Haven’t watched the vid yet, but my opinion on Kickstarter is that funding anything other than things like board games isn’t worth the risk. With simple physical objects they’re done and just need money to begin mass production.
It’s important to remember that it’s not only buyers, but developers that use Steam. Steam is currently involved in a lawsuit with developers.
Actually, it’s generally publishers, not developers that end up paying the 30% cut.
I’m keeping the model simple by equating publisher with developer. Basically, you’ve got the consumer, the store, and the supplier. That some (most) developer studios go through a publisher for funding is a business practice that’s actually unrelated to Steam. Especially because they allow indie content.
Anyone believing Steam isn’t a monopoly is seriously uninformed on the topic or letting their enjoy enjoyment of the platform cloud their view of reality.
While it sucks to have games get exclusivity agreements with EGS when EGS sucks compared to Steam, it doesn’t suddenly mean that Steam isn’t a monopoly.
People don’t want monopolies because companies can abuse their position to hurt consumers.
It’s important to remember that it’s not only buyers, but developers that use Steam. Steam is currently involved in a lawsuit with developers.
The “commission” would be Valve’s cut on sales made through Steam, which starts at 30% and drops to 20% as sales increase. Valve defended the percentage as “industry standard” when Wolfire’s lawsuit was first filed, but that’s no longer the case: The Epic Games Store and Microsoft both take just 12% of sales made through their stores.
The Wolfire lawsuit estimates that Valve controls “approximately 75 percent” of the $30 billion market for PC game sales, a number that lines up with other public estimates of Steam’s dominance.
I like Steam, I’m not hating on Steam, but rushing to defend it from people saying it’s a monopoly (or calling Epic Games Store a monopoly) is very much denying reality.
I definitely remember they had drugs to make them affectionate of and protectors of the Little Sisters. With things like concept art it’s hard to know how early in the process it was. Big Daddy’s could’ve been nothing more than “boss type enemy with old timey diving suit.” They could’ve been concepting their origins and purpose as well. The “guns” the middle and left are holding could also look like a tool. It could be something that serves as both. The mech suit from Aliens comes to mind, which was essentially the equivalent of fighting a bear with a forklift lol. Or maybe something like the rail spike gun from Fallout is a better comparison.
It could also be that they planned on each Big Daddy being a little different, or at least more different types than there were. I just double checked the wiki and there were two in the first game: the Bouncer (the iconic one from the cover) and Rosie. Also, it’s saying the original candidates for the Big Daddy program were criminals and dissidents. The idea that in the right wing dystopia of Rapture they’d force invalids into the Big Daddy program to make them “useful” isn’t terribly far fetched.
Maybe it was scrapped because there weren’t many spaces where wheelchair bound enemies made sense.
I don’t know all the BioShock lore, but maybe that concept art was meant for a hypothetical version where they use disabled people as bid daddy’s. (I don’t remember where they canonically come from.)