You also didn’t hear about it because it’s not great. I watched a stream of it: the gameplay looks uninspired, like a student project to mimic Burnout, and the visuals would have looked dated in 2010.

But it was functional. So it’s neither good nor bad enough to rave about. You just say “huh”, flip a coin, and either uninstall forever or play every 7 months when you remember it’s on your hard drive.

There is a functional product. I played it years ago.

But it ain’t finished yet, which is the insane bit given the breadth of funds and length of time.

You are in essence gatekeeping enjoying a video game as a concept. Like people must enjoy them the way you envision.

What an incredibly inaccurate statement. I love modding video games, I spend more time modding video games than I spend playing video games. I understand that the vision developers have doesn’t often align with what I want from their product.

I don’t agree that developers should be spending dev cycles making a game functional for a user that turns off any configuration of gameplay mechanics.

Saying you can just set a variable from “true to false” is so laughably misunderstanding what goes into software development much less game development that it sounds entitled. What gameplay mechanics are you even saying should be configurable? All of them? Just turn off the combat in a fighting game? At what point is a gameplay mechanic integral to the genre/experience? And who is the person or persons that decide?

Developers should be free to create what they want, and the end user is free to mod it however they want. That includes, for the devs, not purposefully obfuscating things so that modding is more diffcult.

I disagree because it solely approaches games as some sort of “electronic commodity” and outright despises a development group’s artistry.

Sure, not every game is trying to be art. But games have long gone beyond the realm of simply “entertain me”. That opinion is like saying “books should be made in a way that allows users to change the story whenever and however they want.” It is something you can do but there’s no imperative to cater to it.

I think we should see what it’s priced at before we start making proclamations about the Steam Machine being the “standard gaming PC”.

Indie and AA.

I’ve gotten release copies of games for review. Unless they have another secret tier of pressers, this is nonsense. If anything, review copies are more likely to have bugs that making completing the game harder.

Maybe I’m suddenly shite at games but parrying feels like happenstance rather than a technique. The block windup is too long for me to react to the quick strike they throw out. It feels like Skyrim combat, from a “battle flow” standpoint.

I have watched video game let’s plays on Pornhub, once. As a novelty.

Luckily I never claimed that I did. And those “one-dude-did-it-all-in-a-week” games are getting eclipsed by things people churn out in a 48 game jam, what’s you’re point?

I can tell you’re just an ornery arse, so I’m gonna dip.

Plus, making games is so much easier that the industry is cranking out more games than ever. Even if the proportion of stinkers stays constant, someone with bad statistics knowledge and an obsession with the negative would notice an increased number of bad games.

Whoa, what the hell. How are you throwing Totalbiscuit and the entirety of GamerGate’s scandals and social furor into the same, offhand pile?

John was strongly opinionated and enjoyed being a bit of a smug ass as his online persona, but he was mainly about making games more accessible by advocating for more, and more inclusive, settings for all the games he played.

This was the first comment I saw in this post. Having skimmed through the rest of the comments, I’ll just say “fair enough but I disagree.”

Is…this a joke?

That’s reasonable. Might time the pickup right before release then

Okay, that’s good info. I was so excited to see it, I almost reflex-bought in but I wanted some info kn what was even in the game.

Seems like I’ll wait a bit longer. But 30 bucks for the full game seems surprisingly low.

When did they say “fuck morality policing”, or even “let’s all stop policing morality”?

Either you piggy-backed off a comment to be a whole weirdo. Or you neee to up your reading comprehension.

Why are publishers speaking for devs about how much choice devs would have? Why not get devs to speak?

The only asari I’ll ever truly accept is Dr. Liara T’soni, my OTL.

Once again, we have lawmakers just making spurious if not outright false statements with no repercussions. When your words decide people’s reality, you should be afraid of what you say. And I don’t see that fear in legislators.

They just say whatever the fuck incorrect bullshit they wish, and walk it back at their leisure when the effect is already resolved in throughout news media. The world’s gotten their soundclip, the base started foaming when they heard their whistles, and then the politican quietly amends “oh, I obviously didn’t mean that.” If more politicans shut the fuck up because they were scared of the repercussions of walking their statements back, then maybe there’d be more reporting on what they’ve done then the inflammatorily idiotic shit they spew every other day.

The title reads like pure SEO nonsense. They announced it last year didn’t they? No one reasonable is claiming vapourware because a game has gone silent for a year.

This one is REAL rough, not much interesting I’ve seen

Yeah, it’s not trendy but I don’t think we can do trendy unless we do like I said and derive from standout games with identifiable suites of mechanics. You just have to be descriptive or accept heavy overlap.

“Auto shooter” is not very descriptive. In 10 years, someone would be having this same conversation about that term. Asteroids is basically an auto shooter because there’s no reason to not always be shooting, it’s effectively a QOL change. Some bullet hells too.

Video game genres are one of the few fields in which I’m not a prescriptivist. But survivorlikes only aren’t called RPGs because Vampire Survivor is embossed on the whole subgenre. The suite of mechanics rose to high prominence on the back of one game (or franchise, in the case of Soulslikes) rather than refined through years of experimentation.

We aren’t going to get more, simple names unless they’re similarly derived from a single, famous ancestor like your “Soulslike”. But you can always just be descriptive. Diablo/PoE are “top-down gear-grind RPGs”; it’s jargony but all subgenres are.

I’ve never seen Horizon Zero Dawn called an ARPG but that does seem to be the consensus. I’ve always considered games like that or new God of War to be “adventure games”.

They were probably on slightly profitable. Or, Money forbid, only breaking even.

That’s the kind of competition I want. Not a plucky newcomer with fresh ideas, but an industry titan able to burn more money than some companies ever see in an attempt to undercut the competition. They surely aren’t factoring this as a deficit to recoup when they pull a massive reversal after securing market dominance. That’s never happened in the history of capitalism.

Epic can huff my huffables.

How are they affording this? It can’t be a sustainable model, right?

What are your issues with the game? Have you played it?

People with jobs that aren’t playing video games.

Even taking hyperbole into account, this is not a great metric and has not been bourne out in my experience.

What’s a suspiciously high and low score?

I don’t like losing but I’ve been doing it my whole life, so I’m pretty good at it now

They mention it’s from a franchise in the first paragraph.

Have you considered that everything you like is just some level of sci-fantasy (an existing genre[-fusion])?

They are both under the umbrella of “speculative fiction” but they go in different directions.

What was different in the spellcrafting system from Oblivion to Morrowind?

What’s the problem with staying in early access? It’s not like the games are squatting on welfare. Do they get anything from Steam beyond a placard that says “my game ain’t finished”?

The only thing is people deflecting criticism because of the “early access” tag. But if you want to introduce arbitrary term limits so you can win internet arguments about video game developer malfeasance, then you’ve lost me.

I don’t understand why we let Civ get away with amputating gameplay from the end-of-lifecycle previous game to repackage as new DLC again? If they hit upon great ideas in an expansion, why is that not folded into the core product like most decent games do with sequels?

They started with a triangle for 6, slowly carved it down to a semi-smooth, functional circle, then turned around for 7 and said “how about a cube this time?” Stop reinventing the wheel and finish refining it.

Honestly, the development mirrors my playthroughs of 4Xs: start with something funky and a lil different, struggle to make it work, and then restart when I’m close to done.

The only concern is how much the cost of training the model changes if it got a significant kickstart from previous, very-expensive training. I was interested because it was said to be comparable for a fraction of the cost. "Open"AI can suck sand.

I’m doing a temperature check: name a game with good lore.

The discussion was of a common trope in video games, the person I replied to referenced an unspecific element in video game storytelling, and you expect the primary understanding of the subsequent label to be talking to a sub-section of a sub-section of all gamers?

Either you are reading a far too charitable (and unrealistic) interpretation of the previous comment, or the original comment needs signficant revision.

Even if we take your reading as valid, how would the attention span of a minor fraction of all gamers move the needle, in terms of game design, enough to bring about the tropes previously discussed?