I recommend one of my favourite CRPGs of all time: Neverwinter Nights - for the modern hassle-free experience, get the Enhanced Edition. The first single-player campaign is pretty meh by Bioware standards, but the expansion packs (included in the NWNEE) are pretty great. Heard a lot of good about the premium modules (a few of the original premium modules come with NWNEE, the rest are available as DLC).

The official campaigns are set in Forgotten Realms, the same D&D setting as BG3, but you really don’t need to worry about diving headlong into horrors. More fantasy vibes and less visceral stuff. (the second expansion pack is a bit more in the direction of subterranean spooks, but not, like, excessively so.)

However, the real big strength of NWN was not the campaigns. It was deliberately designed for player-created adventure modules created with the included Aurora Toolset. There’s loads of them and some of them had really great production values and writing. They’re currently hosted at Neverwinter Vault and NWNEE also has a custom content browser (though the latter doesn’t have much stuff). Custom modules also have a whole bunch of genres and settings, as expected.

Oh and it’s a game from 2002 so it runs on any ol’ potato. (Well the EE needs a vaguely modernish machine, but not anything unreasonable.)

Vampire Survivors completely drew me in this year.

A couple of years ago, I was having dreams of designing train lines in Cities Skylines. A couple of days ago I was having a dream of weapon combos in Vampire Survivors. That’s how you spot a good and influential game.

This is literally the old EA stratagem. Give the “independent” developer basically an impossible goal and then go “well you failed to meet the goal, looks like you need a little bit of help from us, and by little help, we mean from now on, you do exactly what we tell you, or else”. EA pulled this off with Origin Systems and (to a different extent) BioWare to name just a few examples. It ended with complete sadness.

To EA’s credit, that charade usually took a long time to come to completion. Sony is trying to pull this this so soon after acquiring Bungie.

Really?

Has NOBODY told Ubisoft that everyone else has figured out what their grand plan is?

“Same stuff, new box”? Hello? Anyone at Ubisoft heard of this?

If people get same stuff in a new box that’s not a surprise, Ubisoft

That’s a good angle to speculate on it. But the main thing to take away is this: Do they want to pursue this angle, or are they more willing to sit on this IP until the end of the time? I mean, sitting on an IP is a whole lot more legally safe than, you know, attempting to make some new wild legally-distinct numbers-filed-off things from it. (PROTIP: EA does this really well.)

And more importantly, is American McGee willing to rework this whole thing from the ground up?

Speaking as a random creative person: If I was in American McGee’s position, I’d drop this stuff right away and go think of other ventures. The moneybagmen sadly won.

Well, if American McGee wants to rebuild the franchise from scratch, then he faces the exact same problem, doesn’t he?

If EA wants to remake the franchise, they’re basically saying “Look, we filed the serial markers off, here’s a new Dark Alice in the Wonderland IP”, and they know nobody will buy it.

If American McGee wants to remake the franchise, it’s basically “Look EA, we can’t actually remake the Dark Alice in the Wonderland IP, but here’s Wark Dalice in the Anderland IP”, and none of the EA’s lawyers will buy it, and he get sued to oblivion by EA.

It’s an extermely uncomfortale stalemate regardless of the fact that the original stories were in public domain.

Sure, American McGee can go “well fuck it, here’s a super fucking cute and lore-friendly happy trippy Alice in the Wonderland remake that totally goes to a whole different direction this time, HEY BACK OFF DISNEY LAWYERS, I said totally different direction”, but that’s no longer American McGee’s Alice, now is it?

I mean, if EA wants to reboot the whole franchise, they can do so. But they can’t use any of the stuff in American McGee’s Alice IP, or anything too closely resembling that stuff. The question then becomes this: do they want to use their creative budget to do that… or do they want to use their budget for something else entirely? In other words: Is American McGee’s Alice an IP that’s financially worth it to rebuild from scratch? Answer: Probably no.

They can’t touch an IP derived from a public domain work. If they want to make a new IP, they have to go through all the effort of re-deriving it from the public domain work. Hope this makes sense, I’m just a creative person and not a lawyer.

Edit: If derivative works from public domain were not protected, WOO BOY would Disney be in trouble.

It’s been [UMPTEEN YEARS] since I registered a Steam account, and when I registered my CD key for original Half-Life, I got the Blue Shift and Opposing Force for free. (As is the case with of most Steam library items, I’ve yet to complete them!) Now. Please let me transfer my shit from Battlenet to Steam. I can’t wait to get my Starcraft installed! I could finally be a proper PC gamer! /very mild sarcasm

“Adopted a turtle as a pet. The average lifespan of a box turtle is fifty years. It will outlive you.”
-- Achievement description for “Love Turts” from Firewatch

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