You know someone is gonna make a mod that generates random and unique bases from hab complex assets.
And thats exactly why Bethesda doesnt put the effort in. cause they make the game, then the modders make it good for free… Or it used to be that, now they want to charge for mods and take a cut of the profits for shit they didnt make.
At a scale of 1k planets you're going to have to rely on reused assets and procedural generation. At which point people not into procedural generation say that it's "repetitive". Especially if you only gen once for everyone and not each run lol.
AI generation of assets and code will theoretically eventually resolve this, but that's quite a ways off. They're not even usable for such with human assistance yet. And if you have ai generating the content, it's not really a human team making that stuff lol.
They could at least make the random PoI’s interesting if there was some…randomness to them.
Like, I walk into a PoI, I already know where the chests are, the locked doors, are, where the stupid fucking corpse in the shower is, etc etc. cause I’ve ran through this PoI 20 times.
I dont know why at least the locations of chests and locked doors cant be randomized. Make things at least marginally interesting, instead of cookie cuttered to extreme.
You can, but randomizing chests+locked doors is kinda complicated, and the more "interesting" your generations the harder it is to code and the more dev time it takes. And for a AAA game release you can't really do that.
Key+Lock randomization is something that has been solved, and has been used most notably in procedurally generated zeldalikes. But that's still niche indie territory, and not used for major game releases.
Hasn’t this game been in development for like 5 years? And they built it on an existing engine that they have tons of experience with. You could have said “they were limited on how much they could randomize POIs because of the old engine” and I would have believed you because that sounds way more plausible than “it’s hard to code, so AAA games can’t do it”. Like what?
The issue with procedural generation is the game has to be built for it from the ground up and in a modular way. AAAs try to make themselves appealing by using novel new high quality assets that aren't modular.
I haven't played starfield so idk what they ended up doing, but from the sound of it they have pre-made assets/areas that they then place onto pre-generated worlds in a randomized way.
To make one of these "areas" procedural in itself, they'd then have to code a whole system for that. With AAA/3D the hard part is making modular environments without it looking repetitive or ugly.
My point isn't so much that it can't be done in a AAA game. But rather that it's risky to do (not all players like it), and you have to structure your development around it. Lots can go wrong, there's stuff you gotta sacrifice to make it work, etc.
If starfield is on the old bethesda engine then that's even more of a reason. You can't just plug and play an entire procedural generation thing in there without some fairly large overhauls or just gluing on an unrelated system.
In practice, bethesda probably took the lazy route: using their existing engine without major changes, then just making new assets for it, throwing stuff about a bit randomly, and calling it a day.
That's the thing about procedural generation is: it's a lot of effort and sucks up a huge part of the game's development and comes at some pretty strict costs (repetitive looking environments/gameplay, reduced novelty, larger programming dev time to make it work). It can be done, but for a cost-cutting AAA studio they're not gonna bother.
They already have once though. Many of Morrowind’s dungeons were procedurally generated in development then edited a bit after, that was the same engine. Same with Daggerfall altho that was a diff engine.
Very different game but Amnesia: the Bunker has plenty of procedural generation as well.
It’s not at all impossible for one of the largest game development studios to have some procedurally generated, essentially dungeon content. Doing a bit more than the exact same place copied and pasted would be a huge undertaking yes, but if they wanted to they could have. There are plenty of 3D rogue-likes out now as well. Returnal is AAA and haa procedurally generated levels, far more complicated than neccesary for Bethesda to do in order to populate planets in their game about planet exploration.
I didn't say it's impossible. Just that it's harder, takes deliberate effort, etc. For AAA games they don't bother with that kind of thing because it's larger expense and larger risk.
I was never asking for fully procedurally generated dungeons.
I just said randomize chest locations and door locks. It cant be that hard for a company that has been using the same game engine for almost 22 years to implement a node system to roll a spawn chance for a chest, or a door to be locked or not (with a higher chance of node spawns behind locked doors).
Hell, they could have even gone the lazy way and just copy and pasted the PoI a few times and manually changed the cosmetics/appearances.
With space and prefab buildings, they have the ultimate excuse for why every dungeon is identical (at least until you get into the underground caves…), but not every one of them should have the same dead body inthe same location in the same shower, the same succulent on the same shelf. move the body to a different location! Have a chance for a cluster of books to spawn instead of the succulent! Its a prefabricated hab structure, but that doesnt mean they come with such strict instructions as “Only succulent A on this shelf”
yes. I haven't played the game so idk the details of what's up. but at 1k+ planet-sized spaces it's hard to have a team go over that by hand. Planets are large. But I have no doubt that bethesda team was probably super lazy as well.
7.1% of the total hours spent were on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive / Counter-Strike 2
6.4% were in League of Legends
6.2% were in Roblox
5.8% were in Dota 2
5.4% were in Fortnite
That is a lot of people playing free-to-play competitive multiplayer games.
Free is an important reason why. Also, these games run very well on old machines. If you mostly play that and get a new rig, you don’t have to spend a lot. Pc parts have gotten ridiculously expensive.
I get free reducing the barrier-to-entry, but I kinda look at games in terms of “how much is the ratio of the cost to how many hours of fun gameplay that I get?”
I mean, I have some games that I briefly try, dislike, and never play again. Those are pretty expensive, almost regardless of the purchase price.
But the thing is, if it’s a game that you play a lot, the purchase price becomes almost irrelevant in cost-per-hour of gameplay. I’ve played Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead — well, okay, you can download that for free, but I also bought it on Steam to throw the developers some money — and Caves of Qud a ton. The price on them is basically a rounding error. And the same is probably true for the top few games in my game library.
You could charge me probably $2000 for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, and it’d still be cheaper per hour of gameplay than nearly all games that I’ve played, because I’ve spent so many hours in the thing.
If people are playing these like crazy, you’d think that the same would hold for them. That the cost for a game that you play like crazy for many years just…doesn’t matter all that much, because the difference in hours played between games is so huge that it overwhelms the difference in price.
That and Dwarf Fortress; learning curve is steep but they’re rogue-likes. Death is an opportunity to have a whole other adventure and learn from your mistakes and see what RNG has in store for you this time. And there’s infinitely repeatable!
Yeah, Dwarf Fortress too, but at least Dwarf Fortress has an extensive, well-documented wiki. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead had a not-very-up-to-date wiki at one point, but then whoever maintained it had it go down at some point in the past year, and I’d say that the game has also been constantly updated and more-dramatically-rebalanced than Dwarf Fortress, so learning to how to play involves scouring Reddit, YouTube, and Discord to try to figure out what information is current. I think that the current recommended route on the subreddit to learn how to play is to watch recent YouTube videos of some streamers playing, which is…kinda nuts. It’s not uncommon that a question on the subreddit as to an authoritative answer on game mechanics is “go check the code”…
There are also some military sims I’ve played that are probably reasonably approachable to players who are familiar with the military hardware involved from prior to the game, but for players who aren’t, they’re probably in for a lot of reading and understanding mechanics, and some milsims don’t bother to document that, so you really need to do outside reading beyond whatever the game documentation has.
NetHack takes me waaaay back. Blows my mind DevTeam are still working on it. I haven’t played in a few years. NetHack, Angband, C:DDA, etc are all games I play on long haul flights since they use the least battery and I’ve not been on a long haul since the pandemic.
Much as I like C:DDA, it does not perform terribly well battery-wise relative to what it should and looks like it should use. The game re-renders frames even without keypresses, and on top of that, each frame displayed recomputes the world state.
CS was paid, Dota and Fortnite had “early access” packs before being released. Yeah fortnite is the odd one out here with keeping early access stuff to seperate gamemode and still costing money, but was originally planned to transition to f2p.
Dota was always going to be f2p, and maybe you could buy the beta access, but I, like many others, never paid and just got invited. So I would not consider it to be a paid game going f2p
Love seeing another person with lots of hours in Caves of Qud. It’s rapidly climbing up my hours played list since 1.0 release. Bought it at 17.99, played for 220 hours so far. Math says that’s 9 cents an hour, and I’m still not done playing. Live and drink, friend!
Its the replayability. I mean, look how many people are still playing chess. Stick a human intelligence on the other end of the stick and you’ve pretty much got it figured out.
Further down in the thread, I ran into someone talking about an older RPG, Realmz. I dug up a subreddit on Reddit related to the game, and the stickied post had this gem:
These are codes that were reissued by Skip (Aka. SpoonLard). He and my grandfather were the original two collaborators when Skip attempted to carbonize Realmz in 2005.
Nothing like a comment about someone’s grandfather having tried twenty years ago to modernize a game you’ve played in its original form.
I’m going to be honest I just looked up the game for the first time and had no clue it came out in 2009. I hadn’t ever heard of it until a few years ago so I just figured it was some new game. The whole warcraft/dota thing was crazy to me.
@tacofox@AwesomeLowlander wasnt LoL made by some of the original DotA modders? But somehow valve ended up with the rights for the name so they made DotA 2 as a standalone game? It's been ages since iv'e seen an article about the origins of those games :D
There were many people who worked on dota back then. There was no official version to begin with, you could find a dozen variants in bnet on any given day. Slowly it got centralised. Some of the modders ended up at LoL, others ended up at Valve. The name wasn’t copyrighted, nobody really owned it. Valve kinda inherited it by virtue of hiring the guy running the mod team at the end.
Nope. I know about DOTA and how it has a bunch of spin offs. One of my best friends plays some weird betting game that is a mod of DOTA and he tried to explain the whole thing to me a long time ago.
So looking it up my guess is I played AoE over Warcraft, never understood DOTA, don’t really like battle area games, and have only ever watched AoE in e-Sports.
The amount of times I “finally sit down and watch that new Netflix show I’ve been putting off” and it’s 7 years old. My kid is into “newer Disney stories” I don’t know from my day… that are 25 year old films!
besides the lower bar of entry due to being free, Midias research has shown that the younger generation prefers online multiplayer, and as you grow older, you start to favor single player games more.
My personal hypothesis is that everyone likes online multiplayer initially because it’s pretty cool, then you get bored it when you realise playing with angry randos is no fun. It’s not that a younger generation prefers online multiplayer, it’s that they haven’t got sick of it yet!
Cancelling a pre-loaded pride event because you’re scared of right wing nutcases being mean to your playerbase is the very definition of letting the terrorists win.
Well, to be fair, you don’t know you’re getting it for that. As far as I’ve seen, they haven’t announced the release price yet. And a lot of studios are hoping that Rockstar will take the fall for being the first $100 game so publishers can start charging used console prices for AAA games from then on.
Either way though, I won’t be paying anything for it.
Based on what? You don’t actually know until it gets released. Sure, past history and reputation are certainly things to factor in, but we’ve seen plenty of major gaming companies shit the bed, despite their reputations.
I’m responding to a comment assuming it’ll be nothing but a “pay to win” game, despite any real evidence of that - I’m pointing out the expectations of GTA VI.
This sub is like Reddit on steroids. Just a bunch of contrarian kids trying to start arguments on the internet. Bizarre.
You hope you’ll get those things. It’s Rockstar though so who really knows. I mean we do know we’re going to get a single player that’s been confirmed by Rockstar but everything else is just a guess. The map leak people seem to suggest that the map will include NASA and Disneyland which will be cool I guess, but we don’t know that that’s just a prediction and I don’t quite understand how they can predict that.
I just don’t trust Rockstar not to screw it up with GTA online 2, now with more irritating flying bikes
Because I don’t want to play full price for a 1080 upscaled experience at 30fps. If it’s a good experience then it will be worth the wait and that much better when it runs smoother, looks better, and loads faster. Plus it will have most of the bugs worked by then.
This will probably be the last time it ever happens. They’re trying to get people to double dip, and plenty will, but the console install base isn’t what it was when GTA V came out at the end of a generation. Plus we all know full well that the PC version will happen, whereas in yesteryear, we weren’t sure.
If we were just talking PlayStation I would say 97% is near enough to make no difference but if we compare both platforms together its only 67% and that is enough to influence strategy. A console only release in 2025 is unlikely to eclipse GTA5’s position as “fastest-selling entertainment product in history”.
But also don’t forget that the amount of gamers is larger today than in 2013. Gaming is much more mainstream, and so even 97% of the install base is still disappointing considering steam grew by, what, 3x or something in terms of average monthly users?
Another source I found is that the amount of total gamers grew by roughly 50% from 2013 to 2025. But yeah, I just did a quick skin numbers are not precise
But still, 97% is disappointing considering the general demographic was supposed to grow. And then, in reality, it’s just 67% too
I actually have that in my library because I bought the Index but haven’t played it yet because I wanted to play the first 2 games first. I didn’t play the first game for very long tho because I got stuck at some point early into the game and haven’t felt like continuing yet. You can also really feel the age of that game, controls and that kinda stuff. Not sure if I should just punch through that game or just say fuck it and play Alyx.
Well you’re in luck because there are VR mods available free for the older Half Life games. Just get the Orange Box or something with all the half life backlog and VR mod them for free.
If by “first game” you mean HL1, you could try playing “Black Mesa” which is a fan remake of the game, in the same engine that powers HL2. It’s not a 1:1 recreation, but it’s close enough (and I feel it improves on some things).
HL2 is also 3 seperate games (HL2, HL2 Episode 1, HL2 Episode 2), so make sure you have all of those in your library.
At the very least, I’d suggest playing HL2/EP1/EP2 before Alyx, since those would provide the expected background for Alyx, despite it technically being a prequel-ish thing.
Half life 1 just got a new big update that makes it much better to play this day and age and fixed a bunch of bugs. Either way you could skip 1. As a kid I never played 1 and went straight into 2, then 2 episodes 1 and 2 with the orange box. I still haven’t finished 1 but with this new update I think I’ll go back to it some point soon now.
Am not sure there’s a way for them to release HL3 and don’t disappoint huge number of people. Not because they suck at making games but because expectations have grown so so so much they are downright unachievable now.
I had heard of it but I don’t really watch YouTube. I watched that whole video and what a shitshow. I went straight to my wife and said we have to watch out that the kids don’t get caught up in this.
We give an allowance to our young niece and nephew, who both game on PC sometimes, and it seems like this is exactly the kind of shit that would entice our nephew. He has my old PC and it’s really showing its age.
I guess that must be why I can’t buy the Black & White games or Fable 2. Because Microsoft cares so much about preserving the awkward legal Loop some of their Lionhead Games are in.
I love how this continues to crank out articles with 0 information and everyone speculating what it might be about.
Don’t get me wrong, Nintendo are dickheads, but you can clearly see how everyone greedily clicks on these articles considering how often they get rehashed.
I am just curious, do you have a take on how Nintendo’s lawsuit could be legitimate? Even a high-level theory, surely if you are so concerned about speculation and “greedy clickbait”, you have some logical ideas to back this up?
I would argue we do have enough information to have a take on it. What legitimate patent infringement case do you see in context of Palworld and Nintendo’s products? Be clear and specific.
If you’re going to call for a ban on commentary, you need to have some of argument.
From my perspective, it is crazy to defend some random corporation in this way when you can’t even come up with a basic explanation of why critical commentary is not justified at this stage.
Without going through all of their patent filings no one can. So again, that is the point. Lack of info
We are both gamers (I am assuming this is true for you since you’re commenting here). I am not talking about legal understanding of Japanese patent law. Just a practical evaluation of Palworld vis-a-vis Nintendo products. What genuine technical innovation (I am not talking about bullshit patents for stuff that was implemented many decades ago) do you see in Nintendo’s products that was copied by Palworld?
This is not difficult.
Never said a ban on commentary, just hate bullshit articles.
The implication of thread OP was that articles critical of Nintendo (in the context of this case) should not be published as of today, no? Why is any commentary immediately categorized as “greedy clickbait” or “rehashed content”?
Something I agree with you on. Let them fight. This discussion is in the context of bullshit articles with zero information.
I would argue it’s not a bullshit article as I have yet to hear a single example of what legitimate (in the real sense, not related to Japanese patent law) case Nintendo has. What is this magical innovation that we see in Nintendo products that was copied by Palworld?
I am not talking about legal understanding of Japanese patent law.
But that's what the case is about.
I would argue it's not a bullshit article as I have yet to hear a single example of what legitimate (in the real sense, not related to Japanese patent law) case Nintendo has.
Well then the fact that we still don't know what the case is really about is exactly why these articles are useless. No information in there.
What is your argument here? Your support the Japanese patent law irrespective of whether it reflects reality? You would be OK with Japanese patent that is de facto non-valid (i.e. the approach was already used in games 10+ years ago) just to support a random company?
I am going off memory, but one example would be one of the Japanese gaming companies patenting cross-game saves (release to sequel); an approach that was implemented by the Ultima games 10+ years before the patent was filled? Do you support this?
We have access to Palworld, we have access to Nintendo products. If commentary criticizing Nintendo is “greedy clickbait”, then what innovation has been abused by Palworld? Can you provide an example in context of gaming experiences?
Sure, I mean this is a forum discussion (in a relatively underground platform no less).
I don’t see what this has to do with what I am talking about. If the article sucks, what is this innovation in Nintendo’s products/services that was copied by Palworld? This is a very simple and straightforward question, no?
What’s wrong or “too deep” about a question like that?
Let's go back to the start of this comment thread:
I love how this continues to crank out articles with 0 information and everyone speculating what it might be about.
Don't get me wrong, Nintendo are dickheads, but you can clearly see how everyone greedily clicks on these articles considering how often they get rehashed.
That's the argument: these articles add nothing to the discussion. And you responding to that with "but can you prove Nintendo is right?" isn't the point and also isn't adding anything to the discussion.
So nintendo and palworld are based in Japan which has no fair use on copyright.
If this became a copyright case in Japan and palworld won it could change the law on copyright fair use in, which Nintendo and other corps don’t want as it would open up new games based on their products under fair use.
The only way Nintendo can attack palworld is via patent infringement.
If this became a copyright case in Japan and palworld won it could change the law on copyright fair use
not every country has case law. most of Europe is eg using “code law”, which means a precedent doesn’t change the law, but only applies to the one specific case with all its specific context and circumstances taken into account. under slightly different circumstances, a judge may rule differently
Yes, there are going to be opinion pieces like this one filling the space for a major news story like this one, but there’s still room for proper journalism right now. I recommend folks check out PC Gamer’s interview with an IP attorney that worked in Tokyo (which was also the second link in this posted article).
Software patents are a thorny topic, and it’s worthwhile for enthusiasts of the industry or those interested in IP law to read up on the concept in general. There’s risk for Nintendo here, and I found Sigmon’s offhand comment about how Nintendo’s ramped up legal hiring to be particularly interesting.
Lmao Valve made a service so good at what it does, it’s fucking over all these other business ghouls like Tim Sweemey who are actively trying to dominate the market without actually competing; just look at Epic’s store, it’s d o g s h i t. They give out free games and still no one I know wants to use it. It’s the same across the board, these companies do not want to make good services, they want to legally strongarm the consumer.
I’ll tell you a secret) nowadays ALMOST all corporations regardless of what they make business into wanna strongarm the consumer, for quick example look up denuvo and baldurs gate, if product is good then people will buy and denuvo won’t be needed
GOG has shown that drms are never needed. More often than not, denuvo causes issues to the player, and gets bypassed by a pirate easily. It is simply there because gamedev companies think they get something out of it, when in reality they don’t.
Yeah. I don’t even know that much about the whole thing, just what I learned when going to look for a game a while back, and even from that little it was like, wtf is with this person?
this is very true, its not like they saying no to other stores like apple for example, they just cant compete so they sue instead, really show how pathetic they are.
I recently got Alan wake 2 on EGS because I’m a huge Remedy head and huge fan of the first game and couldn’t contain my excitement to wait for a steam release and potentially see spoilers, and damn dude that store really is the most bare bones half assed thing ever. Even EAs store on their launcher is nicer.
I don’t know if this is a hot take, but I think allowing straight and cis people to identify as such is appropriate, because the alternative assumes that we live in a state of default heteronormativity.
If anything, I want to live in a world where homophobes get mad that if they want to be assumed to be straight online they have to identify like anyone else. No one gets assumed to be straight any more. That’s better imo.
No shade to my Ace friends intended. Totally possible to be horny for art or rock collecting or whatever. Doesn’t have to be a sexy thing. I’m horny for none of the above is totally valid.
heh, this totally reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s dwarves, that spend a lot of time trying to find out what’s under the beard of the other first without asking that akward question xD
as an almost maximally privileged person (cis straight etc), i want my whining fellows to shut the fuck up. Just stop. Stop taking up all the god damn space. Just be quiet. It’s okay not to be included in every scene all the time.
Your point about not assuming people are straight by default is valid. But I mostly just want some cis-het folks to stop embarrassing me by being fucking insufferable.
Until I hear that they have dumped the requirement to log into Ubisoft Connect or Uplay or whatever they are calling it noe, then Ubisoft will remain dead to me.
Makes me sad. I really enjoyed the Assassin’s Creed series and have waited for Shadows for what feels like a decade now.
I was really confused by your responce thinking it was meant for someone else toll I reread my comment. I’m referring to the “ubisoft game” that we all know and are bored of
If gamers are bitching about a game not adding a whole new island, you should ignore them because they’re clearly idiots.
If gamers are bitching about your menu system being navigable by someone with less than a PhD (cough, Risk of Rain 2 on console, cough), and you’re estimating that will take 6 months to fix, then that’s because you (as a company) coded your software badly.
Well for one they’re a consumer who paid for a functional game. Nobody expects drivers to break out power tools and mod their car right off the lot.
It’s even more embarrassing when modders do fix it. Some random guy with no source code access manages to fix an issue in 3 weeks that a whole team couldn’t fix in 3 years.
6 months doesn’t sound unrealistic for re-doing a menu system. Designing, reworking art, re-programming workflows and then testing everything can take several months. Even just the logistics of releasing it after it’s done, that alone can take a month.
Yes, it is possible to setup everything in a very generic way that is data-driven, but that also is a lot of work that has to be prioritized with the scope of the project and the team members available.
it is possible to setup everything in a very generic way that is data-driven, but that also is a lot of work
Sure, but it can also be reused in future games. Separate styling from behavior and you can make it look unique for every game with minimal code changes.
The organization has outdated policies that make delivering changes difficult.
The systems used in development and delivery haven’t been invested in enough to automate repetitive steps, optimize workflow, and increase safety of changes.
Again, complex changes are obviously going to take more time, but if the simplest changes take significant time or effort then something is wrong.
I think you are vastly underestimating how complicated menu systems and UI in games are. I have a friend who works as a professional game developer in a small studio and far as I heard, he’s spent most of his time just working on their UI/menus.
Correct. Once again, Gamers take developers for granted because something LOOKS like it’s simple, but it rarely ever is. It’s hella frustrating to deal with this every day as a dev, but I guess that’s what you sign up for in this line of work.
I know it isn’t completely trivial, but as someone with many years of experience making (small) indie games, I know for a fact that a menu like that it should only be changing a few global variables. It’s a frontend with very little backend to consider.
Something like that is not a year’s work. I could agree with a month, and even at that, most of it will be testing, not design.
And tbh - the main problem with it isn’t even its design (the design is fine) just its controls. You inexplicably have to use the D-pad for character select, but the analog stick for everything else, apart from switching to difficulty select with R2. Why not navigate the whole menu with either D-pad or left stick? That should only take a week to fix at the absolute maximum, unless they’ve managed to tie the code in a spaghettified knot that’s unnecessarily coupled with actual game mechanics.
AAA gamedev here. I agree in principle with the gamefeel critiques, but I’d like to bring up that scale absolutely matters here. Every degree of complexity your codebase adds can cause cascading issues, which is one of the million reasons indie devs are told by everyone to keep their game scope small. Not saying these kinds of games shouldn’t improve, but it’s not as trivial as it might appearr.
Scale absolutely matters, but the scale of the new game screen is (or should be) very minor compared to the game itself. That one scene should only be setting the variables for new play, not interacting with anything outside of it.
And, to be clear, the main concern is simply the input handling in that scene. The UI itself doesn’t really need to be changed, just which buttons change the highlight focus.
I can imagine it was likely thrown together quickly, perhaps with some unnecessary coupling, or maybe reading the inputs using action names that also relate to gameplay, so it becomes awkward changing it out.
I’m not so experienced with Unity, but in UE and Godot, adding and mapping inputs is fairly trivial - select the “up” button and map it to “ui_focus_up”, etc. I can’t see it being much more complex in Unity.
If you’re spending months on your menu system, you’re doing something wrong. Bang it out in a few days and revisit just prior to launch. It’s really important because it’s the first thing players use, but it can also be overhauled late in development because it doesn’t impact much.
I would understand if it was a complex in-game menu system for a grand strategy or 4x game or something, not for a game launch menu. Get your UX team to iterate a bit during development and have devs throw it together once the major features are ready and it’s mostly time for bug fixing and polish.
This is simply not feasible - menus include pause menus, talent trees, inventories, all that kind of stuff. All of that is necessary for proper gameplay testing. You can’t just “bang that out in a few days”.
I’m sorry, but this idea that any of this is easy enough to do in a few days and not crucial enough to iterate on throughout development instead of just doing it at the end, is exactly the kind of naive attitude that the Helldivers and Palworld devs are talking about.
menus include pause menus, talent trees, inventories, all that kind of stuf
Right, which is why I specifically said there’s an exception for menu-heavy games like 4x and grand strategy. If we’re mostly talking about launch and pause menus (which was my intent), that’s a small scope of work, as in weeks, not months.
You can absolutely build that in a few days, and then redo it later once UX has decided what needs to go there. It’s pretty similar game to game, so build it properly once to be data driven, and then tweak the UX and options a bit for each game. Optimization is generally done pretty late in the dev cycle, so those options don’t need to exist until later in development anyway, and that’s like half the work.
The important thing is to have your UX team iterate on it before your devs get involved, so it’s ready. And have them build it out while optimizing things for release. Your menu systems don’t need a ton of testing relative to the actual mechanics and gameplay.
Describing design problems and attributing them to “bad code” is part of the problem tbh. The issue in your example started long before any code was written.
laying off 1,100 employees as a way to "modernize our organization and get even leaner
Yeah because that’s what we want of the ones in charge of publishing, administering and providing support for some of the most played games in the world now and historically: leanness! The fewer people to take care of important things, the better! 🤦
I know that he’s talking to investors rather than players, but come on! Also, there’s nothing “modern” about stupidly trying to increase profits via mass layoffs without expecting blowback and for quality to suffer. That’s some 1700s bullshit right there.
Also, when your company is ailing (read: Not making more profit than last year, no matter what ocean of money your managers are swimming in), fire the good parts. That’ll fix it!
Hasbro is unprofitable, but there was a memo a while back that said Wizards of the Coast was their most profitable division. Possibly their only profitable division. That covers Magic: The Gathering and D&D.
This is also why we’re seeing both those properties getting the fuck monetized out of them. Big influxes of MTG sets based on other licensed properties, and attempts to undo the open licensing around One D&D.
But then it makes even less sense to lay people off from those divisions.
They also said in a memo maybe 2 years ago they want WotC to be worth double their value in 5 years. That’s pretty unrealistic standards for an already established company.
The best way to save hasbro is cut back on making trash plastic toys for kids and stake the company to a well-staffed, functional WoTC who can deliver what MTG and DND fans want.
Is that in the original spirit of the company? No, but who the hell cares? Certainly not investors and certainly not consumers or they’d be buying the toys
God that’s so corporate-coded - instead of fixing your divisions so they are all profitable, just take your two successful divisions and squeeze them like you’re trying to get blood out of a stone.
I’ve survived layoffs at companies where we were told that following the cuts, we were going to get leaner and more agile and more efficient.
I’m sure you’ll be just shocked to learn that what actually happened is I ended up doing twice as much work to pick up the laid off people’s slack, and at the end of the year got a smaller bonus than the previous year, along with a raise that didn’t cover inflation. Overall company profits, of course, hit a record high.
So… basically, Musk turned up at a studio and threatened the devs with a gun (which antique or not, could have been loaded and functional - shooting with antique guns is a thing) to make them put him in the game?
I know there’s a massive cultural difference around guns between the UK and the US, but I’m genuinely struggling to see how “a man has turned up to our studio with a gun because he wants us to put him in our game” doesn’t warrant a call to the police.
Hence why, when calling the police, you wouldn’t say who it is. Just “a man” or “a person” has come in with the gun. Which happens to be true, since until proved otherwise, Musk can indeed be accurately described as a person. Whether he manages to wiggle out of it later is less important than the immediate problem of getting the gun-wielding lunatic out of the studio.
Yeah, hence why I said “until proven otherwise”. At some point someone will pull the mask off and reveal the monstrosity underneath. But until then we have to be the bigger people, give the benefit of the doubt, and assume he is actually a human being.
Whether or not the gun was loaded, the person wielding it sure was, and it’s much easier to say “Call the cops on him” if you’re not worried about whether that guy might be rich and vindictive enough to ruin your life over it.
No matter whether Musk would have actually had any way of doing so, the fear of the possibility alone can be enough to cow you into compliance.
There are ways of surreptitiously sending a message to, say, someone who isn’t in the room, without making it a very obvious call to the police. Or, for that matter, just dial the number on your phone and don’t say anything other than “your gun is really impressive but I’m a bit uncomfortable with having it pointed in this direction”. The operator on the other end will know what to do with that.
Because another way Musk could ruin your life is shooting you while showing off and waving a gun around, given that he is immature and arrogant enough to have loaded it, and reckless enough for his finger to slip.
Sounds like assault with a deadly weapon, and if he took it out to show, then it's brandishing. It doesn't matter if it was non-firming because the target didn't know that, and typically these laws are written to be what "a reasonable person would believe".
Also, at the time this happened he was a known user of Marijuana and thus not eligible to own a firearm, as that rule had not yet been struck down.
Thanks for the explanation! It sounds fairly similar to the law here, where it’s based on what a reasonable person would believe - so even waving a realistic toy gun at someone would get someone in trouble, if the person being threatened with it would reasonably believe it was real.
If charged as a felony, you could be facing a sentence of two to four years in State prison. Regular assault (Penal Code § 240), is always charged as a misdemeanor offense.
The instrument used includes any type of firearm, knife, bat, car, or anything other type of weapon that could produce significant harm to the victim.
In order to prove a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, the prosecutor has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you assaulted another person and you used a deadly weapon or force that would likely result in great bodily injury.
An assault charge does not require that you actually make physical contact with or injure the person.
The English voice recordings for Cyberpunk 2077 were all done in London and LA. So it's basically sure that it wasn't Poland, and it's much more likely that it was LA than London in this case.
I have shot and killed a deer with a flintlock gun. They’re not toys or props. He committed assault with a deadly weapon and the whole word is just like “Oh, that’s just wish.com iron man. You know how he is.”
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