I mean, they’re games meant for kids, man. Why the fuck are you expecting a challenge? The skill ceiling of pokemon is crazy high and building a game to challenge hardcore players would be ridiculously challenging. That being said, watched a let’s play, wouldn’t recommend. It looks… fucking rough and the new combat gimmick makes combat feel incredibly flat. It is an interesting idea, cooldown based combat, but letting the player move around makes it feel floaty and non-impactful.

Mario Kart is the definition of a spin-off game. Like, what?

They think being cruel to minorities and women will make their lives better. Cause they’re idiots. Or naive. Or hateful. Probably all of those, but that’s speculation.

And they’ll only port like 6 games, ever.

Biggest boo is the change to Path of the Giants doesn’t make you size large, it just does a single enlarge. Cowards! They can’t handle the full might of my halfling giant!

Well, ya see, gotta reduce the number of companies. The less companies, the more the line goes up

Mimic is the bad guy introduced in Security Breach: Ruin. But yes, it’s a book character

I loved how dumb DA2 was, played it a whole bunch. Loved that there were only, like 6 dungeon maps, with customizable barriers for “variety”.

Shame all anyone talks about is the bad writing

So, Patch 8 is preparing for stress testing later this month (from what I’ve seen), so that would imply most development work is complete and they’re doing testing and bug fixing right now. That wouldn’t require most of their resources anymore.

Apologies. Am dumb American. At least all these systems were made by video game companies wanting to avoid regulation (PEGI, USK, ESRB). Really brings us all together.

PEGI USK ratings are free to obtain, right? Right?

Yep, it’s their business model. People were pissed about Cyberpunk because they’d only played Witcher 3 after it was complete.

Victim blaming. Classy

… oh, I turned off the launcher in steam. I was very confused on the GTA comment

Based solely on the 80s horror IP and Unreal being a selling point… this is another asymmetrical multiplayer game. Woohoo? Who wants these?

Miyazaki is trying to recreate the spontaneous cooperation he experienced with cars pushing cars up a snow covered hill. Honestly, their system is really cool if you treat it like a side thing, adding people when you really need help. Playing with friends, though, it’s kind of shit.

But they’re not a monopoly because checks notes with a huge wad of cash Microsoft assured me it wasn’t

Literally victim blaming. Classy.

I don’t like the blaming the victim mentality here. Sure, the games aren’t super great, but they use skinner box mechanics to get players to feel like they have to pay. Skinner Boxes are literally dopamine machines, meant to program behaviors. To fully lay the blame on the players instead of acknowledging that the games themselves are mostly to blame feels pretty gross.

I’m so tired of that word

The innovation is… Bethesda not re-releasing Skyrim again… kinda

I can’t play horror games, I freeze when I’m scared. Thank goodness for Let’s Plays, get all the content I want without needing to demonstrate to myself that my instincts haven’t changed.

The future is owned by Veridian Dynamics

https://youtu.be/UMip2MWgf4c?si=jrtnDPeikSD5C0cc

No, it doesn’t. Pushing people to burn out doesn’t make more or better products, it just burns people out. People are more productive when they have work life balance

Less crunch, more realistic deadlines, less unnecessary scope. Makes better games

This is about the comics that game is based on and the characters/settings therein. Not just the material in the game itself.

Listen, it might’ve looked cheap as fuck, but I found a certain charm in the “every dungeon interior is just one of three dungeons with different parts blocked off”. Plus the combat flowed really well. I played that whole game through like… 5 times. One right after the other.

Completely agreed. The issue is that gamers™ aggressively advocate for better quality, and do not care about workplace abuse or worse products with more features. This creates the current feedback loop we have where games that are longer, have flashier features, and aren’t finished at launch.

Labor unions and protections would be excellent, but isn’t something that I, a non-game developer, can do much to advance, besides avocation.

An individual solution, for sure. But unless you get a large plurality to join in, it won’t change the landscape that we have.

Sorry, I’m neurodivergent. Can’t tell if this is sarcasm.

I have no problem if games reached this via a similar model that Larian used here (lots of experienced staff, pre-built systems, 6 years of development, 3 years of expertly done early-access with a highly engaged player base) but they’re not going to. They’re going to implement more crunch, more abuse, more destruction of the few people who want to work in games in order to get there. And that’s where I have the issue.

I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who get paid more to do less. Because that’s what’s needed to make truly great games. People who are passionate, not burning themselves out just to barely make deadlines, make great games.