I am curious if the games community has anything positive to say about major publishers at this point.
It’s fun to laugh at one failure, and it’s nice we still get occasional great indie hits. But when most major publishers fail to turn out anything of interest, and even Sony is kind of reaching vanishing expectations amid remasters of remasters, it becomes hard to even suggest what to buy an unknowledgeable kid for Christmas.
I appreciate them for the effort they put into bankrupting companies that make AAA corpo slop. Ubisoft could not have stopped Ubisoft without the help of Ubisoft. If were lucky EA could hop on board and bankrupt EA by acting like EA.
God deadlock is so good though I have to say. I have hundreds of hours already. This is coming from someone who HATED mobas and would still probably never touch dota or League
Agreed. As someone who doesn’t really like shooters and never got into League or DOTA, I had mixed feelings about playing a ‘hero shooter/moba’. I’m actually blown away at how good it is. They did phenomenal job. 10/10.
It’s a invite only alpha and as I write this it’s #7 on the steam rankings of current players, 6 if you wanna exclude Banana which is it’s own hilarious thing
I don’t think there’s that many big-budget releases you can invest in if you care about Denuvo. Even the Ace Attorney games, re-releases of old DS visual novels, have been getting Denuvo’d.
The point is that it’s not just them paying the price, though. With continuous years of NO publishers putting out anything interesting, we’re at a point where people are just less interested in anything that’s coming out.
It’s a carrot and stick problem to some degree. They know now we hate microtransaction-laden live service games, but it’s harder to define what players would enjoy. Keep in mind, there’s many cases of simply letting the developers cook that haven’t worked out either.
I fully understand your first point and that is how I feel. That’s why I made my comment; I and others have been dealing with endless AAA slop that mostly hasn’t been intriguing for a long time. Even if its a certain game franchise I’m not interested in, I understand other people’s pain of it been driven into the ground with micro transactions and buggier and buggier games.
I agree when it comes to taste-specific stuff. I’m playing Steamworld Heist 2 and have Tactical Breach Wizards in my wishlist, so indie tactics games have been satisfying me - they’re certainly good and interesting, as you say.
But, those aren’t games I’d recommend to everyone. It does mean not much water cooler discussion since no one is playing the “same” games in most social circles. It used to be, a big release like Halo came out and everyone was talking about it, playing it, and discovering things together.
I mean that’s everything. There isn’t a “movie of the summer” anymore really, no I Love Lucy / Cheers / Friends / Simpsons that basically everyone is watching or familiar with. It’s been true for longer with books/music because of the lower gateways to entry and being able to be a “local artist”, but not by much, and even for them it’s exploded since the Internet became mainstream.
The democratization of publication has dramatically broadened the type and quality of things being made and no industry titans really have figured out how to promote around that. At least not consistently.
90% of the games I play are now made by indie or medium sized studios/publishers. I’ve bought several AAA games in that time frame, but almost universally they’ve failed to hold my interest and I typically regret my purchase. I can’t remember the last AAA I bought that I would consider a ‘favorite’.
Also I’m growing more and more detached from what modern, AAA games even feel like. Opening up a game like fortnite or COD where they’ve shoved dozens of different game modes into an all in one program is confusing and overwhelming. It’s off putting to me and I feel like having a ‘get off my lawn’ moment.
There’s probably a whole thesis or five to be written on the subject.
The “traditional” AAA pipeline is “make big games with loooots of assets and mechanics, maximize playtime, must be an Open World and/or GaaS”. Both due to institutional pressures (lowest common denominator, investor expectations for everyone to copy the R* formula, GaaS are money printing machines) and technical reasons (open worlds are easy to do sloppily, you can just deliver the game half finished and have it work (e.g. Cyberpunk), GaaS/open worlds are a somewhat natural consequence of extremely massive development teams that simply could not work together on a more narrowly focused genre).
That’s not to say there aren’t good expensive games being payrolled by massive studios like Sony or Microsoft. But AAA is a specific subset of those, and blandness comes with the territory. However if I was a betting man I’d say we’re nearing the end of this cycle with the high profile market failures of the last few years and the AAA industry will have to reinvent itself at least somewhat. Investors won’t want to be left holding the bag for the next Concord.
Japanese publishers retain staff because every Japanese company does, they don’t pay as well but you get life time job stability. Capcom is on a roll, Sega still has RGG, Bandai Namco has Fromsoft. They have the chokehold on jrpgs. And finally Nintendo is still king
I guess the anti-woke crowd is having a hard-on rn. I don’t play ubisoft’s games but I know a lot of good persons who work there around Quebec, and many of them fear losing their jobs.
This isn’t about being diverse. It’s about making bad games.
As a matter of fact, the new assassin’s Creed is so offensive that the Japanese government is in an uproar about it.
Ubisofts attempt to be so inclusive and sexually neutral is what’s making their games bad because they’re stifling good game design in the process.
That’s not to say that it’s not possible to make a good game while adhering to diversification and inclusion.
Hellblade and horizon zero Dawn are two excellent examples of incredibly good games that don’t expound sexism. Hell, look at destiny 2. They handle these kinds of situations perfectly!
But to simply imply people are upset because they don’t like “woke politics” is a gross over simplification of what’s happening to Ubisoft!
In response to the whole bit about the Japanese government, it seems that the quotes were taken way more seriously than they should have been. Pretty cookie cutter responses that also say that It isn’t really their concern.
Neither of us said that people are ONLY upset because “woke politics”. Original comment is saying that those people are probably celebrating right now because they were “right” and I’m simply pointing out that whenever this happens, the anti-woke crowd think that it’s because of the woke politics. There are plethora of reason to be upset with Ubisoft, just like there were plethora of reasons to not play concord.
Nah, the Japaneses government doesn’t care about fictional characters in a videogame. Neither are French-Canadians mad about being depicted as mimes with bread sticks in South Park.
Oh and “it’s about making bad games” . The GAME ISN’T EVEN OUT YET. Just don’t buy it and stop crying because there’s a black character in fictional universe or because you don’t want to fuck the main protagonist of Star Wars game (I personally find here damn hot btw lol).
They already delayed the release due to so much negative feedback. It’s going to be a bad game. There should never have been a black person in this game at all. It’s 1600s Japan. It makes no fucking sense!
There are so many layers as to why Ubisoft is going through what it’s going through I don’t have the energy to express it here in this comment.
I can assure you, however, if they worried more about making good games and less of inclusion politics their stock would be worth a lot more than 2 bucks!
Why can’t you people can’t just fucking move on with you life and play other games? The fact that there’s a new Assassin or Star Wars doesn’t erase the previous ones, go play the previous ones, the “good” ones.
It’s going to be a bad game. Says who? Your just a rando on the internet who has not played the game, why do you think your opinion maters?
There should never have been a black person in this game at all. It’s 1600s Japan. It makes no fucking sense! IT’S A GAME, nothing makes fucking sens. Why do accept it when it’s some white dude becoming the chosen one and saving a bunch of indigenous, but rip you shirt the when a black guy (based on a real life character!!!) is one of the protagonist of a game set in a FICTIONAL Japan. It’s not real dude, people have the right can make up stories inspired by real things.
I don’t have the energy to express it here in this comment. Nobody ask you too lol. We all have youtube, if we want to hear some white dude’s (with no expertise in nothing) ridiculous outrage about a stupid videogame company, we know where to find it.
I really don’t get you gamers people. There are dozens of causes that are worth defending, why is the only fucking thing that makes you active is when there’s a black man or a woman you don’t feel like fucking in a game? That’s pretty sad and pathetic if you ask me. Just go play something that fits you narrow world view. Meanwhile, Steam rips off all creators of 30% of their revenue while employing 20 people, but you people get wet whenever your hear their name. If you want to be mad at capitalist business, at least try to find something else than “black charcater” doesn’t make sens in a universe where you can walk on walls and kill 20k people by yourself.
So let’s just address the meta here real quick. There was a comment on Lemmy to which I responded. In context the genesis of this comment is in reference to Ubisoft and the general state of inclusion politics in gaming today.
You are questioning the fundamental motivation as to why I have an opinion on the subject matter that is presented to me under the protest that “it’s just a game”.
I mean why even have an opinion? Why formulate thoughts? Why have any kind of discussions?
I am abreast of what is happening generally in gaming and the industry surrounding it because I’m interested in these things. I like playing video games.
I also have other interests. For example, I’m fairly good at playing the guitar, so there’s a lot of content in my social media about guitars and music.
I also find it entertaining to watch flat Earth debunking videos on YouTube to pass the time.
The reason I care about assassin’s Creed in particular is because I’ve been playing the game since the very first one. I like the franchise. I like the video games and watching it get ruined because of inclusion politics is heartbreaking.
Moreover, they already have the game. It’s already been made. Therefore I have the right to criticize it. Simply stating “it’s just a game” isn’t helpful.
I don’t care if there’s black people or women or LGBT people in video games. I could absolutely care less about that as long as it’s relevant to the game. If they’re just including it to be inclusive, then it’s a meaningless gesture. It brings down the game. It brings down the IP and it brings down the company that does it.
Furthermore, people play video games for a reason. Either it be escapism or immersion or simply to pass a small amount of time till whatever else they have to do. Seeing these inconsistencies in the game breaks that immersion it no longer becomes entertainment. It becomes a political statement which I have very little interest in when it comes to my entertainment.
You can pretend to be on your high horse all you want. I have no interest in seeing inclusion politics in my entertainment. It serves no beneficial purpose except to elevate the egos of people like you to make you feel as though something is being included.
Pure nonsense.
Also the new Star wars game which I don’t even remember the name of sucked universally. It didn’t make any money because people didn’t have any interest in it specifically and exclusively because of the inclusion politics added into the game. Also the main character is fucking ugly.
FWIW, a 20% drop is borderline catastrophic for a major company. The squeeze it puts on their supply chain, ability to make payroll, and interest rates on borrowing going up, it could be enough to create a death spiral. I think ubisoft is probably managed well enough to deal with this, but this is definitely a serious situation for them.
Every time BTC crashes I say to myself, “I shouldn’t bet on it coming back, this will surely be The One.” Nope, currently higher than it was before the last one.
There’s always someone betting it will go up, just as much as someone is betting to go down, but right now, Blackrock and Fidelity own a lot of BTC, and are selling it to investors via actual, official ETF funds.
You can go on Fidelity and buy into this fund without ever touching BTC, and follow the price along with the holders, just like a gold or oil stock.
things are going to be interesting over the next few years. BTC has entities invested in it’s future. I don’t expect a crash below the ETF price, which… from memory was around $50k, because then investors are in the red.
I’m not in BTC, but it’s a fun thing to watch. Personally, I think the mining of it is a cancer to society, but once you strip all of that way, it’s just another index fund as long as private entities can manipulate the waves in their favor.
I like gold more. You can make stuff with it, buuut Gold is at an ATH… buuut if Kamala wins, BTC will dump and Gold is a sanctuary hold for a lot of BTC holders, so, man what a year it’s gonna be.
Phasmophobia is tense and mostly because you can die and get no points, but there’s plenty of VRChat horror worlds as well. The quality varies wildly though, and you often face the worst VR horror of all: awful frame rates.
I saw an anecdote from someone who used to work there and they said their infrastructure and resources were outdated as hell. Basically zero support or investment from leadership. Those corpos are intentionally just trying to milk them and the customers dry before total collapse or a buyout.
I’ve been stuck on the DLC for a long time now, not because of difficulty, but because I just don’t find it very interesting. Hoping to force my way through it one of these days.
It honestly is a large DLC that overstays its welcome. I know a lot of people think this game is kind of meh to begin with, but if someone enjoyed the original game and story, I think they’ll like the DLC because it has some more closure on the story and it does introduce some neat new gameplay mechanics.
The issue is you gotta really stick with it. It starts out fun to explore a new area, and then eventually you reach this point where it becomes a bit frustrating, but as you get through it, some stuff unlocks and it becomes really cool gameplay-wise. Also there’s a middle semi-grindy part where it felt like the difficulty got unfair, but after some unlocks involved in the grindy pary it got fun again and really became something else.
I think it could have been done a bit better, but overall as a fan of the original game, I enjoyed myself. You just unfortunately gotta push through to the end to get past this kind of middle part that drags.
There’s lots of fun and ridiculous characters too. I think they did a great job having it really feel like it fits the goofy theme of the game world even though it wasn’t the original team.
What the hell, I don’t recognise this game at all. Neither this image, the name nor any other image or the trailer on Steam, but apparently I own the game on there… I’ve never been so confused about and at a complete loss of memory of something I have purchased.
The original release had 2 DLC’s. This is the re-release called Re-Reckoning, which inherently included the original 2 DLC’s, amd then a bit later they did a new DLC called Faresworn that the original release never had. This is from that most recent DLC story and area.
I’ve played this game to 100% both on the original release, and this re-release.
It’s one of my favorite action rpg’s out there. It’s not special. It never did anything new, really. It originally released around the same time as Skyrim and got forgotten. I still have always felt this game is better and more fun than people give credit for. It’s huge, has tons to do, has bright colorful biomes, goofy characters, silly stories, cool effects, and is just such a charming thing.
Some of my love for it is that it’s just a simple fun accessible action rpg. Some is I genuinely liked the stories. Some of it I liked how cliche and cheesy it was at times. And back when it first released, some of it was just nice to see some actual color compared to Skyrim back then, which I was also playing.
Despite loving the genre overall, I bounced off KoA multiple times. Maybe it’s time to give it yet another go. I just wasn’t in the mood for MMORPGs - which the IP should have become iirc -, I guess.
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