want to make it look even better so they decide to mislead instead of just saying the actually impressive thing
After Half-Life 2 and Bioshock Infinite, everyone learned that the best time to announce the game is when release is 3-6 months out. Especially since 2025 and maybe 2026 is a wash with GTA6.
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