That’s honestly refreshing. Gaming companies think that people have to play their game constantly, and that’s such a weird take. Who watches the same movie every day without watching something else in between?
I remember halo Infinite thought they were going to be the next game to do that, like destiny. No, it’s okay to put down a game and walk away. I don’t care about how many season passes you have or other garbage to try and get me addicted. I’ll play it sometimes, other times I won’t.
god forbid they have expectations of “successful” instead of “most profitable game in our company’s history”. I don’t think PUBG or WoW set out to be the successes they were, it just happened, I wish companies knew that that success can’t be planned for
WoW did set out to be massively popular with a gameplay style that encouraged daily play.
PUBG lucked into the popularity by getting the scale and pacing correct for a large audience.
Both also seemed to benefit from server issues causing an ‘exclusive’ thing that means people lined up to get in during peak hours. Popularity can breed popularity, especially when the games are fun.
No, what they want is to be able to coax more money out of their sales numbers. Retention is correlated with future purchases, both of paid DLC (if the game has it) and of future studio titles.
And it’a an easy metric to point to when talking to a publisher and negotiating funding.
I don’t think this is a bad article - or discussion - altogether, but this excerpt really brings out the most crucial aspect, or rather how its missing:
Missing from the discussion is a sense of how much cash Slavic Magic and Hooded Horse need right now to sustain on-going Manor Lords development.
The point being, major games owned by large studios are driven by infinite growth because that’s how their business model has shifted heavily into for the past few years. For minor developers, indie, solo or otherwise, the matter is far simpler: Can they afford their livelihood plus keep working on the game with how much they’re making? If yes, good, keep at it. If not, then we have a problem.
Given how that’s not detailed at any point, its impossible to really pick a side. If Styczeń has made enough money that he can afford to work on the game slowly for several months, this discussion is a non-issue. If he is struggling to make ends meet, or if he foresees struggling soon due to revenue slowing down, it might be time to work on rebuilding that publicity.
I believe Steam’s predatory cut is very important to the discussion and not a light matter at all, although that’s a discussion for a different thread.
Those should still a good amount of earnings, even if we aren’t aware of how much it goes to HH and how much to Styczeń, so they do have good reason to take it easy.
Not to go down a rabbit hole that’s off topic, but I’m generally not offended by Steam’s cut. The platform, advertising, centralizing, hosting, and cloud saves, etc etc, seem like a major benefit, especially for smaller developers, that would allow them to get to market faster, and with a much larger audience.
I don’t see the sales numbers in the article but even then we don’t know how much it costs for Styczeń to operate, or how much of the profits go to the publisher. I assume they are doing well, but the point is for how long in the foreseeable future that will continue.
The Long Dark came out in 2017 and the story mode still isn’t finished yet, so I dunno if they’re the ones to be pontificating about being slow with the content lol.
I mean it’s a great game, but yeah it’s been a minute.
I bought the alpha version back in 2015. I was happy with my $15 purchase then and they have continually updated the game. Sure, it has taken a while to “complete” the game but I never really even expected a story mode.
I do kind of agree with the sentiment that games so not necessarily need to be constantly worked on. Another game I think of is No Man’s Sky. Yes, it was a shallow and incomplete game on release. But they kept working on it until it was far beyond what would be considered complete. And they are still doing pretty major updates. While I do appreciate it because they have added some great content, I also think they could call it good and possibly put their developers onto a new game. There is also the risk that a major update screws up the game that people thought they bought.
I also bought the Long Dark when it was still new in early access. Haven't played it since, but it was fantastic even then and I felt I got my money's worth.
That was actually my first thought as well lol. Maybe story mode is secondary to some people who just like the survival grind, but it’s the only part I’m interested in, and my attention in The Long Dark has come and gone waiting for it to complete.
I know one of the Long Dark devs – chill AF – and if they are a representation of their company culture, then I would consider this less of a snipe, and more of a business model observation one would make over beers.
But, yeah, it is yet to be seen if Manor Lords is a flash in the pan, or has a long tail (like Paradox games or No Man’s Sky or others).
Part of me wants to give some benefit of the doubt but it’s really difficult. Maybe he was trying to meet up at the nintendo panel for upcoming Super Smash Bros Ultimate and the Twitch admins read “I can’t wait to smash with you.”
If DrDisrespect has actually been wronged then we will find out eventually after a defamation suit, part of the reason they settled it last time might be because the mere allegations being released to the public could be harmful but that cat is out of the bag.
Because I think mob justice is criminal. If Dr Disrespect did wrong then he did wrong, but we don’t know anything other than the fact that he has in fact spoken to a person who was under 18, which in itself is not a crime.
Twitch banned him 3 years after the supposed contact between the two, and attempted to go without paying out his contract termination until he started a lawsuit and Twitch settled it.
Twitch turbo ejected the largest streamer on its platform days after the messages were sent, so… likely pretty fucking inappropriate.
These were DMs, so never public, but the “tried to meetup at twitchcon” makes it seem like he was explicitly trying to rape a kid and thats where twitch, who could have just said nothing, hit the “fuck no” button.
Fuck this guy and good on them. Amazon still has some decent people, or at least did.
The messages were sent in 2017. They weren’t reported to Twitch until 2020, at which point they reviewed and took action - that was the whole “Doc got banned and we don’t know why” saga.
Nah, sexually texting a minor isn’t a two sided thing. There is no justification for it. There is no ‘I’m not a pedophile’ about sexually texting a minor. The sexual texting a minor is the intent to do more. You don’t simply ‘play around’ sexually texting a minor.
Then don’t sexually text any minors. Very simple. Now that I’ve helped you sort out your odd unrelated moral dilema, do you have anything to say about the Doc?
Were there real intentions behind these messages, the answer is absolutely not. These were casual, mutual conversations that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate, but nothing more.
I can finally share my side of the story now that Twitch employees have come forward. You see, all I did was indulge in a little bit of grooming. One might even say it was a minor case of grooming.
But several people also noted that the games industry goes through cycles of mass layoffs, because simply having a stable business isn’t enough for investors. Revenues must grow by a chunky margin: if they don’t, costs must be cut. Embracer’s mishandling of their business might be grotesque, but it’s business as usual nonetheless. “We make a shitload of money, but it doesn’t go back into the games,” one person commented. “It goes into a lot of now very wealthy peoples’ pockets, and the people who actually make the games kind of scrape by, most of the time.”
I have never wanted to play a game so hard in my life. It seems to have the atmosphere of Inscryption, the gameplay of Papers Please and a lot of buttons and knobs to mess around with.
My rule would be simple: The only ships allowed to land are those crewed by a captain who can pronounce this accent-free. Every one else gets acquainted with the business end of the Planetenverteidigungskanone.
rockpapershotgun.com
Aktywne