apparently this is in response to a few threads on Reddit flaming Starfield—in general, it’s been rather interesting to see Bethesda take what i can only describe as a “try to debate Starfield to popularity” approach with the game’s skeptics in the past month or two. not entirely sure it’s a winning strategy,...
In principle, I agree, but I feel like part of that is just AAA vs. indie.
AAA games need to provide lots of lukewarm content, because many more casual players will buy them and expect much bang for their buck + haven’t seen this lukewarm content a million times already.
On the other hand, indies will basically only be bought by people more enthusiastic about the hobby. As such, they have to pick out one or two aspects and excel at them, so that it’s something new for that crowd.
Hello Games was indie and unknown at the time, so likely only attracted that gaming enthusiast crowd, which would have been more easily bored by the extremely lukewarm content in Starfield.
I watched it on my phone in 1080p60 and the scale didn’t bother me. It’s not like I have to read a lot of text and the precise position of the player character is mostly irrelevant, too. Like, if you get hit by a train or something, the screen will flash red and you’ll react to it, too, so I’ll know what’s going on.
Well, and I don’t look at the screen at all times anyways. 🙃
Ah yes, a city builder, which is a genre pretty much opposite to the original Rogue, but make it like a lite version of Rogue. 🙃
I mean, I don’t really care. Words change meanings. But this one does hurt my brain quite a bit, trying to understand which parts of the Rogue formula they kept…
I’m not saying they’re mutually exclusive, I just find it tricky to draw information from that.
For example, I correctly assumed this to not be akin to Dungeon Keeper, which would be a city builder like Rogue in the sense of it being a dungeon crawler.
But at the same, I guess, I assume Against the Storm would have procedural map generation like Rogue did, even though I don’t really consider that typical for city builders.
And yeah, this fuzziness of the term ‘roguelite’ means I don’t really know how much city builder to expect…
Tangentially is 2023 chock full of great games because the pandemic held up the development of so many studios?
I know, they all announced that, but as a software dev, I really don’t see why this should be the case. We largely just moved into home-office and continued working, often even at increased efficiency. I guess, building games might require somewhat more creative sessions, which are generally more productive in person, but I don’t see that making a huge difference.
My impression was rather that they had the usual delays, with maybe a few hickups at the start of the pandemic, and then they just declared the pandemic the whole reason for the delays.
As for 2023 being so full, the pandemic meant lots of people were at home, consuming digital goods. It caused a massive boom in the gaming industry. I imagine, lots of studios were able to secure (bigger) budgets during that time, which are now coming to fruition.
First or third person, preferably 3D. No post-apocalyptic games unless it’s a post-apocalyptic scenario in nature. Also it must have a singleplayer mode. Does anyone know any games like this?
This is going to be an oddball suggestion, but quite a unique gaming experience, in my opinion: NodeCore
It’s basically Minecraft meets puzzling to progress through technologies.
The game is rather difficult. And it being so niche, there’s no wiki to tell you the solutions, except for actual Wikipedia, because somehow it’s relatively realistically modelled.
As such, it has this feeling of being the first human to figure these things out and I found it massively rewarding when I pushed through some of the more complex puzzles.
The whole game is completely free. Just download the Minetest engine/launcher and search for “NodeCore” in the Content-tab.
Edit: I just remembered that even Windows was externally acquired, so I believe, it would be more correct to say that Microsoft has basically never innovated something themselves.
Yeah, it started its life as “Quick And Dirty Operating System” (don’t know, why they renamed it) and even that was basically a ripoff of CP/M: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS
I guess, you can say that they did put in own effort into developing the windowing system. I wouldn’t want to call that “innovating”, since they were late to the party, but I guess, that would be moving the goal posts here…
I don’t really understand how people make the review threads, but we’re sitting at a 77 on OpenCritic right now. Many were worried about game performance after the recommended specs were released, but it looks like it’s even worse than we expected. It sounds like the game is mostly a solid release except for the...
Gamedev is all about smokes and mirrors. A conventional software engineer will actively resent the shitfuckery you have to do, to make games run well (for good reason; it introduces complexity into already insanely complex systems).
Some performance work, you cannot defer, like fundamental design decisions (3D vs. 2D, raytracing or not) or if you’ve coded a tiny feature and for some reason, it completely obliterates performance.
But there’s always going to be tons of features that have been implemented well, they don’t obliterate performance, but if you replace them with an unintuitive/complex smoke-and-mirror solution, then you may be able to shave off 20% execution time for that feature. Or not. Often no real way to know, except to try it out.
Some of these do need to be tackled throughout development, too, but it’s easy to end up with a big block at the end of development.
Especially, if you had to rush a number of features that marketing promised, so that you can make the release date that marketing promised many months before anyone has any fucking clue how long it’ll take.
Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, emailed employees after news of Microsoft's successful $69 billion acquisition to say that he was "fully committed to helping with the transition" and that he would stay on as CEO through the end of 2023.
I have two open-source games to suggest. These not being in it for the profit means they can spend an eternity fixing bugs. Downside is that they’re not the most modern games in the world.
Anyways:
0 A.D. – Sort of AoE2 meets Empire Earth. Mind that the AI is brutal in this one.
Battle for Wesnoth – Turn-based, tile-based, with different terrain and time of day giving different races advantages. So, relatively dynamic gameplay despite being turn-based.
I mean, the VR hype from a few years ago has mostly tapered off. Meta clinged onto it for quite a while with their Metaverse idea, but even they seem to have given up on it earlier this year, as LLMs stole the last bit of spotlight they had.
And the PS VR 2 launched earlier this year, too, was generally well-regarded from a hardware viewpoint, but the lack of hype means there’s still not terribly many games being released for it.
It also is an expensive investment and people aren’t exactly flush with money, thanks to inflation + countermeasures. So, if there is a chance, they buy this headset and no games get released for it, many people will hold off on that.
Personally, I have no trouble believing that. Thing is, these companies’ investors don’t really benefit from long-term plans. So, if it does not pay out in the next two or so years, I expect them to scrap that endeavour altogether.
I just find it weird that Apple decided to jump on that train now, but it’s also possible that they started development at the peak of the hype and finished only just now.
“These AAA publishers have, mostly, used this production scale to keep their top franchises in the top selling games each year.”
I never quite understood, why it’s not more popular among big publishers to create smaller games throughout the year. You can have risky AAA titles in development and compete in the AA market at the same time.
If I remember correctly, it got hyped as the procedural generation not following the usual formulaic approach, where ‘new’ species are created by just propping tusk C onto body shape F etc…
Remember that these were estimates from more than three years ago and before Microsoft completed its acquisition of ZeniMax in March 2021, so there’s always the chance that some of these plans have changed dramatically or been scrapped entirely. But they may provide an early look at some of the games we can look forward to...
This should be illegal, companies should be forced to open-source games (or at least provide the code to people who bought it) if they decide to discontinue it, so people can preserve it on their own....
It’s developed by Facebook, but it’s not one of those in-browser games you might be thinking of. “Meta Quest” is their VR platform. So, while the quality might be similar, you do need to buy rather expensive gear to play this particular game…
Yeah, inflation rate is high, so central banks are trying to counteract that by basically slowing down the economy, so that our normally scheduled inflation countermeasures kick in appropriately. Well, and the usual way to slow down the economy is to make it more costly to loan money, i.e. increase interest rates. Which means investors can’t just pump money into any company anymore, they want that money to actually pay out to cover those interest rates. And that means companies need to actually be profitable to get money to finance their operation.
Borrowing isn’t always the active part. When a company is listed on the Stock Exchange, then investors play the active role by buying or selling their stock.
Most investors don’t just have tons of money laying around. They have property, which they can list as security when borrowing money from banks. And then they lend that borrowed money to companies seeking(/allowing) investment. That means:
a) With high interest rates, investors do have a need for their lent money to pay out, too. As do the banks, because they borrowed it from the central bank.
b) Ultimately, lots of money will be given back to the central bank. The money is effectively removed from the economy then. If you’ve ever heard that inflation comes from too much money being in circulation, that’s how that ties back in.
I’m no expert either, though. I’m just summarizing what makes sense to me and what I’ve learnt from making this post a few weeks ago: feddit.de/post/2514573
For anyone left behind, Minetest is a community-developed alternative.
It’s more of a game engine/launcher + highly moddable, so the base game is rather minimalistic, but you can simply install more extensive games. For example, for a very Minecraft-like experience, MineClone2 is your best bet.
In my opinion, it works best to make loot non-sellable. It takes away the need to fill your inventory with tons of garbage, just to carry it to the store. Instead, your inventory can be reduced to a size that meaningfully limits your options during challenges and forces you to select your equipment strategically.
Hmm, do you mean with a limited number of slots of what can be on offer in the pawn shop? So, that players can maybe grab one or two trophies for selling and leave the rest behind? Otherwise, I’m not sure, what your idea is. 🙃
I mean, isn’t it still only available to those who paid extra? That’s probably why you see so many people wanting to discuss it without having played it yet…
Personally, I try to see it positive. They want to protect others from being disappointed from yet another Bethesda game. I got burned by Skyrim in my youth, so when I see Todd Howard spitting straight lies again, I’ll try to save others the disappointment.
Now that Starfield is public, I feel like people can at least try to form an own opinion, but if only the people who are willing to pay extra talk about it, then you’ve only got Bethesda fans talking.
It’s just a business decision. Enough players have strong enough hardware that the invest into optimizing for weaker hardware isn’t likely to pay off.
If there is a weaker platform with lots of players, like the Switch, that can make optimizing financially viable, but obviously, it depends on how much optimizing you would have to do…
I love hearing about unique takes on game mechanics. Someone recently convinced me that limited inventories are kind of abused currently and that unlimited inventory systems would give more player choices.
I think Achievements are useful if they’re tracked separately by each save game. Minecraft does this, and I find it helpful when I return to a world save after a long time because I can use the achievements I unlocked to help remind me what I was doing and resume from there instead of looking at what clues may have been left behind.
That only works, though, if the achievements resemble game progress. Some games use achievements as entirely optional bonus challenges…
Oh yeah, I’m not arguing against your idea. It would need to be implemented per game anyways, so the devs can decide themselves, whether they want their achievements to be suitable or not.
Having said that, maybe what you really want is a similar idea, which I saw pitched a while ago: Dynamic recaps.
Basically, the game would detect that you haven’t started it in a while, so could offer a quick rundown of the controls. And if you’re loading a save from a few months ago, it could offer a quick summary of your most recent milestones in the story / game progression.
So, yeah, pretty much your idea, but it’s not re-using achievements for that…
Starfield design lead says players are "disconnected" from how games are actually made: "Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
apparently this is in response to a few threads on Reddit flaming Starfield—in general, it’s been rather interesting to see Bethesda take what i can only describe as a “try to debate Starfield to popularity” approach with the game’s skeptics in the past month or two. not entirely sure it’s a winning strategy,...
Doom, but roguelike (www.moddb.com) angielski
Today discovered this mod and wanted to share. I think that idea is so cool! Originally found it by watching this video.
factorio challenge with audio commentary? (diode.zone) angielski
I am thinking of recording a series of episodes where I try to beat factorio with the smallest possible ore settings. It would be vanilla factorio....
Against the Storm Review - An Ambient Roguelite City Builder (techraptor.net) angielski
Whats with the sudden indie output from South Korea? angielski
Usually known for their internal online and mobile games. In 2023 we get Dave the Diver and Lies of P which are non mobile single player games....
Give Me Experiences, Not Obligations (www.gameinformer.com) angielski
Cities: Skylines 2 DLC delayed so studio can focus on PC fixes (www.destructoid.com) angielski
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Looking for a survival sandbox game where you progress through technological ages angielski
First or third person, preferably 3D. No post-apocalyptic games unless it’s a post-apocalyptic scenario in nature. Also it must have a singleplayer mode. Does anyone know any games like this?
Microsoft’s CEO say it’s ‘doubling down’ on being a game producer and publisher | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Well, Cities: Skylines 2 is here, and it's another broken game release. angielski
I don’t really understand how people make the review threads, but we’re sitting at a 77 on OpenCritic right now. Many were worried about game performance after the recommended specs were released, but it looks like it’s even worse than we expected. It sounds like the game is mostly a solid release except for the...
You teleport into the last game world you played. What happens next? angielski
(Idea taken from a similar post I saw in Reddit a longer time ago)...
CEO Bobby Kotick will leave Activision Blizzard on January 1, 2024 (arstechnica.com) angielski
Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, emailed employees after news of Microsoft's successful $69 billion acquisition to say that he was "fully committed to helping with the transition" and that he would stay on as CEO through the end of 2023.
Any strategy games which have low amount of bugs? angielski
I loved CK3 when it came out, but tons of time later they still haven’t fixed many common bugs which I experience nearly every single playthrough....
Meta Quest 3 demand allegedly 5 million units below expected level (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
Epic says it's 'looking into' it after pigeon dating sim maker says she's not received royalties in 2 years (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Leaked email reveals Phil Spencer's damning verdict on AAA games: 'Most publishers are riding the success of franchises created 10+ years ago' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
I'm so glad I waited nearly 3 years to play Cyberpunk 2077, but I dread the fact that this is our new normal (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
How did we get here?
Microsoft documents leak new Bethesda games, including an Oblivion remaster (www.theverge.com) angielski
Remember that these were estimates from more than three years ago and before Microsoft completed its acquisition of ZeniMax in March 2021, so there’s always the chance that some of these plans have changed dramatically or been scrapped entirely. But they may provide an early look at some of the games we can look forward to...
This should be illegal (lemmy.world) angielski
This should be illegal, companies should be forced to open-source games (or at least provide the code to people who bought it) if they decide to discontinue it, so people can preserve it on their own....
Starfield review - a game about exploration, without exploration (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Creators of Slay the Spire will migrate their next game to a new engine if Unity doesn't completely revert their changes (nitter.net) angielski
Picture taken from their Twitter
PSA: If you still have a Mojang account for Minecraft: Java Edition, you have less than a week left to migrate to a Microsoft account to avoid profile deletion angielski
Thought I’d share this in case there are people who are unaware or have been pending off the migration process....
Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 Revive Age-Old RPG Debate About Encumbrance (www.ign.com) angielski
Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 both weigh the player down with encumbrance. Love it or hate it, it seems like it's here to stay.
Starfield’s Xbox exclusivity ‘yielded a better product’, Todd Howard says (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Starfield's planets aren't all interesting, but they're not all "supposed to be Disney World" (www.vg247.com) angielski
You'll probably find that a lot of planets in Starfield are pretty boring, but Bethesda says that's kind of the point.
Phil Spencer Insists Games Launch Across Xbox Series X and S Despite Baldur's Gate 3 No-Show - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
Xbox boss Phil Spencer has addressed the fact Baldur's Gate 3 launches on PS5 before Xbox Series X and S in an interview at gamescom 2023.
Xbox Is Suspending Players Caught Using Emulators (gameranx.com) angielski
It looks like Microsoft is cracking down hard for those found using emulators on the Xbox console lineup.
What game mechanics do you love and hate? angielski
I love hearing about unique takes on game mechanics. Someone recently convinced me that limited inventories are kind of abused currently and that unlimited inventory systems would give more player choices.