Blast Corps

Sorry you’re getting down voted but it’s fact. I work in the tech industry and I’ve got some friends in the games industry. Everyone uses AI in some way. People want to fool themselves into thinking it’s just a handful of mega corps but it’s being used in everything we consume in small ways we can’t see in the end result. The genie is out of the bottle and the line between what is AI and what isn’t AI is going to vary wildly from person to person.

Once again, what’s the value here. We only see AI when it’s someone who’s not very good with Mid Journey prompts. We’re getting to the point where people are using these tools in ways that no one will know the difference.

Content aware fill in photoshop has been around forever. AI.

If ask chat gpt what this unreal engine error message means. Al.

if get a quick llm made script to tune up Some physics, Al.

If the guy making the music generates some starter melodies. AI

If l generate a rock texture and clean it up myself to the point where no one knows. Al.

All of this is AI and all of this will go unseen to the end user, so once again we’ll be expecting developers to self report and only the honest ones will.

Here’s a test give yourself 1 or 2 seconds to make up your mind. https://www.sporcle.com/games/Raydon/image-real-or-ai-generated

It’s tough isn’t it and this is you analyzing the pixels, something we don’t do passively.

It’s already got a name, AGI… Artificial general intelligence

What’s the value here? This is based on the developer saying so and there’s no obligation to do so. Black Ops 6 is loaded with Gen AI, the loading screens are obviously Mid Journey like and some of the actors have been replaced by digital performances which was in the news. They won’t get tagged here for AI because it’s not in the description.

So basically this is going to just have people filtering out devs who are honest and realistically that’ll just be a few indie devs who had to use these tools because they’re a one man team that can’t afford artists.

I think we have to face the facts. Every game is going to be using these tools going forward. If you run a large studio and say no one use AI I bet you your artists are still speeding up making base textures. Your music guy is generating some starter melodies. Your writers are drafting up some filler to pad out the supplementary text.

These tools are as ubiquitous as photoshop (which has had content aware fill all the way back to CS-fucking-5) and unreal engine now (which has added it’s own AI features). The idea that’s there’s only a handful of shady individuals and mega-corps using these tools is naive.

Good god that is a hard headline to grok. I thought it had something to do with the actual day prior to something else.

I mean given the massive industry layoffs over the past few years developers are already pretty used to not having jobs.

I hate how developers are the ones attributed to game industry problems. Decisions like this almost never fall on the developers shoulders, specifically the ownership quote was from their subscription service director. You know… the guy whose job depends on you not wanting to own games.

I’m just waiting for aGameScout to drop a video on this one. He’s been doing excellent deep dives on every Tetris milestone

I have little faith in this. Neversoft doesn’t even exist anymore, they were merged into Infinity Ward to be just another COD grunt. Vicarious Visions who made the wonderful THPS 1+2 also don’t exist anymore and the team was merged into Blizzard to work on Diablo (maybe that’s why last season was a banger). On the plus side of all these closures, Robomodo who made all the worst Tony Hawk stuff (Ride, Shred, THPS HD, THPS 5) is shut down completely so at the very least they won’t get the project.

They’re a small studio with a small budget. They probably didn’t have the skills and money. The success of the game on Steam would have given them the resources to do this.

My biggest fear was arriving at the app store and seeing the word free. Glad to see there’s still people making games where you just pay and get the game.

PSN account is free, you probably already have one if you owned one of the last 3 PlayStation consoles. There are paid add-ons if you want the multiplayer or the gamepass like subscription.

Edit

What’s with all the downvotes, it’s literally an answer to the question. You fellas mad I didn’t editorialize the information with personal opinions?

This is not the stray team, the article picture confuses the story. They should’ve used the Annapurna logo instead but they probably wanted more clicks.

Have you seen kids? Most of them play games exclusively on mobile devices now.

Usually they don’t completely flop though, they just underwhelm expectations but if they can stay active long enough with the right amount of whales and fish they can usually break even or make a small profit. Concord is just a high profile legitimate flop that was turned off before it could do anything.

Headlines might as well just be “Ubisoft Reportedly Hit with Layoffs Due to 🤷”

TLDR: you can get it from the url http://epic.download

Looks like it only has Fortnite, Fall Guys and Rocket League on there for now

Drr Drr

I mean, they’re getting it aren’t they? In the headline photo you have Disco Elysium and Hades/Hades 2 which have gotten a ton of steady attention and love and discussion since their releases. The other half of the photo is Modern Warfare 3 and Immortals of Avium (terrible name) both of which lived and died in their news cycles in about a month flat and most of the conversion was around how bad the campaign was (CODMW3) or how nobody played it (IoA). CODMW3 has gotten a little recent attention for landing on gamepass but I don’t think it’s captured any of the mindshare AAA games used to get.

Thing is, they don’t need to sell consoles anymore. They’re in the gamepass business now. This is why they’re pushing gamepass on phones, PCs, Samsung TVs and Firesticks. They don’t really care about selling you a box under the TV anymore since they’re usually sold at or near a loss anyway. They just want you on the subscription wherever you can play it.

They currently have roughly 34 million subscribers (as of February, I’m guessing Activision Blizzard King is going to bump this number up further), let’s assume an average of $12 a month. That’s over $400 million coming in every month or 1.2 billion every quarter on the books. They don’t have to rely on a big game to have a good month.

You’re more valuable to them having the gamepass subscription and just playing on your phone over someone who buys a console and purchases 7 or 8 games a year. Articles like this fundamentally misunderstand the current gaming landscape and their business model. They’re not losing the race, they’re playing a different sport.

Biggest recommendation for the Gemcraft series. I think it’s absolutely one of the best TD series and it’s on a deep discount right now: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/13292/GemCraft_Bundle/

We’re going for less production design and actor salary to keep things cozy.

Any reason to think this would be a probable takedown? Mods on Bethesda games have historically been a thriving community unless they directly infringe on another company’s copyright.

If you’re unaware of the recent history of this project, the big Fallout 4 update that came out a few months ago broke this project. GOG worked with them to build an installer that would downgrade Fallout 4 to the required version to run this (hence the GOG logo at the start). Good guy GOG to the rescue.

PC gamers be like “framerate dropped to 675, unplayable”

I mean at least it’s released in some format. Beyond Good and Evil 2 has apparently been in development for 15 years beating Duke Nukem Forever for the longest AAA dev time.

Holedown

You just aim a ball and clear blobs before they reach the top. No timer. I usually play this with my screen split to YouTube.

Yea this is pretty much it. I meet online weekly to play something with some friends, after the third or fourth session I was just completely done with the game. It doesn’t feel like there’s a whole lot to do after you’ve tried every mission type.

Penny, morrowind and dishonoured are a really solid bundle alone for $20

I really like it. It’s pretty simple but the small city feels dense and fun to explore. Reminds me of something you’d find on the Dreamcast. If you have gamepass give it a shot.

The Last Night, Replaced and now this. I can’t keep giving my hopes up for highly stylized, somewhat pixely blade runneresk games. I hope one of these get released.

Crystal Dynamics have a really strong track record with the exception of Avengers but I’d put the blame on the publishers for pushing a game on them that isn’t their specialty

With some Mirrors Edge. Honestly, sign me up. If they pull this off it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.

What’s a good gyro aim game? I’ve only used it in the new Zelda games (which admittedly was really nice to aim with)

I think we’re past this now, we’ve had a number of good (or at the very least enjoyable) adaptations now, Sonic, Mario, Pikachu. Werewolves Within was really good though no one has heard of the game. And of course TV has been knocking it out of the park, Last of Us, Fallout, Cyberpunk, Castlevania, League of Legends, hell I’d even throw in Twisted Metal. Even stuff about people who play games like Gran Turismo and Players were really good. We also have things that considered bad at the time are being reclaimed like Mortal Kombat

Borderlands is (by the looks of it) just an IP dump which isn’t exclusive to video games.

Or Cate Blanchett. Like if me and my friends were dream casting this movie one of us would say Cate Blanchett as a joke and we’d all laugh and move on. Don’t get me wrong, she’s one of my favorite actresses, you can Tar and feather me all day but this was frankly a bizarre call.

Reminds me of the show Barry, the character Sally is on a press circuit and someone throws the question at her “Who should play the next Spiderman” and confused by the question she says Ben Mendelson

Nice

They had to sign a 10 year deal to allow COD on other platforms in order for the courts to allow the acquisition to go through. After that they’ll almost certainly go exclusive, they didn’t pay Activision King Blizzard $75 billion just to keep the status quo. Xbox isn’t in the games business, they’re in the game pass business.

I mean yea, it was the whole point of buying Activision in the first place, to help drive game pass adoptions

I didn’t have good gaming gear at the time so I was all in on streaming. Stadia, GeForce now, xcloud, even moonlight on hosted locally with Gamestream. Stadia was hands down the smoothest cloud gaming of all the options I tried. Moving between TV and phone was so quick, no noticeable lag at all and constant 4k.

It’s too bad their business model sucked. Most of the other game streamers have caught up now but I always wished they would have just somehow provided their tech to other services.