Wasting away hours with Ostriv. Alpha/ea or not. It’s not stressing at all, in default even very slow and can be paused. Goes great with an audio book 👌
Alas activity slowed down a lot recently. Which is not very surprising considering the dev lives in a freakin warzone :-/
Just imagine, the citizens of Fallout and the Elder Scrolls likely don’t bathe nearly as often as we’d want them. Just imagine how badly Belethor must smell of rotten cheese, or the amount of piss you’d find on raiders and the shit in their pants when they die.
I’m down with the film, I would actually like to pay to see a new movie, seems like all we get anymore are reboots and basically or just a bunch of the same stuff over and over that executives already know they’re going to make money on.
Even if this movie’s crap, it’ll still be worth it to see something new.
I mean, personally it just feels like there’s too many games. And consequently too many game studios.
On top of that, the cleft between the production value of a triple-A game and anything not that is gotten so big that the moment you aren’t some Call of Duty or Dragon Age or something, you might as well be a 1-person hobby project that as a result has no need to keep making money as it can trivially just go at whatever pace it wants. Add that it’s not uncommon to make the vast majority of your money via an unfinished game that you can then leave unfinished so you can reduce costs while making most of the money, and you got a recipe for disaster for any A or AA development studios wanting to scrape by.
You basically got to have your own little reliable niche, while also being lean enough so you can make games with extremely little cost per game. Hence everyone turning to mobile, where exactly that MO has become established.
It helps to make games people actually want. I know that seems obvious, but so many game studios just make games that are fine, but are not exactly inspired.
I don’t have numbers on this, but I’ll bet the percentages on mobile studios struggling financially are even worse.
Plus, there may be too many games, but I’ll put an asterisk on there that there are too many long games. When so much of it is designed to keep you coming back to this one particular game over and over again, there’s less room in your life for other games that you otherwise would have been willing to buy. I’ve got a list of 14 games that came out this year or have release dates this year that I’m interested in getting around to still, on top of the 8 games that I’ve already started or finished, plus another 8 that are expected to come out this year but don’t have release dates yet…and I’m still going to spend a few hundred hours across three different fighting games that I’ve been playing for years.
You basically got to have your own little reliable niche
I think one big problem is originally. So many indie games are essentially clones of the games that the developers happened to like. Zelda-likes, rogue-likes, greyscale puzzle platformers about depression. There are literally hundreds of examples of the first two of these, and not as many but still weirdly a lot of the third. But without something to make it stand out, casual players will come across the game and think “This looks neat, but basically the same as about 4 other games in my wishlist that are already very well reviewed. Maybe if it starts getting rave reviews, I’ll add it to the queue”.
Not to paint all indie games with one broad stroke, the most novel game ideas out there are also usually from indie studios. I don’t have numbers and I don’t know about longevity, but I bet that games with novel ideas get more initial downloads
This seems like a natural evolution of the market: a period of expansion followed by saturation and contraction. And there can be no doubt that we have hit a saturation point. There has been an absolute explosion in the number of games available, largely because platforms like Steam have simplified the logistics of distribution tremendously.
On the positive side for small developers, if you look at which games are rated “overwhelmingly positive” on Steam, the vast majority are not high-end graphic-intensive AAA games. There is a huge market for lighter, innovative games that can run on a cheap laptop. For every massive Cyberpunk type games in my collection, I have three Stardew Valley, Caves of Qud, and Undertale type games.
As I get older I find I just don’t even have the time for AAA games. Other than Elden Ring, I haven’t played a AAA game in goodness knows how long. 80-100 hours of playtime is basically a year-long commitment.
I love that there are so many indie games that offer a more compact experience and seem easier to put down and pick back up. Much more my speed these days.
I agree though that we’re at a point of oversaturation. Steam is full of shovelware and barely discernable clones of crafting-survival games. But I hope the studios doing interesting work are able to survive this period so we can continue to benefit from their creativity.
I play Rimworld and Factorio. Those are 200 hours per playthrough each and I do about 2 a year for them. My Steam Deck helps a lot with the latter though. The UI for the former unfortunately does not lend itself to the smaller screen even though the game plays well.
That’s the best part! Which is why it’s weird the game is bloated with other systems and minigames that pull you away from what shoulb be the core of it: diving.
Is it just me or does this article just run on and on without actually proving whatsoever that these jobs were lost to AI?
They even acknowledge that these layoffs are mainly due to over-hiring during the pandemic. I see no concrete proof that AI had anything to do with this. Just speculation.
Does anyone else agree? Perhaps I missed something?
They do say straight away that the concept and design departments are getting slashed, now with very few human artists, all who are forced to use AI in their workflow.
The same is happening in VFX and film to some extent, though I know that from personal acquaintances and not the article.
That’s it. The rest is conflated as you say. It is a very loooong article so I didn’t finish it. Perhaps I missed the real horrors at the end of it.
It’s not a good article. I was following along until, 5 minutes in, it suddenly decided to be detailing and describing exactly what AI and LLMs are. Like, long after showing some of the ways it’s hurting the industry, presumably to pad words.
For every shitty article pushing AI hype out there, there’s a shittt article pushing AI hate. Extremism generates clicks.
I thinks there are some nuggets of good information in there. The bits on first-hand accounts from former and current Activision employees, and on how it’s mostly the concept artists that are hurt is interesting. But you really have to wade through a mound of shit to get there, and I genuinely don’t have the patience to wade through the second half and see if there any more truth in this soft mound of turd that Wired called journalism.
But you really have to wade through a mound of shit to get there, and I genuinely don’t have the patience
I’ll ask ChatGPT to pull out the key takeaways for me so I can have an unreliable summary of a tedious article.
For anyone interested, here’s what I got. I vouch for none of it.
Sure, here are the key takeaways from the article:
Workplace Changes Post-Pandemic: Many companies are reevaluating their workplace practices and considering hybrid work models as a permanent option.
Employee Expectations: Workers are increasingly valuing flexibility, remote work options, and better work-life balance, influencing employers to adapt their policies.
Talent Attraction and Retention: Companies are focusing on how to attract and retain talent through flexible work arrangements and enhanced benefits.
Impact on Office Spaces: There’s a shift in how office spaces are used, with a trend towards creating collaborative and social spaces rather than traditional workstations.
Technology Integration: Businesses are investing in technology to support remote and hybrid work environments effectively.
These points highlight the evolving nature of work environments and the adjustments organizations are making to meet new expectations and technological advancements.
wired.com
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