Gamers: stop building in plans for extra content and just release a game that’s done at launch

Also gamers: no dlc = lazy devs, dead game

If that’s the case you wouldn’t be able to charge them, though? I don’t think you can charge them without connecting to a console (or a third party charging dock I guess)

People said similar things about the all-white Wii after the GameCube - it’s just the natural ebb and flow of product design

When has that ever been the case?

The age-old tradeoff has always been that consoles are restrictive and un-upgradable, but generally cheaper than building a PC due to fixed parts costs and loss-leader strategies.

If anything I’d say Heaven’s Vault is the better of the two!

Sure, it’s way less polished and can be janky, but the language and the translation mechanics are so much deeper and more well-developed than anything in Chants of Sennaar.

The languages in Chants are tightly defined and very specific to what the game needed, so they’re not really usable outside of that context. But the language in HV is rich and complex, and you can actually learn to write new things in it.

As always, the headline should be qualified with ‘… in the USA.’

Tintin the brave cub reporter — and his dog, Snowy — will enter the public domain in the U.S. well before they will in the European Union, where they are copyrighted until 2054. That’s because EU copyright terms extend 70 years past creators’ deaths, and Belgian cartoonist Hergé died in 1983.

Bad/misleading title. The article (actually just a regurgitation of a podcast interview) is about the design & layout differences between two specific cities: New Atlantis in Starfield and Diamond City in Fallout 4.

Basically just this one designer saying he didn’t like the design of New Atlantis compared to his own work.

It’s more of an anthology series, so most of the games are unconnected. This is the first direct sequel to the original LiS featuring the original main character.

There are also two different studios involved: Dontnod created the original game, Life is Strange 2 (2018), and the spinoff The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, but the other three games in the series were made by Deck Nine.

Because it has a library of interesting and innovative exclusives, making use of an unusual control input. Whether that makes it worth it or not is personal preference, but you can’t disagree that it offers something unique.

The only reason AW2 happened at all is because Epic paid for its development. Hate on the Epic store all you want (it deserves a lot of it), but it’s one of the few instances where it actually makes perfect sense that it’s an exclusive.

Because improving visuals is an easily quantifiable task, but improving gameplay requires creativity and risk-taking, neither of which are compatible with the AAA business model.

I’ve restricted the repository to prior contributors, and if they have any concerns, they are more than welcome to do so here. If this turns into harassment, then I’ll just shut the whole thing down, because I’m way too busy with my actual job to be dealing with unsubstantiated drama from a hobby that is supposed to be fun.

This is how projects die. Duckstation had a good run at the top, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it dethroned if it becomes a dramafest with bizarre restrictions on forks and distribution.

Such a shame NOLF is so deeply mired in rights disputes that we’ll probably never even get a digital rerelease, let alone a sequel.

It’s called a branching narrative. Most common related Steam tag for finding similar games would probably be ‘choices matter’.

Yes, but they were already on Steam - this release is new

You can manually restart in OW - it’s an ability you can learn from one of the characters you meet.

In my experience, if people are going to bounce off the game it’ll come down to one (or more) of three reasons:

• They hate the flight controls
• They hate the feeling of being on a constant timer
• They hate the lack of explicit direction in what to do next

It’s one of my favourite games of all time, and it has good reasons for all of the above, but it’s definitely not for everyone!

And for anyone wondering, my counterpoints to the above would be:

• Learn to use the autopilot but don’t trust it; learning to manoeuvre precisely will come over time
• Don’t overthink the timer element; pick just one thing to investigate and focus on that, anything else is a bonus
• Use the ship’s computer and follow the unknowns; avoid walkthroughs unless you’re absolutely 100% stumped on what to do next

The DC had upscaled art so the old game looked good enough on 1080p screens, plus a few new bits like character portraits.

This is a complete repainting & reanimating of the assets to 4K quality. Very different! Just compare screenshots and you’ll see.

Not to mention native console ports with crossplay multiplayer

There are prebuilt solutions in some common engines, and companies like Multiplay that will help with development and hosting, but ultimately it depends on the specific needs of each game.

What works well for one project might be overkill for another, so studios have to spend a lot of time figuring out their needs and building something bespoke for it.

Turn-based all the way for me. I need time to think about my moves!

I want to love RTS games, but I just don’t have the executive function skills needed to prioritise tasks and make decisions fast enough to do well. Single player against CPU is sometimes doable if there’s an easy mode or cheats, but online multiplayer is just impossible.

As a kid I thought they were shouting ’Uncle Fester!’ and wondered what the Addams Family had to do with WW2

Newer, cheaper competitors like the FPGBC are finally muscling in on the Analogue Pocket’s market, so I guess they’ve decided to double down on being the ‘premium option’.

Not just the engine, no.

the company is planning to make its proprietary Carbon Development Platform – which encompasses the studio’s Carbon Engine and other technology – an open source property

This has nothing to do with the subject of the post…

The correct answer is because game developers are, as a rule, not unionised. No one is pushing developers or publishers to properly credit their staff, so a lot of them simply don’t.

I’ve played Risk of Rain 2 on and off for years and I’m not bored of it yet

Okay, I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head, but this can’t be true, can it?!

Surely Nintendo have made at least one game with some kind of procedural content??

Delisting always sucks, but it looks like they’re at least doing what they’ve done for previous Forza titles: still available to play if you bought it digitally or physically, and if you played on Game Pass but bought DLC they’ll send you a free copy of the base game itself.

Microsoft is a terrible company, but at least they treat their back catalogue with some degree of respect. I just wish Sony cared more.

It’s definitely making their job harder on the face of it, but it also differentiates them from other ad companies, so I guess they’re betting on that being a draw for potential clients.

Advertising isn’t going anywhere, so investing in/supporting ways to more ethically serve ads without harvesting private data seems like a good thing?

Hopefully it’ll be an improvement on Force Commander

Can you imagine if Rembrandt had an executive committee behind him dictating what to paint a picture of

I get what you’re saying, but you realise all the great renaissance painters worked on commission, right? So yes that’s exactly what happened.

What monopoly? Xbox holds the smallest share of the console market.

I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but I don’t see even a single mention of cloud gaming in the article?

This is about studio closures and a disconnect between MS’s actions and the types of games they say they want.

Mostly agree, except I’ve never liked the dpad on the 360 controller. An XB1 or Series S|X controller is a noticeable step up IMO!

I think BioShock just got grandfathered in through its System Shock lineage.

Except for all the small studios also struggling or going out of business because getting investment right now is really, really hard.

The megacorp closures and redundancies are far from the entire story, they’re just the headline grabbers.

The return on indie games (if there even is a return) is already vanishingly small for 99% of releases - printing and distributing physical copies would just be pouring even more money down the drain.