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chemical_cutthroat, do games w EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

Big “no one understands my art” vibes coming off that dev. You made a mediocre game for an outrageous amount and released it in one of the heaviest gaming release years in recent memory. Sorry, this year a new IP with a 74% on metacritic doesn’t cut it. They say EA dropped 40mil on the advertising for it, but this is litterally the first I’ve heard about it, and frankly I’m the target audience for this game. I bet this shit was shoved down the throats of Fortnight and Valorant players via tiktok.

tomi000,

Same. Those 40mil probably went into someones pocket, not surprising noone is playing the game

M137,
@M137@lemmy.world avatar

No one is playing it because it’s very “meh”, but it has absolutely been widely advertised and also talked about a lot (for being not so good).

I really doubt any of you who replied here saying you haven’t heard about it ever interact with gaming journalism and community. It has been just as visible as most other AAA games.

Jaysyn,
@Jaysyn@kbin.social avatar

I had never heard of it either until this post.

snooggums,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

This is the first time for me as well, and it sounds likely to be the last.

loobkoob,

I heard about it when Skill Up, whose YouTube channel I have notifications turned on for, posted his review of it. Before that, I'd seen absolutely nothing about it, and I heard very little about it after that, too. I was shocked to find out it was an EA game - partly because it didn't look (visually) polished enough to be an EA game, and partly because of the complete lack of marketing I'd seen for a major publisher game.

Finding out it was an expensive flop and not just a smaller AA game they decided to put out on the side is a surprise, too.

M137,
@M137@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not really the target audience and I’ve come across it what must be hundreds of times. It has been talked about a lot on anything gaming. Most of the big gaming journalism (good and bad) websites, youtube channels etc have made articles and videos about it.

technomad, do games w EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"

Trying to act like it flopped because it’s single player… What a joke.

FMT99,

I think BG3 showed conclusively that no one will ever play single player games no matter how great they are. /s

acosmichippo,
@acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

but that was like 6 whole months ago. the market is totally different now. /s

Viking_Hippie, (edited )

I get what you’re saying but FPS specifically are mostly played competitively, so a single player game in THAT specific genre in 2023 sounds like a very bad idea.

Every other genre than FPS needs more games where you’re allowed to only play single player and use tons of mods if you want to without risking being locked out of playing, though.

Fallout New Vegas, Baldurs Gate 3, Skyrim, The Outer Worlds and the older Bioware games are where it’s at for my favorite genre, to name a few examples.

Edit: crossed out mistaken assumption

flamingarms, (edited )

I’m not sure that’s really true what you’re saying about single player FPS games being mostly competitive or that it’s a bad idea. See: Doom, Metro, Ghostwire, Dying Light, System Shock, people seem stoked for Space Marine, etc.

Viking_Hippie,

Fair enough, I’ll retract that part heh

flamingarms,

Props to you for using strikethrough instead of deleting in your edit so the context still makes sense. I think you bring up an interesting point about competitive fps games. I imagine companies structure their development similar to games-as-a-service because they are essentially two flavors of the same thing, right? I had never really considered whether the growth of the competitive scene was part of the drive towards GaaS and away from tight single player experiences.

I think underlying all of this is that publishers want a guaranteed profit margin. That doesn’t exist in art, of course, but they still want it. And if that means choosing what they think is a safe bet, they’ll choose it. I think Bungie made GaaS look way easier than it actually is, and maybe the competitive scene contributed to that too. “Look at all the money these hero shooters are making, let’s get a piece of that pie.” Formulas just never quite work out that simply in real life.

vexikron, (edited )

Yep, nobody enjoyed playing through Half Life 1/2, or FEAR or Deus Ex, or the early Medal of Honor or Call of Duty campaigns, or the Doom series or Battlefield Bad Company or the Wolfenstein Series.

Just because most modern popular FPSs are basically cartoony tf2/overwatch clones/derivatives and there are a lot of highly competitive multiplayer FPSs filled with screaming, racist misosynist babies and manbabies alike doesnt mean theres no market for a single player FPS.

It means that making a single player FPS game these days is apparently too hard for modern game devs to figure out how to do.

Coelacanth, do games w $843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

Can we not go after one of the few good guys in gaming? Please? If you want to hound someone Nintendo is right over there.

MossyFeathers, (edited )

No. It’s easier to go after the “good guys” than the bad guys because they’re easier to beat. They won’t use all kinds of slimy, underhanded tactics to fuck you over.

Edit: I don’t approve of the lawsuit against valve, but that’s the way of the world. Scummy companies and people have many tools they can use to drag you down to their level.

Kecessa,

Oh fuck off with the good guy thing, it’s a private company trying to make money, there’s no good people when profit is the goal, there’s no good billionaires and Gaben is one.

RandomException,

Let’s replace “good guy” with “one of the few actually good services in gaming”, would you still disagree?

Kecessa,

No, they’re still overcharging us if they make enough profit that the boss could become a billionaire while the employees make more than the industry average.

I don’t know what goes though people’s mind to get them to defend for profit private companies, they’re not there to be your friend, they’re there to get you to take the money you earned and spend it while gaslighting you into believing that you get your money’s worth.

RandomException,

I mean I get what you’re saying, but Valve is actually one of the few large tech companies that are providing an actually good service (Steam). People should be allowed to make money by providing value to their customers because that’s the motivation of building such services and products in the first place.

The hatred should go towards the companies abusing their position and violating customers and then just cashing excessive amounts of money for a crap product/service that has no real competition. If Valve had started making their competitors lives harder, by generating lots of nonsense lawsuits for example, they should absolutely be blasted down to hell by everybody. As long as they are just earning lots of bucks by providing a service people want to use without restricting using other services and playing with healthy rules otherwise as well, it’s all fine and everyone working on the great service SHOULD earn more than average.

Kecessa,

Why do you think they’re able to make that much money? Not by using their position as the store where the majority of people buys games from?

There’s no good guys when profits are the goal. They might provide good service, the only reason they’re doing so is because they see potential profit.

There’s a major difference between making more than average and being a billionaire. You know what’s the difference between making 500k a year and making a billion a year? About a billion.

RandomException,

I mean Valve has a game store called Steam, but what’s the actual position they have? There are competing game stores - both digital and physical - and Valve isn’t trying to run their competition out of business with shady business tactics? Just by being good at something and therefore running a successful business shouldn’t be illegal or hated by itself - it’s the way the business is being conducted that actually matters. Gaben is free to have yacht or two as long as his company is being run with a healthy mindset, their employees are being paid a fair salary (which I guess is another discussion in it’s own who decides that) and they are not screwing their competition nor their customers up.

Kecessa,

Six yachts.

They don’t need to actively run out their competition because they already have enough of the market that they’re the default option. Just like Microsoft doesn’t need to try and actively stop MacOS or Linux from existing.

RandomException,

I don’t care how many yachts Gaben owns, he’s free to do whatever he wishes as long as he provides me a great service that I’m willing to use money towards.

And Microsoft did try really hard back in the day to make Linux go away. Luckily OSS community was already large enough that they were able to fight the legal cases and the whole thing didn’t dry up. Nowadays Microsoft endorses Linux because they decided they can squeeze value out of other people’s free work for themselves (and because pretty much the entire server industry runs on Linux anyways).

Kecessa,

Billionaire exist at the expense of people like you and me buddy.

Nilz,

Steam didn’t get to where it is because of market abuse but because of providing a good service, or at least a service that was better than anything else at the time by far. Valve are reaping the rewards now, but are also still providing an arguably better service than it’s competitors. It’s a bit odd that you want to punish a company just for being successful.

Valve isn’t perfect and they’re profit driven, but they’re privately owned and the goals isn’t maximizing profit, which isn’t something you can say about most of their competitors.

Kecessa,

I’m all in for punishing all billionaires and you’re very naive if you think their goal isn’t too maximize profit. If it wasn’t there’s no reason why they would accumulate enough surplus for Gaben to own six yacht, they would instead reduce their 30% cut and pass the savings to everyone and we would have cheaper games.

Nilz,

Yes, the profit is excessive, but it’s because they have a good product where the competition has not really been putting in much effort and letting Valve get away with it for so long.

Valve’s goal isn’t to maximize profit because they don’t have shareholders that demand it. If they really wanted to maximize profits then there’s a whole lot more to squeeze out of Steam and the games they made. And yes I agree Valve can lower their cut and still make bucket loads of money, but I highly doubt that if they did reduce their cut it would actually lead to cheaper games except for a maybe a few. Because just like Valve, the devs and publishers are profit driven and why would they turn down a potentially bigger profit?

Kecessa,

Yes, the profit is excessive

You could have ended your message right there instead of getting on your knees and opening your mouth.

stardust,

I guess steam could have avoided making billions if they had never improved their launcher since Half Life 2. Not improving products and keeping it as crappy as possible so people stay away from it is one business strategy of ensuring people are deterred from using it.

Shame they kept improving and made something people want to use.

Kecessa,

Or they could have charged a fair share instead of 30%.

stardust,

Running a crappy service nobody wants to use is more effective. Even better if it is so bad the company goes bankrupt. That’s how to successfully avoid money.

LainTrain,

Okay, but is Gaben more deserving of this than white replacement supporter, anti-trans fearmonger and apartheid diamond mine baby Musk? Than makes people piss in bottles in warehouses Bezos?

Is what steam does more predatory than basically every major music publisher (the big three), than MPAA? Than OpenAI? Than Meta? Than the streaming services? Than Nintendo? Than Apple? Than Google? Uber?.. And so on and so on.

So why pick on Valve? I’d go after fucking taco bell before Valve. Make it make sense.

Kecessa,

You assume that I’m not pissed at all these corporations and all billionaires and multimillionaires??

This discussion is about Valve, I’ll talk about the others when we have a discussion about them.

uranibaba,

Isn’t that the discussion though? Take the time and money spent on this to fight someone more deserving.

Kecessa,

We can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time buddy.

Regrettable_incident,
@Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world avatar

Shame you’re getting so downvoted. People are so determined to believe in good philanthropic billionaires that they forget the system that allows the accumulation of such ridiculous wealth doesn’t work for nice philanthropic people. It was like this with Elon musk, before he sacked his publicists (my guess) before the cave diver thing. People were saying he was going so save humanity or some shit. All he’s done is fuck up twitter. Same with this guy. I use steam and I think my steam deck is a cool little machine but that doesn’t inspire me to tongue the sweaty arsehole of an obscenely rich guy.

Kecessa,

At least there’s a few people that get it

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Even if you believe that all privately owned capital is intrinsicly evil, you still ought to go after companies from most to least problematic within a specific category, no?

That is, for digital storefronts, start with the likes of Epic or in a broader digital gaming space in general, Microsoft or Ubisoft. Go after Steam when you’ve cleaned up the rapists, backroom dealers and collusionists.

Kecessa,

You think humanity is unable to take care of two things at once?

You think Epic is worse when Valve has 70% of the market so they’re in a position to ruin everything in a second? You realize that the PC gaming market is dependent on the goodwill of a single guy?

SaltySalamander,

Such a simplistic view of the world.

Kecessa,

Emptying the bank accounts of billionaires and redistributing the wealth would save more lives then any philanthropy.

Stop trying to defend the people at the top of the food chain, you’re the prey they feed on.

Stovetop,

Companies are never your friend.

Valve is like any other company. They’re as good as your money is good.

Kedly,

Its still going after the LEAST shitty company and expecting your life to get better when the competition is FAR WORSE

Stovetop,

Fair, but not-shitty companies eventually become shitty companies in almost every circumstance. I hate making the argument that someone is fine because they only hurt a few people compared to the guy who hurts lots.

Beaver, do games w After 350,000 signatures in an EU consumer rights campaign, Ubisoft is adding offline modes to The Crew games - but not the now-dead original
@Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

And the corporate supporters told us the petition was pointless 🤡

penquin,

Never listen to those fucking asses.

tfw_no_toiletpaper,

The pirate something guy was the only one I saw and he’s a fraud anyway

Beaver,
@Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

Guy had Pierre Poilierve energy. Acting like the free market is perfect and that corporations will never screw people over and that by holding them accountable games will become unprofitable to make and that would the end of the game industry /s

Voyajer,
@Voyajer@lemmy.world avatar

Him, ThePrimeagen, and Theo Browne were the biggest ones I saw, with various levels of bad arguments.

hoshikarakitaridia,
@hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world avatar

Why is Pirate Software a fraud?

I appreciated his take on it. Don’t trust politicians to come up with a good solution, always present the issue when you have a good solution ready. And the solution proposed by that petition was weak at best and outright dangerous for the industry at worst.

If you want to force specificity on buying v getting limited time access, that’s fine, but that’s not what the petition focused on.

If you wanna force devs to plan ahead with huge infrastructure cost to make sure servers will be online for a specific time, this might result in online games being unjustifiable for smaller studios.

If you want to shield independent people hosting unofficial servers to games, now that’s a different conversation that we first need to have to figure it out, before proposing an exact solution through a petition. Mind you this is a more complicated topic, as this gets into licensing and IP law.

And I really don’t think stop killing games is clear on those, and that makes this endeavor a lottery with the entire multiplayer games industry in limbo.

Give me another more precise initiative and I’ll join, but until then I’ll definitely not sign anything. If we change things, we should change them for the better, so let’s do our due diligence first.

tfw_no_toiletpaper,

I personally do not care how a policy would damage a company. I am playing the games, not developing them. If a company shuts down servers, they can at least provide players with the server binaries (difficult in the case of MMOs etc, but still better than doing nothing).

The EU can suck, but sometimes they put some pretty neat policies in place to protect consumers (e.g. the difference in USA vs EU MS Windows), so I trust them to hold publishers responsible to not cut off access to a sold product. Let’s say the EU prohibits putting Gacha mechanics in games, would you defend companies then, claiming the EU is cutting their profits (sorry, kinda strawmannish, but it feels to me this way)?

About pirate software (finally looked him up): He just seemed annoying as hell and every time YouTube pushed a short of him it was just ramblings in which huge parts were just untrue. Idk if he even codes, I only see him rambling about some shit with the voice you make when you are 14 and want to sound deeper. People on YouTube said he is a nepo baby but I don’t care too much about him to go down that rabbithole.

ImplyingImplications,

Idk if he even codes

He was a hacker for the US government and has won 3 competitions at DEFCON. Before that he was a programmer for Blizzard and Amazon Games.

ImplyingImplications,

Once again. No government intervention required. Companies listen to consumers.

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/82450fbd-27bc-416c-80fa-25045c29396e.jpeg

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

They’re not listening to consumers. Consumers are not complaining to the corporations, they’re complaining to the government. They’re only doing anything because the writing is clearly on the wall and passing new legislation will make shit way worse for them so they’re being proactive.

ImplyingImplications,

They’re doing this because they’ve lost so much money investors are angry and the executives want to win people back. They aren’t worried about law changes, they’re worried about their stock price and reputation.

In the 12 years since European Citizens Initiatives have existed, there have been few successful campaigns even fewer actual law changes. If I were a greedy company, I wouldn’t be worried about this in the slightest.

If ECIs are to become a useful tool for civil society, campaigners would benefit from a better understanding of how to craft their demands in a way that is likely to lead the Commission to actually propose a legislative initiative. There have now been 133 ECI attempts, millions of signatures collected, a significant amount of money spent, and little to show for it.

helenslunch,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

They’re doing this because they’ve lost so much money investors are angry

There are a dozen reasons in this article why they’re losing money and none of them are because they’re removing games.

tfw_no_toiletpaper,

G*mers will lap up so much slop and malicious decisions publishers push out, we DO need governments to regulate.

The few (big) publishers that listen to consumers can be counted on one hand.

Katana314,

Downvoted for censoring Gamers. I will always downvote people using that stupid fucking asterisk. Don’t be a child.

tfw_no_toiletpaper,

Cry

JusticeForPorygon,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

This was literally the threat of government intervention

absquatulate,

Sadly I doubt this was thanks to the petition itself. More likely ubi is trying to claw back some goodwill ( and make some cash too, by promoting the title that was full of mtx instead of the retired one ). They’ve also done this offline fix thing in the past ( with anno 2070 for one ) and also after a healthy dose of player backlash.

rustydrd, do games w EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"
@rustydrd@sh.itjust.works avatar

The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution.

Apparently, $40 million doesn’t buy you much in today’s market, because I’ve literally never heard of this game until now.

p03locke,
@p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Probably spent it all on cable TV ads, where their audience ain’t at.

Or just blow and hookers.

ShaggySnacks,

“I’m telling you, the cocaine and hooker market is ripe for a AAA single player FPS game.”

Zahille7,

I saw one YouTuber that I follow play it. It looked kinda interesting from his video, but he also has the same criticisms.

Decoy321,

It was actually quite fun! I rented it off Gamefly and enjoyed it for about 30-40 hours. It’s basically an action-adventure shooter like Metroid. It’s a decent game, not groundbreaking, but definitely doesn’t deserve the hate people give it.

joe_cool,

It has Denuvo, and runs like crap even on $1500 hardware.

I don’t know what kind of sales they expected when they don’t test it on lower spec PCs.

noobdoomguy8658,

We should expect more of that with the upcoming UE5 titles. The devs that have devoted to releasing those seem to have very hard time optimising - they’ll likely expect us all to just own 4090s and still run their game with DLSS ultra performance or other fake frames.

STALKER 2 will have the janky soul we expect from the series, but this mostly, mostly due to engine choice and apparent attempts to visually impress the player. Or the investors.

guacupado,

but definitely doesn’t deserve the hate people give it.

I don’t think it’s getting hate. I think it’s getting indifference because no one knows what it is.

DrQuint,

Nah, I’ve seen hate. But mostly from people who hate Wesdon-Like quip writting and, well, women-haters who can’t handle the characters being ugly (and they are ugly, admittedly), so I just dismissed the hate.

ColeSloth, do games w $843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players

“Charges 30% fee” “That’s too high! You’re ripping us off”

“Charges 10% fee” “That’s too low! No other platforms could hope to compete against you with that!”

This is nothing but people bitching about nothing for the price gouging. I will give merit to the anti competitive nature if game makers aren’t allowed to have their games listed for less at other stores. As far as add on game packages locking you in goes…that might be a technical minefield to ensure compatibility.

Shard,

Conspiracy theory here…

Maybe this is an initiative by competing platforms? Epic? Ubisoft?

Stir some shit, hope to get valve in legal issues so that they’re legally forced to become less competitive and therefore creating a chance for these other platforms?

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Of course it is.

All those large online action/claim sites are commercial in underlying nature. When you saw all the small farmers protest in Germany it was primarily driven as an action by about 5 large farming conglomerates because they are the ones getting ~85% of the grant money that was being cut. The whole point of the cut was to not funnel money that was supposed to go to small farmers to large megacorps after all. Who in turn instrumentalized the small farmers to protest it.

Probably what’s going on here, too. You can bet somewhere deep deep down, this is something Tim Sweeney cooked up.

fmstrat,

This of course. Any reduction in fee would not go the people. Studios would raise their prices.

Nibodhika,

Yes, if Valve limited the price games could have in other stores that would be anti-competitive, but that’s not the case. Their price parity clause is just for selling steam keys.

ColeSloth,

Then the entire lawsuit hope is pretty much bs.

JustEnoughDucks,
@JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl avatar

This lawsuit being funded by a Epic Games shell company would not be surprising in the least. They have done so much and stooped so low to try to not have to actually do work and create a good platform.

t3rmit3, do gaming w Starfield design lead says players are "disconnected" from how games are actually made: "Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is"

Yeah, I can imagine the frustration of seeing people who don’t know anything about what happened during development blame you as a dev for something that may have been design decisions or budgetary or time constraints that you had no say in or control over.

“So sure, you can dislike parts of a game,” he concludes. “You can hate on a game entirely. But don’t fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is (unless it’s somehow documented and verified), or how it got to be that way (good or bad).”

“Chances are, unless you’ve made a game yourself, you don’t know who made certain decisions; who did specific work; how many people were actually available to do that work; any time challenges faced; or how often you had to overcome technology itself (this one is HUGE).”

This is a totally fair take. He explicitly says it’s fine to not like the game, but just don’t try to pretend you know what happened on the back end to make it the way it was, because you’re probably gonna misplace blame.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

You know, it's funny. My assumptions, which I think I've made clear are assumptions when I talk about them, are that Starfield is what it is largely because of technical limitations. I think, if I'm wrong, the remaining possible answers are far more disappointing. Are the side quests bad because that's what the engine allows them to feasibly build? That sucks; they should ditch their engine. Are the side quests bad because the designers don't know how to design good quests? That's worse. You can extend these kinds of assumptions to the way space travel works, the way their conversation system works, etc.

averyminya,

And moreover, did they not play their own game?

I feel like the core complaint that every person has regardless of liking the game or not is that the travel system is just absurd and inconsistent. It is so weird how I go to my ship, pull up to orbit a planet, can see the planet from my ship but I cannot select it. Sometimes, you can! But most of the time, you cannot. This means the player then has to pull up the map and land on the planet from there, even though a simple interact to land would be much more seamless and immersive.

The map issue goes deeper, literally. Opening the map on a planet brings you to the ground-view of it, so you have to pull up one or two sub-menu levels to go from ground-view to planet view to solar system to galaxy. Literally, consistently navigating through menus - heaven forbid you pull up one menu too far because you’ll have to start over.

It shouldn’t feel quite so bad, but each interaction of these takes like 5-7 seconds. Doing that over, and over, and over again? That’s a symptom of the game as well, have you ever been in a space fight and held down E? Then you have experienced the pain of leaving the cockpit for that insanely long animation, only to have immediately sit through the insanely long sit back down animation while your ship is being shot up.

The game is full of little hold ups like this that compound into something that just feels awful to navigate.

Don’t get me wrong; I liked my first playthrough of Starfield. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, despite these issues. But I was working through these issues. And then NG+ came around and stole everything from me (understandably with the lore). I just couldn’t bring myself to do it again. Philosophy wise, the game has some great decisions that are impactful and raise. Gameplay wise these are pretty terrible decisions.

I did everything my first playthrough, I checked out every planet every quest every follower (not the dialogue for those quests, obviously). For the most part I liked my time but the base building and the homestead quests since those seem mostly broken (gas vents were never discoverable for me). A number of hours in on NG+ for the main quests having to recollect everything… What was the point?

No, I didn’t get lucky with a crazy NG+. I shouldn’t have to replay a game 12 times to “get to the fun stuff”

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

I haven't finished my first run through the game yet, but I do keep hearing about NG+. There are all of these factions to check out, some of which should be opposed to happening in the same playthrough as certain other factions, and they built a game around NG+, so why not have you commit to one faction in the course of a shorter game, and then build the opportunity to play through the other factions into NG+?

I'm not hating my time with Starfield so far, but hardly a few minutes go by while I'm playing before its obvious shortcomings annoy me. Most of them I think (and hope) I can easily attribute to their ancient tech that they probably ought to throw straight in the garbage.

interolivary,
!deleted5791 avatar

The thing is that Fallout: New Vegas used the same engine, and it proved that you can do a much more interesting and engaging story and quests with Creation Engine compared to what Bethesda is capable of. Sure, Creation is still a bit of a piece of shit when it comes to engines, but it can be used for creating complex storylines etc. and not just “go there and push a button” or “go there and kill a person”

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

True, but in particular, I'm referring to the non-faction quests. It's been a while since I've played New Vegas, but I can't remember if that game even had the equivalent of Starfield's "activities". Those quests are often so bad that I wonder why they're in the game at all.

lukas, (edited )
@lukas@lemmy.haigner.me avatar

I get the frustration here, but it’s also kind of… idk? A “No, you just don’t understand!” response. Everyone who works in a white-collar job knows what it’s like. Everyone has different theories about why that project failed, but nobody knows the objective truth. Nobody can present a “documented and verified” list of reasons for why the project failed, not even the lead designer here. They can guess, but never reach the truth. He could repeat what he always did without changing anything in the next project, and succeed due to different circumstances, plain good luck.

habanhero,

You know what an even better take is? “We hear you, we’ll take your feedback” or just as good, say nothing at all.

Arguing that you are smarter or wiser than your users / customers is paradoxical. You are by definition not smart if you attempt to do this.

t3rmit3,

Where did he say he was smarter or wiser? I must have missed that quote.

skulblaka,
@skulblaka@kbin.social avatar

This particular dev didn't. But the Starfield team at large has been blowing up the internet recently telling people that don't like the game that their opinions are wrong.

gamermanh,
@gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Emil Pagliarulo (guy quoted in the article), lead on Starfield, is known to have this attitude towards players. He’s also known to not like design documents, which explains the massively disconnected design of recent Bethesda games, especially Starfield.

Emil is one of the giant reasons their games have been the way they have been lately and it’s why he’s being a baby about it

peter,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

This is why we only ever get PR responses to anything that happens instead of actual information or explanations.

rgb3x3,

It’s better than arguing with the customer.

Simple explanations like “we felt we were under X constraints” or “our engine didn’t handle the loading times as well as we had hoped” would be just fine.

Instead, they just seem to be telling the players they’re wrong for disagreeing with many of the design decisions made

AndrasKrigare,

I was assuming this was a quote from an interview with a leading question like “what do you think about players who claim to know what went wrong in the development of Starfield?” And the quote was out of context to make him look bad.

But this was a Twitter thread. It’s a completely unforced error, no one was making him do this.

GBU_28,

Blame is on the leads, because they are the leads, and get paid as such

smeg, do games w After 11 years, Xbox One emulators are finally coming to PC - but they're not actually using emulation at all

The rest of the article is mildly interesting, but if you just took the bait from the headline:

On a technical level, Xbox One is essentially a PC using a heavily modified version of Windows, and this software simply translates native Xbox applications into a form that can run on standard Windows PCs

NikkiDimes,

So…software emulation…kinda. I guess translation technically. Whatever lol.

twoface_99, do games w EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"

The issue is not the genre “single player (shooter)” itself, but that these big companies just churn out the same generic bullshit and then act surprised when no-one plays it.

AAA studios just don’t have the balls anymore to take a risk and develop something unique. And this is their downfall.

Titanfall 2, Metro Exodus, Ghostwire Tokyo, Doom (to name a few) are all excellent first person shooters. All of them have something unique about them that makes them worthwhile.

Hyperreality,

Goes to show that making a good game is still more art than science.

Hell, make a broken or buggy game, if it has the special something it'll still likely become a classic.

Eg. Fallout New Vegas or Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

Damage,

Titanfall 2

Titanfall 2 had one of the most acclaimed single-player campaigns, with it being only a few hours long and mostly a showcase to get people on multiplayer, and it was still enough.

vexikron,

Quite seriously I am actually looking to attempt to solo indie dev a sort of fps/tactics/management hybrid FPS that would at least start out as single player, and titanfall 2’s gameplay is something I am drawing inspiration from.

My basic idea is: What if you had the squad management and mission planning depth of basically Xenonauts, but you actually played out the missions in first person, with combat systems and load outs and player (and enemy) capabilities that resembled titanfall2’s mix of athletecism and gunplay?

Im in very early stages, but yeah basically titanfall2/xenonauts hybrid with (this is likely the hard part) procedurally generated, 3d levels, strung together with a kind of narrative generation engine, something sort of like rimworld’s system that simulates world conditions and then generates certain events based off of them, but also responds to certain specific things you do or do not do in mission, or what missions you choose to embark on over others.

Probably Im gonna focus on core gameplay systems and not really worry about graphics or assets at all until I can get any of this to an actual working concept level.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

So like Rainbow Six 1-3's mission planning mode?

vexikron,

Probably similar in many ways, but ideally I would like to make it as or more in depth with other features from something like xenonauts.

Youve got resources such as vehicles of differing kinds you may choose to deploy or not, but you have to store them somewhere and also be able to repair them. All this comes from pools of funding from at first probably just completing a mission according to guidelines, but some things take maybe an R&D program or just outright raiding a rival faction or something.

Maybe you want to go a more special forces type route and have a few exceptionally well trained / equipped soldiers and leverage things like helicopters to do infil and exfil and leverage the element of surprise.

Maybe you want to act more like a conventional military and go with larger numbers with decent equipment and a wider array of possible vehicles and support systems.

Maybe you want to focus as much as possible on gathering intel before missions, maybe you want a more intelligent active battlefield info you can access in mission via various sensors.

So… what I am aiming for is something that eventually allows for a more broad array of mission profiles and sort of map archetypes, which, depending on many factors, will have surprises that may occur, like an enemy force having the ability to call for reinforcements that maybe you did not know about, and might force you to withdraw.

Or maybe some missions will take place with a relatively high number of civillian AI running around and your org you work for/run will suffer massively if you just go scorched earth.

I dunno, these are all ambitions at this point, and Im going to focus on at the very least getting a functional combat prototype done first, and then testing out how well that and what I can make combat AI actually do actually works.

Its possible I’ll find some kind of thing that really works well, or really doesn’t work, and change scope significantly.

So far all I have really figured out is that a near future setting would seem to work best with the scope of either my minimal working concept, or a more extended version of it.

???

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

Best of luck. But yes, there's a good chance your scope is too large, so definitely start small.

vexikron,

Oh hey Im surprised that all even posted, my connection crapped out right as I hit send.

But uh haha yeah.

My one saving grace is I have a lot of time on my hands.

But I expect it to take probably at least 6 months before I even have what Id consider a working combat prototype with a variety of different weapons and Ai routines, and maybe a barebones model of a procedural map generator.

Im guessing that me soloing a whole project like this could take 3 years, but if I can get a prototype working, I might have enough money to pay for some 3D assets to speed up dev time a bit.

Almost certainly not enough money to hire anyone lol, and I really really do not want to do kickstarter or early access and deal with the community and possible total failure.

Im the exact opposite of a PR person.

yamanii,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

Titanfall 2 also bombed, even a good game can flop if your marketing sucks or if you release it next to other massive hits.

flamingos, do games w After 10,000+ hours grinding, MapleStory's first level 300 player slams the brakes at 299.99 to rant about the MMO and then quit, all on a dev-promoted stream
skye,
@skye@lemmy.world avatar

gamers will use what little voice they have to place the spotlight on a shit game and giving it an award, getting people to buy that game. Holy shit this is stupid

I’d rather see “gamers” vote for actual good and fitting games for these awards, starving shit games from any attention and money.

thisbenzingring,

Red Dead is a work of art. It’s just shameful that Rockstar has neglected it.

Starfield is such a piece of shit, it actually gets me upset thinking about how bad of an experience it was. I finished it just so I would know how it turns over and I’m still angry about it. Thankfully I waited until it was less than $50

skye,
@skye@lemmy.world avatar

yeah i was mostly just thinking how stupid it is to vote for starfield as “most innovative gameplay”

thisbenzingring,

Yeah I hear that. At one point I was thinking why didn’t they turn the ai generator on the random shit instead of the world. Like there’s all these worlds and only one package type for everything? The immersion could have been amazing if there was 50 different packages of Chunks or whatever.

purplemonkeymad,

If I paid for starfield I would have felt annoyed about it. Played it on game pass so probably spent half price or less on the subscription time. It was fine, but not full price fine.

Feyr,

Shit I played star field on game pass, which I get for free, and I’m still annoyed at how bad that game was. Didn’t even finish it

Maalus,

Red dead got labour of love for how shitty the dev situation was when working on the game tho.

sp3tr4l,

If Labor of Love had to go to a huge project, it should have gone to CyberPunk 2077. The devs had it at least as bad, if not worse, and oh they actually massively significantly improved the game.

RDR2 has uh… do they even still add new clothes?

Maalus,

It doesn’t need to go to a huge project, it needs to go to a project that was supported for a long time by dedicated devs who like working on the game and put in their all into it etc. Red dead was literally all crunch, devs hated working on it, and it stopped immediately after release.

sp3tr4l,

Still laughing at anyone who watched Fallout 76 happen then willingly purchased a Bethesda game before two weeks after release to allow for some actual reviews to happen and the hype train to lessen.

DragonTypeWyvern,

I mean, I never expect a Bethesda game to come without game breaking caveats on release.

They just used to be worth it anyways.

ech,

I fully believe that particular occurrence was just people blindly voting for the games they recognized. Tbh, I’d be more disappointed if it was a coordinated effort. Highlighting a smaller game that is is great would be exponentially more effective and beneficial than using the awards to complain about a game you don’t enjoy playing. The studios aren’t going to notice, and neither will most people (like me), so it’s really just wasted effort.

Maalus,

Nah dude. Both cases are incredibly famous for what they were voted for. It was countless people shitposting. There were other, better recognizable games in there. Like Red Dead 2 is from 6 years ago.

billiam0202,

There were other, better recognizable games in there. Like Red Dead 2 is from 6 years ago.

That’s what the “Labor of Love” award is supposed to be for: games that are older, but the devs have continued to support them as a passion project.

Both of those games being ironically nominated for those awards is apropos.

lath,

Tbh, I did blindly vote for games I recognized or looked good in the screenshots/videos.

ech,

Just so you know, supposedly you don’t have to vote at all to get the rewards anymore.

AnUnusualRelic,
@AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world avatar

It was you!

cyberpunk007, do games w EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"

I would eat up a single player story driven fps no problem.

acosmichippo,
@acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

exactly. maybe you guys just made a shitty game and can’t accept that.

Archelon,

Doom (2016) and Wolfenstein TNO both proved that AAA single player story-driven fps can be hugely successful.

They just need to, y’know, not be shit.

MilitantAtheist,

Thanks!

Paradachshund,

These studios can’t quite wrap their heads around that last part.

RizzRustbolt,

But… The Formula!

Poem_for_your_sprog,

Doom eternal was amazing.

I never even heard of this, but I wouldn’t buy it anyways because EA.

n3m37h,

I’ma just go back and play through Mass Effect series again

Fish,

Cyberpunk 2077 exists, though it may not be the best example.

cyberpunk007,

I enjoyed that one

DragonTypeWyvern,

Eventually

RampantParanoia2365,

It’s excellent. Seriously a great RPG after 2.0.

RampantParanoia2365,

I guess Cyberpunk was a truly awful idea. Who knew?

Visstix, do games w Sony boss admits forcing PC gamers into PlayStation accounts can "invite pushback," but insists they have to keep games safe – which doesn't really track in single-player

Safe from what? Convenience?

rockerface,

Safe from the players, of course

fmstrat,

Keep ________ safe. No matter how you fill the blank, you fill it with money.

Duamerthrax, do games w Sony boss admits forcing PC gamers into PlayStation accounts can "invite pushback," but insists they have to keep games safe – which doesn't really track in single-player

If Sony games aren’t safe to play without a PSN account, I better not play them at all.

ByteOnBikes,

Ubisoft did that too for a while, forcing Ubisoft logins. And they’re continuing to lose staff and shut down games.

hiddengoat, do games w Cities: Skylines 2 "absolutely cannot" have the decade of DLC features that the original game added | GamesRadar+

"We absolutely cannot have ten years of Cities Skylines 1 content done" for the launch of the sequel, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen says in the latest issue of PC Gamer. As a result, the studio decided to focus on "those things that we feel should have been in the original Cities: Skylines, but we didn't have the time or manpower."

Anyone that's not a fucking idiot already knew this, because we understand how temporal reality works. But the whiny "everything sucks and is bad" Stephanie Sterling crowd won't care.

HobbitFoot,

But it looks like they did incorporate DLC into the sequel; it just isn’t obvious. The current implementation of extractive versus value added industry looks better than what they did with Industries. The quantity of different transit types also feels like an equivalent to a couple of DLC for the original game. I also feel like the sequel’s approach to power would also be most of a DLC for the original.

It isn’t perfect, but it looks like Collosal Order at least implemented a lot of lessons learned from the original game. It doesn’t seem as empty as C:S at launch.

chunkystyles,

I’ve played enough CS1 to know that I can’t play it any more, no matter how much content it has. Its absolutely braindead traffic AI destroys my enjoyment of if the game once a city gets sufficiently big.

The traffic AI fixes were all I needed to see to be interested in CS2.

Not_Alec_Baldwin, (edited )

I too am an Adam Something fan. 😂

Edit: the reference www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHnYod32PCk

chunkystyles,

I don’t actually get that reference.

Not_Alec_Baldwin,

Oh!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHnYod32PCk

Adam Something just released a C:S2 video where he removed roads and messed with traffic logic.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

I see a whole new generation of gamers who have grown up on these new games that they think are perfect, who didn’t see the decades of toil and crap that we did growing up. They expect everything to be the most amazing game they’ve ever seen, not understanding that perfect games are in fact, exceedingly rare. That most games have bad mechanics, quirks, boring areas, and things we put up with. But younger folks just stamp it as a “bad game” and refuse to see the nuance.

Things like games are a spectrum. There’s only 3ish games I mark as perfect. Most will have some things wrong with them. If you don’t like that, then just be content with maybe one perfect game a decade.

Frostbeard,

What three games are perfect?

stankmut,

I don’t know about the other two, but I know one of them is SimAnt.

Paradox,
@Paradox@lemdro.id avatar

I can guarantee you that if SA were released today it would be riddled with micro transactions and covered in dlc

Sandbox mode basically wouldn’t exist

HobbitFoot,

Or it would be made by an indie studio.

makingStuffForFun,
@makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml avatar

Dessert Bus. Boulder Dash. Antix.

Pheonixdown,

While that’s true, there’s also a huge difference from like 20+ years ago when they more often than not released games as a complete functional product as opposed to a “we hit the date” buy-in beta test. Games just tend to release with less features and polish than they used to, for the most part companies will keep working on it and get it where it needs to be so the final product is comparable, but it makes for a murkier cycle, buy in at release and probably suffer or wait and try to time when it’s actually ready.

TIMMAY, do games w EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"

I play a lot of games but Ive never heard of this game before this post

dan1101,

Same. This seems to be getting more common with various media and products. Too many choices which is a good thing for consumers but not good for publishers.

rickyrigatoni,

“Nobody bought our game we didn’t market. Guess we’ll stop making an entire genre of games.”

Damage,

I mean, it’s my favorite genre, so if EA can stay the fuck away from it, that’s not a bad outcome

TropicalDingdong,

I mean, it’s my favorite genre, so if EA can stay the fuck away from it, that’s not a bad outcome

Had you heard of it?

I’ve literally never heard of it, but not my genre.

ArachnidMania,

I think they mean single player shooter is their favorite genre, and would be happy for EA to stay away from them. Not the ‘game nobody heard of’

1371113,

I’m not the person you replied to but I’ve been a first person shooter fan since Wolfenstein 3D and original doom. I had NEVER heard of it til today. First person and tower defense games are basically all I play.

JJROKCZ,

They claim to have spent 40 million usd marketing it, I saw some people on twitch playing it when it first came out but it looked meh and was priced way too high so I didn’t watch much

Passerby6497,

There are many genres EA needs to stop making, but I doubt they’ll take the right lesson from this

Salix,

From the article:

“At a high level, Immortals was massively overscoped for a studio’s debut project,” the former employee said. "The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution…

They must have done extremely bad marketing even though they spent so much on marketing because I’ve never heard of this game

DrQuint,

They did market it. A lot.

It’s just that the game’s trailers were wildly forgettable.

TIMMAY,

I mean im on my ps5 every day, browse a ton of game related content on lemmy and such, and share a lot of game news with my friend group, and Ive literally never heard of or seen marketing for this game.

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