SnotFlickerman

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Or you can get it for less than $7 dollars from a reputable game service, unlike the fucking joke that is Epic Games Store.

I mean, it’s not like you’re actually going to play it, either way.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

“The last laugh is mine, I don’t have any dignity!”

SnotFlickerman, rok temu (edited rok temu)

EDIT: RE: Valve and Darwinia:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introversion_Software#Finan…

Darwinia was eventually released in March 2005, but despite a strong opening weekend, sales soon slipped too low to sustain the company. Within six months, the developers were back on UK government benefits until November, when they contacted Valve “on a whim”[10] to try to set up a digital distribution deal on their Steam platform. Valve responded enthusiastically and, following a 14 December 2005 online launch, digital sales, which exposed the game to a new, global audience, kept the company going through to the release of their third game, DEFCON.

Valve didn’t reach out to Introversion to make demands, they actually saved the company. For a game basically no one had ever heard of and abysmal sales for were about to make the company go bankrupt. Valve didn’t pay for this exclusivity. It is however true that 18 years ago, they had an exclusive game.

This is a big difference compared to Epic paying 2K for exclusive access to Borderlands 3 so they can secure the profits of a huge franchise. Epic pays big companies big money to secure early profits to exclusive titles. Valve may have technically had an exclusive game, but Epic’s business model is literally paying for exclusive access to the biggest games they can get, so they can get the biggest cut of the sales at the highest price point, before discounts.

Only one of these two companies is trying to “Pay 2 Win.”

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There really isn’t. This is personal opinion.

Some of us just have issues with Epic Games. Some others have issues with Valve.

No private company is really “good.”

But the argument with Epic is things like:

• They brought “exclusives” to PC gaming for the first time. Previously, a PC game was a PC game, and it didn’t matter what storefront you bought it from, because it was available at all storefronts. Epic chose to pay companies to restrict their titles just to Epic, in an attempt to move the market towards them.
• In a similar vein, trying to fight Valve’s dominance, they started giving away free games. They have been firing people left and right because their financials are in the toilet, and yet they’re still pissing away money on free games and exclusives to their store.
• People who care about access to music and paying artists hate them because they have effectively put a death warrant on Bandcamp, buying them for two years, doing nothing with the product, and then selling it to Hedge Fund fuckies who already shitcanned half the staff and the site is officially on life support. They basically killed the last place you could buy music and make sure all the proceeds went to the artist and not a middle man (Bandcamp Fridays).
• During all of this, they refused to spend any money on actually improving their fucking game store. Things that have been staples of Steam for a decade now are still on a waiting list of features to be added. The User Experience for Epic Games Store is just bad, bad, bad, bad. There’s no excuse for it, especially when they chose to piss money away on exclusives and free games instead of paying people to produce a better product than Valve has. They refused to even try to release a better product, believing they could buy their way to dominance.

Do you really want to support a company that doesn’t give a flying fuck about your user experience as a customer and has such bad business plans that they’re letting go tons of staff? It’s bad enough that they had a bad business plan, but it also seems like they’re not very good to their employees, either. Compared to Valve’s “flat” management where there are no managers, or where Newell famously paid the writer for Portal to “be sick” for two years while he had a serious disease. “Your job here at Valve is to get better.” This was before he wrote Portal, no less.

One company clearly cares about the user experience that their users experience, and one clearly cares about using every tool at their disposal to be the top of the market, everything from paying for exclusives and free games to suing in court to try to carve out a niche for yourself where you don’t have to pay vendor fees.

Of course, I also encourage you to do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Valve offers a better product, better user experience, and treats their employees with more respect, but it doesn’t mean Valve hasn’t made their own share of anti-consumer decisions.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

You have to create an account to get them.

If you don’t think data harvesting to sell the data isn’t part of that equation, you’re just a little bit naive.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Don’t worry, it’s never enough cash, so he will assuredly be back to fucking shit up in some business capacity soon enough.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Oh, so he never matured at all then, huh?

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

I mildly disagree.

First, I think its the first game of this type to have any successful control scheme for a controller at all, so I think it deserves accolades for making it happen at all.

Second, while I still mostly play in traditional mouse and keyboard, I am an old man now, having played the original BG as a teen when it came out. Having the controller as an option is huge for me when I am in pain.

Anecdotally, my partner never played these games growing up and she fucking hates trying to play with mouse and keyboard. She says it feels clunky and slow and confusing.

Is it the best? No. Is it an excellent effort? Yes, because it actually works.

The fact that a game with a ruleset as complex as DnD manages to have a couch co-op option and gamepad controls built-in is an achievement, imho.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

That would mean something if Ethereum wasn’t effectively dead in a ditch and being pissed on by a vagrant.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Ah, the ol “kill literally anyone and everyone you can interact with” playthrough.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Yeah, the OG Steam Deck video before it even released made very clear that the original run was made with self-tapping screws, which meant that disassembly and re-assembly was always going to result in a less firm and tight re-assembly because the holes have already been tapped once.

It was honestly my personal biggest complaint considering it seemed otherwise like they were aiming to support self-repair. Very refreshing to see they changed tack to a costlier option for the sake of their customers. Very true, companies rarely do this out of the goodness of their hearts, and Valve is an unusual company.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

When GabeN dies, shit gonna hit the fan.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

But it only works as long as the replacement for Gabe Newell has the exact same ethos about the business. Changing hands always risks changing how things function at a company. Unless Newell has been practically grooming a successor for years, it’s very likely that a replacement will want to “shake things up.”

When Newell retires/passes, things will change. Time will tell if it will be for the better or the worse.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu (edited rok temu)

Dear God. Because Nepotism has worked out so well so many times in the past. /s

Just shut down the company now, Gabe.

From an interview with his son:

“If it’s one thing I’d like to see Valve do, it’s push it with more their ideas,” he said. "The people there are the smartest I’ve ever met, the hardest working, the most inspiring. The culture at Valve is a very good one but they’ve kind of found this point where they’re a working machine. And that’s good, but I think they should reach out and do something scary. Do something that they don’t know what the outcome is going to be.

“They make incredibly smart decisions, but sometimes you have to do something stupid. Sometimes you have to have a stupid crazy idea and say ‘fuck it’, go with it. Valve has a mindbogglingly enormous amount of resources at their back, and I hope they find the courage to throw it at something new. I want to see them push the envelope again.”

Yeah this chucklefuck is going to break shit day one, guaranteed.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Almost definitely. When they did the initial release, it could have easily been a flop, and if it was a flop, it would have been pointless to have gone in planning to repair and sell refurbished units. Now that sales are showing its a hit, they are taking the time to invest in changes for more long-term support.

Self-tapping screws made sense for a product in an entirely new product category without knowledge if it would be successful or not. Torx screws that slide into metal threads makes a lot more sense for what is expected to be a product with long shelf-life.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

They literally already did that with the SteamDeck, it’s absolutely groundbreaking. They created a whole new product category, but it took years of planning and patience and watching the market. It happened with prototypes like the Steam Controller, the Steam Link, and the original vision for Steam Boxes, as well as the nearly decade of work they’ve done on Proton to get Windows games to run well in Linux. It didn’t happen with a “stupid crazy idea” that they said “fuck it, go with it.” It started with a smart idea, well executed, over a long period of time, with many bumps in the road on the way to success.

Steam Boxes were originally announced in 2012, this is the result of a full decade of work.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

I wonder how much of Newell’s past at Microsoft helped with that? He helped produce the first three versions of Windows.

While Windows works wildly differently these days and the last one he worked on was Windows 3.0 (maybe 3.1?) and a massive amount of stuff has changed in how Operating Systems work since then.

However, I do wonder if his familiarity with the old systems helped at all.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Everyone loves Scotty Auks, doncha know?

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Well he’s 61, and the average life expectancy for males in the US is 73ish. He is well-to-do, so he likely has better access to healthcare than most, meaning he will be one of those who lives past 73. I’d suspect we have twenty years at best, but more likely about 10 years if he retires at a “reasonable” age.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Development Process: “How do we make the most money?”

Post-Launch Priorities: “Surprisingly, more money.”

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Terraria Fishing Intensifies

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

-Upton Sinclair

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Hi-Fi Rush just consistently reminds me how comically bad I am at rhythm games. I love the game, but man I got burnt out because even though they made it “easier” for folks with no rhythm like myself, it’s still tough if you just can’t match the beat.

I am some kind of masochist though, because in the past I beat both Parappa the Rapper and UmJammer Lammy.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

Super Mario Bros Wonder threads this needle expertly, in my opinion.

Each level has a difficulty rating from 1 to 5 stars with 1 being easiest and 5 being “Mario Hard.”

To complete the main story, you only really need to beat mostly the easier levels, like difficulty 1-3 stars. All other levels are really optional, but there are a lot of them, and they are the 4-5 stars level difficulty.

So the “main game” by default should be “easy enough” for most gamers, and for those who want a challenge, there are tons of extra challenges for them to pursue.

I think I prefer this to a “difficulty setting” because it allows both casual and hardcore gamers to approach the same game in different ways. It doesn’t make you feel like you are missing anything from either way you choose to play. It also allows you to practice the harder levels if you want to get better.

Some games like Halo, if I recall correctly, literally rewarded you with special cutscenes for the hardest difficulty in beating the game. That can leave players who “aren’t good enough” for such high difficulty to feel a bit left out.

I don’t feel the same about Super Mario Bros Wonder, it just feels pretty accessible to all and I think more companies need to attempt something similar.

SnotFlickerman, rok temu

I forgot to mention that! Yeah the nigh invulnerability for struggling players is a huge help.