Unity is firing people as a result of a failed monetization attempt by the chief executive. I would argue the employees should have a case against the company and the chief executive. As this was so poorly implemented, fault could be argued.
I've got a friend who waits for a sale and then buys games like this for White Elephant parties at the end of the year. Often times he buys them for himself because he just has a burning curiosity for bad games.
Haha that’s at least an understandable behavior. What blows my mind are people who buy these games expecting them NOT to be anything but micro transaction live service infested dogshit.
Or people who LIKE micro transaction live service infested dogshit.
I’m pretty confident it’s following closely in the shoes of The Avengers game that came out not long ago, and not in the shoes of any popular co-op game.
I would LOVE to be proven wrong. Rocksteady has (had?) a lot of talent that shouldn’t go to waste.
I remember when Gotham Knights(game, not the show) and Suicide Squad (game, not the movie) were announced almost back to back. I was more excited about the setting of Gotham Knights, then immediately irked when they made it clear it did not line up with the Arkham story, then immediately completely turned off when they announced it would include a leveling system for the player and enemies since it clearly would not have the feeling of the Arkham series’ combat and was likely to have leveled weapons that have artificially weak feeling impact. Suicide Squad seemed more exciting at the time simply because it sounded more narrative-driven like the Arkham games even though the jump from playing as Batman against the more grounded Batman rogues gallery to literally “Kill the Justice League” sounded extremely jarring and made it seem like the games could not possibly feel like they were from the same development team or storyline. Here we are, years later and I feel very proven right. Neither game so far has sounded even remotely interesting. EXCEPT for the co-op. If Arkham Knight had co-op baked into the game that would have been incredible. That’s all that I wanted from either Suicide Squad or Gotham Knights. Sadly, that’s not what we get.
Good old fee-2-play. Not sure how much microtransactiin crap is going to be shoehorned in but they’ve already announced a season pass scheme. They’ve tried to cash in on the Arkham brand history and are promoting it on Steam. The comments are less than happy, let’s just say
Yeah, I also paid for Destiny 2 on launch, and then like a year later they went f2p and archived all the original content I paid for. Really, really shitty.
Yes. When Destiny 1 came out, it was famously… an acquired taste. It took many updates to get it to a point where it lived up to its potential. And by the time Destiny 2 was near, Destiny 1 had grown into one of the best games I’d ever played. Then Destiny 2 came out and it was like they completely threw out everything they learned fixing and growing Destiny 1. It was a HUGE step back in almost every respect. A massive waste of money.
And then just to rub it in, they went F2P pretty quickly because that’s what you do when you charge for a live service game and nobody wants to pay for it because it’s crap.
I went back to it a few years later to see how it was because it had seemed to find a following eventually. They completely reworked the beginning off the game to make it almost exactly the same as the beginning of Destiny 1. That’s how they fixed it. They changed it back to what worked in the first place. Pathetic. Insulting. Infuriating.
Destiny 2 killed one of the best games I’d ever played. Then replaced it with a poor imitation whose main advantage was that it was optimized for predatory MTX. Fuck Bungie.
And by the time Destiny 2 was near, Destiny 1 had grown into one of the best games I’d ever played. Then Destiny 2 came out and it was like they completely threw out everything they learned fixing and growing Destiny 1.
Thanks for the reply! I remember reading some stuff from D1 players who were bemoaning the power creep and ridiculous level cap increases with each new installment. They talked about how it felt like a real achievement to max out a character in D1, whereas in D2, you could get to max level in a week.
I never played D1, but I gave D2 a try a few times, and it just never felt like a full game to me. It felt like a demo for a game engine, and I spent a good part of the time going, “Why am I doing this? This doesn’t feel like it matters.” I was never enticed to spend $30+ for the DLCs, so they even failed to create a free experience that drew me in.
Yeah, the biggest issue I had with D2 when it first came out was how disconnected it felt. It never felt like a full world, it felt like you warped into a map and killed some things with no larger goal, just some “kill x things” or “pickup x drops” mini quests. Then you warped back to base and then picked a new zone to warp to for no particular reason.
D1 at least had a story that propelled you forward, including tons of lore (admittedly poorly implemented lore, but it was there!) and secrets and easter eggs. The story and voice acting was one of the big criticisms at the start so it’s one of the things they worked hard on fixing over the life of the game. So it was REALLY off-putting when D2 went back to no story and lore. (And as I said, they decided to fix it by just putting in the story from D1.)
Thinking on it now, Avengers had that same disconnected feel as D2 once you got thru the campaign. I quite enjoyed the campaign but the game stopped being fun after that. Coincidentally right when it started being like D2.
I was really looking forward to another Arkham style game. Sucks for me that they decided to go in another direction. Doubly bad when that direction (live service co-op) is one I couldn’t enjoy even if I wanted to (and to be clear, I don’t).
I’m really interested for this game to release. I expect it to be a critical failure and a commercial break-even, mostly due to Rocksteady’s (as yet untarnished) pedigree and marketing.
But I also haven’t ruled out that it will be a surprise hit. I didn’t even realize this wasn’t being fully marketed as a live-service game, and who knows, maybe all the hogwash in this article about the “trinity” of gameplay elements and sharing experiences with friends will actually work somehow.
But if it is all the worst things about the live service trend, I do hope it fails for the greater good, all due respect to the individuals who’ve done their best with it.
Mainly because of the hype/marketing, but I may be overestimating it. It’s a good point that Avengers bombed, but I do think Rocksteady is a more competent developer than CD (I’m not personally a big fan of their Tomb Raider games).
I also just tend to think anything is possible until it isn’t. It wouldn’t be the first game to buck expectations if it somehow managed to be a hit.
Either way, the fact that this is the only game Rocksteady releases in nearly 10 years will be a deep source of bitterness.
Nah, take a look at the Steam discussions. People are tired of the GaaS shitfest. Rocksteady have tarmished their reputation just by announcing this game.
Live Services, much like their older cousin MMO, are not something people can play multiple of. Each of them takes so much time/money investment that most people who do play them just pick one and stick with it. Making too many of them is a mistake.
People will never be satisfied with awards. Let the community choose? You get popularity contest. Let the review outlets choose? Then you get only a certain kind of games to win the contest. Steam is very community focused in most of their recommendations and in this case, awards. This has ups and downs and sometimes its stupid. In case of RDR2 who knows what the reason was why they chose this game. It might be an attempt to troll in mass. Or a misunderstanding.
I take awards as one kind of view and never in isolation. Context matters. So I ignore those where I think it is stupid awards, like Starfield and RDR2, and look at the other candidates. And the other categories as well. And then move on with my life. Just like with the other award shows. Who cares what game won what award? It rarely impacts my choice.
I see literally zero problems here. Did they have a contract with an artist? They didn’t? Well then it sounds like they have no obligation to use a real artist.
AI art is here to stay, and companies will be using it heavily. It’s ignorant to think they would choose otherwise. Why pay an artist to make an image you may not even like over the course of a few days when you could get hundreds of images to choose from in a few seconds using AI? It’s 1000 times easier and more convenient.
This is the only point that matters. Even if AI is here to stay, that’s fine, you just don’t use it when specifically highlighting the demographic most threatened by its usage. The post was just a bad business decision; they should have known how it could come across. It’s their job to know that kinda stuff before hitting Post.
If an independent developer is threatened by AI, then they’re using it wrong.
From a development standpoint, it is so nice if you are someone who is good at coding but bad at art to be able to use AI to help with the visual design of the game. It’s easy to say “just hire an artist” when so many indie devs are literally one-person operations who can barely afford rent, let alone wages for an artist.
I really don’t care one way or the other. I think AI being used is an inevitability. I think it would only really be relevant if Microsoft had a policy against AI being used in games for things like asset generation for example.
gods am i glad microsoft didn't have to dip into their literal trillion dollar valuation to pay independent artists any money at all to advertise the independent developers they're so gleeful to take credit for
I’m not defending Microsoft. They’re a soulless corporation releasing an ad around a holiday where a lot of people have time off and recently received gift cards and spending cash. I don’t think them paying for an artist one time when they hope to use AI for a majority of their throwaway adverts really matters.
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