sugar_in_your_tea

@sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works

Mama told me not to come.

She said, that ain’t the way to have fun.

Profil ze zdalnego serwera może być niekompletny. Zobacz więcej na oryginalnej instancji.

sugar_in_your_tea,

So… is Elder Scrolls VI ever happening?

sugar_in_your_tea,

Exactly.

And it’s something that only applies to a fairly small subset of people. If we look at Steam users (decent indicator of people passionate about games), Germany has the highest in the EU at 3.6M. 3.6M is ~4.3% of the German population, so if we extrapolate to the EU, that’s ~19M Steam users.

If we assume that’s an accurate measurement of people who would be interested in this petition, you’d need 1/20 of them to sign. I’m not in the EU, so I don’t know how popular these petitions are or what the requirements are (do you need to be voting age?), but if I assume a lot of people who play games are young, and that young people tend to be fairly uninterested in politics, getting 1M signatures would be incredibly difficult even if it’s something that all games agree with (and I would imagine most would care about this at some level).

So yeah, getting >400k signatures for something like this sounds like amazing success.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Many games have mixed experiences, some multiplayer, some single player. Take COD, for example, it has a SP campaign, but most people play it for the MP experience. if they disable the MP experience, the game is technically playable since the SP campaign still exists.

This petition seems to focus on “phoning home”:

An increasing number of publishers are selling videogames that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or “phone home” to function. While this is not a problem in itself, when support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function, proceed to destroy all working copies of the game, and implement extensive measures to prevent the customer from repairing the game in any way.

This sounds very much like it’s focusing on preserving the SP experience and forcing publishers to remove any artificial limitations on that experience once they stop supporting the game. Nothing in the petition sounds like it’s talking about multiplayer functions.

Here’s the part about being “playable”:

The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.

So they’re explicitly not asking for the publishers to provide anything new (i.e. the game server), it’s only asking for limitations to be removed (i.e. phoning home).

This is still an important petition, but it doesn’t seem to say what you’re arguing it’s saying.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Right, but the petition explicitly says it’s not expecting any additional resources.

neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it

If that was the intent, the petition should have been more clear, saying it expects any resources not part of the downloaded game but necessary for the full experience to be made available once the game is discontinued, perhaps specifically calling out server code.

If this turns into a bill, I fully expect online content to be excluded since that would require more than just removing the “phone home” bit of games.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Is there a video? I don’t see it in this post or in the linked initiative.

I’m not in the EU, so I’m really not familiar with this process, and I’m guessing a number of EU citizens also aren’t familiar. If there’s any related information, it would be good to link it.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Awesome, thanks! This is literally the first time I’ve seen this petition, so I appreciate the extra info. I also wasn’t sure if it was part of Stop Killing Games or a separate initiative (looks like it’s at the 26min mark of the first video).

I’m in the US (looks like Ross Scott is too?) so I obviously can’t sign it, but I am very much interested on the outcome since it’ll likely impact me. If it’s strictly limited to SP games, that’s a lot less interesting since that can easily be region locked (so it would just be the same as piracy for me), but if it also forces release of server code, then I’m getting something I couldn’t before.

For US people, there’s still hope. It looks like Louis Rossmann is pissed off about this as well, but from a regular software perspective (Odyssee and YouTube), so he might try something similar to what he did with Right to Repair. He has a bit wider reach and probably a very different audience, and maybe he can help get something going in the US.

Thanks for the links, I’ll see what I can do to spread the word.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yes, but it can start at the state legislature, which is a lot easier. But you need a lobbying campaign to get anywhere. Louis Rossmann has made some progress this way by banding together with farmers, and while it’s painful and expensive, it does work.

So if we’re going to do something in the US, we need a lobbiest, a lawyer (to draft a bill), and a lot of people to show up and give testimony. But we only need to win in one state, and then it gets a lot easier. So:

  1. Pick a state with good consumer protections and a market segment that’s somewhat rated to what you want (video games probably won’t work, but other software could)
  2. Work with pissed off companies to put together a lobby
  3. Find a few reps that care (e.g. the reps for those companies’ districts), and get them to sponsor your bill
  4. Appeal to regular people saying this is a stepping stone to what they actually want
  5. Get people to annoy their reps, show up to hearings, etc in support of the bill
  6. Get the bill to the floor (crazy amount of effort)
  7. If the bill passes, start the process over in the next state, which should go smoother

Once you have legal precedent, repeat the process with a small expansion to the thing you actually care about. This should be a lot easier, because you’re just expanding the same rights to more types of customers.

It’s much more of a long shot, but it does seem possible.

sugar_in_your_tea,

The ones you mentioned, as well as:

  • GTA V - I disliked the characters, story was uninteresting, and gameplay felt like a downgrade from GTA IV; graphics were the main attraction there, and that’s not enough for me
  • Borderlands - my fastest “nope, not for me” game I’ve played; I don’t like loot in games, and that’s basically the entire point of the game
  • Skyrim - found it very bland coming from Morrowind; side quests weren’t as interesting, which is pretty much the entire reason I liked Morrowind
  • any competitive FPS (Apex Legends, COD, etc) - I play most games once the get the story, mechanics, etc
sugar_in_your_tea,

TL;DR - I’m a fan of tighter, focused experiences with a strong element of puzzle solving, and I’m generally not a fan of sandbox-y experiences.

Some of my favorite games are Zelda, Ys, or Half Life. Loot in those games is typically an intentional part of the progression, and the gameplay feels like an action-y puzzle. Resources have a specific purpose, and wasting them has consequences.

Using a slightly different weapon, item, cosmetic, etc doesn’t excite me at all, I am mostly there for the story and gameplay. To me, shopping feels like poor game design and essentially covering for the player missing something important. So games with extensive store/inventory mechanics feel poorly designed, on average.

There’s one big exception here: if the economy of the game is integral to the core loop. For example, I love Recettear, which makes loot and inventory management a core mechanic in an interesting way. I’m also working on my own game with a player-driven economy (e.g. if you sell a lot of something, you get less for each additional one, it’s cheaper for AI/other players to buy, and NPCs will slowly distribute the items around the game world).

On those same lines, I generally don’t like things with crafting, enchanting, etc, unless it’s an interesting, core gameplay mechanic. I’m very goal oriented, so the journey is less important than the destination, so I like constant “mini-destinations” (boss fights, puzzles, etc). I almost never replay games, unless there’s a different set of challenges to explore (e.g. I loved each of the three characters in Ys Origin, but won’t bother playing Morrowind twice).

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yup, I love the ability-based progression in Zelda, older Ys, Metroidvanias like Ori and Hollow Knight, etc.

I don’t like loot for the sake of loot. For example, Borderlands prides itself on having 16-17M weapons (they’re procedurally generated). That’s not interesting to me, that’s tedious. I much prefer the Half-Life approach (14 in original, 10 in Half Life 2), where each weapon fills a niche and you pick based on what you need.

A lot of people love loot in games, such as in MMORPGs, Bethesda-style RPGs, and Diablo-style RPGs. The latter is the most frustrating because many people mean Diablo-style when they say “ARPG,” whereas I mean Zelda/Ys-style.

sugar_in_your_tea, (edited )

Yup. I’m a fan of lore in a lot of series, but that’s not why I play Zelda.

I play Zelda because it’s fun. I like the creative puzzles that aren’t super hard, but hard enough to require a little bit of thinking. I like that there’s progression, but no leveling system, so a lot of the progression is learning to use new tools. I like the silly side quests.

I’ve never really been interested in Zelda lore, so I’m honestly okay with things not quite lining up. I guess I see each entry as a separate universe where Link saves Zelda in a different way each time. Zelda games rarely have direct sequels, and I think that was the real mistake this time around. Just let me fight Ganon or whatever in a new cycle every time, I don’t need any kind of story coherency.

sugar_in_your_tea,

I think it still is, it’s just that game devs have found a recurring revenue model that works similarly to licensing: microtransactions.

I can see Disney wanting back in now that MTX is socially acceptable. Milking the same IP for decades is exactly their MO.

sugar_in_your_tea, (edited )

I don’t think I have any of them, but I’ll likely get a Zachtronics game (not sure which) and maybe Human Resource Machine. Those have been on my wishlist for a while, but I haven’t seen a lot of these so there are probably a bunch of other gems.

sugar_in_your_tea,

It’s still there, I’m not sure what your point is.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yeah, I haven’t played any of them. I’ll give it a shot, thanks!

sugar_in_your_tea,

I still hear about them and buy from them, but I buy a lot less because:

  1. They were bought by IGN, so they’re a for profit group now
  2. Changed Choice to offer major AAAs more often instead of being focused on indies
  3. They set slider for minimum percent to Humble in bundles to 15% (I used to give about 20-30% to Humble, now I do 15% as a form of minor protest)
  4. Bundles often come with coupons for the store instead of just being bundles of games, and the $1 tier is either complete trash or non-existent

And so on. Basically, they’ve gotten more corporate, so they’re less unique vs the competition. In fact, I’ve picked up more bundles from Fanatical than Humble in the last couple years because I no longer feel a preference for Humble, and now just go where the deals are.

I’m guessing some or all of that is why the sources you follow don’t mention it as much. It’s still very much a thing though.

sugar_in_your_tea,

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. The reason wages are low is because the games industry attracts a lot of talent, so companies can get good talent for less. So I don’t expect unionizing to help in terms of quality of work produced, but it should improve wages and working conditions.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Maybe, but I feel like any quality gains would be minimal since people are already passionate about their roles (else why would those roles be so desired?). Then again, the Valve model really works, so it really depends on whether unions can change company culture, or if they’ll just secure better working hours and pay. The culture is the problem, and I’m not convinced a union can fix that.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Huh, well fear is a very different thing than stress. Once your stress turns into fear, you’re no longer personally invested in the project and are merely concerned about your own survival.

The video games industry definitely comes with a lot of stress, but they rely on passion to get value out of those long hours. This sounds like a situation of completely awful management, which won’t be fixed with a union (at least not immediately), since a bad manager can make life suck even if you have decent benefits, reasonable work hours, etc.

Then again, I don’t have a lot of details to go on, just that there’s allegations of “fear” at Daedelic.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Nah, Intel is already doing that. Valve getting into graphics cards would be a colossal mistake. That’s not in their wheelhouse at all.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yup, Intel is struggling to enter the market, and they’ve been building similar chips for years. This just isn’t an area for someone like Valve to break into.

Maybe they could make a good cooler design or something, but they’re going to be using off the shelf chips, or maybe slightly altered custom chips like they did with the Steam Deck.

sugar_in_your_tea,

I’d probably buy one if it worked okay on Linux and wasn’t made by Facebook.

sugar_in_your_tea,

I don’t really care about EGS, I’m more concerned about Unreal Engine. If they keep dumping money into EGS exclusives and whatnot, it could impact UE investment, which would be bad for the industry.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yeah, I’m a parent and I take my kids with me to the gas pump quite often. We shop at Costco and fill up before or after. I honestly don’t see an issue at all, my kids know gas pollutes (I tell them frequently even though they’re in elementary school), and they know why I continue to buy gas (EVs are too expensive, inconvenient for longer trips, and have a fire hazard).

So no, I don’t have a problem with fossil fuels being a thing in games. I do have a problem with advertisements in games generally, and ads marketed to kids specifically. So if this was an ad for a socially acceptable business (take your pick), I’d still be opposed. Keep that nonsense away from my kids.

sugar_in_your_tea,

So they’d tell their parents to fill up at Shell instead of Chevron or whatever. It’s not like kids are going to want more fossil fuels, they’ll just want to shop at the cool brand instead of the less cool brand.

sugar_in_your_tea,

They went bankrupt, and then they were bought by someone else. So this is a new Telltale, and apparently they’re having similar issues.

sugar_in_your_tea,

I’m happy to give indies a pass because they generally don’t have the resources to know what accessibility settings people need, and they often don’t go through the major reviewers. I think people should absolutely point out those issues, but I really expect new releases to be fully accessible.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yeah, the number of games that list epilepsy warnings is way too high, devs should just not do it. I am not sensitive to flashing lights yet I still hate it.

So devs, if you feel like you need to put a warning, just fix the game to not do that.

sugar_in_your_tea,

They have two options when it comes to a port:

  • do it right
  • pay someone to do it quickly

They have consistently done the second, which makes absolutely no sense to me since doing it right would mean they could bring great old games to a new audience. All they need to do is increase framerate caps (and fix bugs caused by that), increase render resolution, and improve texture quality. They should have all of the original files, so this shouldn’t require a ton of effort, even if the code is a mess.

GTA SA and friends was terrible because it didn’t look anything like the originals since it was a mobile port. Nobody asked for big changes, just a few QOO updates. The same is true for RDR, we just want to play it on PC with higher FPS and whatnot, we don’t expect anything groundbreaking. If it’s easier, they could port the campaign to RDR2 (they already have a lot of the models) and then not have to maintain the older codebase. Surely that’s an option too.

sugar_in_your_tea,

That seems to be Valve’s MO. They don’t make a ton of games, but they’re pretty much all fantastic.

sugar_in_your_tea,

I want Just Dance, but for racing wheels.

sugar_in_your_tea,

IDK, it kinda loses that “old west” feel imo. It looks nice, but I don’t think it feels as fitting for the time period it’s set in, but maybe that’s just be after watching lots of movies set in the time period.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Same. I guess I’ll wait until they change that.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Their loss I guess.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yeah, if I get it, I’ll probably buy a license and then play the cracked version. However, I’m not likely to go through the effort, so I guess we’ll see.

sugar_in_your_tea,

I just finished Skyward Sword last weekend, and my kids wanted to see me play on Hero mode, so that’s what I’m doing.

sugar_in_your_tea,

You don’t even need to try very hard, just throw in some nonsense and someone will make up a plausible explanation.

sugar_in_your_tea,

I’m surprised my 6650XT is so low, it’s like the perfect mid range card imo. My wife’s 6700XT apparently sold a lot better though.

sugar_in_your_tea,

They’re both poor terms.

To me, “redundancy” means someone you don’t need, as in, their job is worthless, and “layoff” means the company can’t afford to keep everyone, so they’re temporarily reducing the workforce. What we see so often isn’t either of those, it’s just headcount reduction or downsizing.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yeah, layoffs feel temporary (like furloughed government employees). I dislike both terms though, I prefer “downsizing” or something like that to clearly indicate that it’s not temporary and your job wasn’t worthless, it’s just that the company needs fewer people employed to meet budget targets.

sugar_in_your_tea,

The point of first party exclusives is to make money from your store long term. If they make their first party titles available on other platforms, fewer people would buy a PlayStation, which means less long term royalties from store sales.

So you limit the customer base for your first party titles, but ideally you make a ton more on your store fees. That’s the same reason Valve makes first party titles, to get people on Steam, not to make money from game sales.

What they should do is make a handheld that can play PS4 titles. That attracts a different demographic and keeps control of the store royalties. But they really need to make sure it works well, since it’ll be competing with the Switch and Steam Deck (and similar handheld PCs).

sugar_in_your_tea,

Sure, it’s possible, but I think unlikely. This sounds like the normal BS reasons companies give when their investors want better margins. I’m guessing Tencent isn’t happy with profit margins and wants a better short term return for their stake.

But you’re right, it’s all speculation at this point.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Nah, GME to the moon!

sugar_in_your_tea,

Nah, GME is there. Screw em.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Why? The Total War series is awesome.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Is that… comfortable? That sounds like a really awkward way to play. Any reason you didn’t do all in on the controller or keyboard+mouse?

sugar_in_your_tea,

And pretty much any USBC dock will work as well.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Just do like Baldur’s Gate and release a portion as early access, then release the full game on all platforms when it’s ready. Ideally skip early access and just release when it’s actually ready, but the early access option is acceptable.

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