In my eyes, part of the reason for this is that they forgot a key element of penetrating a market... you need a potential customer base that is actually displeased with the current available solutions and is actually looking for an alternative. And, by and large, the current storefronts had done a good enough work of pleasing their customer base that, when the Epic Store rolled out, few people were actively looking for a switch, to the point that no bonuses or goodies or exclusives that Epic offered could outweight the friction of moving from a platform that was perfectly serviceable, please and thank you.
The whole thing was just mistimed. They should have waited to see if Steam committed some sort of fuck up. They should have waited for some type of negative sentiment. I don't know. I know that developers did feel displeased with some of the conditions on Steam, but Epic could only do so much to win them over with 88%'s and paid guarantees and what have you, when they couldn't offer them the most important thing: a paying customer base.
I was never happy with Steam. It always seemed bloated with unwanted features that had nothing to do with playing a game, constantly wanted to run in the background and update, launched at a snail’s pace.
I’ve found myself liking EGS a lot more because it’s clean and simple.
Both are owned by big gross corporations, so really I’d prefer no launcher at all.
If speed is a problem, The EGS is painfully slow. I don't use is because it needs like 15 seconds to load the library (and it's just the part that is on screen if you scroll, it needs more time to load the games), in the rest of the launchers is practically instant
There are problems with Steam that a competitor could win customers from by solving those problems, but they didn't bother. They only went after the people producing games, not buying games.
As much as I like GoG, it doesn't really solve any problems that Steam has that I can think of. In fact, in several ways it seems like they've gone backwards in the last several years, imo (as a launcher/storefront alternative)
My understanding is that GoG does some work to make sure that old games they sell will work on new PCs. I have at least one game that is bugged on Steam, but works fine from GoG.
When I bought Vampire the Masquerade from GoG it came pre-bundled with the primary community bugfix patch, I thought that was pretty neat. It didn't come baked in, so they still give you the base version of the game, but I pretty much just checked a box on install and it added it on.
Yep. I have not and will not give epic store money because they didn’t try to make a better product.
In fact they attacked me as a customer, in essence, by offering a worse product but then paying for exclusivity on various games. And in exchange they try to bribe me with free games.
Well, I’ll take the bribes, as I try to remember to collect my free games each week, but I’m not giving them money.
It does take time, but when you launch a product that's missing basic features (like a shopping cart, something almost every online store in existence has) you tell on yourself to your customers, and let them know they're not a priority.
I don't disagree that Steam's feature rich platform makes it hard to compete with on that level... but for fuck's sake, at least try a little bit. Especially if your first move is to say they're unfairly gaming the market by... providing something people want.
Agreed. I'm putting 2023 in my pantheon alongside 1998, 2004, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. A great year for RPGs and fighting games, with the latter bumping up two of my favorites from previous years, Skullgirls and Guilty Gear Strive, a few notches via updates. Hi-Fi Rush is the first game in the character-action genre that clicked for me, and I've tried to make it click so many times before.
Hi-Fi Rush just consistently reminds me how comically bad I am at rhythm games. I love the game, but man I got burnt out because even though they made it “easier” for folks with no rhythm like myself, it’s still tough if you just can’t match the beat.
I am some kind of masochist though, because in the past I beat both Parappa the Rapper and UmJammer Lammy.
It hasn’t exactly been banger after banger for me personally this year, but I can still recognize how big 2023 has been and how much excitement there has been year-round, from Hi-Fi Rush’s shadow drop to Alan Wake 2 right now.
It’s also been a great mix of new properties and long-running franchises. Zelda, Resident Evil, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Baldur’s Gate, Mario, and even Armored Core all had well-reviewed, major releases this year.
I’m nowhere near calling 2023 the best ever–I think it’ll take a complete paradigm shift in the industry to ever top 1998–but a lot of people have been eating very good this year.
Wanna know which game I last broke my “no pre-orders” rule for?
No Man’s Sky. The game that was a tech demo for the first year or so after release. It’s become a hell of a game since then, but it taught me a valuable lesson and I haven’t bought a game since then.
It’s kinda the natural progression of late stage hypercapitalism though. Used to be that you spent all your money up front, then your sales recouped your investment and hopefully generated you a profit. Once game companies figured out OTA patches they realized that they can push a lot of QA back until after release and use pre-orders and day 1 sales to fund it. Then with DLC they realized that they can sell the untested skeleton of a game up front and use presales and early sales to fund development. The natural progression seems to be the Star Citizen model, where you get huge chunks of your sales up front and use that to determine what you’ll develop and when (if ever) you’ll release it
Sometimes you are in the cult of a cult classic, and so that game feels like one of the best ever. I will still come out and say the same about my old faves, like Guild Wars 1 or Phantom Dust. I exaggerate to express how good I think these games were!
Everything is of course subjective. But it was a unique concept and execution. With solid gameplay and decent graphics in an era known for originating the boomer shooter and all its clones.
If you crave run and gun, probably not. But if you enjoy the kitschy, retro James Bond, Secret Agent aesthetic. And very early, but decent female protagonist. It's a lot of fun.
The writing, setting and concept were charming and the art direction is good which means despite being polygonally challenged I don’t mind the way it looks. Great soundtrack too. That being said I tried playing it earlier this year for the first time and it just struck me as one of those games that have aged like fine milk mechanically. It really really wants you to be a stealthy spy sneaking around and being non-lethal yet the stealth gameplay felt terrible, and going guns blazing wasn’t particularly fun either as gunplay in these old games is hard for me to enjoy having gotten used to modern FPSes. And it doesn’t help that the guns blazing approach forces you to listen to a constant soundtrack of blaring alarms, which frankly was hard for me to deal with.
I couldn’t make myself finish it despite really wanting to be able to say I’ve played it, but maybe I’ll give it another go some day. At least I don’t think it’s all that long.
That can definitely be said about a lot of classics from that era. Things have changed a lot since then for better and for worse. It's an absolutely unique experience, though. I would love to see a more modern take on it if it were possible.
For me in general I think FPS games have aged the worst. There is such a big part of the pleasure that comes from animations, gunplay, recoil implementation, enemy AI, ragdolls, hit effects… I have a much easier time playing something like Fallout 1&2 - which are even older but have mechanics that are more timeless.
But yeah it was definitely a time in gaming where technological advancements felt like they were happening at an exponentially increasing pace. Comparing games from 2000 with just a few years later is like night and day. Splinter Cell came out only two years after NOLF and that’s a stealth game that’s aged spectacularly. And even Monolith’s own F.E.A.R. came out in 2005 and feels like one of the first truly modern shooters - one that still really holds up well.
What’s up with everyone calling it ugly? It’s a shit car, but I think it looks cool. Something that has no place in reality, but fitting in a video game.
The cybertruck has enough issues that I wouldn’t want one, but yeah I would like a car looking like that, if it was actually a good car not made by Tesla.
I remember hearing that some Hollywood contracts require that if you sign up for some studio, you must make X amount of films. Big stars get to chose those films to some degree, but once in a while, they have to do “a stinker” to end the contract as “X amount of films done, okay?” or something. Contractual Obligation and all. This film feels like a dumping ground of a lot of those contractual obligation hires from the trailer alone.
Requirements like that in the music industry are why there’s an excess of Christmas music albums. I like the idea that video game movies and other slush-level movies are the equivalent.
True, but a movie like this, if successful, has a much higher potential profit than a small drama. As an actor, why not take a bit of a gamble on a big blockbuster for a potentially massive paycheck?
Good point! They could have even had a period accurate trailer, with that guy with the really deep voice like in movie trailers back then “A game, 20 years in the making…”
I swear when I had dial up I could tell how fast my connection would be by the sound of the static. If it didn’t sound clean I’d get a crap connection and just hanging up and dialing a different connection number would do the trick.
Oh, trust me I know the 56k dance, too bad I never learned how to actually dance…
However! I have since purchased the game, and it is just as spicy as the reviews say :) level design is interesting, it throws in some puzzle mechanics between the gore fest
Same, and it’s great! I can’t wait to dive back in. But I need to read the stuff more because I get lost and I feel like they’ll tell me what I’m supposed to be doing.
I have a ps1, 2, 3 and 4, a psp, a vita, I also have a NA snes, OG xbox, xbox360 and xbox one. I pretty much don’t play with any of them, I work too much…
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