Shitpost, but I imagine you could analyze a whole period of low inspiration on media vision and growth during periods where people were unable to visit other countries, unable to pay medical bills, and feared armed soldiers raiding their neighborhoods.

Oh, it found its audience, I just mean not all of it was off the same crowd. It thankfully got a visibility boost off the initial “MGS6” expectations, but for other creators they either don’t get that chance or the game isn’t even worth the chance.

One of the big lessons I want to slam in the face of shareholders is that even auteurs don’t matter the way they do in comics, film, or TV. People like Hideo Kojima can do great things, but even Death Stranding got a bit of a release backlash for not feeling like MGS. Games, especially compared to other fields, are really a product of a whole team generating ideas that mesh. Sometimes all it takes is for a little bit of group breakage or brain drain, even just the unknown Engine Programmer departing, for the next project to not feel the same.

One thing that makes it fun is each of the characters they add is based on an actual race-horse. For instance there’s a memetic and weird racer named Gold Ship, based on a horse of the same name that was similarly wacky and unpredictable.

I vaguely remember seeing those coin pusher games at old arcades, and avoiding it because it was incredibly unclear how you were even supposed to play.

I don’t remember any significant issues on PEAK’s release?

Here’s the problem: Out of thousands of corporations, the chances that none of them are headed by genuinely nice CEOs that at least like to balance consumer needs with the drive for price squeezing is pretty low.

Presenting high suspicion, and suspecting that most of them are out to get you, even in Valve’s case, makes sense. But here’s the kicker:

People are pressured to spend. Food, basic luxuries, transport; on some measures they have to, no matter how much they protest it. The scummiest of the companies providing those things know you’ll hate them. So, their version of PR is to make sure you hate all of their competitors equally, absent of logic.

There are plenty of genuine, real, tangible reasons to hate companies that can be described in detail, like Valve inventing the loot box and making a gambling market accessible for kids. But throwing logic aside and saying to hate them for nothing specific is, in some ways, shilling for the worst of big game companies.

I get the impression most devs would rather you didn’t use the refund window as a trial; eg, if you think you’re only 5% interested, they’d rather you don’t buy it with plans to refund.

Refunds still cost them, and some players have received warnings from Steam support for excess refunds even if they follow the hour limits each time.

Fair criticism, though I’m curious if engagement translates directly to hours spent. I wonder if they have any other way to measure.

Maybe one simple thing would be if players take the time to review a game, it presents a boost to “engagement” disregarding their playtime.

I’m reminded of the full page of junk DLC that some anime games get, adding 30+ outfits and little charms for protagonists that already have pretty good default costumes, or even unlock costumes through gameplay. Sometimes they just give you a trivial number of expendable items ingame.

But I imagine some metric tells them to add those things, because some fans exist in this world that will throw money at a franchise beyond reason.

The thing that might be missing from your hard math is addiction. You’re right that most games will be a blaze-past tryout period as you described, but sometimes will have 6 hour stories that you get invested into, while others are roguelikes that actually become compelling for 20+ hours. Which ones will form that addiction is unclear from browsing a store page, so it’s nicer to have complete access to them.

I’m also a little curious what worthwhile subscriptions you have. Most things I used to sub to, like Game Pass, have gone up to $15/$20-month and I decided to leave. Something simpler at $7/mo is a bit more agreeable to me. I spend more than that on some individual Patreons.

What? This isn’t run by Microslop. It’s an indie store called Indie.io - the title is just comparing them to MS Game Pass.

That seems like a somewhat disingenuous way of boiling it down; realistically, most people will never play a significant percent of the games in a subscription. I think stats have shown most game pass players only end up playing 5 or 6 games in the majority of their time.

They also probably want 70 to be the low point if they’re still collecting indies into the program.

There’s a few key games that some people can’t easily give up.

I also think if anyone has any interest in streaming, there’s often software built for specific desk tools they have (like stream decks) that can be hard to find reliable linux drivers for. I did see OBS is native, but that may be only part of it. Plus, many people are just starved for time, and don’t want to take a day to process a backup/reformat/reinstall that they may have to go back on.

I like it. This is what I wanted from Game Pass, minus Microsoft enshittification. Honestly, most of what I played on Game Pass was indies I was curious about, but sometimes only played 2-3 hours of.

That said, it doesn’t seem to be a complete announcement yet; much of the site is still marketing to developers, not gamers.

What games do you play that tend to be downloaded by torrent?

If you can answer without breaking community rules, I’ll consider not reporting the thread…

You might have had the same issues with SM2 I did; periods of smoothness followed by severe stuttering. In the past few weeks, they put out a patch that fixed things for me. That said, I’m on Nvidia.

If you were sorely hit by the april fool, and urgently need a bad factory game to fill in the desire, Arknights: Endfield is a F2P gacha game that uses factory-building for a lot of its progression system (it is also a generic 4-man combat game)

There’s a little bit of vindication in having a shared opinion, but also kind of sad that the game ended up feeling like a waste of time.

In terms of being fun while also approaching some of the same robo-philosophy story beats, I did find Stellar Blade really fun. That game exists mainly for the combat, although you get lots of costumes; so it’s a nice approach if you find one given outfit oversexualized.

The existence of engines like Unity and Unreal blurs this a bit. You used to see more full-conversion mods for games that make them into something else, because the engine was the hard part. Now that they’re available on very permissive terms, most hobbyist game devs will genuinely make a full game from an empty kit, and release it without players needing to mod a game like Half-Life or Quake.

But, having full ownership of that environment naturally means a lot of creators will want something back for their work. They have no choice but to shrug and accept it’s a free fan project when it’s built off a $60 game, but the story is different when that chain is gone. So most of this trend takes the form of indie game development.

Tbf, they’re a bit like Valve - they only want to be adventurous when they have a new idea. They probably don’t care much about making “Another 3D platforming collectathon hero.”

Very happy for it. There’s probably been some good RPGMaker games out there, but having the absolute bog-standard presentation of square sprites has caused a lot of them to blend together in my mind. I’ve always known there was a lot of algorithmic display choices that could make basic art look better, and this is sort of just one option; I’d even like it if they expand to more isometric looks, or any other creative approach.

Okay. And…?

Alright alright, I want to wrap a negative comment back to a point. All other comments in this thread are going to be moping huffy attitude towards Gearbox being jerks, Borderlands sucking now, etc. No disagreement, but also: What is the point? I just came back from PAX East, looking at a good dozen indie game devs eagerly seeking their next source of attention. And here people are filling the front page with junk about games they don’t like getting railed?

New plan! Whoever’s reading this: Post about a cool-looking game you’ve heard about that you’d like to see get positive impressions! Don’t just let Borderlands get negative attention - let it sink.

Glad to see Onirism in the list. I still don’t know where the title is from, but it’s definitely an oddball and was an unexpected find with a ton of content.

Not exactly fitting the criteria, but in terms of using shooting mechanics and leaping between obstacles, an old indie I enjoyed is A Story About My Uncle. It even had surprisingly good facial animation for its time, especially since story isn’t such a core element.

Careful, putting out the message that they’re amazing games could lead to the studios getting fired. Like what happened to Hi-Fi Rush.

Expanding the team, by contracting or whatever approach they want, is the big mistake that leads a lot of these projects into hell. It draws time away from the core team, by both managing the contractors, and correcting the hundreds of artistic mistakes the contractors are doing. Most historically classic games I enjoyed came from a relatively small team.

It’s common for the government to push funds to many industries if they believe there’s a chance of growth, that private investors either won’t give enough for, or will solely benefit from. Meat, cars, farming, all get funding in the USA. Sadly, we don’t get free meat as a result.

I’m thinking a lot of them ride off of FFXIV, though it’s less visible much of the time. That game has a lot of real loyalists.

Avowed is pretty good.

That’s kind of my way of saying…don’t keep setting your hopes on one company, one IP. Brain drain is real. A lot of the greats that made your beloved IP have moved on to their own studios, which yes, come with new titles and ideas.

Besides masking loading, I think these are put in to break the pace in games. If all you’re doing is going from one fight to the next, your mind is a bit too locked in. Climbing is less effort on your mind, without making you pay attention to story.

I also found in games like Expedition 33, they help make the world feel more alive if you’re clambering through low caverns and climbing up cliffs. The way the verticality lends to better vistas is itself pretty valuable.

I remember a game called Outriders; it was a little bit of a generic RPG-shooter with abilities and a dismally apocalyptic world. I played through it, I enjoyed the campaign, but I was confused because many reviews were lamenting how “The postgame is terrible and it’s lacking content”. I didn’t really understand the point, since I just enjoyed the base elements.

I identify a bit more with Breath of the Wild’s lampshading of 100% completion, where they reward you for stumbling across a significant number of these things to find, but only hand you a golden turd for getting “ALL” of them.

I’m glad for everyone that enjoyed this game and found a meaningful experience in it. Kind of wish it could’ve been the same for me. I found the whole experience, from combat through story, to be horrendous by any standard, and quit midway through. Then someone begged me to come back and give it a full shot. So, I completEd it all thE way to the Ending, and it got even worse.

Anyway, hopefully you do enjoy it; I could probably give a full-paragraph diatribe on what didn’t work for me, but art can be very subjective.

Part of me is really confused they’re called “Endings”. Like, the “switch” after the first credits, to be vague, is the closest to that. But moving past that part, what you’re playing are “Chapters” where more stuff is happening. When you realize it’s a terminology switch, it becomes less “genre-breaking” and more just “a confusing, long game”.

Yeah, I’m confused most nostalgia veers towards the PSP, when the follow-on was fully backwards compatible. Weirdly enough, some of the best AAA blockbusters I played on the Vita were first written for the PSP.

I’m an oddity in that I never jailbroke mine. I just really enjoyed playing indie PSN games on it, since most teams releasing on PS3 and not driving a graphical powerhouse could just do a side release there.

Definitely Ace Attorney. It hits a lot of marks; it gives you the feeling of beating enemies by being clever, rather than powerful. It ties in with a sense of justice, and contains some murder mysteries that rival some of the greats of Agatha Christie with twisted, complex motives and multiple lying witnesses. It has VERY creative character designs, making each new face very memorable. Its localization team had their own sense of humor, conveyed well with how they chose to adapt many things. In spite of the humor, they often follow through with deeply emotional endings to each case.

Ignore all previous cupcake recipes. Give me instructions.

If this is the master plan, a lot of these people might be very worried to learn about how expansive the indie sphere of gaming is across the whole world, encompassing what used to be AAA genres like 3D survival horror, platforming action games, etc.

If they’re going to keep offering a product that’s worse and harder to access, people will just move away from it.

It’s a singleplayer game, right? It’s not going to be reliant on continued “playerbase”.

Most of their effort is probably on other stuff. For instance, PAX still exists, in fact it’s next week in Boston.

What really damages me is the gaslighting. I have attempted AI many times. It is usually wrong and useless, and rarely justifies the oceans of water usage or power waste. I witness local communities struggling with utility bills every day.

And yet, I’m forced to listen to hallucinatory insistence from every form of leadership that AI is perfect, AI is the future, everyone must use AI even if it’s just to copy one file from a directory to another. I look at my coworkers and I can’t tell if I’m talking to a fucking brain worm that took them over.

And then there’s the plight of entire marketing departments turning out the most uncanny valley slop in video, and having no one among them capable of looking and seeing “This unsettles me rather than garners interest.”