Very good! I’m worried they’ll all be laid off tomorrow, but I’m very happy overall. Even tech workers are realizing now companies never liked us, we were an expense, nothing more. Now is the time to unionize
I’d say it’s remarkably consistent how gamers will pick up on budget reductions and cost cutting in games. This isn’t the movies, we aren’t going to just spend 2 hours with a piece of media where some editing handwaving can get us to ignore or not even notice something. These are 40-120 hour games here, we’re going to notice when business stepped in to tell the creative folks to drop something.
Even Hogwarts, a game that I 100%'d, was obviously affected by that. The fucking Merlin Trials. Revelio? You can’t tell me there wasn’t some committee decision that was “We have this big open world, just throw those in every 100 feet or so to make it feel active”. The more corners are cut, the more gamers will notice. They can bank on that.
Corporate America can absolutely be a cult. I’ve jumped around a fair bit, but you can always tell who the lifers are. Think the company is their savior, love the CEO even though they only met them once, go to all the functions, it’s sad to me. Most of those lifers were making much less than me because I jumped around to bump my salary, they are constantly passed over for promotions because “now just isn’t the time”, and usually they ignore their home life and never take PTO.
Been saying it since last year. The companies are so terrified of a recession that they’re going to cause one. The funny thing is that this time the market is actually trending up again. This time they just want their bonuses.
I was in Europe on their rail and we rode from Switzerland to Rome in a day. Albeit a bit long, 8 hours, but when we got off we realized that entire trip was the same distance as Denver to Seattle, a flight we frequently take.
Flying takes us about 3.5 hours plus security, waiting, travel to and from the airport. Plus then sitting on a cramped plane with very little service.
I wish I could take 2 more hours and have an enjoyable ride like the rail they have over there.
All of the stories were like that in starfield. If I could sum it up it would be “jack of all trades, master of none”. Too much stuff crammed in and none of it fleshed out well enough.
Base building was fun, until it was tedious because they only half automated the process.
Ship building was fun, except you could only customize to a point.
Exploration was fun, except they only made really 10ish buildings to just spawned them everywhere instead of generating custom ones (I fought at the same building at least 2 dozen times)
With exploration, we want you to wander through giant spaces and planets, but give you no explorer or vehicle to use.
We also want you to explore the galaxy fully immersed, but couldn’t solve the loading screen problem that yanks you out of the immersion.
So so many cool ideas that you can tell the committee was just like “no, it’s not with finishing that, players will be fine with it”. The entire game feels like it was built by committee.
For puzzles, absolutely unpacking, also have seen similar friends put time into that remodel game that escapes me right now. House Fixer maybe?
It is more action, but I have had success during covid with family who was trapped at home by introducing them to Mass Effect (on story mode, the easiest setting). The story is so engrossing through the three games that they overlooked the action. If she likes big stories, I would suggest that. On keyboard and mouse it’s not the most confusing game either, pretty simple.
If you were thinking Factorio but want to do it together, check out Satisfactory. It’s a 1st person version of it that supports multiplayer, and you could set up a dedicated server. (I’m biased though, I have over 2000 hours in it and I am a mod of !satisfactory). Satisfactory is definitely less intimidating than factorio for newbies to the factory building environment, and there’s a creative factor in there too.
I’ve also had luck with people giving them portal. Portal is a great game to introduce them to not anction gameplay but helps them learn movement controls. Honestly out of the three I suggested maybe portal first and go from there. Would introduce movement, a weapon, and the second has a pretty strong story.
For anything else, what are her interests, what does she do for a living? Maybe we can put forward some more.
As a mass effect and dragon age fan, I empathize so much with you. Love deus ex too, so many rpgs just left ignored.
I really don’t understand it. All of these games would be smash hits. Let’s be honest even if they weren’t very good the franchises are known so well that they would all be bought, and older game sales would swell too. To me it’s a no brainier, make the game, it prints money. They’re just so terrified of having to… Invest in something to get a payout.
This always happens with mergers, and it’s disgusting that our government knows this and allows it to happen without a plan.
T-Mobile buying sprint did the same thing. “Oh, we’ll need everyone on deck!” Really? You’ll need 2 teams rolling out the same phone? You’ll need twice as many people managing the same amount of plans? That’s just not how it works.
Surprisingly, as soon as the heat was off of them after the merger they laid off entire departments that were “redundant”. Never trust a corpo kids.