I love the idea. Worker co-ops and subscription-based news (just like a newspaper) are both perfect models for this. I’m a big proponent for and supporter of the Patreon model for small creators.
…But I read through their articles and they’re just not in sync with my taste in gaming. I think they need more writers who are into sandboxes and sims, because they all seem super into smaller, narrative-core games, and somewhat derisive of open worlds that don’t hyper focus on a story.
Between this and Remap continuing with essays & journalism… I am one happy dude. I’m hopeful that there is still a space for writing in the video game area.
404 Media (formerly Motherboard at Vice) are generally more “tech news” but they are similarly going down that road (and it sounds like they actually worked with the Remap (formerly Waypoint at Vice which worked closely with Motherboard at Vice and were in a similar org structure) crew to iterate on the model).
And what it will actually entail is unclear, but Gamers Nexus similarly brought back their written article website to provide more information on hardware reviews and so forth. Also sounds like it will be a venue for longer form pieces similar to their Artesian Builds video.
Remap is what Waypoint turned into. Waypoint was a video game vertical/section through Vice Media. It was Patrick Klepek, Rob Zacny, Ricardo Contreras, Renata Price, and Austin Walker at one point. Klepek, Zacny, & Contreras started Remap to carry on their brand of video game analysis (very thoughtful, far-left leaning, and often times focusing on smaller and older games).
I subscribed and I liked what I’m reading so far! I liked their Alan Wake article and how it celebrated the cheesy elements of Remedy’s work…listened to all the Alan Wake songs and Take Control on my train ride this morning :D
I like the sound of this! The Starfield coffee article was funny. $7 a month miiiight be a little bit much for me - but I’ll keep an eye on this and if the journalism is decent and they put out a fair number of articles I’ll definitely consider it. I guess I used to spend around that amount on gaming magazines…
I am ride or die with Remap (added a year of Founders during the launch stream) and consider their podcast insanity to be worth the monthly fee alone.
But for 404 and Aftermath and whoever else, I am planning on buying a month or two here and there when there is a particularly good article I want to read/“support”. Probably comes out higher than grabbing an issue of EGM or OPM or PC Gamer back in the day, but also inflation so it might even be cheaper?
I mean, it certainly looks nicer. At least they’re thinking about ways to make the experience better, for those that use it.
I’m still really happy with SteamOS, the only real downside is that newer AAA games are simply too demanding. Not so much of a problem on the desktop, but certain games just look rough and run at sub-30 fps.
Yeah, I thought about getting the Ally, buying the Steam Deck’s the way to go. Now if only Linux get a bigger market share and more apps, that’d be great.
if you have modern hardware and newest nvidia GPU, just stay away from Linux. Windows is still best atm. But, if your newest hardware is ageing, then Linux is the best for that.
Not really true at all. If all you care about is raw performance, then that’s debatable, but if you’re talking ease of use then Linux is fine. Just grab a distro with an Nvidia ISO like pop_os and install, nothing else left to do.
My hardware is 2 years old (ryzen 5900HX and RTX 3070). I use manjaro/Ubuntu LTS and Non-LTS/PopOS/LinuxMint/Zorin/LMDE/Nobara and endeavour OS and it’s freezing quite often and I have to go back to Windows atm. I think Nvidia is main culprit here. If I move to Full AMD or the current nvidia hardware is getting older (more than 5 years old). I might try Linux again
Freezing doing what? I’ve got modern hardware and I’m running nobara and I don’t get any issues except my Taskbar freezes on Wayland. On x11 I have no issues
What nvidia drivers did you used? The open source one or the proprietary one? Because I have the rtx 3070, and I have not experience a problem using the proprietary drivers in plain old debian stable, using x11
tested with proprietary with 525,535,440. it’s awful. But, my other working laptop ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 (Intel) with Kubuntu 22.04 with Iris gpu is perfect without issues.
You are technically correct, but Valve is a very “consumer first” company. This of course is no guarantee they’ll always be “good”, but Valve has earned and maintained my trust over the years and I trust them more than any other company I can think of. Far and away orders of magnitude more than Microsoft.
That’s a good point. I’ve never participated in that so it didn’t really factor into my opinion of them. In every way I’ve interacted with the company they have been excellent.
I like them because they make niche products that may not have mainstream appeal, but that their customers love (steam link, steam controller, valve index, steam deck). They have excellent customer support and always do more than they have to:
My GF lost the power adapter to her steam link and asked how to buy a new one, they just sent her an entire replacement device since they were stopping production anyway
One of my Index lighthouses died and I had bought it used from a guy since they didn’t sell them in my country yet. No questions, they sent me a new one
When they were releasing Half Life Alex they just checked if you’d ever had an index connected to your PC and if so they gave you a copy. No asking for proof of purchase or redeeming codes that expire.
I could go on, but yeah to me they are pushing Linux forward, making hardware that excites me, have reasonable prices, and great service. So I like them.
I mean... if somebody has a gaming storefront monopoly in Windows it certainly isn't Microsoft. Concern about monopolistic practices is a great catch-22 between the OS dominance of Windows or the platform dominance of Steam, and I'm about as concerned about both.
FWIW, I have both a Steam Deck and a GPD Windows handheld and, being entirely agnostic about that entire conversation I default to my GPD Win 4, because of ergonomics, usability and compatibility concerns, in that order.
I don’t think folks realise how much effort and investment Valve has put into making Linux a viable gaming alternative for modern-ish games.
Most distributors use Windows because it is easy to install and setup for gaming. Is it perfect? No. But any vendor can pay Microsoft and get a viable OS for gaming.
Linux will need a lot of custom graphics card drivers and a lot of tweaking (think power as well as graphical features, memory, CPU etc) to get the optimum performance. Most OSes out of the box have OKish performance for gaming, which is OK for any hobbyist but would be a disaster for a consumer product.
And before Valve came along, Proton wasn’t even a thing. Proton is now a thing, and the way Steam utilises it makes it effortless, but it will need a fair bit of custom args to get it working well.
Each of these things separately can be quite painful in its own right, but altogether it would be a headache for any company not well versed in Linux. Not only that, but having to provide customer support for a Linux OS would put the fear in most companies.
I would imagine most vendors would just slap Windows on their machine and be like “you know what to do with this” and let them go nuts.
I get the greed behind turning 1 into 2 but how could any of the devel team see what was happening and not absolutely lose their minds. How could anyone see that the game would be better off removing paid content or locking off earnable content. Just blew my mind when it released.
Why do people hope that Microsoft will miraculously revive dormant/mismanaged IPs from their new acquisitions, when they’ve done nothing in the past 10 years but lay to rest and mismanage their own IPs?
They released the Series X three years ago now and are yet to release a single game on the platform that people care about.
The game’s currently sitting on “mixed” reviews on Steam, and the rating is steadily going down (67% at the time of writing, which is an all time low), and that’s on a platform where you can use mods.
I also literally forgot about it. I guess that’s what happens when you release a game that looks and plays like you gave a prompt to Chat GTP and waited for it to build the entire code and voice all the dialogue for it.
I don’t think it’s fair to consider Starfield, since the game was in development before the acquisition completed. The only significant input I would consider is making it Xbox/PC exclusive.
Being that both IP’s are ongoing I’m hoping that going forward they’ll at least increase access to the game. I’m not expecting them to revive it to previous status.
I’m just hoping with Kotick out things will stop getting worse and a lot of the IP’s end up on GamePass.
And as far as first party stuff goes Flight Sim, Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite all have been fairly well received and are at the very least console exclusives. Minecraft isn’t going the way that a lot of the Java players like but it’s much more accessible and on damn near every device known to man. And that IP is still selling gangbusters even with Legends and Dungeons being not fantastic.
“Look at all the games you love! Please forget we’re a massive corporation which just moved 70 billion dollars closer to a monopoly and would certainly never abuse that position uwu”
That was awesome. I imagine if I worked for Activision Blizzard, that knowledge of Bobby Kotick leaving plus that welcome video would give me some feels.
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Aktywne