Still is dead to me. I heard you can bypass the requirement and don’t need a Sony acct again, but it’s just not worth the trouble.

Eh, I think there’s just as many examples of burned out creatives not wanting to make a sequel, being forced to make a sequel, and it turning out poorly. A recent example would be Matrix 4.

I agree that continuity is important, but I think inspiration is the most important thing. If somebody doesn’t have a good story to tell in a universe, it doesn’t matter if they have perfect attention to continuity, they’re telling a bad story.

I mean, GI already died and came back once, so maybe

One of the wild hypocrisies of living in Capitalism is simultaneously hoping that an entire economic industry collapses, because it clearly deserves to do so and is not at all sustainable in it’s current nonsensical state, while also not wanting any of the innocent workers like Heather to get impacted in the process.

It sucks that it’s going to take even more suffering and people losing their jobs, but AAA Western gaming has gone full enshittify and needs to be weeded out by the roots. We basically need another crash on the level of the 90s before the C-suites at these shitty companies finally realize they have no goddamn idea what they’re doing and they need to listen to their developer teams again.

Hopefully Last Epoch’s latest patch. I recently migrated to Linux though, so getting it running has proven to be a bit of a bugbear.

the behind the scenes is that they made it the fuck up. Men 25-84 have about a 90% participation rate in the workforce.

The only places where men are at low participation in the workforce is 16-19. He wants more children working.

Excited by the remaster. I kinda still want a remake in the style of Nightdive’s System Shock remake, but tbf SS2 is a lot more playable for a modern audience.

On the one hand, yeah definitely export your own cultural weirdness. Part of the joy of having so many other cultures in the world is getting little peeks into them via art.

On the other hand, some of my favorite games of all time have come from Japanese developers fetishizing American culture and trying to pretend it’s normal. Deadly Premonition, Metal Wolf Chaos, all the works of Hideo Kojima. I think there’s something to be said for the strange fusions that can occur when an outsider makes art in the style of a different culture.

I guess someone threatening you with a lawsuit stings a lot more when there’s a chance they could actually win. Typically when my office gets threatened with a lawsuit, we all just laugh and laugh at the absurdity of their claims.

The bottom is kinda falling out of the market and investors have dried up, largely because AAA has had too many extremely costly fuck-ups recently. Now the whole sector is looking bad, and it’s been trickling down into impacting the ability for AA studios and indie teams to find funding for their projects.

Hmm, wonder how that’s going to be okayed. Also, didn’t they have voice actors? I’m sure they’re using original audio for at least some of it.

I was thinking more like a Victor Zsasz or an Aaron Helzinger. Not top tier Batmen villains, more like the C-listers.

Even if they can’t get the rights, it’s not like there’s anything stopping them from making a new original “boomer shooter.” I don’t need it to be called Blood 2, I just want them to make something high-octane and kickass again.

That’s fair, I only knew Zaslav had been pushing hard for live-service games and will likely be the death of Rocksteady. Fuck Haddad too then. Why does Warner Bros employ so many execs with Batman-villain ass last names?

Same reason Skyblivion is allowed to exist; they’re making all the assets from scratch. Usually, the issue developers have with in-engine remakes has little to do with the modification of the engine, but everything to do with the mod team basically stealing assets from a different game. In truth, there’s no difference between Skywind and your favorite Skyrim overhaul mod besides the scope and scale of what they’re trying to do.

I really hope these teams are able to stay together. Monolith was absolutely getting wasted by Warner Bros. Games, they’re way too good a studio to get stuck making brand tie-ins. Just more dogshit mismanagement from Zaslav though, Warner Bros keeps seeing flops but won’t address the problem.

Damn, another one down. I thought it was a perfectly adequate Monster Hunter competitor, but I guess people looking for that are fully satisfied by Monster Hunter

We’ve officially gotten to the point where videogame layoff news has become so oversaturated that incredibly simple firings are reported with outrage.

It’s so weird that I feel nothing. I remember being elated when Borderlands 2 was announced, and I was really excited for Borderlands 3. After BL3, the New Tales from the Borderlands, and the Borderlands movie? I don’t wanna touch this franchise with a 12 foot pole.

Don’t they already have this? What is the Steam Deck, if not a rival to the PS5 and the Xbox ala the Switch? Shouldn’t the focus go into optimizing that space, as opposed to trying again at the home console market?

Hey wow, look what happens when we don’t buy their games and loudly organize to tell others not to buy their games over this bullshit!

There’s still nothing Sony puts out that I really think is all that good, but hopefully this serves as another message to the industry to stop with this dumb bullshit. Funny how Sony has been getting a lot of those kinda messages recently.

Pretty sure all the hype was by potter-heads. I don’t know anyone who enjoyed playing the game who wasn’t also a die-hard fan of Harry Potter.

Do. Not. Buy. Sony. Games.

I dunno how many times we have to keep hammerin this one in. If you absolutely must play their latest vapid, designed-by-committee bullshit, at least pirate it.

Yeah absolutely, really itching to just bash the first smarmy fascist I see.

In minecraft, y’know?

I see we’ve hit the “it wasn’t that big a deal” part of the Narcissist’s Prayer.

Actually super agree, and surprised people aren’t as on board with this.

Why the fuck should anyone have to do Ogrila dailies in 2025 if they just want a cool item for transmog? What is the point of currencies that trade for other currencies? Does anyone really need to make going back through Warlords of Draenor any worse?

Blizz already has converted old currencies to gold in the past. Would it really hurt the old and forgotten content of Retail if it was made more accessible to new players?

Ooh, this seems like an excellent guess.

Good! Wonder what trend the brain-dead CEOs are going to chase after now. Cozy games?

I think the issue is that most game’s core gameplay loops are not endlessly replayable. Lots of single player RPGs fall into the trap of being alright to progress through for maybe 20 hours, but you can quickly become so powerful that the rest of the game falls into busywork. It’s really hard to meaningfully introduce new and interesting gameplay after the 30 hour mark, but without it things become same-y.

I’d argue this is just a fault of poor game design though. There are RPGs with really well iterated gameplay loops, with a wide array of variety, that I’m happy to put 400+ hours in. Games like Baldur’s Gate 3, or Elden Ring, have a lot of freedom and variety in the way you can approach a playthrough, even allowing you to dramatically change things mid-playthrough, while still feeling mechanically satisfying to play. A 10/10 game will feel good to play forever, but a 7/10 might get boring after 15.

Yeah it kicks ass. This is like making a story out of Skyrim or Baldur’s Gate 3 or even Witcher 3 continuing to have players. People like playing really good single player RPGs. There aren’t that many of them.