Idk if this is “a reason” but leaving the launcher running without actually playing the game does count as playtime for steam, which may result in folks not being able to refund it if they don’t like it, and increases overall hours played.
Whether that’s part of why these games have useless launchers, or whether those things actually pan out that way, who knows.
I don’t think that’s part of why they do it. I’m an avid civ 6 fan, and I can say that the launcher is pretty unobstructive. Between launching from steam and launching from the 2k launcher, it takes about a minute. It’s likely to collect data, but honestly the only useful data they’d get is the pc hardware, the length of play, and common mods. 2k probably saw that they weren’t getting sellable data and decided to scrap the idea, honestly it’s probably the only decent thing the company has done in years.
Maybe, but for Civ 6 specifically the launcher came out a few years into the game’s lifespan, so I’m not sure they were doing it for whatever marginal revenue benefit that would be. I’d imagine selling DLC without Steam or whatever storefront getting a cut might be a motivating factor.
That’s just a by-product of how Steam works. Playtime is counted as long as the Play button says “Stop”.
For games without DRM (e.g. KSP), you can launch it from the Steam install folder without Steam running. Everything works perfectly but your playtime won’t be counted for the same reason.
I can’t seem to get into them but I used to love all the theme*s. It feels like each title just plays it too generically and doesn’t innovate on the genre since.
Moguri mod works great on the Steam deck. It’s a bit of a learning curve to get it installed, but there’s a guide that will take you through the entire process, and it will teach you some about the more niche features of the deck.
I bought SoD a while ago, and while I dont regret it, its gotten worse and worse. I use a laptop for everything, gaming included. The game has gone from running at a steadyish 30 fps (which is totally fine and usable, I don’t understand high fps people) to being an unstable mess that maaaaaybe hits 20 fps if I stand still.
Even ignoring the gameplay issues, this game needs WORK.
It was already bad at the beginning. Never improved. Also, there seems to be no plan for a community driven mission system, so you can only play weird auto-gen ones.
I really like the regression of graphics trend lately. It enables the developers to focus in on gameplay, mechanics, and building the world. Personally, I love the style. It reminds me of PS1 days in so many ways.
I’m pretty sure some of them are objectively broken. I had a mission where the mission givers partner was seeing someone else and I had to figure out who. The process of figuring out who the person was was pretty cool. Outside of some vague physical traits my leading clue was the mystery persons partners job position. I had to look up every restaurant, break into every single restaurant, find all the people who worked that position, find where they live, break into their apartments to find who their partner was and if they match who I’m looking for.
Eventually I was 99% sure I got the right person, but I needed proof they were seeing each other. I combed their entire apartment, found nothing. I combed the partners apartment, found nothing. I checked their workplaces, found nothing. I tailed both of them the entire day, still found nothing. I even checked their mailboxes and found nothing. I literally ran out of ideas how to solve the case because I found nothing.
Turned me away from the game because I got this cool investigation with some really out the box thinking, and then didn’t get rewarded because I didn’t find that last piece of information.
Yeah, people are either spoiled or deluded with games needing to be 100+ hours, especially cause those hours are often padded with garbage.
Shadows of doubt gives you at least 10-20 hours of hilarious procedural generation that actually hangs together as an immersive sim. You start to see the seams pretty quickly but by the time that happens you’re digging into the actual mechanics. Also the devs take their time on updates but the last update was pretty huge so they obviously have a pretty big scope for the game.
I don’t even have time to finish games longer than 10 hours in reasonable time. 20-30 hours of gameplay and not ready for getting out of early access? Waat?
I think it depends on the amount of fun you have. There’s a difference between “I grinded for 30 hours to get this item, I felt pulled into doing it and now I’m 6 hours late for work” addictive fun, “I played for 30 hours on and off, it was such a relaxing experience” chill tf out fun, and “I played for 30 hours, I broke my controller from gripping it too hard and my heart was pounding the whole time” hardcore action fun. It’s tough to gauge a game just on how much time it takes to complete.
replayability seems like the big advantage of something procgen like this though, independent of price. otherwise, why isn’t it just a story curated by the dev?
I think both things can be true at the same time. 30h of gameplay off a $20 game is a very reasonable proposition. At the same time, not managing to translate the procgen core mechanic into - if not infinite then - better replayability is absolutely a flaw. Some will see the procedurally generated content part and hope for something to sink hundreds of hours into, so it’s a fair warning.
If my experience is anything to go by, you mug everybody you see, steal everything in their wallet to “identify them”, interrogate them while vomiting drunk in their apartment, and maybe solve a murder or two on accident.
It does feel like there’s a lot of writers out there that see a lot of “X” and aim to poke fun at how much “X” we see…but don’t realize that media is so pervasive that they’re aware of their own faults, and able to play around them.
A long time ago there was an attempt by a comedy show to make fun of comic books, by having The Joker tell jokes and make fun of Superman’s underwear-on-outside…not realizing he does exactly that in the comics.
Really, I think a lot of writers just need to go back to basics on recognizing what constitutes an original idea. It’s certainly not easy.
Marty Stratton of id Software tries to throw Mick Gordon and his entire music production career in front of a bus over the Doom Eternal OST issues:www.reddit.com/r/…/doom_eternal_ost_open_letter/
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