Yeah, I still play it. I’m based down in Eldjaerin in Minmatar space, right near losec where I do my capital production.
Occasionally I like to try to bait the Russians in Frulegur and Konora (e.g. Coastal Brotherhood) into attacking my carriers or HAW dreads, but I think they’ve learned not to anymore. :P
I think that I was probably spoiled by Eve in that regard. It has a lot of “wow” moments too. Or SC, though obviously that came after E:D. I’m also just not sure it really had the impact on the genre that the others have, though some of their impacts have not all been positive, obviously.
Yeah, it’s definitely very intimidating to get into, and I don’t think I could start now just because it feels like it’s too late; already 21 years old as a game.
If you want a space game that is very similar to Eve, but not online, check out Astrox Imperium. Be warned, it is very janky and indie.
I’ve got a bunch of other recommendations, but I’ll save those for my med/small posts, so I can write more about them.
Haha, I admit that is my personal bias. I was burned in several ways as an E:D Kickstarter backer, especially when the “all updates” part turned out not to include… all updates.
But honestly, I just lost interest. I was doing rare goods trading routes and Frontier nuked them into the ground, and it became very obvious to me that they wanted to force people to play a certain way.
Wrt Mass Effect, I personally think that “space game” shouldn’t just be limited to “flying a spaceship”. I think it’s fair to say spaceships should be part of it, but Halo or KOTOR or any number of other RPGs that are literally all about space aliens and other planets wouldn’t qualify.
I think that Space Sim or certainly Space Combat sub-genres are fair to require actually flying the spacecraft yourself, but Space Games ought to be a big house, imho, to include RPGs and tactics games and even just Alien Planets, so long as the alien part is really the point (which is why I’d consider Stranded: Alien Dawn more of a space game than Rimworld, though it’s a pretty subjective position to be sure).
I’ve never actually played Warframe, mostly because I’m not really into competitive arena shooters (with CS:GO and Apex being notable exceptions, though I’ve long since left them behind), and from my short glances that’s how it appeared to me. Does it take place in space?
Yeah, Freelancer is very special. I really think it’s completely unappreciated for how open the world really is, because it’s very easy just to follow the storyline and never just sod off and explore the world. I recently was replaying it with a bunch of mods, and I went exploring the ice asteroid fields in the south end of New York system, and it’s so atmospheric and cool.
I don’t know how to encourage investment without the stock market
I invest in stuff that’s not stocks all the time. When I give money to someone so that they will hopefully create a cool new product in the future (e.g. a video), I’m not paying for an individual product, I’m investing in them as a creator in hopes for future ROI. That’s Patreon.
We treat the addiction to wealth accrual different from any other addiction, in that we laud it, but make no mistake that it is addictive. Watching numbers in your account go up gives you a rush, just as sure as watching numbers in a video game.
When other addictions cause harm, we push people to get treatment, or at very least condemn the addiction. When someone is addicted to the accrual of wealth, even to the detriment of others, we call them, ‘genius’, ‘savvy’, ‘visionary’, or ‘shrewd’.
Navok noted that if a game costs $100 million to make over five years, it has to beat what the company could have returned investing a similar amount in the stock market over the same period. “For the 5 years prior to Feb 2024, the stock market averaged a rate of return of 14.5%. Investing that $100m in the stock market would net you a return of $201m, so this is our ROI baseline,” he explained.
This is why capitalism ruins everything. So it’s not even about making art that is profitable, it’s about beating out other investment opportunities that someone could have chosen, even if it meant the art didn’t get made.
That is so ass-backwards.
Investment should be about wanting to grow a company whose products you believe in, both to see returns when those products perform well, but also to enjoy the future products.
Someone whose attitude is “I don’t care about your products at all, I just care about cash ROI” will turn around and short your stock and disparage you, if they think it’ll net them more money. In other words, they won’t actually look out for the best interests of the company, and will always be looking out for opportunities to plunder the business for more profit.
And this is supposed to create a healthy market for goods? Please.
“The free market makes goods compete to see what customers prefer.” Apparently not.
Apparently it creates a situation where the products can be profitable and amazing and well-loved, but a bunch of wealthy assholes who don’t care about the products at all can decide the company isn’t up to their standards, and punish or kill it.
There was another post here on Beehaw about housing costs, where someone noted that “voting with your wallet” doesn’t work because wealthy people can “out-vote” you, on a level that even collectively you can’t compete with, and this really illustrates their point well.
Late edit:
I think it bears saying that under this model of ROI calculation, depending on how well other industries are doing, it is entirely possible that no video game could feasibly outperform the market for a given timeframe… so should the whole games industry just fucking shut down in that case?
That could work if these firms were somehow competitors, but these aren’t Sony-aligned studios they’re buying, these are studios that were releasing games on Xbox.
This is definitely a case of, “what makes stock line go up? New games, Big names, More stuff!” Then later, “uh oh, did that and stock price not going up. Layoffs mean less cost, now stock line go up again!”
The article didn’t say he needs to go, they said people need to stop treating him as though he is actually on the side of consumers and employees, rather than investors.
The literal last line of the article is
I hope moving forward Xbox fans and the media hold Spencer more accountable for future mistakes, cuts, and failures.
As someone who used to really like Phil, I agree with this. He’s clearly banking on his popularity as a “celebrity” within the gaming community to put a smiling spin on what is a clearly horrible business record.
The question here is not whether Microsoft does the same things that all businesses do (i.e. be evil Capitalist monstrosities that run people’s livelihoods over in the name of investor greed)- that much is obvious.
The question is whether Phil Spencer is actively enabling this behavior and also covering for it- which he is.
And that is why, as the article suggests, people need to stop treating him as anything other than a corporate representative who wants to extract as much value as he can before it all runs into the ground.
PSP, followed by Gameboy Color, followed by Advance SP.
I recently got a Retroid4, and took an amazing trip down memory lane with Mana Khemia, MG:AC!D, FF Tactics Advanced/A2, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, and a bunch of pkmn ROM hacks. All of them easily held up today.
Unless SteamDeck counts, in which case it wins hands-down.
I didn’t say it’s not good, I said it’s not equivalent to console releases of that year. Graphics isn’t everything, and I still enjoy playing Pax Imperia and Nox, but that doesn’t change that it was a handheld game, not a console game. Pokemon Red/Blue were also some of the best selling games the year they released, but that doesn’t make the Gameboy equivalent as a console to PSX or N64 either.