That seems weirder to me to be honest. Like the recent The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. Just call if Return to Moria and make a LotR badge for marketings sake. Same here.
While Helldivers 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 might look like sudden jackpot successes
This article is funny. It’s like the feel-good inverse of a rage-bait article. It’s stating what we all want to be true and cherry-picking two games that only sort of provide evidence towards it, and only if you squint really hard.
Both games are sequels backed by huge publishers with tons of cash.
BG3 is a Dungeons and Dragons franchise title; a franchise which recently received a massively successful film, a huge boost in popularity during a pandemic, and a boost in cultural relevance in Strange Things.
Helldivers 2 fits the claim a bit better, but it is still a sequel to a well received, well selling title. The extraction shooter genre is also exceedingly popular right now, and the fact that it has Games as a Service bullshit built in says that publishers weren’t as hands-off as the article implies.
So the more realistic take-away from this is that good games with huge budgets for development AND marketing in reasonably popular genres can make a ton of money.
Which isn’t saying much. And it certainly doesn’t look like a sudden jackpot.
Very true. Though I would click that bait so hard!
I still prefer this type of article to lots of others in the bait family. Obviously they want people sharing this article and saying “See! That thing I believe is proven!”
Worth mentioning that Helldivers is hugely and openly influenced by Starship troopers, which although not as big as something like D&D, is still pretty well known in pop-culture to this day, at least in the sci-fi circles.
I can’t speak to Helldivers, but pinning Baldur’s Gate 3’s success on the recent growing popularity of the D&D franchise is beyond reductive. There’s no huge publisher for Baldur’s Gate 3; Larian’s a licensee and an independent studio to boot, and Hasbro’s not running massive marketing campaigns for them any more than Disney is for the typical licensed Star Wars game. There’s also the game’s pay-once sales model, which is something else you get when you’re not beholden to publishers or public shareholders.
BG3 was the culmination of decades of iteration by Larian and was the studio’s first attempt with a AAA budget. The game has more in common with Divinity: Original Sin 2 than it does Baldur’s Gate 2, as the Baldur’s Gate die-hards would be happy to tell you.
Calling CRPGs a popular genre is also going to get some laughs. Sure, we might be able to look on this point now in a few years as when CRPGs went mainstream (or maybe not, as the insane amount of choice built into the game set the bar so high that it’s possible no one’s going to bother with that kind of risky content-making). But by the time Larian started development on BG3, the genre had just risen from the dead after some successful Kickstarter campaigns and was still very niche.
I think the last good Ubisoft game I truly loved was Beyond Good & Evil. And I am pretty sure they merely published that, but it’s been a long time I could be misremembering.
That’s probably why development now stops. Nah, I’m being sarcastic, they did good with Anno 1800 and I can understand something new to make money with is needed.
CS is awash with gambling websites that let you bet on the outcome of a match and potentially win some weapon skins. As for the reasons for the stunt, it’s explained in the article.
I really wonder how the palworld devs feel about being gamepass day 1. I have no idea what the payouts look like for them. It probably got a lot more people to try their game, but would they have done better selling it only on steam? They probably weren’t in a position to negotiate a very favorable contract with Microsoft.
I think that’s looking at the deal in hindsight. Palworld had just as good a chance at flopping completely as hitting #1 worldwide, I imagine they were grateful for the opportunity to have some guaranteed income at the time.
I think they meant guaranteed income prior to selling the game, since they had no way of knowing how successful (if at all) the game was going to be once released.
Because craftopia and palworld have a social aspect getting a big seed of players who only played it because it was free (for them) was I think a catalyst in making palworld blow up like it did. There are too many games out there for people to look through so it probably helps get word out effectively to sell out cheap for a big initial audience like gamepass when you’re a small dev. I only knew of craftopia or palworld because of gamepass at least
The flip side is Microsoft is 100% giving the above as a sales pitch to devs why they should put their game on gamepass for peanuts (paid in exposure!). That’s probably some of what drives the shittier deal devs get now
For those wondering about why such basic features are mentioned here it’s because work on Squadron 42 (single player part of the project) moved to the polishing stage and everything created for it is being ported back to Star Citizen (multi player part).
Is it worth an article? It is if you’re interested in the game, I guess?
Is SC a perfect project? Of course not, far from it. I do find it interesting however how… angry it makes people and how much they want it to fail. Yeah, I know $1000+ packages and so forth (not needed if you just want to play the game btw).
For those interested in actually checking for themselves whether it’s a scam or not, there are free flight events multiple times a year - you get to see the current state of the game with everything good and bad it entails. Surprisingly enough, they tend to bring in more players every single time.
Just because the product they are making is quality does not mean it isn’t a scam. The game was supposed to be released a decade ago now. They said they had the entire single player finished and ready in 2014. The things they have made are impressive, sure. But after that amount of time its looking more and more like they lied about how ready things were to get more funding, and have been doing that for a decade now.
I absolutely agree with this point. I think CIG’s inability to openly communicate when things go bad is a big reason for the scam allegation (that and loooooots of issues with planning, especially early on). I see it’s as a serious problem for a project that presents itself as “open development” (which it is, don’t take me wrong, but not as much as it should be).
I think both CIG and players underestimated how long it takes to build a company, tech and two big budget games at the same time. It’s 100% on the devs to realize and communicate that, which they failed to do.
For better or worse, S42 is officially in its final stretch. Is it really? Transfer of people towards SC seems to confirm that but we’ll see when the game finally releases. When that happens we’ll also see whether game taking this long was worth it.
On the contrary, the last few years were pretty much fully focused on Squadron, with SC being maintained by (almost a) skeleton crew - hence the slow updates.
Now updates are seemingly picking up, though it’s early to say for sure since we only got one quarterly patch so far, with next one probably targeting April-May (depending how porting some of new additions goes).
They didn’t, they just had a big announcement on October that SQ42 is “feature complete” and that it’s entering the polish phase which is why they moved devs back to SC. The remaining teams stay on SQ42 as so-called “strike teams” to polish and tweak tech.
Source: I follow the development way too much, send help lol
It’s not that they lied about it being complete, it’s that they entirely changed the scope of the game around 2014ish. If I remember correctly they even had a poll asking the community if they’d rather wait for planetary landing which was originally not meant to be in the game.
The original game was freelancer 2.0. you don’t land on a planet, you get into a cutscene and then appear in “New Atlantis” (yes I’m referring to star field, that’s not a city in SC) then as the story goes a developer made a tech demonstration they called “pupil to planet” showing the ability to continually zoom out from, you guessed it, looking at a pupil and going all the way to space with no loading screen so the had to essentially rework the game from the ground up. The story and a lot of the assets/voice work, etc was all done and “ready” for what that game would have been, but since the change they now had to rebuild a lot of the systems and make new systems for the way the game works now. That’s just squadron 42 (the single player game) star citizen the MMO has always been a bit on the “back burner” waiting for SQ42 to complete.
Now that we’re past all that, and just this last weekend SC had a majorly important tech test that seemed to go very well, they’re putting the last foundational pieces together so they can actually complete the game.
If anyone wants to say it took too long, I’m with you. I backed in 2014 and thought “damn, answer the call 2016? That’s a long ass time.” but to say it’s a scam? They’re the dumbest bunch of scammers in the entire history of scamming, Nigerian princes and all, if this is supposed to be a scam.
If SC simply showed their original roadmap and timeline, it would speak to itself if it is a scam or or not.
As someone who bought in from the start (when everything was bundled), the argument of “not a scam” fell through when they started to hide their original roadmap.
Just to clarify, which roadmap are we talking about?
The changes to the release view from last year or so?
One from CitizenCon after addition of full planet exploration?
One from the early days where SC was suppose to be a prettier Freelancer with planets separated by a loading screen and consisting of a small hub for activities?
I’d like to make sure which one we’re talking about.
Edit: I’d also like to add, how far are we going with people being scammed?
I can understand this view for early backers (I’m one of them) but what about people who decided to drop money on the game in the last 2 or even 5 years? Were they also scammed despite hundreds of articles about delays, issues and thousands of people yelling about a scam every time SC is mentioned?
I can understand this view for early backers (I’m one of them) but what about people who decided to drop money on the game in the last 2 or even 5 years? Were they also scammed despite hundreds of articles about delays, issues and thousands of people yelling about a scam every time SC is mentioned?
Maybe, maybe not, but is entirely possible to be scammed while also being in a position where you should have known better; the two are not mutually incompatible.
Of course, but I think it’s a bit harder to defend this accusation with all of this info available and the ability to try the game for yourself for free. The latter is what I’d suggest to anyone interested in the game, even if they aren’t worried about wasting money anyway.
Eh, let’s not act like CIG is completely blameless in all of this. They made a lot of mistakes along the way and SC is still far from what they promised it to be.
Yeah it’s honestly pretty fun, but there were juuuust enough performance and stability bugs that I gave up and returned it. I think it has potential and I’m glad someone is doing this.
Which is why I appreciate them doing free flight events. They don’t present the game in the best light a lot of the time but it’s a great way to test if the game is for you in it’s current form (or even in general). They are also a good way to prevent new players from feeling scammed so there’s that.
I feel like a lot of us backed and stayed with this project despite all of the issues exactly because they’re trying to do something no one else is willing to risk. It’s a rough road, full of mistakes and delays but they’re sticking with it, which is more than many people expected.
Because everything ran locally at a datacenter, the real killer app of Stadia would have been a super-massively multiplayer game. There wouldn't be any problems with latency between game states, (any lag would be between the server and the console.) Imagine massive wars or mediaeval battles with thousands of participants. They never developed games that took advantage of what was unique about the platform.
AFAIK, MMOs keep all the game state on the servers already. The difference is that what they send to the client is key deltas to the game state, which the client then renders. Stadia type services instead render that on the datacenter side and send the client images.
With their expertise at networking and so-on, Google might have been able to get a slight advantage in server-to-server communication, but it wouldn’t have enabled anything on a whole different scale, AFAIK.
IMO, their real advantage was that they could have dealt with platform switching in a seamless way. So, take an addictive turn-by-turn game like Civilization. Right now someone might play 20 turns before work, then commute in, think about it all day, then jump back in when they get home. With Stadia, they could have let you keep playing on your cell phone as you take the train into work. Play a few turns on a smoke break. Maybe play on a web browser on your work computer if it’s a slow day. Then play again on your commute home, then play on the TV at home, but if someone wanted to watch a show, you could either go up and play on a PC, or pull out your phone, or play on a laptop…
Larger massive multiplayer capability was one of the features Google was touting upon Stadia's launch:
Over time, Buser [Google’s director of games] says we should not only see additional exclusive games on Stadia, but also cross-platform games doing things on Stadia “that would be impossible to do on a console or PC.” Instead of dividing up virtual worlds into tiny "shards" where only 100 or 150 players can occupy the same space at a time because of the limitations of individual servers, he says Google’s internal network can support living, breathing virtual worlds filled with thousands of simultaneous players. https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/6/18654632/google-stadia-price-release-date-games-bethesda-ea-doom-ubisoft-e3-2019
Sure, they claimed that, but it’s telling that nobody ever took them up on that.
Google’s internal network may be good, but it’s not going to be an order of magnitude better than you can get in any other datacenter. If getting thousands of people into the same virtual space were just a matter of networking, an MMO would have already done it.
A shard is going to be storing the position, orientation and velocity of key entities (players, vehicles, etc.) in memory. If accessed frequently enough they’ll be in the processor’s cache. There’s no way the speed of accessing that data can compare with networking speeds.
That doesn’t mean there couldn’t have been some kinds of innovations. Say a game like Star Citizen where there are space battles. In theory you could store the position and orientation of everything inside a ship in one shard and the position and orientation of ships themselves in a second shard. Since people inside the ship aren’t going to be interacting directly with things outside the ship except via the ship, you could maybe afford a bit of latency and inaccuracy there. But, if you’re just talking about a thousand-on-thousand melee, I think the latency between shards would be too great.
You’d only be able to play with people local to you, in the same Stadia datacenter. If Stadia wanted to minimize latency, they would increase the number of datacenters (thus making fewer people per instance).
I “bought” this game when I was in high school. I’ve graduated high school, college, and I’ve been in the workforce for 7 years. Still no game.
So yes, they should figure out this game is going to be, set a launch date, and work towards that schedule. This forever-in-development thing they have going on is ridiculous.
Edit: Alright, it’s not fair to say “still no game.” There is a game you can download and play, but the question I have is does it have all the bells and whistles you expect from a complete game, or is it a technical demo with some game features? See my other comment in this comment chain for why my opinion is what it is.
“Still no game” see, this bad faith shit you do is just chef’s kiss. You can go play it right this second. Their updates to this point are open to play. Right now. “Still no game” isn’t just dishonest it’s a fucking lie and you keep saying it.
They don’t have to set a launch date, they don’t have to put down in writing for you what the game is going to be, and they have roadmaps and are updating the game constantly. You are owed fucking nothing more than what you’ve been given and you throwing a tantrum about it isn’t just frustrating, it’s childish.
If you don’t like the development cycle, move the fuck on and stop bitching about it. You have a life, right? 7 years in the workforce. Play a different game and stop letting this one live rent free in your head. As a grown man, that should be pretty easy. Let the developers decide what they do with their game and if you don’t like it, nobody is making you play it. Nobody is making you keep up with it. And the constant posts of people bitching and moaning “Why isn’t it out yet? Fuckin’ scammers >:(” drive me up a fucking wall.
It’s been a decade and people still rage bait this game.
It is pretty easy not to think about this game, it does not live rent free in my brain. I bought the promise of a space ship over a decade ago when there really was no game. The “game” then was here is your spaceship in a garage, stare at it and marvel. That was the whole game.
Over time i’ve seen bits and pieces of it in my feed, I remember when they added being able to fly the spaceship, idk when that was, but again that was the whole game. You could see pretty space but still no substance.
That was really my last experience with it because I think somewhere around this point is probably where I started working full time and stopped really following game news.
Flash forward to today I see this post to see the game is still a work in progress, I shared my opinion.
So if there is a decent game by now with a plot that would be great, I would give it a shot. But if it’s still just a fancy tech demo where you can run around for a bit but there’s really nothing to “do” then I’ll wait another decade.
I still can’t play the one I actually bought, Squadron 42, so no there’s no game. There’s a live demo for star citizen but nothing but promises for the one they said would come out first
So this hyper specific thing that they changed focus from is why you shitcan the entire rest of the game? The story driven campaign that takes a lot more time and resources you’re upset about taking time to develop? Like come on man. This really is Cyberpunk all over again. Just let them work. Go play Helldivers 2.
Yes me pointing out they still haven’t done the part I paid for is shit canning the game. I’m sorry I don’t want to just play a tech demo while I wait for the game.
Also bad analogy as cyberpunk was playable and launched
Notice how “Squadron 42” has a different name than “Star Citizen”? You bought the tech demo for a module of a larger game when you could have waited because clearly you’re not interested in the tech demo. Development isn’t a straightforward process and you had to know that going in. Sorry you think there’s “no game” because the section you wanted isn’t done yet. You’re just wrong.
Cyberpunk released nearly unplayable under the pressure of people threatening to kill the developers for pushing back the release date too many times. Almost like they shouldn’t have put a release date. You seem wildly uninformed about both games.
You do realize the original kickstarter and pitch was for squadron 42 right? And by backing you’d get extras in the form of the MMO Star Citizen universe coming out after the SP Squadron 42.
Honestly I don’t think you know anything about either…
Reasons You’ll Want to Play Star Citizen
A huge universe to explore, trade and adventure in Space is unending, endless and so are your opportunities. Strike out to make your fortune amongst the Stars or sign-up for a tour of duty in the UEE Fleet.
Constantly expanding and evolving universe We’re committed to making Star Citizen a living, breathing universe that is its own entity. It will be a constantly shifting and evolving place for players to explore and affect.
Micro updates rule! We’re not interested in having yearly updates. Once live, we will have a team of people adding content on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. So we’ll always be adding data, stories and campaigns as well as reacting to the needs and actions of the players.
Squadron 42 - A Wing Commander style single player mode, playable OFFLINE if you want Playable offline or online, co-op with friends, you sign up for a tour of duty with the UEE fleet, manning the front lines, protecting settlements from Vanduul warbands.
Life during wartime If you distinguish yourself in combat, you might be invited to join the legendary 42nd Squadron. Much like the French Foreign Legion of old, they can always be found in the toughest areas of operation and always snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, regardless of the odds.
The conflict never ends Upon completion of your tour you’ll re-enter the persistent Star Citizen universe with some credits in your pocket and Citizenship to help you make your way. But in the universe of Star Citizen when one conflict ends, another is just around the corner. You’ll have opportunity to spend more time with your squadron mates as additional Campaigns are released as part of the content update plan.
And unlike most kickstarter scams, they’re still trying to honor that original pledge.
Notice they didn’t promise an exact date? Damn that’s wild. You wanted to be an early backer so congrats, the monkey’s paw curls and now you need to grow up because you somehow haven’t over the course of the development of the game you keep whining about taking so long.
The adults who backed this project with WAY more money than you are still mature enough to put this in the back of their mind and go about their life with the assurance CIG will make good on these pledges. Helldivers 2 is a great game and there’s no kickstarter for you to buy and bitch about later.
It’s been an ALPHA since I first play tested sometime in 2016. In that time Halo Infinite released with a more polished game than this shitty tech demo
Yeah, 8 years. The typical game development cycle. For Star Citizen, the well known highly ambitious game. You people can’t even wait until it takes them longer than a typical fucking cycle to bitch and moan about how long it’s taking. Fuck off already.
It’s utterly ridiculous how copyright law has been twisted to erode the very idea of ownership. Does it have software on it? Well then it’s not just against the terms of service… It’s illegal!
Some researchers did a study several years ago and found that adding a virtual nose decreased motion sickness significantly. However, I don’t think I’ve seen any developers try this. I wonder if it’d help.
Have they discovered a link between people with big noses and less motion sickness? Imo these are the more important questions that will drive humanity forward
Yes although I’m hypothesising large nose peoples brains will be doing this with a larger area hence the greater effects against motion sickness. It could lead to novel treatments for motion sickness like wearing a big nose while riding on a bus.
Nickmercs has always been a piece of shit. I feel like he's only ever stepped up to bat for his friends when they've actually done some heinous shit, so seeing his defense of Doc only further confirms my belief that he did it.
Nickmercs' support is an unexpected canary in this coal mine.
It’s like when people that cheat on others in their relationships start accusing their partners of cheating or have major trust issues because of their guilt (or whatever it is). And by that same logic I conclude that Nickmercs is a pedo (if he can do it with the LGBTQ community without evidence then he wouldn’t mind me making similarly wild claims about him, right?).
Why is the consumer just expected to roll over and take it when a game sucks instead of the responsibility being on the publisher to release updates until the game resembles what was originally advertised? Games aren’t on ROM cartridges anymore, you can still improve the game after it’s released.
Look, No Man’s Sky set the precedent for what you’re supposed to do when your game sucks at launch. And we should expect nothing less from game studios with ten times the person-power and money.
Obviously sucking at launch is bad. But it’s inevitable that some games will suffer that fate and as No Man’s Sky showed, that’s no excuse for the game continuing to suck after launch.
Yeah, if a product is sold, I expect it to work for the most part. Now, mistakes happen, and not much to do about very obscure things and it's great if thing can be added afterwards.
But what I want, and this is apparently wild, is a finished 1.0 product that works as expected.
I pre ordered no man’s sky, because the people who made fucking Joe Danger said “I’m going to procedurally generate a universe”
I played it a bit at launch, but the antihype, especially spoilers about the ending made me stop. It’s a bit dense to try to get back into at the moment, but I regret nothing. I paid a modicum so that the guys that made Joe Danger could make a universe, and because me and people like me didn’t demand a refund, they got to do it.
Agree. Also the same with CP77 - I don’t care how much they update and polish that game, I’m not touching it again. It was barely playable on XBOX1X on release. I luckily was able to sell my launch day copy with a small loss, but I’m not trusting them with my money again, after I (and many others) have been misled, and given an unplayable game on consoles.
I am not an investor to lend money to the company for development, I am a consumer, so I want a working game for my money on Day 1, otherwise I’m shopping elsewhere - as plenty of studios manage to great and polished games (e.g. most PS exclusives).
I always wait a few years before buying a game. It prevents situations like this and saves aot of money to boot. Not just the game price but also because I don't need the highest spec pc
I have no proof but in my eyes it all smells like Sony and other gaming news are to blame. They hyped up the game to unachievable levels and then held Hellogames to the previously set deadline. I am very happy they sat down and finished the game, although there is new content patch ever few months still. Gave them those 60$ happily even though it’s not my kind of game.
CP2077 had a bunch of issues on release as well. Much better now. I feel like they(developers) need to bring in different testers near release. If you have the same testers whom have been testing builds for years it can probably be hard to see the issues with the same clarity.
Also stop having release dates. Just use vague terms like 2nd half 2024. When you get the release build, anounce a date, like a month later, give your devs a couple weeks off as there will be missed bugs after release. Hard release dates aren’t helping these situations.
It’s not about unknown issues on the dev side, it’s about greed. CDPR wanted to release for Xmas when the large playerbase of the prev gen consoles was still relevant, so they happily pushed marketing and lied to take people’s money, hoping they can pay exec bonuses and fund future development from that.
Sony had to pull the game from the online store, as it was barely playable. One good question of course why Sony would let it even be there without testing, but of course major companies are trusted to QA themselves, and not release a broken game - luckily this seems to work most of the time.
Because people will pre-order games to the point that it’s made a healthy profit even before it’s even released. Consumers vote with their wallet and for some reason gamers just constantly choose to show publishers that shoddy, half-assed products are good enough for them.
Exactly, when you buy a shit product you should learn not to do the same thing. People are still out here buying crap and complaining on the internet where the money having developers couldn’t give less of a fuck.
Gabe was talking about the making of Half Life, back when you shipped your disc and that was that. And the game was, apparently, crapola.
There were patch and updates back in the day. The problem was that not everybody had a good internet connection or a connection at all, during the 90’s.
Games like Daikatana and SiN were flops due to bugs that required patches to fix.
It’s because that’s how capitalism works. If you keep buying stuff from the same source without due diligence, you can’t be surprised when you get stuck with another sucky game.
The only incentive to spend resources on fixing a game is to preserve reputation for future games.
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