The main problem is that its not enough to be competitive with Steam at this point... you need to put out something so good that it give people enough of a reason to leave the comfort of Steam... you need Steam and then another layer of goodness on top of Steam.
This is the same issue that a lot of MMOs had when trying to become a WoW killer. You not only needed to have pretty much everything Blizzard put into the game, but more on top because otherwise why would anyone bother to leave the comforts of Azeroth to play something that is maybe marginally better, or a possibly worse experience?
Yeah... A new store would need to have a handful of killer apps and significant feature superiority over Steam, all on release, just to have a chance at being a successful competitor. And it would probably need to maintain that momentum for a decent amount of time, and it would probably also need a fuckup on Valve's part.
Freakin EA didn't achieve it, freakin Sony didn't bother trying it, Epic dropped a fuckton of cash just to barely move the needle. I can't imagine what it would take.
Well, maybe? A Steam competitor could try what Epic did and offer better deals. This time to publishers and players if they actually want customers. Or they could try to offer things Steam doesn't. Or they could just try for parity and see if it works? We haven't seen a platform with parity yet so maybe people would want a new option?
The thing is Amazon dosent exatcly need to be competetive.heck they could make it basicaly a Amazon prime semi-exclusive platform for games basicaly competing with xbox game pass instead of steam or with both of them at once
My guess it’s just an internal name to boost morale, inside joke sort of thing. Many software projects do that. Would be funny if that was the name though
They already have one where the put most of the prime games called “Amazon Games App”. So if “Vapor” is something new it is more of another another launcher.
If they however just update the game app to also be a store front, it be fine I guess. I’m not thrilled about everyone needing there own launcher, but Amazon already has one, so can’t really blame them for spicing it up a bit, to be at they other launchers level.
I’d give it a zero out of ten just for being an RPG with a single save slot. They failed at the starting line. The got the core of RPGs completely wrong. Taking a shit on it with MTX seems like this was deliberate self sabotage
Star Citizen is a game that’s been in development forever, all while attracting money in forms of donations and sales of in-game ships. A single-player game by the same devs, Squadron 42, is a somewhat similar story, except that people can’t even play it yet (as far as I remember).
A whale is a tern that often means someone/something that brings you the substantial part of your revenue, so in case of the games above, whales would be the players that spend most money on the in-game ships or donations to support development.
The “whale fracking operation” in this context probably means that the entire trailer is a yet another bait for the community to go crazy and bring in the money so that the devs don’t starve and finally deliver finished products.
The punchline is, however, that it’s likely not gonna happen anyway lmao
I’d guess that the idea here is that a “whale” is someone who will spend a lot of money on something. Historically, catching an (actual) whale meant that you’d caught something that was very valuable; my guess is that this is where the phrase came from. Whales were valuable because at the time, they were an economically-reasonable place to get oil. Fracking (or hydraulic fracturing) is a way to extract oil from the ground.
It’s a bit of a stretch, but I can see where they’re coming from. A “whale fracking operation” is not a standard term that I’ve ever heard before, though I get what the guy probably meant.
Oh yeah I took it to just be wordplay, interpreting wordplay is still sometimes stupid hard for me, even despite the fact that I speak English at a near-native level and can understand each word individually.
It’s a good question how “whale” ended up having this particular meaning. I was in the games industry for way too long and first saw it used in the context of big spenders in freemium mobile games, but I have a vague memory that it’s used in the same way in the gambling / casino world. Your guess for the history sounds pretty believable, and it seems like the ginormous size of whales could play a part? Big spenders stand out from the “small fish”
Hopefully this showcase is successful enough to become a tradition. It would be nice to have an indie-focused showcase that doesn't have to juggle their time between the games, advertisements, and sponsors.
“OMG, those nerds have had 20 full seconds to talk? WRAP IT UP”
(for those who don’t know Game Awards really did this. The few acceptance speeches that were there were very short, and winners were all told to “WRAP IT UP” via teleprompter and cut with music. 11 minutes of them talking in total, for a 3-hour-long show)
Although I don’t understand the appeal of Leon in a g-string, I also understand that Capcom didn’t make the mod.
Heads up capcom, the religious conservatives of the world are angry that kids are playing games and not praying. Your reputation is already in the sewers.
In a separate slide that’s explained a little more fully, the company adds that the impact of mods on their reputation isn’t just the result of someone stripping Leon Kennedy down to his knickers. Players who install mods only to suffer performance problems such as crashes, freezing or save data corruption can end up turning to Capcom for support, which can then eat up workload and development budget that might otherwise be spent on creating higher-quality games.
While it’s hard to imagine anyone finding goofy mods swapping cartoon characters or kids’ TV characters for grisly monsters all that scandalous - something that Capcom seems to recognise by acknowledging that “the majority of mods can have a positive impact on the game”
Oh yes, because everyone knows. They say one thing it totally won't morph into something new afterwards. Also how do you imagine they will "restrict" the modding? By making the game more tamperproof and harder to mod. So while it may not be "prevented" they will basically make the only mods around texture swaps or some shit.
They probably spend fractions of a percent of their profits on moderation. We’re talking like 0.01%. Half the time it’s cycling college grads through 18 month contracts that they terminate so they can pay them less and less each time (Source: Worked at Microsoft, and they’re infamous for this. Hell, QA for Microsoft’s game division make about 50 cents above minimum wage in BC.)
I've worked in software support for a decade and saying "We can't support you because you modified this" is pretty standard. And with automated replies they don't take too much support time.
Require customers to email support, require a log file, have your log files show if mods are installed, auto reply that the customer should reinstall the game without mods and see if the issue persists.
If you want to get really snarky, figure out who wrote the mods and cc them on the reply saying "For your convenience we have included the authors of the installed mods on this email so you can work with them to resolve your issue."
Yeah that logic on their part is horseshit, anyone savvy enough to mod a game that isn’t mod friendly knows that if they have instability that’s on them for modding in the first place. All the times I completely hosed my Skyrim install with mods, or my Cities: Skylines install with mods, I never once thought about contacting the game maker for support. So to act like across the board modding will cause a flood of support requests is dishonest.
I killed my Cyberpunk game trying to mod it. I just changed the installation directory, re-download, and loaded from cloud save when I got sick of trying to fix it. It’s so easy to recover from stuff like that nowadays.
Exactly, if you hose your self, uninstall, delete the folder entirely and redownload. It’s a cope out to point to mods as increasing demands for technical support. If handled right modding can breath longevity and extra interest in your games. Shit, some of the most popular games on the market started out as mods originally.
Tone deaf companies will continue missing the point.
Look at the Sims 4 support website, is a good start to see that a lot of people will 100% ask questions like, " Completely moded action, has a bug. How to fix it? I don’t play with any mods I promise."
So personally I don’t have any higher hopes for the Capcom audience, but credit to EA at least they just shrug their shoulders and answer " First completely remove your mods, clean the cache files and repair the game"
Then just impliment some automatic message before anyone in support is contacted. Something like “If you installed mods in your game, the first step is to uninstall them. If it still works, reinstall the game. If it’s still not working after that, THEN we’ll help”
Maybe worded a little more professionally, but just an automatic trouble-shooting message that’s gonna be every support person’s first response anyway
I guess it depends on what reviews were reading or even if you were reading them. I will give it to you that it rated pretty highly but I'm fairly certain most of the reviews I read at launch talked about the bugs, some even mentioned how pointless the open world was since it was just pointless set dressing.
This guy unabashedly loved the base game when it came out. So yeah, I don’t really trust his opinion, but it’s not inconsistent for him to praise new content for a beloved game.
That’s my thing with RPS. They have extreme opinions and while I do disagree with their statements, they’re always entertaining and I always go, “I see your perspective”.
I like it!
They’re also the very few game sites that give attention to indie games, or write creative pieces about specific elements in games. The author Sin Vega does great long form articles about interesting game mechanics.
Have you played it? Aside from the horrible buggy condition it launched in (most of which is fixed now), it's still an absolutely fantastic game. The story, the music, the character development, are all spectacular, IMO. Honestly, it's in the top 5 for me.
I thought it was really shallow. Nothing seemed to matter, the city was supposed to be one of the main protagonists, but it was just cery shallow, driving is the least fun i've ever had in a game like that, to the point that i never drove anywhere, npc's where a joke, so was the police. Most of the time it was just a Bethesda like "collect garbage and shut up" game. The music and artstyle i found fantastic, the sound design in general was very memeroble, but the game felt shallow and dead.
It feels exactly like Witcher 3 with cars, guns, and less janky combat. There’s a lot of people who think Witcher 3 is the best game ever made. I think CP2077 is better than Witcher 3. Of course, I’m that guy who doesn’t really love Witcher 3.
Of course, my favorite games are Bethesda “collect garbage and shut up” games. I play them for the story (feel like I’m getting judged for reading Playboy now)
I have tried to play Witcher 3 in several different stages but I just get incredibly bored and drop it. I genuinely cannot understand what people see in it.
Good thing I didn’t let that lead me to ignoring CP2077 because I liked it a lot. It does have the pointless crafting grind from Witcher 3 but if I just ignore that it’s fine.
I am just one people, so I only speak for me. What kept me engaged in Witcher 3 was the dark and interesting world and the stories the game tells. I really love that about the game! I recommend playing Witcher 3 and Dragons Dogma back to back: one has this rich and interesting world with so many interesting stories and people in it and the other has this great combat system I’d love if those games had a baby!
Basically me, too. I can do 4 or 5 playthroughs of Skyrim and enjoy the hell out of it and want more, but I only reached “late-ish-game” in Witcher 3 once in 4 or 5 attempts… and even then burn out.
The bugs aren’t even the main problem. The problem was that the game was marketed as “every single decision you make could have massive impacts on the story” and it turns out there’s only one mission near the beginning that can change depending on what you do leading up to it and that’s it. You can make the game completely bug free and it wouldn’t change that the game did not live up to the promises.
That being said, I did enjoy kinda enjoy the game once I accepted it for what it was. Someday, I hope to play the game they were talking about when they were promoting this one.
It is still one of the best games. It didn’t work on outdated consoles, that was the only flaw to complain about. Oh and it wasn’t gta, but that’s a positive in my book.
It’s also soon to be astroturfed to hell and back with “omg let people enjoy things” and the “stop having FUN” comic any time people mention how dogshit this is.
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
Haven’t heard of paralives. The one I’m familiar with is “Life by You” from Paradox. I’m hoping for cities skylines integration, which is why I have my eye on that one, even if it is a different developer it’s the same publisher so there’s hope…
(Sorry if you briefly saw a billion duplicate comments from me— Memmy suddenly crashed and when it reopened it seems to have just kept reposting again and again. I think I deleted all the copies now)
RIP Maxis. Who knows what kinds of awesome stuff we could have had. Oh well, at least Cities Skylines 2 is on the way. Haven’t played a Sims game in a long time but had such a blast with the earlier entries in the series.
Not just pausing; it's poor value for the customer to not have an offline mode for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is longevity, because their servers won't be there forever.
never know when your internet just decides to go down for an hour. happened to me 2 nights ago and i didnt even notice until i tried looking at the dlc store (i was playing rock band 4)
It’s kind of bullshit to call people impatient if they buy a game when the publisher says the game is ready for release. That’s on the punisher, not the consumer. While everyone is fine with pushing the blame on the consumer for buying games at release, I’m over here shaking my fist at the publisher. I get the whole idea of being upset that purchasing on release is perpetuating poor practices, but don’t be sloppy with your aim. This is squarely on the publisher.
But it will keep happening regardless - so you can either keep falling for it and screaming it’s not your fault, or wise up and start having a bit more patience and buying games later.
It’s kind of bullshit to call people impatient if they buy a game when the publisher says the game is ready for release.
At this point…you’re contributing to the cycle of buggy releases. Yes, the responsible gamers absolutely can call out the dumbasses who still pre-order games.
You might think that fist shaking will make a publisher change. Look at the history of buggy game releases. It’s extensive. Look at all that fist shaking.
Publishers are run by people. People respond to incentives. Business is incentivized to gain dollars.
If, for example, no one gave publishers dollars until trusted reviewers verified no bugs / issues, the publishers would be incentivized to release polished products. (note, trusted reviewers may not be the ideal solution, but hopefully illustrates the concept)
Even if customer isn’t to be blamed as you claim being voluntarily ignorant despite past trends at the very least makes them an idiot. And the type to get swindled by everyone since they take everything at face value.
This your first day in the real world? Devs have been releasing games in this state since like 2013 (not including the gaming collapse of the 80’s) regularly.
If you still trust developers to claim a game is ready and then release it as such, then you’re gullible and will fall for anything.
You want the system fixed?
DONT PREORDER
Wait for actual reviews, not the “I played the tutorial and then made this video so I could beat the other YouTubers, 7/10.” Two weeks or so gives the passionate reviewers to play the whole game and give their opinion.
(This one is where you morons keep fucking up) If the game isn’t up to your standards… DONT FUCKING BUY IT! Buying shitty products tells the devs and publishers that you’re willing to spend money on a heap of garbage! You know what they’ll do next time? That’s right! More garbage!
Stop trying to blame the system because you’re a shitty consumer who will hand over their money for a promise and no second thought.
Stop. Buying. The. Crap. Products.
If this was housing or medical I’d be calling for regulation, this is video games. A luxury good. Just don’t pay money for garbage and they’ll be forced to make better products to get our money.
Not even a good dev reputation is enough anymore. I’ve avoided a lot of wasted money by just letting people QA the game for a few months. How good the game is and how much I want it get factored in and then I decide when I want to buy it and at what sale price.
If it’s a franchise I love and the game gets good reviews, only then will I buy it completely new for 70 USD. Anything less and I either wait for patches to make the game what it should have been or just wait for a Steam 9.99 sale on the GOTY edition.
Unfortunately a trend I’ve noticed is a game will come out busted, get dropped to like 40 bucks a month in cause it’s shit, then when it’s finally patched a year later to launch day expectations they bump the price back up to its original value.
The system is so fucked and it works cause people will willingly pay to be QA testers.
You wait for a sale and not only do you pay less, you get a patched version of the game, with mods available, often with DRM removed or toned down, walkthroughs and wikis already matured, and depending on how long you wait, your hardware might have evolved allowing you to experience the game better than you could at release.
But it doesnt hurt the industry enough to notice or care, because the vast majority of gamers are idiots who continue to throw buckets of money at game devs, often while begging for more pointless DLCs so they can throw even more at it,
and until the little gremlins with fat wallets and minimal sense see the light, we’re just gonna have to sit back and watch all the worst shit continue to get ever more worse.
And of all the hubris to want to rock up to a company that is over 125 years old and still going strong to tell them you would know better how to run their company than them.
It’s really hard for humans to imagine things at that scale, but Microsoft is so many orders of magnitude larger than Nintendo that whatever Microsoft (and other mega tech companies like Apple and Google) does the entire global international finance system feels it.
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.
With all the studio buyouts, closures, layoffs, etc to pile on top of all the usual greedy macrotransaction crap - it’s really hard to give a shit about games right now. Seriously, the only upcoming game I’m even remotely interested in is Tiny Glade.
The indie/pseudo-indie space still has a lot of great games. And the reception to those are vital for convincing the few remaining funding sources to “take a risk” on their next game.
But that is also not what the keighleys are. They are basically E3 in that it is about the big publishers and platform owners doing big announcements and a select few smaller studios being allowed to pad things out and get cut if Kojima decides he wants another jerk off session.
But I assume there will be a Steam demo event of some form during this (it feels like we have one of those every week now). There are also actual indie groups that do showcases around the same time. And THOSE are a spectacular time where it is clear people love the games they are working on. Also it is usually a great contrast to “all dudes, all the time” on the keighleys and actually having developers on the indie showcases.
I got badges for PAX this year, first time since pre covid, and was really excited. After I bought them though I was like “Why did I buy these, there are literally no games coming out”. Hoping the indie scene will be great though
Haven’t been to pax in years, but the indie corner was alway my favorite part anyway. So many games to play I’ve never heard about, the lines to play are usually much shorter and you get to talk to someone who’s directly working on the game so they are super passionate about it and happy to have people there.
Yeah last time I was there I met the American truck simulator guys, they were really cool, and learned about a lot of newer games. Definitely a fun area.
I’ve known all year that the game I was most looking forward to was the new trails. Sad/disappointing that were halfway through the year and I can honestly say that there’s almost nothing already announced that excites me, I was hoping to see something that would excite me but alas that wont be the case. And I do play indies as well as bigger budget games and I’m not depressed or mentally unwell (I’ve had people armchair diagnose me on Reddit for not being interested in games before)
The whole situation just made me believe Sean Murray really wanted to make a cool game but he got overwhelmed by the media attention and started running his mouth. Maybe he felt like he had to overpromise and say yes to everything he was asked? Hello Games was still an indie studio before it got all that attention.
If he had done it in bad faith it would have been much easier to cut his losses and run away with the money. Nearly 10 years of expansions wouldn’t come out of it if not for legitimate passion.
It also made their next game announcement pretty funny.
it might just be me but I come back to this game about once a year, play for about 4 hours before feeling like it feels almost exactly the same? I see these huge update drops but they don’t ever feel like anything
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