I did some of my gaming for like 2 years for basically free thanks to Google’s refund, and got free gaming hardware (controllers)… call me an idiot or call me a genius, but, that was a heck of a deal.
Honestly I really like Play Pass on android. Mostly because it’s only 3usd here thanks to regional pricing and there’s a lot of great value! My issue is that Google generally sucks at keeping things going so I’d never invest anything beyond that with them.
My Steam account from 2006 is still going, all of the games work, it’s mostly the same platform but better. I don’t think Google can match that.
This. Valve is doing a lot of good. People can claim they are doing a lot of bad as well but I can’t mention many companies with purity from top to bottom.
Another article mentioned that this guy is now working for Tencent (announced in 2022). Before becoming yet another Galactus in the industry, Tencent is originally an online service provider and (mostly) an ad company.
What about barbarians trying to ruin the glorious video game empire now?
Funny how this small detail doesn’t show up in that article, where he’s only “ex-Sony boss”.
I left the living room window open for 5 minutes for fresh air.. Fucken ten cent was sat on the sofa enjoying my coffee, petting my fucken dogs be time I came back.
In gaming? Netflix is definitely at the gate with the current options they have. Apple as well with their Arcade service. Google and Amazon keep coming back but never stay long, I’m not even sure they should be in the conversation.
Tencent has been in gaming for a long time now, they’ve owned Riot since 2011. They’ve had their hand in other gaming companies many times since then. They’re well past the gate, it’s not even in their rear view anymore.
Unless they make that completely seamless behind the scenes, I can’t see that working. Most people don’t use crypto and don’t want to learn how. It also requires users to sign up for a crypto exchange, which requires people to register with a photo ID. Additionally, it is difficult to exchange exactly the amount you need to purchase something, because of how volatile the currencies are. You end up spending more than the cost of the thing you are buying, just to be sure that you have enough. And then you’re in the digital currency problem of “I want the $3 skin but the smallest package I can buy is $5 worth of V Bucks”, which always feels like a ripoff.
I’ve seen this a lot, and there are problems with it. People are not going to want to go through setting up a crypto wallet just to buy a game. People are not going to be happy with Itch.io doing it transparently behind the scenes (who knows where they are sending it to). Creators are not going to be happy with having to pay higher transaction fees. And all this would apply to all games sold on Itch, not just the spicy ones, since Mastercard and Visa would absolutely block them if they tried it.
Why not just use something like Wero (or a hypothetical global equivalent) and use direct bank to bank transfers with no payment processor acting as an intermediary?
Yeah, but it wouldn’t be realistic to say “we accept crypto now and also are refusing to comply with credit card content policies” right away anyways, because that would just lose them all their business. The better plan would be to do what they seem to be doing; comply in the short term as best they can, while simultaneously looking to branch out with the payment options they accept, so that at some point in the future credit card companies might have less leverage.
I don’t think that someone is talking about using BTC or ETH. They’re literally unusable to make purchases (multiple minute settling times and the high costs you mentioned) but any other functional L1 would work. Algorand for examply has ~3second block times with instant finality and costs a fraction of a fraction of a cent to use the network. Those fees couple be subsidised they’re so low. They’re significantly lower than a rail like Visa or MasterCard. But you’re right, implementing it so anyone can easily use and access it is key.
On the one hand, yes, it’s a solid alternative because it’s decentralized and can even be untraceable (see Monero), but on the other hand, it’s been under attack for the past years. I would disagree it’s censorship-resistant, because if you make it illegal or hard to buy and sell crypto, few would be dedicated enough to go around that. Moreover, your proposed solution would still rely on some gateway between crypto and fiat, which would be vulnerable to pressure.
Dan Olson’s documentary is as true as ever. Stop recommending an environment-destroying investment scam to people. You aren’t helping, and I’m not going to be left holding your bag.
Edit: lmao they edited their crypto hawking out of their post
You could argue that remnant is intended for multiplayer and you could argue that maybe only bg3 and stalker and really narrative driven but the truth is, anymore I tend to buy single player and stream to my friends than I do actually play mp games. The only mp game i was tempted by was Helldivers and I was just too busy at the time.
Anything else are steam deck friendly indie games. I buy a lot of those, and bought a lot even before I had a deck.
In my anecdotal experience, when I see x game is multiplayer, or live service, or just not an experience I can enjoy on my own time I tune it out. For example, I always bought Diablo games but I don’t own 4.
I also immediately think of some other big ones that I opted out of, like Wukong. People fucking love single player games when they are good games. I think the real issue is developing a good game is hard. Developing a game with dark practices and otherwise addicting (but not necessarily fun) gameplay is a much easier way to make uninspired games made by committee.
It’s just easier to point the blame at the market than actually admit that upon self reflection you realized it is best to avoid the hard part of game development.
I mean, if someone creates a game with all the options there and you just use AI as a replacement for a complex UI, it could kinda work. A game like scribblenauts could theorically implement an AI based stage creation option with the current tech already. The problem with that is that the AI wouldn’t be able to guarantee that the stage has a proper challenge level (or even that is possible to complete it), so it would also need to implement an AI that tries to beat the level as well and then keep iterating over the two until a proper stage is found.
In short: doable, for very niche cases and probably taking a very long time to complete a prompt (possibly hours).
I see AI as being more useful in things like Bethesdas radiant quest system. Theoretically an AI could generate quest and character dialog and react in unique ways to game world events. As far as game elements, machine learning is actually a pretty good way to have dynamic difficulty where the player is pushed as far as they can go and game elements are tweaked accordingly. Or the AI could even design unique quest items and names if trained right.
Plenty of applications for it but I think we’ll see it overused in some games which will lead to bland or non-cohesive elements that on the surface are fine, but don’t amount to anything unique. Like imagine cyberpunk but written by AI and it’d be mostly generic dialog with few connecting ideas. It’s not impossible for AI to get better at that though and maybe if it were only trained on other game dialog or if it gets approved by a human first, it could be incredible.
Do you guys do anything other than to pile on to shit on this game? Shit on Star Citizen? Shit on buying anything ever? Shit on Sean Murray and how naive he just was and you would just do such a better job right?
Thought this would be a cool place to talk about games. How do you not have any awareness that [removed for civility]
Makes sense though since Linux is [bad word] at running games unless you have a Steam Deck.
I recently switched my laptop over to pop os and I’ve had no issues running the games I want to play using Lutris. Hell I’d argue Linux runs old games better than windows because of lutris. I have a few games I tried running on windows 10 and no matter what I did the game would insta ctd. But after switching and installing them using a lutris config I’ve actually been able to play those games. I even thought for sure I’d lose some of the functionality of my laptop (key lights, touch screen, something) but nope it all worked straight after install.
Linux has come a long way since I last tried it ~15 years ago
Linux has come a long way since I last tried it ~15 years ago
100% this. Linux has been my daily driver since ~2005 and it seems like suddenly one day I went from playing tux racer and trying to get Skyrim to work to some degree with wine to buying games on steam with little fear of having to anything more than choose proton experimental and maybe add gamemoderun to the settings. It’s a completely different world now.
If you come across such comment, please reply to them instead of OP, maybe you will start some interesting debate instead of just try to stir conflict in the community.
If this was a reply calling on someone baselessly criticizing the game, I’d allow it, but OP just posted an article that doesn’t even criticize the game.
There was just too many derivative comments to choose from. I didn’t want to make it personal with someone. This was not directed at OP I thought (perhaps incorrectly) that that would be clear.
They hated it because it fucking sucked, dude. Just one look at the final product and you can tell you how fucked up it is. You don’t even need to play it to see it sucks; that’s how bad it fucking sucked.
SPOILERS - Please bear in mind some of the entries below might contain spoilers, proceed at your own risk
But it doesn’t separate them, or have any cover whatsoever. So if I want to find out if a quest that’s bugged for me is fixed, or other issues, I do have to read it at some point.
This is why I think they meant to spoiler tag it and didn’t (I edited it to remove actual spoiler content):
The ‘(GOAL)’ background goal for Soldiers will now unlock correctly after you spoiler kill (ENEMY) and escape the (AREA).
So you can use a sponge and soap but you can’t even chill in a tub completely naked like my man Geralt? My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
• The sudden realization that you can bathe and don't have to crunch around in weeks of dried gore
• The further realization that at least one npc mentions you stink and should probably do something about that
• Standing relatively close to a waterfall for a few minutes if you can find one, or perhaps walking at a normal pace through a really deep puddle.
• Sophisticated method — stealing a water bottle, throwing it really hard at the floor, and hoping the splashback is enough
After months of steady work, we can use the soap now, but you're going to have to give your fellow gamers a minute to get used to things before you start making other suggestions
How did I forget about that cloak!? I got that before reloading because I kept failing my attempts to steal all my money back. I didn't expect all of those to be so addictive. I loved it.
My personal favorite was the boots that grant their wearer misty step for the tradeoff of leaving all your other clothes in a pile at your starting point. Still kinda sad I couldn't snag those again.
Haven’t played fifa but understand that loot boxes are basically gambling. Arguably worse than gambling because with gambling at least you might win something “real”.
Curious though - there was a screenshot in the article where you could preview a loot box before buying - does that not make it more like “buying” the players instead of “gambling” for them?
All packs for sale in the FUT Shop have an eye icon and a button to trigger the preview. Doing that exposes its contents as if the player actually had bought the pack and opened it.
Once the player has seen the revealed cards, they may then buy the pack with either FUT Coins (the free in-game currency) or FUT Points (the premium). If they don’t like what they see, they don’t have to buy the pack. But there will now be a 24-hour wait period before they can preview another pack or buy a different one in its class. If they buy the pack, that timer immediately expires.
I obviously don’t have a deep insight into FDev’s finances. But they have pretty openly said that Elite is a foundation of the company.
And yet, they have done everything they can to kill that. Cutting back on social media spending to more or less make every single Influencer say the game is dying. Turn updates into a trickle of “You know that thing that was added two years ago? They finally added enemy NPCs around it”. And even actively screw over the people who were dumb enough to buy the ten year pass by not even providing steam keys for the pre-ordered expansion (currently on two of ten or so?) to let people take advantage of Valve’s CDN.
It is genuinely baffling. Other devs are, if anything, focusing too much on keeping the bread and butter live game “live”. Whereas FDev seem to have decided that they can do whatever to E:D and the money will keep flowing… which might be true but…
Also, should be obvious but: Lapsed E:D fan who bought the lifetime pass like an idiot.
Just to elaborate on the community streams more. Most live games have their community managers (sometimes devs) do a weekly or monthly stream where they play the game, talk about what is coming, interact with the playerbase, etc. They are almost all puff pieces, but whatever. FDev reduced the frequency of those (I forget if by half or straight to quarterly) which was IMMEDIATELY fuel for “Frontier is sunsetting Elite”. And it isn’t like they fired the community managers. They just… do less streams.
Decrease grinds. I want to play the fucken game not do chores. I drop games nowadays as soon as I have to grind. Grinds aren’t fun, they are methods of artificially increasing playtime and engagement. That doesn’t mean hand everything out, it means make the things you do for stuff varied. I didn’t think this would be so hard but over the last 20 years grinds have gotten worse not better. We should be doing away with them in favor of engaging mechanics. Instead everything is more or less the same game with different flavor texts and models. But they all have grinds.
A grind is a lapse in content. A grind is a hamster wheel in place of interesting mechanics. To grind is to toil, all in the name of throwing it away next season to start it again. If I’m purchasing entertainment, I expect to be entertained and not simply convinced I am entertained. It is not a problem that it is possible to do in a game, that much is fine if you wish. It is a problem when the developers expect you to grind hours to achieve something. It equates to nothing but a long days work at the long day factory.
Example: AC6: Fires of Rubicon allows you to purchase mech pieces in a shop for credits. These credits are handed out at mission end. You can grind “The Wall” mission in under a minute to recieve a hefty sum. Or you can just play through the story again. Thats fine within the context of the game and I can choose to grind if I want.
Diablo on the other hand expects us to literally restart every 3-4 months and do everything all over again (except the campaign itself). Which in itself is alright cause the “Immortal Realm” exists. But that effectively turns each season into a massive grind. So if you want to participate, you have no choice but to grind. Its just a little upsetting I bought a grinder and not a game.
Yeah I played for 2 hours this season, saw that I have to unlock every waypoint and do a lot of the side quests and fortresses and whatnot. On top of having to get back to certain levels so I could actually start playing the game on T3… I kinda just noped outta there
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