We should expect more of that with the upcoming UE5 titles. The devs that have devoted to releasing those seem to have very hard time optimising - they’ll likely expect us all to just own 4090s and still run their game with DLSS ultra performance or other fake frames.
STALKER 2 will have the janky soul we expect from the series, but this mostly, mostly due to engine choice and apparent attempts to visually impress the player. Or the investors.
It’s not even about what we want, but what the stakeholders and decision-makers push for in order to rack in more profits.
The gaming industry was at its highest in terms of fun and variability and innovation when the industry was still figuring out best ways to make mad money, no matter how ethical or morally bankrupt - now they know they can use fear of missing out and predatory tactics to lure people into essentially gambling in a free-to-play online game, or pad out a singleplayer one with mechanics that contribute nothing to the gameplay, but manage to fool game journalists (the ones that weren’t already paid) into praising the game for its deep and branching loops, attracting more investor money or something.
A lot of people accuse us gamers of being a whiny crowd that cares too much and doesn’t like to have fun, but I guess yeah, we do care a little too much and that’s why so many of us try to actively influence the industry to go into a better direction when we vote with our wallets or write reviews or discuss games and practices in ways that can be hopefully seen by the industry’s decision-makers.
Not to say there isn’t just as many (if not more) gamers that don’t care enough and still pour money into games and practices that are ultimately making the industry worse, only to make the stakeholders and CEOs wealthier.
Squadron 42 is the single player campaign of Star Citizen, that is supposed to launch as a separate game. It's basically a small portion of Star Citizen, but with a story and ending. I'm still not confident; waited too long for that.
Star Citizen is a game that’s been in development forever, all while attracting money in forms of donations and sales of in-game ships. A single-player game by the same devs, Squadron 42, is a somewhat similar story, except that people can’t even play it yet (as far as I remember).
A whale is a tern that often means someone/something that brings you the substantial part of your revenue, so in case of the games above, whales would be the players that spend most money on the in-game ships or donations to support development.
The “whale fracking operation” in this context probably means that the entire trailer is a yet another bait for the community to go crazy and bring in the money so that the devs don’t starve and finally deliver finished products.
The punchline is, however, that it’s likely not gonna happen anyway lmao
The tons of exploration you’re talking about are copy-pasted identical POIs, too, with the same enemies and objects in the same locations.
I honestly don’t understand what they expected us to be doing for the hundreds of hours and years they they hoped we’d be playing the game for. It’s certainly the most “ocean wide, inch deep” game for what it was marketed to be.
Your point is fair and works really well on its own, but in the context of the entire game, its systems, mechanics, and the entire experience they come together to create, I just can’t help but feel genuinely bored and disappointed regardless. The writing feels uninspired and generic; contrary to what some people have been saying, the writing isn’t a product of playing safe by the outsourced writers Bethesda used - it’s just bad, like a bad paint job on your car or poorly written software.
Even trying to side with the supposedly lowlife immoral inhabitants of the game’s world, you constantly hear either that they’re all family and friends (despite seeing one murder another because they got ripped off), or that they didn’t have a choice and still try to be “good”.
This isn’t what people expect from a Bethesda game in general, and from a game with ESRB rating of Mature (17+).
Again, ignoring my expectations that the game’s marketing specifically built to be centered around me being able to tell my story and stuff, it’s just poorly written and executed in the vast majority of aspects that matter in a game like the one Starfield is trying to be - the motifs aren’t clear, the storytelling is the most basic straight-up lecture in every quest that never tries to adhere to the “show, don’t tell” principles, the tasks you have to do are just boring and generic, too; it’s 2023, Bethesda has published and made tons of games of various genres st this point, many of a larger caliber, yet they still purposefully choose to go with the cookie-cutter quests that involve no unique one-time mechanics or animations, rely on mostly generated animations that feel out of place most of the time, and have you feel like you’re playing a game from pre-2010 that you should be able to play on a toaster, but are somehow told to upgrade to the latest hardware because the company couldn’t be bothered to develop and optimize a proper experience.
The pain scratches off at way more places than just exploration in Starfield.
Two things I really like are the artstyle and building my own ships with actual interiors, but the latter actually falls short due to massive restrictions in terms of said interior designs and the fact that space is basically a big mostly empty room to teleport to and from, akin to many other places in the game; no wonder an SSD is required to play, and for the worst reasons possible in a modern AAA title of that ambition.
I loved the game at first, but a lot of that was due to my huge interest in the niche it could cover, space, and science fiction, and white unfortunately, I’ve discovered way too many prominent flaws while simply trying to have fun like I always managed in similar games, even from Bethesda.
I hope that mods and DLCs may save the game, but none of that is ever going to fix the game’s broken carcass of poor writing and uninspired practices.
Yeah, you’re most likely right. I just never got anything more powerful since 2017 because it’s been more than enough for the games I play even today, and the games that won’t run well on my old trusty… well, they just seem to require a jokingly expensive investment on their lazy and sub-par programming work anyway, so I’m still giving it a pass. Not to mention that ray tracing still hasn’t gotten me to care enough to build anything that can run that even on 1080p at 60 FPS.
AI dungeon is the shit. I trained a few games to be very much identical to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe, incorporating elements from both the games and the books. The best part about it is that you can always modge it in the desired direction, either by rewriting its prompts or doing something that essentially negates or ignores them.
Doubt we’ll see anything worthwhile like that in any 3D capacity, though, as there’s much more limitations there - primarily the corporate KPIs
It’s not a standard xbox controller. There’s a gyro with several ways to handle it, including flick, which does take a little time to get used to, but works really well as a mouse substitution for such an environment. Some people are just that good with a thumbstick as well and can easily enjoy casual gamemodes.
Steam Deck is a capable beast, even for a game like Counter-Strike.
CS:GO is dead, though, and neither of the popular and beloved entries to the series was ever solely focused on the competitive scene - the community and the casual fun also matter in the world of Counter-Strike, and that’s one of its parts that can be enjoyed on a controller just fine. Of course I don’t expect to be able to perform just as well or better than the M+K players when playing on a controller, regardless of its gyro capabilities, especially in the competitive modes. Counter-Strike is just much more than just a competitive game.
Not to mention a lot of them are still crappy at best: Fallout 4 is ridiculous, Fallout 76 is even more ridiculous, Assassin’s Creed turned into a conveyor joke, Cyberpunk 2077 was just insultingly bad at launch and remained that for a long time (haven’t played 2.0 yet, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt), Starfield is another sandwich full of lies, Redfall is not even worth talking about akin to Deathloop, Diablo 4 is a machine to vacuum money on a schedule, online FPS has been nothing but battle royale for what feels like almost a dozen years and now they’re testing the waters with “extraction shooters” looking at Escape From Tarkov (the extraction aspect alone won’t bring them the same fame), and all of that is coupled with ever-increasing system requirements and prices, making gaming the most expensive it’s ever been for really no good benefit.
The only AAA game that left me satisfied on launch in the recent years, like in the days of buying boxes, was DOOM: Eternal; to a lesser extent, Hogwarts Legacy was good, but the story felt lacking and really took away from the fun.
I personally blame the managers in the AAA gaming for not managing the scope creeps that obviously happen in many of these games, stretching the development resources, yet resulting in another “mile wide, inch deep” discourse time after time. Again, DOOM: Eternal is a great example: no crafting, no open world shenanigans, no multiple choices all leading to the same outcome (while not being a conceptual story-telling instrument) - just a focused game with multiple elements that make up the linear progression and gradually increase the possible complexity of one’s experience, finally culminating in a complete FPS sitting atop impressive optimization and great visuals.
AAA is just not worth it these days and hasn’t been for several years, neither in terms of hardware, nor software.
That can’t be the sole metric. The POSTAL series is widely regarded as one of the worst franchises to ever happen in video games, and yet, I and many others are big fans of the entire series in general and are especially fond of some entries in particular; but it certainly doesn’t make these games less janky and subpar in many regards - at the very least, none of them was advertised as something “for the next gen” or “groundbreaking” or any of the big words the AAA industry likes to throw around when advertising.
entire franchises as a joke
Thanks for that, though, I didn’t meant to call the entire AC series a joke, only multiple of its entries after the first games.
I’m totally fine with you enjoying whatever games you enjoy, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. My opinion is that of the corporations and their practices only, not the consumers that happen to find something dear to them in the final product.
Granted, we, as consumers, have - or at least should have - certain ways to leverage the industry and let it know explicitly what we appreciate and like, and what we absolutely hate, but that’s much easier said than do on the scale of modern gaming in general, let alone the AAA gaming, the massive beast it is and the sizes of its many audiences. I do what I can to influence the industry, whenever I can, and that includes talking about it with my fellow gamers to maybe spark the same tendencies in them - but I certainly don’t want to discourage anyone from having fun.
Off the thread topic, yeah Prey and Dishonored are definitely one of the greatest games we’ve seen in 2010s, especially Prey.
You’re not buying a copy, but a license revocable at any moment, not to mention that you need a service to leverage that license, too, so when that service either dies or prevents you from accessing what you paid for, you can kiss goodbye to it, and your only option is to cash out again.
For some, $10 is not a sum they can spend on non-essentials. Some don’t want to wait for various legitimate reasons. Some want to be able to try the game out before making up their mind on whether they’ll pay for it. Some just don’t care about giving money to a massive corporation that’s definitely not suffering from the lack of money, for one reason or another: one of them, a very prominent one, is to avoid supporting the greedy corporate practices with your wallet, such as the lack of proper optimization and control over the graphical fidelity wrapped up in the “Oh, we just wanna preserve the look for everybody” bullshit.
Lastly, if you really insist on defending paying against piracy, you should know that pirates either never pay in the first place, so it’s not like some poor big corp lost some sales, or they’re one of the most consistently paying customers for a given media, as has been the case for decades now.
As for whether $10 is a lot… it’s really not up to you to decide when someone can or cannot afford to spend their money on. Not to mention that there’s no reason to defend a company that has more money than you can imagine, ripping off its employees only because of greed rather than lack of funds, yet they still decide to outsource basically the entire game to a gazillion of other studios, resulting in a game that’s kinda good, but very flawed with massive inconsistencies and “play it safe” decisions coupled with good-for-nothing premium editions and confirmed upcoming DLCs only to squeeze more money out of their consumers.
I’m actually not giving them shit because they’re salaried and have been (undner)compensated for their labor during the course of their employment. They’re not going to suddenly eat less if I simply don’t pay for the product - this is identical to watching a trailer of a game and then deciding that you’ll completely ignore the game; no purchase was made, yet no property was stolen, because the game is still intact. It’s not the same as coming to a store and stealing a copy, preventing others to pay for it and bring profits for the store.
If the game’s worth it and I can easily obtain it legally at a sensible price, the pirating the game isn’t my first urge for sure… Again, if I pirate something I was never going to buy in the first place for one reason or the other, there’s no theft to speak of.
Maybe I could transfer you several billion dollars right now, plus some change to cover up for the fees and taxes that may come up, but I just don’t - would you say I stole that money from you? You probably wouldn’t, because that was just a expectation and you never had the money in the first place, so there was no way for me to take it, and the fact that you expected to have more, didn’t get anything as a result, and did not actually lose anything does not constitute a theft.
I’m sure you know better than I do what I’d spend money on to be so confident in your claim that’d I’d pick up on a sale Anyway. Not to mention that sometimes you just don’t have the option to purchase the digital product because the vendors aren’t selling it you, as is the case with some counties and companies.
Some practices also just don’t sit well with you and you’re basically voting with your wallet by not paying for the game.
As for the theft argument, let’s say you have an expectation that I should you give you a certain sum of money, but it’s just that, an expectation - like I promise to wire transfer you billions of dollars, plus some fees and taxes, but I never do; did I just steal from you? You have absolutely everything you had before, but didn’t receive the money you were expecting.
Or I made an identical copy of something you have and am now using it, too - you still have the original, though, you’re no worse off in any way because the original object is still cometely intact, and I would have never gotten it otherwise if it wasn’t for the identical copy that took you no effort. Did I take the original from you, i.e. stole anything from you?
Except I’m not profiting off the games I pirate, and neither does anybody else these days (hasn’t since 00s).
You don’t even see the dissonance in your arguments: you’re trying to tell me how bad it is and how nobody should pirate of they can’t or don’t want to pay, but the benefactors don’t get paid either way, but I case of the latter, we’re somehow not talking about ripping someone off; it’s a sale that’s not being made either way, and assuming that the people pirating the content would’ve bought it if it wasn’t for piracy is just wrong as evident by a lot of research done on the topic.
I still haven’t seen your arguments as to how exactly it hurts people outside not closing the deal that, again, wouldn’t have been closed anyway had piracy not been an option.
Oh, now that’s the real culprit! That honestly explains a lot in this conversation and makes me see you less of a corporate ally for absolutely no good.
As for the “piracy le hurts” reports, I’m really not surprised that you were able to find these, mostly debunking anything stating otherwise. As if we didn’t live in the massively lobbied society where corporations and money-turners have much more leverage than anything else to manipulate the popular opinion on anything that “hurts” them, be it anything legit or simply perceived.
So first that isn’t true, people pirate games and stream/create videos of them to gain views which converts to monetization.
I don’t really know where you got that from, as any content creator that has any worthwhile numbers to make their monetization off of pirated content a problem, in fact, never mentions anything positive above piracy. Following your logic, though, are these content creators supposed to share their revenue with you if their content is based on your game?
Second, we can both agree you gain something. Does money have to be the thing you gain to see it as wrong or does enjoyment count as well? Or are we in such a monetary society that we must have monetary gain from work you didn’t make for it to be wrong?
By that logic, I can’t share games with my friends and family, because while they get some fun time, they pay nothing for the game. I’m sure that’s an absurd idea even in your books - consider every pirate my friend and family, especially when it comes to distributors and publishers I have zero respect towards. Sometimes a game is made using and promoting damaging practices, and while the game is good in its own merits, I choose not to support the developers or decision-makers monetarily.
While I’m at it, you seem to think that I just don’t for any games, like, ever, which I assure is not the case - I have a massive Steam library and some games I bought in EGS and GOG, many of which I deliberately bought as a thank you and a sign of respect only after I’ve played/beaten their pirated copies.
Demos, though, are still a minority. Starfield doesn’t have a demo, neither does Cyberpunk 2077, nor most (if not all) games that have prices so high that people even consider piracy in the first place. You strike me as a smaller developer that I may actually find during Steam Next Fest (love these, by the way, barely skip any), and you may provide demos, for which I say thank you, and it may even earn a purchase from me specifically; however, it still is an exception more than it is a rule these days.
If you have any games on Steam, I’ll be happy to check 'em out, either during a Steam Next Fest or otherwise. Most likely, you’re not charging an absurd amount of money on a bunch of lies and predatory practices, and if that’s the case, I won’t think twice about paying for a digital revocable ticket that I can only access via a single gateway (being Steam), but you won’t suddenly find yourself with less money if I simply choose to ignore your game, and you certainly won’t start losing money from your bank account if I download multiple copies for free or even make multiple copies of a legally purchased one.
But if you’re Bethesda, telling me that I can do impressive rounds of exploring in your game for dozens or hundreds of hours, or even months, or even years, but I have to pay at least $60 to enjoy the game… only to find out that this massive selling piece was a lie and once I’ve seen one POI, I’ve basically seen every POI of that type, down to enemy, object, and loot placement, yet you’re still going to sell me DLC(s) and expect the community to patch the game for free, then sorry (not sorry), I’m not going to spend any money on your product and make you think that treating your customers like that is okay in any capacity. Is it possible that I enjoy the game despite such flaws? Yes, but it doesn’t mean it’s worth the money for me, not now, not later, because it’s a predatory marketing strategy built on deceiving your buyers, and if you believe that pirating games hurts the companies that are supposed to receive the money, then I’m happy to pirate their games thousands of times to punish them for being absolute dickheads.
The reports and courts supporting those with the big wallets in this regard is identical to how climate change is still a prevalent problem that’s being put on shoulders of people like you and me, while oil and gas and tech and other industries get subsidies, leverage, and bail-outs from the governments.
We’re getting really lengthy here, and while that was fun while it lasted, we’re clearly both set in our ways, so I’ll answer to only a few topics that don’t simply revolve our beliefs. I know we’re just going to back and forth, ultimately saying “I’m right, you’re wrong” anyway.
I mean at that point why play it though? I figured you’d just see the gameplay videos and move on. Maybe you want to go in entirely blank? Honestly, and controversially I feel the same about a recent purchase I made, Red Dead Redemption 2. I played 26 hours and feels like I barely played 2 hours worth of enjoyable content for myself. That said, my friend’s dog did the mo-cap for the dogs in the game and it’s nice to see.
You’ve proven my point by saying that despite having spent 26 hours playing the game, barely 2 of them were worth it, and no Steam refund is going to listen to your definition of the amount of hours that count for an actual refund. You had no demo to try, and no amount of gameplay videos is going to answer the questions like “How would I play the game?” and “How would I enjoy that?”; to a certain extent, demos don’t either, because they’re not a complete experience and complete experiences count, but they’ll definitely give you a much better feeling of whether you should spend your money on the game.
That’s one reason to pirate a AAA game: you know you might like it, but you don’t want to become a metric on another chart for the sharks to pat each other on the back and say “See? We did it! We were right! They bought the game!”, even if for a 0.001% of the original price.
Kudos for casting your dog there, though. Good boy/girl.
I’ve seen it with a few streamers, it’s uncommon but it happens. Now we are also seeing the rise of paid pirating platforms which are clearly making money off of others’ work as well.
Now, we all generally denounce people making money off any sort of pirated content, be it cinema, books, games, or anything else. It’s about a lot of things, really, but none of them is profit - certainly not these days.
Yeah, that’s absurd but the point is that clearly there is a line there and it’s not yours to draw. It’s the copyright holders. Some people offer Steam family sharing, being there physically or sharing a Steam account requires 1 copy of the game and can only be played by one device at a given time. That’s the line developers draw and it’s on us to determine how we want to share our artwork. I think that’s pretty fair. If I make something, I can determine how I share it, it’s not up to anyone else to take my creation from me, even if that means I don’t lose the original copy.
I buy a book you wrote. Would you insist that I don’t share that book with anyone else and instead tell them to go get their own copy? You’ll most likely say ‘no’ once again, that’s something we both agree on, and a game is no different. Nobody is taking your book away from you, it still is yours in every regard, but you don’t get to control whether people can lend it. It’s sharing, i.e. caring, and sharing often leads to increased sales and exposure through various channels.
You even said it yourself that “there is a line there and it’s not yours to draw”, yet in the same paragraph you say “If I make something, I can determine how I share it, it’s not up to anyone else to take my creation from me, even if that means I don’t lose the original copy.”
Make what you will of it, but you stumbling like that over there clearly shows how neither approach is universally correct and simple, especially given the amount of people and their individual circumstances involved in each case of sharing, piracy, or buying a single copy exclusively.
They don’t think that. They just know that the people will pay up anyway, bringing in the profits for shareholders and the C-suite, and that’s all that matters.
The DLCs, cosmetics, MTX, etc. are all pretty much alive and well despite everything just because enough people cash out, so why change their ways?
AAA gaming is a big industry, and big industries are nothing wholesome.
If Counter-Strike 2 does actually come out in Summer 2023, as planned, I don’t care even if it’s the last minute of Summer 2023 on this globe, I’ll just be amazed that we didn’t get Valve Time’d with this.
Super excited for the release itself, but even more importantly for the tools that the community will have with it, and all the new maps it brings. Surfing is about to get even prettier with all the new bells and whistles.
EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Personally I would not call Immortals of Aveum an AAA game. 😅...
Baldur’s Gate 3 boss says gamers don’t want mass subscriptions (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
Space sim Squadron 42 is "feature-complete" and gunning for Starfield's lunch with massive new video (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Squadron 42 is the single player campaign of Star Citizen, that is supposed to launch as a separate game. It's basically a small portion of Star Citizen, but with a story and ending. I'm still not confident; waited too long for that.
Todd Howard says Starfield was 'made to be played for a long time,' but a month after launch I'm already drifting away (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Steam Hardware and Software Survey (store.steampowered.com) angielski
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/434b8763-166d-4a8e-831f-a093f9e56156.webp
What type of game you want to see that doesn't fully exist yet?
Counter Strike 2 is surprisingly awful on Steam Deck right now (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
Leaked email reveals Phil Spencer's damning verdict on AAA games: 'Most publishers are riding the success of franchises created 10+ years ago' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 and Phantom Liberty install sizes release (www.gamescensor.com) angielski
Steam Shmup Fest: Official Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
The Elder Scrolls VI will skip PS5 and isn’t coming until at least 2026 (www.theverge.com) angielski
Todd Howard asked on-air why Bethesda didn't optimise Starfield for PC: 'We did [...] you may need to upgrade your PC' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
You heard him 4090 users, upgrade to a more powerful GPU.
Counter-Strike 2 Makes Significant Development Towards Release (www.gamescensor.com) angielski