Increasing complexity, tighter deadlines, demand for highwr profit margins, decrease in education quality. Theres a lot of reasons and not all of them are necessarily bad. Its good that we can simulate what we can. I think the profit motive is just starting to show its ruinous powers as shareholders demand more and more.
If there’s an ownership dispute between the creator of the thing and the people who sell it, I’m always gonna side with the person who created the thing. Publishers are a cancer.
Kind of mixed on this one for me. On one hand it’s a win against microtransactions, since a big name like Marvel isn’t enough for people to buy it, so much that it has to be delisted. I think that’s a huge win and I think it’s worth mentioning.
On the other, preservation is a thing and I’m wondering if this game could somehow still be played if it’s taken off the store. Granted I’m not familiar with this game so I don’t know if physical copies work, or if they’re just codes with a plastic shell. Or even if this game would be playable once the servers go down. I know it’s not the best game to keep around, but history deserves preservation, etc
I disagree. I think games are definitely worth preserving, even if they aren’t that fun. Regardless, this game has historical significance and should at the very least be playable after it’s delisted.
What is and isn’t worth preserving is not something that can be known at the time of preserving. The point of preservation is so things can be accessed later if and when they’re needed. Even shitty games like Avengers may be relevant in many ways in the future, even if just to reference as ‘a shitty game’.
I recently saw this video about the British Library. They collect everything that’s published in the UK (books, magazines, papers, leaflets, flyers, …). One of the librarians makes a pretty good case about the use of collecting and preserving everything. Even (or especially) the things you don’t think are worth preserving.
“Good” is not the metric for preserving things. “Important” is. Marvel’s Avengers is important to preserve because this failure is a major historical milestone.
Like, imagine if somehow every copy of ET for the Atari 2600 vanished. Would anything fun be lost? Of course not. But would we lose some critical context in an important historical event? Yes. Very much so.
Fortunately, Atari games aren’t the kind of ephemeral media where we have to worry about that like cloud-service games or pre-code cellulite films.
Is preservation of GaaS actually important though? We’re not talking about niche shovelware that somebody is nostalgic for, we’re talking about preserving a thing that wasn’t meant to ever be preserved, that hurt the gaming industry and represented gaming’s modern backsliding into corporate greed.
I just started last night, but that was immediately the vibe I was getting. Not a bad thing so far, but I never did finish Skyrim, so I guess I'll see if this goes the same way...
Bethesda didn’t evolve over the past 10 years. They just added some ambient occlusion and increased the resolution of their textures. The game engine was OK when when Skyrim came out, but it’s really kind of embarrassing that the exact same issues still remain in 2023.
I’ve only finished eg. Skyrim or Fallout 4 both once, but I’ve got gods know how many zillions of hours in them, especially after installing Sim Settlers 2 for FO4. I like the worlds, I just don’t care much about the story and the games don’t make me care about the story
This is a nice sentiment, but it falls apart when you realize that a lot of the exploration is procedurally generated POI that eventually copies not just assets, but layouts and granular details. That tends to detract from a sense of wonder and mystery.
Which is fine, if they would just embrace that instead of trying to change how people perceive their work.
That’s exactly it-- The game is what it is and will be alot of fun for many people. They’ll have nailed some stuff and missed the mark elsewhere…
But all the spinning shortcomings as design decisions is off-putting. Like if a restaurant is taking a long time to make my food, just say “it’ll be a few extra minutes…” Not “Actually the anticipation of waiting a little longer will enhance your enjoyment, so you’re welcome.”
That’s not a review bomb, you guys aren’t victims. That’s gamers telling you to fuck off with lies, under delivering, treating your employees like shit, micro transactions and battle passes
A friendly reminder that the creators in the past have asked those interested in the game to pirate it instead, though of course I do not endorse such activities.
What’s an enormous brain he has, it’s amazing that it fits in his itty bitty head.
So living in the UK which has free healthcare I can tell everybody that it’s super easy to do this.
Obviously I don’t have a job so I can’t afford food, so I just starve myself until I nearly die, and then the NHS turn up and put me in one of those pokeball rehabilitation things and I’m good to go.
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