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This article somehow set me on a long path of reminiscence and reflection on how I’ve not been particularly enjoying many new releases. I usually compose these ramblings and hit delete instead of send, but this hits close to home so please allow me to take to the stage just this once.
It started by reminding me of one of my favourite games of all time: Kid Icarus Uprising. Each level opens with a 5 minute on-rail segment before transitioning to a third person mode where you can explore a little as you make your way to the boss. Every few levels has a unique mechanic to spice things up too, overall providing a great and balanced variety of gameplay whilst you experience an entertaining story through to the end. It’s repayable not because there’s a ton of different outcomes to dialogue trees or a different NPC to romance, but because it’s fun!
I also love to be involved in the game’s story, watch the drama unfold around me in real time as characters come and go and tensions ebb and flow. I’d rather have one major choice to make or none at all than this constant deluge of meaningless multiple choice dialogue boxes and quests with outcomes boiling down to “the easy way” or “brute force”.
I feel like the success of “open world” games has taken a toll on single player experiences, with it’s philosophy mistakenly applied when it probably shouldn’t have. I grew up with the DS+ family and since moving to PC I’ve seen a similar thing happen with Battle Royales and multiplayer, so I can only assume this has happened before and will happen again.
Obviously the answer is Indie games, but visibility is the key problem to solve. I love seeing people talk about their favourites, so if you have one that resonated with you please give them a shout-out! I won’t keep you here any longer so I’ll only briefly mention the one that gripped me the whole time: CrossCode.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Actually I’ve been using it all the time ever since it came out in beta. Being able to set it to record certain games automatically so I can share something funny or report cheaters after the fact is amazing.
No need to fiddle with OBS to find some instant replay like thing, remember to start it and then edit them in another piece of software. it’s all right there, built in to Steam, and so easy to use that I often trim and save clips during gameplay.
The workshop is an interesting topic and one if like to see a larger discussion around - theoretically people are free to upload their workshop content outside of Steam altogether, but arguably it’s on developers to support importing non-workshop content.
Censorship is definitely something that needs sorting out. I hadn’t heard of much censorship going on but I can definitely see it happening, giv n Japan’s standards can differentiate massively from America’s. Clear rules need to be laid, and I hope clear reasons are given when it occurs.
I’m with you on all of this. I’m familiar with this (am a game dev) and you’re 100% right that the biggest cost is game distribution. One thing though: it costs ~$100 to list a game on Steam, which is returned to you after it’s made a thousand or two.
Honestly there’s nothing much valve can do to appease people, but I believe the most likely thing they can do is release data on how much distribution costs and give companies the ability to disable the “extra stuff” to save even a few percent of their revenue.
That’s on developers for not putting their games on other platforms, Valve do not prevent you from doing so. If they went crazy tomorrow, people can just jump ship.
I swear the only games that could never be on another store would be Valve’s own. It’s really not their fault that other platforms are so bad or niche.
Like realistically what should they do to not be seen as gatekeepers? Become worse to scare developers and customers onto other platforms?
Are they gatekeepers though? It’s not like they own Windows or Linux and stop you from using any other store. Just having the biggest audience doesn’t make them gatekeepers to the market.
I never see people talking about what valve should change other than lowering the 30% cut, but arbitrarily forcing that would set a bad precedent.
Instead of virtue signalling here’s reasonable things Valve could do:
- allow developers to chose what features of steam they use for each game, allowing them to lower the cut by individually opting out of forums, workshop, cloud saves, achievements, inventory items etc
- offer a purchase = one time download with no drm (still legally one copy) for the closest thing to “owning” a digital game
- allow someone to inherit a steam account
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure proton is free to use and you can install stores and games not from steam on a Steam Deck, so again I really don’t know what they’re gatekeeping.
Deceive Inc. is such a good game. Charming characters and an art style that really immerses you in a fun way. They learnt a lesson really quickly that’s taken so many other games years to get right - buff the weaker, less fun stuff rather than nerfing the fun, overused things.
It’s just a shame that the multiplayer only market is so saturated at the moment with games trying to monopolise your attention. To even get people to try it is difficult due to the entry cost - which is a fair £17.
Not a silly question! The answer is technically yes, but not really.
Considering there are still sites that store plaintext passwords, there has to be some that just hash it and call it a day. For those, once you crack the hash, you know everyone with the same hash has the same password. Any real site does some more complex stuff to “personalise” each hashed password.
The real issue is when you reuse the password and it gets cracked once, people will try that with your email for other leaks and live sites. If a lot of people use the same password (like “password123”), they’re likely to try it as one of the first guesses to crack any new leaks.
I’m oversimplifying my already oversimplified knowledge of basic cryptography, but it’s a really interesting topic!
HOLY SHIT you have no idea how long I have been trying to remember this game. A cousin showed it to me when I was young and I loved it. Next time I saw him he’d forgotten, and I never could find it when I finally got a PC!
I can’t believe it’s been under my nose this whole time (Paladins fan) and it makes complete sense. Thank you for unlocking a core memory 🙏
Everything about this project is amazing, but the documentation is something else. It is written so perfectly concise and yet easy to understand, gives example code just when you’d need it (and 90% of pages have C# variants and includes notes on how it may differ!) and so you just walk away knowing exactly what to do, or with a link to another useful, beautifully written page with what you actually were looking for instead.
I used to think Unity had good documentation, but now that I’ve seen this it’s just on a whole new level. It also genuinely makes me weep when I go back to work in a proprietary engine with such scarce notes that it’s easier to look for other places it’s used and spend a day writing your own for the poor souls who come after…
TL;DR Whoever writes the docs, I love you
I used to really love this game. It has so much potential to be more than a battle royale, but it took like 4 years to get a permanent non BR gamemode. Battle passes only work if your players don’t get burnt out… And don’t get me started on collection events 2: electric boogaloo, this time with more gambling!
As a casual who didn’t start playing shooter games until late, if it wasn’t for SBMM I wouldn’t be playing them at all.
The real evil is engagement based matchmaking. I don’t want to beat players even newer than me every time I haven’t won in 20 games, and I certainly don’t want to be steamrolled by players who have been playing their whole lives when the same happens to them.
This sounds like Osvaldatore’s Apex source is being sniffed out. It’s just believable enough that the opportunity to be the guy to leak TF|3 was too exciting to pass up.
I hope one day they’ll have the courage to actually make TF|3 but I imagine there would be few who worked on the original left at Respawn. I know a bunch of big names left when I played Apex a ton from launch to two years back or so.