Having seen what the film industry did to Borderlands, my expectations are at about zero for this.

Maybe since it’s a Sony game and Sony movie they will respect the story, but who knows…

Isn’t the multi-player immersive sim thing what Arcane was going for with Redfall? That one didn’t work out so well…

I love these games. I replay them both every few years and they are still fun. I’m still pissed about what happened to Arcane Studios and what could have been had the big corpos not done their usual bs.

What?!? I’ve been wanting a fairphone forever and couldn’t find a place to send it stateside. This is great.

OH MY GOD PLEASE STOP CONSOLIDATING GAMING STUDIOS. I don’t want all my games to come from Sony and Microsoft.

Not a lawyer, but it seems like changing the ball throwing mechanic is an admission that they are taking ideas from Nintendo. Maybe they are trying to minimize the damage but still seems like they are weakening their position.

I guess it’s hard to walk the line between pleasing hard core gamers and speed runners vs more casual gamers. The speed run community takes advantage of glitches that in many cases make gaming worse for the more casual folks. It’s probably one of those things that devs have to keep in mind in choosing whether to eliminate a bug/glitch or leave it.

Yep, happened to Arcane Austin. Redfall was a disaster because Bethesda couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that Arcane made (awesome) single player games and not MMOs. Hopefully history won’t repeat itself.

It’s hard to believe that Annapurna leadership (and Ellison specifically) are surprised by this. It reads like Ellison is known for backing out of deals or simply not honoring them. Why should the staff believe she would honor a spinoff deal?

Hope the team is able to get something off the ground.

$700?!? Are you freaking kidding? I’ll stick with my PC, thanks.

" optimize staffing levels to be more comparable with industry leaders”

I will never understand why investor types like to play follow the leader rather than giving strategic or financial reasons for business decisions. Who gives a shit if every other studio is laying people off? If the staffing is right for your company then following other industry leaders will only make things worse and cement you in a place behind those leaders.

I’m hoping they learned their lesson with 3. I liked many of the changes to game mechanics but the story and characters were awful. Plus the idea that basically every woman is a siren is just a little worn out.

I would have fully supported a movie with Mister Torgue running around having adventures. Of course he would be played by John Cena in a mullet.

Good. I’m sick of seeing the “pet this cat” reviews at the top of the list. Hopefully this changes some of that stuff.

I wonder how much things like drift and recursion (ai training on its own data) would have on applications like this. I assume it’s like most and it it would just produce nonsense. But since it would likely result in cuts to the animation staff, I’d think recovery from model collapse would be harder since getting new data takes time, staff resources that would be hard build up while in the middle of development.

“If we expect all games to attract players indefinitely, Buckley says, ‘we’re just going to get more of these really soulless live service games that come out and get shut down nine months later, 12 months later, because they’re not making enough money.’”

We need more developers talking like this.

Same. I’m a little surprised it took them so long to build out a 4-player coop mode. Would have expected that with OMD3

Gaming historian did a really interesting documentary on Oregon Trail. Definitely recommend checking it out

Here’s the link https://youtu.be/8QbjlHeoLdc?si=BmxLQj_yIDn_Kzhl

Just got Stardew Valley. I’m a little reluctant to start it though- it seems like one of those games I could sink hundreds of hours into and I have a huge backlog. But I’m excited to try it.

Yep. Even if he was concerned he wouldn’t want to express that publicly, because his teams would all start jumping ship. Then he’d have an actual delivery problem on his hands and the chance of closure would be much higher.

That said, any studio owned by Microsoft should be worried. They demonstrated that even producing popular, highly-acclaimed games isn’t enough for them, so there doesn’t seem to be a way to keep them happy.

Excited to see more updates coming to Cult of the Lamb. I enjoyed the hell out of the main campaign and recent update.

Tried the Anger Foot demo a while back and it was okay. I may grab the full version depending on price. The aethetic is fun and interesting and the kicking mechanic is pretty satisfying.

I don’t understand why this isn’t discussed more openly by studios and publishers. Instead, they all seem to be trying to milk more money from the teets of and gen z gamers who are worried about things like buying a home or even paying for groceries. They keep driving more games to live service, or paid DLCs that 20 years ago would have been part of the base game or free updates. Why not go for a new market instead of fighting over the little money that most younger gamers have to spend?

Yeah, but the non-tech savvy business leaders see they can generate code with AI and think ‘why do I need a developer if I have this AI?’ and have no idea whether the code it produces is right or not. This stat should be shared broadly so leaders don’t overestimate the capability and fire people they will desperately need.

Plus they are bleeding money from all the acquisitions and haven’t seen the return they expected in game pass subs. The cost cutting isn’t done and it would be very surprising for them to try to dump more money into new storefronts when they are still trying to make their own business model profitable (to their expectations).

What I don’t get is that most of these acquisitions are reviewed by a govt body somewhere. And every single company trying to buy or sell another always says it will support growth of the business, but that is literally never true. There are always layoffs; sometimes right away and sometimes 6 or 12 months later, but they always happen. How companies get away with claiming the sale will create jobs and people are surprised when they turn around and do layoffs is totally beyond me.

He works for a marketing and web design firm. So the guy who designed their graphics is gone and they are using AI tools. Imagine paying for a firm to build you web and marketing materials only to have someone just use an AI.

Why bother paying the marketing firm at all?

Oh awesome. I’ll have to try it again. I have a couple hundred hours in xcom 1 and play long war from time to time. Exciting to have a ‘new’ game to play!

And then there’s XCOM… which thankfully 2 is amazing.

Really? It wouldn’t play on my machine back when it first came out so I returned it and never went back after seeing a ton of negative reviews about the timed missions. Did they update that part or was the bad feedback overblown?

The nice thing about products that improve accessibility is that they often make experiences better for everyone just by having more thought put into the design and use.

I don’t have any condition that would require me to need this controller but I’d love to try it out.

Some interesting info in this article. If game pass hasn’t really paid off (in maintaining growth of new or recurring users), this may be an indication that they will make some changes to it.

Honestly it’s probably for the best. Remedy is great at rich world building and stories, but I’m not sure that a coop multi-player game is really something I’d be all that jazzed about coming from them. Just get me Alan Wake 2 on steam and Control 2 please.

Ugh.

They don’t all need to be 10-year development AAA games. Maybe we need more than another 150+ hr, $80 game. These studios were doing good stuff that checked a lot of boxes and now they’re gone or stuck with Microsoft making more starfield updates.

WHEN LAWYERS WRITE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IT MEANS WHATEVER THEY ARE SAYING IS SUPER DUPER LEGAL AND NO ONE CAN EVER QUESTION IT.

Looks a little like Untitled Goose Game with a cat.

I approve.

It sucks that in pretty much every case, when a company is successful enough to acquire another, they somehow immediately become cash strapped to the point that they have to lay people off.

I know business people will say it’s more complicated than that, but I don’t think it is or needs to be.

Whenever I think of the good old days of the internet (like 2000-2009) I think of using stumbleupon and finding the best and most random stuff.

And you know what games were released via shareware? Doom. Quake. Great games that made you want to save up to get the full version. But even if you couldn’t do that you still got a solid playing experience with the free version.

I feel like those of us who grew up in the 90s got to see a young utopia internet. I kind of wish we could hit the reset button and go back to those days.

If studios want to commit to this games as a service model they need to really tighten up their language Don’t “sell” games, since they can’t be owned by customers. Don’t promote replayability if you have no plans to make the game available indefinitely. Sell it like an experience, like going to a theme park or getting a massage, and be crystal clear about how much usage the license purchased will get players, support window, updates and patches included etc.

Studios keep wanting things both ways by saying they want to sell games but then don’t let customers use them how they want after purchase, and pull the rug out as if customer should have expected it.

Yep. I’ve been working through Horizon Forbidden West,l over the past few days, but before that I’ve been cycling replays of Borderlands 2, Control, South park, Portal 2 and a handful of others older games. Probably will do another Dishonored run this year too. The older games just scratch the itch way more than most of my newer ones.

This is a good April fools joke. Definitely seemed believable, right up to the woman in the driver’s seat wearing it.