I once heard "when you vote with your wallet, people with more money get more votes", and that really helped me internalize how unlikely it is to expect occasional boycott to beat executives investing millions in marketing to lure entire audiences of well-off customers might not even be informed of the issues going behind the scenes. You can boycott for your moral satisfaction, but to enact actual change, it isn't enough.
Indies really are the way to go for both customers and developers if they want a better, more ethical and respectful environment. It is a risky career path, but given how many major publishers treat the developers under them, it's not like sticking with mainstream would lead to a comfortable stable livelihood either.
Baldur's Gate 3 really put me in a dilemma, but I think I'll ultimately buy it because I want to support Larian Studios more than I want to avoid Wizards of the Coast. I wouldn't trust Wizards enough to get One D&D and the likely tabletop lootbox hell they are scheming, but BG 3 is delivering a good product that deserves support. Though buying the Divinity games is an alternative if you don't want WotC to get any money.
I was planning on paying a rogue, paladin, or warlock (based on my tabletop characters), but this article nearly has me convinced. I am waiting for the PS5 release, so any agreement or dissension from my PC friends? Other class recommendations?...
That's the issue with how combat oriented D&D is. While there is a wide assortment of abilities between classes and their roles in combat, a lot of non-combat situations are reduced to just roling high on a skill check, not many choices and approaches to be made. There might be the odd utility spell, but even that isn't a choice for martial classes. Because of that, Bards dominate non-combat encounters, with Jack of all Trades and Expertise.
At the beginning, there was the theme of “connecting,” and after that, I made a lot of notes about character settings, game ideas, and so on. Like how to connect it. I put it together while maintaining a balance…But I had to rewrite everything because of corona. In Death Stranding, it was justice to connect, but with the...
He definitely wants his games to be movies without having much of an idea how to direct a movie, but they still have more of an unique identity than a lot of games out there.
Just for the heads up, this thread will probably have a lot of spoilers. I’m gonna try to go vague on spoilers for anybody that hasn’t played Hotline Miami 2. If you’ve played the game, you’ll probably know what I mean, but I’m going to say some purposefully esoteric shit to keep it out of full spoiler territory....
Omori. Finally understanding what is it that the protagonist has been trying to repress so hard and coming to terms with that. That game took some ideas that are pretty much a cliche in surreal RPG circles, yet the build up and execution around them is masterful. The art and music do a lot to fully convey all the emotions involved. By the end of it all I could feel the entirety of it, and it was overwhelming. I could understand why that affected the protagonist and everyone around him so much.
Games in crowdfunding tend to undershoot the actual development costs as a goal and often end up needing extra funding from investors and publishers, I hope they keep exceeding their goal so that they have as much as they actually need.
The whole video is worth watching, but this section in particular makes a better case than I’ve seen in other analyses: that the game condemns player involvement not by simply chastising the player for choosing to continue playing itself (as I’ve seen other analyses argue), but rather for carelessly and uncritically engaging...
Same. When I played, at a couple points I tried to go all the way back to the beginning, when it seemed like the initial mission Walker was assigned was in some way fulfilled or inviable. When the game had absolutely no response to that, it kinda detracted from my appreciation for the message of the game. For all that it has to say about hero fantasies and the player engaging in it, it doesn't have any alternative to that. It needs the player to commit the sins that it wants to denounce.
At least an option to disengage within the fiction would be appreciated. I'm not too keen on this idea that closing the game works as a conclusion. A closed book doesn't have a different story. It's not like Walker will leave his path if you are not playing it. Without a different resolution, even the guilt that they try to lay on the player can't stick as well.
Considering it again, if the goal was to get the player to reflect critically about the sort of game they are participating of, then maybe laying on so thick on how the player, and solely the player, is at fault for pushing it to the end, is if anything counterproductive to that. Players of war shooters seeking a heroic fantasy don't exist in isolation, they exist in a culture that glorifies war and violence, with many parties that profit over it and/or want to incentive it.
To borrow the metaphor, "Walker" really did follow "Konrad's" orders, every step of the way. The author may be absent but the constraints of the story and gameplay are already set, the player can't truly break free without disengaging, and they can't evaluate critically without being engaged.
But the confrontation with Konrad, considering his and Walker's state, really suggests that they believe the issue is all in the players' agency and mindset, rather than the lack of a broader understanding. It claims that the player is at fault for "wanting to be a hero", no comment as to why they believe this is what a hero ought to be like, and what led them to believe that.
SPOILERS, since there are people who haven't played it yet in this thread.
It seems relevant to consider that Konrad, which is the creator stand-in, is ultimately dead, and Walker, the player, is hallucinating an argument with him, where Walker must admit that he was responsible for everything that transpired. The ultimate conclusion of the game is the developer is basically saying "you did all this yourself, I'm not even here". While the shock of internalizing all that transpired and the player's role in it might shock some people into looking at these games beyond just the action and thrills, what it doesn't do is to guide them to question the premises, framing and conclusions of a game like this. The truth is that the players only have done that which the developers have enabled them to do, and this is especially important to consider when it comes to games that do try to make the player feel heroic for war crimes and historical revisionism. The creators are alive and present,
I definitely can't equate "Do you feel like a hero?" with being mindful about entertainment, especially not in its harsher version "You are here because you wanted to be something you are not". Unlike the video, I don't think we can gloss over that in the same scene the player is told "None of this would have happened if you just stopped". Applied broadly, it seems like what the studio suggests, is that people stop engaging with war shooters entirely. That indulging in this military fantasy at all is inherently reprehensible. That, like Walker, seeking someone to blame for the moral failings of such a story is an excuse to protect your own ego.
But usually, there are people who are responsible for the moral failings of military propaganda.
The general anti-war and anti-imperialist themes as well as the deconstruction of the military action hero that simply charges guns blazing are definitely well done. While I don't think their metafictional message is quite as refined and well directed, it was sure impactful regardless.
Indie games really skew that count, though to be fair they weren't really a thing back then. But speaking of major triple-A and mid-sized double-A studios, they have released games much more slowly compared to previous generations, and that's even easier to see in more powerful consoles like the PS5.
It absolutely needs backwards compatibility. Throwing away the whole Nintendo Switch library would be a waste, and there are some games that would even benefit from improved performance.
Nah, that's definitely not what I meant. It's great that we get so many indie games. But if anything I feel like, other than Nintendo, the large studios are not making the most out of each generation before the next console is released.
There are games right now that could use a boost in performance. If they don't have backwards compatibility it will be a huge disappointment, and I doubt I'll be buying it anytime soon.
I've basically been holding onto the hope I'll be able to play Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity on co-op without a drastic drop in resolution and framerate once this new console comes out. Because that was not a level of performance appropriate for an exclusive game.
The successor to Nintendo Switch named Switch 2 will continue to be a hybrid console that can be played on TV and in portable mode, it will be launched
@Rodsterlings_cig If the Switch 2 turns out to be backwards compatible, buying a Switch 1 now only to buy a Switch 2 later would be a waste. It's better to wait for the announcement before making that decision.
I love hearing about unique takes on game mechanics. Someone recently convinced me that limited inventories are kind of abused currently and that unlimited inventory systems would give more player choices.
I think MMOs need fast travel because sometimes you just want to meet your friends in X dungeon and all the scenic travel is just an obstacle to that. There shouldn't be barriers to the social aspect of these games. MMOs have more than enough padding already, if people want the immersive experience they can choose to do that on their own.
Personally it's more the story for me. Not only it deals with some heavy themes, it's such a constant descent of things getting worse and worse and worse, full of pretty much arbitrary misery, that at some point I just don't feel motivated to keep going.
For what is worth I can agree that calling it the Painful RPG is on point.
I can handle turn-based RPGs, even difficult ones. I do like OFF a whole lot. It's surreal setting and mysterious quest was much more compelling for me.
Anime if anything seems to be doing worse at this. Nearly every fantasy or fantasy adjacent anime goes for a knock-off D&D MMO style and it feels so tired. They don't want their audience to need to make the smallest effort to understand the world and the role of the characters in it.
"Today, PlayStation revealed that its PS5 has sold 40 million units. Microsoft doesn’t share hardware numbers typically, but court documents, math, and slides from an ID@Xbox in Brazil seem to suggest the Xbox Series X|S line-up is around 20-23 million units sold globally. That essentially puts the PS5 at a 2:1 advantage...
That is a circular problem. People don't buy Xbox because it doesn't have exclusives appealing enough to make them pick it over the alternatives. As much as I'd wish game exclusivity wasn't a thing, it does effectively attract customers. They had many IPs which could attract players, even before the ActiBlizz acquisition.
The Xbox Series S sounds appealing in theory but they could have gotten all the benefits of that simply by supporting the Xbox One for an extended period of time. As for cloud, I doubt it is that which is holding back their sales. If they say the demand is still small they are likely not keeping too many units for that.
It's ironic and somewhat revolting to see the behemoth that is Microsoft crying that it can't compete and it needs to acquire other publishers, when it already has a collection of studios and franchises, means to fund brand new studios and make even better hardware. If they aren't competitive now, it's because of their own bad decisions.
Although it seems that despite their hardware not being as popular, they seem to sell GamePass for PC at least decently.
I'm skeptical, because they had Halo, Banjo & Kazooie, Conker, Perfect Dark, and they don't seem to know what to do with those. Killer Instinct 2013 was nice but it's been a decade we don't get anything else from that. We are only now getting to see some of the projects from the newer studios they have been acquiring, but Redfall definitely didn't get my hopes up.
Are they gonna keep buying publishers whenever their output dries up under them? Is the problem really a lack of studios or is it that they can't manage them well.
I believe this framing is misleading to begin with. Not only Microsoft as a whole is already a much larger company to Sony, so the whole idea that it deserves a boost to catch up is missing the forest for the trees. On top of that, it seems like a remnant of Console War mindset to consider the ideal of the market to be a 50/50 or a 33/33/33 split.
It is better for the industry to have more publishers and studios which are beholden to no platform owner. The idea that whoever is below the top 3 is entitled to swallow up everything under them so that they get a chance to reach #1 is a convoluted way to justify consolidation. It's not fine just because Microsoft is #4 rather than #2. Being #4 is not such an insignificant position in first place, and it's weird that it's assumed that Microsoft is owed an even position.
And I'm sorry, if freaking Microsoft can't use the many studios it already has to make their platform they have appealing, the issue is not lack of studios and IPs. I don't think the "competitiveness" of taking games that already could be available to everyone and locking them to a platform is actually making the market any better (no, not even when Sony does it). It's a net negative for everyone except the acquiring company itself. If they want to make their platform more appealing, they should make better games for it.
Not only Microsoft as a whole is already a much larger company to Sony
With regards to this industry, it really doesn't matter.
Yes it does matter. It still gives them advantages, from the wealth and influence their other endeavors amass as well as technology being directly related to gaming. These matters don't exist in isolation.
This makes it harder for upcoming innovators to compete, when that is what they have to face (or be bought out by).
On top of that, it seems like a remnant of Console War mindset to consider the ideal of the market to be a 50/50 or a 33/33/33 split.
That is the ideal. It means each one has to try their damnedest to earn the dollar of their consumer.
It's shortsighted to assume Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo is what this industry will ever be and it's the most competitive we can expect it to be. In fact, letting them gobble up any other significant publisher is an obstacle towards more competition. Nevermind that even among those three, third-party developers create an incentive to make their platforms appealing beyond simply being the only place that has that game. Features and services.
Yeah, they've got this game Starfield coming out, plus Hellblade II, Fable, Clockwork Revolution, South of Midnight, etc. But games just take so long to make that it takes forever to make up for a deficit they created last generation.
That is the business that they are in. Lets see how they are doing and how much they need more when these come out. Why should they acquire more if it isn't even proven that they are handling the others well? If anything, those layoffs are not a good indication.
It doesn't make the market better for the customer, but it's far worse if Sony's lead is so immense that a console manufacturer doesn't profit from making consoles.
Worse for who? Nintendo's consoles are profitable and Microsoft can definitely afford to sell units at a loss so that they can sell games, which is the same that Sony does. And is it better for Sony and Nintendo customers if they lose access to third-party games because Microsoft gobbled them up? Sure it would be better for the customer if Microsoft made good games that made their consoles a more appealing option, but gating existing franchises isn't helping them in any way.
I see a lot of these arguments are ultimately taking pity on Microsoft, for being behind, because it should do what is more profitable to it, but they don't actually help the customer any. It's funny to see this "poor little Microsoft, they have it so hard" when Nintendo is a smaller company with a weaker console under the same difficulties and they are doing better than them. Of course you don't hear of big acquisions from Nintendo because they don't have as much spare money as Microsoft does, which it can take from profits of other segments.
Once again you talk about it like the are owed the #1 place rather than having to, you know, compete for it. Are you going to tell me that they didn't get any market benefits from, say, experience with OS and the hardware architecture as well as the networking and cloud technologies that they use? It would make more sense to assume that if not for this they could be even further down, but you are not even counting it because they are not exactly on par with Sony. You gotta do better than to just dismiss this.
By the way, a paradigm shift is already happening. For a lot of people their phones are their primary computing and gaming platform, and while I'm not a fan of the practices in it, a significant change in the market is anything but unpredictable. The second largest gaming company is Tencent, a mobile-focused one. Mobile revenue has surpassed consoles.
But that says nothing of the consoles that we could have tomorrow. It used to be that SEGA was one of the biggest console manufacturers and Sony wasn't even in the market.
It's worse for the consumer if Sony doesn't have a Microsoft to keep them in check.
Sure, but what is the point here? The question here is whether Microsoft should acquire ActiBlizz. If it has enough capital for that, it's not going bankrupt. It would be a false dichotomy to treat acquisition and leaving the gaming market as the only two options. After all, aren't all the other companies they already acquired appealing enough? Or weren't they worth it? And if they weren't, why would this fix anything?
Even if Microsoft is not so interesting a platform right now, Sony cannot relax or they could catch up, like they did in the 360 era. The only thing lacking here are Microsoft's own efforts.
What I would hate more though is if Sony ran away with an entire sector of the market when they're doing a lot of nasty anti-consumer stuff too, including trying to acquire exclusivity of a lot of the stuff Microsoft just bought.
Well if you are concerned that the top player resorts to anti-consumer tactics, you shouldn't be defending that the playing field is "levelled" (only between two large players) through more anti-competitive and anti-consumer tactics. If you think it's shady that Sony paid to have FF16 as an exclusive, why are you defending that Microsoft does that to Starfield? At least when it comes to Sony, Microsoft could have outbid Square for exclusivity
Which I want to make clear, it can do. Because it has a lot of money, enough to buy Activision Blizzard, the 6th largest game publisher. It could be funding new studios, it could be playing from Sony's handbook, but they decided to one-up them instead by consolidating the market and taking away options from everyone else in a far more concrete way.
The ideal solution here, is that Microsoft's acquisition should be blocked but Sony should also be punished for anti-consumer tactics.
It will just be closer, and close enough that they decide to stay in the console business.
Again, when this has been in question at all? Does anyone really think the 4th largest gaming company is going to drop the market? Despite all that they already invested even before ActiBlizz?
At the scale that Microsoft is operating at, they may as well buy them outright;
Exclusivity and studio acquisitions are both out of Sony's handbook. Microsoft just has a bigger pocketbook.
We've just been talking of if it matters that Microsoft is a larger company in general, and here you are spelling it out like it's a gotcha at Sony, which, seeing as it will lead to more exclusivity, it's not even in your interest as a customer.
I'm just wholly baffled with the way people take Microsoft's side simultaneously like it's a desperate underdog and as if it would be a fool not to crush it all and take it all over with piles of money. As if whatever is more profitable and advantageous to them would be good for the customers losing options too. And that would be fair???
But seeems like you are set in seeing it this way and there's nothing I could say that would make any difference, so I guess I should just drop the matter.
No they aren't. First of all, because Sony is not monopolizing the market. Microsoft is there and so is Nintendo. There is a difference between being a market leader and being a monopoly. Sony doesn't actually control SquareEnix, they can release games for different platforms, which they do. Octopath Traveler II is multiplatform, Dragon Quest Treasures is a Switch and PC release.
The horror scenario of Microsoft leaving and Sony dominating everything isn't going to happen. Xbox is just half as popular as Sony, which is still a sizable chunk of the market.
But lets say it goes as you wish, Microsoft bravely acquires most of the market to match Sony... and then they just keep buying. What do you get then? Microsoft will be able to just tell Bethesda and ActiBlizz not to release for any other console, and refuse any deals.
If you are a Linux user you should know that MS doesn't stop at what's reasonable.
Still, that's not saying that Sony is acting fine. Which is why I believe they should be prevented from making exclusivity agreements for games that aren't entirely funded by them.
I agree that exclusives suck, but acquisitions are worse in every way. At least with a deal you can hope that eventually the game will be out for everything, or the next one will. Now if anyone hopes to get a Bethesda game on other consoles again, they are out of luck.
But also, if first-party XBox games were more appealing they wouldn't be in this situation. Sony can't lock Nintendo out of the market because people want Mario and Zelda anyway.
And yet Sony's Horizon series has been overshadowed by Zelda.
Only hardcore gamers, who make up for a small part of the market, believe that Nintendo somehow doesn't count as far as how this market competes. That somehow it's a separate market because the specs aren't comparable. That's not how it works at all. The entertainment budget being fought over is the same.
In any case, all this is a separate matter. The point is that aside from Microsoft, the other console makers manage to attract buyers through first-party games. Same goes for Sony. A lot of people bought Playstations for God of War and Last of Us.
A lesson to use the right studios for the right projects. Daedalic Entertainment could have made a really fun 2D point-and-click adventure game set in The Lord of the Rings world, maybe even about Gollum. But a game like this was definitely not the right format and too large a scope for them.
Thanks to a video posted by Reddit user OkPain2022, we're given a glimpse of how pickpocketing will work. Of course, you'll still need to approach them by crouching, and after you do that, a prompt will appear, allowing you to steal from them. After that, another menu will appear, showing you what they have and the odds of you...
I'm not one to keep fawning over celebrities either, but when it comes to art and media, the end product is only possible because of the human factor. It's the inspirations, experiences and values of the people behind a work that lead to them to try to express themselves as well as they can.
Rant: Frustration Related to Ethics of Games Companies
Hi, everybody! Sorry for the rant!...
Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare Coming to Switch and PS4 (youtu.be)
Edit: https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/6ee0dce8-2e9f-4bcf-b2a7-2ad251db35a3.png
The Fuss Over The Term 'JRPG' Says A Lot About The State Of The Genre (www.dualshockers.com) angielski
JRPG or RPG didn't matter when creativity was at the forefront of the industry.
Bards are Baldur's Gate 3's best class and I can't imagine playing it as anything else (www.pcgamer.com)
I was planning on paying a rogue, paladin, or warlock (based on my tabletop characters), but this article nearly has me convinced. I am waiting for the PS5 release, so any agreement or dissension from my PC friends? Other class recommendations?...
Hideo Kojima Says Death Stranding 2 Will Redefine 'Strand' (kotaku.com) angielski
At the beginning, there was the theme of “connecting,” and after that, I made a lot of notes about character settings, game ideas, and so on. Like how to connect it. I put it together while maintaining a balance…But I had to rewrite everything because of corona. In Death Stranding, it was justice to connect, but with the...
Most emotional moments in games? (SPOILERS)
Just for the heads up, this thread will probably have a lot of spoilers. I’m gonna try to go vague on spoilers for anybody that hasn’t played Hotline Miami 2. If you’ve played the game, you’ll probably know what I mean, but I’m going to say some purposefully esoteric shit to keep it out of full spoiler territory....
Steam Hardware & Software Survey - Go Linux! :) (store.steampowered.com)
Linux surpassed MacOS in marketshare for the first ever time this month. Let’s go! :)
Patapon spiritual successor Ratatan surpasses Kickstarter goal in first day (www.kickstarter.com)
The stretch goal for multiplayer has also been reached. Next is for a console version.
How Spec Ops the Line Condemns the Player: A Timestamped Excerpt from Games as Literature's Analysis (youtu.be) angielski
The whole video is worth watching, but this section in particular makes a better case than I’ve seen in other analyses: that the game condemns player involvement not by simply chastising the player for choosing to continue playing itself (as I’ve seen other analyses argue), but rather for carelessly and uncritically engaging...
Sources: Nintendo targets 2024 with next-gen console | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
From article:...
Developers and Analysts Sound Off: Does the Next-Gen Nintendo Switch Need to Happen in 2024? (nordic.ign.com)
Switch 2 would arrive in the second half of 2024 and development kits are already out (gamerkick.com) angielski
The successor to Nintendo Switch named Switch 2 will continue to be a hybrid console that can be played on TV and in portable mode, it will be launched
What game mechanics do you love and hate? angielski
I love hearing about unique takes on game mechanics. Someone recently convinced me that limited inventories are kind of abused currently and that unlimited inventory systems would give more player choices.
5 indie games you WILL play (not asking) (www.youtube.com) angielski
Videogame fantasy settings are staler than mouldy bread right now (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Xbox's biggest crisis right now isn't games. It's hardware. (Opinion - Jez Corden) (www.windowscentral.com) angielski
"Today, PlayStation revealed that its PS5 has sold 40 million units. Microsoft doesn’t share hardware numbers typically, but court documents, math, and slides from an ID@Xbox in Brazil seem to suggest the Xbox Series X|S line-up is around 20-23 million units sold globally. That essentially puts the PS5 at a 2:1 advantage...
The update we were all waiting for!! The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Update 2.2 released, full patch notes (www.dsogaming.com) angielski
Daedalic Entertainment has released Update 2.2 for The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, and shared its full patch notes.
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Bethesda Is Changing The Way You Pickpocket In Starfield (www.gamespot.com) angielski
Thanks to a video posted by Reddit user OkPain2022, we're given a glimpse of how pickpocketing will work. Of course, you'll still need to approach them by crouching, and after you do that, a prompt will appear, allowing you to steal from them. After that, another menu will appear, showing you what they have and the odds of you...
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