To paraphrase Jeff Grubb, there’s been more smoke lately indicating a console than VR, but “frame” implies glasses implies VR headset. It could go either way or both, where the console and VR are complementary. Or neither! But I think smart money is on Valve announcing new hardware imminently, and personally, I think...
Yeah, I’ve noticed more hits coming out Europe lately, with the likes of Remedy, Larian, Warhorse, Hazelight, etc., and probably the reasons they could afford to make those games in the first place is that labor costs are far cheaper for a similar result. Where capital is flowing and creating employment, I’d imagine, is tightly correlated with that.
This is just classic shrinkflation. Your bottle of shampoo comes in 32 ounces, they shrink it to 24 ounces without changing the price, then later they come out with 32 ounce bottles again with a higher price and a sticker that says, “Now with 33% more!” to make it seem like they’re giving you so much shampoo; and then the cycle repeats.
Yes, but Moore’s Law has broken down, and the things that used to allow for consoles to get cheaper over time, via new revisions, are not holding true anymore. So in lieu of those things, we’ve got classic shrinkflation.
This could just be the vestiges of E3’s ghost creating a bad demo, but I was pretty unimpressed by this. If Hitman allowed you to be as freeform as Crysis, this demo looked like Crysis 2, highlighting all the specific options that they crafted for you to use, and there are only maybe three of them rather than allowing you to...
Like, I chose to play the Tutorial at the beginning. This Chainsaw seems like a pretty critical piece of the gameplay loop, but at no point has there been an explicit explanation or demonstration.
This may have been a game that came out at the tail end of the instructional manual era, and missing a mechanic like this in the tutorial area would have been an oversight that they could live with.
The characters are Tom Clancy levels of larger than life, which is significantly more restrained than what came later.
Mind going into more detail on this one? I’ve been reading the Jack Ryan novels, and I’m 3/4 of the way through Rainbow Six (the book) right now, and I think part of the appeal is that the characters feel small, as those stories always involve ensemble casts.
I agree that 4 and especially MW2 both feel very Clancy. I might even be more partial to MW2 as it’s got this prominent theme of history being written by the winners that hits all of the notes that matter to me most in movies.
I’d argue that those people with infinite resources, or personal friends with someone in high places, exist in a number of Jack Ryan stories, and perhaps it’s a matter of how frequently you encounter it that stretches one’s suspension of disbelief. I’ll also point out that the sequence of events that led to Jack Ryan being president are as crazy as anything in Modern Warfare 2.
Take-Two almost took over the project and seemingly wanted to take over the franchise, but Microsoft didn’t agree to the terms, hence the Crystal Dynamics layoffs. I still doubt that this game would have turned into anything other than the most generic form of whatever FPSes are these days, which I’m not enthused about, but...
RTS was Pokimane’s company, who went into business 50/50 with Sony to acquire Evo a few years back. Neither retain ownership now, at a time where investors aren’t exactly in love with e-sports outside of the Saudis.
Featured in this video: Blizzard doing exactly the shitty thing that we suspected they were doing, and a Ubisoft developer using an example where they can point to a law on the books to stop their bosses from doing shitty things.
I’m kind of done talking about him or thinking about him, honestly. But this video is good for getting an inside look at a decent sample size of developers’ opinions, especially on the technical side.
Is that not just a reflection of how popular it is and the incentives that players have to not lose and not just the desire to win? As opposed to a deathmatch or ranked game, you actually lose stuff when you lose in this game, right? Is there anything you could reasonably ask of this developer that isn’t just inevitable for this game design?
Dear Reader who I shall never know, in your eyes, I know this game was ultimately a fiction. However, I hope you’ll follow us in our analysis and recounting of this fantastical adventure. I hope I will be able to reminisce and review what we saw together. Even if your journey is over, I hope you’ll still want to tag along....
There’s a very good couple of paragraphs in this article showing where the likely culprits are in the pricing of these consoles. There’s about as much competition now as there has been for the past four decades, but Moore’s Law has broken down.
You didn’t even mention Epic’s giveaways or the games that come with a month of Amazon Prime. If you needed a gaming library in a hurry, there are great games given away for free or cheap on PC all the time.
Something I’ve picked up on with my gaming preference is stories that don’t simply focus on one “mood” for the game, but alter it to fit the situation. Players get a relaxed time exploring or diving into combat, and the world is inviting and colorful, but when the story builds, it puts brutal tests of character in front...
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II did this really well just this year. Largely a story about contrasting a desire for adventure with the horrors and realities of war, it also has quests that are full of comedy. You can try to attract a pack of wolves using what the shepherd refers to as his absolute dumbest sheep; you can get blackout drunk with a band of mercenaries who may or may not have killed your childhood friends; you can clean up and decorate a crypt full of loose bones for a man who speaks only in rhymes, poorly, and might be a ghost.
Rainbow Six 1 (GOG) and 3 (Steam) are both playable via LAN and some of my favorite co-op games ever. The first game may require hacking some easy-to-read level config files to make them finishable, but 3 doesn’t have that problem. Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear isn’t available for purchase anymore. I hear SWAT 4 (GOG) is great for scratching this itch too, but I haven’t played it myself.
While not so story focused, you could also co-op Star Wars: Battlefront II; the good one, from 2005 (GOG).
If people were powerless to the whims of a corporation, Kinda Funny wouldn’t exist, but if you believe you’re powerless, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
See, that’s just it. This entire business doesn’t survive on ad revenue anymore. Everything that isn’t Gamespot and IGN have folded, because the money that used to be there in ads isn’t there anymore. Subscriptions are what keep companies like this sustainable and afloat. Kinda Funny came from former IGN employees, and they knew the power they had to bring their audience to them rather than surrendering to the whims of IGN. Digital Foundry, Giant Bomb, Video Games Chronicle, MinnMax, GamesBeat, Aftermath…they all transitioned to doing this.
Well, the difference is that now you’re paying for it by viewing ads and, down to personal preference, a worse product. With commercial interruptions, you’re saying how much your time is worth, if nothing else. In any case, yes, that’s worth it to a lot of people, and it gives niche creators power over their current or former bosses.
As a cautionary tale, I said the same things about Embracer acquiring unused properties and underutilized studios in an attempt to revive more niche series for underserved segments of the market.
I’ve been wondering this recently. I grew up on atari/nes/snes and so of course almost all of those games (pretty sure all) are written in assembly and are rock solid smooth and responsive for the most part. I wonder if this has affected how I cannot stand to play badly optimized games eith even a hint of a laggy feel to it....
Wasn’t prediction baked into the netcode very early in the FPS genre? I wasn’t playing multiplayer in the Doom days, but by the late 90s, you wouldn’t have latency so much as you’d have rubberbanding. Games also use very little bandwidth, so 56K was no different than broadband, from my recollection.
Not just tariffs, but Trump is trying his damnedest to add more inflationary pressure to the economy by firing the people who are keeping interest rates high, counteracting the tariffs.
“And at least part of that plan involves AI”, reads the subtitle. To be clear, not an endorsement from me. Some of this reads very strangely to me, but this is boots on the ground reporting from Gamescom of developer sentiment....
All that to say that adapting to trends creates genres and results in honing in on better versions of the original idea. There will be bad versions along the way, but it’s good to get that much iteration. We used to get that much iteration.
Fortnite is a still-very-visible version of this exact concept. They were able to iterate quickly. Mostly because they just adapted their dud of a horde mode game into a completely new genre using the same mechanics, but they still did it quickly and found that success. We’re also seeing it in the likes of Getting Over It, Lethal Company, Vampire Survivors, and plenty of other games that spawned imitators.
“Iterate quickly” isn’t corporate bullshit. It’s just English. There are always those that tag along to something successful and find success themselves, like Terraria and Starbound to Minecraft; or Apex Legends and Fortnite to PUBG. But if you spend 4 years chasing an idea that came out in 2017, you end up with Hyperscape or Concord, unless there’s truly such an insatiable appetite that customers can’t get enough. In a world of live service games, they look to retain those players for years. Decades ago, they didn’t. We had so many first person shooters coming out every year, single and multiplayer, that it would be a full time job to count them all. Most of them brought new ideas to the table, and across many releases it would take years of iteration trying things that are slightly different than the last idea that would eventually lead to things like aim down sights becoming a fairly standard feature of the genre.
I’m drowning in a deluge of great games to play, personally. The exception there being first-person shooters and racing games, and racing games are starting to fill in the gaps.
I think I’m saying that what we changed from is better than what it changed into. Chasing ideas being the desired goal, because it leads to permutations of those ideas. So it has changed. It can change again.
I have! I enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m not really so much looking for “boomer shooters”, but the style of shooters that postdated those from the late 90s through the 2010s, especially when they include a campaign and multiplayer in the same package, which is harder and harder to come by these days…and often times, they create a dependency on external servers when they do. I didn’t even have any appetite for Doom Eternal or The Dark Ages. But this was the extra layer on top of Doom 2016 that I wanted in order to keep it interesting.
New Valve trademark for 'Steam Frame', looks like we're getting new hardware (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
To paraphrase Jeff Grubb, there’s been more smoke lately indicating a console than VR, but “frame” implies glasses implies VR headset. It could go either way or both, where the console and VR are complementary. Or neither! But I think smart money is on Valve announcing new hardware imminently, and personally, I think...
Over 50% of the job cuts in video games are in California (www.thegamebusiness.com) angielski
Sony is releasing a new PS5 console, but it's a downgrade (www.tweaktown.com) angielski
Same price, less storage. Shrinkflation at its finest....
007 First Light – Gameplay Reveal (www.youtube.com) angielski
This could just be the vestiges of E3’s ghost creating a bad demo, but I was pretty unimpressed by this. If Hitman allowed you to be as freeform as Crysis, this demo looked like Crysis 2, highlighting all the specific options that they crafted for you to use, and there are only maybe three of them rather than allowing you to...
I'm playing Gears of War Reloaded, and I have a question. Will there be some point when the Chainsaw I've had for hours actually gets explained to me? angielski
Like, I chose to play the Tutorial at the beginning. This Chainsaw seems like a pretty critical piece of the gameplay loop, but at no point has there been an explicit explanation or demonstration.
A live-action Call of Duty film is on the way (www.bbc.com) angielski
'Perfect Dark' Developer Lays Off Staff After Funding Deal Falls Through (www.bloomberg.com) angielski
Take-Two almost took over the project and seemingly wanted to take over the franchise, but Microsoft didn’t agree to the terms, hence the Crystal Dynamics layoffs. I still doubt that this game would have turned into anything other than the most generic form of whatever FPSes are these days, which I’m not enthused about, but...
Qiddiya Fully Acquires Evolution Championship Series Organizer RTS - TEA (esportsadvocate.net) angielski
cross-posted from: slrpnk.net/post/26950260...
Hollow Knight: Silksong Will Release for Only $20, Release Times Revealed (bsky.app) angielski
Four days until release! Hollow Knight: Silksong will be available on 4th September....
I asked 20 game developers about Stop Killing Games. [Alanah Pearce] (www.youtube.com) angielski
Featured in this video: Blizzard doing exactly the shitty thing that we suspected they were doing, and a Ubisoft developer using an example where they can point to a law on the books to stop their bosses from doing shitty things.
‘Escape From Tarkov’ Coming To Steam In the Coming Weeks (www.forbes.com) angielski
I Hope that Fantasy Gives us Strength – Metaphor ReFantazio Review & Analysis (blisscast.wordpress.com) angielski
Dear Reader who I shall never know, in your eyes, I know this game was ultimately a fiction. However, I hope you’ll follow us in our analysis and recounting of this fantastical adventure. I hope I will be able to reminisce and review what we saw together. Even if your journey is over, I hope you’ll still want to tag along....
AI was a common theme at Gamescom 2025, and while some indie teams say it's invaluable, it remains an ethical nightmare (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Today’s game consoles are historically overpriced (arstechnica.com) angielski
Four wheels good, two wheels bad: why are there no exciting cycling games? (www.theguardian.com) angielski
What games have mastered "Both emotional extremes"? angielski
Something I’ve picked up on with my gaming preference is stories that don’t simply focus on one “mood” for the game, but alter it to fit the situation. Players get a relaxed time exploring or diving into combat, and the world is inviting and colorful, but when the story builds, it puts brutal tests of character in front...
Best Co-Op Games? angielski
What are the best co-op games you enjoy? Anything from the modern games, to the old games....
After More Layoffs, Unionized IGN Workers Are Done Picking Up The Slack: "We feel greatly understaffed and undervalued" angielski
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36423623...
Atari has acquired five Ubisoft games, including Child of Eden and Grow Home, and will re-release and ‘evolve’ them | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
It would be nice to see some more IPs liberated from Ubisoft, since they’re not using them anyway.
Are those of us who grew up on older games more attuned to latency? angielski
I’ve been wondering this recently. I grew up on atari/nes/snes and so of course almost all of those games (pretty sure all) are written in assembly and are rock solid smooth and responsive for the most part. I wonder if this has affected how I cannot stand to play badly optimized games eith even a hint of a laggy feel to it....
PS5 may get more price increases in the US, analyst warns (www.tweaktown.com) angielski
At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion (www.gamesindustry.biz) angielski
“And at least part of that plan involves AI”, reads the subtitle. To be clear, not an endorsement from me. Some of this reads very strangely to me, but this is boots on the ground reporting from Gamescom of developer sentiment....