“Xbox” will just be Windows going forward, at least on handhelds.

We’ve come full circle, almost like a red ring of death.

I wish, but it feels like Valve is still mostly trying to support x86/x64 type devices and ARM/RISC-V doesn’t seem on the roadmap as much.

Dude off the top of my head Balatro (won many Game of the Year awards), Vampire Survivors, Terraria, and Minecraft all have Android ports.

I wonder if Valve plans to release an Arm version of SteamOS

The problem here is you’d be relying on a translation layer similar to Proton, but would probably have to be built off of something like Box64 for it to work. There just may not be enough horsepower on these small devices for that to do well.

I’ma be real: It fucking kills me that Steam on Android has been mostly used for 2FA and the idea of it being an alternate game store for Android somehow just… doesn’t exist?

Especially, out of all companies to take the fight about that kind of stuff to Apple and Google, Valve has the punching power, and they’ve literally already had Epic forge a path for them in this regard.

Why is my Android copy of Balatro unable to use the same cloud save system as Steam? Why am I stuck in Google’s fucking lame gaming ecosystem? It just makes me heave and sigh because I’d way rather be purchasing games for Android via Steam on the Steam Android app. It just feels like such a missed opportunity.

Because AAA games cost more to make than blockbuster movies, thus they need profit to match.

They take more art than a blockbuster movie, they take more script than a blockbuster movie, they take more motion capture than a blockbuster movie (except maybe the Avatar series which are basically all-CGI/motion capture), just everything is so much more than what you need in a film plus the need for compelling gameplay with a satisfying ludonarrative.

The massive amounts of capital needed to make one to begin with literally preclude studios that aim for this style of game from doing anything but submitting to large publishers who will finance them. Because the resources required to make that type of game are just that much.

It’s part of why Larian did Early Access for BG3 so they could make money during the development to help lengthen their runway and lower their burn rate. They still had to cut a huge amount and just release as-is. The Upper City got cut entirely as did the return to Avernus and with it Karlach’s actual happy ending, all of her current canon endings are technically fail-states for her storyline.

I have a hard time even playing one but that’s depression.

It’s been a week or so since I last played a few hours of STALKER 2.

A fun video I actually came across recently about Opposing Force/Blue Shift. It had been years since I had thought about it.

Do you think MachineGames is known for watered down bland sequels?

I know they kind of went all in on the Wolfenstein universe, but I haven’t heard of most of those as being watered down and bland. Most of them were pretty well liked, I thought. I certainly like several of them. Maybe I’m out of the loop and they’re considered bland and watered down now.

I mean, the other thing they released this year was a bunch of levels for Doom II (Legacy of Rust) that was also pretty well received. You don’t have tons of modern developers dumping their time into Doom II levels. They had also previously put out levels for Quake and Quake 2.

I honestly like the slow movement and feeling like Indy really isn’t a superhero. It kind of kicks ass.

I’m actually really impressed at how they’ve leveraged what they were doing with Wolfenstein to do something so wildly different in tone and execution (I mean, other than killing Nazis, that parts the same). We need more creativity and breaking gaming boundaries like this, exploring entirely new genres of gaming essentially.

need more capital than we’d imagined.

Altman: You know, I really hadn’t realized how expensive yachts actually are, so we’re realizing we need to move into the for-profit arena.

Neir Automata had pretty good graphics, but nothing groundbreaking.

The soundtrack is fucking phenomenal.

The few times they’ve pursued more gritty realism (Twilight Princess, for example) are all the times that haven’t aged as well.

Twilight Princess came out after Wind Waker, but Wind Waker obviously aged far better.

Maybe it’s just me, but I like the style it’s presented in, and I have major adblockers in service so I’m not sure how it’s a drug fueled hellscape. It basically becomes a normal NYT article after a half-page of scrolling. Not all their readers are familiar with these games, so the NYT is doing its diligence by trying to show what they’re talking about, so their readers have a frame of reference. (Remember the NYT is actually aimed at an investor class who owns a second house in the Hamptons and may not be gamers at all. Go look at their Lifestyle section sometime.)

I think it’s fine but I guess I’m in the minority, but also maybe it’s less worse for me because of uBlock/Pihole/Bypass Paywalls Clean.

The worst thing is that some brilliant sound design is held back by some folks who will buy a top of the line video card but some cheap shitty headphones.

I’ve seen a lot of cool indie games pop up out of heavily modified classic idTech engines like the DOOM and Quake engines. They’re definitely not high fidelity, but a lot of them scratch an itch that slower paced modern games can’t seem to scratch.

Shout out to Borderlands 1, one of the last game to have some of the best comedy delivered by text, instead of audio.

I actually am in the minority of preferring 1 over 2 because 2 is just so fucking loud. Handsome Jack in my fucking ear for hours on end, refusing to shut the fuck up and let me play the game.

I much much much preferred the quiet reading of Borderlands 1.

Probably is, but I get why the other fella was confused by this.

Until right this moment I was under the impression that Genshin was literally just a phone game. Looks like I was wrong.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/genshin-impact

Look, I’m gonna be real with you, the pool of writers who are exceptionally good at specifically writing for games is really damn small.

Everyone is trained on novels and movies, and so many games try to hamfist in a three-act arc because they haven’t figured out that this is an entirely different medium and needs its own set of rules for how art plays out.

Traditional filmmaking ideas includes stuff like the direction a character is moving on the screen impacting what the scene “means.” Stuff like that is basically impossible to cultivate in, say, a first or third-person game where you can’t be sure what direction characters will be seen moving. Thus, games need their own narrative rules.

I think the first person to really crack those rules was Yoko Taro, that guy knows how to write for a game specifically.

There are a number of theories why gamers have turned their backs on realism. One hypothesis is that players got tired of seeing the same artistic style in major releases.

Whoosh.

We learned all the way back in the Team Fortress 2 and Psychonauts days that hyper-realistic graphics will always age poorly, whereas stylized art always ages well. (Psychonauts aged so well that its 16-year-later sequel kept and refined the style, which went from limitations of hardware to straight up muppets)

There’s a reason Overwatch followed the stylized art path that TF2 had already tread, because the art style will age well as technology progresses.

Anyway, I thought this phenomena was well known. Working within the limitations of the technology you have available can be pushed towards brilliant design. It’s like when Twitter first appeared, I had comedy-writing friends who used the limitation of 140 characters as a tool for writing tighter comedy, forcing them to work within a 140 character limitation for a joke.

Working within your limitations can actually make your art better, which just complements the fact that stylized art lasts longer before it looks ugly.

Others speculate that cinematic graphics require so much time and money to develop that gameplay suffers, leaving customers with a hollow experience.

Also, as others have pointed out, it’s capitalism and the desire for endless shareholder value increase year after year.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a perfect example. A technical achievement that is stunningly beautiful where they had to cut tons of planned content (like wall-running) because they simply couldn’t get it working before investors were demanding that the game be put out. As people saw with the Phantom Liberty, given enough time, Cyberpunk 2077 could have been a masterpiece on release, but the investors simply didn’t give CD Project Red enough time before they cut the purse strings and said “we want our money back… now.” It’s a choice to release too early.

…but on the other hand it’s also a choice to release too late after languishing in development hell a la Duke Nukem Forever.

The Neverhood is deeply underrated. It got a spiritual sequel a few years back.

“A decade of growth!”

My doc says this about the mole on my back. /s

Stay classy, young men.

If they don’t actually film it on the Olympic Peninsula they’re doing it wrong.

It’s just such a god damned beautiful area, and with how far apart the small towns are, great fodder for any post-apocalyptic stories.

Further, there’s several large Reservations in the area, I think any post-apocalyptic story set in the area that doesn’t have Native American folklore becoming resurgent due to the local native population is missing a real opportunity for kickass storytelling. Quinalt, Quileute, Maka, Hoh, and Skokomish all surround the Olympic mountains. Ignoring the large local native populations would be foolish, imho.

That’s some top tier Main Character Syndrome.

Will the netcode be as crappy as in the original GTA Online? Sources say yes.

If that’s the case then I bet this would work with older phones using microusb

https://www.amazon.com/MakerSpot-Accessories-Charging-Extension-Raspberry/dp/B01JL837X8

Since it claims to be built for a Raspberry Pi. All my older devices are still microusb.

For sure, this isn’t against PostmarketOS. PMOS is fine. It’s rather if I’m trying to set up Docker on a phone, I’d rather find a way that’s… less limiting on what hardware can be used.

The main suggestion I would have in regards to using the battery as a UPS:

If you want the battery to last a long time, you need to figure out how long it takes for it to charge and discharge, and set up an outlet timer (either a manual one or a zigbee operated one) so that the outlet the phone is plugged into turns on just long enough for the battery to charge, and then turns off just long enough for it to discharge, with the aim to keep it in the 30% to 80% charged range.

Otherwise you’re just always charging the battery and significantly reducing it’s life and ability to be a UPS.

https://www.amazon.com/Century-Indoor-24-Hour-Mechanical-Outlet/dp/B01LPSGBZS

I just use these, I have a few old phones set up as a surveillance system. I’ve never tried an external ethernet dongle because unless you search for a special connector cable, you can’t charge the phone and have it plugged into ethernet at the same time.

Requires PostmarketOS which only has less than 30 phones it’s available for, many of which are very old (Samsung Galaxy S III??? Where would you even find one of these anymore?) and out of the list of less-than-thirty at least five of them don’t offer full support, only partial.

The newest Pixel phone you can use is a Pixel 3a.

Yeah I think I’ll pass on something that requires PostmarketOS.

The good thing is that thanks to how GOG works, as long as some pirate purchases a copy, they will always be able to keep a current update available to the pirate community.

Thanks GOG, for being against DRM in games.

Yabbos

Yeah from what I hear, they kept the shitty self-downloader of the first one that is obscenely slow and counts as “playtime” because the game is open while downloading.

This is on Microsoft, they can make as many excuses as they want, but they fucked it up.

Nostalgia’s a helluva drug. I’ve done my best to try to avoid it, but we all like that hit from time to time.

Go watch South Park’s “Make Love, Not Warcraft.”

It was ugly and goofy looking in 2006 as well.

Your mind just remembers it prettier than it actually was.

What are you talking about? George Lucas invented the Hero’s Journey! It’s his birthright! /s

It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism

-Frederic Jameson

Because they hate their customers and want the mouse to become junk you have to replace when the mouse goes dead. It’s a finesse in planned obsolescence.

'cause why ask permission to back up and preserve your own stuff?

Copy that floppy!

This is why there hasn’t been a refresh on the Valve Index: not enough interest, not enough games. Half Life Alyx is still one of the few major games with any depth to them in the market, and you can’t access it easily outside of the Steam ecosystem. In other words, it’s unavailable for a lot of VR headsets. They aren’t going to dump more resources into more VR games if people aren’t buying the headsets or the games.

Steam Deck on the other hand? Huuuuuuge market, people want that shit.

Eh, I’d say the biggest learning curve is updates and how they’re generally password protected.

It’s actually not straightforward to a new Linux user how to bypass entering your password every time there are updates, and with how often Linux updates, this can create headaches and confusion for new users.

Especially with coming from Windows and being used to Microsoft arbitrarily forcing updates in the background. They are confused because Microsoft gave them zero control, while Linux actually gives them full control, and that can be confusing when you’re used to updates being forced on you in the background.

Linux expects you to be an adult and handle this shit, and does a lot less hand-holding for the casual user, and this can be overwhelming for some new users, because it’s a lot of extra personal responsibility they formerly didn’t have to think about. Some people just don’t have the extra mental energy to dedicate to it all.