He basically pivoted the WC success into making movies (the Kojima model) and the Wing Commander movie was so bad that it killed both the franchise and his career in film. He still had money so got to be a producer on a few flicks, but never had any creative control again.
And Freelancer was so horribly mismanaged that it basically “blacklisted” him as far as game dev went.
Star Citizen was basically an attempt to take advantage of the crowd funding craze that somehow also keyed in on what is largely the rise of “influencer” games where people care more about the dream of doing something than actually doing it (Dwarf Fortress and EVE Online are earlier examples where the vast majority of fans will never play the game but might buy it to “try it”).
Speculation, but I assume the attempts to make a bunch of tech that does what everyone else already does but poorly is trying to build out a portfolio for a buyout.
And it is worth understanding that Wing Commander… very much benefited from being “first” and for having a few celebrities involved. Even by WC4 there were “third party” games like Star Crusader that were basically better in every possible way. And Star Wars had been doing x-wing games since '93.
And then Freespace hit in 98 and was a revelation (with Freespace 2 in '99 basically being the gold standard to this day).
In a lot of ways, Squadron 42 was so anticipated mostly because we hadn’t had anything in the genre for years by that point (Darkstar One sort of existed?). Sort of like how almost all the xcom sickos played UFO ET and found it “fine” and a lot of the JA2 sickos played 5.56 and… anyway. Or us Silent Storm fans who tried to tolerate Hummer & Sickle.
I dislike the GD/Titan Quest style of character builds (a lot of awkward “meta” mechanics and you more or less are the same character from level ten to endgame) but GD is very much a game I go back to every few months. So pretty much a no brainer to buy this expansion. Just something about the encounter balance and meatiness of attacks keeps me happy
Which is a shame that everything feels so “whiff” in the Titan Quest remaster.
That is true of basically every game. It is why we moved away from “Game, wait a year, expansion, wait a year, expansion. new game” on to DLC and now straight up live games. It is just a reality of development as it lessens crunch (you can put features off for later updates) and removes the old ramp up/down model.
The issue is not that star citizen is trying to be a live game. It is that it is horrendously mismanaged and helmed by a “rockstar developer” and his family. Apparently the brother actually DOES know how to ship a product, but he isn’t the one who runs around telling people to prioritize bedsheet deformation. Or to insist on needing 64-bit coordinates rather than using the industry standard approach of only loading a few cells within range of the player (and then lots of complex shenanigans to update the rest at a much lower rate). And so forth.
And I am not even going to complain (too much) about the sp campaign never coming. That is what I bought a decade or whatever ago and I am still pissed that was immediately dropped in favor of making the game Microsoft said “… fucking no. Release Freelancer god damn it” to. But the majority of current players want star citizen so… fine.
But the issue is just that there is no competent leadership. And all anyone has been able to figure out is “If we keep releasing ships, people will keep buying them”.
Because if they had gotten a vertical slice in? This would have eaten ED’s breakfast and NMS would never have had a chance at recovery. It was everything that every elite game has been working toward (and Evochron already did a decade or so ago…) and would actually give people stuff to do with those ships. Add in new solar systems, game systems, etc after the fact.
Been a couple years since I messed around with GW2 but:
GW2 has seasonal events. And (possibly removed a week ago?) daily login rewards that “penalize” you for skipping a day. And the Living Story used to be full on “never again” but became “login to unlock it”?
And I would probably classify the world bosses as being comparable to the Warframe void relic alerts. Unless you are part of the zerg you aren’t going to be beating them or having any chance at their drops and they, by definition, happen on a cycle that can make it hard to progress if you have other responsibilities.
But yeah. I am genuinely not seeing a difference outside of the examples I listed above (arcane event, mostly). Basically everything is grindable/“you can check it off” if you just play the game. If you miss a cycle you can do an RMT to grab it rather than wait for it to come back around. I forget if you can trade for gems(?) in gw2 or not, but it is the idea of “I was busy last month so I missed a chapter of the living story and now need to buy it” versus “I was busy last month and forgot to buy a dozen void relics to grab Volt Prime”.
I feel crazy but I think Mortismal and a few other youtubers did a large preview of this game a few months back? It looked “fine”. Very b-game with the potential to reach “Bulletstorm” levels of “Why did nobody play this? it is awesome”.
But yeah… if anyone is wondering why Alan Wake 2 delayed by a few weeks… this is why. And AW2 is part of a franchise by a studio that a LOT of people love. This… has a name and premise that we would expect Ice-T to be explaining to an old white guy on a cop show.
Until the aya neo system (or whatever the hell it is), I agreed on the vaulting for relics. Now? They cycle regularly enough and you can often buy the stuff you don’t have. But, more importantly, it pretty much killed the platinum market so you can generally buy the frame you REALLY want for fairly cheap.
I strongly dislike nightwave. But it is generally cosmetics and slots that you are missing out on and it is “free”. I still prefer the old alert system where I just check what is worth doing for extra resources, but I can see how that would have cannibalized the void relic playerbase.
The Baro rotation I feel is a lot closer to FOMO. But you can also “just” buy some cosmetics for Tennocon and get access to the entire catalog. Which is a different kind of “uhm…” but has the added bonus of, again, breaking the platinum market.
Because that is mostly the path to “catch up” or avoid grinding something obnoxious like eidolon hunts or caches. Grind some relics to get ducats or to sell on the market for platinum (or just get a prime access pass…). Then use that platinum to buy the shit you can’t be bothered to grind for from other players.
The annual arcane event is definitely FOMO though. Basically the only chance to get arcanes in a timely fashion and if you don’t engage you are looking at thousands of plat or just ignoring them.
At the end of the day: Its a live game. I personally feel Warframe is a lot more mellow. But they aren’t for everyone. And the “achievement hunter” mindset of needing 100% completion in everything really broke live games/MMOs for a lot of people.
Kenshi is fun but always feels like too much of a time investment to get to the fun parts. Sort of like a roguelike where the first hour is always the same but you still will probably die. Caves of Qud is VERY different, but has a similar “let’s do some weird stuff in a weird world” but is “fun” from the first few minutes.
Starsector I could just never get on with, but keep trying every year or two. I think the problem is that I “grew up” in the peak of the elite game genre and with stuff like EV Nova. And now that Cosmoteer is out, that is more of what I want from that style of game. Just a shame the quests are so weak and there are no mini-narratives… yet.
The major franchises are, by and large, sponsored by the platform holders and major publishers at this point. They can actually spend a few years working on a game. More time means less crunch
And as a consumer? I already got way too many games to play. Right now I have Baldurs Gate 3 (!), Armored Core 6 (???), Alan Wake 2 (… I have to have died and somehow got put in The Good Place, right?), and LAD Gaiden (that actually is sane) in the next few months. Let alone whatever I managed to forget because this shit is so insanely stacked.
But also? it doesn’t really matter i I play a game at launch. Last of Us 2 and God of War 2 were some of the bigger games ever with massive twists that EVERYONE cared about. And… because I ignored threads about it, I was pleasantly surprised (well, mostly bored but…) when I finally got around to them a year or three later.
And… for as big as these new games are? I still got Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld and Warframe to check in on way too often.
So yeah. I am perfectly happy with the big sequels getting more time in between games.
More than a bit corny (and I loved that clearly bamco just figured “Vaati likes Souls, Vaati likes AC” so Vampy had to ask awkward questions about how Vaati is a long time AC fan) but I loved it overall. If anyone wonders why that interview was so awkward? Vaati basically only ever touched an AC game earlier this year when he did a speed through of the series (and I think he didn’t even play the expansions for the most part?). Absolutely nothing wrong with that, and I loved his stance on the “is this mech souls?” debate, but it was definitely funny.
Because… this is Armored Core. We were always the sickos. Our games controlled horribly, were horrendously balanced, had monetization/distribution models that made no sense, and had weird ass plots that we constantly shoehorn into some semblance of a narrative. And we’ve been playing these games even while we loved Souls games. The “showcase” SHOULD be corny.
Also, calling my shot: Oro fucked his build for a reason. There is some ridonkulously powerful shoulder laser (Shoulder mounted Karasawa?) and he got REALLY used to that build. So when he switched to the starter cannon he had all the energy drain with none of the insane DPS to justify it.