misk

misk, 16 days ago

Honestly I haven’t seen the video but it looks like something I was wondering about recently so let me explain.

We’re more and more confused as to how mainstream games look like, as if gameplay was not a consideration at all. One could argue that this is due to lack of direction and trying to satisfy as many market needs as possible.

At the same time I also think that there could be an issue where there is no constructive feedback in the discussion because all of the reviews were either paid for (with a game copy and maybe some other goodies too) or have an interest in creating an outrage (culture wars or being negative all the time). There’s no middle ground so everyone works in the dark. Honest reviewers are rare and you need to find someone matching your taste which is beyond most people so it’s kind of irrelevant for how things look in general.

misk, 18 days ago

I didn’t think that gimmicky game where you run over lines of people (monks? cadets?) would become that popular. Never figured what they were exactly but it was fun. Quest system was a dealbreaker for me. I didn’t know English that well and timed missions suck.

• I skipped 2 based on experience with the first. I think I missed more colourful lighting but not much more than that.
• Couldn’t ignore 3 which was technically impressive but was kind of boring otherwise. Played it to kill time but Tony Hawk was still better at that.
• 4 ran like shit but the story kept me playing. This thing needs a proper remaster to evaluate.
• 5 was an all around achievement and a landmark in a video game history. It’s probably the closest thing to a modern Blizzard game - not exactly innovative but really polished and treated reasonably well for years.

Never touched a game with predatory monetisation so I never touched multiplayer. Heard it sucks but somehow it’s making a bank.

misk, 17 days ago

According to pcgamingwiki it has frame pacing and stutter issues even on high end systems. I’m okay with how it runs on current PCs and Xbox Series X but that’s because I can stomach 40 fps with inconsistent frame pacing - many people can’t and at this point it’s probably best to hope for some updated version.

misk, 26 days ago

The CPC Network, coordinated by the European Commission, is publishing a set of guidelines today to promote transparency and fairness in the online gaming industry’s use of virtual currencies.

That doesn’t seem binding.

misk, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Yeah, as a resident Valve hater I agree it’s a weird thing to get angry over.

If there was anything to get angry over is that I bought this game in a box (stand alone because I was too broke for Orange Box!) with an understanding that it’s an online multiplayer shooter. Meaning, there are servers you join manually from a list, shoot at other guys for a bit and return to that server or not based on how good time it was. This functionality has been ripped out of the game and replaced with some weird algorithm. Before that Valve broke their own design promises of clear silhouettes which made the game less accessible. The game has been dead, riddled with bots farming in-game items that can be traded for real money that Valve added to the game because they could. If it was any other game I wouldn’t care but TF2 started out as an amazing game that was mangled beyond recognition by Valve greed.

They should have released TF2 source code this way 10 years ago. They’re probably doing this now because income from TF2 related items on Marketplace is laughably small compared to their other titles.

misk, 2 months ago

I started playing on a PC in the 90s so as long as it’s above 40 with consistent frame pacing it’s fine. Those VRR displays and games targeting 40 are a game changer for me and why I play on Xbox with a modern LG OLED.

misk, 2 months ago

You’re mostly here to self promote from what I can tell. It shows in your post history and the fact that you though it’d be more important to link to Steam and not the article itself.

misk, 2 months ago

It becomes a problem once others see this is permissible. It’s not that much now but once everyone realises they can put ads here for free how do you imagine it goes from there?

misk, 2 months ago

I want to learn about it either through an independent journalist or from a space dedicated to self promotion. Small developers are not saints and ads are poison, haven’t we all learnt?

misk, 2 months ago

Thank god nobody from this comment section was involved in antitrust cases against Microsoft.

misk, 2 months ago

Valve runs a couple of online casinos that target children specifically, not sure we should be arguing who’s worse here. I think Steam is a clunky piece of software that’s popular mostly because everyone else missed the moment to start competing and Valve gained monopoly unopposed. Other viable competitors tried and failed at even gaining a foothold and are relegated to small niches because it’s impossible to move people who amassed content libraries over the years. Valve skims 10-30% of an insanely large volume of transactions and should be held to a much higher standard. You’re ignoring all of the warning signs because they didn’t screw you over yet.

misk, 2 months ago

Pressure on their web browser monopoly was necessary because IE6 was stifling entire industry. From a legal point of view it’s not illegal to be a monopoly but to abuse that position so there isn’t that much you can do about it, especially in the US. Going after operating system or office suite monopoly should have been done but matters less and less these days.

misk, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Adding gambling to video games without verifying user age is targeting children with gambling. There’s a lot of convenient combinations of circumstances that Valve is fully aware of and profiting from. I don’t care about plausible deniability because Valve employees were visibly smug and amused when questioned about it. There is no absolving Valve after this.

You blame others for Valve monopoly. Yeah, I said they missed the ship. We have a private monopoly in PC gaming storefronts now and that’s not good. It doesn’t matter if they won fair - they are a parasitic middle-man that makes everyone lose.

Ask yourself and be honest about it: if Valve had a true competitor would their cut be as high as it is now? This is the only thing you should be concerned about, not that they engage in Linux philanthropy or that they make cool games.

misk, 2 months ago

MS prevented you from using other browsers by using vendor lock-in. It was a prime example example of now misunderstood concept of embrace, extend, extinguish. You could download Mozilla Phoenix but you couldn’t use it for everything because CSS rendering in IE was so detached from standards. On top of that you had ActiveX which meant you HAD to use Windows for some websites.

misk, 2 months ago

Probably same reason Sony keeps releasing their games on PC before they release their sequels on PS5. They’re no longer getting sales on original platform so they’re not losing much and they build up the taste of the franchise because someone might like it enough to buy their hardware. It feels very weird to do in this case though.

misk, 2 months ago

This post is overrated, you Philistine.

misk, 3 months ago

I call bullshit even if it would make sense.

PS5 Pro wanted to do RT at smooth framerates but turned out to be way too undercooked. We’re seeing glimpses of that on XSX too with Indiana Jones and Dragon’s Dogma 2 (that 40 FPS VRR window makes it work). It’s working as a tech demo that’s building appetite for more because of how transformative to the experience in both games that is. If Microsoft could deliver it at this timing it would be extra awkward for Sony who need to keep on going with current hardware for a couple more years not to look like Sega with 32X and Saturn. Even if Nvidia shows something revolutionary with new line of GPUs it will be prohibitively expensive in the context of consoles anyway.

misk, 3 months ago

IF 2026 was a real date that wouldn’t matter that much. Microsoft wants to be the first one to sell you the last console you will need be able to afford to. People will get it for generationally better experience but there’s not much else to look out for on the horizon. Hardware got too expensive for the consumer and games beyond certain budgets are much too risky. Consider upcoming trade wars and overall bleak economic outlook and you have to assume every player is looking for a survival strategy. Market analysts say that Microsoft is going to become software publisher primarily again but this makes no sense to me. Game Pass Cloud and Xbox are the only places where they don’t have to share the spoils with owners of other platforms. Obviously they’ll want to keep it going regardless of circumstances. Microsoft could be banking on getting high-end market for now and transition with revisions of the same hardware into lower segments with time as market conditions improve.

I’m very stoned currently so I can’t vouch for the quality of my analysis long term but I will stand by it for now.

misk, 3 months ago

They made FSR vendor-agnostic for reasons that turned out to be irrelevant in the long run. It was just couple of years ago when games supported DLSS only and engines weren’t ready for plugging multiple different upscaling solutions. Nvidia and AMD tried to get exclusivity deals and things seemed fire for a moment. AMD hoped FSR would be enough for smaller players to adopt it but being vendor-agnostic handicapped them so much that everyone developed their own solution anyway (PSSR, XeSS). Not that it really matters that much because in the end modern AA gives similar results to old FSR and game devs will use what works best.

misk, 4 months ago

Please stop blaming those things on everything except people. I’m Polish. Polish people drink homophobia with their mothers milk. We didn’t need to import it from US or Russia (it’s still better than in the 90s). Average developer is a young male who predominantly votes for outright fascists. The reason CDPR appears progressive is because they calculated it to be more profitable.

misk, 4 months ago

People 18-39 vote predominantly for Konfederacja (far right), KO (populist centre-right), PiS (populist right). I could dig some more precise sources with gender data but I think it’s telling that these are the results even with women in the mix. Coincidentally even among young women voting for far right is more common than for centre-left. I’m not mentioning left since their popularity is within a margin of error.

Yeah, artists skew left but you won’t find a more bigoted libertarian than a young polish programmer. Most of them are also pretty spoiled too because of the degressive tax system that favours them so much.

misk, 4 months ago

Is that correct? Kojima bought full rights to the IP couple of months ago and released Death Stranding on everything immediately. Seems like it’ll be timed exclusive at most.

misk, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Won’t the tariffs incentivise domestic production and give work to more regular folks? There’s also less stuff to be hauled around the world so there’s environmental benefits too. Sounds like a leftist idea to me.

misk, 4 months ago

Tariffs can serve as a stimuli to build out local manufacturing capacity, which sounds pretty leftist to me. I understand arguments for laissez faire policies but at heart they are liberal and not left. It’s the refusal to accept it that led to far right being as popular as it is.

misk, 4 months ago

I’m not here to convince liberals that they should try to care for the poor. I’m here to argue that the jig is up - people are voting for literally anyone, including fascists, that promises to change the course.

misk, 4 months ago

Are you arguing that tariffs and other market restrictions are ineffective at incentivising moving of production sites? I guess that’s why Biden lifted tariffs Trump imposed. Oh wait.

Or are you arguing that container ships full of plastic trash are good for the environment?

misk, 4 months ago

If you proposed something else that would uplift lower classes sooner they’d probably vote for it. What Democrats were offering wasn’t credible enough because people have been deceived for too long.

misk, 4 months ago

They will do what’s most profitable. If domestic production becomes competitive someone will do it.

misk, 4 months ago

Politicians lie so I’m mostly interested in outcomes, not the narratives that politicians use to make things happen. Why would I care that something I want and is mostly outside of my control happens for the wrong reasons?

misk, 4 months ago

Could be that US rejected modernity because it wasn’t working for them.

misk, 5 months ago

If you own an iPhone just get Apple Arcade through Apple One, it’s really worth it if you game on your phone. No predatory monetisation, regular self-contained games, plenty of high quality titles.

misk, 5 months ago

Most of the games in AA that I played have been reworked to remove monetisation while their regular App Store versions offer freemium model only.

misk, 5 months ago

I understand that half of the world is currently healing psychological trauma from the US election results but Atlus has been commenting on politics in their games for much longer.

misk, 5 months ago

Apple Arcade is still going and getting plenty of releases. I don’t know anyone buying it specifically but including it in Apple One (competitively priced subscription for most Apple services) means lots of people have access to it. Me and my partner use it a lot. It’s very nice knowing that those games won’t try to shove microtransactions down my throat.

misk, 5 months ago

No longer a leak, embargo lifted couple of hours ago.

misk, 5 months ago

I wait for a Digital Foundry tech review before making a purchase on AAA game these days. They tackle what’s quantifiable and add their thoughts on the game in general which is about as much as I need from a professional outlet.

misk, 5 months ago

When preserving culture is criminal, or punishable, ya might want to reevaluate your laws

Or, don’t treat it like culture but slop to be consumed and discarded. If law is not there, put pressure on publishers to release games under licensing that allows preservation after predetermined amount of time. Maybe make slop ineligible for game awards and remove it from review aggregators. There are ways I’m sure.

…Who am I kidding, nobody is going to do because it would require too much cooperation and people are selfish.

misk, 5 months ago

I imagine that the news headlines of the future will be:

12 Dyson Spheres and 700 Million Years Later, What’s Going on With Star Citizen’s Development?

misk, 6 months ago

Not the same but StarCraft 2 is available on Macs and runs acceptably on my M1 Air. It probably runs quite well on M2 Max. Even though it’s seen as predominantly multiplayer game it has a very nice single player campaign with tech tree upgrades between missions.

I know there are many Total War and Paradox games on Macs but they don’t run well for me through Rosetta. Might be worth a try in your case.

misk, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Here I am at 2 months of attempting Shadow of the Erdtree final boss. I do it once or twice per week now, got incredibly close dozens of times (past meteor). Refusing to switch my weird ass incantations based build. Bayle was a complete pushover compared to this guy.

misk, 6 months ago

Agreed. Sense of humour is.

misk, 6 months ago

This is a very valid point, yet companies do shady stuff all the time and some even get caught via subpoenas and such. Nintendo can do it in a way that will never be noticeable on their books for sure.