It's objectively a good target for ridicule that the game has raised enough money to make the next Grand Theft Auto off of a strange and exploitative business model, been in development for over a decade, and still has no release date. At the same time, there's more game in that public alpha than a handful of fully released products, so calling it a scam never made sense.
Those managers and publishers were likely looking at their burn rate and needed to get some funding to come in to keep the studio afloat. It's tough out there for games right now.
Which means I'll always watch on YouTube. Being able to pause, rewind, and play back at 1.25x speed to catch back up is such a critical feature that every other streaming site needs, but Twitch's exclusivity has made it difficult for streamers to utilize. Unfortunately, discovery on YouTube is horrendous, so maybe I find a streamer on Twitch and then watch on YouTube.
Historically, some of the best multiplayer components attached to single player games were done with very few resources in a matter of weeks, like Halo and Goldeneye.
And now those games just get shut down with no recourse. Eventually, those companies will realize that they're better off making a multiplayer game that doesn't get 5 years worth of updates to chase after bazillions of dollars that never materialize.
Sure, and game development in general takes longer than it did 20 years ago, but allocating a proportional amount of resources is all you need. If it's a hit, it's a hit. If you want to patch it up a bit to fix some glaring flaws, go ahead. Expecting it to maintain tens of thousands of simultaneous players is going to end up with the dev putting lots of resources into something unlikely to be the next big thing.
They're different teams, but it's relevant because, according to this article, this spun out into another live service project after HyperScape quickly died and the Ghost Recon game wasn't going to recoup its costs. The entire industry is facing a live service reckoning right now; it can only support so many, and making more expensive games like this isn't panning out.
EDIT: Man, I forgot XDefiant too. If that game isn't cancelled before it officially hits 1.0, it'll likely be shut down within 18 months.
I think people largely have stopped buying them, apart from very few exceptions, which is why games like Hyenas get cancelled at the finish line and why we've got a graveyard of live services that shut down just this year. Second Extinction didn't make it out of early access. Rumbleverse didn't even last one year.
if anything they are still looking to recoup the development costs of those games. So why not use that technology in a multiplayer game that’s surely to sell well? Right?
But it's been spun out separately, according to the article...I think we're talking past each other. Ubisoft and Sega are not the same company, but Hyenas was Sega's most expensive project ever, and they still found the best decision to be not releasing the game at all, which makes some amount of sense because live service games have recurring costs. Maybe Ubisoft is staring down that barrel right now, as there's definitely a world where, like with Ghost Recon, a successful franchise's name won't carry your live service endeavor to even recouping any costs as opposed to just killing it in the womb and avoiding the sunk cost fallacy.
It is my hope, and it's possibly the reality, that Ubisoft has discovered that live service games are not guaranteed money printing machines. Then maybe we can get back to an industry that isn't so intent on destroying itself rather than the semi-dark-age we're in right now.
You were originally talking about HyperScape, not Hyenas.
You say tomato, I say...it works better when spoken.
Ubisoft, like many giants, isn’t going to give up on GaaS games any time soon.
Like the above, I'm just saying there are only room for so many. Remember how everyone wanted a World of WarCraft? And everyone wanted a Call of Duty? And everyone wanted a League of Legends? And everyone wanted a PUBG? Those games, and like two of their competitors in most cases, are still around, but there just isn't enough room for more when you're the Nth battle royale (HyperScape) or extraction shooter (Far Cry). No one can predict the future, and my own biases are informing what I'm taking away from my own observations, but you have a problem where the audience now knows that when you sink money into a live service game, it's likely dead in a year, and you're out of pocket $X with nothing to show for it when the servers are gone.
Overall, though, I don’t see the industry destroying itself.
No, it actually is. Not the entire industry but the live service end of it and the games they created. They're designed with kill switches, self-destruct buttons, or whatever other metaphor you like. They're burning down the library on their way out the door, which is why, short of YouTube footage, I don't see how this can be anything other than a semi-dark age for the medium. Semi because plenty of games are not bound to servers or some other form of planned obsolescence, but a lot of high-profile releases most certainly are, and they'll be lost to time. Meanwhile, games from 30 years prior still live on and can be enjoyed by people who weren't even born yet when they released.
I'm totally with you on some studios shrinking, other studios forming, and the circle of life continuing. My prediction for the industry was way faster than the reality of things, but I foresaw that studios like TinyBuild, Embracer, Devolver, Anna Purna, and the like would inevitably come to be and grow, because there are games that the big AAA publishers just don't make anymore, and people still want to play those games.
That's precisely the thing I hope we've finally hit a turning point on, and that we have some evidence that we've hit that turning point. The metaphorical landfill filled with dead games as a service got so many more games this year. Especially because so many of these games are designed to monopolize your time, perhaps they'll realize there isn't enough time on earth to dedicate to this game when it's already being dedicated to 100 other games. Then they can come to the conclusion that there's more money to be made in 5 short experiences than 1 game that you're intended to play indefinitely.
Yeah, that's why I stopped buying EA games and why I didn't buy Tony Hawk. I'm not alone in the forums when asking about that stuff, and we'll see how much momentum that carries.
I have seen people post factually incorrect AI summaries often enough that I don't trust them by default. This one's crime was just not being a summary but a paraphrase, lol.
My Ghost Recon team in my second playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 got past level 8, and they may as well have ascended to godhood then and there. There are several achievements for killing some boss or another before they get to do some kind of attack, but this team just bursts them down before they get the chance to take a second turn. I'm in Act 3 now and just checking out a few remaining plot threads that I missed in my first playthrough.
I'm also trying to finish a run of 30XX. It's good, and the level generation is slightly less repetitive than its predecessor, but it's mostly just more of the same. New bosses and such, and the game is still good, but I was hoping for more of an iterative improvement over the first game.
Hi-Fi Rush had me going back to play through the Devil May Cry series earlier this year, and I didn't finish them before 2023 releases started popping off, but I left off at DMC4. I seem to remember the impressions of it back in the day being so-so, but I really enjoyed what I've played of it so far, and it feels the most like what Hi-Fi Rush became out of the series thus far. 1 and 3 were great, but 4 seemingly keeps what made those good without as many rough edges.
Live service games that were fully developed are being cancelled at the finish line because they don't think they'll make that money back. Companies like Bioware have laid off a bunch of developers in advance of marquis releases, but if everything was rosy, they'd definitely want those developers around through launch. Smaller studios have been hit too.
Honestly, all this might show is that there's enough hype behind a big marquis Bethesda release that it can power through Game Pass availability. Most games would love to sell in a lifetime what Skyrim sold in a single month 10 years after its initial release.
Eh, not really. Game Pass does have a lot of value in it; it's not the way I want to engage with games, but it makes sense for both Microsoft and customers. It's just not the proof that this headline posits it to be when you use a game guaranteed to sell millions of copies.
I’ve been thinking about making this thread for a few days. Sometimes, I play a game and it has some very basic features that are just not in every other game and I think to myself: Why is this not standard?! and I wanted to know what were yours....
LAN, direct IP connections, private servers, and when it makes sense, same-screen multiplayer. Several of these used to be standard. Games as a service are creating a dark age in video game history where lots of these works will arbitrarily disappear, and they don't have to.
And I've got a potent incentive to not buy it when it's got a built-in expiration date. Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 are both available DRM-free and sold through millions of copies. BG3 has LAN, split-screen, and direct IP connections for its multiplayer, even.
It's always more complicated than that. Perhaps each load is very distinct from the last, which wouldn't be uncommon in open world games, and it means you're always doing that load "the first time"; perhaps it's dependent on something like a random seed or network connectivity, which are both extremely variable; perhaps you add new content or DLC regularly that throws off this calculation. All that for a return on development time invested that's probably not worth the effort. It is worth it to show progress to confirm that the system hasn't locked up, and consoles often have certain thresholds to meet for this sort of thing in certification, but beyond that, it's just an extremely difficult thing to do, even for Microsoft.
Security through obscurity isn't real security, and I'd argue that for some genres, especially FPSes, cheating is just going to be a fact of life due to how many software and hardware layers there are between human and game. So I'd rather be able to run my own server and only invite people who I know aren't going to cheat rather than say that the company should be able to sell me a worse version of the game (where I don't get to run the server) under some false pretenses that we're better off.
Splatoon doesn't give you as much control over it as a Steam controller does. It's only the Y axis, and it's always on. It's much better when you can hold a grip button to toggle it. Then you can use the right track pad or analog stick for big movements and the gyro for fine tuned precision while holding a grip button.
A lot of games don't even have checkpoints, and there are a lot of things that could affect load times very differently. I get that you want this to work well, because we all do, but if it was as easy as your high-level explanation, we'd probably have perfect progress bars in things by now. People far more educated than you or I have tried.
I'll tell you that my friend sat me in front of Returnal on PS5, and that game felt unplayable without either M+KB or gyro, even though plenty of people managed just fine. There's even a gryo feature in the PS5 pad! They just didn't enable it for the game. On PC, you can use it on Steam controller whether the dev enabled it or not.
I have coded a load screen progress bar before, in the one commercially-released game I worked on (I will not be disclosing), using my own defined checkpoints, like you mentioned. There's still a ton of variability even there, so some percentages seem to take longer than others on different computers. I did research before starting on the task and found the same thing echoed over all the place. Here's an example.
There's a reason I mentioned critical and commercial success, because the two combined are the closest we can get to an objective measure of quality. If the game is selling well and reviewing well, it's very difficult to make an argument besides your own personal taste that the quality has declined.
I havent owned a console so that explains why I don’t recognise Naughty Dog.
There's never been a better time to play video games and not own a console, because there's hardly such a thing as a console exclusive anymore, but you'd really have to live under a rock to be unaware of Naughty Dog if you've ever paid attention to E3/summer announcements, game of the year awards, or just what other people are saying on forums.
I have played quite a few fighting games and the genre is definitely quite stale when it comes to single player. The only ones I can think of where I enjoyed the single player was the new Smash and Skullgirls. Mortal Kombat hasn’t had a new idea in like decades, they seem to be content with milking the franchise without doing anything new.
This is a very strange paragraph. NRS are the fighting game studio for single player content, and they were even during the 6th gen era when people generally didn't like Mortal Kombat games. If you think they haven't had a new idea in decades, you definitely haven't been paying attention for at least one of those decades...the past ten years. The most recent game added kameo fighters, which shook up the way those games play quite a lot, plus up blocking and a way to convert down 2 into air combos if you've got the meter for it.
Yeah, but the big company that the bigger company just bought refused to make smaller games and constrained their catalogue over the past 20 years to make fewer and fewer games. This bigger company, via Game Pass, has an incentive to put out more games than Activision has been. Microsoft has an incentive to try to compete with Sony in a way that Activision hasn't had competition for Call of Duty since...when was the last good Battlefield game?
Call of Duties are trending down but still generally seen as good games. Sports games are doing worse. Since the exclusivity contracts were signed in the mid 00s, the quality among critics and fans has been seen as declining, but if you're a basketball fan, you've got no real option besides the casino disguised as an NBA game, for instance.
Yea, I don’t follow any gaming media or forum.
You're on one right now.
As for Mortal Kombat, this is where we just get back to accounting for personal taste. They're immensely popular, review well, and they've been doing measurably better with critics and fans since the acquisition. (Hit me up in Skullgirls though.)
I definitely went several hours being okay with only the to hit chance, but once you start leveling up and fighting harder enemies, you're looking for ways to optimize, so I wish it was an option to see what the math is that determines that chance ahead of time.
Hard disagree. Sony's in a dominant position specifically because of anti consumer tactics like exclusives. These games can take 5+ years to make, so the only way Microsoft catches up at all during this console generation is via acquisitions (of companies looking to sell, mind you). The only way their trillions of dollars (of market cap, not cash on hand) helps them anytime soon is acquisitions. And also remember that these acquisitions came up in response to Sony seeking further exclusivity of things like Starfield and Call of Duty.
And once again, there's just so much to the video game market that neither of those companies own. Video games are an international industry made up of many, many, many participants, and even Microsoft is nowhere close to having a majority of it.
Sony being in that dominant position puts them in something much closer to a monopoly of their segment of the market than Microsoft is post-acquisition. Building up studios takes a lot of time, which would translate to Sony further running away with their market position. I'm not exactly pro-acquisition; I'm just not anti-this-acquisition, especially when there are a lot of games and IPs from the past that Activision has no incentive to revive but Microsoft does. That is something about this acquisition that benefits customers and not just Microsoft.
Star Engine Tech Demo (Star Citizen 4.0) No Commentary CitizenCon 2953 4K (youtu.be) angielski
Since I haven’t seen anyone post this, I thought I’d share the new Star Engine demo video from Cloud Imperium Games.
Alan Wake 2 Review Thread
Game Information...
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PS5 Slim's Optional Disc Drive Needs to Connect to the Internet to Pair It to a Console - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
Putting an early expiration date on your hardware purchase.
Twitch now allows simulcasting to other platforms (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Twitch streamers can now simulcast on any platform. That means streaming simultaneously on Twitch as well as competitor…
Far Cry's Multiplayer Game is an Extraction-Based Shooter (insider-gaming.com) angielski
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Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 22nd
Hey all! Whatcha been playing. I am recovering from surgery and have been playing a ton of Mario wonder. Loving it so far 😊
AAA Games Are Dying - It's Time To Indie (youtu.be) angielski
Description: In this video we talk about the major AAA releases that are failing, and what it means for indie games.
Starfield Just Busted The Biggest Myth About Xbox Game Pass (kotaku.com) angielski
Every Bethesda RPG, ranked from worst to best (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
What is something (feature, modes, settings...) you would like to see become a standard in video games? angielski
I’ve been thinking about making this thread for a few days. Sometimes, I play a game and it has some very basic features that are just not in every other game and I think to myself: Why is this not standard?! and I wanted to know what were yours....
You Can Now Play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 Offline, But There's A Catch (kotaku.com) angielski
Only on Steam Deck. So that means it's trivial to allow everyone to play the game without an internet connection, but they just chose not to.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Review Thread
Game Information...
So, Microsoft now owns Activision Blizzard. How will this affect the rest of the industry? (www.gamesindustry.biz)
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 15th
Whatcha playing!...
Disney's CEO Is Reportedly Being Urged to Consider Turning Company Into a 'Gaming Giant' [and buying EA] (me.ign.com) angielski