- 1 Post
- 83 Comments
Dis u?
I’m not comfortable with companies using any kind of marketing tactics.
Now, I felt like I was fairly gentle in pointing out the absurd nature of that statement. I even readily acknowledged what I assumed to be your intent, i.e. there are absolutely marketing tactics which go beyond the pale. But, as I, and others, have pointed out, you’re the one operating on your own personal definition of marketing here, which is in contradiction to what that concept actually is. Any intro to business class will tell you that marketing is, essentially, ANYTHING an entity does to inform people of its services. It’s an enormous umbrella, which includes tactics both odious and innocuous. It is as readily applicable to the gal who posts on Facebook that she’ll do your hair for $20 as it is Facebook selling that information to a third party so she can be served targeted salon equipment advertisements.
All I’m saying is, if you say “all marketing is bad”, you need to be prepared for people to call you out on the hyperbole of that statement. Therefore, you might consider arguing the point you actually intend to make (which is good and I agree with you about!), instead of leading with a statement which you don’t actually believe.
Calling you Chicken Little was facetious, but meant to be a gentle dig at the hyperbole. Still, I shouldn’t have said it, and I apologize.
Take it easy there, Chicken Little. “I’m uncomfortable with any kind of marketing” is so hyperbolic, it’s almost parody. Putting the name of your business above the door? Thats marketing. Creating a website where customers can find and engage your services? That’s marketing. A minority-owned business proudly owning that status? That’s marketing. A friend telling you about the great meal they had the other day from a local restaurant? Believe it or not, that’s marketing.
Marketing is not evil in and of itself. Unless humanity returns to a tribal social structure where you can count the number of non-related acquaintances you know on your fingers, it is a necessary component of operating a business. Of course, you’re 100% right that there have been dubious applications of the principle, but again, you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water, and it hampers the salient point that you’re trying to make.
I didn’t even realize that there was another strike ongoing until yesterday, when I watched this Maggie Robertson (Vampire Dommy Mommy from RE8) interview. She even mentions that word wasn’t really out there about it at the time of the interview. Glad to hear it resolved enough that the union was willing to end the strike.
Caveat: I don’t play fighting games, but I come to EVO moment 37 every now and again for the frisson it provides me. From what I’ve gathered from folks who are in that community, this fest is even more impressive than you might realize, because he had to begin parrying that move before the screen effects begin. You can even see his character sort of twitching back and forth before the super pops, anticipating the directional inputs necessary to pull the parry off. So, not only is it practically frame-perfect reflexes and timing, but it’s also an incredible display of metagame knowledge to guess that is what is coming.
And it’s pretty good! I had fun with the time I put into it, though it did feel a little bloated in the same way their Pathfinder RPG did. I think it’s a consequence of their Kickstarter success for these games, which just kept talking on more stretch goals.
The good news is there is a LOT of game present for those that enjoy it.
Idk about that, I heard a fair number of folks who were less enthused with Eternal vs 2016. The general sentiment among those folks was that Eternal skewed too far into “combat puzzle” territory, where encounters felt like they had prescribed “solutions” that you needed to perform to succeed reliably. This iteration being less about resource management and high speed encounter flow seems to be a reaction to those critiques.
Exploiting Morrowind’s systems is a hobby unto itself. For years, the only copy I had access to was the Xbox release (not even the GOTY edition). Without the dev console, I had to discover other ways to bend the game to my will.
To this day, I have to resist the urge to steal the Limeware Platter from the customs office, not to mention sequence breaking by phasing through the barrel with Fargoth’s ring in that building’s courtyard. Since you hadn’t technically completed the tutorial and been released from custody yet, you could zip around the whole island, stealing with impunity and assembling quite the nest egg for your playthrough.
I’d say the latter rationalization is more plausible than the former. From memory, the swampy bits are pretty well concentrated along the western edge of the island, before giving way to the relatively temperate zones around Caldera and Pelagiad. By contrast, the volcanic portions of the island cover at least half the landmass, and there’s implemented ash storms with some frequency in those zones.
As far as headcanon goes though, I’m partial to thinking the fog represents aerosolized Cliff Racer droppings.
Okay? Again, who are you serving by choosing this specific forum to shout that messaging? I know you aren’t OP, so consider that the royal “you”.
It’s just tiresome is all, and I’m on the “boo, capitalism” side of things. It’s like the folks who turn every thread tangentially related to Microsoft into a Linux advertisement. Or the involuntary ejaculation of a vegetarian when the subject of diet comes up. Like, yes, these folks are probably correct about the things they are saying; you’re never going to be wrong to consider the angle being worked by a corp. However, it’s infantilizing to suggest that people are unaware that a corporation wants their money. That’s a given, and without additional commentary, it’s a positively useless statement that only serves to make people tune out the messaging, even in contexts where it IS desirable to bring it up (such as when a company is doing shady shit in pursuit of your money). Releasing a mediocre graphical remaster of a title that people have nostalgia for hardly qualifies as “shady shit” in my book. Lazy, sure, but not shady.
I really wish there was a companion piece to this article in which all of the alluded to “higher-ups”, who are pushing the technology, were afforded the same anonymity and freedom to speak candidly as these employees. The most insightful passage of this article, to me, was the individual who theorized that proponents of AI view game development as a problem to be solved, rather than a valuable process of iteration. Given the opportunity to speak freely, I’m curious if the pro-AI devs/execs would agree with that characterization.
Buy the Divinity games instead. Rewards Larian, doesn’t give WOTC/Hasbro shit, and enables the studio to continue to work of stuff they find exciting, rather than becoming chief foremen of the IP mines, along with all of Activision’s support studios who do naught but crank out CoD skins nowadays (RIP Raven).
If I remember right, Larian has pretty definitively said they want nothing to do with DnD or BG3 moving forward, to the point that they cancelled DLC plans.
Meh. According to the source you posted, that exchange was simply “my wife found two reports that Apollo Legend committed suicide. If it’s true, I will not shed a tear. I will try to suppress a smile or a giggle.” Yes, considering Apollo’s eventual death, it’s shitty, no doubt.
However, according to your source, that was in a private text to an unidentified party, who I presume is affiliated with Mitchell either socially or professionally. It wasn’t a public post, and it wasnt directed to Apollo. It doesn’t even state that Mitchell hopes that it is true. Just that he’s not going to be broken up about it. I’ve said far more inflammatory shit with regards to the barons of the American insurance industry. Does that mean that I should be found culpable for the death of Brian Thompson? I sure hope not.
Caveat: I only read the source you posted, so perhaps there’s wider context I’m missing.
This video series sounds like it might be up your alley. Guy documents his attempts to simulate a goblin society and ecosystem.
An emotional box? Enough about my wife!
Hopefully someone with better info than me will chime in (my algorithm occasionally coughs up LOTRO vids, but I haven’t played seriously in some time). I believe that there are two stated reasons for the situation, both relating to the age of the game. The first is that the remaining player base is not big enough to support the number of servers currently offered, and so consolidation will help the game feel more alive at any given moment. The second reason is that the legacy servers are 32 bit, and they want to modernize to a 64 bit architecture. So, two birds, one (standing) stone.
Just came from another thread detailing them walking back the skin=class change. Glad to that’s being fixed, as that’s definitely the most egregious issue, but I’m very disappointed to hear the gunplay is less impactful. That was KF2’s biggest strength imo, esp as a Commando main when I played it frequently. Popping domes in slo Mo was art.
It sounds like they had moved to a more restrictive system. It’s been a long time since I played KF2, so my memory could be suspect, but I recall your “character” being not much more impactful than a weapon skin.
The meat and potatoes was actually what class you picked, which perks you selected from that class (you got a new choice every 5 levels or so), and then what weapons you rolled with. This will be hypothetical because I don’t actually know the particulars, but I think it’s generally illustrative of KF2’s progression design:
Load in, select Demolitionist class, get a +1%/level damage bonus with explosives and incendiaries as my class trait. Hit level 5. Choose between doubling the AOE of my Molotov cocktails or being able to carry two extra frag grenade. And so on. Any “character” could be any class, and could freely tailor perk choices to their liking.
Are you actually proposing incorporating elements of the BR genre (choosing drop locations, looting, encroaching zone time limit, limited respawning, etc) or do you just want bigger arenas and more players in your regular Twisted Metal death match? Cause I don’t actually think Twisted Metal is as suited for the BR genre as you say, but I could be convinced otherwise if you have a take.
It’s a holdover from the early days of Rainbow Six would be my guess. You had like a dozen or so operatives with mild differentiations in stats and traits. Each guy had a “service record” of sorts, which gave a little more context for what was, in essence, the games’ lives system. If I remember right, some of these names were either pulled from or incorporated into the Tom Clancy Universe of novels and adaptations. It was a practically free way to inject some story and character into games that were pretty light on those details otherwise.
Of course, modern Rainbow Six has no need for these things, but inertia is a bitch, and you can be sure some grognards would piss and moan about a “feature” being removed if they stopped including these details.
I’m speculating, and certainly not a business expert, so heaping handfuls of salt comes with this statement: I think part of the problem that led to this is that each game was published by a different entity. Square published 2016, then put the devs up for sale the following year, citing underperformance. IO buys itself out and becomes independent, but needs capital to get Hitman 2 across the finish line. Enter a publishing deal with Warner Bros. That game proves successful enough that Hitman 3 is able to be self-published.
Considering IO’s concept of this World of Assassination trilogy was always that it would have certain online-only or live servicey features, and I assume that publishers often provide the necessary infrastructure for these things, I wonder if the rotating chair of publishers is to blame for making this process so much more obtuse than it needs to be.
Please do not connect multiplayer shenanigans into my Doom campaign. It seems vanishingly rare nowadays to get a AAA shooter with as much, if not more, love put into its campaign mode, if it has one at all. Have your death match LAN parties all you like, keep the dream of the 90s alive and all, but I’m not too proud to beg that it stay its own disconnected thing.
I agree that a flawed product is typically better fodder for analysis than either something “perfect” or “abysmal”, and hey, if the scale works for you, don’t let me yuck your yums. You had the courtesy to explain what the ratings mean, which is more than many such systems give you. I think I am simply preconditioned to equate a ten point system as roughly analogous to school grades, e.g. 6 represents the lowest “passing” grade, so I was taken aback by your system.
ETA a minor note for your consideration: pre designating your ratings as 4-7 sort of boxes you in as a reviewer. I think the premise of “I’m going to examine games whose reception was tepid to lukewarm” is valid and interesting. However, your rating scale operates on a preconceived notion that the reception these games received was correct and that, by virtue of your having selected the game for review, it will be a 4-7/10 game. Of course, I’m sure you’re willing to color outside of the boundaries of that range if you feel moved to do so by a gameplay experience, but I felt it should be point out that even titling your post “Mid Game Reviews: XYZ” is something of an argument, for better or for worse. I know seeing “mid game” and “dark forces” in the title got me to click, again, because my nostalgia for the game overrides any desire to do an objective assessment (which, to be clear, is a me problem, not you). I’m just imagining a post like “Mid Game Reviews: The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time” and the sorts of response that would evoke, even if your review was “idk how this ended up in my queue, this is a masterpiece 10/10”. Do with this perspective what you will.
- @[email protected] to
- •
- www.pcgamesn.com
- •
- 2Y
- •
For some reason I always figured CCP was an independent outfit, based on how they’ve handled EVE over the years. I know there were some rumblings about the business model a few years back, but, by and large, everything seems to be done with a fairly hands off ethos.