Considering steam had it at “overwhelmingly negative” reviews a while after release… It’s maybe somewhere between 😁

Indeed. This sounded much like an agenda and not like science.

Yeah exactly…and it was - who would’ve thought - 1.5x the content. At best. Just stretched to fill the land. Everyone thought (and still seems to think) that size is everything in an open world. Only procedural games like No mans sky beat this with even less soul. While being technically fascinating, they’re ultimately boring once you’ve seen all the “ingredients”.

Good point about the travel in KCD. And yes, i actually found the battle in KC1 extremely unsatisfying. KC2 had it a bit better. But still, my patience grew thin over the last decade, i must admit :-) For me, personally, that skills-approach doesn’t went well with an RPG. Skills belongs to things like Destiny(2) (which i love btw), but in an RPG it should be about the character I’m playing, not ME. As it’s literally in the name RPG :) But no complaints, I love everything that is not US-centric for a change and KC totally wasn’t.

Totally agreeing with you on the map-size-topic. I really hate the bigger-and-bigger-trend that usually (logically?) comes with less and less value. Even gothic did fall victim to the trend. G2 was “triple the size!!!” (or whatever, but THAT was the leading argument) And G3 was “EVEN BIGGER!” …and what was it? more walking, less exploring, less interesting stuff, just large plains of nothingness filled with filler-mobs. Nonetheless G2 was absolutely great, and had a fucking great Addon (when addons actually were like 1/3rd more of the base game, not just cut content resold as “DLCs”). G3 was …good.

Also questing in G1 was really great. And actually felt absolutely fitting. Not some “kill a dragon” shit but “go clean the toilet you piece of shit”. Or “steal this”, then you steal it, and they give you a beating not a reward :-) You really work your way up. Every weapon-, armor- or skill-upgrade REALLY mattered and changed everything. Back then it also had a fantastic unexpected gimmick in it (which now is removed due to licenses): Suddenly in act 2, a famous midage-band had a “live-concert”. Back then it was one of my favourite bands and suddenly they perform in game…that was a chin-dropper :) And it was one of the (or the?) first game(s) that had NPCs do have an actual job/routine. They ate, drink, pee, work, sleep. Ah you see, I could go on and on …

Skyrim was very vast, but at least they really tried to fill it meaningful. Most of it. So exploring mostly paid off. But without mods it was just okay-ish anyway. But it’s THE game that got the greatest mod-community there ever was (and sadly probably will be). Last time i spent like hundreds of hours modding until i ended up with like 2000 mods, kid you not. Didn’t actually PLAY for half as long :-) BG3 was also incredibly good. Very memorable!

Oh right! I forgot about the wc3 mod which spawned a genre. So yeah, another example.

Oh kingdom come. In theory I would have highly enjoyed the last one. But I only managed 5 hours or so. It’s just too “realistic” for my taste somehow. It even managed to be realistically boring most trips. Not in the sense of “omg this is how I’m gonna die” but more like “this is a forest. And that’s about it”. If that makes sense? It also felt artificially hard, like the souls-games. Hard for the sake of being hard. Maybe I’m just getting too old but it didn’t really click with me. Sadly so, will try again though.

The oblivion remake really deserved the label. I expected some new ai-upscaled textured slapped on the old shit, but no. Completely redone from the ground. The hate it gets mostly stems from the modding-community (which actually kept those games afloat. Without mods they’d all be long gone to, well, oblivion). Same with skyrim. Another new base to re-make eeeeeeverything. Fragmenting the modders AGAIN. Despite that, if you never played oblivion and don’t wanna fiddle with mods, there’d be no reason to use the old one.

Remakes are hard to do anyway. Either you fuck up or you can never meet nostalgia. Also you get cussed at for doing nothing new OR for doing something new. Gothic new could be super awesome but would never ever be Gothic again. Like playing half-life today. It’s never the same, no matter how great it is. But a great remake at least gets the franchise floating again due to younger people who can enjoy it the same. Maybe.

As for time I am probably more blessed, I game at least 5hrs a day since the Atari 2600. Besides my servers, smart-home and wifey my great passion 😁

But…Gothic isn’t a big open world. It’s like the size of bg3’s tutorial. If even. It’s just not empty wasteland. Every step has an importance and no hand holding. You learned where not to go by dying 😁 By today’s standards that map-size would not fly. But it was nore than enough. Still is. It respects your time. Quick save and exit anytime and continue exactly there. How it should be.

As if I’d care about some murican’s opinion 😁 Now go back to work/school.

True. If you weren’t knees deep into the scene it all went by unnoticed unless it went nuclear.

The aoe thing wasn’t too bad tbh. It wasn’t a standalone game, just a game mode, like a custom scenario. And it was kinda fun for a little while, but they added a full queue for it in the UI and everything. It was moderately popular for about two weeks, and now there’s a queue languishing that nobody ever uses. It was amusing.My current fear is also the remake of “Gothic”I only learnt about Gothic fairly recently, thanks to this really interesting video. I’m certainly hoping the remake does it justice, because it looks really interesting.

Lol. OK that is amongst the funnier things. But could’ve been. Counterstrike was once just a nod/gamemmode too.

If you’re not into RPG or not German,Polish or Russian (that seems to be only still active people who keep the original alive to this day) you might’ve missed it. It was a revelation like half-life back in the day. For once not USA-centric, it used a fitting harsh language (can only speak for the original german VO) for an original idea. You’re no superhero but just a regular are able to maybe lift a stick and kick a bug 😁 Small world but every item counted, blahblah I could go on for hours :-) With all modern updates and fanworks it still works and better than ever. Remake not sucking has low probability though. Expectations are most likely impossible to fulfill even if they do a true remake with no bullshit.

Luckily, as being no die-hard rts-fan, this went by me (or I just forgot…). But it sounds bad. My current fear is also the remake of “Gothic”. After all those many many years it really gets one.

Of course I don’t remember every flop. But also not every success. But if just checking AAA releases of the last 5 yrs, I could name a loooot of games with >40% bad reviews. It might still be a financial success though, and this is what sadly really counts. Especially established franchises usually just go down, in tendency. If something releases a part 4, my expectations are already at zero. The louder the hype, the worse the product.

I would have to think a while longer to name good games that also were hyped. Cyberpunk? Even through even that one got a lot of hate since release. All others that come to mind were Indis.

Luckily you actually already know the exact proportion of good vs bad games, and even over the last 3 decades. That is awesome.

And “never been easier”…yeah sure. Except we went from one-dude-did-it-all-in-a-week to hundreds of people working for years and spending even tons of millions of moneyz.

Nah, totally no nostalgia. I wish it would be just that and AAA was still good.

And yes, I did speak of “big money makers” AKA AAA. Also speak for yourself, but failures like e.g. duke nukem forever or even ET (on Atari) were memorable.

And? It was still awesome. Shit today is bad AND broken. Not so say it’s OK to release broken stuff. It sure ain’t.

Yes. With great regret I remember this 😔

As usual I won’t read shit about it, pirate it when it’s out. And if it doesn’t suck (no pun intended) I’ll buy. I’m fairly optimistic with this one though. The expectations surely are high, but it would be a horrible shame to fuck this great series up. Especially considering it’s kinda niche customer-base. It’s not the next multiplayer war-game or FIFA.

Sure. But there was a time where even AAA didn’t suck so much. Where a failure was memorable. Now the ones that are great are memorable. And I’m gaming since the Atari 2600. The amount of re-iterated boring crap, filled with micro-transactions, pre-order and ultra-mega-deluxe bundle with season pass. All that highly calculated to please the least common denominator.

Touché 😁

Please

Don’t

Suck

Like most major releases the past decade.

While I admire your view, and your points are all valid and better than mine after re-evaluating them, I couldn’t embrace the same optimism.

Wherever I look I just see a downward trend. People aren’t getting more stupid or more lazy. They got less and less time to worry about anything else than surviving. Especially in horrible places like the US or some other third world countries. With two jobs and three kids there’s no capacity to act upon wrongs in the gaming-industry. And those who are well off don’t care because they just throw enough money at it.

And those few, like me, who don’t need to worry about the former while not giving in to the latter are probably a minority.

It’s like Idiocracy…

I don’t say you’re wrong. You’re not. But your way just won’t work because noone cares, especially not those who profit from this. So that still leaves me with nothing beside dedicating my life to politics or just pirate the shit I can and not consume what I can’t pirate. Both are effectively meaningless, yes.

Can a boycott work? Sure. As a coordinated political action, the consumer-side equivalent of a strike. This takes just as much work and coordination as any other political activity.

I guess we might slightly miss each others point. It really really should not take “as much work” if only people would just not be dumb consumers only. If at least 20-30% would actually only buy shit when it’s not shit, even excluding your point with “not caring ENOUGH”, it would be enough in each case. But we won’t.

Microsoft is the Antichrist, but I need office!

I hate Apple’s isolation, but look at this sleek design!

I hate not owning games anymore, but steam has SPÖ many!

Netflix is the worst, but everyone saw this show hence I need to too!

etc. It just hurts to see the obvious and most simple solution to be so rarely effective. And I’m surely not the epitome of intelligence and knowledge.

I don’t get political because i don’t care enough. Already got enough hobbies to fill the day and no offspring to make this world a better place for.

And your point isn’t just exactly correct. Examples where wallet-voting indeed changed things that just come to mind:

• Netflix acc-sharing witchhunt. Salesdrop lead to back ruddering.

• #deleteuber-movement lead to 200k uninstalls and hence forced über to adapt

• Nestlé’s hideous water-scandal lead to effectively make them ditch the whole project

• EA and its battlefront 2’s microtransactions. Massive Säle drop made them change it.

• Bud light boycot seriously affected bud.

Probably more like those. Might not be a universally a viable tactic to vote with your wallet (and maybe even voice that) but often certainly is or was.

Oh I’m not a murican and already am protected as much as one could. Doesn’t change the point though.

Yet voting with my wallet is my local political action. Nothing else I could do besides actually getting involved with politics. Not my fault the majority doesn’t understand how they get screwed. If roughly 10-20% would actually not buy it, assuming they would have if it weren’t shite, it would matter a lot. 5-10% would already be noticeable.

So, according to your point, you could also just buy another one, doesn’t matter anyway. And any other critical customer, who wanted to skip it, could too. As long as we’re below the noticeable 5%-treshhold. “It’s not my fault I have to buy this switch, it’s the government’s lack of regulation!”

Sure, regulations would do it much better, but the best I can do is exactly that. Not consume the shit. Not my fault the vast majority are just unreflected consumers.

So your suggestion is that I should buy one too (Assuming i needed one) because my “vote” doesn’t matter anyway?

Sounds fine to me. But I bet there are a handful of “nice” exclusives.

Luckily I don’t have kids and hence don’t have to buy them such crap 😁

But yeah sure, I’m all in for regulations. But voting with your wallet is still the most basic way to say “lol no”. If I’d be hellbent on gaming on-the-go I’m sure there are alternatives that come close at least. If not, the I guess I’d carry a laptop around for that

Lol, why even buy such a piece of shit then? Even when in the EU, the fact they do this is enough.

A total shame. I do love to quickly “crack” my steam games. To either just play offline or keep an oder Version.

Nice interview!

I was a major in the scene back then when they all rose. Razor, fairlight and the unknown nonames. A time where you could sell a warez-cd for 200 moneyz and it all was IRC, FTP and BBS. The days with phones lines bills >1000 bucks because you HAD to call this one foreign board 😁

I miss these days… It was all about fun, friends and fame. Same with competitive gaming.

Definately one of the more wiser purchase-guys :-) I went a lil nuts when inventory-gifts were a thing. You know, doing what the corporations all do: Exploit globalism to my advantage. But for many years I rarey buy anything anymore, only if i REALLY intend to play it. I’m old, not wise :-)

Playing for an hour to see how shitty it is? Or actually bought to enjoy for manymany hours, as intended? Thought so 😁 For us peeps with way more than a few k games, 20% actually been played would be already the big numbers I’d guess.

Hmm sounds suspiciously like one of those sane people who buy a game and then have thousands of hours of fun with it. Get outta here 😁

But the vast majority can be played without steam. Mostly by force coughcough but still. I know, still no legal ownership.

Come on, none of us will ever play all their games. I’d bet around 2000 of my games on steam are some free keys or other incredibly cheap shit I wouldn’t touch with a 10m-pole. If I’d ever find them again in the library, that is.

But I admire your positivity and optimism 😁

Trying to list some I haven’t already read here:

Len’s Island. Will even be released the next days.

Everafter Falls

Necesse (also releasing soon)

Palworld

Enshrouded

While some might not be “chill farming” only, they could be set (or modded) to nearly no danger. Actually most (more recent) survival-games could be played that way. I do 😁

If just chill is mandatory:

Farming Together (or alone, part two also incoming)

AI is sweet and all,if we could only stop calling it that. It’s maybe “A” but most certainly not “I”.

Be fair. Wait for the p2w micro transactions after launch, then judge 😁

Me too. Having too many hobbies, too many games and a steam-backlog worth of like 50yrs continuous gaming 😂

Totally don’t care for mobile games, but this, for sure, is one very helpful resource to comb through this pile of rabble.

Don’t forget the far cry(4?) that ended after waiting 10 m after the villain said wait 😁