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.