Yeah and right now we’re all raving that Helldivers 2 is great.
The point is that on average these massive conglomerates of corporate shareholder-driven studios are not soulful because they have the soul beat out of them. Devs have tons of soul, but if it ends up in the final product is ultimately a decision of the management, and they have had the souls sucked out of them.
There are still soulful games, but on average the industry is soulless.
As is the case with all media. Nobody remembers Populous or Bill Lambeer’s Combat Basketball on the SNES cuz they were horrible games, but I still hear about Zelda: ALTTP and Super Mario World.
I get what you’re saying, but “the entire video game industry” didn’t make Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m not jaded enough to claim the entire industry is soulless (indies and AA still exist), but the AAA industry is pretty much there, with the rare exception.
We’re pushing AAAA gaming forward, to grow our fledgling AAAA Gamer-base! We are excited to introduce AAAA-as-a-Service. We think you’re gonna love our AAAAaS.
Stay tuned in 2032, when we launch our connected AAAA-as-a-Service-Subscription! Now you’ll be able to get ground-breaking AAAAaSS gaming at an affordable value. Paid subscribers will get even more checklists, even more overwhelming map icons, and an even larger empty world with no payoff to explore to complete in our games! Do you love going here and pressing the A button? What if you could complete those map markers while not only pressing the A button to end the mission, but instead, having to swipe your credit card while timing the press of the A button? We feel this rewarding challenge will introduce a sense of pride and accomplishment in gamers, and introduce more money in our coffers.
Gamers:
Dude, just create new innovative games with new IPs that aren’t monetized to hell! We’ll buy those! We miss the old Splinter Cell days.
Uibsoft:
MoNeTiZaTiOn, you say??!! Splinter Cell as a Service, you say?! We hear you loud and clear!
I’m assuming the vagueness of the phrase “record player engagement” means it has a lot more to do with engagement with whatever microtransaction they have going than engagement with the game itself.
The game had an 8-hour free trial. That would drive the “engagement” they’re talking about, and I’m guessing it’s the only positive news they have. If the game was selling well or had significant daily active users, they’d be talking about that instead.
The different school in 8 months after Skull and Bones launch:
Our curriculum isn’t doing well. This is not the curriculum we wanted to deliver. Players expect better, yada yada yada, you know the usual school’s apology stuff. We need to lay off 100% of teachers so as to realign, synergize, refocus, retool, and remoney our money-making money curriculum disguised as a “game”. We will do better. We hear you loud and clear (kind of), and we probably learned a lesson of some kind.
User accidentally opens Uplay when trying to double-click Steam
A store banner ad shows ‘Skull and Bones’
User immediately frowns in disgust and tries to spam the X button to quit Uplay
Uplay privacy-invading telemetry captures an image of the user frowning via the webcam, and tracks the movement of the mouse cursor moving across the banner ad of ‘Skull and Bones’
Uplay closes, telemetry is uploaded to Ubisoft’s servers
An offline mode is the only way I'd consider buying and playing Nightingale; I do love survival games, but I need them to be offline adventures balanced for single-player experiences! As an introvert the last thing I want to do is encounter another person in a game.
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