As long as there continues to be succesful live service games, they will never stop attempting to make new ones, because the succesful ones are the most profitable forms of entertainment ever devised.
Of course there is only room for a limited amount of live service games on the market (since gamers only have one life to waste on them), so most of them will fail, and many of them even before leaving the drawing board it seems.
Yep, they can make a bunch of games that costs them hundreds of millions to make it they manage to make one that brings in billions in profit… That’s what we call gambling.
This is an excellent point. An organisation the size of Sony is simply incapable of not attempting a live service hit as long as they have the resources to do so.
A smaller player can pursue a strategy where they gain profits from their (somewhat specialized) segement of the market. Sony lacks that flexibility due to their size.
Of course we can’t really know what goes on behind the scenes. But obviously these kinds of games are designed by committee (namely board members). So every single detail is going to be dictated from above, and as new games are released by other publishers with new succesful features these dictates changes mid-production. I can’t but imagine that the development of live service games are a complete shitshow from start to finish.
So perhaps at some point they decide to get rid of the entire mess and start afresh, only for the process to beging again of course.
Also worth noting that getting a live service game with enough infrastructure going to immediately make them millions is a significant startup cost on its own. picking the best project of them and then putting it in its own studio seems like a very smart way to do it.
Looking like Mass Effect is not a bad thing. ME rules. If the gameplay is just as fun and characters/story just as interesting, then I’m absolutely down. That said, the NPCs are giving me cliche, overly-talkative, super annoying vibes. Hopefully that’s just from the editing. After the utter failure of Starfield, a solid sci-fi RPG would be very welcome, even if it’s a little derivative or overly reminiscent of its predecessors.
I don’t really buy youtuber merch, but I bought a couple things from GN after their investigative work with the latest Asus warranty debacle. Excellent channel and Steve and crew deserve all the support they can get.
That said, the 2 months wait and uncertainty of products seems to be a thing of the past (based on the things I purchase, not like I’m ordering skinny jeans), as most stuff arrives in 2 weeks and hasn’t made it to the trash.
Though Canada Post being on strike is likely to bugger that up.
[Edit] I stand corrected - AliExpress packages just came through, ordered 10 days ago.
I have both sets of the coasters on the GN store, the rubber ones and they’re the best coasters I’ve had since they’re flexible and washablez highly recommend them
CEO says “I want to make more money”. Crowd responded “No shit”.
I’ve seen a theory that Steam is holding, possibly even for a time when Sony puts it in writing that players won’t need a PSN account permanently before they’re willing to relist the game which I think is a fair desire at this point.
It’s like an administrator/tenant relationship. Generally, the publisher controls the region locks, but if the publisher starts doing something potentially illegal or brand-damaging, like selling a bricked game, the store owner can also manipulate the locks.
If they couldn’t, a dev’s efforts to willingly commit brand suicide by releasing a game that bricks people’s computers (not beyond the pale given how stupid publishers are now) would also take Steam down with them.
That makes sense, but I haven’t seen any official announcement from Steam saying that they did this. Only speculation from random people. Any documentation I can find just seems to point to this being a decision that’s made by the company releasing the game (or in this case Sony as the publisher).
I doubt that Steam is still trying to block additional countries given that Sony has already announced that the PSN account requirement is being withdrawn.
The thing with the 3 new countries seems to be a fix by valve, you might notice that there were several invalid country codes in the previous restricted list.
I was not a big fan of BG3 or even the divinity series, but I love Larian. Their products show clear passion for the budget they have, they don’t bad mouth other dev just to gain some brownie pts with gamers (CDPR) and their games are well supported.
To me it just felt like divinity with higher budget. It has Proper cinematic cutscenes and different rules to the combat. I guess I just don’t like CRPGs, I never properly feel immersed in the world.
Its weird because I loved dragon age origins and Pillars of eternity. I thought Wasteland 3 was ok.
I think with D:OS 2 I was annoyed that I didn’t choose a premade character at the start, and that the storyline was just, become a god. I don’t find that kind of narrative compelling. I also didn’t like the fairytale lighthearted vibes. The world didn’t feel “meaty” somehow.
You are giving me same vibes as myself, that meaty comment is spot-on. The game tell you that you’re traveling continents, but it never really feels like it, maybe we need a bit more imagination lol
The game has like four major maps, that’s why it feels tiny compared to your average CRPG that has dozens of smaller maps to create a sense of a big diverse world.
As a person that didn’t really enjoy the borderlands games, I had no idea this was happening and this is easily the oddest thing if read all week. Before I read the article I was confused but interested. Now I’m informed, confused, and interested. But hey, I’m glad they were able to do this with a game. I’m an average science enjoyer so I’m always glad to see good news.
As a bug fan of borderlands, I honestly wish they made a mobile spin off for the minigame that they’re using for this. I love playing the game they made for it, I love that it’s doing actual stuff, I just have a limited amount of time to sit down and play games at my pc and when I boot borderlands I wanna play borderlands.
Big surprise that Crema has stepped in it again. They've been pretty awful since this game started. I can still remember when they first rolled out the bans and insisted their would be no appeal because their ban process was never wrong. The CEO aggressively defended it, and it wasn't very long before community managers were walking that back admitting some people had to be unbanned.
Their discord was run by dictators as a meme that cropped up around a botched patch resulted in the mods going nuts and banning anyone who mentioned it, and the steam forums were the same. They had a gaggle of fanboys who'd attack anyone who said a bad word about the game, and if anyone talked back to them one of the developers would come along and ban them.
It was such a great idea ran by absolutely awful people.
Thank you! The CEOs’ children need Maseratis, boarding school, college, jet fuel to pedo islands, and so many other necessities! We can’t let them suffer!
I feel old. Remember when a brand new, highly anticipated, AAA game was like $40?
Not they are $70, plus $20-40 for preorder deluxe directors cut extra content bonus versions. Plus $10-30 for “season passes”. Plus online subscription services for the game itself, the online service the game runs on, or both. Oh, and don’t forget ad placement in the game. A giant billboard for house insurance in every cutscene. Drink your monster energy to refill your sprint meter…
That doesn’t include greedy mobile games that require vast amounts of money to remove artificial restriction, such as daily energy meters to act. Or cosmetic DLC that costs half the price of the game itself.
And don’t even get me start on the constant tracking, spying, or actual malware some publishers implement in their games.
pcgamer.com
Ważne