Meh, at least as far as the games industry goes, we’ve been here before. Really the past few years have been incredible for games, now it’s time to settle into another stretch of mediocrity as companies learn the same lessons over again. Super sucks for the devs, though, seems they always get the shortest end of the stick.
If they use the blockchain as designed, there will be no central server to switch off - it’s just running in a bunch of basements. They rarely do, though.
The person who stated this a while ago deleted their comment so the reply may not have made sense:
The blockchain does not contain the digital assets. it is just a ledger saying who owns the assets.
If the place the blockchain ledger points to no longer exists, the ledger is useless.
Same with NFT's, they are digital receipts that point to a web address, If the web address closes down, the NFT is useless.
For a real world analogy.
A deed (blockchain ledger) proves you own a house (digital asset stored on the game server). If the house burns down (game server is switched off), the deed still exists but it is useless as the asset it describes no longer does.
An NFT doesn’t need to point to a web address - the ape picture can be stored on the blockchain too.
So on the case of a game, everyone can be running their own server, using a blockchain to keep the shared world in sync. There’s no physical product to begin with.
It would definitely take some creative interpretation IMHO. That is if you’re using the gameplay of Eternal, you’ll want to make changes to the original maps structure and encounter design. Would be an intensely interesting project to take on… Even just an episode, or a level or two…
I’m already thinking about how to “gate” different sections in episode 1 to work with Eternal’s arena based gameplay. Later episodes and Doom 2 gets easier, though.
The only thing about the level design I think would get broken is the fact you can jump and other traversal methods. The original maps weren’t designed around that, and even Brutal Doom breaks them with the addition of jumping. But what’s broken is the intended progression and access to secrets and is also an easy fix. Just make the barriers higher or gaps further, etc.
I hope not. Jennifer Hale is amazing. She’s the reason I’ve never played as male Shepard in mass effect. She also voiced Bastila in knights of the old republic. Incredible skill/talent.
Mark Meer is great, and definitely worth playing thru to experience. Not quite at the same level as Jennifer Hale’s performance, but it was still absolutely brilliant.
Still, I hear this every time I hear Shepard talk to Dr. Chakwas.
I really enjoyed the characters. When I think about Mass Effect 3, for example, I think of how I felt when making peace between the Quarians and the Geth, because of how I had gotten to know the characters of Tali and Legion. Or Wrex enthusiastically greeting Shepard as an old friend, something that’s only possible if you talk him down in the first game.
I was as disappointed as everyone else at the actual ending to Mass Effect 3, and I do think the plot goes a bit weird even before that (the ending boss fight of mass effect 2 is a bit weird, but again, I think more of the personal stakes that had been set up by good character writing (plus Jack Wall’s “Suicide Mission” makes what could’ve been overly cheesy instead feel grand and epic)), but I found the smaller, interpersonal stories that Mass Effect tells to be quite compelling.
Because you don't play it for a harsh challenge, the story is pretty decent, but I played it for worldbuilding, art style, ensemble cast, feeling of adventure and journey across a galaxy. That sort of broad feeling stuff.
I’m not really a gamer, but I listen to a lot of audiobooks.
AI isn’t anywhere close to being able to replace “good” narrators. Maybe a bit like self driving cars - the first 90% was achieved rapidly, the next 5% took some doing but ok, now though the final 5% seems kinda unachievable on any timescale.
That said, automation (and yes, AI) tends to approach industries incrementally. A headline voice actor isn’t going to be replaced tomorrow, but maybe some low level roles are. Fewer voice actors just means less demand for the really good ones. Def not good for the industry but… time marches on I guess.
Sony learned nothing from the Helldivers 2 shitshow
Well they learned to announce that it would require an account before releasing the game rather than after people had already bought it, which was the complaint with Helldivers, right?
While it was the complaint, the game did mention a required PSN account on all storefronts. This was disabled when auth/login was unplayably bad on launch week, then not re-enabled until a while later (with a week long heads up for new players and a month long heads up for existing players). Nobody actually got locked out of the game, and as my PSN account is registered somewhere I do not live, I don’t think anyone would’ve been stopped playing by the change if it had been pushed.
What we “won” and sony “learned” is that they can’t get accurate metrics on playercount since HD2’s statistics aren’t being tracked correctly by the game’s session system and the playerbase is uncooperative. In this era where data is king, this just means we’ll stop seeing Sony funded helldivers ads on youtube while they market their giants that correctly report the data they’re looking for that helps them make a userbase that prints money.
Oh, and we marred the all-time and recent review score from overwhelmingly positive. Guarantee you the successful action was the steam refund count on the game - truly unsolvable problem. As refund requests that don’t meet an automatic metric need a reply, and resolution usually takes ~an hour, the 6 digit refund count was not realistically solvable without rolling the requirement for a legitimate PSN account back. You can track how many total refund requests steam has day by day, as this is a public count in steam’s support page. There were 800k more than the average weekend.
Tl;dr: while the complaint was this, the reality was not. The review bomb hurt arrowhead’s relationship with sony more than it hurt sony. The refund bomb didn’t cause steam to change policies this time but damn if it isn’t justified now.
“I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don’t have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?”
Larian is the new CDProjectktRed. And by that I mean they are projected to be a perfect, infallible, manifestation of developer perfection that gamers will worship and praise blindly until Larian proves themselves to be mere mortals by making a mistake.
In what bizzaro world did the witcher series fail to live up to expectations? The first one was a masterclass of atmosphere and had zero expectations, the second were just fine and the third one still is the gold standard for quest design in open world games.
Buggy like most ambitious open world games, but still perfectly playable. It certainly lived up to expectations, it was one of the most praised games of its time, more than what I’ve seen about BG3. Granted I don’t follow the industry as closely as I did back then.
Just because you didn’t like 1 and 2 doesn’t mean they didn’t live up to expectations. CDPR was nobody before witcher 1 and a small studio before 2, so I really don’t get how they didn’t live up to expectations for those two games.
I‘m starting to get the impression people build them up precisely to watch them fall and kick them down. It‘s in our DNA, I‘m afraid. I mean the praise they get for the most mundane claims (and often they are just that) is ridiculous to the point they‘re becoming the developer version of the life of Brian. And deep down we‘re already anticipating to watch them bleed out at a cross.
All that talk about how Xbox is investing in the Japanese market and then they close the one prominent Japanese studio that they own. The same one that, as the article points out, made Hi-Fi Rush which was “a break out hit”. What the hell, Microsoft.
Over and over and over and over the gaming community has been screwed over by Publishers so I’ll stop grave dancing when Corpos stop being so horrible
Requiring a third party account to play a game months after it was released and after selling it to customers who can’t legitimately make an account because you don’t feel like their country can make you enough profit. Helldivers 2
Attempting to take away peoples digital “purchases” of media because you can’t be bothered to pay licencing. Sony
Changing the definition of “purchase” an established word in English and not defining your new definition until page 22 of a EULA that you know nobody is going to read. Sony, and everyone else
Shutting down a server and rendering a game with a whole single player aspect completely useless and not telling consumers this at the time of purchase. The Crew (www.stopkillinggames.com)
Selling a terribly incomplete game filled with glitches for the price of a full game. Cyberpunk 2077 and so many others.
Selling Pre-Purchases to let people play the game early but really its just another way to get people to pay to be Guinea pigs in your buggy game. That new Star Wars game and so many others.
Adding so many stupid “micro transactions” to games to milk players as much as possible for useless skins and camos etc. Diablo 4 and so many more.
Adding a “Season Pass”??? I don’t even understand what this is??? Buy a full priced game and then buy a subscription to that game??? But still not have access to all of the content and then be shown a magic glove that costs €500, why is this not part of the subscription or is it??? I hope it is. New COD and probably others
“Making” a game and selling it to people but really its just a scam where they got “volunteers” to work on the game for free. Then shutting the game down instantly. That zombie game with Will Smith.
Something, something Overwatch 2 is a totally brand new game.
Shutting down third party mods for an unsupported and dangerous game just after the sale for that game is over. Fine, they didn’t own all of the assets used but they did fix the issue where people could infect your system with malware. COD
Increasing the prices of all of your subscriptions and making those subscriptions worse by offering less while your parent company is posting ~$20 Billion profits in the most recent quarter, yes quarter, thats like 3 months…
Btw all of these examples have happened within the last 4 years. Its pretty sad that I can list these off the top of my head. I only play single player games and I only got back into gaming a couple of years ago after ~10 years of not really playing anything
Actually "rationalising the pipeline" would be getting rid of all the massively overpaid execs, rather than the people who actually make the Take-Two execs their money
Not defending corporations but these massive conglomerates usually get so intricate, so messy, that there are people who end up getting a paycheck that genuinely do not get assignments. In other words, getting paid to watch paint dry. So sometimes the comments that look terrible are directed at people who were doing nothing or very nearly nothing and still getting paid for it.
But yes also fuck executives getting x80 the pay of developers.
Let’s not pretend that the vast majority of CP2077’s side quests are not that type of C&P’ed filler crap.
They are.
What is significant about CP2077 is how a dozen or so side quests are incredibly stellar, far outdoing even the main (non-expansion) story quest. They’re incredibly good. That’s just a few ones sadly, but they’re big and have lots of interactions and cool moments though, they almost feel like the main quests in a lot of ways.
I get how people didn’t like them. But I had a ton of fun doing the NCPD busywork. The gameplay was engaging enough to entertain me. If you don’t have a lot of time to play video games ut’s sometimes frustrating to watch an hour of cutscenes and only play for a couple minutes. The story was great but it gave me the option to just play.
tbf that’s a lot easier to say when you’re the president of one of the richest companies in the industry. I don’t disagree, but not everybody has the resources to just keep developing forever, and that’s easy to forget too.
In the documentary this quote is from he said that about thr development of HL1. To be fair the devs themselves said they voluntairily crunched quite a bit and had some time constraints at the end of the game.
But he’s also president of one of the richest companies in the industry because he always said this.
And while your point is valid for smaller studios, it feels like it’s usually used by the big ones that do have the resources, but would rather give more money to investors.
Yeah, no one has a problem with small indie groups doing early access, aka terraria, rimworld, factorio, minecraft. It’s about keeping expectations in check and having a good fun base game.
Rogue Legacy 2 had a great early access in part because it was regular releases with a lot of communication and they set great expectations for it. I knew what I got myself into and had a blast trying each new area as it came out.
The context for this was them deciding to take the time to finish the game properly even if they were no longer going to get paid to do it (the publisher would stop funding).
wizards are turning into Gaben as he echoes across eternity. It seems like he’s turning into a wizard, but that’s because we can only see behind us in time.
Reviews are one of the only weapons and Outlets that consumers have anymore. Especially a dire need because game journalism is so incredibly incredibly corrupt and inept. So the bitchy tone of this article certainly does track.
If Amazon has shown us anything though, its that reviews can be bought and sold en masse. I’m not sure how Steam reviews are mitigating this, but I fear that it will be undermined soon
Do you actually look at Amazon reviews and trust them now though? They may have proven they can pay to put them there, doesn’t mean anyone cares about what they have to say… Though I’m probably overestimating the general population of Amazon shoppers
You have to have a copy of the game on Steam to review it. It will automatically say you got it for free if it’s a key from Steamworks (given to the press usually). This means the costs of faking reviews would outpace the volume really early.
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