I would absolutely add 20 super obscure conspiracy nut teasers to every promo and just never acknowledge anything if I was working for one of these companies.
I'm talking like throwing some messages in binary through specific set of sub pixels of images for a year that all come through because they're my actual plans, then switching them to obviously insane nonsense that will take way longer to disprove and finding a way to get someone to notice.
I’m always curious about how hard it is to make insane nonsense that’s hard to disprove. Like, 100% randomization seems like it could be easier to detect vs. more believable things added by people.
So then you have to spend time making it believable…
"If you take the green subpixel at (46,85), (75,32)... it contains just enough letters you could read as words that form a story detail. And in this post it's a gameplay hint. And this one is a character name" but the same locations enough times in a row that it's hard to be random. Then post a crazy fan theory post after the early ones are known facts about the game and I've embedded crazy shit in a few.
I didn’t see a source for the statistic in the article which is a bit disappointing as I’m really interested to learn more about it. It seems pretty high but also there’s quite a lot of uncertainty built into it.
From my experience with VR I found I got sick after a long enough time but was able to get my ‘vr legs’ and have much longer sessions even on more intense games like Windlands where you swing around like Spiderman (super fun if you have the stomach for it).
The other thing to note is that for me at least it’s a spectrum. It’s not just ‘VR makes me sick’ but it depends a lot of the game or activity and there are a bunch of ways for games to try and reduce it. It does take time to get used to some of them though.
Hopefully things become better with time and more folks get to enjoy it because it’s a lot of fun in my experience.
Yea, some games I can play for hours.
Others make me feel weird after a few minutes.
I can spend a ton of time in Alyx, or doing barrel rolls and corkscrews in Star Wars Squadrons.
I have a hard time finishing a level in After the Fall.
I have had a lot of friends over and try it and since they are making up their statics I will do a statistic purely based of my experience. About 5% of VR triers experience nausea when the frame rate isn’t smooth in a moment of movement.
Jet Island was the game for me that grew my VR legs, Windlands sounds similar except you also have Ironman thrusters and a skate board. After that I could then spend hours in dirt rally 2.0 which poetically would’ve gave me a bad headache before.
I don’t think VR is going to work for us. My SO and I get carsick really easily, and my SO gets sick playing or watching FPS games on a normal screen. It’s mitigated somewhat by adjusting FOV and higher refresh, but it still causes issues within an hour (usually like 30 min).
I wonder how much of this statistics are from people like us, for whom even “tame” things like being a passenger in a car can cause motion sickness.
I saw a streamer do that once with a character they absolutely despised. Save, kill, reload, kill, reload, kill, reload a couple times until they finally had it out of their system.
Bear sex. Not what I would expect from this game but I haven’t played any in the series. It does make me want to play it just to see how this fits into the story tbh. Good marketing.
Bards are objectively the best if you want the full breadth of options to move the story around. If you want to kick ass in combat or sling more spells, other classes are better at those aspects of the game, but Bards are going to give you a lot more to play with in terms of the RP.
Not spoiling anything either, but you can always try bard and change your class later, as there is a mechanic in the game for that.
at least from the perspective of general PC users.
This is a bit of a side tangent not strictly related to this article - The overwhelming vast majority of computer users are not gamers. Most people do not play videogames on a PC and whether or not a few games run or not on Linux is irrelevant to them.
What is relevant to them is productivity software, employment requirements, ease of use, and stability. And, on those particular fronts, Windows still has a noticeable advantage despite being a dumpster fire that costs money.
I acknowledge the many achievements that have been made in the world of Linux development lately and I’m so stoked to see it enter the mainstream more and more, but grow very tired of all the articles, opinion pieces, blog posts, etc saying that Linux is “ready” because it can play games - as if that is the only thing that matters.
Ah. I didn’t know they said that. It’s definitely shitty to go back on that promise. Although in a vacuum, I think this is the kind of non-cosmetic content that’s somewhat acceptable to me as paid DLC. It’s not a competitive game and assuming the class is balanced, it’s just adding content that gives more variety. I’ve been fine with paid DLC in other big games as long as it’s a worthwhile amount of content for the price and it’s sold in a straightforward way without any funny business. Given that this game has online co-op, I think it makes sense that they’re gonna keep the content expansion free so it doesn’t divide people who would want to play together (also I guess there is trading, but I’m a CoF player so…) and then this is something that mostly just affects someone’s individual experience. Like if you were going to be happy enough to keep playing the game with existing classes, then this doesn’t really affect you.
So in principle I’m ok with this… but like I said, the bigger issue is them going back on their word.
Not defending last epoch but Grim Dawn did not feel complete. The base game story ‘ends’ on a complete cliffhanger quest the way a TV show Season 1 ends.
I like Grim Dawn but it pisses me off that the base game is so cheap when the studio knows the experience is super incomplete without the 3x as expensive expansions.
Valid. I just cannot play ARPGs absent a decent enough story. I’ve dropped a few due to uninteresting grinding, but I understand that is an appeal in and of itself to other gamers.
Grim Dawn was an excellent and finished game on release, and said DLCs came out years later via DLCs that acted as expansions to the campaign.
Last Epoch doesn’t even have a complete story, just some unfinished tripe with no real lore and oh here’s a bunch of alternate versions of how the unfinished thing you encountered could have happened differently.
They’re not even in the same class. It’s why I have 440 hours on Grim Dawn and would play it more still. I dropped LE at 170 hours and don’t really see any reason to play more. Hell, Last Epoch had a cash shop before the game even left Early Access. It feels like the development and costs were mismanaged out of the gate. I waited to buy it on discount.
Most likely they fucked up their report and they’re using the rules of the exchange to suspend trading until they fix the mistake. But Ubisoft has been running on fumes for some time now, shitting out the same 3 or 4 games over and over again so I doubt their financials are that great.
This is exactly why they SHOULDN’T have named it Steam Machine. The Steam Deck was released and no one talked about Steam Machines. Call it Steam Machine and suddenly everyone is reminded of the colossal flop all those years ago.
Same. I don’t have any immediate need for any of the newly announced hardware products, but I’m hopeful they succeed because they indirectly benefit me as a Linux gamer.
There’s so few people that remember… Nobody cares.
And Steam Machine is going really hard as a brand and as a device name, really. I bet there’s a lot of salivating at this level of brand recognition in a lot of marketing departments.
Does it matter though? You can put it as a failure that got so bad Valve eventually cancel it, or you can put it as a product that got good from countless iteration. Its kinda like glass half empty half full kind of situation which eventually doesn’t really matter.
Going from YouTube comments on gaming channels that don’t focus on PC gaming or Linux, I don’t think many people remember the first Steam Machines from 10 years ago.
The goal of marketing is to get as many people as possible to be aware that a company’s product exists. These articles are doing just that, for free.
Initial sales will probably take a hit bc of the negative articles. I don’t think they’re being written bc valve decided to stick with the same name though. The articles are probably being written bc negative headlines get clicks.
If the new steam machine proves to be a solid product this time around then gamers are going to buy it. If it’s such a solid product that it manages to turn a product line that was once associated with failure and negativity into a product line that’s associated with success and positivity then I really can’t think of anything better the new steam machine could do for valve’s brand. The (hypothetical) articles comparing the huge (hypothetical) success of the new steam machine to the dramatic failure of the past will also be a bit easier to write a headline for. More free marketing.
It is. “From failed product to global success” will also drum up a positive vibe about this particular hardware. What i meant by it is it doesn’t really matter if the previous iteration is a failure, what people really care and what’s important is the current iteration and what Valve learn from their past mistake, and the marketing team of Valve know exactly that. It’s marketing after all, turning negative vibe to positive one is part of the marketing strategy.
A friend of mine thinks it is gonna flop (tbh nobody knows), only because of that prior flop, he refuses to acknowledge that they might have learned of their mistakes, and hardly acknowledge that the Steam Deck is a success, only because it is a different market (he truly doesn’t believe in Steam hardware).
I for one am excited as I don’t have any PC gaming at the moment (or Steam Deck lol), I have been a console (and mostly handheld) gamer since the old days, and this bet on Steam makes sense for me in this day and age.
what is someone gonna type into youtube/google/ or any other search engine?
what are they going to end up see?
are they smart enough to understand the differences in products?
I’m trying to think of a scenario where someone would think twice about purchasing a steam machine just because a product from 10 years ago bombed in sales.
This would require them to ignore the recent success of the steam deck… which is basically impossible.
Therefore, I have doubts that the name alone would have ANY direct impact on sales
I remember the flop, but since Proton and Steam Deck have been waiting for them to try again. In many ways it might be bad marketing and just adding a “2” to the name would probably help. But in other ways, it might just be them being transparent? Same with the controller. Like they’re owning their past and saying “we still want this, and the time is right this time”
This is the initial vibes I got but then again I might be bias because I’m already familiar with steam. Honestly, it might be better if valve added 2 to the end of their products. For example, The nothing phone company tried to do something “unique” with their earbuds but all that did was confuse the shit out of people. I think they reverted back to numbering them.
But then on the flip side, sony is infamously known to name all their products with a shit load of numbers… so tbh this can go either way lmao
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