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jjjalljs, do gaming w Vampire Survivors-like Megabonk makes megabucks, selling a million copies in 2 weeks, and currently has more daily players than Borderlands 4 on Steam

I keep forgetting borderlands 4 even came out. I guess I block most ads, but none of my friends have even talked about it.

etchinghillside,

I assume I’ll have to wait around until the next gen Steam Deck to play it.

Dutczar,
@Dutczar@sopuli.xyz avatar

I only remembered it was being developed from watching a Nintendo Direct half a year ago, and then only heard about it after launch due to performance issues and Randy opening up twitter again.

The worst part, it’s apparently really good, which I didn’t expect. But I can’t run it on anything and won’t for a while.

TheGreenWizard, do gaming w Vampire Survivors-like Megabonk makes megabucks, selling a million copies in 2 weeks, and currently has more daily players than Borderlands 4 on Steam

Practical games for practical gamers

Midnitte, do gaming w Vampire Survivors-like Megabonk makes megabucks, selling a million copies in 2 weeks, and currently has more daily players than Borderlands 4 on Steam

Get embarrassed, Randy Pitchfork.

dreadbeef, do gaming w As Game Pass prices get laughably high, Microsoft is reportedly spinning up a free version of Xbox Cloud Gaming—but of course you'll have to sit through ads

Gotta drink your verification cans

specialwall, do gaming w As Game Pass prices get laughably high, Microsoft is reportedly spinning up a free version of Xbox Cloud Gaming—but of course you'll have to sit through ads

I was wondering how they would be able to run such an expensive service based on just one person’s ad revenue:

Microsoft is also currently testing a limit of one hour for sessions, with up to five hours free a month

I just don’t understand how Microsoft thinks someone is going to sit through minutes of ads and be okay with only 5 hours per month in return.

savvywolf,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

When I was a kid my parents would only let me play games for half an hour a day. That works out at, using the monthly times, three times as much as Microsoft is letting people use.

Microsoft, is it an ad supported tier or a limited trial. Pick one.

TheAlbatross, do gaming w As Game Pass prices get laughably high, Microsoft is reportedly spinning up a free version of Xbox Cloud Gaming—but of course you'll have to sit through ads

Canceled my sub via the handy link in the 50% price hike email.

Microsoft can huff my piss

18+ pprem, do games w Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop
@pprem@plantex.top avatar

Les extrémistes religieux vont venir nous faire chier partout où ils le pourront... C'est logique, mais ça casse les couilles !

MaggiWuerze,
@MaggiWuerze@feddit.org avatar

Religious extremists will come and piss us off wherever they can… It makes sense, but it’s a pain in the ass!

The problem is that we allowed these idiots to amass so much wealth, that they can just buy and ruin everything they don’t agree with. If the US had anything close to an actual anti cartel agency, they would not allow these kind of takeover to protect free speech and american values

TurkishKebab,

American values like what? Imperialism? It is funny Americans (or Europeans for that matter) still act like their countries have free speech😂you only have free speech as long as that speech doesn’t go against your interests.

(no, i am not defending saudi, they are literally an american puppet)

MaggiWuerze,
@MaggiWuerze@feddit.org avatar

I’m european myself and think there have been american values before but yeah, they’ve pretty much been eroded since the 80s

TurkishKebab,

I mean i am Turkish and we are still in a worse position than you,

You guys are living in oligarchies

I am living in a dictatorship

cerebralhawks, do games w Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop

BioWare needs to do what the Castlevania creator did. Konami wouldn’t give up the rights to Castlevania (or sell it — the Netflix deal was lucrative, after all) and just make their own studio “with blackjack and hookers.” Sure, the studio behind Bloodstained was problematic when it came to delivering on certain promises to Kickstarter backers, and sure, the mobile ports were abandoned and the Switch port was (apparently) never fixed… but on PC and Xbox at least, the game was fine. The best of Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow, it’s the best Castlevania game not called Castlevania, and it’s among the best Castlevania games, too. I’m not sure there is even one that is actually better at everything. They really took all the good parts of Castlevania and, instead of a gimmick like an inverted anti-castle or entering paintings, they just made the castle stupidly huge, almost unreasonably so. The architecture doesn’t make sense, but it never did.

It happened with the developers behind Fallout as well. They became Obsidian, and I think InXile got some of those developers. Obsidian went on to make Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds. InXile made a bunch of RPGs too, but I can’t name any without looking them up.

BioWare needs to take its talent and go indie.

DoucheBagMcSwag,

They kinda are… Look up Exodus. Feels like that game will never come out though

brucethemoose,

That’s the issue, isn’t it?

I see this on the internet a lot. People posit things like “wouldn’t it be awesome if these fired devs got together” or “Why don’t they make good stuff anymore? Wouldn’t it be great if somone made a thing like this old beloved thing…”

…Except it’s already happening. Or happened.

And there’s just so much noise on the internet, it’s largely unknown to the folks who’d be interested.

To be clear, I’m not blaming OP, and I’ve done the exact same thing myself. But I still find it kind of… sad.


Anyway, thanks, I am bookmarking Exodus and Archetype Entertainment now.

ShaggySnacks,

I checked out Exodus. The lore behind the game looks fascinating however my concern is how the devs are going to handle time dilation and your choices.

If my character takes off for a decade, I expect some sort of noticeable change. Buildings a little grimier or nice and clean. Creating new models and maps to reflect the time dilation and the choices you make is going to add a lot of extra dev time.

Glide,

and the Switch port was (apparently) never fixed…

What’s the supposed issues on the Switch port? I only owned the game on Switch, and I didn’t have any issues playing through it.

addie,
@addie@feddit.uk avatar

InXile did Wasteland 2/3 and Torment: Numenara. All fine RPGs.

Completely agree that the talent needs to go elsewhere - this deal is the death knell for creative works at EA. I’d be careful about what you promise on Kickstarter, though. Signing up to lots of stretch goals is likely to burden your game with lots of tickbox features that don’t make any sense.

In fact, I’d say that Bloodstained (while generally excellent) would be improved by cropping out some stuff. The crafting, cooking and crop farming could just be chopped out whole, and put all the upgraded gear in the place where you find items. Would swap out some of the enemy and boss count for a bit more variety. And ‘hard mode’ could have done with some playtesting and a general rebalance, or just be renamed ‘infrequent crazy difficulty spike’ mode. But someone paid for those tickboxes and so we’ve got them.

Letting RPG designers run completely free from publishers can be a recipe for disaster, too. Pillars of Eternity? Excellent. PoE2? Unbelievably unfocussed and sprawling, disrespectful of your time, goes nowhere fast. Could possibly have made two games out of it if someone had told them to chop it in half and then polish the bits, but was a bit of a studio killer instead, could never sell enough to cover the costs.

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot,

They could buy the rights to the Freespace franchise from Interplay. It’s the same story, after all.

Jarix,

Dead Cells which eventually got Castlevania official support is very good

whereyaaat,

It happened with the developers behind Fallout as well. They became Obsidian

Ok, well, let’s not forget that the only reason Fallout achieved mainstream popularity is because Bethesda took it and applied their Elder Scrolls formula.

The Outer Worlds

Which although being more polished than Fallout, was nowhere near as good. They also had some bad writers with an agenda that made sure players couldn’t have relationships.

BioWare needs to take its talent and go indie.

Bioware has no talent in 2025.

Adderbox76,

InXile was most famously the Wasteland series, the spiritual successors to the original fallout designs (1 and 2). But they also did Tides of Numeria and Bards Tale (I think, but don’t quote me)

F_State,

BioWare has lost alot of it’s talent in the last several years. There’s almost no one left that played any hand in the Success of Dragonage or Mass Effect 1-3

utopiah, do games w Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop

“read the runes” … people need to stopping believing that money is money. Money is money AND strings attached. It’s totally different to get 1 EUR from a friend vs 1 EUR from a brank vs 1 EUR from VC vs 1 EUR of public subsidies. Money NEVER comes without string so one must be cautious they are not getting a noose around their neck while signing a contract.

PS: IMHO NLNet is an example of “good” money. Other examples welcomed. In software in the game “industry” specifically I don’t know where one can find non “bad” money so please if you have examples, do share.

yakko,

Bad money chases out good, they say.

utopiah,

Fascinating, digging into en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law then, thanks for bringing that up!

yakko,

I thought I might be playing it loose applying it to the case of private equity in the creative arts, but it feels right

yermaw, do games w Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop

I really cant wait for this generation of kids to grow up and start dealing with bills and shit. The moment they learn the true value of money this whole trend of buying lootboxes and packing players will die on its arse so fast.

I just hope theres some fly on the wall footage of the boards faces when they realise.

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

You think? That generation will have kids who buy the same crap and won’t listen to their parents, just like the kids now don’t listen.

yermaw,

Im hoping so. We don’t have the receipts to show them. Were just grandpa’s who yearn for the good old days and we just dont get it.

Akrenion,

I know adults who boost their ego with lootboxes. Beating the peasants by spending money that others use for groceries is how they feel superior.

Joeffect,

Yeah no… the fucked thing is they don’t care … everything is fucked… spending a bit of money on cheap plastic brings you a little bit of joy… why worry about money if you don’t even have much? You can’t get ahead so at least you can be happy… thats where we are…

ShaggySnacks,

Gotta keep the bread and circuses going.

ExLisper,

You don’t grow out of an addiction.

mohaas,

They’ll just graduate to sports gambling.

jjjalljs,

I know plenty of adults who are really bad at money and paying bills.

Tm12,

You rang?

dubyakay,

They will just become packers at Amazon.

MyNameIsAtticus,
@MyNameIsAtticus@lemmy.world avatar

Unfortunately they don’t grow out of it. I have a friend who still spends upwards of hundreds of dollars on games, especially Gacha games. It’s an addiction that i worry won’t be stopped

sadfitzy, do games w Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop

I’m interested to see the fan response to this.

jjjalljs,

I feel like the average video game player has really poor media and political literacy, but maybe it’s just the ones who make noise online who fit that profile.

rafoix,

Sport games sell very well every year and have tons of predatory monetization. The target audience is not very discerning.

Cheems, do games w Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop
@Cheems@lemmy.world avatar

I almost certainly will never play another NFL or NCAA game again. Cod can go fuck itself. I’m almost definitely not in the demographic to which they’re trying to sell games to anymore. But God damn I know I’m not the only one in this field.

Glide, do games w Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop

The last Bioware game I genuinely enjoyed was Dragon Age: Origins, which was the last thing (mostly) developed before the EA buy-up. I’m sure it’s scary for the employees, but I suspect this is good for Bioware in the long term.

ripcord,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Why do you suspect this is good?

whereyaaat,

Maybe they get shuttered or are given more creative freedom thanks to the Saudi’s ignorance of RPGs and their perception among executives in the business.

I guarantee you, Saudis really only care about FIFA. Everything else is superfluous.

Bronzebeard,

Yeah, nothing like an ultra conservative theocratic dictatorship to really expand those creative freedoms…

whereyaaat,

My point is they will be so unfamiliar with RPGs that they essentially let the studio do whatever they want.

Bronzebeard,

Do you think they don’t have video games over there? What a bizarre thing to say. They’re able to effectively censor all kinds of other media, why do you think RPGs are special?

whereyaaat,

I think the people in charge have never heard of Dragon Age.

I’m also not saying it’s guaranteed, just a possibility.

Glide,

Because if they’re shuttered, the company/people that make the company have the opportunity to go somewhere else and do something better. I’ve disliked everything they’ve produced since they were purchased by EA, so I’ve come to think the publisher holds them back.

F_State,

I liked Inquisition alot though the behind the scenes scoop was that the development process was a dumpster fire that only came together into a good game cause they got lucky.

whereyaaat, do games w Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop

That’s kind of an upgrade, at this point.

Bioware has essentially existed to pander to a very small minority for the past decade. I don’t think they’re capable of making a good game anymore, but at least they won’t get any support from anyone for their mediocrity.

SereneSadie,

BioWare created the first canonically gay character in Star Wars.

Take your bigoted shit out.

dubyakay,

canon

Doubt.

Timberfang, do games w EA CEO says company values will 'remain unchanged' under the new ownership of Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner's investment firm

At least they (hopefully) won’t be getting even worse?

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