Exactly. I was extremely disappointed in the community reaction when Steam was going to implement the option for modders to get paid. Instead of focusing on the legitimate issues with the proposal (pay ratios were off, mod dependencies and ripoffs need to be addressed) it boiled down to “rah, I don’t want to pay for things I didn’t used to, rah. Real modders give me stuff for free.”
I think we’re missing out by not having this as an option. Modding can provide a good stepping stone into full game development, and if people can earn money for their work, they can justify spending more time on it or potentially even doing it full time.
“Inspired” by the Square-Enix putting their foot in their mouth thread, I thought it’d be interesting to make a little thread about indie games. People always talk about wanting to try different, cheaper titles, but with how hard it is to get good gaming news and the state of advertisement/marketing, word of mouth tends to...
To help give love to some games I think are underrated, here’s a list of my favorite games with 4,000 reviews or less on steam under $25 ranked by my personal play time.
Post apocalyptic survival sim, that reminds me a tiny bit of Oregon Trail. There’s a good chance a scratch will kill you, and finding a plastic bag so you can carry more than what you hold in your two hands makes you feel OP. I’ve put 74 hours into this game, have died and restarted countless times, and have hardly gotten anywhere in it, but it’s exactly my kind of survival game
Turn-based grid combat reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics, with just a splash of pokemon. The mechanics and setting I found really fun, although the difficulty can fluctuate a good bit at times.
If OG XCOM went more crunchy than streamlined, it’d be Xenonauts instead of Firaxis’s Enemy Unknown. The combat gives you a ton of control during combat, specifying how much time they should spend aiming before shooting, specific hours of overwatch, crouching, etc.
Roguelike turn based party RPG. It doesn’t do a crazy amount that’s new or novel, but it executes very well, and lining up a good combo with your build feels amazing.
Slay the Spire with some smart additions. Instead of one hero, you play two, which gives some extra possibilities to mix and match between runs. Instead of an overmap with a couple branching paths, there’s a hex overworld where you can use resources to reveal tiles.
Avatar the Last Airbender as a 2d stealth action game. The level layouts are great, and the ability upgrades strike a good balance between being impactful and not trivializing encounters.
A classic point and click adventure, except using human logic instead of insane Game Logic. Reminds me of a bunch of similar games I played at the height of Newgrounds. It’s a tight, solid experience that doesn’t over stay its welcome.
What if Slay the Spire had a hex grid system? I’ve seen other games ask this question, but Alina is the best I’ve played. There are some really clever design decisions they’ve made where certain builds very intuitively form some classic archetypes.
Roguelike XCOM themed as a crystalpunk version of Vermintide. Combat is solid, but the theme of running to the exit while shooting rats on the way with crystal powered machine guns sets it apart for me.
This one breaks my “4,000 or less” review rule by a little bit, so I’m putting it at the bottom, but it is one of my favorite games. I understand the love for Obra Dinn, but Golden Idol is better in my opinion. Each puzzle is a scene more or less frozen in time, which you can click on things for clues as what’s happening. What sets it apart is how you really do need to solve the mystery to progress; the game doesn’t walk you into it nor really lets you brute force it. Hands down the best mystery game I’ve ever played.
I think it highlights how perverse the stock market itself is. It doesn’t really seem like it functions much as a way for riskier ventures to raise capital outside of a bank, but a giant casino that gives the illusion of not being a zero sum game.
It’s hypothetically possible for a company to make more money in the stock market by investing in themselves than by creating anything (see Tesla). And if all companies could behave this way and somehow knew what the stock market would do for 5 years, I’d wager a TON of companies wouldn’t meet it, invest in the stock market, drive up the “value,” more don’t meet it, etc. etc. until no one is making anything, and everyone is happy with their paper fortunes and try to sell.
Not really, and I’m guessing it’s part of their decision here since it could open them to possibilities they don’t like if they say that an account is an asset. It’s also probably fairly complicated, legally; they need to understand how estates are settled in every country they do business, open themselves up more to scammers, etc.
I doubt they’re going to enforce this if you were to give your credentials to someone else. They’re just not going to voluntarily provide the credentials for you.
I still don’t know it. I don’t have a huge amount of confidence in “a prominent figure in the Counter-Strike community” as a source for Valve’s internal finances.
Yeah, I think all indications have been that Microsoft is getting out of the video game business. Or, if they were planning on staying in, why would they close a bunch of studios, including successful ones like Hi-Fi Rush’s Tango games.
I’ve never played a soulslike games because they are a bit intimidating to me. Amy recommendations for soulslikes games to start on or for beginners to the genre?
I really disliked the ability to get lost combined with the challenge in Dark Souls. In most games, if I come upon an area that’s extremely hard, it’s clear that I’m not supposed to go there yet. But with Dark Souls, I know it’s supposed to be hard and had a harder time gauging if there was somewhere else I should be going.
Saw that response coming. I’m just saying maybe don’t assume everything is American before asking a question like that, and especially don’t do it for a website with “euro” in the name
“How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?”
The industry should’ve already learned this lesson from the MMO crash, of everyone trying to replicate WoW’s success and then later realizing that a business model of investing a ton of money to try and compete for both consumers’ time and money is a bad idea.
I’m looking for recommendations for WWII single player fps games for the pc. In particular, I’m looking for older games from the 90s to early 2000s. I always hear how the market used to be over saturated with these games, but after playing through the early Call of Duties and Medals of Honor, I don’t know of any games that...
I’d just throw out that my recollection is that it was really more of a mid-to-late 2000’s thing for the oversaturation of WW2 games, if you’re willing to move your window forward a bit. That and there weren’t nearly as many games being released at that time period, so it didn’t take much to saturate the market; there were roughly 1/50th the number of releases in 2008 as today (www.statista.com/…/number-games-released-steam/ using steam releases as a rough approximation of total).
In terms of specific games, I don’t have any that aren’t already mentioned elsewhere. The Battlefield, Band of Brothers, and Call of Duty recurring releases are really the big ones. …wikipedia.org/…/List_of_World_War_II_video_games has a good list if you want to browse more.
I feel the same. Something about having agency in the game has never really made them scary for me, but I guess horror movies don’t do it for me either so I guess it’s just not my thing. I loved RE4, though; horror aside it’s such a good game.
apparently this is in response to a few threads on Reddit flaming Starfield—in general, it’s been rather interesting to see Bethesda take what i can only describe as a “try to debate Starfield to popularity” approach with the game’s skeptics in the past month or two. not entirely sure it’s a winning strategy,...
I was assuming this was a quote from an interview with a leading question like “what do you think about players who claim to know what went wrong in the development of Starfield?” And the quote was out of context to make him look bad.
But this was a Twitter thread. It’s a completely unforced error, no one was making him do this.
In general, fantasy isn’t my favorite setting, but this looks pretty cool and will definitely be keeping my eye on it. I’m curious if it’ll keep NMS’s general minimalist story structure or do something more akin to GTA with set built story elements/missions, and then a sandbox to explore in between
I think those are all good points, but I think they’re also potentially surmountable ones; I think the key would be to be as restrictive as necessary for which mods are allowed to charge. If only a small fraction of the most clear cut and expansive mods can charge, maybe even hand-picked by the developer, I think that’s still a better state than it was before.
Some potential examples: a mod isn’t allowed to charge if it has any mod dependency. Games supporting paid mods must support opt-out updates (steam already supports this easily via "beta branches) and mods have at least one version available to consumers that are guaranteed to work. Depending on the mod, it could be possible to do some automated regression testing, similar to how the Steam Deck verification works.
The ethics get muddier for your average person, though. Piracy is (to a good chunk of people) clearly wrong: there is something someone made that most people had to pay for and you’re getting it for free. That’s not how things are supposed to work.
With this, you are still paying money for the game, it’s just cheaper, but games are cheaper when they’re on sale, too. I think a much larger group of people will make use of “used” digital games without giving a ton of thought to the fact that the game creator is getting less than those who are fine with pirating games. On top of that, ethics aside, one of those activities is illegal and the other potentially legal, which does affect how people make decisions as well.
Not really, though. NFTs only benefit is to distribute trust/authority. In this case there still needs to be some central authority who will actually honor it and provide the game at the end (either Steam or the game’s creator or something else). It is far more energy efficient for that central authority to also track who has what without performing useless work.
Why would they discount the game when the used market is an option.
I think the key part there is that when they disconnect a game they still get (almost) pure profit off that sale. For a used game, they’re only getting some percentage of it if the person selling is getting a cut or majority. I think the creator would always prefer sales and avoid the used market at any cost, since it provides them no value and actively hurts their more lucrative sales.
I fully acknowledge that it’s a grey area, but I’ve personally always considered resale of digital goods (goods which can be obtained purely digitally, even if sold in a physical medium) to be unethical, although legal. If I’m going to pay money to it, I want the money to go to the person who created it, not to someone else who happened to purchase it or, worse, some company that provides no value other than encouraging those transactions.
To me, resale on physical goods is ethical because there are two core differences with those which could be acquired purely digitally. Physical goods degrade with use, providing reduced value compared to new goods. And it is better for unwanted physical goods to continue to provide value for someone than for it to enter a landfill.
That’s an interesting idea to me, particularly regarding preservation of games of bankrupted companies. I’d still be in favor of a central registrar as opposed to NFTs, just because of the huge inefficiencies and environmental impact of that (essentially useless) computation.
There would need to be some governing authority dictating that companies need to honor the download of games not purchased from them (essentially the government of each country that has this as a law). It would make sense to me that that same government could host a service to keep track of the transactions. Or, more likely, the government just mandates the companies to play nice and exchange purchase data with each other. Sure, in some sense you’re letting the wolves run the henhouse, but it also isn’t that different from a game company refusing to give you a game you purchased from them. They could do that, but you would take legal action against them. Same thing here.
The context for this was them deciding to take the time to finish the game properly even if they were no longer going to get paid to do it (the publisher would stop funding).
In case you’re out of the loop, the old Steam Deck had Philips screws that screwed into self-tapping plastic holes. This lead to occasional stripped threads and often stripped screwheads....
It might not be as many great games as you’d think. youtu.be/1FBGR6vmNeU?si=rckpsplXwQhMBELE has some good explanation. Players often say they want smarter AI, but enjoy “dumber” ones more
What you said, but in video form youtu.be/VhWGQCzAtl8?si=Gj9AaniT3U46KlGF. And that came out 5 years ago. Even if we only kept up with inflation from when that video came out until now, videogames should cost $73
Absolutely makes sense for most planets to be rather barren.
This idea is something I’ve heard a lot about Starfield and is why I don’t think I’ll pick it up, at least until a big sale. To me, it seems like they made a fair number of design decisions around what “makes sense” rather than what’s fun.
Cyberpunk 2077. I was pretty skeptical of it before it came out (didn’t really feel like it was doing anything unique), but it was such a big release I picked it up to have an opinion on it.
Don’t think I’m gonna do the same for Starfield, though, that’s just a pass
Games should cost more than $60, they have not remotely kept up with inflation. The price was able to stay static so long because things could get cheaper with economies of scale as the industry grew, but it can’t do that forever. The price has to go up.
This is not a criticism - I love how much attention this game has been getting. I’m just not understanding why BG3 has been blowing up so much. It seems like BG3 is getting more attention than all of Larian’s previous games combined (and maybe all of Obsidian’s recent crpgs as well). Traditionally crpgs have not lit the...
This is a big part to me, in addition to your other points. D:OS2 didn’t have the same hype going into launch because (at least to me) D:OD was good, but not amazing. Given how well received D:OS2 was, I think the media was primed both to give it attention and praise.
He added: “So when it comes to the term ‘JRPG’, this is something that ties into this – these are RPG games that, in a sense, only Japanese creators can make with their unique sensitivity when it comes to creating these experiences. “I think it’s certainly something that should be celebrated moving forward, and...
I think it’s generally agreed that pretty much all our genre naming conventions are bad and alternatives exist. youtu.be/uepAJ-rqJKA has a pretty good description of an alternative, where you describe games by their core reason for play as opposed to mechanics or camera perspective
Starfield’s Paid Mods Ignite A Review Bombing On Steam (kotaku.com) angielski
Hello, PC gaming here: Are the consoles OK? (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
The Indie Chat & Recommendation Thread (cdn.imgchest.com)
“Inspired” by the Square-Enix putting their foot in their mouth thread, I thought it’d be interesting to make a little thread about indie games. People always talk about wanting to try different, cheaper titles, but with how hard it is to get good gaming news and the state of advertisement/marketing, word of mouth tends to...
Former Square Enix exec on why Final Fantasy sales don’t meet expectations and chances of recouping insane AAA budgets | Game World Observer (gameworldobserver.com)
You can't take it with you, but you can't leave it for someone else either: Valve says you aren't allowed to bequeath a Steam account in a will (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Here's Why Microsoft Buying Valve Is A Terrible Idea (www.thegamer.com) angielski
Crazy rumour suggests Microsoft are preparing $16 billion offer for Valve (www.altchar.com) angielski
Best Soulslike game for beginners? angielski
I’ve never played a soulslike games because they are a bit intimidating to me. Amy recommendations for soulslikes games to start on or for beginners to the genre?
GAME staff discovered zero hours contracts move via mass Microsoft Teams calls (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Forget Ubisoft's AAAA Games, CD Projekt Is Making 'AAAAA' Games (insider-gaming.com) angielski
Dragon's Dogma 2 MTX
So there’s obviously been a lot of existing discourse on DD2’s micro transactions, and I’m curious to get the thoughts of people here....
Five Years Ago, Anthem Was A Warning (kotaku.com) angielski
TL;DR:...
WWII first person shooters
I’m looking for recommendations for WWII single player fps games for the pc. In particular, I’m looking for older games from the 90s to early 2000s. I always hear how the market used to be over saturated with these games, but after playing through the early Call of Duties and Medals of Honor, I don’t know of any games that...
Valve Made $1 Billion From CS Cases Last Year, Data Claims - Insider Gaming (insider-gaming.com)
5+ man group games
Hi everyone, I have a group of friends (we are 5 in total) and we’re looking for some new games....
Yahtzee Best, Worst, and Blandest Games of 2023 (youtu.be)
Formerly Zero Punctuation for the Escapist, now Fully Ramblomatic for Second Wind.
Best of Steam 2023 - A look back at the year's top sellers, new releases, most-played games, and more! (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Male players: Why do you play female characters? (kbin.social) angielski
Got the idea of posting this when I watched this YouTube video that talks about reasons men love playing as girls....
Was 2023 the Greatest Gaming Year of All Time? (www.theringer.com) angielski
Starfield design lead says players are "disconnected" from how games are actually made: "Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
apparently this is in response to a few threads on Reddit flaming Starfield—in general, it’s been rather interesting to see Bethesda take what i can only describe as a “try to debate Starfield to popularity” approach with the game’s skeptics in the past month or two. not entirely sure it’s a winning strategy,...
New single planet fantasy game from Hello Games (www.youtube.com) angielski
The Game Awards 2023 Discussion Thread
Hey y’all. Figured I’d make a thread for this. Discuss anything about the game awards and it’s announcements here!...
Bethesda is once again adding support for paid mods to Skyrim (steamcommunity.com) angielski
Seems like Bethesda wants another go at this
EU court rules people can resell digital games (www.gamingbible.com) angielski
Finally some good news! I’ve been waiting for quite a while for such a ruling....
Gabe Newell on why game delays are okay: 'Late is just for a little while. Suck is forever.' (www.pcgamer.com)
Rant: Valve's new Steam Deck screws speak volumes about their ethos.
In case you’re out of the loop, the old Steam Deck had Philips screws that screwed into self-tapping plastic holes. This lead to occasional stripped threads and often stripped screwheads....
Risk of Rain Returns Released! (store.steampowered.com)
The first two are probably in my top 5 games of all time. This one combines both into an experience closer to the first while adding new stuff....
Far Cry's Multiplayer Game is an Extraction-Based Shooter (insider-gaming.com) angielski
What type of game you want to see that doesn't fully exist yet?
Capcom President Says ‘Game Prices Are Too Low’ (kotaku.com) angielski
lol. lmao.
Payday 3 players endure second consecutive day of server issues, preventing them from playing (www.eurogamer.net)
Starbreeze insists it is “working hard” to keep servers online after Payday 3 players endured a second consecutive evening of disruption....
Starfield (Zero Punctuation) (www.youtube.com) angielski
Bethesda says most of Starfield's 1000+ planets are dull on purpose (www.pcgamer.com)
What games have you played due to FOMO? angielski
FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out....
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What is up with Baldur's Gate 3?
This is not a criticism - I love how much attention this game has been getting. I’m just not understanding why BG3 has been blowing up so much. It seems like BG3 is getting more attention than all of Larian’s previous games combined (and maybe all of Obsidian’s recent crpgs as well). Traditionally crpgs have not lit the...
Hideki Kamiya thinks Japan should be proud of ‘JRPG’ and wants to use ‘J-Action’ (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
He added: “So when it comes to the term ‘JRPG’, this is something that ties into this – these are RPG games that, in a sense, only Japanese creators can make with their unique sensitivity when it comes to creating these experiences. “I think it’s certainly something that should be celebrated moving forward, and...