Hmmmm, a bit confusing it’s a dating sim if it’s meant to be about an AroAce person, but it’s somehwat understandable if somebody is trying to figure themselves out.
Might check it out once it’s complete (early access is too hard to trust especially with a newly made studio).
Disclaimer: I’ve not played the game and don’t know if it’s accurate but it could be about going on dates with the expectation of it just being a friend date but then the other person wants more and stuff like that. Like how in BG3 you just want to dance a bit with Wyll and he randomly tries to kiss you
I think they’re trying to explain how this works in a dating sim.
This isn’t the first game to do it… Instead of trying to weave through the choices to date a character or characters, you weave through the options to avoid dating without getting a game over (or whatever game mechanic they use)
This just reminding that Postal is the cause of all the violence because we played games on certain hardware. I’m pretty sure at the time if they had ISIS terrorist attacks they would blamed Postal as the cause.
Of course there are innocent people, what the fuck.
Be gleeful about it failing to sell, yes. But don’t be cruel. Don’t be glad that people who did their jobs have lost their jobs because a CEO wants to preserve investors’ profits. All the bad decisions that made the game what it was, in a huge company like EA or Ubisoft, were probably because of upper management and not because the people who lose their jobs did their jobs poorly.
Dunk the game on reviews, tell your friends it sucks, hell even laugh at the grumbling of the pre-orderers or the captive audience of fans who will die on the hill. But don’t be cruel.
I have no personal vendetta against any of these individual Devs.
My stake in this is slightly different. Like, when I heard about how Blizzard treated it’s own staff and then the whole sexual harassment thing popped up, I was done with them. From that point on, that company didn’t deserve to exist and I blacklisted them. So i try to keep up with gaming related news.
More studios have joined that list since, for various reasons, and I find myself mostly playing indie titles from small upcoming developers now. I feel better about that.
I do believe we should be(e) kind. But I also believe kindness is a two way street.
But you see how this is different right? I boycott the vast majority of AAA publishers too, for the same reasons. That doesn’t mean I cheer when they do mass layoffs. It doesn’t sound like you do either.
I know of some specific instances of like community managers or a single employee clapping back. Apparently they speak for every employee and the entire studio? Is that how this works?
If anyone is interested. This is The Sims 2 with DLC from an EA “giveaway” some years ago. Just installed this yesterday and still haven’t found any problems. No EA bullshit and all the DLC. github.com/voicemxil/TS2-Starter-Pack
I would strongly suggest downloading the standalone installer and the install files (on a different github, you can see the address when using the web installer), in case this gets taken down, which isn’t exactly unlikely, now that the game isn’t abandonware anymore.
Installation is a tiny bit more complicated this way though. You need to manually unpack the content of the archives into your desired install folder before launching the installation, which then needs to install into this folder.
“Numerous studies demonstrate that without fair hiring practices in place, certain groups of people are often favored over others due to unconscious biases.
A study by the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley found that applicants with white-sounding names received 9% more callbacks compared to those with African-American-sounding names, despite having similar qualifications[1]. In some companies, this gap widened to nearly 19%[1].
Research from the UK showed that white candidates were favored in about 47% of hiring tests, with ethnic minority candidates needing to send twice as many applications to receive the same number of callbacks[6]. A more recent study by the University of Oxford found that candidates from minority ethnic backgrounds had to send 80% more applications to get the same results as white British applicants[6].
Gender bias has also been documented. A study on science faculty hiring revealed that identical applications randomly assigned male or female names resulted in men being rated as more competent and hireable, and even offered higher starting salaries[6].
These biases persist even in organizations committed to diversity. Research suggests that firms may unconsciously favor candidates from privileged backgrounds, such as those able to take unpaid internships, which introduces socioeconomic bias[7].
Without fair hiring practices, these studies consistently show that white candidates, males, and those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds tend to be favored in the hiring process, highlighting the need for interventions to reduce bias and promote equity in recruitment.”
That’s the thing though, these biases against people based on their ethnicity and gender already exist, whether the people doing the hiring realize it or not. The best people may lose out on job opportunities because of these qualities. The whole point of DEI is to compensate for these biases.
Then that company just missed out on a qualified employee, and said employee probably dodged a bullet by not working for a company that would engage in not hiring someone based on their race or ethnicity.
“Guess that minority shouldn’t work there then. It’s a good thing we have fair, gainful, and plentiful employment where every company with a hiring bias is perfectly balanced out by another company with the opposite bias. I sure am glad our perfect egalitarian society ensures that the minority’s kids are fed clothed and housed until they find work at an exactly comparable company - with the same exact pay - that hires minorities.”
This isn’t unique to any company. This is systemic and pervasive through our entire culture and society. Countering it requires education and effort, not ignoring the problem and experiences of those it effects. The status quo is not a fair playing field.
Hi. You’ve gotten some very good responses from the community so I’m going to leave the thread up for now, but please be aware that pushing more will likely result in removal or a temp ban. Thanks.
@PlainSimpleGarak@TheRtRevKaiser one white dude to what I suspect is another: be better than this. You get to say you don’t care because of many privileges you enjoy. Most everyone else has to care about this because of how it affects them. No one is even asking you to champion the cause but could you at least not actively be a dick about it?
That tells me you’re either a cishet, white, male, or you’re woefully uneducated and selfish. You’re totally in favor of development crunch too, aren’t you?
While it can be tempting (especially with posts like this one) if you cannot respond to a comment or post that is not be(e)ing nice in a productive manner, please just report it so that a moderator can deal with it.
You’re saying you don’t wanna buy a season pass for your new triple AAA game that costs $50 and gives you a new cosmetic skin every month for the next 2 months?
Honestly, I think the bar for games these days is totally warped. People expect these cinematic masterpieces with ultra-realistic graphics in gigantic 3d landscapes with massive autonomy, extensive character creation options, full voice acting, juiced up complex mechanics, and zero bugs, and they want it yesterday. If it costs more than a full tank of gas they’ll say it’s too expensive, and if it isn’t fully patched on day 1 they’ll call it unfinished.
It seems almost obvious that simpler 2D games are a better and more satisfying alternative in this landscape. No wonder AAA studios seem like they’re racing to the bottom.
How are you supposed to get all that and also have a decent story or a sense of cohesion? We need to simplify.
Paradox's games don't really do storytelling in a traditional sense. They're strategy and managememt games. Some of them are pretty damn good at creating stories dynamically through gameplay, or providing a frame upon which you can create your own stories, but they were never intended to be narrative experiences
What’s that meme? Hold on… I can dust it off since it’s still applicable. Oh, right! “I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less, and I mean it!”
I don’t need it to be super epic in scope and graphically mind blowing. I just want a tight, focused, well thought out game that isn’t buggy af. And it doesn’t have to be flawless day 1, but there should be some pretty good communication and patches in the first month.
“We need to simplify” indie games are doing just fine. It’s almost like super massive studios take much more money to make games with less replay value.
And who expects cinematic masterpieces? Most gamers skip the cutscenes and all dialog lol
Studios make the games pretty for pre sale hype. Getting people interested without game play.
Agree. The thing with realistic graphics is that it brings in soooo much complexity on a systems level that it becomes the center point everything else revolves around.
Imaging a 2d game vs a 3d game. Alone trough that you have a complete third dimension wich you have to account for.
A whole book full of new bugs are possible now.
And with realistic graphics the brain now expects the rules of the world to be realistic too.
My character looks photorealistic so, of course, the environment needs to look photorealistic too otherwise we go into uncanny valley territory.
So next thing the interaction needs to look realistic too. Think walking trough a forrest and the player character pushing leaves out of his way.
That is just to fucking much you need to test and invest time in to be flexible anymore.
The simple answer here is better art direction. Photorealism is neat but not needed.
With simpler graphics it becomes cheaper to change stuff in development so it becomes more viable to experiment with creative ideas.
You can have more diverse assets because they are, potentially, cheaper/less time consuming to make and they don’t take as much space.
Like 1 photorealistic tree needs as much discspace as 2 trees with half the polygons.
In the and gaming has become a business and people got involved that don’t play games.
For them it is just an investment and no different to a car or a garden hose. And for those people the only viable way to solve a problem is to trow money at it.
Which worked but only for making things grander not making it more interesting. For that you need people that solve problems with creativity.
And you get people who solve problems with creativity when there is less money because you have no other choice but to solve it like that.
That is clearly not the whole picture but a part of it IMHO.
I think at this point, if you are a gaming enthusiasts and are informed about the “scene” there is just no reason to buy AAA(AAAAAAA) games anymore.
And also no need to be angry about it. Just ignore them and talk about the indies that made a change. It is more productive to have that dominate the conversation than what sucks.
Because talking about shit is still advertisement for shit.
the recent avatar game is a great example of actually hitting the mark visually and superficially (probably one of the better looking games I’ve ever played) and the physics and gameplay in the world are pretty damn good. but people complain the story is boring. and yeah it’s not amazing. I don’t think it’s terrible, and it’s a game really built to explore the environment rather than complete missions.
it’s near impossible to get that perfect game that hits every single button possible. I truly think we gamers need to settle down a bit as a whole. Sure buggy messes that are unplayable are not something we should tolerate, but I think we need to stop treating everything that isn’t perfect as a pile of shit
They are part of the studios… point was “the bar” is “fun/interesting”. The vast majority of people that purchase games don’t have a bar as defined by the content I originally replied to.
I completely agree that business ghouls doing business ghoul things make studios make worse games… doesn’t really affect my point though… studios are not making games based on a “bar” set by the consumers as described in the original post…
This is a shame, I haven’t played a sims game in a while and I remember them quite fondly. The latest EA sims stuff has just been utter micro transaction slop, or at least last I checked. I hate to see a smaller studio that’s not working through one of bastard publishers get hit like this.
I’m a lot more patient with paradox than I am with other publishers. Their focus still seems on producing interesting games rather than chasing “maximized revenue”. There are realities to being a publisher though. if a studio is failing to produce something and your financials are limited, there’s only so much risk you can take on extending deadlines, and writing something off for a quick boost to financials is a alluring sirens call.
I have my issues with how paradox studios design is affected by their DLC model, but I don’t think there’s a better way to bring in ongoing revenue to fund further development.
It’s a mess, all of it, but it is a results of the context and system they exist with in, not necessarily the will of those making the calls at paradox. Paradox tends to do a better job of existing with in the system without making pure slop than other big publishers, so they have my patience for that.
The latest EA sims stuff has just been utter micro transaction slop, or at least last I checked.
Feels like the only valid way to play the Sims these days is to pirate it. No one wants to pay $500 for the complete DLC collection, and if you don’t have that you’ll always be plagued with fomo and possible mod conflicts.
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