What if I told you that there are roughly 4 million steamdecks in existence. Ref

And that this is about 1\3 of the Steam Linux market. Ref and about half of the entire handheld PC market. Ref

Of course, we dont know how many MAU GOG has so maybe 4 million new customers is baby numbers, but Steam seems enamored enough of that market segment to commit huge new UI and store features (deck verification, “Runs on Deck” filters, other deck specific stuff) including the game controller mappings which do help with non-deck also but were clearly a necessary element for handhelds. Maybe deck users, it being a committed gaming platform, spend more on games?

Anyway, trying to get subscribers (always a teeny fraction of your free users) ahead of converting new non-customers into customers, seems like bad econ to me.

If GOG is so hot for game preservation why not see if they can score an emulation deal to bring lost handheld titles to PC\deck? Sega might be down, NeoGeo is owned by the Saudi’s, I’m sure they’d love some free money for their back catalog. That’s in line with Lutris’ mission of being the one game launcher for your entire library. A few strategic investments and partnerships could open up GOG as the gateway to classic gaming across devices, but that would require some vision to carry through.

I assumed the alternative was “melee combat only” not pacifism.

Also classic Doom has an entire pacifist speed running category. And a melee only category, usually called “Tyson mode”

Thanks for the fun summary! (Oh hey, its Atomic Poet, I follow you on Mastodon too, love your work!)

I played the newer trilogy on PC years ago and really enjoyed them, great little action games. I’m too young and American to have enjoyed the Amiga in its day, though a Commodore 128 was literally this baby’s first computer. Big Team17 fan currently too, I adored Yoku’s (sent me down a digital pinball spiral that was finally slaked by Xenotilt) and love them as a publisher too, being behind great indies like Blasphemous and Dredge!

🙏Lord, I seen all that money Fortnight is making, and I want that for me!

The new Prince of Persia is the worst for this! There’s no auto-cloud save, so you have to manually manage uploading and downloading to the one cloud save slot between your three on-device slots.

And no matter what, no matter how long it’s been, it asks about it, like: “Your last save was 0 minutes ago, as you sure you want to exit?”

At one point recently I bought a two pack of USB Blu-ray burner drives for $25. Optical media is so dirt cheap now that the readers are BOGO. Gave one to my partner, the other is still serving my physical media needs very well.

If you liked SupCom and want to recapture the magic, do check out Zero-K! It’s free (like actually, no weird micro-transactions) and open source (though buried a bit on the site) It’s based on SpringRTS, which is great to see something cool being done with Spring!

In my mind the RTS genre hit major twin peaks with SupCom and CoH1. SupCom is the best of its subgenre (massive rts? actually the recent and free Zero-K hits real good in this genre too!) CoH 1 is the top of the Dawn of War family of more tactical RTS.

I haven’t played in a long time, but I recall the story being good. The mechanics though were just so top notch! Great squad controls, not too much micro, vehicles feel really impactful, the nature of control point capture means every skirmish is very dynamic. Ah, what a classic!

Well that’s good, I was just getting close to running out of the old planets.

I think I ended up buying HM 1, 2, and 3 individually in GOTY bundles over 3 or 4 consecutive winter steam sales. I did end up with all the missions (I think) but I’m surely missing some premium cosmetic dlc that I couldn’t possibly care less about.

Admittedly, if Steam puts out a “finish your collection” bundle that costs me like $.97 to add a few cosmetics in, I’d probably buy it just to feel like I’d “finished” the collection.

Hitman is truly the worst though (also a truly emblematic case of shit publisher, hero studio). Especially when you consider all thr pre-WoA games, I’m not sure it’s even possible to be sure you have all the games. Only like, Wolfenstein, has more confusing reboots.

Looks like another fan of TA/SC grew up to make their own RTS, and I’m here for all of them!

DRG and Warframe also hit the critical requirement of actually being games that are fun to play!

I haven’t played a lot of WF, but I’ve got hundreds of hours on DRG. There is no grind. Getting holiday loot takes 5 to 8 matched total, and the Seasons are long and very relaxed. I maxed out XP for this season already and the next probably won’t start until at least this summer.

The community is going strong, the game is fun, Ghost Ship seems stable and like a nice place to work. It’s so stupid that more companies don’t see that they could run like this instead of chasing “get rich quick” corporate schemes that always alienate the fans.

For me it’s trying to remember what I was doing, realizing I’m right outside the door of an extremely difficult boss that I’d given up on, and now i also have no idea how to play anymore. At that point I either uninstall the game to wait longer or I flush the save and start anew.

The first time I played Crisis, I was already in awe because of that brilliant sunrise opening scene. As I’m creeping through the jungle towards the next objective, I hear loud running water and decide to see what it is.

They put in an absolutely stunning waterfall off to the side, complete with rainbows and ferns growing up around the base. One of those few memorable, special times when a game had the right art direction, graphics tech, and hit at just the right moment for me to all culminate in a real feeling of wonder and joy.

I tend to be very cynical about games being able to do that to me anymore, and it is much rarer with how commonplace high-definition but artistically uninspired assets have gotten. But it still happens now and then, the last time being Elden Ring which did have impressive art and design, and did “wow” me several times.

I especially like how the only example photo (from a fucking tweet of course) shows the completely flat non-ass of some anime goth girl that looks like she’s 14. We need to go back to making gamers ashamed of their hobby.

Is there an ARPG that doesn’t have some former D1 or D2 staff member on it? I’m sure the old janitors from Blizz North had to end up somewhere too.

I haven’t absorbed much about this release yet, but with talks of selling the company, and how massive a success elden ring is, and now this… I’m just saying, the signs are all there. ER is going to be FROMs Skyrim: so successful it destroys the good part of the company.

Still the 🐐!

I install rR on every computer and device that’ll run it. Wonder what Cho is up to? clicks link in OP Wow! Apparently he’s been cranking games the whole time, what a back catalog to dig through!