The Covenant might be religious fanatics but they’re actually capable of working with other religious fanatics, in mutual cooperation.
MAGAs are more like Species 8472, utterly hostile to anything that doesn’t conform to their very narrow and ill informed worldview, even to the point of being hostile to potential allies, thus alienating them.
A casual look down the MobyGames lists on New Vegas and Outer Worlds 2 still shows a lot of overlap, so probably. It would be weird to invite people who didn’t work on New Vegas to see the realization of a thing they didn’t work on.
Josh Sawyer, Chris Avellone, and John Gonzalez were responsible for disproportionate amounts of New Vegas’s overall design, world building, and writing.
Gonzalez seems to have done a disproportionate amount of the writing.
Of those 3, only Sawyer is on Outer Worlds 2, as the Studio Design Director, a relative demotion from being Project Lead in New Vegas.
Of those Sawyer specifically names… we still have himself, Jesse Farrel, and Jeff Hugses, on the Outer Worlds 2 team.
John Gonzalez, Chris Avellone, Eric Fenstermaker, Akil Hooper, Rob Lee, Charles Staples, Travis Stout, Steph Newland, Mat MacLean, and George Ziets, are all absent.
So basically, almost everyone is gone other than Josh Sawyer and two area designers/writers, who I am guessing wrote the stories and dialogue specific to the areas they designed (for New Vegas).
John Gonzalez was probably the most invovled in actually writing the most important parts of New Vegas, he doesn’t appear to be on the Outer Worlds 2 team.
I don’t think Sawyer was “demoted”. I think he’s just on other projects. Pentiment’s entire development probably fit within Outer Worlds 2’s timeline. I don’t think Bethesda said, “invite everyone who worked on New Vegas” expecting there to be no change in staff in 15 years, but there are still plenty of people from that old project there.
As basically a design lead, as opposed to total project lead.
Yeah, sure, he could have requested that himself.
It still basically is a demotion, its less responsibilities, not in charge of the whole project.
In fairness, he’s getting pretty old, I don’t blame him.
But the main point here is… its pretty much just Sawyer, out of names people might actually know, who’s the only one from New Vegas, who is on the Outer Worlds 2 team.
He’s on Outer Worlds 2 as “Studio Design Director”, as in duties that apply to the entire studio, a studio that works on multiple projects at any given time. He was game director on Pentiment while Outer Worlds 2 was being built. I’m sure he did plenty of actual work on Outer Worlds 2 the same way that my boss helps solve problems I’m having, even though they’re also working with other teams on other projects. He probably also got started on his next main project right after Pentiment wrapped, all while helping out on Avowed, Outer Worlds 2, and Grounded 2.
its pretty much just Sawyer, out of names people might actually know
I knew very few of these people’s names before looking at the credits just now, but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. There are names on there that you probably didn’t know that worked on both projects.
I… just went to went to Moby and actually ctrl+f searched for the names that Sawyer specifically mentions in his the reddit thread that I linked to.
And I at least already knew Sawyer, Avellone, and Gonzalez, because I’m a pretty big fan of New Vegas.
I’m quite familiar with Sawyer, because…
… Sawyer famously released his own mod for New Vegas, which is basically ‘Hardcore Mode ++’, literally his originally intended design that was not able to be fully stuck to in the main developement cycle of the game.
Other people have since taken his mod further and expanded on it, but you can still find the original though, up on NexusMods.
You could go to Moby games and start using Ctrl+F for the names found on the other Moby games page. That’s what I did. I found like 7 or 8 in common before I stopped. That’s enough on its own for a fun reunion on the set of the TV adaptation of the thing you built 15 years ago.
Based solely off the trailer I can see how a big American storefront would err on the side of caution here. There is very little to gain from carrying a game decidedly built with controversy in mind, but a lot to loose.
With the publicity around it and sales still possible through alternative stores maybe things will turn out alright for the developer in the end. “Banned” media is always in demand, after all.
Unless it unexpectedly sells gangbusters, the dev says they’re likely to shut down as not having the massive steam audience to sell to won’t net them enough to continue. And people are stupidly loyal to valve for some reason.
That's because Valve is privately owned and this has largely resisted the enshittification that largely plagues public companies and private equity frims.
I mean, he released the communication he’s received. It’s not super clear. And the things he thinks it was isn’t even in the current version of the game
If they had to scratch their heads trying to figure out what parts of the game needed to change to not include allusions to that, then they have bigger problems than not releasing on Steam.
They’d be as well carrying on. Its in a pretty unique position as being a game that people are talking about before its even finished, which is pretty uncommon for most titles, and can be “the game they tried to ban” which did wonders for Manhunt, GTA and Postal.
Valve is pretty upfront about being a business first and foremost. Their customers are loyal because they consistently provide high value at reasonable prices, even though they are in a dominating position in the market. They’ve taken unpopular decisions in the past, but never any that seriously alienated a meaningful chunk of their customer base.
Like for instance, when epic came out with their exclusive access titles being a part of their business plan, valve could have responded with their own exclusive access system and had a good chance of killing off epic and others in the process. Instead they just ignored it and people like me continued using them and didn’t even consider epic even when their anticompetitive actions switched to ones that would have benefitted me (free games), because I could see the shithole they wanted to bring gaming to if their platform achieved dominance.
No place for challenging art in video games. Books and movies have been pushing boundaries for millennia, but this new medium is way too effective at affecting people
The distinction may seem like nitpicking but no, CSAM is a legally defined term of depictions of actual children being sexually abused.
This game does not feature any such content. Not just because there are no depictions of real children, but also because the fictional children depicted aren’t subjected to sexual abuse.
Valve’s language cites “sexual conduct” which in this case reportedly (I didn’t watch it myself) has been stretched to include nudity that is non-sexual in nature.
I get why Valve would err on the side of caution, but that TOS decision is no basis to turn around and make the legally relevant claim that the game features actual CSAM.
As like 3000 other comments here have explained, Valve has a zero tolerance policy for what they consider CSAM, meaning they will not reconsider. Which is their prerogative.
I’m on the fence about the topic, but you’ve gotta be dense to believe CSAM has nothing to do here. The accusation is one of CSAM, so the argument is whether the scene is CSAM or not.
In a perfect world the question would be simple, but in the reality we live in, you have to consider if the art will be misused - and that’s assuming the artist is honest about their intentions in the first place.
i’m less worried about me not buying their games and more worried about the folks who buy madden every year even though the last interesting release was 08
It already is a unique art form. This is not defined by the commercial availability, and this game wouldn’t be the first art piece that understands controversy as part of its essence.
Y’all need to read what CSAM is. Questionable or objectionable art isn’t CSAM in the same sense that drawing a murder isn’t murder and drawing Noncon isn’t rape.
Depiction isn’t harm, if it was damn near all literature would be in the same category.
Let’s not go down that slippery slope.
Books like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – Judy Blume would be considered abuse material on such an asinine slope.
Y’all need to read what CSAM is. Questionable or objectionable art isn’t CSAM in the same sense that drawing a murder isn’t murder and drawing Noncon isn’t rape.
it’s literally legally defined as CSAM in most western countries. and I probably wouldn’t be arguing otherwise, since it looks like the other dude who did that got all his posts deleted by the mod.
drawing a murder isn’t murder and drawing Noncon isn’t rape.
Drawing people having sex isn’t sex, but it is porn. Verbally attacking someone isn’t assault, but it can be abuse. Drawing a comic where someone tortures and then kills the president of the United States isn’t murder, but it will get the FBI knocking on your door.
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