sugar_in_your_tea

sugar_in_your_tea, 15 dni temu

I’m guessing that once we get to 5% excluding console-like systems like Steam Deck, we’ll see it start to explode. That didn’t happen for macOS, probably because of the cost of the hardware, whereas Linux can be installed on whatever you have.

sugar_in_your_tea, 16 dni temu

Like the Batman Arkham series.

sugar_in_your_tea, 16 dni temu

And Arkham City.

sugar_in_your_tea, 16 dni temu

Nah, all of the one’s I’ve played are fun. I’m sure there are duds, but here are my favorites:

• Marvel Superheroes
• both Harry Potter games
• Jurassic Park
• Lego Movie
• The Hobbit

sugar_in_your_tea, 15 dni temu

If you’ve played one, you want to play another. There’s not a ton of gameplay differences between them, but that’s not what I play them for, I like the silly take on the story, the puzzles can be fun and satisfying, and the collectibles are fun to find.

sugar_in_your_tea, 15 dni temu

If you’ve played one, you want to play another. There’s not a ton of gameplay differences between them, but that’s not what I play them for, I like the silly take on the story, the puzzles can be fun and satisfying, and the collectibles are fun to find.

LEGO games are the comfort food of games IMO, you know exactly what you’re getting and it’s satisfying.

sugar_in_your_tea, 19 dni temu

Hit and miss since those tend to not have actual standards and generally do their own thing. If it’s popular, there’s a decent chance someone has reverse engineered it and there’s at least partial support (mostly applies to simpler things like steering wheels), but there will be concessions to make until device manufacturers officially support Linux.

If you’re willing to replace equipment, there’s something that works for most of those categories, if not all.

sugar_in_your_tea, 19 dni temu

What you need is a system where everyone is required by law to behave in a way that benefits the society.

That’s not feasible, but it’s probably feasible to require everyone to act in a way that doesn’t hurt society, and make restitution when they do hurt society.

For example, I’m okay with gambling in games being legal, but there needs to be rules:

• no kids
• pay into a fund to help those with addiction
• odds of winning are clearly posted in a way that’s accessible and understandable, and the odds are verified independently
• there should be a way to buy something instead of gambling for it
• must have a way to set spending limits to protect drunk gamblers

sugar_in_your_tea, 19 dni temu

I was about to rebut the “visit the US” thing, but people really should wait until immigration no longer looks at peoples’ phones or social media. I think I can still refuse as a citizen on 4th amendment grounds, but until that’s extended to visitors, I recommend holding off.

sugar_in_your_tea, 20 dni temu

Exactly. And once people sign a petition and see it actually get implemented increases the chance that they’ll get involved next time.

This petition is great because it’s:

• actionable - it’s easy to see what the expectation out of a suggested policy is
• non-specific - there are a bunch of laws around this, and having a specific petition that happens to be illegal is a great way to get it killed
• broadly relevant - almost everyone who plays games cares, and gamers tend to complain more than act, so this is a baby step to get those people invested in action; even people who don’t care about games could care, such as right to repair people, since this lays a framework to get similar policies enacted

Something like homeless doesn’t have as clear of direction on solutions. Likewise ads, since that runs afoul of how tons of businesses make money, but this could be leveraged to reduce/eliminate ads in games that you pay for.

If this petition actually goes somewhere, I sincerely believe we’ll see more petitions from people who otherwise wouldn’t speak out. Ross was one of those people, and if he sees success, he’ll inspire a bunch of other people like him to act. I think it’s fantastic.

sugar_in_your_tea, 20 dni temu

Exactly! Some examples:

• right to repair - actually owning games is similar to actually owning laptops and phones
• ads in cars, apps, etc that you’ve bought - do you really own it if it’s littered with ads you don’t control?

Set the precedent, then gradually expand scope.

sugar_in_your_tea, 20 dni temu

Extra points if you bring some munchies to share.

sugar_in_your_tea, 25 dni temu

Um, that’s how it always should have been. That’s how journalism in general works, going back since pretty much the dawn of newspapers: readers pay for copy, and advertisements subsidize it.

Like the games industry, publications that cover video games have been rocked by a turbulent market since the highs of the COVID-19 pandemic. Media owners like IGN, Fandom, Gamer Network, and Valent have all cut jobs in the past year.

Is it turbulent though? This article goes over video game spending by year, and it has largely plateaued since 2019. There was a pretty big jump in 2020 due to the pandemic, but the market seems to have returned to a normalish trajectory and mobile revenue seems to be plateauing (I guess it’s saturated?).

I think what happened is that people are shifting where they get their information from. Instead of relying on game journalists, who seem to be paid by game devs (hence why any big game rarely gets below 7/10), they rely on social media, who theoretically aren’t paid by game devs (there’s plenty of astroturfing though). The business model where they’re not paid by game devs should always have been the case, since when people are deciding what games to buy, they clearly would prefer a less biased source.

IMO, games journalism should have multiple revenue streams, such as:

• fan revenue - either donations or subscriptions should always be primary
• curated game bundles, like Jingle Jam - run a charity event where a large portion is donated (be up-front, and have a slider so donators can decide how much goes where, even 0% to one or the other)
• merch
• game tournaments w/ prizes - would be especially cool to focus on indies
• maybe have paid questions from fans that gets answered in a podcast or a paid video to discuss topics of fans’ choosing

They can get very far before needing to run ads. Produce quality journalism and have some additional revenue streams and it’ll work out.

I don’t consume much gaming journalism because it’s largely BS that praises big AAAs and generally ignores indies unless they get viral. I want honest opinions about games, not some balance between sucking up to who pays the bills and mild criticism.

sugar_in_your_tea, 25 dni temu

But weren’t game reviews essentially ads paid by the publisher? Because that’s what it looks like from the outside, since the reviews are increasingly poor quality that largely focus on positives and ignore negatives. Some games that completely flopped due to technical issues got glowing reviews by journalists, probably because they were paid handsomely for that review.

I think game journalists should avoid advertisements as much as possible because once they rely on it, the temptation to allow their content to be colored by whatever attracts advertisers is too much. They should be solely focused on attracting readers, which means they need to be reader supported.

sugar_in_your_tea, 25 dni temu

Is that actually enforced? If so, what’s the explanation for reviewers giving suspiciously high reviews to AAA games?

sugar_in_your_tea, 24 dni temu

Are you talking from a regulatory standpoint or from an “I like indies so I’d give it a pass” standpoint?

sugar_in_your_tea, 24 dni temu

I’m not talking about my personal preference on rating, I’m talking about broad community reviews.

For example, Cyberpunk 2077 is a notorious example. It got generally favorable reviews from reviewers, and the public release was a completely broken pile of trash on console. Reviews didn’t even get the console release, yet still gave it a positive review because the experience on PC was decent. How can we trust reviewers if they don’t actually try the game? The terms of the review embargo alone should have pushed reviewers to give it net negative reviews since they’re not able to actually try the game.

For strict review differences, look at Starfield, which got 85% by Metacritic, and Steam reviews are more like 55-60%, and it got hit hard by independent reviewers shortly after launch. That’s a pretty big mismatch.

GTA V was pretty close to a perfect score, but actual reception was a bit lower (80% or so on Steam right now). That’s not a huge difference, and it could be due to frustration about not having a sequel for over a decade, but it does seem that some studios get more favorable reviews/more of a pass than others.

That said, a lot of the time reviews are pretty close to the eventual community response. It just seems that reviewers overhype certain games. I haven’t really seen much evidence where critics review a game much below where the community reception is, but I have seen cases where reviewer scores are quite a bit higher than the eventual community response.

Maybe there’s nothing suspicious going on, it just sometimes feels that way.

sugar_in_your_tea, 24 dni temu

This makes a lot of sense.

It would be nice if multiple people reviewed each game, and then they discuss before publishing a review. That’s one thing I really like about Digital Foundry, though they focus way more on technical details than overall gaming experience, but it’s very fun to see what each reviewer has to say about a given title.

sugar_in_your_tea, 30 dni temu

I’m more like 90/10, because GOG still refuses to port their Galaxy client to Linux. At this point I don’t even really want to use it since Heroic is good enough, but it really sucks feeling like a second-class citizen, compared to Steam, which goes out of its way to provide a top tier experience on Linux. I’d even be fine with them adopting Heroic as an officially-supported client (provide links and whatnot on the website next to Galaxy), I just need some indication that they care.

Most games I own on Steam are DRM-free anyway, so I’d be supporting GOG more out of principle than anything.

sugar_in_your_tea, 30 dni temu

Eh, when someone says “private investigator,” I subconsciously assume there could be a group involved, and not one person. If I hire a tax preparer, there are probably multiple people involved (the person preparing the tax docs, the accountants auditing those docs, people auditing their software, etc).

If someone says “private investigators,” I assume they contacted multiple agencies, perhaps on multiple occasions.

sugar_in_your_tea, 30 dni temu

I’ve used minigalaxy in the past as well. There are solutions, sure.

I’m more rankled by GOG not even giving a nod to Linux users and going out of their way to court Windows users. I understand the economics here, but I would very much appreciate something from them. When they had a user voice (not sure if they still do? A quick search didn’t find it), the top requested feature was Galaxy support for Linux, and we’ve gotten nothing from them, except I guess a deal w/ the creator of Heroic for a referral revenue share on game sales (similar to sales through streamer links and whatnot). That’s it. That feels like a bit of a slap in the face.

sugar_in_your_tea, 30 dni temu

Whether it’s good or not is irrelevant. The fact is that it exists as the recommended way to install games, and it’s not available for my platform even years after it was released. What does that say about me and my platform? If I have an issue with a game, will they help? If they’re unwilling to support their flagship launcher, why would they help with a game?

Steam works on my platform and has for over 10 years, and they’re constantly making improvements specific to my platform. GOG has DRM free games. Is that enough reason to prefer GOG over Steam? Most of my Steam games are DRM-free, so my answer is no.

sugar_in_your_tea, 29 dni temu

Yeah, I didn’t have a Steam account until they came to Linux back in 2013 or so. Back then, I bought most of my games through Humble Bundle since most had Linux support, and the rest direct from the dev’s website (e.g. I bought Minecraft and Factorio around their public alpha/beta release). I played a few games through WINE, but not many since it was a pain.

Steam was a game changer, and they didn’t even have Proton yet, so I only bought Linux-native games through them. Being able to finally find games that supported Linux easily and keep them all on an account was amazing! And then they added Proton for the Steam Machine launch, and I could finally play many Windows games as well!

In that time, what has GOG done for me? Offline installers suddenly doesn’t sound as impressive, especially since they don’t come with a compatibility layer, so I’ll have to go mess with WINE directly again to use them for Windows games. With Steam, I can copy the installed files for most games and it’ll work without Steam running, so I can get 90% of the value GOG provides (my “installer” can be a tarball) with a small amount of effort, and also get all of the extra value Steam provides, so why pick GOG?

Here’s what would change my mind, in rough order of preference:

1. GOG brings Galaxy to Linux with a WINE compatibility layer that works with local installer backups
2. 1, but without support for local installer backups
3. 2, but offloads the WINE support to another project, say by adding Steam entries or handing off to Lutris or Heroic or something
4. Officially recognize and support Heroic (or another launcher) on the download page for Galaxy (e.g. “until Galaxy comes to Linux, use Heroic, which is officially supported by GOG support”); the closest they have now is a Heroic affiliate link

I mostly want some indication that GOG cares about Linux gamers. Valve has gone out of their way to support Linux, EGS has done the same to not support Linux, and GOG is somewhere in the middle. I like GOG’s principles here, I just need some level of actual support from them.

sugar_in_your_tea, 29 dni temu

No, if there’s nothing, it’s not using one of the big DRM systems.

There’s a good chance it doesn’t use any DRM, but the only way to know for sure is to install it and try to run it without Steam (rename Steam dir and Steam exe just in case). Some games use Steam DRM or otherwise rely on Steam, so this is to rule those out too.

sugar_in_your_tea, 29 dni temu

Why not just buy a game instead? That doesn’t provide as much money to GOG, but it also rewards game devs for providing DRM-free games.

sugar_in_your_tea, 29 dni temu

Eh, GOG isn’t a nonprofit or anything, so there’s no guarantee they’ll use your money for the cause you want.

Go for it if you want, just remember that GOG is a for-profit entity at the end of the day and don’t owe you anything for your donation.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

Yup. I use AI when I need a “good enough” result. I do it myself when I need an actually good and provably correct result.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

But what about a Magic: the Gathering set?

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

I find them really valuable. Before buying a game, I’ll skim 10 or so reviews, both positive and negative, to find what it’s good and bad at. If the negative reviews are all stuff I don’t care about and the positive reviews excite me, I’ll probably get it. But if the negative reviews consistently mention something that’ll bother me, I’ll pass.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

Yeah, Magic Carpet rocked. I’d love a game like that with MP.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

I just don’t buy games that have features I don’t like. I don’t pirate them, I just don’t play them.

Most of my money goes to indies because they don’t pull this BS. I’ll play the occasional AAA game if it’s worth it, but not many.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

I have no idea how Steam’s forums work since I only go there if I can’t find a solution to an issue elsewhere, but for that use case it’s totally fine?

GabeN is a pretty established Libertarian Tech Bro and Valve only moderates to the bare minimum requirement.

Isn’t that kind of what you want from a distributor? Looking up “Gabe Newell political views,” the top results were about him refusing to ban games, partly to avoid the Streisand effect, but also because he doesn’t believe in censorship. If Valve banned things based on company views, they’d quickly be at risk of an antitrust lawsuit.

I personally agree that Valve shouldn’t be involved in the forums. But I do think the publisher should be able to take over moderation if they so choose. Maybe that’s a thing, idk, I don’t know very much about the forums.

I do a quick skim of the review scores and get it

I’m the same way. I skim the first ten or so reviews, skipping low effort (one sentence) and try-hard (massive checklists and essays) reviews, and try to find a negative review or two. I’m looking for what the game is good and bad at to see if it likely justifies the price.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

Okay, so unwritten rule that you can’t sell games about murdering actual human beings.

I assume those would be illegal, which seems to be the metric Valve uses when deciding whether to ban something. That means you could have different bans based on region, so China will have different bans than the UK, which will have different bans than Russia.

Which is what the steam forums ARE.

Which is why publishers should be able to take over moderation if they don’t like how the community is acting. I don’t know if that’s the case, because the only time I go to the forums is from an internet search looking for a fix to a specific issue. I don’t see 99% of the nonsense here, nor do I know how moderation happens (or doesn’t happen).

Libertarianism isn’t about leaving things alone, it’s about protecting rights. Valve has every right to moderate, but if was a government, it would not, outside of speech likely to directly incite violence (e.g. planning an assassination or terrorist attack) due to the right to free speech. It seems GabeN is holding Valve to theore strict standard of a government than the looser standard of a private company.

If Valve sees the platform as similar to a government, it should see a game-specific forum as a private space controlled by the publisher. If the publisher doesn’t want to take that responsibility, they can leave it up to Valve’s standard.

I think the hands off position is correct, provided the publisher can take over moderation. Players can choose with their wallet and their engagement and decide whether to buy a game or engage with the forums based on its community moderation.

Steam has a lot of value to me partly because there’s a ton of stuff there I find distasteful, which makes me feel like there’s a better chance things I like that others don’t will be allowed on the store. If a game isn’t on the store, that’s because the publisher didn’t publish it there, not because Valve blocked it. Platforms like Steam shouldn’t be opinionated, they should be as inclusive as possible, and that includes criticism of public figures the platform may like.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

At the end of the day, it is Valve’s house. If there is a room full of nazis then clearly they are okay with it. End of story.

Would you rather Valve, with their dominant market position, be opinionated about what games and speech they allow? Or would you rather they act more like a public market, where publishers decide what is allowed in their corner of the market? Does this preference change depending on whether they align with you?

If a publisher wants to attract Nazis, let 'em. If they want to attract leftist extremists, let 'em. If a publisher wants to discourage all forms of extremism according to their own opinion of what “acceptable” means, let 'em. But the choice should be for the publisher to make, not the platform, especially if that platform has a dominant position.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

Sell the IP.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

Really? They had some bangers in the 90s, such as Road Rash and Need for Speed, as well as a ton of great games they published, like Sim City. Even their sports games were generally great.

It wasn’t really until the 2000s and 2010s that their games became money grabs.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

Can confirm, my neighbor makes indie films, and I don’t live in Hollywood or anything, just a random town in Utah. There are more than you and I expect.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

I disagree. The PC gaming market is about $76.67B. That’s ~$4M for each of the 18,626 games, most of which are asset flip crap. Many of the remainder are by indie devs (generally <30 people). The article mentions about ~10% of those games receive 500 or more Steam reviews, so we’re probably looking at $40M on average person game w/ 500+ reviews (i.e. probably not asset flip crap).

There are only about 20-30 AAA games released every year. The indie game market size is about $5B, and that’s across platforms. Even if that was only for PC games, that’s still 85% going to AAA studios, as in those 20-30 games that get media attention.

We don’t have too many games, we have a problem where too few people buy indie games. The average successful indie studio isn’t making $40M per game, it’s likely much less than that.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

You’re not going to convince the Madden/FIFA/etc group because community is more important than the game itself. The same is true for the big competitive games, since again, community is more important than the game itself.

The rest of the market is massive though, and even the people who only play a handful of games still pick up the occasional game to play on their own.

The solution here, IMO, is a high profile reviewer that focuses on indie games. In fact, we don’t really need reviewers going over AAA games because their marketing departments are already handling it. I want professional reviewers who try hundreds of indie games every year and promote the top 10-20 or so. Indie games are some of my favorite, but finding them is incredibly time consuming.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

only game every year is Assassin’s Creed,

How did they settle on AC? Is that the only game that would ever appeal to them, or did one of their friends introduce them and they got hooked? How many of them played Balatro or Among Us and other “viral” games?

The way to market to these people is to get that one person in a friend group to try something new and sell their friends on it. I used to only play a handful of games too, and back then it was mostly StarCraft and Halo. Then a friend introduced me to FTL, Factorio, and Minecraft (back when the last two launched, not what they are today), and I fell in love with indie games. All it takes sometimes is a single experience to show people what they’re missing.

Second Wind

I took a quick look, and it seems to be a mixed bag of content, from first time experiences with games to meta discussions on what makes parts of games great and interesting. Looking at last dozen or so videos, it’s mostly bigger games like Borderlands, Hollow Knight, and Subnautica. If you play any indie games, you’ll hear about those (and Borderlands isn’t even indie).

I think what I’m looking for is something that goes over the top new games from the last month or something, with deeper dives between those videos.

I’ve found niche games to scratch a certain itch I’ve had just by going to the Steam search and filtering by tags

I’ve done the same, and it’s way more miss than hit. When I finally find a hit, it’s usually a few years old, and is going for a fraction of the launch price.

For any given game, I can usually find a decent review by some random fan on YouTube, but going the other direction is a lot harder.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

How did you lose interest in Assassin’s Creed?

The story went nowhere.

Wishlist

That format looks like exactly what I’m looking for! Thanks!

I didn’t like Yahtzee tries as much, probably because it was like a Let’s Play with banter instead of an actual review.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

Sure. My point is that AAA studios have massive marketing budgets so it’s more likely you’ll consider them than an indie that you night like more. We need a better way for good indies to get noticed.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

Your friends buy you stuff?

Mine exists so I can avoid the front page. I have it filtered to show only discounted games, so when I need a game, there’s almost always something I’m interested in that’s on sale since I have over 100 games on that list.

sugar_in_your_tea, miesiąc temu

You probably opted out years ago. Check your Steam notifications settings.