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One problem is that in a world without major problems, stakes have to be low (which is perfectly fine and can make for an engaging story) or an external threat has to be introduced. The latter can easily feel forced or disconnected with the world.
I wonder how it would be to have a nonlinear game set in two time periods. One is a solarpunk-ish idyll under threat (with the protagonist’s actions focused on protecting it) and the other is a preceding industrial dystopia (with the protagonist’s actions focused on effecting change for the better).
Throughout the game the player first learns that the dystopian protagonist’s actions did succeed in changing the world for the better but also that the threats faced by the idyllic period are consequences of those actions. The message is that even ideal decisions can have negative effects down the line, “happily ever after” endings don’t really exist, and happiness requires maintenance. Yet, change for the better is both possible and worth the effort.
Not everyone needs to talk to everyone. But many people need to talk to many people.
Microsoft had to abandon the initial Vista project and start over because they couldn’t manage a team of 1000 developers. People working on adjacent features had to go through so many layers of management that in some cases the closest shared manager was Bill Gates. For something like getting a change in the shutdown code reflected in the shutdown dialog.
Huge teams become exponentially harder to manage efficiently.
It’ll be marketed as Skyrim with all LLM text and end up as Oblivion with prefab text chunks.
Even disregarding the fact that current LLMs can’t stop hallucinating and going off track (which seems to be an inherent property of the approach), they need crazy accounts of memory. If you don’t want the game to use a tiny model with a bad quantization, you can probably expect to spend at least 20 gigs of VRAM and a fair chunk of the GPU’s power on just the LLM.
What we might see is a game that uses a small neural net to match freeform player input to a dialogue tree. But that’s nothing like full LLM-driven dialogue.
System Shock (the remake) with a cut-down version of the Ironman mod to provide randomization. It’s only slight loot randomization so there’s no major pathing changes but it’s fun nonetheless.
I like randomizers. They add some additional replay value to already good games. I must’ve played through randomized Bloodstained a down times already – and twice that for Super Metroid. (And then there’s the beautiful mess that is randomized Borderlands 2. I don’t think I’m ever going to finish a run but man are they wild.)
Good point. If you look at the Yakuza games, they’re typically set in a little entertainment district. The map isn’t huge but it’s not supposed to be. It feels the correct size for a busy little part of town.
Meanwhile, yeah, Fallout 3 gave me the impression that even before the war the DC metropolitan area was home to maybe a thousand people.
I’m not really a fan of MMORPGs, both due to the gameplay (MMOs are grindy by nature and the hotkey-driven autocombat of most MMORPGs isn’t interesting enough to sustain that for me) and because of often aggressive monetization.
I do like some MMOs in other genres, though. Path of Exile is an action RPG with drop-in multiplayer and a rudimentary built-in trading system. It’s basically Diablo 3 in good. Plus, its monetization system is one of the fairest I’ve seen so far, with the only MTXes that offer gameplay benefits being on sale literally every other weekend.
Path of Exile 2 (currently in closed beta) is basically the same with a tweaked skill system and a soulslike dodge roll mechanic that you’re expected to use. Pretty decent, a bit slower-paced than the first one.
I should also pick up Warframe again one of these days. The repetitive nature of MMOs isn’t as bad when it’s a mobility-focused third-person shooter. And IIRC, there’s not much you can get with MTX that you can’t also get through gameplay somehow. Plus, it’s also a game that you can just play singleplayer if you want.
Using AI driven software is willful negligence.
Not necessarily. Neural nets are excellent at fuzzy matching tasks and make for great filters – but nothing more. If you hook one up to a crawler you get a fairly effective way of identifying websites that match certain criteria. You can then have people review those matches to see if infringement happened. It’s basically a glorified search tool.
Of course if you skip the review step you’re doing the equivalent of running a Google search for your brand name and DMCAing all of the search results. That would be negligent.
There is no indication that Funko/BrandShield did that, however. They say that infringing content was found and we have strong indications that a now-deleted Itch project did contain official screenshots of Funko Fusion so the infringement threshold might have been met. Their takedown request was apparently made in good faith.
Now, why the entire domain was taken down, that is the question. It might be a miscommunication or they might’ve mailed the hosting provider directly. I can imagine everything from human error to faulty processes as the root cause here. What I don’t believe is that they made a high-level decision to nuke Itch.
Who needs to face the consequences depends on who screwed up here. For now we’ll have to make do with both Funko and BrandShield taking a PR hit.
Exactly. If this was “Marathon: Return to Deimos” or “Marathon: Battleroid Arena” or even “Marathon Infinity Plus One” I wouldn’t complain. Much.
But just taking the name (and logo) of the original one? The game that started Bungie’s path towards being one of the big names of the FPS genre? That’s like saying they went straight from Pathways Into Darkness to Halo. That’s not honoring Marathon, it’s a soulless recycling of an old IP.
My vent cores feel distinctly unblasted.
Man, I hate it when they make new games that have exactly the same name as an older game by the same company. And this one’s not even a remake. I have no idea if Marathon (1994) and Marathon (upcoming) even play in the same universe but they don’t seem to have much in common gameplay-wise. Ugh.
Makes me wanna install M1A1 Aleph One (didn’t know it does M1 directly these days) and shoot some Pfhor, though.
“You finished a computer game, Atticus.”
The truth was a burning green crack through my brain.
Credits scrolling by, a reminder of the talent behind a just-finished journey. The feeling of triumph, slowly replaced by the creeping grayness of ordinary life.
I had finished a computer game. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.
Speak for yourself. I’m going to migrate all of my 22-bit RSA keys to a longer key length. And not 24 bits, either, given that they’re probably working on a bigger quantum computer already. I gotta go so long that no computer can ever crack it.
64-bit RSA will surely be secure for the foreseeable future, cost be damned.
True, although that has happened with F/OSS as well (like with xz or the couple times people put Bitcoin miners into npm packages). In either case it’s a lot less likely than the software simply ceasing to be supported, becoming gradually incompatible with newer systems, and rotting away.
Except, of course, that I can pick up the decade-old corpse of an open source project and try to make it work on modern systems, despite how painful it is to try to get a JavaFX application written for Java 7 and an ancient version of Gradle to even compile with a recent JDK. (And then finally give up and just run the last Windows release with its bundled JRE in Wine. But in theory I could’ve made it work!)
Note that this specifically talks about proprietary platforms. Locally-run proprietary freeware has entirely different potential issues, mostly centered around the developer stopping to maintain it. Locally-run F/OSS has similar issues, actually, but lessened by the fact that someone might later pick up the project and continue it.
Admittedly, platforms are very common these days because the web is an easily accessible cross-platform GUI toolkit SaaS is more easily monetized.
Honestly, it’s still the F310 for me. I have mine since the early 2010s and it’s still working perfectly. Those things are built like tanks and between XInput and DirectInput are compatible with just about any PC game of the last forty years, no extra software required. Also, they’re dirt cheap.
Honorable mention to the F710, the wireless version. While Windows 10’s USB stack unfortunately broke compatibility with it (causing randomly dropped inputs), Linux does not have that problem.
In my experience rear-mounted sensors are the most accurate, closely followed by under-screen sensors. Side-mounted sensors are utter garbage.
Accuracy isn’t even that much of an issue, it’s that the side-mounted ones are far too easy to accidentally trigger just by handling the phone. I can’t count the number of times my last two phones told me I had three incorrect fingerprint attempts after I had just pulled them out of my pocket.
Then I got a Pixel and I have no more such issues and virtually perfect accuracy. Same on a Samsung tablet. Same on an old phone I had where the power button was on the rear and had a full-size sensor.
Basically, I’m perfectly happy with any front- or rear-mounted full-size sensor. Those tiny side-mounted ones suck.
And even if we accept that it was always intended to be PSN-only and they decided to launch before PSN integration was done, the fact that multiplayer is entirely dependent on them providing a service is troubling. That’s how we lose games.
I can still launch Rainbow Six 3 and play multiplayer with my friends because it has the server built in and allows direct connect via IP address. You can’t do that with a live service game; once the official servers are down the game becomes (partially or completely) lost media.
Evil is usually about power and influence and that’s something players typically don’t get to have in large quantities – otherwise the game quickly starts behaving much differently. Why go on adventure when you can just hire adventures to do it for you while you work to further your influence, after all?
A TTRPG can try to mutate to accommodate this (probably using a pile of ad hoc house rules) but a CRPG world need to have all that programmed in. And the players might not like the genre shift.
If you don’t have power you can still be an effective hero but as a villain your only option is to try to backstab your way to the top – but if you can make any substantial progress there we end up with the aforementioned problems. If you can’t make that progress you’re basically stuck roleplaying Iznogoud and few people want a gameplay loop that deliberately leads nowhere.
What can work is an evil character playing along with heroes for their own reasons. I once had a TTRPG character who was a SHODAN clone (inhabiting a human body via invasive cyberware). My SHODAN was perfectly aware of how vulnerable she was and how she needed allies. As a result she wasn’t nice but fiercely loyal to the party, deferring to their judgement on most matters because that was most likely to keep her alive.
She still ended up getting written out when she turned out too annoying to play. I hope she’s happy with the space station I bought her.
Now the big question is how many patents are relevant and who owns them. And even if it turns out to have cheap licensing, beating HDMI won’t be easy, as DisplayPort demonstrates. Technological superiority doesn’t mean shit if you can’t overcome HDMI’s network effect.