And to prove your point even further: my friends and I went go-karting for someone’s stag do a couple of weeks ago and it was £50 per person for two fifteen-minute sessions. And that’s even more entry level than autocross, I’d argue!

We had to get there early, too, and get registered, get changed into overalls and helmet, etc. We had to go through an idiot-proof safety briefing. We had to wait for the previous group to finish their session. We had a break between our two sessions for drinks and to cool down / recover, and another session ran during that time, so ~twenty minutes there. All in all, our half-hour of driving probably came with around an hour and a half of downtime, which I think lowers the value proposition even more.

(Plus I got heatstroke during it and got increasingly ill as the day went on - and was unable to really eat during our restaurant meal or drink at the bars later in the day - which lowered the value proposition even more for me, ha!)

£100/hour of actual go-karting, versus £1/hour for most AAA games these days. I don’t tend to like AAA games that much, for the most part, but even with all their bloat, recycled content, open-world downtime, etc, they still seem like better value per money per time than anything motorsports-related.

The big difference between the two for me is how much feeling of gameplay expression there is. In Fallout, my options feel like melee, shooting enemies with shotguns, shooting enemies with automatic rifles, shooting enemies with long-range rifles, shooting enemies with lasers, shooting enemies with miniguns, and so on. And the shooting mechanics don’t feel strong enough to really differentiate those different weapons as different playstyles for the most part. If I play a game like Titanfall, Battlefield, etc, then changing weapons can feel drastically different - they handle differently, you navigate combat arenas differently, you prioritise targets differently, you use cover differently. But that doesn’t really feel like the case with Fallout for me without any of the moment-to-moment decision making that tends to allow for gameplay expression in shooters.

Whereas Skyrim feels like there are a lot more playstyles available. Destruction magic feels very different to conjuration which feels very different to illusion which feels very different to being a stealth archer which feels very different to using a dagger which feels very different to using a huge, two-handed melee weapon. They’re not just visually different; how you approach and navigate combat encounters will be significantly different depending on what kind of build you have. It just feels like there’s so much more gameplay depth.

I don’t disagree, but gaming laptops are always overpriced. You’re paying a premium for the small form factor. (And I assume they also have the much less powerful RTX 4070 Mobile, which makes the value proposition even worse for laptops.)

I’m definitely a little confused about Tango - I’m hoping we’ll at least get more details come out about why Microsoft shuttered them. I mean, Ghostwire Tokyo was… whatever, and I could understand Microsoft not wanting to have them working on that kind of scale again any time soon. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it was fairly expensive and perhaps didn’t do as well as they hoped. But I’m surprised they didn’t want to just downsize the studio and aim for another HI-FI Rush-esque game (or sequel).

But Arkane Austin being closed definitely makes sense. Not only was Redfall a disaster, but by the time Redfall released, 70% of the people who’d worked on Prey had left the studio. (Largely because the studio’s president had left the studio just after Prey, I believe, rather than because of the Microsoft acquisition of Bethesda.) All that was really left was the name.

Those and reducing the requirements for the early blinds definitely stand out to me, yeah. Reducing the early blinds is a very good change - I think most of my early losses aren’t necessarily because I’ve played badly, but rather because it’s too early in the run to have found something to build around or to put any combos together. This change makes you less beholden to RNG in the early game, and also allows you to think a little more about your endgame strategy rather than focusing on surviving right now.

I don’t think the Steam Workshop is the issue here. I’m glad it exists, and direct downloads or snv links are still a reasonable alternative for mods that can’t be hosted on the Workshop for whatever reason.

It’s okay; I appreciate the apology! :)

I think it’s important to look for the nuance in situations and not treat everything as zero-sum. Both sides can have good points and be open to criticism at the same time (this isn’t an “enlightened centrist” take, I promise!). I think a lot of discussion online does tend to strip away nuance and take the position that if you show any empathy with one side then it means you must hate the other - I do my best to avoid that!

these people SHOULD be putting this negative pressure on them. It’s deserved

Was it not implied I agree with that when I said:

The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.

and;

• customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
• people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable

I’m not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it’s obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I’ve not played it myself) and should be improved.

?

I don’t see why that would make my opinion stupid. Yes, the studio/publisher should be held to account for the crappy release. But a big part of holding them to account should be not giving them money for it in the first place; not just handing over money and then complaining afterwards. Complaining afterwards is reasonable for the people who did hand over money, but they should also hold themselves accountable for financially rewarding a company that puts out a crappy product - they’re part of the problem.

The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.

• it’s hard to feel sorry for people who pre-ordered because they got exactly what they paid for - a game of unknown quality and quantity of content
• it’s hard to feel sorry for people who bought post-release because they also got exactly what they paid for - a game where reviews detailed poor quality and quantity of content
• customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
• people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable
• people abusing the devs is not reasonable

I’m not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it’s obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I’ve not played it myself) and should be improved. But I do think gamers could learn to be a little more responsible with their purchases and inform themselves before buying a game.

I’m pretty over the whole cycle of games coming out and not meeting expectations, people buying them anyway (through pre-orders or day-one purchases), people being unnecessarily rude/hostile/sending death threats to developers as if they were forced to buy the game as gunpoint. Yes, developers should try to do better, yes publishers should often give developers more time to polish up games rather than announcing the release date two years in advance and refusing to delay, but also consumers could really take some responsibility for what they decide to give money to.

It also left Game Pass somewhat recently, which could maybe contribute.

The idea that non-game software doesn’t involve creativity or spit balling or iteration is ridiculous. But from what I’ve seen it does involve a lot more waiting for consensus and thinking too far down the road, which are political activities aimed at being right (as measured by vice presidents) rather than productive activities aimed at getting something done or making something cool (as measured by your own name in credits of a completed work offered to the public).

I think the key difference is what the goal is. With non-game software, there’s usually a goal of we want something that achieves X - let’s create, spit-ball and iterate until we achieve that. X is a measurable outcome - it requires some creativity, spitballing and iteration, but it’s easy to see if/when you’ve succeeded.

With games, things are a lot more subjective. The goal is create, spitball and iterate until you have something that people find enjoyable. You just keep going until you recognise that you’ve got something worthwhile. It’s a “you’ll know it when you see it” situation, rather than something you can track your progress towards. Sometimes you can follow a formula/template and iterate on another games’ mechanics/systems and people will like it; sometimes you can do that and people will call it a soulless copycat instead. Sometimes games are technically good but just don’t feel enjoyable; sometimes they’re enjoyable despite any technical issues they might have.

Amazon and Google’s issues stemmed from treating game development like any other software development.

An analogue would be: petrol stations stop being a thing as the world transitions to electric/hydrogen/whatever cars. You start working on a way to modify your car in some way to account for this - perhaps you plan on making your own biofuel, or manually converting it to a electric/hydrogen/whatever car. The manufacturer of your car hears about this, comes along to your house and repossesses your car and takes it to be crushed, despite it being something you own and that they should have no say in any more.

And if you’re getting a game 48 hours prior to release, you’re at least getting a finished game.

True. But, personally, I think it has all the downsides of pre-ordering but at extra cost. The game could be an absolute disaster (Suicide Squad, anyone?) and there’s no way for anyone to know that. Not waiting to be able to properly inform yourself about what you’re spending money on is so stupid.

I’m honestly reaching the point where I think pre-ordering games should be legislated against. Sure, it’s only stupid people being parted from their money, but it’s clear some consumers need protecting from themselves and it’s only really the corporations that would lose out.

That’s not even the big reason; microtransactions are often very lucrative (as much as I tend to dislike them). The main thing is just the COVID hangover and general economic downturn the world has seen.

• during the height of COVID, people had more time and money to spend on gaming. While brick and mortar stores and quite a few service industries suffered, the gaming sector was seeing record profits and growth.
• investors were also investing a lot. Crypto was booming, interest rates were really low, and a lot of investment companies were just throwing money around as a result. With gaming companies not only not being hit too hard by COVID, but also thriving during it, gaming-related investment shot up. See Embracer Group for the prime example in gaming.
• like good little capitalists, these companies saw all the extra money coming in and tried to grow their companies - more staff, bigger projects, etc. They scaled up to levels that were sustainable for their newfound income and investments.

Now, not only have all of those factors been reduced, they’ve actually gone the other way. Consumers have less disposable income than they did pre-COVID due to rising cost of living. Investment companies can’t just throw their money at absolutely anything and still turn a profit because the interest rates are much higher. And the companies all found their expenditure and growth unsustainable once the money dried up, which is why we’ve seen so many layoffs in gaming already this year.

On top of all that, we’ve seen game budgets just go up and up and up, to the point where some games are costing upwards of $200M to make. The price of games hasn’t really budged that much, which means the only way for the increasing budgets to be sustainable is for sales and microtransaction spending to keep increasing. Obviously that’s not happening, and until some novel tech comes along that draws in new gamers - like the Wii did, where people who didn’t care about games at all were interested in getting the Wii for Wii Sports, Wii Fit, etc - I think gaming’s not likely to attract too many new people.

Microtransaction scandals and less and less innovation in the AAA(A) space obviously don’t help, but they’re not the big reasons why the industry has hit hard times.

Guys, don’t fall for this propaganda video about the game, it’s actually much better than he’s making it look - Skeleton Bones Ghoulie just has a bone to pick with Will Smith.

I’m aware of when to use “a” versus “an”, but I wasn’t aware that Americans don’t pronounce the “h”! It makes a lot more sense now, thanks!

…well, a little bit more sense, anyway - I’m still not sure what calling someone “a herb” actually means…

Ahh, that would do it! I don’t know if I’ve ever actually heard an American person say “herb” so I just assumed the “h” was pronounced like it is everywhere else! Thanks!

Jim Spanfeller is an herb

What does this even mean? And shouldn’t it be a herb? (Not trying to correct you on it, I know you’re just quoting, but I can’t figure out how or why you would say an herb.)

My interpretation is that it sold poorly, but that among the people who did buy it it’s got high retention.

There are definitely technical reasons why saving mid-run is a lot more complicated. With Pacific Drive, right now when you save, it’ll save:

• the state of your car - this will likely be done by looking each individual “equipment slot” the car has, assigning them a number, assigning each possible upgrade for that “slot” a number/letter, and storing its damage state (which is probably just a scale of 1-5 or whatever). So the game will store everything about your car in the format off “slot x, upgrade type y, damage z”, which can just be three values.
• your quest state. The game won’t remember what quests you’ve done or how you’ve done them in the way that you remember it - it’ll just store that you’ve completed quest step 14a and that 14b is your active objective.

It makes for a fairly simple, small save file. Being able to save mid-run would add a lot of complexity because it’d need to save a complete map state, including:

• the map layout
• your position in the map
• the enemies and hazards in the map - their positions, states, etc.
• what’s happened already in the map
• the loot in the map, and whether you’ve collected it or not

And so on. Not only does it massively increase the complexity, it would also increase the size of save files a lot and make saving and loading a lot more cumbersome. And that’s just a simplified breakdown; there are definitely other factors that can make it much, much more complicated.

There are definitely some games where “easy mode” save systems could be implemented without much changing on a technical level, but I don’t think Pacific Drive is one of them.

1.0 is getting a “true offline” mode where there won’t be any chat (and where a connection isn’t required for server authentication). Personally, I quite like the chat and the sense of community it brings (apart from when it’s filled with “D4 bad”) but I can see myself wanting it turned off if the game gets much more popular and attracts a more casual playerbase.

Honestly, though, I feel like that’s such a minor quibble to have - especially for a game still in beta. While Last Epoch obviously doesn’t have the budget behind it that Diablo 4 or Path Of Exile has, I think it’s done a great job of cementing itself as a worthwhile addition to the genre already. The developers have done a brilliant job of coming up with creative solutions to problems (both LE’s own problems and problems that other games have suffered from) and I think they’ve laid a very strong foundation to continue to build upon going forward. The game is mechanically interesting, has probably the most interesting itemisation and by far the best crafting in the genre, and generally feels good to play.

I agree that the art style isn’t as strong as Diablo 4, Path Of Exile or Grim Dawn, but I think it looks much better than a cheap Unreal asset - especially with the lighting overhaul in 1.0. And I’m glad that it isn’t just another dark fantasy setting; as much as I love those kinds of settings (Grim Dawn’s, especially), having the more lush, vibrant style of Last Epoch makes for a nice change.

It’s not a perfect game by any stretch, but I think it’s a very good game and I think it has a lot of room to grow going forward.

“poop knife xDD hehe”

There’s so much actually great content posted across reddit over the years, it blows my mind that people decided that was something that needed to be mentioned all the time.

Last Epoch and Grim Dawn are probably most in line with Diablo, I think.

People have mentioned Path Of Exile, and I’ve played a lot of it, but I don’t think it feels particularly like Diablo any more, even though it started out that way. It’s quite unforgiving, and even a lot of experienced players feel like they need to follow build guides rather than work things out for themselves. Its learning curve is hundreds or thousands of hours long. Of course, the reason for that is that it has incredible depth, variety and complexity, which may be a selling point or a deterrent depending on what you like! I definitely like the complexity of it myself, but it’s very overwhelming when you’re new. The reason I don’t think it’s all that in line with Diablo these days, though, is simply the pacing of the gameplay. You blow up screens of enemies at a time, and your deaths are often so fast that you’re not really sure what killed you.

Path Of Exile also heavily revolves around its trading economy. Item drop rates are balanced around players being able to trade for them, which makes trading somewhat mandatory (unless you’re a bit of a masochist). The economy is fairly complex, with there being a lot of different currencies, and quite a lot of factors that can affect the value of an item. I’ll let you decide whether you find this appealing or not - some people do, some people don’t! I do think it causes some issues with the balance and progression of the game, but it’s interesting to say the least, even if you wish you didn’t have to engage with it.

Grim Dawn feels a little mechanically dated at this point but it’s still solid. It’s got some good builds, the dual-class system and constellations system make for some interesting variety. It’s got an offline mode, as well as online co-op play. Its real selling point, though, at least for me, is it’s absolutely soaked with atmosphere. It’s very, well, grim, but the world is really immersive and it has a great setting in general with a solid story and some great lore. It also has quite a lot of mods available (including the Reign Of Terror mod I mentioned in another comment in the thread that adds the entire Diablo 2 campaign and all its classes to Grim Dawn).

Last Epoch is more mechanically interesting than Grim Dawn, I think, but it’s lacking in the story and world-building. It’s still in early access, although its full release is next week. It has quite a lot of depth and complexity, but it’s all done in an intuitive way that means you can jump into the game blindly and work things out for yourself fairly easily. It has a good variety of skills, and the fact that each skill has its own fairly comprehensive skill tree means you can play the same skills in very different ways. It has a wonderful itemisation system that does a great job of making you actually engage with the loot you find on the floor (which is an issue in other loot games), and some of the best crafting I’ve ever seen in a game. The dev team also manages to come up with some really creative and somewhat intuitive solutions to things they perceive as issues in other ARPGs.

Last Epoch’s biggest drawback is that its endgame is currently a little lacking in comparison to POE (which has a very rich and deep endgame, but is also a ten-year-old game that’s been updated constantly). It’s still far, far better than Diablo 4’s, though, and will obviously only improve as more is added. Last Epoch has some truly brilliant systems in place for the devs to build off - and frankly, I still think it’s great now - but it’ll only get better as more content gets added over time.

I love all three games I’ve talked about for different reasons, and honestly, they’re all well worth playing!

Grim Dawn also has a mod called Reign Of Terror that lets you play the entirety of Diablo 2 in GD, complete with classes, skills and items! It has some differences because it’s built on Grim Dawn’s systems, so it has the dual-class system from Grim Dawn (with similarly laid out skill trees), item affixes work like Grim Dawn, etc, but it feels great to play! And you can combine Grim Dawn classes with D2 classes, D2 classes with other D2 classes, or just play the D2 campaign with a regular Grim Dawn build. It’s great!

EDIT: spelling

I heard about it when Skill Up, whose YouTube channel I have notifications turned on for, posted his review of it. Before that, I’d seen absolutely nothing about it, and I heard very little about it after that, too. I was shocked to find out it was an EA game - partly because it didn’t look (visually) polished enough to be an EA game, and partly because of the complete lack of marketing I’d seen for a major publisher game.

Finding out it was an expensive flop and not just a smaller AA game they decided to put out on the side is a surprise, too.

that game is over for me once I’ve launched the rocket

Ahh, well that definitely isn’t the case for me! I usually keep playing long after I’ve launched the first rocket. For me, launching the rocket is a somewhat arbitrary “ending”; it’s a good objective for people to focus on - especially new players - but I don’t think anything really changes before or after the rocket launch in terms of gameplay loop (and there’s no narrative to change). Just like before the rocket launch, there are still things to optimise, new ways to build, etc, (some of which are supported by the science you get from launching rockets, in fact).

I suppose it partially comes down to whether you’re an objective-driven player or someone who enjoys the process. For me, it’s all about the process/journey, and the objectives are more of a guide than anything. If the objectives are complete and I’m still enjoying the process, and there’s still room for me to enjoy the process, then I’ll keep playing.

I can definitely think of quite a few non-live-service games with an “end game” that I’ve enjoyed:

• (Older) Pokémon games with their battle towers, where putting together a flexible team with as few weaknesses as possible is the aim.
• Loot games like Borderlands, Grim Dawn and Last Epoch where I want to make new builds and test their limits against harder and harder challenges.
• Factorio, where I want to optimise my factory. Although there’s absolutely an argument to be made that that is the game, but I think it becomes more about player-set goals once you’ve launched the rocket.

All of them are either offline or have offline modes available. All of them have potentially infinite “content” if you’re the sort of person who like optimising, or just being able to set yourself new targets. They’re all enjoyable to play for their “campaigns” alone, but they also have very strong sandboxes that players can continue to engage with even after the game stops giving them objectives.

I don’t necessarily disagree with your overall sentiment, though. I think MMO-style “end games” where you login for your daily, time-gated quests and do the same thing you always do with no variation or sense of progression (be it narrative, emotional, build-related or some other kind of progression) isn’t necessarily healthy. And I dislike the way “end games” have tended to move away from being optional post-game content for people who aren’t ready to finish playing yet and instead are often viewed as the main game that you have to get through the sorry excuse for a campaign/story to access.

Even of that were true (which it may be), there are loot games and loot games. Personally, I want itemisation to make a meaningful difference to how my build feels to play and how it performs. I want to be able to have a unique/legendary item drop and think, “wow, I’m going to make a while new build around this”.

Games where the loot is just +1 damage or 7% extra armour, and where there’s no real depth to the loot, would be better off without loot, I think - I’d rather just see an armoury where I pick the weapon I want, and not have to deal with the loot scaling, enemy level scaling, etc. Save the looter aspects for games like Path Of Exile or Borderlands where loot is actually engaging and impactful.

Mine, too! It really showcases the kind of narrative that is only possible with the interactivity of video games as a medium. If I could experience any game again for the first time, it’d be Outer Wilds!

Absolutely. I think perhaps my all-time favourite romance of any RPG is Parvati’s from The Outer Worlds, where you play wingman and confidant to Parvati. It feels so much more fleshed out and intimate than any player romance has ever felt to me, despite the player only being an onlooker.

Branching dialogue and decision trees are great for letting players decide what actions to take, but I feel that giving players that level of freedom with their romantic relationships feels very limiting and shallow - especially when the player is given multiple romanceable NPCs to choose from. The fact that the player character is often a blank slate means it’s impossible for there to be any real chemistry built up, too.

Give me railroaded romances between clearly defined characters where I can actually believe the characters are into each other, or give me no romances at all.

Around 15 hours for someone who goes in completely blind, I think. Or 20 minutes for someone who knows what they’re doing!

I’m not cheering for the layoffs, of course, nor am I necessarily in favour of monopolies and the consolidation of the gaming industry (although, in this instance, I think it’s probably a positive thing for fans of Blizzard IPs). But layoffs during this kind of merger/buyout are expected. Microsoft has its own legal departments, payroll departments, marketing departments, etc, and while they might need expanding slightly as the company grows/absorbs new companies, they don’t need an entire second company’s worth of those departments.

These layoffs were about cutting redundancy rather than just chasing short-term profits. It sucks for the people who were laid off either way, but I think it’s good to be realistic about why they happened.

I reckon the number of sales of the game was pretty irrelevant to them. They lived off investor money for years, and the fact that they released something makes it rather difficult for them to be sued for fraud. I suspect that’s why they never took pre-orders, too - it makes it more difficult for any “false advertisement” class action suits to get any traction if they weren’t accepting any money.

Here’s something that isn’t that widely known outside of developers/publishers: Steam holds any money from the sales of a game until the end of the following month - it makes refunds easier, it gives them time to deal with processing fees, etc. So The Day Before’s devs, who said they had to shut the studio because they’d run out of money and couldn’t afford to stay open because the game hadn’t sold well enough, wouldn’t have seen any money from the game until next week anyway. And they’d have known this - this wasn’t their first game.

Unfortunately, I doubt it’ll have much of an impact. Most of the properties/studios Embracer owns aren’t popular enough to get people to make noise about it. And people don’t tend to see the bigger picture - especially when these stories about studio closures are trickling out rather than all happening at once. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of talk about it if something happens to do with Gearbox/Borderlands or The Lord Of The Rings, or if multiple studios all get shuttered at once, but other than that, I expect it’ll just be small stories that continue to fly under the radar.

And regulators don’t seem to care about video games unless people make noise. They get involved in things like loot box regulations or Microsoft acquiring Activision because those are big deals that almost everyone in the gaming sphere has an opinion on. But unfortunately, I don’t see Piranha Bytes having issues or being closed getting enough attention for anything to change.

The convenient thing about a handful of people controlling all the wealth is it means there are only a handful of people who need to be liberated of their wealth!

I’m not sure they’re sleepwalking into it; I think there’s just very little they can do without pivoting to an entirely different business sector at this point.

• Physical game sales been dropping for years as people get better internet connections, bigger hard-drives and as games come with larger and larger day-one patches
• Many “physical” versions of games these days just contain a download code which only reduces physical sales further
• People often find it easier to buy peripherals on Amazon then go into GAME. And GAME can’t really compete with Amazon when it comes to online shopping.
• GAME tried to diversify into gaming and general “nerd culture” collectibles years ago and it’s obviously not something that’s revitalised their business.

Where do they go from here? I certainly think they handled things poorly 10-15 years ago, and could perhaps have pivoted successfully then if they’d seen the writing on the wall. But pretty much no-one predicted the current landscape back then. It’s only a decade since Microsoft’s disastrous Xbox One reveal where they got savaged for its always online nature and for heading towards digital-only games, with everyone saying, “but we love buying physical copies of games”, and now here we are ten years later with brick-and-mortar stores looking like they might not survive the year and physical sales numbers in free fall.

I don’t think GAME is necessarily mishandling things right now. I just think there’s not really a market for a business like theirs nowadays.

You’ve got some good answers already, but I can expand on it a little: businesses in most sectors are feeling the impact of increased interest rates - both because they can’t borrow as much themselves any more, and because there is less money coming in from investors because they can’t borrow as much either - but tech (including games) is doubly impacted because there was such a surge in demand during lockdowns. While other businesses tended to struggle during lockdowns, and have simply had that struggle replaced with a different struggle due to the interest rates, the tech sector grew massively during the pandemic.

People working at home, or furloughed, had more personal time and more disposable income because they weren’t spending money on travelling to work, on overpriced lunches, on dining out with friends, going to concerts, etc. It all added up, and they spent that money on streaming subscriptions, video games and just generally on recreational, home-based activities, many of which revolve around tech these days. So the tech sector grew a lot because of the low interest rates, and it grew a lot because more people were buying its products/services. And now, rather than having more disposable income, a lot of people are facing a cost of living crisis, meaning not only have they reduced their spending because they’re back in the office and dining out and going to concerts again (and all those other things people spend money on when they’re not confined to their house), but many people have less money to spend on gaming, subscriptions, etc, than pre-pandemic.

Also, because the tech sector was doing so well during the pandemic, it was an attractive prospect for investors (who themselves had increased money, as well as great interest rates), meaning it grew even more. Everything kind of fed into each other and the tech sector grew exponentially as a result. Whereas right now, not only does the increased interest rate for borrowing mean investors are throwing their cash around less in general, but the fact that the tech sector is struggling makes it a less attractive prospect for investors, meaning the whole sector kind of doubly loses out on that front.

So these tech companies invested their money into growing their companies and expanding their businesses’ scopes like good capitalists. Which does generally make sense - if you find yourself sat on a huge pile of money, it’s generally better to find a way to invest it into something useful (or to invest it into something makes you an even bigger pile of money if you see the Monopoly Man as aspirational). The issue is, most of them were somewhat short-sighted (plus global economics is a tricky thing to predict); they spent money as if it was always going to be coming in at the same rate. And now that they’re being impacted by increased interest rates on their own borrowing, the loss of investors, and the reduced spending power of consumers and they’re very suddenly having to make massive cuts to stay afloat.

I’m sure a lot of the people who said they were going to boycott it did boycott it. But a boycott was never going to work for this game. The IP alone meant it was going to sell 10M+ copies, even if it was absolutely terrible.

It absolutely is. Although, putting aside the obvious ethical debates, I will say that least AI has some practical uses. Crypto-currency and NFTs felt a lot like a solution looking for a problem, and while that can be true of some implementations of AI, there are a lot of valid uses for it.

But yeah, companies rushing to use AI like this, and making statements like this, just screams that they’re trying to persuade investors they’re “ahead of the curve”, and is absolutely indicative of a hype bubble. If it wasn’t a hype bubble, they’d either be quietly exploring it externally and not putting out statements like this, or they’re be putting out statements excitedly talking specifics about their novel and clever implementations of AI.

I don’t think consumers were the target of the scam; if they were, I don’t see a reason why they wouldn’t have accepted pre-orders for the game. In fact, I think they know that accepting pre-orders would have left them open to false advertising lawsuits which is why they didn’t go for them, and I think they were well aware that people could just refund the game so trying to scam consumers (in this instance) was probably not worth attempting.

Instead, I think the investors were the target. The brothers who own(ed?) the studio have been living off investor money for the last few years, and which how suspicious their finances are (their ludicrously high travel expenses, in particular) I’m sure they’ve hidden away a bunch more money.

The game that exists is a shameless, cheaply-made asset flip that I suspect only exists at all because it makes it much harder for investors to sue for fraud when there’s an actual product. If they’d just tried to take the money and run without releasing anything it’d be obvious fraud, but now they can claim they tried their best, expectations were too high, etc, and it’s difficult for the investors to prove otherwise.