Personal note: in that last linked article, they compared BG3 vs SF to Disco Elysium vs Outer Worlds, and I think this is hilariously just showing how much this is about their predilection for narrative-core games.
I like Disco Elysium. I like BG3. They are much better narrative RPGs. I also feel absolutely no desire to go back and replay them.
I go back to Outer Worlds and Starfield. They are much better open world RPGs.
Like, chill PCG. It’s a good game, enjoyed by lots of people. If your staff is more into narrative-core RPGs with linear progression, that’s cool, but you don’t need to demonize Starfield to enjoy BG3. The worst Bethesda game? Worse than '76? Come on.
FO76 had a rocky start for sure, but they have made a ton of updates. It is easily better then Starfield now. If you compared them release to release then FO76 would be worse, but I think they are comparing current state.
Personally, hard disagree. I don’t find FO76 fun at all. The world feels small, the characters are boring, and finding zany houses sprinkled around breaks any versimility of the world, which is the cornerstone of Bethesda’s games.
I think the houses fit in the world, but the world is definitely small. I still enjoyed my time in it a lot more than my time in Starfield, which is mostly open fields with the occasional settlement/work site/lab dropped in. I don’t think Starfield is a bad game, just not an exciting one.
Fallout 76 is a lot better than what it was at launch but it’s still nowhere near close to Starfield. It’s a weird mesh of ideas that don’t really fit together but are still enjoyable separately.
I like Disco Elysium. I like BG3. They are much better narrative RPGs. I also feel absolutely no desire to go back and replay them.
Really? This is crazy to me. I get Disco, but outside of intentionally regenerative games (such as roguelikes/lites), I don’t think I’ve had my hands on a more replayable game than BG3 in years. There’s so much you don’t see in a given playthrough.
I don’t doubt it has new events, new ways that things can pan out, etc… but it’s the same characters, the same goblin camp, etc.I am very big on exploration, and without a world large enough to find places I haven’t seen, or at least places that it’s been so long since I saw that I don’t remember it, I bounce off games very fast.
Yes and no. My second play had countless new characters–three of them playable–several new zones, and a ton of new gameplay. I was constantly finding new places, new encounters, new conversations. I know there are still several zones I haven’t poked around in.
The main story beats don’t change much but there are still a lot of branching paths to get to them. Hell, you could even completely skip the goblin camp if you wanted.
Game studios just don’t do the kind of extra work to cover player choice like Larian did here. It’s why the game made waves in the industry. I’d say unless you really went over it with a fine comb the first time around (125 hours or more), it’s absolutely worth revisiting at some point.
So make something new. Microsoft is in desperate need of defining series rather than Halo and Gears of War, both of which are the types of games he’s criticizing here.
Gamdevs should get roylties based off contribution like a number so small for indie games its meaningless unless it does well, but for bringingg us longlasting moneymaking games like gta they should be making way more
Absolutely; but you just know that Publishers will just push to outsource development to 3rd party “contractors” so that they won’t be eligible, or some other such bullshit.
I mean they can do that and quality assurance will struggle even more, making indie games look even better in comparison. Let publishers keep shooting themselves in the foot in their endless greed. It will only speed up the destructive cycle.
I pretty much only buy indie games these days, maybe one AAA a year and I used to buy multiple a month. Most stuff doesn’t feel unique enough, like I’m just repeating experiences with slightly different themes and controls.
Uhh, going to need to see some evidence of that. Literally never heard of non indie devs getting royalties or continued payments based off the success of the game.
Actually I’ll correct myself, rockstar is the only company I’ve heard of that does big internal payouts post launch. Most of Rockstars game launches have resulted in new houses for some of their teams.
Unfortunately for larger games individual devs don’t have that much control nor can have a mensurable impact. For example, I wrote a few lines of code for a large game, those lines will be executed every single time the game runs, but if they weren’t there no user would notice. I was told to write those lines, and it’s not something I personally wanted to add to the game, there was an issue, I was sent to fix it, I did. This is true for the vast majority of the game code, most devs are pointed to issues to fix or features to implement, they have some wiggle room in the how to do stuff, but the what to do has been approved by the boss of the manager of your manager’s manager, and unless there’s a good reason it won’t change.
Think about it this way, have you ever watched the credits from a AAA game? The vast majority (as in there are likely only a couple of persons who didn’t) of the people in that list contributed something to the game, either directly or indirectly, it’s hard to measure how much each contributed, a small but critical fix might be more important than a large but unused feature, how do you measure between the two?. Not to mention past employees who did stuff for a previous game that got re-used.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice idea, one that I would personally benefit from, but I think it’s just not feasible for large games. In short it’s impossible to be fair doing that, and people would get hurt because John from accounting got the same share that he did. And if you do it in any other way that’s not everyone gets the same share, you’re essentially playing favorites with the people whose job is to do the stuff you’ve ranked higher, even though the other person’s job is just as important.
That is true. However, you can still solve it and i have seen it work in practice: allow every employee to buy shares of the company. Fixed limit of shares per year of employment. Shares cannot be sold on the free market, they are bound to employment. Shares are kept after departure. Shares give dividends as usual.
That’s an interesting approach, but eventually you’ll run out of shares to allow employees to buy, and you’ll have to dilute the ones you’ve already sold. You need to think that AAA studios have hundreds of people working there, and certain games have thousands of people working on related stuff that’s not directly the game but contributes, like engine, servers, social, etc.
There is no problem with diluting. It’s not guaranteed amount passive income :) but if more people work there, you would usually also have higher gains to distribute. And old shares eventually disappear, they are not inheritable.
the problem is that companies will find a way to screw devs with that too. Imagine figuring out a solution to track every single bit of contribution to keep royalties as low as possible based on STATS BYATCH. it will literally turn into “your grass texture will bring you 0.00000000000000000000000001 cent off each sale” kind of fuck around.
Wild. Sounds like Subnautica 2 dodged a bullet. Hope they sue the literal pants off them and then build the spiritual-Subnautica-2 we all always wanted with the damages awarded and the Early Access money that they know we’re going to give them the moment they announce it.
And RIP Inzoi, we barely knew you before you got infested with AI bullshit and it sounds like that’s only going to accelerate to hyperspeed now.
Inzoi was dead on arrival in terms of quality already. It’s so half baked and barebones the AI crap only served as the moldy cherry on top. Some players have pointed out it was obviously a K-Pop idol simulator before they marketed it as a Sims game. There are still a number of interactions in that AI slop for an excuse of a game that only make sense in this context. Oh well, luckily we live in the golden age of Indie games and don‘t have to put up with this.
Ehh, I wasn’t worried about that until the AI stuff happened. Even a K-Pop idol simulator would’ve been an interesting start. Filling in the content to a level that creates compelling stories and gameplay takes time. It takes years of expansions for Sims games to start getting decent levels of content and stop feeling soulless and shiny and bland compared to the previous game (arguably Sims 4 hasn’t even gotten there yet but that’s more of a Sims 4 problem).
Once Inzoi started trying to fill in the content with AI they thought they could rely on that to shortcut their way to success but I knew it wasn’t going to work. It needs the human touch, it’s gotta be quirky and have its own individual character. K-Pop idol might’ve been exactly what it needed to stand out if they had leaned on that instead of trying to fill in the gaps in content with bland and soulless AI, which is exactly what life sim games DON’T ever need more of.
I don‘t think a K-Pop simulator would‘ve sold very well. Especially not in the west because a lot of it seemingly revolved around romantic relationships and keeping them secret at all cost. Even as little as being seen with the opposite sex in public is career suicide for an idol. That seems like a tough pitch for a game tbh.
I’m not going to pretend I can judge its potential for commercial success, I’m just saying I think that hypothetical K-pop idol game would’ve been a more interesting game than Inzoi is currently or seems likely to ever be in the future I see for it now. That said, I’m not dying on this particular hill and I don’t have any particularly strong opinions about it so if you think I’m wrong about that you’re totally entitled to that point of view and I’m not going to try to defend my beliefs any further, I think I’ve said all I could possibly have to say about Inzoi at this point. Where the game goes from here is something which reality will eventually tell us, but I’m not optimistic about it.
I can see your point, though I belief it would probably be as superficial and soulless as an idol game as it is now. But I completely agree it‘s not a hill worth dying on. Inzoi in it‘s current form is a bit of a disaster and it will probably stay that way.
Honestly I liked a lot Subnautica 1, and despite the leadership change, still look forward to Subnautica 2. Better juge on the product than on internet dramas.
Sometimes people have ideas that just don’t work out. Even if the same people make another game, unless they just make a carbon copy they’re going to try and do something different. Sometimes it doesn’t work as well as the original, but at least it’s not churning out the same thing over and over and hoping people don’t notice.
Granted, Gamefreak has basically been doing that for 25 years, so what do I know?
I heard it had a lot of issues during testing but I didn’t personally have any issues with it having played it the first time 4 years ago nor have I heard of any widespread game breaking bugs. Might just be your particular system :o
Draw distance sucks for a vast ocean of plants and sealife. Seriously, I have a really good video card, and this fucking Unity engine can’t draw 500 feet in front of me.
So many wall “suggestions”, clipping, other graphical glitches, especially near the end area
Incredible music, but it’s barely heard because the game either cuts it off midway through or decides to go silent most of the time
Bad save serializations that can sometimes spam a ton of error messages on load
You can’t kill anything, including warpers that are more dangerous than leviathans
Can’t walk with a Prawn in an alien base, because you end up getting stuck on the floor for some reason
Reaper in caves, who can drop you off the map
An insulting unrealistic O2 meter, and not enough keyslots
The Cyclops is. Fucking. Useless. By the time you get this thing, the leeches in volcano areas fuck you over, when power is already a precious resource. And it still needs full upgrades to make it even remotely useful in Lost River.
Torpedos are useless. Flares, Floating lockers, air pipeworks, nuclear reactor, alien containment, all useless.
Death might as well be like hardcore, since losing a vehicle is worse than losing 30 minutes of progress
I also find it unbelievable that the other player never experienced bugs, because I also had a lot of them during my play through.
But your list is a complete mess with a mixture of bugs and design decisions. And the latter aren’t bugs. That’s just not how it works. It would make your argument stronger, if you stay with the facts and not include your personal disagreements with game features.
Half of those aren’t even bugs. They’re intendes gameplay elements and they are what makes Subnautica such a good game! No being able to easily kill most creature is what makes the game better. Torpedos being borderline useless is what makes the game better. The extremely limited O2 meter makes the game better!
The cyclops is amazing. You’re just very obviously use it wrong. It’s not meant to explore the volcanic region. It’s meant as a mobile base and it absolutely excells at this!
Honestly, the draw distance optimization may be the only valid concern here.
Draw distance sucks for a vast ocean of plants and sealife. Seriously, I have a really good video card, and this fucking Unity engine can’t draw 500 feet in front of me.
IIRC, they did not really know what the first game was about while developing it. I remember reading a dev blog about them adding a bug report in game with screenshot attached, and how that helped them understand players expectations and direct the development of the game towards that instead of having a pre-defined vision of the final game.
Yeah, this is the right approach, especially with the subnautica community that seems to be really thirsty for drama. I was going to wait for reviews anyway before getting it, so this whole “devs beg community” is probably for the preordering folk.
That said, my money’s on “subnautica 2 will disappoint regardless” because it continues to build on the original instead of being new. What made the original so good was the novelty of that format, combined with the horror aspect and the fresh lore. Now, after two games set in the same world and the same general flow, people know what to expect so they will be extra picky about s2 and I wager they will end up underwhelmed. I’m still hoping s2 will at least be extra pretty because goddamn if I didn’t love the environments of the first two games.
Does the same logic apply to shoes hand-sewn by sick children?
How the fuck did capitalism manage to make people care more for inanimate objects or software than actual human beings.
You are trying to portray a black and white picture about a situation we all know little about. It’s word for word, and in such case it be hard to give more credits to either party.
I heard that there is a lawsuit brewing, maybe this will give us more objective informations.
In the meantime, the only way to see if either the founders or Krafton vision would be the best would be to release the EA, even with the lack of content Krafton is complaining about. Like that we would be able to make our own conclusion.
I would not ignore if Krafton do betray UW employees. But I also take into account that for now it is word for word, and depending on which side you believe, both sides can be sided with.
If the three ousted exec did abandon their responsibility as Krafton said, their dismissal is justified. If not and that’s a way to not pay the promissed bonus, then a boycot is justified.
There isn’t many way to know, other than releasing the EA now. Like that the customer can have and idea of the true state of the game, without having to base its opinion on a bandwagon.
I agree. But you said “Better juge on the product than on internet dramas.” and I dont see how the game would tell us anything about how Krafton fucks the developers.
Krafton says that the game isn’t yet worthy of EA. Ousted led dev says that it is. Someone is probably lying here. Only way to put an end to that is to lanch the EA this year, for us to juge if it is enough content or not.
From what I’ve read, that bonus isn’t tied to a specific release, but to an earning target.
Not being able to get to that target is tied to the fact that Subnautica 2 EA should have been a huge cash influx, which now isn’t possible due to the delay, and the only remaining way would have been either a sudden renewed Subnautica 1 and BZ success or for the mobile version to be a incredible success, which I doubt.
Releasing the EA wouldn’t be an “I win button” from UW. It could go both way. Either the current state is enough for user to buy it, and not refund it, or it will be a resounding failure, with huge refund percentages. In the first case, this may allow UW to get to that target, but in the second case, it may in the worst case make the studio go under before Subnautica had any chance to be released completed
They’ll release a “New!” version in a year with an improved screen as one of its bullet points, in a bid to get you to buy it again. And people will. See also:
New 3DS was actually a pretty huge upgrade over the original. Despite the name, it was effectively the next generation of the console. Or at the very least a half-generation.
If there was one god damned example of any company saying this and sticking to it I might believe them. But I have yet to be proven wrong. Sucks too as they were my go to for mods.
I bought it on confidence when it released. That was the last time I ever did this. I played 25 very boring hours and uninstalled it. It’s very difficult to figure out how you can fail so spectacularly with such a budget, such a long development time, and such a carte blanche with making a new universe from scratch
They changed the recipe. Skyrim, Fallout 3 and 4, Oblivion, and Morrowind all had something in common: handcrafted environments densely packed with points of interest.
Starfield used procedurally generated content. It generates abandoned mines and outposts from a tileset and then drops you in the literal desert between them.
Which is just frustrating because there’s some real improvements in mays of their usual systems elsewhere in the game. The I think the persuasion mechanics are a real step up from previous games and I’m amazed the system hasn’t been ported into Skyrim. They got flight mechanics to actually work in the Creation engine. Zero-G and low gravity works great. Gunplay and combat is even more improved over Fallout 4 (though it’s an incremental improvement over the revolutionary leap made with Fallout 4).
Imo, Starfield is mainly lacking in only a few (though critical) things. They need more than 4 fleshed-out companions, and have them for different factions; there’s a couple of NPC’s that I expected to become companions. Since they insistend on having procedurally generated content, they needed to add way more pieces to their tilesets and, more importantly, have an algorithm to stitch things together and have some actual variety. As it is right now, you get the same exact facilities copy-pasted as whole spaces with no variation. And they needed to not force you into the main storyline, or at least pull a Fallout: New Vegas and have multiple paths through the main storyline.
There’s a lot of good bones to be had in Starfield, which just makes the cock-ups more disappointing since they’ll lead to those imprpvements being abandoned
IDK, I still think about how the dufuses added recoil to laser guns in FO4. And the fact that land mines and similar traps change every time a save is loaded is super dumb because it’s just like “OH DID WIDDLE BABY GET BLOWN DA FUQ UP? LET ME FIX IT FOR YOU (Removes the landmines)”.
That’s not the only issue it has. They could’ve made procedural generation work, with having a combination of hand crafted and procedural environments. But it doesn’t seem like they have the skill to pull it off.
Issues this game has, and probably one of the major reasons why it’s so dead feeling, is how the world doesn’t react to you.
Tell me, what happens in Skyrim or Oblivion if you walk around town with your sword drawn?
What happens if you start randomly casting spells where the guards can see you?
What if you managed to get a certain artefact, wear a certain kind of armour, or work on upgrading a certain skill tree?
See what I mean? See what’s missing?
The dead, empty, open world tiles only compounds this. And how everything feels even more limiting because of how the game is strictly chopped up with loading screens.
Very true. So long as your shots don’t hit anybody, or your powers affect anybody, you can show them off all the time on the big cities and nobody gives a fuck. Using the whirlwind Sprint shout on Skyrim makes everyone around comment and a guard desperately asking you to stop.
And some of them are duplicates ! I discovered THREE identical locations just roaming about ! the same dungeon layout ! but different loot. Can you believe that shit
God how did they fuck that up? Who thought I’d want to fast travel there? Sure sometimes, but honestly I’d love it if it showed how many minutes to destination and then you started jumping.
You’re in the pilots chair, you see 10 minutes to the other side of the galaxy where your mission is. You hesitate because that’s far, but 2 minutes away is your home base anyway so might as well swing through and drop off some stuff, make sure the pumps and extractors are working. 6 minutes past that is that side quest you’ve been putting off, I guess we can do that too. You hit the jump button, stars whizz past. You go talk with your crew, get caught up on conversations. You jump back in the chair when the 20 second warning goes off. You jump out and arrive, but there is a weird signal on a nearby planet in this system…
Now THAT’s the game i wanted. Altering one mechanic right there completely changes the entire style of the game. I will forever be annoyed that everything in the game is instant fast travel. Sure have a button there to skip if people want to, but personally I prefer to lay back and fully immerse myself
It could have been so good and the game genuinely has some cool environments but for the most part there is just nothing to do. I’ve stumbled on some cool places like the Mantis hideout and stuff but the game is so repetitive and 98% of the planets are devoid of life.
And they wanted it that way. They were like well that’s what it’s really like! Which like yeah great, but that’s terribly boring for a game.
Another game like that was Mass Effect 1, where they had the undiscovered worlds, but even those were more entertaining. They gave you a mako, and each planet had at least one faction with at least some backstory to it so it wasn’t a complete waste. Starfield is like, nothing. I encounter the exact same building structure and camps multiple times on my single playthrough. Absolutely uninspired
Yep! When I saw that Todd said that I was kind of dumbfounded. I get that that’s how space is but like, that shits boring. They really could have had something special but they severely missed the mark.
On the one hand it sucks that a writer lost their job. And it’ll never not suck. On the other hand I love when Apex Legends looks bad. I lost Titanfall 3 for that?
In a better universe apex and tf3 could have existed at the same time
Unfortunately we live in the universe where games as a live service is the only model that big companies run on, which means all resources must go to just that one game
They ought to patch out the need for Ubisoft’s launcher. Same goes for EA’s back catalog, for that matter. At least EA’s newest releases don’t come with the launcher.
Even when you buy their games on Steam, there’s an EA launcher there in addition to Steam. This is the case for It Takes Two, for instance, but not for Split Fiction. Split Fiction only uses Steam if you bought it on Steam.
I can’t confirm for Steam, since I only have the game on EA app, but the game’s wiki page on PCGW shows the same DRM-free info (with correct launch steps).
I believe it was added after launch. I distinctly remember trying to play this game on the Steam Deck on a train with no internet, and the EA app complained about it and wouldn’t let me launch the game. It’s quite possible that this can be sidestepped by specifically putting the Steam Deck in offline mode, rather than just severing the internet connection, but I didn’t know to try that at the time, and it’s definitely DRM.
So just that I understand this correctly: I need steam to buy it, but after that it launches without steam after I download the installer? Like on gog?
If yes, holy shit, I would have never expected this from EA!! Last time I checked this company was pure scum, but this is a surprisingly nice move!
Only the newest ones. They haven’t gone back to remove the requirement from their back catalog, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Split Fiction don’t require it now. Meanwhile, Madden 26 still requires it, so I guess it isn’t universal.
EA’s games that released on Steam after Origin was a thing still launch a mini EA launcher when you press Play on Steam, much like how Ubisoft’s does on Steam. That’s at least how it seems the last time I tried it with Fallen Order.
Right, but that extra launcher causes problems, so I tend to avoid games that still have it. It’s why I still haven’t played A Way Out but played Split Fiction.
This is so strange. Wasn’t it not long ago that studios were crowding into very specific release windows ( usually november iirc ) so they could maximize initial sales? Maybe the digital release era has changed things. I mean, I get it if your game was in the same niche or smth, but “companies might tank” seems a little much.
Either way, if this is true, eoy 2025 is in for a dry spell when it comes to new games.
Edit: Also I find it hilarious how all these “industry analysts” keep popping up suggesting ominous things despite Rockstar not saying a peep about the game besides the trailer. Almost as if they were paid to do it.
Over time they realised that, while holiday windows or whatever have high sales, if there’s a better or more popular game coming out then, yours will just be forgotten.
That said, most “industry specialists” are just glorified influencers, so take it with a grain of salt
They aren’t crowding into those windows because competition helps their sales, it’s because they expect the biggest shopping period of the year will result in more sales than they lose. And there’s a reason only the biggest titles release in these windows.
Capcom made the decision years ago to release in February/March because they know a November window will drown them.
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