Wouldn’t that mean the reviewers were starved for fast travel, and would have thus complained about it? That seems to be the narrative a lot of people are suggesting - that the DLC makes the game playable.
Unless I’m misunderstanding and reviewers got infinite fast travel.
I saw this same thing with games like Dead Space 3. They included a cash shop, very likely hard-pushed by some asinine executive. But, you could tell by playing the game, the majority of developers likely tested with that feature off. Was it a fun game? No, but resource starvation was not the reason for that.
Basically it feels like the hands trying to microtransact for singleplayer games are not the same as the ones designing those games to begin with. It still deserves negative attention, just nuance.
There’s awesome art made under fair working conditions, but I can’t imagine how you’d put together the kind that needs ludicrous hours. The kind that involves hundreds of thousands of hand drawn frames all in the same art style.
When it needs both creativity and intense devotion, it no longer becomes a 9-5 thing, even if you’re your own boss. Some people do that voluntarily but end up with carpal tunnel, sleep issues, etc. That has even been the case with a lot of Japanese creators I’ve seen.
I definitely prefer the world in which we have unions and better worker rights, but I am starting to be aware of that world’s drawbacks.
Take a look at the great pyramids of Egypt. Take a look at classic anime, filled with intensely detailed high-framerate animation. These are fantastic works that, in some way, are made possible by people that are working far, far longer than a healthy work day for probably mediocre compensation. It’s almost lead to a zeitgeist where many games have not reached the height of the 360/PS3 era due to a mass of brain drain in development - thousands of really talented developers focusing on their life plan rather than passions.
In a utopia, one day we’d have high-paying employers that can truly willingly rally the greatest minds, but I think too many studios and publishers are growth/profit-minded to really get there.
I got overloaded by the puzzles in the first game, so I didn’t even consider the second. Yes, it iterated on interesting ideas around the blocks, but just after resolving one, I’d feel exhausted from the enormous sequence of movements and actions I’d need to do to get through the exit - and just be thrown into another mess of them. I really preferred something like Portal, where it’s just small executions of simple ideas that may require one act of ingenuity to use them right.
I also can’t really bring myself to care much about story in any game that’s so far post-apocalypse.
To me, this is actually why I’d want a Team Fortress 3 rather than more updates. The wave of cosmetics in some way turned the previous game a bit unplayable.
You talked about console hardware, but then mentioned distribution. I’m going to guess you mostly mean servers - as these days people don’t really need any special local hardware aside from any controller.
The major cities generally already have those servers distributed and working. It’s true certain edges of the world don’t have a good experience, but that sort of just fits in the 70% of scenarios where you wouldn’t want a cloud game.
There’s still this weird expectation it would replace your home den where you have lots of space and disposable income for multiple consoles - it doesn’t. It’s really more for the convenience of getting your games from a web browser.
Why do people react so negatively to cloud options? (Emphasis on that last word)
It’s dumb for a lot of cases, but there’s plenty of niche occasions it’s very cool. I had an extended period of time I was away from my gaming PC, and sad that I couldn’t play my home games - but GFN let me do so easily.
Nobody working on this tech (with any sense) is claiming ALL games will come from the cloud in 10-20 years. Nobody will accept that level of lost control. But having it as an extra way to access games, in a situation where you’d be reliant on the internet more than hardware anyway, is very useful. It was even how I recommended people play Cyberpunk on release if they had a mediocre PC.
I get that there’s constant worries about how close we are to the EA-managed dystopian control of their library, I just don’t see the logical sequence of events there when it’s an option on a generally open and consumer-friendly store.
I get the impression Amazon just rightly avoided overselling it and growing too far too fast. I see it advertised for a few specific cases where people don’t own consoles and might try it, but not overblown in showcases the way Google did.
I don’t follow. Some games do come out as irreparable buggy garbage, get terrible reviews, and nobody of sound mind buys them. Other games come out with a genuinely fun product, and as a result of player engagement, the developer decides to add more - and nobody of sound mind is then claiming they “released it half finished”. Meanwhile, early leaks are always buggy because the bugfixing and polish phases come late in development.
So what does any of that have to do with justifying leaking?
While it’s perhaps morbid, could there ever be a feature of Steam Inheritance? Eg, a person owns many thousands of dollars in games, passes away, and has a family that might like access to them.
Has some legal difficulties where you’d need to verify identity and have contact with lawyers to execute it, so it’s not exactly a software problem.
Y’know, I distinctly remember the friendly fire being the thing I didn’t like about the first one. It was initially very “Oh haha you killed me!” but then something kept you from getting to play again for a long time, and so it was hard to just shrug it off. I’m assuming it’s something somewhat different now.
Looking at the 34GB install, I’m guessing it’s some kind of massive emulation layer; it’s scary to say but I feel like we’ve just run out of game developers that can genuinely code against the machine itself to optimize install size and performance.
When you look back on the meager specs of old consoles and what they got running there, it now feels more and more impressive.
“I may have stolen your wallet, but it’s okay - I gave it back. Surely it wasn’t because several police officers were walking over with curious expressions.”