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I would consider myself a borderlands fan since I’ve played every game in the series a bunch of times (except the tell-tale ones). Being obnoxiously stupid was one of the key charms of the franchise. I think if you go and look at how the fanbase feels about 3, it’s going to be the gameplay was really fun but the main story and everything associated with it was terrible. I think most other side missions were pretty decently written and had the charming campyness of the series. Taking out the toilet humor is a real ship of Theseus activity to do in a series where toilets are chests.
There was a PvE ARPG dungeon crawler inside DotA calle Aghanims labyrinth which was essentially a custom game which valve made as part of its pre-International battle pass. Absolute blast. Now, they won’t release it as a custom game and they won’t release it as a standalone game and absolutely no one understands why. It’s something that they had sitting already and they just chose to not let people play it anymore and no amount of requesting has even earned a response from Valve. I wish I had a job, not because of money or prestige, but entirely the ability to fuck around and do whatever you want
Brother, it’s your cost of living. Almost every other country which has a footprint on the video game market and isn’t known for black policies has better working hours and balance of life. It’s just that paying Americans a liveable wage is three or four times more expensive than giving a reasonably comfortable wage to a developer elsewhere.
The other part of it is to look at where your game companies are clustered in the US. It’s either the bay area, Seattle, or Florida. None of those places are exactly cheap to either hire employees with these conditions or to hold an office space.
I think one of the major reasons why they are having to do PoE 2 is because the game has garnered a reputation of being a spreadsheet simulator, which really hurts any new users from picking the game up. This is, of course, an almost imminent death to any game. There is also some truth in it, in how the game has bloated itself to where it is now, where any seasonal character has to click 50 buttons between running maps.
PoE2 lets them not have to invest time in their current set of issues and start fairly afresh. Even if half of their committed users don’t pick up 2, it is still bound to outperform 1, I feel.
That’s a bit of an unsolvable problem at this stage as well because when not enough new people pick up the game, they can’t be matched with new players. Naturally, you end up getting matched with other low skill players who are, in a good number of cases, in that skill bracket because of this behaviour.
I have multiple thousand hours on DotA but I feel like the problems here might be the same. These games have bloated themselves to the extent that it becomes impossible for a new player to be able to pick up the game because it is near impossible to create and maintain an in game tutorial. With hundreds of heroes/champions it’s like a thousand different mechanical interactions and expecting new users to be willing to put up to that is asking for too much.
I don’t know if you meant it with a /s or not but I would like to point out the entire rage around early access or alpha releases.
Other than that, having fans do things like these is something I don’t think any developer would want to do primarily because contracts ensure accountability. As a developer, I have no way of knowing if the Spanish dub you made of my game is full of racial slurs or not. Similarly, if I launch my PS game on switch in the future, and it’s absolutely abysmal, I would be the one on the firing block and rightfully so because I am the one who is bound to make money off of it. Shouldn’t that mean I go with someone who has expertise in doing these things?
I personally am not aware of the mana series so I might not fully understand your argument, so you should feel free to educate me, but I believe it might be more of an exception with things going right instead of the countless ways it could go wrong.
I would also like to disclaim that I have no love for publishers and more often than not, they are despicable suits. However, this is the reality of the video games industry which isn’t changing in the near future (but I sure hope it does further down the line).
I sort of work in the industry so I feel like publishers are pretty important in getting your game out there. You, as a developer, want to focus your energies in making the best game possible. To make a game successful, there is a whole gamut of tasks which are necessary but are a pain to do such as finding a QA team, finding someone to do localisation, porting your game to other platforms if needed, marketing, and in a good bunch of cases providing funding.
The last part is where things get ugly. Because publishers are the ones who are giving you the money to complete your game, you are naturally beholden to the timelines and goals that they set. Good publishers listen to the developers because good games make good money. Then there are fucks like Sony management here and whoever was at embracer group who have never played a game in the last ten years and are in the position because of their MBA degree. There are a bunch of decent publishers out there like Devolver but naturally they are going to be picky with their titles. For the vast majority, going with whoever is going to give you the money and support is the way forward.
At the same time, the industry is looking towards massive monopolization. I think Embracer move was also motivated by seeing how ABK was able to make a sale to Microsoft and cash out. Now everyone is trying to sell themselves, including EA. The buyers are usually trillion dollar tech, or Saudis (who currently own a very big part of the industry), and Chinese megagiants (who own the other big part of the industry). As days go by, we are looking at a landscape which could be similar to early era console wars where players were forced to tie their wagon to one horse and hope that it keeps releasing titles. This might sound a bit doomer speak, but if a studio the size of gearbox can shut down, then absolutely anyone can.
Just like PoE!