Nah, it definitely is, in fact I have noticed a disconcerting number of indie games I REALLY like especially 3d games with physics engines are on the unreal engine.
I have always been a massive fan of at least the creative output of projects on the unreal engine, I don’t know much about the politics and details around how it is to actually create games on the unreal engine or anything though. I just don’t trust Epic honestly or whoever owns them now or rather I don’t trust the incentive structure… but yeah I wish the unreal engine success I am just asking how people see the state of similar engines in this moment.
Is there something to be worried about here with the Unreal Engine being the only big business in town in terms of indie game development for 3d game engines?
I mean obviously yes, but how worried should we be of this becoming a bottleneck?
I can confidently tell you your impulse isn’t brash here, Mutant Football League is exactly what you think it is, has splitscreen and is fucking awesome.
I honestly don’t even give a shit about 'murican football, it doesn’t even matter (though make no mistake, this game has good arcade football gameplay, it isn’t “just a joke game”), Mutant Football League is a journey on a road paved with footballs but it is about the experience along the way not what type of sportsball the road was paved with that you walked your pilgrimage on.
If you want a shockingly good local multiplayer arcade volleyball game check out Super Volley Blast (seriously how is this game so good, it is just volleyball??)
it looks like the same indie devs have an arcade tennis local multiplayer game too calledSuper Tennis Blastbut I haven’t personally tried it yet like I have the rest of these games
Lastly, check out the airhockey meets top down action team based hero game Omega Strikers. This game isn’t pay-to-win and it really deserves a lot of love! Don’t pass it over just because it looks like it could be another live-service casino disguised as a game.
edit 2 - does Rock Of Ages count as a sports game? It certainly has lots of balls, a clear goal for those balls to go in and a set of sensible and logical rules to how those balls get there which leads to mythical stories about heroes, sounds like a sportball game to me so what if the sportball is made of living sheep
Just go play Operation Harsh Doorstop, it is free (community funded free not microtransaction casino “free”), runs a million times better, has vehicles and support for large maps and is moddable!
(including support for players downloading a server’s mods on connection so players only have to click on a server to try out a new gamemode or mod)
I constantly praise this game and it is because of the crazy potential of it, it’s accessibility and the fact that the foundation is already awesome.
The sequel, Imperfect Dark is much narrower in thematic focus as you are just trying to blow up all the devices in your house that incessantly have leds on even when they are off.
There are also going to be lots of talent who permanently leave the industry because there are no longer any stable decent paying jobs at larger studios.
I already sold it pretty hard in other threads so I will give it a break but in short it is a free moddable tactical shooter with vehicles and realistic ballistics.
Because that is part of the cycle of collapse and shock doctrine these corporations rely on to keep from being clowned on by moderately competent smaller game studios who actually are excited by the challenge to convince people to buy their art instead of shoving derivative slop down their customer’s throat as the cinematic monochoice for entertainment product category no. 1254…
If you mow the grass, the longterm benefit of preserving a strict monoculture is well worth the temporary mass destruction (from the perspective of the person driving the mower, it smells quite pleasant actually).
To be clear, the blades of grass are the smaller game studios on Microsoft’s lawn.
Don’t understand it as a rational thing, understand the hate as a cancer with its growth being juiced and accelerated by the ruling class because incels are the easiest demographic to scam into violently acting against their own interests.
A cancerous process is by definition irrational from the perspective of the body it acts upon, the reason the cancer exists and grows is not because of a motive, desire or need but rather because the cancerous process consumes all the space and oxygen in a room at a faster rate than anything else can compete with while remaining invisible to the body as a threat.
Toxicity towards women displaces other topics and viewpoints specifically because the men pushing those topics want to monopolize the discussion and framing and often centrist types don’t challenge that at all because of some self-perceived high ground to tolerating intolerance (not something you tend to believe in if you have experienced serious hate).
I wouldn’t call it cold blooded, the CEO was cold blooded. The shooter presumably only murdered one person, the healthcare CEO was undoubtedly a mass murderer.
I am not trying to argue this isn’t also true too, my argument is that the fediverse doesn’t have a marketing department so the framework of discussion around the fediverse in mass media will always be fit to whatever the most convenient narrative is for the corporate tech world which will always be the fediverse is an obscure nerdy diy thing like ham radio or something.
That isn’t to say the fediverse doesn’t also have existential accessibility issues on multiple dimensions.
In the near term of course bluesky will, it has hype, it has rich tech people on it, it has 10s of millions of investment it can throw at stuff.
This is not how Mastodon or the Fediverse grows, our growth is real, not based on hyped and marketing. People come and stay here because it is a nice place, not because it is a popular or exciting new hangout spot that all the rich cool people are going to.
Until Mastedon can appeal to simple minded mainstream basic folk (which is a pretty good size of netizens) it will always be a niche group.
I think the bigger problem is that the tech press starts from the perspective that Mastodon and the Fediverse is just for techie nerds and then fills out the narrative with supporting details and so unless those narratives are challenged Mastodon and the Fediverse will never be for normal people because the Tech press and the money behind it won’t let that narrative stick in the general public’s minds.