It’ll be interesting to see how Discord enshittifies.

It’s the default destination for the niche-interest “cozy web,” and they could go down several paths.

Wuthering Waves

I have nothing against a beautiful animesque art style, but… does it have to be rail-thin women in schoolgirl skirts and stockings? Is this game the exception?

EDIT:

Watches Steam trailer.

Literally magic schoolgirl skirts and stockings. Complete with winking in action.

BG3 turned out well, though?

Yeah, please no Starfield. I love space opera, I love Oblivion and Fallout, jank and all, but the Starfield I got through was so boring.

I’d rather them continue GOTG. I’m not a Marvel person, but the GOTG game was great.

Oh that’s awesome. Yeah, I see the rumors now:

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-mystery-behind-the-game-awards-statue-appears-to-have-been-solved/

Selfishly, I hope their other half’a working on a sci fi game. Or a cyberpunk one?

Shadowrun? Gods, that IP would be perfect for Larian.

I suspect Larian will take their sweet time.

Bioshock sounds like it’s in development hell; I’d be suspicious of that.

Maybe theres confusing crossover?

I’m of the opinion that Starfield, in particular, is unreasonably tolerated even though (from what I played) it’s a dreadful, archaic, boring and sluggish game. I’m of the opinion that FO76 released in a particularly bad state, and that Todd behaved in a smiley “tech bro” kind of way immediately after its release. And I will pound BGS all day over that.

On the other hand, yeah, I’m all for devs re releasing games. It gives them visibility! BGS does it so much it’s kind of a meme, but it’s not bad.

So, BGS deserves some skepticism. But not over Skyrim, really.

multiplayer RPG suite

Are you talking about Skyrim Together? How’s MP work now?

I’ve been out of the modding scene forever, and last I heard there was no “massively” multiplayer and only a coop demo.

It should automatically be enabled if it’s supported, and just give you a straight up better experience. At lower frame rates and budget hardware, the difference is especially dramatic.

Then watch on a plug-in Android TV box. Or take to the high seas.

I’m just saying, if you’re going to stream from an internet service anyway, video/audio on every HTPC streaming app I’ve tried looks bad. Netflix is the best, and it’s still heavily compromised. And (at least on my Sony), the local Android apps tend to have the best system integration for rescaling, HDR, setting the correct refresh rate, per app IQ settings and so on.

But that obviously doesn’t apply if you’re hosting it locally though Kodi, Jellyfin, Plex or whatever.

Well Valve should sell an optional DisplayPort adapter then, right?

The Steam Machine is supposed to be plug and play, and not getting VRR on your TV is a huge compromise.

TBH you should be playing DRM content though smart TV/TV box apps anyway. Desktop Windows playback is more technically limited (for instance, no auto resolution/refresh rate switching) and aside from that you usually get a worse bitrate stream on a stuttery player.

I don’t even know about DRM playback on Linux.

Active ones aren’t cheap, though.

Yeah, exactly. Xbox too. They make EA look good.

IMO Ubisoft seems to have bottomed out, almost like EA has.

And the discoverability pipe is breaking.

• No one reads oldschool curators like RockPaperShotgun anymore. They’re barely afloat.

• Generic algorithmic social media like YouTube tends to snowball a few games.

• Forums are dead. Reddit is dystopian.

That leaves Steam’s algorithm, and a sea of sparsely seen solo reviewers. But there are billions of people oblivious to passion projects they’d love, and playing AAAs or gacha phone apps instead.

That’s a bit extreme. Everything from Hazelight (It Takes Two, Split Fiction) is sublime, they still have Respawn making Star Wars games. They have Sims. And (outside sports games) they’ve dialed down the “MTX meme” they were a decade ago.

…I’m not saying they’re good. But they’re nowhere near Activision-Blizzard enshittified, nor hurling towards it as fast as Xbox Studios and some other AAAs.

That was a good buy. Those big Ampere GPUs are aging like wine.

It’s reasonable to be outraged over a scam, or a ‘scam adjacent’ project. They’re everywhere, and literally screwing up the world.

That being said, I wouldn’t want to criticize the gameplay, either. If it’s fun, it’s fun; that’s very personal. But the predatory FOMO aspect is completely fair game.

The base Mac Mini is not super powerful. Physically, the silicon comparable to AMD Strix Point, which you’d find in any AMD laptop.

I am not trying to rag on Apple here: their stuff is fine. It’s ridiculously power efficient. It’d be beyond excellent for a handheld like the Steam Deck, or a VR headset.

…But a plug in gaming console? That’s more ‘M4 Pro’ silicon. And what they charge for that speaks for itself.

M chips are super expensive. They’re optimized for low clockspeed/idle efficiency and pay through the nose for cutting edge processes, whereas most gaming hardware is optimized for pure speed/$, with the smallest die area and cheapest memory possible, at the expense of power efficiency.

And honestly the CPU/GPU divide over traces is more economical. “Unified memory” programming isn’t strictly needed for games at the moment.

And, practically, Apple demands very high margins. I just can’t see them pricing a console aggressively.

…I wonder what it would take for Intel to get in the memory business.

Or GloFo? WTF are the euro fabs doing these days?

High end workstation is the same silicon/memory as gaming cards.

They’re presumably “saving” it for the high margin server GPUs, under the presumption that memory makers will allocate more production to HBM.

Sigh.

I swear, Epic would probably have a decent reputation (and storefront) if Sweeney would just shut his trap and delete all his social media.

Interested. Also a little interesting in the MC server, per your website.

Never played Starbound; how many players are typically on a server concurrently? Or at least y’alls server?

Do we get to save mods, too?

That’s a huge factor. It’d put Rimworld and Minecraft squarely on the list for me, and I’d have to think about the others. There are some ridiculous mod communities out there though.

Sounds about right :(

Stellaris was like that early in its life, too.

provides a way for micro transactions to pay out mod developers.

No.

Absolutely not.

I’m sorry, I like the idea of mod devs earning incomes, but this just opens the door to too much drama, attention farming, infighting, and trouble. Every paid mod I’ve ever seen is a hot mess that cooperates with zero other mods.

Mods should all be Apache licensed, free, with prominant support/donation links and maybe paid cosmetic features. Or a DLC/update sponsored by the dev, if they want to go that big.

The poor state of Stellaris QA is incredible.

It feels like one of those friends you adore, with a constantly relapsing, and worsening, drug habit.

The price fixing part is an issue, but they don’t technically do any illegal price fixing. They just say they don’t want to see your game cheaper elsewhere - you can drop prices elsewhere AND on Steam though.

I mean, if Amazon or Walmart tell a supplier “we’re doubling our cut, but you can’t price any lower in cheaper stores. Don’t like it? We will drop your brand and ruin you,” people scream bloody murder.

…Because that’s exactly what Amazon and Walmart do! It’s awful, and it’s not okay if Valve does it either.

EGS is a victim of Sweeney’s absolutely massive ego, but still, I think they’d have gotten a lot more business if every game on there was 20% cheaper. No one can compete with Steam on software features at this point, so it’s either niche angles (like GoG being DRM free), discount stores (eg key resellers), or ‘1st’ party discount shops like EGS could be.

Have not played it yet, but for me, personally, E33 looks like one of those “better to watch the cutscenes on YouTube” games.

I bounced off Witcher 3 too. Watched friends play a lot of RDR2, not interested.

…BG3 was sublime though. I don’t even like D&D combat, or ‘Tolkien-esque’ fantasy, but holy hell. It’s gorgeous, it just oozes charisma, the map is great, and was quite fun in coop.

They should be reigned in as a monopoly. That’s how it’s fixed. Nothing drastic either, just stop Valve from (say) dictating prices outside their platform, and do the same for Amazon and Walmart while they’re at it.

The ‘Steam is a pseudo monopoly’ thread was NOT like this. It was a bunch of commenters simping for Valve and Gabe, even here on Lemmy.

…Which is why they can charge 30%, and Gabe has a few mega yachts.

To be fair, they are too big.

They just have too many employees and costs. The way they’re organized, they’re stuck with gigantic budget, milquetoast, broad appeal games just to attempt sales they need to break even, with all the inefficiency that comes at that team size… unless they fire a ton of people and split up the rest.

My observation over the past decade is that “medium size” is the game dev sweet spot. Think Coffee Stain, Obsidian, and so on.

100%.

I got the first Korean 1440p “overclock” monitor, and 60-> 110hz was like night and day many years ago. Sometimes it’d reset from a driver update (as the graphics driver had to be patched to work with overclocked DVI back then), and I’d immediately notice even poking around the web.

Some with phones. I got a Razer phone 2, and 120hz was incredible. I went from that to an iPhone 16 plus (60hz), and it feels sluggish to me.

Another caveat is that 120hz is more “convenient” and less stuttery for most video. 24fps does not evenly divide into 60, but it does for 96 or 120. An once you start seeing choppiness in video, your eyes can’t unsee it.

…Isn’t this a bit ironic, considering GTA’s/RDR’s writing of (loosely) “plain folk’s plights?”

It’d be like CDPR going all in on DRM/corpo surveillance tech. And NO, CDPR Bot, that was not a suggestion!

I answered elsewhere.

But a friendly warning, OP: you will get downvotes for using too many emojiis on Lemmy, heh.

Minecraft is gorgeous with a few mods. Or, more practically, a good modpack.

It’s also quite complex (with a good modpack).

And building requires a lot of mouse precision. And other kids their age are probably playing it. TBH among all these answers, it’s the obvious choice, if you ask me.

Aimlabs is quite literally a mouse precision training game. It has different ‘tests’ and courses for different skills.

Very effective in short bursts, but your kids might find it boring after awhile.

That’s basically all large fandom/hobby subs now, in my experience.

And yeah, don’t forget the shallow memes or fear of arbitrary banning.