I get that you‘re frustrated for more reasons than a freshly released game has bugs but this is literally the first time I hear of bg 3 being not completeable. What specs are you running on?
You just have to use your judgement and laugh at what you find funny on your own, if you need peer pressure (opinions of others) to find something funny then it’s not really funny to you and maybe isn’t even funny for many people to begin with.
This might be controversial but maybe many Sitcoms that do this were never funny in the first place and used laugh tracks because try as they might they had to force people to find it funny via artificial peer pressure, that either constitutes of a crowd being told to laugh on cue, or a recording of them doing so, which is what a laugh track is.
Here’s the key point and why we stopped using them, things aren’t funny, people think certain things are funny, and they also think plenty of things are not funny, and like it or not people are not always going to find the same things funny.
I always thought it was because the earliest stuff was actually filmed infront of a live audience (Like a theatre) who did laugh, so when switching to non-live-audience stuff, the viewing public would be ‘put off’ by no laughter, so they injected it with canned laughter… then as time went on they realised this was rubbish and stopped it.
But maybe I’m just missing the joke in the previous two comments, I dunno.
In the earlier days it was like that but as time went on it became a technique known as sweetening to make the joke seem funnier, sometimes they would even use it to fill in silence or dead air since that was frowned upon (I wonder why people said TV rots your brain for the longest time… can’t be related to any of these practices could it?).
The beginning part is essentially saying that if people need laugh-tracks to find things funny they are dry and humor-less, a joke at their expense but also at the same time it’s 100% sincere, a person who can’t find things funny without others lacks a sense of humor.
Steam Deck is shaping up to be the “Nintendo” of handheld PCs. Not the most powerful thing on the market, but cleverly put together with its own bespoke software that allows users to customise and tweak games at the system level via quick access to its features. Having windows on the other machines makes your access to games better but means you have to dig harder or install extra software to do what the deck does. To paraphrase Sega’s 90s marketing, It Does what Windon’t.
Most great games never get anywhere near this much buzz.
I think it’s a product of the genre. BG3 is in the CRPG category, which had a bit of a resurgence lately between Pillars 1+2, Pathfinder 1+2, and (perhaps most relevantly) DOS 1+2. Good games in an existing category of game helps build up buzz in that category and more players. More players creates more demand… but there hasn’t been that much being made in the CRPG bucket lately.
Then, on comes BG3. It fits in that bucket. It has much higher production values than the other recent games in that bucket. It’s got one of the most valuable CRPG IPs attached to it with Baldur’s Gate. And it’s reportedly amazing as a game on top. The last part wouldn’t get it anywhere near this much attention on its own, but in conjunction with the others it’s gotten lots of buzz.
I also feel like Larian handled the early access part really well for keeping the game in discussion without making the game oversaturated in gaming circles. They got a lot of “free” (not actually free, but you know what I mean) marketing out of that.
For me Half Life: Alyx was not even the best VR game but maybe one of the best games i played in my 20+ years gaming experience. It really shows how great VR can be if developers put an immense amount of time, effort and love into a game. Other honorable mentions: Pavlov VR, Blade and Sorcery (especially the Star Wars mods) and War Thunder
If you want any amount of discoverability, you will have to go to Youtube or Twich since those really are the only platforms that have any amount of viewers. And even then, discoverability is pretty terrible, good luck promoting a new channel from scratch.
If you just want to stream for the sake of streaming and don't mind having zero viewers, you can try PeerTube or Owncast. But do be aware that you will have zero viewers.
I feel like a growing solution would be to simulcast to Twitch as well as other platforms, and hopefully slowly encourage users to view via the other platforms.
Kudos to the OP - I stopped watching Twitch when Bezos went full Nazi, but couldn’t get YouTube off my list.
The original Silent Hill games were created by an internal group within Konami called Team Silent. This team was formed by underperforming Konami staff to work on a Resident Evil competitor that Konami higher-ups wanted to underperform and give them a chance to fire said underperforming staff. Instead, they struck gold with SH1.
Team Silent suddenly had a level of fame to themselves, but they were still Konami’s red-headed stepchild. 2-4 were similarly successful, with 2 being the high point of the series.
After SH3, key staff started to depart from Konami. By the time the 5th game, Homecoming, came out, much of the original team had been replaced with those more aligned with Konami bigwigs that wanted to turn the series into a moneymaker instead of the quiet success it was built as.
An example of this is the Silent Hill HD Collection for PS3 and X360. The ‘remaster’ of SH2 and 3 was anything but. They had to make these remasters with incomplete codebases, no original staff to question, even some of the original voice acting was missing because Konami straight-up deleted the original source code.
There are those that say that SH never recovered from the gutting of Team Silent, and they tend to get louder with each entry into the series. Sometimes they have valid points, but not always.
To add to this, Team Silent members started leaving after SH3 came out primarily because when SH2 released, it wasn’t that well received compared to SH1 (this is mostly to do with the Japanese audience complaining online at the time that SH2 was not a sequel or continuation to SH1). As a result, Konami started forcing Team Silent to make changes to SH3 that Konami executives thought would make it sell and review better in Japan than SH2. In other words, Konami was taking away Team Silent’s autonomy within Konami to develop what they wanted.
Silent Hill 3 was the beginning of the downfall of the series because it was the first game in which the original developer’s vision for the game was edited by Konami executives. This would sadly become a recurring theme for every Silent Hill game released thereafter. Silent Hill 3 was never supposed to feature the cult from Silent Hill 1. Heather was not supposed to be Cheryl. The hospital was not supposed to be reused from SH2, and was only done so because the developers were running out of time.
What’s worse, except for Akira Yamaoka, the original series composer, Homecoming did not have any original Team Silent staff working on it because it was outsourced to an external, Western development studio. Not one member of Team Silent was credited in the game except for Akira Yamaoka, they weren’t even mentioned in the “Special Thanks” portion of Homecoming’s credits.
Why do we still attention to tiny loud minority of Gamers^TM^ who whinge about “go woke go broke” and yet these still games sell like hotcakes? Just tell them that if they don’t like the game, then don’t buy the game.
I prefer to clown on them relentlessly and let them be aware that everyone thinks their opinion is stupid and childish
Allowing this to go unchecked or ignored is how we got here in the first place. “Just ignore the trolls” led to the trolls having actual societal inertia. It is no longer enough to just ignore them, they need pushback.
I don’t disagree. If they troll, troll them back harder. But the way the mainstream act is that these toxic Gamers^TM^ opinions have weight, when in reality their toxic views don’t even make a dent to popular opinions and sales of game developers.
Tbh, I’m not even sure where most people get exposed to these whiny gamers. Maybe I’m just lucky that the places I spend time on online and offline don’t overlap much with these weirdly conservative gamers who seem to forget that the moral panic conservatives tried to use to ban games they love.
I’ve noticed a lot of things liberals bag on conservatives for are things they don’t say IRL. The converse is true! We pick the most outrageous statements and say, “SEE! That’s what they’re all like!”
Literally I’ve talked to people like this. Usually when I was younger, but people aren’t known for growing up. And then there are Facebook comments that are just horrendous cesspools. Also the fact that 99% of conservative politicians are openly homophobic/sexist/etc. and that never seems to disqualify or register with their base and actually improves their chances.
No, many conservatives say some pretty awful shit on the regular and you’re either lying or ignorant.
A lot of Facebook comments are filled with these people. Every once in a while I’ll go there and see an onslaught of people whining about it but generally I keep to saner places. Hell, a woman goes anywhere near a lead role and someone like Ben Shapiro, who has plenty of loyal followers, is right there to bitch and moan about it.
There are plenty of these people around, and I remember even in person when I was younger hearing about people whine about a single gay cahracter in a movie so it is not surprising at all.
You know, I dont mind you saying “maga”. But I cant get on board with “conservatives”. They arent all one thing, any more than democrats are. In fact, you cant even say “maga” as a lot of them still want to see the Epstein files. Maybe just say “cunts” :)
Maga can still want to see the Epstein files. Conservatives I’m just so fucking tired of because there is no amount of evidence you can show them that will convince them that their backwards ideology is wrong. It all hinges on hyper-individualistic nonsense based on not sharing, and the entire ideology was created by people who believed that poor people were dirty and they did it because they didn’t like that the parasitic monarchs where being treated how they deserved.
A grown adult screaming about low taxes on the rich and throwing in with people who consistently want to strip people of their basic human rights is not a serious person. “I like gay people though!” well you keep voting for homophobes and giving them power so piss off. The internet is a thing, there’s no excuse anymore, and I’m done with these unserious jokers who can’t read or do basic math enough to know that none of their ideas work at any level.
Its fine to disagree with people. Dems and republicans for decades, disagreed, but respected the system. And just got on with it. Look at the state of it now? Neither of you trusts the system. You are both locked into this social media driven culture war, to the point that if you dont win an election, you call it rigged. The MAGAtards went further, raiding the capital and seemingly some were ready to kidnap and kill. But in general, republicans arent like that. They have different values to you, thats true. But they also believe that in the end, you are all Americans. MAGA isnt that.
Think about the time that old biddy started talking shit about Obama to John McCain, and he shot it down quick as fuck. He wouldnt allow his own supporters to lie about the content of Obamas character. THAT is your general Republican. Not MAGA chuds.
You can talk to a republican, maybe even see eye to eye on some issues. You can have an informed debate. You can have that with MAGA. All you get is lies and screaming. And the danger is, if you keep on confusing the two, you end up forcing them together and then you do have one big raging group of cunts. And no one wants that.
The system is literally designed to be a problem, and the “culture war” is entirely conservatives trying to strip people’s rights away and getting mad when minorities exist. We literally know that Russia helped Trump to win and Trumps claims were complete nonsense.
One day maybe you will figure it out, but the conservative ideology is a dead-end designed to try to convince the peasantry that what the nobles are doing is fine and normal and is the natural way of things. And if they claim to be nice but keep voting in terrible people they “don’t fully agree with” just so they can pay less tax then I really, honestly, do not fucking care.
No, the culture war is YOU. Look at what youre doing. “Its them, its all them being horrible to buzzword!”. Its not true. It was never true. Its just the excuse people use to justify dog shit.
Like tv shows that dont land with the audience. All the cave brained cunts in the world run to social media to decry the chuds who got it cancelled. But how? How would the chuds not watching it, get it cancelled? Its not like they are the target audience, so why is no one on the supposed left watching this shit? Its being made for them. Like the Acolyte. For some reason we are supposed to believe that youtube grifters like the critical drinker and nerdrotic convinced 153 million households around the world not to watch a great show, just because there was a black girl in it. Its just not possible.
This is the culture wars. Marvel, star wars, star trek, lord of the rings, the witcher, etc etc etc. They abandoned the core audience for those things, and then all started crying “racist, sexist, homophobe!” when they all stopped watching. And this has bled into American politics. And because those in Hollywood are pushing this shit, and calling people awful fucking names, while at the same time taking money to support democrats, the general audience is associating dems with hollywood cunts. Kamala didnt even push any “woke” stuff. She was basically pushing old style Republican stability. She was the PERFECT republican nominee. But no one wanted her, because of that association with hollywood.
The cultures need to end. We need to stop calling stuff woke or not woke, and go back to good or bad. We need to stop pretending that the only reason to like or dislike something is because its got minorities in it. And stop freaking out when theres a white girl on tv selling shitty jeans.
Hahahahahaha yea sure buddy the culture war is the people who are finally standing up for themselves against the onslaught of racists and homophobes and definitely not mega rich conservatives constantly inciting violence against others in order to distract from their theft of wealth from the working class. Man, you were at least margainally serious before but if you’re more mad that people are standing up for themselves than you are that peoppe need to stand up for themselves then you’ve lost it, bud.
And people were not mad about “a white girl selling shitty jeans”. It was a fucking Aryan looking woman under the words “good genes” in a time where white supremacy is going hog-fucking-wild in the US and they’re mirroring Nazi Germany in disturbingly close and obvious ways. There are literally people trying to create whites-only communities and, newsflash, those people are conservatives.
No it isnt. Its for the perpetually online, to use social justice issues for their own self serving reasons. Worthless internet points at best, clout and money at worst.
So I’m bad for focusing on the hate that is right be very publicly pushed and even baked into legislation in many places and that makes me the same as the people who are screaming about made up nonsense and using that as justification for even physical violence against minorities?
You’re not being “reasonable” just because you don’t have the spine for a strong position. All you want is for everyone to stop being loud, regardless of the context, and that’s nothing.
Saying “everyone is the problem actually” is not enlightened, it’s just an easy answer. There is so much history and context that is missing from that position. It’s nearly the same energy as saying that Ukraine has equal or near equal guilt in the war it is currently a part of despite the fact that it was minding its own business before it was invaded for “reasons”.
Minorities have spent so goddamn long being told they can’t have a damn thing in the US and every single thing they do have has come with a fight. Hell the working class in general couldn’t get a 40hr work week without literal bloodshed. A little black girl, who’s still alive today because it wasn’t long enough ago, needed an escort to go to school because of how pissed white conservatives were that she was going to be attending a school with white kids. Straight people make all kinds of shitty movies but an all female Ghost Busters isn’t perfect and people blame the gender of the cast and call it “pandering” because they finally weren’t the target audience this time and they can’t let it go.
I remember thinking similar things around ~20 years old and then I actually started learning things and meeting these people, not just in passing but as my friends, and shit changed quick.
No one is. But we are all exposed to people moaning about them, while looking for upvotes…
All I ever see is an ocean of positive comments everywhere. And the moaning is always, like the person youre replying to. Using buzzwords and positive message to get up arrows… Like they matter at all.
Red Candle Games said that “in the aftermath of the incident, some still possess different speculations about Devotion. As regretful as the incident was, we have to bear its full consequence.
I don’t know if this was an honest mistake, but… 😂
This and Balatro (and probably many rogue-lite deckbuilders I haven’t tried) are perfect compulsive time killers. Even though they’re newer, I would say they deserve serious consideration.
It would just require smaller teams making lower budget games that are more focused on Art than sales, which I would be really happy about honestly. Too many people are in this industry solely to rake in the big bucks.
If you are going to compete with AAA games it’s going to require a big budget, which not all Devs have access to.
A high quality AA game would probably do great, but would be unlikely to outsell a AAA with hundreds of millions of dollars for budget.
Obsidian made a fantastic game with Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire but it was considered a ‘failure’ sales wise (at least at launch), despite being well received.
Obsidian sold to Micro$oft despite making very high quality games and their crowdfunding campaigns consistently earning more money than they were asking for. The stated reason was they found it hard to keep their employees paid consistently and they didn’t want to lay people off. Also that they thought they could do just as good as other big players in the industry if they had access to larger budgets.
I think it was a bad move. They managed to survive the massive round of 9,000 jobs cuts to Microsoft’s gaming division (this time), but you just know that Microsoft would cut them in a heartbeat if they thought it would save them a dime in the future. That being said I think it’s understandable to want to see your employees paid, and it’s just a sad fact that AAA games require huge budgets nowadays, so I can kind of understand why they sold, even if I don’t agree with it.
Pretty much every popular indie game has a publisher. Publishers are great because they provide relatively low cost marketing, the trick is to be careful when signing a contract that you don’t sign away too much while still getting value from them.
It’s not so black and white, Clair Obscur : Expédition 33 has that level of quality and polish because the team behind it was able to find a publisher to finance it. Everything has nuance, we got shafted on subnautica 2 but we had other great games, some self published, some not
I’m at least willing to wait until it gets reviews to make a sound judgement.
I don’t think the bonus would have been a big enough reason to delay the game. Delaying a game like this relatively last-minute and giving it an extra year of development is waaaay more expensive than the bonuses would have been. That’s a gigantic revenue spike they were expecting to get this year and now have to push out to next year, and they may well end up paying out similar bonuses next year too.
My suspicion, from the history of Steve Papoutsis, is that Kraftom wanted to add in anti-player elements and the original founders refused. Probably micro transactions, or maybe even having a bigger multiplayer focus to make it closer to a live-service game. Some mechanism to get money from customers beyond the original purchase. I suspect crap like that will be reason enough not to buy the game when it comes out.
Delaying a game like this relatively last-minute and giving it an extra year of development is waaaay more expensive than the bonuses would have been.
Is it still more expensive if they just shelve it and pretend to give it extra development? I haven’t seen any details on why it wasn’t ready for release or what they are changing or adding? A quarter billion dollars in savings seems like pretty good motivation for a company to park a project for 6 to 12 months.
Agreed. Subnautica 1 steam revenue breakdown offers a bit of perspective on why they might want to play pretend.
“How much money did Subnautica make? We estimate that Subnautica made $274,113,745.92 in gross revenue since its release. Out of this, the developer had an estimated net revenue of $80,863,555.05. Refer to the revenue table for a full breakdown of these numbers.”
Bloomberg reported that the bonus was tied to revenue targets. So the $250,000 estimate must be estimating significantly higher revenues for them in 2025.
What you posted is just the sales on 1 platform for 1 game, whixh came out in 2018 when games were cheaper.
It’s far and away their most profitable game to date, so it would make sense to get some perspective from it. Can you offer anything concrete about their other platform sales? I’m not familiar with any tools for that
Yes. Like, it’s not even a question it’s more expensive to delay it. First of all, they are choosing to pay for 6-12 months of extra development, which alone is probably several times more money than the bonus that they would have paid out. I don’t know what their payroll is, but we don’t need to know because math.
If the bonus was for 1/2 annual salary per person (which would be insanely high), then the cost of the bonus would be the same as 6 months of additional payroll. Meaning that with any longer delay than 6 months or smaller bonus structure than 1/2 of annual salary, it becomes more expensive to delay the game. Both of which are incredibly likely in my opinion.
And that’s just salary. It’s possible the studio was planning on laying people off after release, but more likely that they would have moved to a other project that is currently wrapping up pre-production. So this is causing a cascading effect unless they hire additional staff to catch up.
Then you have marketing costs. The rule of thumb in the industry is that half the overall budget is marketing. There are all sorts of contracts they probably had- digital stuff like banner ads on websites, on the console digital storefronts, partnerships with twitch streamers and YouTubers and review websites, physical stuff like cardboard cutouts and fliers. They may have started printing for boxes for physical releases (though I’m not sure whether this game would have had one or not). They may have started acquiring merch inventory: shirts and stickers and backpacks and flashlights and more perhaps. Some of these contracts they may be able to postpone or cancel, but they certainly aren’t getting back 100% of what they paid.
And in all of this time they aren’t getting the huge revenue spike they were expecting. The vast, vast majority of a game’s revenue comes at launch (excluding live services, which this hopefully will not have). They need to survive another year on the trickle of revenue coming in from the sales of their other games, or Krafton may need to pump more of their own money into Unknown Worlds. Or debt.
According to one of the articles above the publishers operating profit last year was "only" $300m so that bonus would make the shareholders mad I guess.
bin.pol.social
Ważne