Encrypt-Keeper
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I’m forced to see the game’s lack of a manipulative business model due to the objective absence of any and all manipulation in the business model. I cannot choose to see something that isn’t there, in much the same way that I can’t choose to see the earth as being flat.
No characters’ story modes are locked in Skullgirls.
Both Double and Valentines story modes are locked until you complete the story mode of every single other non-dlc character.
Why do you think the costumes in Magicka didn’t have a battle pass tied to them but Helldivers II does?
Because progression and rewards are an integral part of video games and their appeal and have been since the early days of gaming. You unlock weapons, upgrades, and cosmetics in the base game of Helldivers 2 because it’s fun. Why on earth would they remove the progression systems for new content? Paid instant-unlock content for games is cheap and devalues the content itself. The gratification of using a cool skin you worked to unlock is intrinsically tied to the appeal of video games.
What you’re telling me here is that you would actually balk at one of the Skyrim DLCs like Dragonborn because in order to access the content inside of it you have to actually play the game that you like enough to pay for more content for, but when they released the “horse armor” DLC you looked at that and just said “Hell yeah”? If that is truly your opinion then so be it. But you need to understand that you are one of very few people who would hold it.
The person who put the game down earlier because they are bored of the game is not going to spend money on additional content that they aren’t interested in playing. And if they do, and have fun, then they aren’t being manipulated. They’re having fun with a product they purchased (just like all video games). Removing the FOMO part absolutely means it isn’t manipulative because that is quite literally the only thing that makes battle passes manipulative in the first place. For you to argue against this is to argue that all video games are manipulative because they were all created to get you to play them more than before you were before you bought them.
The game I’ve put the most time into, on Steam at least, is Skullgirls. It has no progression whatsoever.
Not true, there are a couple of characters you unlock story modes for after beating it with other characters. Guess you’re being manipulated into playing the game more, huh?
This argument of yours is completely devoid of any rational thought.
They have rewards tied to… playing the game. Just like every other video game ever made. That’s how video games work. The only way for there to be “an incentive to keep playing beyond when you want to” is by making the additional content limited in time to generate FOMO or worry that you’ll have wasted your money… which in this case is not happening at all. There is no FOMO because you can buy any of the war bonds whenever you want, and complete them whenever you want. You paid money for something you will keep forever. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That is literally the best possible approach to new content. By your reasoning, every video game ever made is manipulative because they made the game and put… content in it to get you to play the game more than before you bought the game.
“Buying the rewards directly to play in the game” on the other hand is the wrong approach. Why would you prefer to play the game less? If you don’t want to be playing the game why are you spending more money on it?
The distinction is very much universally accepted. The reason CRPG is used synonymously with RPG in that article title is because CRPGs were at the time of their inception what an RPG was. You can tell by reading the introductory description and the characteristics section that what is being described and named are tabletop-like CRPGs specifically.
You’ll notice that in the section that defines ARPGs that they’re referred to as a hybrid genre. They are related to CRPGs which is why they’re on the page, as they borrow elements from CRPGs but they are their own genre that by that hybridization are distinct from the traditional CRPG.
This is reinforced by the Wiki link I sent you which is a more cut and dried succinct list of game genres, where it lists ARPGs and CRPGs as two distinct genres.
A CRPG is the video game sister-genre of the table top role playing game.
“Computer Role Playing Game” doesn’t mean “A Role Playing Game that’s on the Computer”, the word computer is used here specifically to distinguish it from tabletop, meaning it’s intrinsically tied to tabletop RPGs.
So if a game plays with very similar mechanics to a tabletop rpg (Turn based, tile or distance based movement, top down or isometric views, unique player-created characters, plus the other hallmarks of the greater RPG genre), then you can call it a CRPG. Games like XCom are closer to being CRPGs than the likes of Skyrim, though it wouldn’t itself qualify because it’s not an RPG.
Games like Skyrim are well established in the “Action RPG” genre which is intentionally distinct from the CRPG genre so the burden of supportive evidence and reasoning would really be on you to try and make the claim that Skyrim is a CRPG.
Wikipedias list of video game genres has a brief distinction explanation. The most important being turn-based vs real time combat.
Something that’s being heavily overlooked in this thread is the difference between a CRPG and an RPG/ARPG. I’m not sure which one OP is referring to, but if you want an easy guide, Fallout 1-2 are CRPGs, Fallouts 3-4 are not. Skyrim, the Witcher, latter Assassin’s Creed games, Elden Ring, etc are not CRPGS. Games like Divinity Original Sin 1-2, Baldurs Gate 3, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder, etc are CRPGS
The undeniable top spot has to go to the Battlefield 1 trailer, which stands at 74m views over the last 8 years.
The Halo 3 Believe trailer is up there as well.
A personal favorite of mine is the God of War: Ascension Super Bowl Ad
Honorable mention goes to a really solid recent trailer as well is the one for the long-awaited release of Satisfactory 1.0
That’s my point. If any MMO is going to be tightly designed to utilize the abilities of a platform like AWS, you’d think it’d be the one owned by the company that owns AWS. At the very least because it’s an opportunity to flex the capabilities of AWS as an MMO back end. AGS is not AWS, but you’d assume there would be a team from AWS assigned to work with them specifically, as well as the fact that AGS doesn’t have to consider cost as a limiting factor when utilizing AWS as a back end, like any other MMO developer would. It’s a huge leg up they had over every other MMORPG developer, and still somehow managed to screw it up.
The world’s 1st most popular cloud infrastructure company was also unable to deploy their own software on their own cloud infrastructure. I remember just being in total disbelief when New World, the Amazon-developed MMORPG struggled for WEEKS (Months?) with server capacity issues. Like… you guys own ALL the servers, the main selling point of which are their ability to dynamically scale to demand.
As a fellow management sim and automation game enjoyer, I understand your love for Rimworld and why Stardew does not scratch that itch. But the appeal of Stardew is I think just what you’ve figured out for yourself, it’s the anti-management, anti-automation game. The part of the brain that Stardew taps into is the one that likes to make things with your hands. It’s a bit more tangible feeling of involvement which is its own allure that is wholly distinct from the one where you watch a bunch of cogs turn in a machine.
I love playing Satisfactory and Factorio and Rimworld, and at work I spend a lot of time automating and analyzing and alerting. Stardew is the game I play when I’m burnt the hell out and I don’t want to diagnose why the automation I’ve written isn’t doing x thing or giving me Y result. I just buy seed, plant seed, water, and harvest. There’s very little planning and virtually no troubleshooting. You just put X effort in and get X benefit back. It’s why so many IT guys retire and become goat farmers.
If that’s your definition of a low bar, then it hasn’t really fallen so much as it’s always been that low. From the beginning, games have gone without cutscenes, plot, even dialogue. Many of the greatest and most beloved games of this decade and the last have had sub par stories, and often times no plot, cutscenes, or characters to speak of at all, and yet they’re some of the best of all time. They’re three of the least important things for a game to have after all, especially the Borderlands games, where the story is little more than a vehicle to deliver more gameplay, and the gameplay in 3 is the best of the series. Thats the only thing that really matters when it comes to people wanting to play games.
As a Borderlands sequel, or just as a game? I’ve never actually heard anyone complain about the gameplay. It’s the same gameplay the series is known for but even more refined, with tons of QoL improvements. It is quite literally the best in its class with no real equal.
The only thing I can imagine about your friends is that they didn’t get through much of the gameplay because they were turned off by the horrifically bad writing, cringelord villains, and a sense of humor firmly stuck 15 years in the past, which I would not blame them for.
I think the thing to note here is that ISPs roll those things out fully aware that hardly anyone who pays for that will actually USE that amount of data. They don’t want a killer app for it, they just want you to think you need that much data, and then never actually use it. In fact there are some places where regardless of your bandwidth, you have a monthly data allotment. This game represents a shift into super high bandwidth usage for the general non-technical population. If everyone and their mom starts actually using all the bandwidth they pay for, can the ISP deal with that? If you don’t have a monthly data limit, do they start to roll those out to you and your area?
With the rise of private equity, you don’t even have to go public to sell out anymore. So many companies in operation today are empty shells puppeted by private equity firms who buy any company in any industry just to squeeze every last bit of profit out of them before throwing them away.
Just look at the veterinary industry and the mass disappearance of vet practices owned by the doctors who work there.
I’ve played it within the last few weeks. Like I said, deep as a puddle. Lots of systems have been bolted onto the side, sure. But the gameplay loop remains largely unchanged since launch. None of the added features integrate into the experience in any kind of meaningful way, they’re all just distractions, little side excursions. Base building? Cool, what are they for? Oh gloried fast travel points. Their primary practical use is to help you build more bases. There’s no real rhyme or reason to engage with any of the new systems added. They’re just novelties you toy around with briefly because they’re new.
Yeah the difference between being public and private disappears when the “private” part just means a private equity firm.