Many games have mixed experiences, some multiplayer, some single player. Take COD, for example, it has a SP campaign, but most people play it for the MP experience. if they disable the MP experience, the game is technically playable since the SP campaign still exists.
This petition seems to focus on “phoning home”:
An increasing number of publishers are selling videogames that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or “phone home” to function. While this is not a problem in itself, when support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function, proceed to destroy all working copies of the game, and implement extensive measures to prevent the customer from repairing the game in any way.
This sounds very much like it’s focusing on preserving the SP experience and forcing publishers to remove any artificial limitations on that experience once they stop supporting the game. Nothing in the petition sounds like it’s talking about multiplayer functions.
Here’s the part about being “playable”:
The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.
So they’re explicitly not asking for the publishers to provide anything new (i.e. the game server), it’s only asking for limitations to be removed (i.e. phoning home).
This is still an important petition, but it doesn’t seem to say what you’re arguing it’s saying.
And it’s something that only applies to a fairly small subset of people. If we look at Steam users (decent indicator of people passionate about games), Germany has the highest in the EU at 3.6M. 3.6M is ~4.3% of the German population, so if we extrapolate to the EU, that’s ~19M Steam users.
If we assume that’s an accurate measurement of people who would be interested in this petition, you’d need 1/20 of them to sign. I’m not in the EU, so I don’t know how popular these petitions are or what the requirements are (do you need to be voting age?), but if I assume a lot of people who play games are young, and that young people tend to be fairly uninterested in politics, getting 1M signatures would be incredibly difficult even if it’s something that all games agree with (and I would imagine most would care about this at some level).
So yeah, getting >400k signatures for something like this sounds like amazing success.
Yup, I love the ability-based progression in Zelda, older Ys, Metroidvanias like Ori and Hollow Knight, etc.
I don’t like loot for the sake of loot. For example, Borderlands prides itself on having 16-17M weapons (they’re procedurally generated). That’s not interesting to me, that’s tedious. I much prefer the Half-Life approach (14 in original, 10 in Half Life 2), where each weapon fills a niche and you pick based on what you need.
A lot of people love loot in games, such as in MMORPGs, Bethesda-style RPGs, and Diablo-style RPGs. The latter is the most frustrating because many people mean Diablo-style when they say “ARPG,” whereas I mean Zelda/Ys-style.
TL;DR - I’m a fan of tighter, focused experiences with a strong element of puzzle solving, and I’m generally not a fan of sandbox-y experiences.
Some of my favorite games are Zelda, Ys, or Half Life. Loot in those games is typically an intentional part of the progression, and the gameplay feels like an action-y puzzle. Resources have a specific purpose, and wasting them has consequences.
Using a slightly different weapon, item, cosmetic, etc doesn’t excite me at all, I am mostly there for the story and gameplay. To me, shopping feels like poor game design and essentially covering for the player missing something important. So games with extensive store/inventory mechanics feel poorly designed, on average.
There’s one big exception here: if the economy of the game is integral to the core loop. For example, I love Recettear, which makes loot and inventory management a core mechanic in an interesting way. I’m also working on my own game with a player-driven economy (e.g. if you sell a lot of something, you get less for each additional one, it’s cheaper for AI/other players to buy, and NPCs will slowly distribute the items around the game world).
On those same lines, I generally don’t like things with crafting, enchanting, etc, unless it’s an interesting, core gameplay mechanic. I’m very goal oriented, so the journey is less important than the destination, so I like constant “mini-destinations” (boss fights, puzzles, etc). I almost never replay games, unless there’s a different set of challenges to explore (e.g. I loved each of the three characters in Ys Origin, but won’t bother playing Morrowind twice).
GTA V - I disliked the characters, story was uninteresting, and gameplay felt like a downgrade from GTA IV; graphics were the main attraction there, and that’s not enough for me
Borderlands - my fastest “nope, not for me” game I’ve played; I don’t like loot in games, and that’s basically the entire point of the game
Skyrim - found it very bland coming from Morrowind; side quests weren’t as interesting, which is pretty much the entire reason I liked Morrowind
any competitive FPS (Apex Legends, COD, etc) - I play most games once the get the story, mechanics, etc
Huh, well fear is a very different thing than stress. Once your stress turns into fear, you’re no longer personally invested in the project and are merely concerned about your own survival.
The video games industry definitely comes with a lot of stress, but they rely on passion to get value out of those long hours. This sounds like a situation of completely awful management, which won’t be fixed with a union (at least not immediately), since a bad manager can make life suck even if you have decent benefits, reasonable work hours, etc.
Then again, I don’t have a lot of details to go on, just that there’s allegations of “fear” at Daedelic.
Yup. I’m a fan of lore in a lot of series, but that’s not why I play Zelda.
I play Zelda because it’s fun. I like the creative puzzles that aren’t super hard, but hard enough to require a little bit of thinking. I like that there’s progression, but no leveling system, so a lot of the progression is learning to use new tools. I like the silly side quests.
I’ve never really been interested in Zelda lore, so I’m honestly okay with things not quite lining up. I guess I see each entry as a separate universe where Link saves Zelda in a different way each time. Zelda games rarely have direct sequels, and I think that was the real mistake this time around. Just let me fight Ganon or whatever in a new cycle every time, I don’t need any kind of story coherency.
I still hear about them and buy from them, but I buy a lot less because:
They were bought by IGN, so they’re a for profit group now
Changed Choice to offer major AAAs more often instead of being focused on indies
They set slider for minimum percent to Humble in bundles to 15% (I used to give about 20-30% to Humble, now I do 15% as a form of minor protest)
Bundles often come with coupons for the store instead of just being bundles of games, and the $1 tier is either complete trash or non-existent
And so on. Basically, they’ve gotten more corporate, so they’re less unique vs the competition. In fact, I’ve picked up more bundles from Fanatical than Humble in the last couple years because I no longer feel a preference for Humble, and now just go where the deals are.
I’m guessing some or all of that is why the sources you follow don’t mention it as much. It’s still very much a thing though.
I don’t think I have any of them, but I’ll likely get a Zachtronics game (not sure which) and maybe Human Resource Machine. Those have been on my wishlist for a while, but I haven’t seen a lot of these so there are probably a bunch of other gems.
Maybe, but I feel like any quality gains would be minimal since people are already passionate about their roles (else why would those roles be so desired?). Then again, the Valve model really works, so it really depends on whether unions can change company culture, or if they’ll just secure better working hours and pay. The culture is the problem, and I’m not convinced a union can fix that.
Yup, Intel is struggling to enter the market, and they’ve been building similar chips for years. This just isn’t an area for someone like Valve to break into.
Maybe they could make a good cooler design or something, but they’re going to be using off the shelf chips, or maybe slightly altered custom chips like they did with the Steam Deck.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. The reason wages are low is because the games industry attracts a lot of talent, so companies can get good talent for less. So I don’t expect unionizing to help in terms of quality of work produced, but it should improve wages and working conditions.