I’m a game developer and honestly, you are kind of right. It makes the game more fun to be able to haul around things infinitely. A lot of game developers put in cheats specifically so they can either just spawn what they need or carry everything or both. That said, it also ruins the game incredibly well after 2 minutes of you dicking around and having fun with every item without issue.
Overall the basic issue is twofold. One, if you let the player carry everything, then some players are going to look and dig through levels to find everything. Two, Some players won’t do this so you need to stock your levels with enough obvious items to keep the players who don’t explore stocked enough to keep playing. If you do that then the items the exploration players are looking for are just either overpowering them or not giving them any benefits like collectibles. There is a middle ground to this and make exploration reward items different playstyles. Like in Deus Ex, a lot of exploration bonus items are stealth based. Meaning if you want to do a stealth playthrough you’ll be exploring a lot and thus you’ll find less ammo which is on guards or in the middle of guarded areas and you’ll find more hack tools and lockpicks.
So problem solved right? But wait… Deus Ex’s inventory is… exactly like REs. Why? Because the issue above was the basic issue of why to even include inventory. Now we bring in what it adds to the game. Player choice and agency. As the player, you get to pick your own path. In any game with an inventory, you are going to get to pick which things you keep and which you don’t. This means you have to actively make choices according to your playstyle. In Deus Ex the question boils down to, do you take the big fuck off GEP gun or do you keep your inventory lean for lockpicks, pistols, SMGs, shotguns, and assault rifles so you can use whatever ammo you come across. In the first Deus Ex, ammo is very scarce. Thus having room for ammo and the tools to use it is very important. a GEP gun only really works on 4-6 enemies and the ammo is huge as well as the gun. Taking up around a third of the inventory, maybe more, depending on if you get inventory upgrades. This is an active playstyle choice.
Some games are simply built around inventory management, likewise, some games are built around unlimited inventory. The latest Hitman (2016-2021) series allows unlimited inventory and you can certainly build around it. The issue with Hitman is that you lose all of your inventory every time the mission ends then you can only bring select things into a mission to keep your inventory slim. It still rewards the player for exploration because now you know another path through the mission which potentially gets you another item or in a place you didn’t know you could get without the right outfit. Because the missions are replayable the information you gain in one playthrough helps the next. Knowledge of that item existing in that location is enough of a reward.
@Pseu mentioned that survival games need inventory management. I pose they don’t. Crashlands is a survival game without inventory management and doesn’t even have an inventory screen for better or worse. Inventory management, as far as I am aware, isn’t a requirement of any genre. If it is then someone out there is going to try to make a game to remove it. There are also games that are solely inventory management like Save Room - Organization Puzzle. There are types of people who like inventory management and those who don’t.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk! I hope this was helpful and interesting.
No, this is not really typical for a large studio. I’ve been in the games industry for 10 years and losing your team every project is a studio killer. No one does this anymore aside from really small indie studios that can’t afford to keep the team together. This is not normal for a studio that knows what it’s doing.
Saying that GDPR doesn’t know what it’s doing is like saying MGM doesn’t know what it’s doing. They aren’t the best in the industry but they’ve still made some quality products. They know far more about what they are doing than an indie studio that hasn’t even released their first game.
I’m not a GDPR fan at all. They put out one game I even got through and it was mediocre. I’m just not a fan of the general gaming public thinking they know more than a studio full of veterans.
If that’s the case, it’s not the norm. Most studios do not lay people off every release. They get them working on another project immediately. Typically a project starts up as the game is wrapping up for release then people switch gradually.
I’m not saying that they can’t criticize. I’m saying it’s still a studio that I would say knows what it’s doing more so than a studio that is going to lay off a bunch of people just because the project they were working on ended. You’ve been in the industry for 15 years, how many times have you been laid off at the end of a project at a well-formed studio? In my experience, it rarely happens. If you have a good team you don’t break it up willingly.
That’s all I said. It doesn’t make business sense to do so and CDPR and any well-put-together studio knows this. Any business knows this. To say that “Well, it’s CDPR thus they are going to make stupid mistakes that a novice indie team would make” is silly and not seated in reality.
In a response to a post from the AntiDRM Twitter account, Ubisoft Support has clarified that users who don’t sign in to their account can potentially lose access to Ubisoft games they’ve purchased. The initial post from AntiDRM featured a snippet of an e-mail sent to a user from Ubisoft notifying them that their account had...
It’s not. You don’t own the game you lease it with the clause that the storefront can ban/delete/deactivate your account for any reason. This is true for Steam, GOG, Itch, Epic, EA, Microsoft, etc.
When you purchase on the Ubisoft Stores, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensed, non-commercial and personal license to use the Ubisoft Products.
Also note:
Ubisoft Products may also be purchased from third parties authorized by us to sell such Ubisoft Products. When you purchase Ubisoft Products from a third party, your purchase is with that third party and not Ubisoft.
So I’ll do this for ubisoft but last I checked it was in Steam, EA, Gog, and Epic’s. Itch is the only one I hold out hope to be better but this is pretty boiler plate stuff.
This license is just that, a license.
These Terms of Sale are incorporated by reference to the Terms of Use of Ubisoft available at legal.ubi.com/termsofuse (“Terms of Use”). All capitalized terms used but not defined herein shall have the meaning given to them in the Terms of Use. Certain Ubisoft Products are subject to the acceptance of an End User License Agreement (“EULA”) and any other additional terms, which will be available to you before you can access, download, install or use such Ubisoft Product. UBISOFT’s Privacy Policy is an integral part of these Terms of Sale and can be found at legal.ubi.com/privacypolicy (“Privacy Policy”). Please read it carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.
So we now need to look at the EULA and Privacy Policy.
So the EULA of the store legal.ubi.com/eula/en-US Clause 1 backs of Clause 1 Scope of the Terms of Sale.
So Ubisoft reserves the right to terminate your account and thus the EULA agreement and thus your license.
For fun, lets do a bigger storefront because ubisoft is small.
Valve is smarter and calls this directly not a term of sale but a subscriber agreement. You are a subscriber to their service of steam and this is the agreement:
Steam and your Subscription(s) require the download and installation of Content and Services onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a non-exclusive license and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms). This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet.
Establishes that these are licenses, not purchases and that you have to have a steam account and running the steam client.
Valve may restrict or cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally, or (b) you breach any terms of this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use). In the event that your Account or a particular Subscription is restricted or terminated or cancelled by Valve for a violation of this Agreement or improper or illegal activity, no refund, including of any Subscription fees or of any unused funds in your Steam Wallet, will be granted.
Valve reserves the right to cancel your subscription if they decide to cease providing such subscriptions to “similarly situated subscribers.” E.g. as long as they do it to everyone in your “situation” it’s legal. So Valve could very well delete inactive accounts legally without refunds. It’s in the EULA, you’ve agreed that as long as they do it without direct discrimination that it’s fine.
So again, you can go through every storefront and realize you have no ownership or right to a refund if they decide to shut down. Also don’t see this as “pro-corporation” I am not defending anyone here. I am pointing out that people have not understood the loss of ownership in the digital world we now live. I’ve been sitting here waiting for the day that people go “hey wait, they can just delete my account without anything I can do?”
Sure, “laws are threats made by the dominant socioeconomic-ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just the promise of violence that’s enacted and the police are basically an occupying army.”
I was simply talking about the current legal definition. It’s hard to call it theft or fraud when the terms are made clear before the sale. An example of this to a lesser degree would be game studios making multiplayer games. Is it theft if a studio puts a game out on Steam with the clause “We can only support multiplayer for as long as our budget allows us.” and then goes under a few years later? A lot of these multiplayer services are things someone would have to pay for like Playfab or Gamelift. Not something easily open-sourceable. You could argue “Well don’t write your game like that” but then you are essentially killing the multiplayer game service industry without consideration of its existence or benefits.
Hmm yet steam has certainly banned lots of accounts, probably some of those owning games and are citizens of Australia. So clearly there is a clause around it.
Aging gamers were reportedly delighted to see that a new video game called Eldric Quest has accessibility features catered specifically to people their age who do not have enough time to actually play a video game....
It’s literally fine though because hard mode doesn’t mean anything more than you do less damage and the enemies do more in 99% of the games out there. You’re not missing extra gameplay or narrative. You just slide two real basic siders up and down.
The big thing for me is that if I play narrative-focused games like immersive sims, I want to dive deep into those worlds, and that takes a certain amount of brain energy.
Honestly, I think am close to done with game pass. The games on it are fine, they are acceptable. But the fact that I can’t play them on linux/steam deck and the fact they go away. I’d probably just rather sub to humble monthly or such.
You don’t own those games though. You can’t play them on any device you want to. I got kids so I’m wanting them to play these games in a few years. I’d rather just pick up starfield if it’s good. Forza doesn’t interest me at all.
Have you ever played a game and wondered what if you could do something that it doesn’t really allow you to do, for example being able to move around blocks in Minecraft fluidly instead of in sectors, edit the world in Hogwarts legacy with spells, be able to fly in a world like Elden Ring or Elder Scrolls with epic sky...
That’s what the Ultima Underworld series was. Underworld Ascendant was supposed to be a modern revival. Sadly, the studio seemed to bite off more than it can chew.
but I do believe you will have to have a connection in order to play cause it’s made in the Unreal Engine, it’s using cross-progression, crossplay, I do believe we need you to be online," said Listo.
I’ve been using Unreal Engine 4 since 2014 and in 2020 started using EOS which I’ve shipped on a game. This is bullshit. It’s entirely bullshit that you don’t need someone 10 years into the games industry with the relevant engine experience and relevant online subsystem experience to tell you it’s bullshit. You already know it’s bullshit. But here is a random expert opinion to definitively confirm it’s bullshit.
The only thing they had to do is make it so you can store your progress locally until you connect to a server. I do that with my achievement system in an indie game I made for under 10,000 USD from my publisher. It’s insane to think this is their excuse.
I don’t see this as a bad thing but it’s also not a great thing. It’s like watching one village-crushing giant team up with another village-crushing giant because one of the giants isn’t crushing enough villages to be healthy. So they will now crush villages together in hopes both can eat a lot better.
It’s like aww, they found family… But also they’ll probably crush us at noon so there is that.
So one comparison they make is “What if Titanic was only available on VHS and you had to go buy it off eBay!” I feel like it’s a very silly way to compare video games and movies. Like what? That’s fine. There are thousands of movies that are only available in their given home release format. Video games are already digitized for the most part but it’s like asking “What if you could only play a really specific pinball machine by buying the pinball machine?”
I’m all for preserving games. As a game developer, that’s my work and I do want it to live on forever. That said it’s insane to expect any developer or publisher to fund a failed game’s port to newer hardware or still sell it for older hardware. It’s simply not worth the hassle. Make it profitable, give grants for selling older titles. If this is something gamehistory.org wants to see, offer the money to make it happen. Otherwise be happy with old formats and ROM dumps.
In release - For the purposes of this study, a game is considered to be “in release” if the game, or a version of the game derived from its original release including emulated, modified, or reimplemented versions of the original game is reasonably, readily, and legally available from the game’s rightsholder, either in physical or digital format, for a currently produced or supported game platform.
They are expecting copyright holders of a game to indefinitely sell the game. It’s not that easy. Something like the 1999 movie Dogma would not qualify as “in release” since you can’t buy it or watch it from the copyright holder. You can however buy a DVD version on amazon from mediamaniasales legally.
Overall, the study is expecting studios to support and release classic games for current or supported game platforms. It’s a lot of work and it’s not reasonable to expect a studio to do. If people want supported classic games then they should create a system that gives money to people trying to do that. We live in a society that requires money and people work to get that money. Expecting people to put in that work for free is pretty silly.
I love obscure and overlooked games and want to share a bunch with all of you. Most “hidden gem” threads end up listing titles with thousands of reviews or that got some level of marketing. I aim to mostly avoid that. While you may see a few familiar games here, everything in the list below has under 1500 reviews on Steam...
I made a choose your own adventure that’s been called Oregon trail like bigbossbattle.com/the-away-team-review/ I don’t know if it truly embodies Oregon trail though.
I have the exact same opinion. I didn’t come to fallout for crafting and extreme town defense. I went to fallout for a fun RPG with an interesting story. I thought the main studio would have seen fallout new vegas and remembered what the series was known for. Fallout 3 was just as bad in terms of story.
From the notoriously flat structure of Valve to the support of free software to the extremely laissez faire way of running steam to the main Dota tournament being named “The International”… Is Gabe Newell a card carrying Anarchist?
This is entirely silly. Specially when you consider they removed the flat structure at Valve recently. Also even when it was flat it was still structured as more important people’s opinions carried more weight. It made it feel like high school according to one developer where there was cliques and entourageous. That’s not anarchy.
Additionally Valve is not overall for Foss projects. Steam itself is still very closed and very restrictive. Proton was created to keep costs down and because Windows at one point threatened to enforce the windows store for outside apps. Potentially destroying steam.
Steam and Valve only contribute to open source as far as it benefits them. They are ex Microsoft employees that understand the embrace and extend side and are embracing Linux and it’s community. Extending wine. And potentially one day extinguishing the broad availability of Linux to replace it with steam os. You see this on their storefront already. Years ago when a game supported Linux on steam you’d see an icon of tux. Now you see an icon of steam os. A subtle reminder that Valve does not care about Linux but instead of being a thriving business.
Gabe is a capitalist. You don’t become a billionaire without abusing workers.
Why do people choose the WORST possible organization of their inventory? (media.kbin.social) angielski
Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher studio CD Projekt laying off 100 staff (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
Ubisoft Can Delete Inactive Accounts, Making Users Lose Access to Their Games (gamerant.com) angielski
In a response to a post from the AntiDRM Twitter account, Ubisoft Support has clarified that users who don’t sign in to their account can potentially lose access to Ubisoft games they’ve purchased. The initial post from AntiDRM featured a snippet of an e-mail sent to a user from Ubisoft notifying them that their account had...
Game Introduces Easy Mode Called “I’m 35 and Have One Hour to Play This” (hard-drive.net)
Aging gamers were reportedly delighted to see that a new video game called Eldric Quest has accessibility features catered specifically to people their age who do not have enough time to actually play a video game....
I used to be concerned about a game being too short. Now I worry that it will be too long. angielski
Title mostly describes how I’m feeling now....
Gamepass Games for July (Console/ PC) (lemmy.ca)
What type of game do you want to play that doesn't really exist?
Have you ever played a game and wondered what if you could do something that it doesn’t really allow you to do, for example being able to move around blocks in Minecraft fluidly instead of in sectors, edit the world in Hogwarts legacy with spells, be able to fly in a world like Elden Ring or Elder Scrolls with epic sky...
Payday 3 requires an internet connection, even when played solo (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Another “always online” game that forces people to connect to internet while playing single player....
87% Missing: the Disappearance of Classic Video Games (gamehistory.org) angielski
Actual Hidden Gems on Steam angielski
I love obscure and overlooked games and want to share a bunch with all of you. Most “hidden gem” threads end up listing titles with thousands of reviews or that got some level of marketing. I aim to mostly avoid that. While you may see a few familiar games here, everything in the list below has under 1500 reviews on Steam...
Remember the hype around Fallout 4? (lemmynsfw.com) angielski
Still like the game, even if it did not live up to expectations.
Is Gabe Newell a hardcore anarchist? angielski
From the notoriously flat structure of Valve to the support of free software to the extremely laissez faire way of running steam to the main Dota tournament being named “The International”… Is Gabe Newell a card carrying Anarchist?