I don’t think it is, it’s $500 w/ Mario Kart, $450 without, and if we compare to the Steam Deck at $400, it has:

• better screen resolution, faster refresh rate, and a larger screen (almost an inch bigger)
• is lighter, thinner, and overall smaller
• has better performance, at least in Cyberpunk 2, with generally better graphics
• plays Nintendo first-party games

The Steam Deck has been the handheld to beat. Some are faster, but no PC handheld is anywhere near the Steam Deck in terms of value (price for performance). The Switch 2 beats it in performance, and is a similar price, which is pretty awesome.

The games, however, are really expensive, but we’re talking about hardware value here.

It’s the same form factor but a lot better hardware.

Whether it’s good or not is irrelevant. The fact is that it exists as the recommended way to install games, and it’s not available for my platform even years after it was released. What does that say about me and my platform? If I have an issue with a game, will they help? If they’re unwilling to support their flagship launcher, why would they help with a game?

Steam works on my platform and has for over 10 years, and they’re constantly making improvements specific to my platform. GOG has DRM free games. Is that enough reason to prefer GOG over Steam? Most of my Steam games are DRM-free, so my answer is no.

I’ve used minigalaxy in the past as well. There are solutions, sure.

I’m more rankled by GOG not even giving a nod to Linux users and going out of their way to court Windows users. I understand the economics here, but I would very much appreciate something from them. When they had a user voice (not sure if they still do? A quick search didn’t find it), the top requested feature was Galaxy support for Linux, and we’ve gotten nothing from them, except I guess a deal w/ the creator of Heroic for a referral revenue share on game sales (similar to sales through streamer links and whatnot). That’s it. That feels like a bit of a slap in the face.

Eh, when someone says “private investigator,” I subconsciously assume there could be a group involved, and not one person. If I hire a tax preparer, there are probably multiple people involved (the person preparing the tax docs, the accountants auditing those docs, people auditing their software, etc).

If someone says “private investigators,” I assume they contacted multiple agencies, perhaps on multiple occasions.

I’m more like 90/10, because GOG still refuses to port their Galaxy client to Linux. At this point I don’t even really want to use it since Heroic is good enough, but it really sucks feeling like a second-class citizen, compared to Steam, which goes out of its way to provide a top tier experience on Linux. I’d even be fine with them adopting Heroic as an officially-supported client (provide links and whatnot on the website next to Galaxy), I just need some indication that they care.

Most games I own on Steam are DRM-free anyway, so I’d be supporting GOG more out of principle than anything.

Yup. I use AI when I need a “good enough” result. I do it myself when I need an actually good and provably correct result.

For example, for random trivia to settle a dispute, AI is fine. For something at work that will impact a ton of customers, I will double and triple check anything that goes through AI.

Eh, Steam Deck has buttons, which are probably different enough design-wise to avoid lawsuits.

Eh, I’ve tried to like it and I don’t. It’s fine, but the buttons kinda suck and I never got used to the left touchpad. The main thing I miss is a second joystick.

The Steam Deck is way better, and I think I’d like a standalone controller designed that way, with a bit bigger touchpads (not as big as the Steam controller though).

The touchpads are great at replacing a mouse, but not great at replacing a joystick.

But what about a Magic: the Gathering set?

I find them really valuable. Before buying a game, I’ll skim 10 or so reviews, both positive and negative, to find what it’s good and bad at. If the negative reviews are all stuff I don’t care about and the positive reviews excite me, I’ll probably get it. But if the negative reviews consistently mention something that’ll bother me, I’ll pass.

Yeah, Magic Carpet rocked. I’d love a game like that with MP.

I just don’t buy games that have features I don’t like. I don’t pirate them, I just don’t play them.

Most of my money goes to indies because they don’t pull this BS. I’ll play the occasional AAA game if it’s worth it, but not many.

At the end of the day, it is Valve’s house. If there is a room full of nazis then clearly they are okay with it. End of story.

Would you rather Valve, with their dominant market position, be opinionated about what games and speech they allow? Or would you rather they act more like a public market, where publishers decide what is allowed in their corner of the market? Does this preference change depending on whether they align with you?

If a publisher wants to attract Nazis, let 'em. If they want to attract leftist extremists, let 'em. If a publisher wants to discourage all forms of extremism according to their own opinion of what “acceptable” means, let 'em. But the choice should be for the publisher to make, not the platform, especially if that platform has a dominant position.

Okay, so unwritten rule that you can’t sell games about murdering actual human beings.

I assume those would be illegal, which seems to be the metric Valve uses when deciding whether to ban something. That means you could have different bans based on region, so China will have different bans than the UK, which will have different bans than Russia.

Which is what the steam forums ARE.

Which is why publishers should be able to take over moderation if they don’t like how the community is acting. I don’t know if that’s the case, because the only time I go to the forums is from an internet search looking for a fix to a specific issue. I don’t see 99% of the nonsense here, nor do I know how moderation happens (or doesn’t happen).

Libertarianism isn’t about leaving things alone, it’s about protecting rights. Valve has every right to moderate, but if was a government, it would not, outside of speech likely to directly incite violence (e.g. planning an assassination or terrorist attack) due to the right to free speech. It seems GabeN is holding Valve to theore strict standard of a government than the looser standard of a private company.

If Valve sees the platform as similar to a government, it should see a game-specific forum as a private space controlled by the publisher. If the publisher doesn’t want to take that responsibility, they can leave it up to Valve’s standard.

I think the hands off position is correct, provided the publisher can take over moderation. Players can choose with their wallet and their engagement and decide whether to buy a game or engage with the forums based on its community moderation.

Steam has a lot of value to me partly because there’s a ton of stuff there I find distasteful, which makes me feel like there’s a better chance things I like that others don’t will be allowed on the store. If a game isn’t on the store, that’s because the publisher didn’t publish it there, not because Valve blocked it. Platforms like Steam shouldn’t be opinionated, they should be as inclusive as possible, and that includes criticism of public figures the platform may like.

I have no idea how Steam’s forums work since I only go there if I can’t find a solution to an issue elsewhere, but for that use case it’s totally fine?

GabeN is a pretty established Libertarian Tech Bro and Valve only moderates to the bare minimum requirement.

Isn’t that kind of what you want from a distributor? Looking up “Gabe Newell political views,” the top results were about him refusing to ban games, partly to avoid the Streisand effect, but also because he doesn’t believe in censorship. If Valve banned things based on company views, they’d quickly be at risk of an antitrust lawsuit.

I personally agree that Valve shouldn’t be involved in the forums. But I do think the publisher should be able to take over moderation if they so choose. Maybe that’s a thing, idk, I don’t know very much about the forums.

I do a quick skim of the review scores and get it

I’m the same way. I skim the first ten or so reviews, skipping low effort (one sentence) and try-hard (massive checklists and essays) reviews, and try to find a negative review or two. I’m looking for what the game is good and bad at to see if it likely justifies the price.

Ah, that’s where non-credible defence gets its source material…

Sure. My point is that AAA studios have massive marketing budgets so it’s more likely you’ll consider them than an indie that you night like more. We need a better way for good indies to get noticed.

How did you lose interest in Assassin’s Creed?

The story went nowhere.

Wishlist

That format looks like exactly what I’m looking for! Thanks!

I didn’t like Yahtzee tries as much, probably because it was like a Let’s Play with banter instead of an actual review.

only game every year is Assassin’s Creed,

How did they settle on AC? Is that the only game that would ever appeal to them, or did one of their friends introduce them and they got hooked? How many of them played Balatro or Among Us and other “viral” games?

The way to market to these people is to get that one person in a friend group to try something new and sell their friends on it. I used to only play a handful of games too, and back then it was mostly StarCraft and Halo. Then a friend introduced me to FTL, Factorio, and Minecraft (back when the last two launched, not what they are today), and I fell in love with indie games. All it takes sometimes is a single experience to show people what they’re missing.

Second Wind

I took a quick look, and it seems to be a mixed bag of content, from first time experiences with games to meta discussions on what makes parts of games great and interesting. Looking at last dozen or so videos, it’s mostly bigger games like Borderlands, Hollow Knight, and Subnautica. If you play any indie games, you’ll hear about those (and Borderlands isn’t even indie).

I think what I’m looking for is something that goes over the top new games from the last month or something, with deeper dives between those videos.

I’ve found niche games to scratch a certain itch I’ve had just by going to the Steam search and filtering by tags

I’ve done the same, and it’s way more miss than hit. When I finally find a hit, it’s usually a few years old, and is going for a fraction of the launch price.

For any given game, I can usually find a decent review by some random fan on YouTube, but going the other direction is a lot harder.

You’re not going to convince the Madden/FIFA/etc group because community is more important than the game itself. The same is true for the big competitive games, since again, community is more important than the game itself.

The rest of the market is massive though, and even the people who only play a handful of games still pick up the occasional game to play on their own.

The solution here, IMO, is a high profile reviewer that focuses on indie games. In fact, we don’t really need reviewers going over AAA games because their marketing departments are already handling it. I want professional reviewers who try hundreds of indie games every year and promote the top 10-20 or so. Indie games are some of my favorite, but finding them is incredibly time consuming.

I disagree. The PC gaming market is about $76.67B. That’s ~$4M for each of the 18,626 games, most of which are asset flip crap. Many of the remainder are by indie devs (generally <30 people). The article mentions about ~10% of those games receive 500 or more Steam reviews, so we’re probably looking at $40M on average person game w/ 500+ reviews (i.e. probably not asset flip crap).

There are only about 20-30 AAA games released every year. The indie game market size is about $5B, and that’s across platforms. Even if that was only for PC games, that’s still 85% going to AAA studios, as in those 20-30 games that get media attention.

We don’t have too many games, we have a problem where too few people buy indie games. The average successful indie studio isn’t making $40M per game, it’s likely much less than that.

Can confirm, my neighbor makes indie films, and I don’t live in Hollywood or anything, just a random town in Utah. There are more than you and I expect.

Really? They had some bangers in the 90s, such as Road Rash and Need for Speed, as well as a ton of great games they published, like Sim City. Even their sports games were generally great.

It wasn’t really until the 2000s and 2010s that their games became money grabs.

Mad respect!

That, and often not taking the free card if it doesn’t have great synergies.

I prefer mini-boss fights (better cards), shops (removal), and random encounters, not easy fights and card quantity.

Inscryption is a story driven deckbuilder with a number of puzzles you need to solve that aren’t directly related to the core game. The reason to progress the game is that you enjoy the story and want to see it unfold, not because you enjoy the deckbuilding gameplay. If you want an infinite mode of the deckbuilding gameplay, there’s a mod for that, but IMO it goes against the spirit of the story.

Slay the Spire has no story and the reason to progress is because you enjoy the gameplay. Winning unlocks a new character, and winning with each character unlocks more difficult bosses.

If you want to play a great deckbuilder, play Slay the Spire, Balatro, or Monster Train. If you want to play a great game that happens to be a deckbuilder and will make you reflect, play Inscryption. All those games I mentioned are great, but I much prefer Inscryption and think about it far more often.

Inscryption is an interesting story designed around an interesting card game, and it ends when you finish the story. The devs other games work with this game to build a deeper world (The Hex, Pony Island, etc), and the lore of Inscryption goes pretty deep too, so look on YouTube for a breakdown once you finish and your mind will be blown.

Slay the Spire is a roguelike with a bit deeper mechanics, but incredibly shallow story (if you can call it that). There are multiple classes with different play styles, and you will likely take a different strategy each run depending on what cards you see.

I highly recommend both, but it depends on what excites you more, interesting story or replayability. Inscryption has horror elements in the storytelling, Slay the Spire is basically just a weird fantasy theme.

My preference is Inscryption, but I’m more into story than gameplay, all else being equal. Both are solid.

Pony Island is also great. Everything that guy touches is great.

You probably opted out years ago. Check your Steam notifications settings.

Your friends buy you stuff?

Mine exists so I can avoid the front page. I have it filtered to show only discounted games, so when I need a game, there’s almost always something I’m interested in that’s on sale since I have over 100 games on that list.

Really?

I just open the Steam app on my phone periodically. I have over 100 games there, so there’s usually a few on sale on any given day. I have my wishlist set to “discount” so only games on sale are shown, and I check it periodically and buy when a game gets to an interesting price.

I never look at Steam emails.

That doesn’t cost them anything

It’s an opportunity cost. What other games would have otherwise shown? If the game isn’t appealing, that’s poor use of ad space and could result in lost sales for another game that would then in its place.

I think it’s the right thing to do, though perhaps the window should’ve been longer, like 3 days. But saying it costs nothing isn’t accurate.

I’m the same way. I’ll periodically prune it, but most of the games there have been there over a year. If the game goes on a really good sale, I might get it, but I probably won’t.

Yup. I started w/ flight sims, so the controller controlling the airplane made sense. When I transitioned to FPS games, the controller controlling the head made logical sense. I’m not the character, I’m controlling the character, so why shouldn’t the character work like a plane?

I always use inverted.

I first played flying simulators as a kid, and inverted makes a ton of sense. 3D shooters weren’t really a thing yet, so when they became a thing, I kept using inverted controls and it was comfortable.

I can switch, but it takes some getting used to, and my error rate is higher.

That said, when I use a mouse, I want up (forward) to go up, and down (backward) to go down, so the inverted controls are only for controllers w/ joysticks.

Ok, then go through the minor inconvenience of installing 32-bit libs.

If you install the flatpak, you won’t need to deal with those dependencies.

Adding a repository really isn’t asking for that much. It took like 30s back when I used Arch, and it works OOTB on my current distro family, openSUSE. On Windows, the installer handles it.

It really isn’t something that anyone should care about.

Are you worried about storage?

You’d also still need most of those if the launcher was 64-bit if you install an older game.

I don’t think I’ve ever purchased a remake/remaster for a game I already have, it’s usually the first time I’ve played it.