They expect you to spend $60 on a game plus microtransactions?
I put away 50 to 100+ hours into games that cost me $15. Why doesn’t everybody else do this? Does high-end 3D graphics actually matter that much to people?
EA, Activision blizzard, Ubisoft, 2k games and many more. I think you meant “AAA gaming companies and poor business decisions are a match made in heaven”.
You can play online and there are tons of free apps, but it used to be that someone had to purchase a set to be able to share it with their friends. Though since making copies would have been difficult I guess it would have been more like Mario Party than the first nine levels of Doom.
The issue was never having the set, you can make one in an afternoon with scrap wood. The problem is having other people who want to play whenever you want to play.
But doesn’t shareware refer to software that is distributed freely, playable (maybe with limitations on how far you can play into the game, or how long you can play it for free) but it’s generally a proprietary game that is distributed through this model? I may not have a perfect grasp on the precise meaning of shareware.
I see chess more like abandonware - if someone developed a proto-chess game and didn’t assert their ownership over the IP (recognising that this happened before copyright and IP were understood concepts), doesn’t that make it effectively free to play, noting you of course need a board to play?
Maybe an ancient and highly modded board game doesn’t translate that well to a software/copyright analogy. Also you lost me on your comparison between Mario Party (I think you mean only one person needs to own the game) and the first levels of Doom (which are more like a demo). I don’t see either of these as shareware, though I guess a freely playable demo is a form of shareware with my understanding of the term above!
I spent quite a lot of time on the Switch, just talking with random people and helping new players. It is a very special games. Found my first love in there too. 😇
It’s the most bizarre and almost worrying thing now how much video games have transitioned into this “game of the month” thing - where seemingly everyone with a computer all goes and buys the same game each month because it got hyped up by the twitch steamers they watch or whatever.
Just strange. “Are you playing Lethal Company? Everyone’s playing it. Oh, you wanna play Lethal Conpany? Everyone’s playing Palworld now. Oh shit man, we’re not playing that anymore, Dragons Dogma 2 is out”
I noticed this after a hiatus from my gamer friend, when I reunited with them a few months back I saw how games would release and they’d buy it, even defend some aspects like kernel level anti cheat/micro-transactions as well as bad game design.
The hive mind seems somewhat new to me like I’d dabble with a few titles a year while spending considerably more time than the average gamer on my PC. And the fast action from lethal company to plate up to velhaim to palword/and hell divers over the last few months has been jarring maybe concerning too
Are they playing on console? A lot of those times the problems just aren’t equally represented, like when Wild Hearts came out and ended up with Mixed reception although buying on console I simply didn’t have the performance problems and enjoyed the game as a unique take on MH gameplay
The fast pace certainly comes from console subscriptions and trying to eke out as much value from Game Pass or PS+ Extra, on both the consumer and publisher sides. If I’m regularly paying for it, I’m gonna keep looking for new value in it, and conversely MS and Sony will look to keep adding value to it at a consistent rate. It’s simply far too much income to not throw everything at the wall to prevent it stagnating
pc but some of my buds are on pc and console, constantly hearing about game pass :P idk when it come to subscription services its normal for the initial few years to be packed with plenty to capture a large pool of customers, operating at a near loss, then prices go up and content declines. hopefully this doesn’t happen with game-pass
To be fair Lethal Company and Plate Up are fantastic games made by single devs and priced very fairly. It's not really the indie scene that's the problem, that's the holy grail right now. It's these big releases and "triple A" games that are all disgusting cash grabs driven by marketing and how many twitch streamers they can pay to play their game for the "hype".
thought we were talking in general trends. also i am not saying the games i listed were bad, instead i was describing how people are consuming more games in a smaller window of time to what i have been use to
Yeah fair enough, that's definitely true. People tend to have a 'main game' that they hop off to play the new thing, burn out and then go back to their main.
It would make less sense if the games were single player and full price, but Lethal Company, Palworld, and Helldivers 2 are all at $40 or below for the base games and have a multi-player experience.
Of course people are going to jump on lower priced multi-player games with positive word of mouth quickly so they can play with their friends and get a few dozen hours or more entertainment.
Those people have always been around. They want to be a part of the current conversation. And that’s cool. There are plenty of people who wait years to play games until the ultimate version with all DLC goes on sale for 50% off. I’m one of those people. But I also don’t care about being a part of the conversation. I’m just a patient gamer who never spends more than 15$ for a game.
Yep, and it was probably even way worse before the internet with few outlets to let people know about games, and way less resources to get different opinions on the matter.
I don't know if it was really worse, but magazines did cost money.
Most magazines that I used to buy had coverdisks with demo versions.
If the demo was no good it didn't matter what the review said. And they can't really get away with describing things that are proven false in the demo.
Worst thing would be a great demo but very little more in the main game.
But I wasn't going to pay a lot for a game if I'd not played the demo a lot.
Frankly that also proved it'd run ok on my usually very old HW.
As for getting lots of other peoples opinions - not as important if you have a decent demo.
Issue is even knowing about the games existence. So I would assume back then that it would be games that had marketing budgets and pushed by big publishers that ended up even being in a position to have a demo in a magazine. Now days games made by one dev can become hits out of nowhere to even their surprise.
shareware - I mean they probably didn't make much money.
But apogee, epic, id all came fom releasing shareware initially.
but also nethack and all that stuff.
I can't really remeber how it worked, but i think you got these bundles of paper stapled pamphlets for free with hundreds of shareware packages listed with a few lines of text describing each one.
If you didn't have BBS, you sent a real mail back to a distributor and they send you disks in the post ffor a fairly small charge.
Some shareware was so good the magazines had to cover it (for example, doom)
Also i think there just werent as many big budget titles back then (on PC),
Consoles probably had most of the money.
elite 2 was massive, but still only 1 bloke i think.
I’m doing my part to be part of the conversation by finally playing Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. It was in my library and I’ve never played it. Figured I’d check out what all the fuss is about without dropping $70 bucks.
People never usually never (updating since absolute statements not best to make) vote with their wallet and gaming industry is way too big for people voting with their wallet to even matter, since it’s not a niche hobby. So bad press is the best outcome possible.
I also have a backlog of games and my friend just spun up his Minecraft server again, so my friend group havr been playing that a lot. My coworker took a day off to play Dragons Dogma 2. I have no desire to play that game rn.
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