I’m pretty sure the few overpaid execs that are “fuck you” rich are still there, and they’re probably richer than ever. However now they probably consider themselves too important to park with normal people. It’s all about private jets and helicopters.
Tells a lot about this guy and his ilk that he thinks you measure a healthy company to how many assholes actively flaunt their money with shallow luxury shit.
The quality of games did not improve, in fact game quality and diversity has deteriorated. The quantity of content has dropped off as well. Graphics fidelity and production costs have skyrocketed though.
Graphics are so superficial when it comes to games anyhow, why would anyone pay more for a pretty waste of time?
Edit: i am talking about AAA games here, obv there has been an extreme proliferation of indie titles
Diversity and quality are both going to be difficult to measure objectively, and I’d argue both are still in better supply today. Quantity is far easier to prove objectively. Not only are there just far more games out there, but try some like for like comparisons of some of your favorite long-running franchises on How Long to Beat. Assassin’s Creed II was 20-25 hours; Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is 35-64. Halo 2 was 9-12; Halo Infinite is 11-20. Baldur’s Gate 3 is close to as long as its two predecessors combined. Call of Duty is three games in one now.
The value of a game’s Quantity is directly proportionate to its Quality though, starfield and its 1000s of repetitive planets are the perfect example of this. Would any halo fan rather play 20 hours of infinite or 20 hours of halo 2…?
Yes there have been outliers of increased quality and quantity over the last decade, but in the full priced AAA space nowadays, that is the exception not the rule.
Quantity is directly proportionate to quality though
I’d disagree with that premise. It’s not like they’re making just as much game in the same amount of time. Games are taking way longer to make these days than they used to. As I’m 70+ hours into Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and nowhere near done, they could have made about 2/3 as much game as they made, and it still would have been phenomenal and worth the price. The same goes for Baldur’s Gate 3, not to say that I’m unhappy about how much of it I have.
I don’t think the high quality games are outliers. We just have so many more games coming out these days that it becomes more and more likely that we get some bangers in that volume. EA or Ubisoft may be putting out fewer games because of how long they take to make, but they’ve got more competition than they did 20 years ago.
As the end user why should i pay sympathetically for the extended dev time of a product that hasnt tangibly improved for my uses?
Yes the price ceiling of $70 does not do justice to games like KCD 2, but all that matters for the end user is perceived value. If the perceived value of any game isnt going up, then it is difficult to charge consumers an increased amount.
KCD 2 and Elden Ring are great examples of RPGs with content that fans perceive as a great value, but only AFTER playing.
Maybe KCD 3 or Elden Ring 2 can push their perceived value beyond $70, but the simple fact is that the majority of AAA games DO NOT offer an amount or quality of content that gamers would consider to be worth $70, especially with the tiering off of content with various editions, passes and DLC.
It is just subjective that you and i disagree about the amount of games that cross the value threshold of $70, but the evidence of a $0 cost increase for full priced games over the past decade or so definitely seems like evidence towards my perspective.
I wish i could pay more money for higher quality games with more content, but the advertising for these products happens within a competitive and reciprocal market, and that market has a mean perceived product value of $70.
KCD 2 and Elden Ring have essentially wasted dev time/cost creating bonus content, although the perceived value towards their brands it has created, plus the positive IP mind share, will pay off for them down the road with units sold i am sure.
As the end user why should i pay sympathetically for the extended dev time of a product that hasnt tangibly improved for my uses?
That’s not the point I was making. The price you’re paying is the same, but they’re delivering more for the same price, which you argued they were not. Then you said that quality dipped when they made more, which I argued it did not, and the reason for that is because they’re spending more time making it, so they don’t have to sacrifice quality to build more game, because they can give it as much attention as they’ve always given it but for longer.
Yes both very subjective. Accessibility and streamlining gameplay has seemed to be the focus. Developing unique, novel but also enjoyable new gameplay experiences? (the reason i believe most people game) That more or less ended with the Wii, Ps3 and 360 era of consoles.
I will, respectfully, still disagree with that assertion. Just because Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, and the like are on their umpteenth entry, does not mean that no more unique and novel games are being made.
I would argue that AAA full priced gaming space is not where that innovation has been happening in recent years, it has mostly been with lower priced indies.
As soon as they showed the JoyCon mouse control I was hoping there would be support for standard mice. It still doesn’t do anything to steer me toward a Switch 2 over a Steam Deck, but it’s an excellent move for accessibility.
Yeah it’s about use-case. Owning 2 handhelds from the same generation really only makes sense if you collect consoles. I didn’t buy a Steam Deck because I got gifted a Switch Lite. I’m covered as far as handhelds go until there are new games I can’t play. I would argue most people think this way.
Your perspective is way off. It sounds like you’re young, single (no kids, at least), and doing well for yourself. Which is great!
I have a pretty well-paying job, at least enough for my family and I to live comfortably. But I also have adult responsibilities, including taking care of said family. Sure, on paper, I could feasibly afford to get both, but there’s no sense in getting two systems that–to my earlier point–seem to serve identical functions. Especially not when I’d also like to go out with my wife, prep a high schooler for college, help my younger child with severe special needs with everything he needs to thrive, sometimes go on vacation, do some other hobbies, responsibly maintain vehicles and things around the house, and so on. All that on top of purchasing frugally (every single piece of furniture in my living room, for example, we got secondhand for free).
So yes, it’s very much an either/or decision for me, as it is for a lot of people.
Funny you mention it, the next large purchase I have planned is a gaming PC to replace my aging 2018 laptop, and I plan on going all-in on Linux. From what I can tell, AMD seems to be the way to go, and as a long time Fedora user, I’m interested in Nobara.
On one hand difficulty settings seem good because it gives players choices.
But on the other this genre is meant to challenge you. And for me if Dark Souls hadn’t been one difficulty only and hard was the way it is now I probably would have never beaten it on the hard difficulty. But I persevered and did something that felt great because of that design choice.
They’re gonna have to have a main cast who is just a literal chimpanzee in a vacation shirt flinging actual shit all the time just to achieve any level of unrealistic over the top satire. The real world is just too ridiculous for anything less to be their usual exaggerated caricature.
Nintendo are trying to avoid a shortage and scalpers at launch, which is why they are producing the device in large numbers before having officially unveiled it. Given how highly anticipated this console has been for years and how many people have seen it or at least parts of it by sheer necessity, the leaks are unsurprising.
They were also wise to not have revealed the Switch 2 any earlier, because it would have jeopardized sales of the Switch 1. Enough companies have made this mistake in the past. Leaks - which the vast majority of their overwhelmingly non-techie customer base will barely even hear about - are a small price to pay for the obvious economic advantages of this approach.
I’m not listening to any podcasts. I think these are pretty obvious conclusions that anyone can easily reach on their own with the available information.
i heard very similar remarks on Jeff Gerstmann’s podcast on Tuesday. He’s an old GameSpot/Giant Bomb dude. Sorry if my original reply came off as snarky in any way, reading back i can see how maybe it comes off like i’m accusing your response of being not your own.
I’m actually super curious how easy/hard it’ll be to grab a console at launch. I’m also very curious if the switch 2 will have a stable launch without any weird launchday bugs like the original had.
What kind of bugs did the console have at launch? I must admit, I wasn’t taking it particularly seriously when it came out and didn’t pay much attention to it.
I actually don’t know how widespread the issues were or if they were overblown, but I remember seeing them pop up for the first couple of months after release. I didn’t really hear about any problems after that, so I don’t really know.
My assumption is that the likelihood of these issues repeating is very slim. They probably based the software and hardware off of the existing switch, so I would think it would be less buggy and more refined, but I guess we’ll have to see.
They were also wise to not have revealed the Switch 2 any earlier, because it would have jeopardized sales of the Switch 1. Enough companies have made this mistake in the past.
I feel like this is really a consequence of what many called the “bad deal” the SAG/AFTRA merger was years ago. When the union can effectively exclude you from the bargaining process and arbitrate you to it, what’s the point? They’re behaving like a cartel, and not like a union. This is not praxis, brothers and sisters!
If this is true... Oof...
Like, imagine losing your job because somebody decided to drop over 70 milion in something like this... I bet everybody affected would have predicted that this needed to be canned way earlier. Yet the people responsible for this unforced error will be largely unaffected because since business is accepted to be a gamble at times, I guess that means you get to make stupid mistakes that ruin hundreds of livelihoods for no reason and just go oops, my bad, we'll have to do a tactical restructuring I guess.
Seriously, the first trailer was unanimously received with "another one of these games?" reactions. There is no excuse for any dollar spent after that! Anybody could have told you it was a miss! Aaaarrrgh.
Also much less important but still frustrating, knowing that so many properties under SEGA have struggled to get a budget and support, while they were spending all of the money in a fire pit instead. Now that it's been cancelled, we can say ANYTHING would have been a better use of that money. Don't ever let SEGA tell you that anything would be a bad project ever again! Oh, SEGA, you still think a localized port to modern platforms of Valkyria Chronicles 3 would be a bad project? Well let me tell you, it sure as hell wouldn't have lost DOZENS OF MILLIONS.
And in that line, nothing hurts more for me personally than knowing all of the issues that the Total War franchise has had, with products that didn't get the development time they needed, additional content policies that went way overboard with pricing, very small degree of evolution and investment between entries... And the money that could have gone to that consistently performing franchise that has no true substitute competitors was instead going to... To burn it in a pit with funny colors and masks and dances and...
Far different games though. Completely different genres and I don’t find dwarf fortress as immersive as even nethack due to it being more of a god game. It really pulls me far out of the experience when you don’t control a single character. I still find it fun but more in a strategy system way rather than an RPG.
For me Dwarf fortress is like watching TV, nethack is like reading a book.
I feel like I’ll watching some bizarre sitcom with such great stories as “dwarven child sees an elephant trample a goblin and then gets possessed, keeps making bone carvings of the scene, and then gathers all the elephant meat in a forge and kills three grown men by slapping them with meat.” I’m not anyone in that story, but it’s fun to watch.
Nethack is like getting to know the quirks of your character as they narrowly escape death.
Have you only played the Steam version? The non-steam build has Adventure mode, where you control just a single character in a turn-based roguelike. IDK why it wasn’t included with the Steam release, but it’s always been my favorite part of the game.
Almost certainly still stuck with their fork of gamebryo. On the bright side, the footage I’ve seen of Starfield suggests that they’ve actually gotten around to implementing a better animation system.
I’m not sure on the specifics of how animations work at the engine level (I know there’s stuff about animation rigs, but not much beyond that) but all their games up until now have had the same system of character animations and it consistently looked ancient. Straight from the late 90s levels.
Oh man, I remember in Oblivion how bad the third person view looked. Characters were stiff and stood perfectly upright while their limbs flailed around in nonsensical ways. I was amazed at how bad it was for a game of that gen.
Then Fallout 3 was a little better but still pretty shit. And Skyrim massively improved it, but it still wasnt up to par with games that actually put some effort into the animation systems (like GTA4).
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