It’s a tough one. You’re not wrong by any means, but equally the environmentally unfriendly bit is why people buy physical media. The memory card holding the game is mostly superfluous because of day 1 DLC or patches, but it’s the box; art; manual; and physical tangibility that matter to a collector of the media.
Ideally there would be a middle ground - sack-off the normal physical edition and purchase the memory cards themselves - and push up the price and pay for a premium edition of the copy made from better materials.
I suspect we’d only get the worst of both worlds though, the cynic in me thinks.
Man you would have had a field day with PC gaming in the 90’s!
In fairness though, even though some did skimp out and just launch a CD in, most had a manual and something of lore interest or a physical anti-piracy thing, and a fair few were stuffed full of trinkets or other world building material… just because.
Even my Atari ST edition of Zak McKracken had the floppy, manual, passport anti-piracy card, and a faux-magazine which was both hilarious and acted as a hint book too.
That’s a shame. I can sort of understand taking Unreal and RtNP from the storefronts from a financial perspective as a remaster is rumoured to be in the works, but UT99 - along with Quake III Arena - was probably influential in taking online multiplayer from the discrete deathmatch or capture the flag maps into what would be eSports and games as a service… as much as that makes me almost barf to say.
I’ve always quite liked Sweeney for being “old school” in his approach to game design and company direction, even if I didn’t necessarily like how he went about it, but it has really pulled a hair out of my arse how he’s gone off the rails in the last 6-12 months - complaining about needing more linux devs one month, and binning off hundreds off staff a few weeks later even though they’re proper rinsing the Fortnite cash cow.
Great nod to the Valve documentary though, I enjoyed that far more than I should have.
(edit: crash course for the uninitiated: Fortnite was a great game, until it launched it’s Battle Royale mode - Fortnite then effectively became this game mode, whereas the base game was left to die as Save The World.)
It’s a mode that people paid money for, and Epic treat it as a second rate game even though without it, there wouldn’t even be this behemoth that Fortnite has become.
Epic have come a long way from Epic MegaGames, and it isn’t always a fairytale story I suppose.
Not sure what brings back more nostalgia in that picture to be honest. The feeling of the vastness of a game that had no right to feel so big given it’s constraints, or the GLC’s lyric “I made love to a BBC Micro”.
Yeah, it’s probably more British slang more than anything. To “bang in” or “knock in” or “pan in” or “put in” a quantity of anything is generally used to describe a tedious or repetitive task.
One could “knock in a good few hours of revision” or “bang in half hour on the treadmill” or “put in a shitload of effort” or other such terms.
In this case, my lad plays Pokémon Go, but I’ll cover distance goals to accelerate progress a bit.
It’s doable. It’s just a different game. You get to know usernames who take or join gyms, you can recognise people on the rare occasion you party up for a raid.
A friend of mine GPS spoofs the game and it’s a completely different game though. I’m having to use external tools to remote raid for cool mons as an organised party, but they just tip up to any major city centre raid location and do whatever they need to do whenever they want. That said, gyms turn over within minutes, so getting free coins is a pain in the ass whereas a lot of rural folk repsect the 8hr rule to maximise coins.
If I’m honest, I’m just a guy who let his youngster sign up for an account, so that my boy could play the game while I banged in the buddy miles daily when out running, but I’ve quite enjoyed it too being out in the sticks.
I have (and still do) use EG for most of my news, but that has taken a slide in quality over the years. In general, they’re not receptive to developmental feedback either - though I’m not prepared to leave the blame at the editorial or mod staff door on that one when you’ve got a company like ReedPop coming in with a clear agenda to make more money, and leaving so soon.
My main concern is for DigitalFoundry - genuinely one of the best, most entertaining, and in-depth spin off channels out there.