There’s a definite sweet spot for a subreddit/social media instance/online community whatever your verbiage. Once you get over around 10- 15k people quality of community goes slowly downhill
I would argue against that. You can keep the quality up even with larger sizes but you need focused moderation and some level of distinction between sub-communities (e.g. large forums of old would have special rules/culture for certain sections).
In defense of the generally indefensible masses of reddit, Hansen is hardly a figure above criticism. Fetishizing vigilante justice, embracing of the far-right, his emphasis on spectacle without regard for the community, that time where they more or less killed a guy… Child molesters are horrible (tho why we keep electing them, I’ll never know), but we don’t need to hail and laud someone as our champion just because they agree.
Hansen’s documentary has an opportunity to shed light on online grooming as a pervasive problem endemic to all online spaces but instead appears to further his usual moral panic about how there’s people lurking behind the bushes, waiting to nab your children while they do the things they enjoy. His productions have never been better than any other schlock reality television, but with a veneer of legitimacy from his LARPing with law enforcement. Targeting a popular piece of pop culture, instead of an expose on say grooming rings on discord or the constant abuses of children from religious institutions as facets of the ever-increasing access children have to unmoderated online interaction seems to be just as morally vapid as his work has ever been.
Shitting on Hansen I can understand, but defending Roblox? It’s no grand conspiracy that it’s riddled with predators, it’s an actual fact, so that’s kinda disgusting.
A bigger problem is the predatory behavior of the company that owns Roblox. You can teach kids how to wall themselves off from the pedos on that site but you can’t really protect them from the company that runs it. Short of keeping them off it all together… Which is what I do.
What blows my mind is the child predation isn’t even half the problem with Roblox. Gambling with real cash, child labor, black market for digital content.
It’s an absolutely dumpster fire of problems, and yet balatro is the one the EU cracks down on.
Hansen is generally more of a grifter these days to be fair. And even back in the heyday of the show, it had a lot of issues both legal and just moral. I really feel weird about this kind of predator catching stuff being made as entertainment.
I think it brings awareness. Which is needed to change the culture. I do think it’s weird to gain financially but I don’t think it’s the only “benefit” of making a show.
Historically the kind of awareness it brings is less constructive information on the problems with these websites, and more on the line of unhelpful paranoia.
I don’t use reddit, but tbf roblox is what you make of it. My kids enjoy the heck out of it. There’s the same issues with most games - exploiting the users for profits with micro transactions or whatever and the dangers of lousy people in chat. The real issue is that Roblox has become a mecca for kids and that attracts more of the worst aspects I mentioned.
I hate to say it but parents gotta parent. Roblox offers decent parental controls. I employed them and relaxed them as my kids got older, and check in on what they’re playing. Problem is parents treat games like babysitters and then get upset when their sitter hiring policy is leaving the front door open and let anybody walk in.
I had to click anyway, though, just to be sure… they’re announcing that they’ll announce an announcement they’re going to announce tomorrow. Kinda baffling. Hopefully they’ll announce something interesting when they actually announce the announcement they’ve announced. 🤦
How about just the completely entitled attitude of the execs that think they can tell us how to enjoy something. Only to then whine that nobody wants to buy their 70 euro no better than mid game
Honestly, Outlaws has flaws, BUUUUT it’s fun as hell. It’s a 7/10 game, but it’s fun. I enjoy my time with it even though I see some glitches here or there, or that the lip sync is a little jank.
It’s a big ass Star Wars game (with no AC towers hooray!) where you get to rub shoulders with scoundrels and play Sabacc and visit honestly cool locations that are visually impressive.
I feel like most of the issues it has is probably a function of “we need this game out by X date” versus the devs’ ability.
I finished the main story last night and I basically agree with you. It’s got plenty of issues, but overall it’s fun. It is neither the 9/10 game of most reviews I saw nor the 4/10 game that people want it to be.
I think my main issue is that it wants to have a story about the underworld and how you can’t trust anyone and you’re a huge underdog just trying to survive but it doesn’t want to commit to it. It feels thematically janky in places and ways that feel design-by-committee. It fills the shoes of Shadows of the Empire decently enough, but it feels like it was trying to be 1313 and failed.
I have this feeling that once it starts going on more sales and more people play it the general consensus will be that’s it’s a pretty solid game. I also imagine like a lot of these games there will be a patch in the next month that fixes a litany of issues.
You’re right it’s kind of interesting that the factions don’t really add a lot of meaningful gameplay mechanics, but oh well. At first I was like, “I’m not working with the Pykes AT ALL because I know what happens in your spice mines.” But you end up just being friends with all of them as needed (to get their rewards).
Just having this big coat of Star Wars paint over this otherwise fairly standard action/shooter/open world game really does make it more fun, though. I still have a bit to go in the story, but I’m just basting around cleaning up side quests right now because it’s fun to do.
9 years old is pretty old for a video game. When it first came out, the goofiest thing about it was the guy who could heal you by throwing a syringe at you. Now everyone has goofy super powers and things that would never make sense in the same world as something like a Jack Ryan novel.
My god Siege was good for the first few years. Intoxicatingly good multiplayer. Too bad they fucked it up trying to make it more CoD like. For example, I used to play with a completely hidden hud because it was so immersive and fun. Now it’s like rainbow six and Roblox had a baby and the weird game popped out. I can’t even hide my hud or crosshair any longer
they did a little bit of this to hell let loose. The primary thing that bothered me was how when the game came out there was no hit indicator whatsoever. no visual no sound nothing. it made for some very interesting gameplay. then they added it indicators, even if you’re like 100 yards away from somebody you can hear this bullet go “whap” if it hits them
But Infinite growth!! How do you affirm the ability for a new CEO to make tough decisions without going on insane hiring sprees to show growth, and then firing those same people to cut corners and also show growth!? The economy needs blood!
Oh wait, they’re not publically traded? I thought only corner shops were allowed to stay off the market.
That’s just a name we give to “a share of a well-known, profitable, and established company with a history of success”. I.e. “companies that experience constant and consistent growth”. That’s literally what OP is criticizing. They do the same things. Microsoft is a blue chip. You think they don’t have layoffs to appease shareholders? Google? Apple?
Honestly this is what pissed me off about the reaction to cyberpunk bugs. I remember how the fallout games were at launch. And I think even now trying to play new Vegas on Xbox (360 I think?) Has an issue if your save file gets too big where the save will corrupt.
CDPR definitely over promised. But every business does. They probably should’ve not released on last gen consoles at all, but that is tricky as fuck. I mean when they started to dev cp2077, I doubt Sony and MS even had dev units for next gen. Probably should’ve delayed last gen release only, made a transparent explanation and apology, and did what they ended up doing after release. But I had a low mid tier PC that played it at a solid 60 fps without major issue at launch. And it was exactly what I had hoped.
I’ll probably also really like starfield, warts and all, when it drops. These are just my type of game.
To be honest, half the stuff people claim they lied about was always entirely speculation hype that never had any backing.
Otherwise, for some people the game worked just fine. For others the game was nearly or entirely unplayable, and everything in between. Cdpr certainly lied and should have delayed their game’s release, probably upwards of a couple years, but the situation is rarely portrayed accurately.
I’m not saying they didn’t lie, there are many of features which were at best skeletons of the features that were expected. But I’m just saying a lot of the hype around the game was so out of control you had people on the sub reddit talking about how cool the car customization will be, or how they can’t wait to play, what would’ve amounted to essentially, gtav but with arasaka. Talking any l about features which actively were never even slightly implied to exist.
People get way too excited for any game, should always expect a pile of shit these days and just be pleasantly surprised instead. People are die hard fans of games like CP2077 before they even release, it's not good.
But expectations don't come from nowhere, a lot of the city stuff they were selling was like GTA, but the AI didn't even release at a 2004 San Andreas level, it's still not as good as GTA AI and that's just people walking/driving around convincingly. GTA V itself was 7 years old when CP2077 released, it's not surprising people were expecting a simulation of the world to be at least as good as that. I think their scope was too big, there was probs a lot of mismanagement behind the scenes. I don't know how they spent 8 years on it and it still turned out like it did, I guess we will never know what happened. The story is the only saving grace, they should have just delayed it and tried to make it a more linear story game and just abandon any RPG-esque/open world elements that were left.
Being critical of games is good, especially ones that completely shit the bed, defending it just leads to more of that in the future. I love BG3 for example, but it has it's fair share of issues that I can point out every time I play it. Why would I not want better products? Why settle for less? There's too much submissive consumerism these days.
For sure. And who knows, much of that could be guerrilla marketing to stoke the hype.
Expecting cp2077 to be anything like GTA is just silly. They are entirely different games.
And the RPG elements are fine, it’s already very linear, and plays like you’re the focus character of a cyberpunk campaign. They did just fine on that front, so I don’t really understand your critique there.
I played through the whole game last year and while I had fun, you can definitely tell the scope is too big. There’s lots to do but when you do things, there isn’t much depth. Systems that you think should be in place just aren’t there. The game also has a lot of features that align with open world action games of the era like Ghost of Tsushima or Horizon Forbidden West. There’s stealth, there’s a crafting system, there’s collectibles and fetch quests. But there’s few features that align with most other role playing games. You cant get a bite to eat at nearly any restaurant. You can’t have a conversation with an NPC that isn’t one of the dozen that’s relevant to the story. (My favorite activity in fallout is to chat with random characters about random things.) Dialogue trees are shockingly stiff and inconsequential. Most missions have choices but it boils down to “X character is alive instead of unconscious.”
There’s a lot more I could go into but in general it just came across like it was almost unfinished. The only mission I played that felt like a true RPG mission instead of a stealth game or a shooter was the Flathead mission, so it makes sense that’s the mission they relentlessly previewed back in 2019.
Agreed. The biggest issue for me, as a PC gamer who expected bugs at launch, was really that it’s a stealth/action game that was marketed as an RPG even though it has precious few consequential choices or playstyle options.
Honestly this is what pissed me off about the reaction to cyberpunk bugs. I remember how the fallout games were at launch
I bought the fallout games at launch. I bought Cyberpunk months after launch when I found it on clearance. Cyberpunk was still far less playable for me than the fallout games were at launch.
This was due to:
The game crashing at least once per hour
Falling through the ground at least one per hour
Dying suddenly though nothing was attacking me at least once per hour
Questlines breaking and being un-repairable
Additionally, CP2077 had all the same bugs in Fallout/Elder Scrolls releases.
I usually power through buggy RPG releases, but I waited to give CP a couple more patches before actually trying to play through it.
Not to excuse Nintendo, but I think people need to stop being such big consumers. Having new phones and new consoles on release is completely unnecessary; I bet most gamers have bought games that they haven’t even played yet, let alone finished, and are already anxious for a system that hasn’t even been released.
I think we all can be more patient and frugal, and stop following trends and releases so closely.
I’d love this comment to be a sticky post on every new thing announcement. Trouble with us humans is we like to really get into a thing that’s completely out of our control, and then we get very upset when it goes in a direction we don’t like. Being able to take a step back and say “ah well, guess that’s not for me anymore” is much better for your own mental health than getting angry at consumerism.
I appreciate this and agree 100%, but there are a LOT of factors besides just having the thing that make it harder than “just stop consuming”.
If you are someone who typically only plays games with friends, it can very much be a case of “Buy or miss out”. I have a group of friends who will probably buy GTA VI and play hundreds of hours of multiplayer together. I know I will not be rewarding Rockstar for their inevitably shitty choices and behaviour with this game (Fuck them for what they did with GTA VI, greedy assholes), and I know this means just…not playing with my friends. I’m okay with that as a thirty something adult, but for others they won’t be able to “just not”.
Then you have all the FOMO stuff - I refused to buy Diablo 4 on launch in protest of prices and Blizzard, etc. But it was VERY hard for me, being aware I was missing out on an exper
Limited time items, exclusive events, etc, can all play a factor for those who’s brains are tickled in just the right way.
I wish it were simply a case of patience and frugality.
Fuck them for what they did with GTA VI, greedy assholes
Did you mean V? And by that I mean: do you mean Online?
V is still a great single player experience for a reasonable price. Online is considered separate and always was, and I can completely agree with what they did to that. I can also agree that not giving us dlc for V in favor of Online updates was crap, too. But R* still gave us a game worth the money that’s still playable right now
If there’s been some huge update with VI that I missed then, well, shit. I think I saw the price went up $10 on some retailers site, but idk if I trust that kind of shit
I don’t consider myself an early adopter, heck I never am, the only time I recall is getting a New Nintendo 3DS Black Friday edition even before the BF (the thing arrived first in Mexico) just because it was a special edition and the only way to get that model here officially… And for a good price even!
The only reason I am tempted to get a Switch 2 is because it probably means it will get exploited easier/earlier than the next batches.
At this point, I guess they are either ignorant, unethical, or they are just lying to themselves because they can’t resist the temptation to play their games.
Look I don’t fault developers for kissing the ring. I know and have spoken with multiple devs at different Nintendo affiliated companies and they don’t enjoy it either but it lets them make the games they love for the people that they want to entertain.
I can’t say I support hating a full group of people because that’s not great either. “… except for the Amish but it’ll never get back to them” - John Pinette
In my case, I don’t hate them. I respect those devs, people have to put food on their tables somehow, and this way isn’t one of the worst… I just believe that by doing so, we are helping to perpetuate vicious corporativism.
Nintendo isn’t just the nestle of companies to users… they are the same or worse to their own.
I’ve seen people lose teams over errant comments about a novel idea for the IP they would love to see happen, or maybe even be developing as a passion project, purged for the notion that they were anything more than drones.
It’s a disgusting work culture taking advantage of bright eyed developers that grew up with fond memories of the brand. I genuinely love some of the IP and worlds made by the developers - but I will never, ever, spend a fucking penny on that company until it is changed.
I‘ll still buy their controller because you can‘t sue Chinese companies either so what‘s the difference? However I‘ll use it for PC gaming. No way I‘m going back to their ecosystem. Those days are gone.
I’d kind of like Steam to have the ability to indicate games that can run offline in its Store and enforce this by running the game in a container without network access.
I run all my games in Linux and everything but Steam goes via Lutris which I configured to, by default, launch them inside a Firejail sandbox with no network access (plus a bunch of other security related limitations) something which I can override for specific games if needed.
It’s interesting that Steam games are actually the least secure to run in Linux and with a configuration as I have it’s literally safer to run pirated shit downloaded from the Internet than Steam games.
I run all my games in Linux and everything but Steam goes via Lutris which I configured to, by default, launch them inside a Firejail sandbox with no network access (plus a bunch of other security related limitations) something which I can override for specific games if needed.
That sounds like a neat setup! And no messing around with firewall rules either. I’ll have to look into it.
In Lutris there’s a “Command prefix” configuration option both per-game and one in the global config with the default for all games, which is where the firejail command line goes (basically for sandboxing with firejail you’re supposed to run “firejail firejail-options original-command original-options” and putting firejail and its options in “command prefix” does that).
Note that there are other sandboxing options that run in the same way as firejail but I found firejail to have more straightforward options.
Also note that this won’t sandbox the actual setup of a game, only the running of the game.
Yeah, and it’s sad bro. I put about 900 hours into Elite: Dangerous, which I enjoyed a great deal, but it still left me longing for something with more depth. Back then I thought Star Citizen would be the next leap forward in my career as a space trucker who dabbles in bounty hunting and deep space exploration. I wanted to have games worthy of justifying a home cockpit setup, and now it seems like a lost cause.
I really hope someone picks up the torch. Even if it’s just Frontier making a generational leap with the Elite IP.
Elite:Dangerous is sad for its own reasons, too, and I have a similar count of hours logged. Glacial pace of development and a lack of strong game design / sense for balance. I'm still stunned by how much of a selling point the background simulation was, and how limited it actually is in practice (it did get some love over the years, but far too little too late IMO.)
I really wanted to like it, but it just never scratched the itch when I played it. I love stuff like freespace 2, but E:D just never did it for me. Which sucks, because the community search thing sounded really fun at the time.
It annoyingly needs a more complex HOTAS to properly play than most cheap entry-level ones have, while also not having ENOUGH complex need to justify me pulling my godamn keyboard over for
Literally the main reason I don’t play it even though slapping my quest 2 on and space VR flying is fucking fun
I haven’t played E:D so I can’t really make comparisons, but maybe X3/X4 can pique your interest?
I don’t think they can justify a home cockpit setup, they’re also kinda hard to get into (especially X3, you can’t get far without a guide), but hey, there’s a combined 1.5% chance that you haven’t heard of them and that you’ll enjoy at least one of them if you don’t care much about graphics. Or voice acting. Or UI/UX.
X3 is a fun game, with a very developed universe (you’ll see factions conduct invasion in real-time as you do your own thing) with a wide variety of gameplay. The universe of X3 honestly makes Star Citizen seems like a theme park for children.
That being said it is extremely difficult to get into them both because there are so many gameplay options and the UI/UX is subpar (prepare to be constantly fiddling with menu and looking up how to execute a given course of action).
Yeah, I never even bought it after reading the reviews about how janky it is, I want to use a HOTAS and rudder pedals and it doesn’t sound possible in X4
I play it with hotas and it works fine. You’ll absolutely still want to keep a keyboard and mouse handy though because the RTS/management half of the game is really not that well controlled with a flight stick.
I couldn’t find a way to bind a double press in X4, so hold RB and tap X for example. These combinations are essential because there is no other way to use a controller to perform all of the necessary controls. It’s a shame because I would have invested a lot into the game if that was surmountable.
I tried binding in Steam but the controller settings in Steam are kind of terrible too. Half the time I don’t know what a setting does, and I feel like I need to do a training course to understand it. So I gave up and went back to Elite.
I didn’t blame you. Over the years I’ve seen some really impressive controller setting though. You can do a lot things with the steam settings. But yeah, you need to want to really invest in learning how to do it, and then actually remembering what you’ve set.
No, X is absolutely my type of game. Don’t blame me for the horrible controls and menus, I didn’t create that hot mess. It’s also a well complained about part of the game.
I remember how awesome Distant Worlds was, as a community event, and I wish I appreciated it more at the time. 65000 light years and back, I even bought a T-shirt and coin to commemorate the event lol o7
My big in game accomplishment was making it to SagA*, I spent some time in colonia and joined a discord of nerds that hung out there getting big exploration creds. I actually made the trek all the way back to the bubble after spending about a month in the galactic core. It was an epic adventure in my mind, but afterwards it was hard to be motivated for the engineering grind.
I sold my pledges off 9 years ago, the reason I even made a reddit account in the first place. Was getting disillusioned with it back then and I was super excited when I initially backed it, had a decent amount of ships in the hangar at the time, but felt like I was only ever going to see them in the hangar
It is the exact opposite of vapourware, even. They have over a thousand employees in multiple studios across the globe pushing out regular, massive updates.
So they have rounds of layoffs, staff feel less secure in their role, and they’re surprised that knowledgeable and easily employable experts are leaving for more stable roles?
All bs and scam atuff aside. This is what happens when you have a leader who never gets told no.
Dude never finished and feature krept freelancer too before Microsoft kicked him to the curb and finished it themselves.
Yep, feature creep is basically this entire dev cycle. Dude just keeps adding more and more and never really finishing anything. I grabbed the game on sale a few years ago, I have maybe 15 hours into it. It’s got stuff to do, but not what I would expect from the money and time that’s been spent on it.
At those time frames it’s not just feature creep you have to worry about, but tech- and social creep as well. Think back what games were popular 12 years ago and what hardware we had. That’s why usually in longterm, large scale projects you have a technological freeze, where you essentially ignore all progress made outside of your project for the sake of completion, which Star Citizen clearly hasn’t done.
This is the second time they’ve pointed out the size of valve. First total size, now steam specific. Is it some kinna dogwhistle to other companies that the size is a weakness to exploit? Cuz what layman cares about how many people work at a given company?
“Companies have too many employees!” cries the guy who will lose his job if all companies are run like Valve.
Them having few employees doesn’t prevent them from taking a 30% cut on all sales and making billions in profit and having a billionaire at their head, so are people expecting that if other companies were “trimming down some fat” it wouldn’t simply result in them making more profit because prices wouldn’t come down or something?
Also, a company can pretend to have 10 employees if it instead hires 1000 contractors to do the actual work.
There are no good billionaires, the reason they exist is because people like you and me are paying more for things than they’re truly worth, billionaires exist because of the surplus we pay.
the reason they exist is because people like you and me are paying more for things than they’re truly worth
There is no true worth, worth is defined by how much people are willing to spend on something, doesn’t matter how much something costs to produce and distribute
There’s a cost to producing things. All the overhead you’re being charged that ends up enriching investors and bosses that have so much money they wouldn’t be able to spend it if they tried? That’s money you could keep in your pocket.
Have you ever thought that maybe you evaluate that some things are worth a certain amount just because that’s what you’re used to seeing them sold for so in reality you just underestimate what your money is worth and how much you should be able to purchase with it? Because that’s exactly what’s happening, especially with digital goods, there’s no supply vs demand relationship here, there’s no rarity.
If bread sells for 5$ for long enough you’ll think you’re getting your money’s worth by getting it on sale for 4.50$ without realizing that it cost 2$ to make it, transport it and put it on the shelves and there’s still 2.50$ going to the grocery store owner. You were paying that bread 3$ a couple of years ago and at the time it cost 1.75$ to make, transport and store, but you’re ignoring all that because what’s important is that right now it’s 50¢ less than full price so you’re getting your money’s worth. Most of the surplus is going to a company that’s just making record profit year after year after year, but that record profit comes from somewhere. It went up 100% in a couple of years while the people who made, transported and put the bread on the shelves have seen their salary increase by 10% and you’ve seen what you spend on grocery increase by 66%, but hey, you’re getting your money’s worth and the price is fair because that’s what people accept to be paying, right?
I don’t know where this contractor bullshit is coming from; if anything that should be aimed at Microsoft.
TBF, Valve does hire contractors to help work on Proton and Steam OS. I have no idea what the terms and compensation are, I’m just pointing out that they do hire contractors
A lot of companies have been trying to sue them and are trying to tarnish their name in any way possible because their case is already shaky at best. The whole “monopoly” thing despite competition existing and Valve only being on top because they’re the best feature wise stuff.
Exactly. It’s hard to argue that Steam has a monopoly when the other launchers exist and suck. Steam, despite its flaws, is still the best storefront we have. Gabe is the person who taught us that piracy is largely a service problem, not a price problem. People will pay when the paid option is quality.
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