I’m glad for that move. By the end of Witcher 3 I was supremely fed up with Geralt’s whole shtick. I couldn’t take anymore of that giant hunk of boring constantly tripping over thirsty sexy single witches near his location. The so called “dating sim” part was nothing more than basic fan service. I’m liking Ciri’s “I’m done” energy in the trailer.

AC’s best parts are hardly the dialogue choices. Often there’s a good one, some bad ones, and information is either partial or vague. Hardly fun unless guessing is your thing. Their approach to “solving” it is just a bandaid over a flawed design though.

I was more used to hearing privatization referring to a government owned entity passing to private interests, but I did a quick search and found out it can mean both things:

Privatization occurs when a government-owned business, operation, or property becomes owned by a private, nongovernment party.

Privatization also may describe a transition that takes a company from being publicly traded to becoming privately held. This is referred to as corporate privatization.

I love the aesthetic but my hand eye coordination is very mid and I bet I’ll suck. How hard is it?

Well I wouldn’t say it’s measurable since we’re talking about something qualitative. It’s hard to speak for the audience as a whole too, but for my part the disconnect is pretty fucking big.

Last one I played was FFXV and it was… weird. Hero is an emo jerk, everyone has a kpop haircut and worries about their weight when they go have fried chicken. Setting is fantasy rural USA. Who is even the target audience of this thing?!

They’re sitting on something lovely and precious. Squenix could make a turn-based RPG with Chocobos and airships and little black mages with large straw hats and red mages with musketeer swag and everybody would lose their shit. They don’t need to make it an action based 3D megaproduction. 2.5D with a spruced up battle system would be so fine.

I can tell this isn’t a prebuilt because your PSU isn’t a sus nondescript metal box.

Plenty of normal people don’t have time for a single live service game

I didn’t realize the new Steam family sharing was so detrimental to close ones away from each other. Their Guide & FAQ is clear with their intentions:

While we know that families come in many shapes and sizes, Steam Families is intended for a household of up to 6 close family members.

To that end, we expect the requirements for participating in a Steam Family to change over time as we monitor its usage and add requirements to keep usage in line with this intent.

Last line is pretty brutal. Apparently even family members living in the same country & different household might be in for a surprise eventually. That’s really saddening because at first glance this overhaul sounded amazing considering a single game was locked by play instead of the whole library.

For peripherals (screens, audio) rtings is pretty cool. They take testing seriously with a scientific/engineering approach.

It’s at least a century old problem imho. In the 1950’s clever capitalists where already looking for ways of “Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary”. I can’t believe how often I’ve had to buy a new fucking toaster. It just keeps getting worst.

Ullman’s argumentation is very wiggly when it comes to impact on performance. On one hand, he claims there’s very little proof, on the other hand he claims there is no point producing proof because they wouldn’t be believed. Furthermore he says their hands are tied as they’d need their client’s approval to publish such numbers, conveniently ignoring the possibility of anonymizing and grouping data. Remember they state to being included in 70-80 games yearly.

Finally, and this is an old song, but anyways: preventing loss in sales due to piracy is an exercise in wishful thinking. The amount of pirate players who would have paid in an alternate universe with no cracked version can’t be reliably estimated.

This whole little discussion is just users telling each other to fuck off with no elaboration whatsoever on either side.

Conspiracy theories are easy answers because they lack the nuance of reality and they present an attractive narrative. There’s good guys, bad guys, underdogs, secrets, etc. In contrast reality is full of grey areas, requires a lot of thought, will make you empathize with those you thought you’d blame and vice versa. Facing facts is hard work.

The gaming industry has treated their workforce very badly and yet they are still attracting the best because it remains a “dream job” for many. I remember reading somewhere that the same kind of thing happens with airplane pilots.

Despite the corporate crust one has to deal with when playing a Ubisoft game, I do enjoy how hard they go on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. The seemingly endless flow of bigoted tears that follows is priceless.

Ugh, the suspense… When will we even get to know what the accusations are about? Is this Japan or Kafka’s Trial?

The ploy to rake in money has backfired as Unity revenue has dropped 16% and now the money people are backpedalling. I agree with you that the damage is done and it’ll take much more to build back trust with the gamedev community.

Eyeing Planet Crafter, been craving for a craft survival lately

I’m still surprised they couldn’t (or decided not to put the necessary effort to) get the save games fixed. Telling your players to start over is brutal.

Gotta chase that perpetual growth.

Q [english] Please tell me what plans you have for the Mega Man series.

A [corpospeak] Mega Man is one of our highly-valued IPs and we are considering how to create games for it on an ongoing basis.

A [translated] None whatsoever.

I know Ubisoft has a history of making greedy decisions, but when I see the disgusting backlash they get for being woke I can’t help but get curious about the game. There’s something irresistible about that kind of salt. That’s basically how AC Valhalla got in my backlog.

Non traditional input devices are fascinating, so thanks for posting your research. In your precise situation though, my advice would be to put down the baby.