Besides that “one weird trick”, the other is to just include a diverse sets of people/cultures in your game. There’s no need to push their agendas, just don’t misrepresent them. That’s actually what they’re asking for, even. It’s a lot more effective, IMO.

Trolls will still complain your game is woke, but they won’t have any teeth.

I think this is a pretty typical scenario for advancements. The old way was simple and easy to understand, and the new way is better, cheaper, more “green”, etc. People around them will help them through the situation and it’ll be fine. If it had been this way from the start, it would all be fine already.

Sure, but if he wants to play them, he’ll need the client. And it sounds like actually does want to play them.

It’s one guy claiming people around him are happy about it. He doesn’t even say that he is personally excited about it.

It’s too bad Ente doesn’t have any browser extensions, because it sounds pretty awesome otherwise.

Nobody should ever be banned without knowing exactly what they were banned for. Either he’s lying (I doubt it) or they didn’t bother telling him, just gave him a perma ban without notice.

That’s pretty shitty. They deserve the shit storm this will kick up.

I think, even without a source, that’s it’s pretty much a given that each generation of cards is going to be about the same price as the last, possibly adding in some more for inflation.

Also, the xx80s and xx90s were always for gamers with insane expectations. The xx60s and xx70s are much more reasonable and are still amazing. Anyone complaining about the prices of the top end cards should just re-evaluate what they need instead of grumbling about prices.

Oh man. There’s only one of those dungeons that I actually like, and I got almost 2/3 through it solo, and decided that I just didn’t care enough. I’m sure I could have done it with enough tries… But ugh. So time consuming.

I totally respect people that do it even once, and people that do it for every dungeon are basically gods.

When I was a kid, Tomb Raider was a pretty easy game, except this one part that required absolutely perfect timing for a some running and jumping between platforms for a bonus item.

At the start, I could make it to the next platform. After a while, I could do 2. Eventually, I got 3. After a long, long time, I finally managed to string all of them together… And screwed up the very last one.

Here’s the thing, though. I got it on the very next attempt. I had learned that sequence so well that it actually wasn’t hard any more, even though it was nearly impossible for me at the start.

Afterwards, my parents (who watched the whole thing) told me they had never seen me focus on something so intently for so long and they couldn’t believe I managed it.

That’s what souls games are, from start to finish. Every single encounter is basically impossible at first, until you die and learn enough to get through it. But you start from the beginning of the game every freaking time.

Any time I see the word “exclusive” I know it’s a crap article. Yes, your own writers only write for you. That’s not what “exclusive” was supposed to mean for journalism.

Being unable to come to an agreement isn’t “exclusive” news. No shit. It’s not even article-worthy.

Honestly, free-2-play economics are so baffling that nothing they do surprises me.

There’s a Genshin Impact McDonalds collab where you have to buy a very specific happy meal to get some in game wings (which I very much want) and some other garbage. I actually considered just buying the meal and giving the food to someone else (homeless?) because I can’t eat that crap on my diet. But instead, I settled for telling everyone around me that I want the code if they get one, and I’ll just hope.

How does that help Genshin Impact? I imagine it helps in the same way as this nonsense physical copy. People get excited about physical copies, even in normal boxes, and they get excited about exclusive items that can’t be obtained any other way. That pulls in a little money directly from the sales of the plastic, but it also creates a ton of buzz around the game like this whole thread.

I think. As I said, it’s pretty baffling. I have to file it under “there’s no such thing as bad PR” most of the time.

The disc is 100% trash. People that buy this want the cards, keychains, and (especially) the exclusive in-game items.

I am surprised that it doesn’t also come with some in-game premium currency, though.

As for $40 in-game… That alone is going to net you some trash. You’ll pull a lot more on the free gems you get just for exploring and playing. Sure, you could get a great character, but the odds are back-loaded so that you generally won’t pull a 5-star in the first 70 pulls. $40 is like 40 pulls, maybe?

Nice! Congrats!

Ah, I see. Well, I’m a little surprised it’s backordered that far then.

For fun, I checked Fi… Oct 23-30 for me.

It’s been possible to order pixel 9s for a couple weeks, hasn’t it? When I looked at one after the announcement, it was going to be here on release day. When I looked a few days later, it was going to be a couple more weeks.

I’m not surprised that they’re backordered for a while at this point.

First off, I think you’re absolutely right about your right to disable “this nonsense”. I support you in that.

But “this nonsense” is what makes games fun for me.

I’m not about struggling and finally overcoming.

I’m about having an adventure. It’s the interactive version of a book, where I engage my brain a bit more and explore or solve puzzles, instead of the book just telling me the answers immediately. I enjoy gun fights in games, but I don’t want to play them even twice. I want to win them and move on to more content. Losing a scenario doesn’t make me feel even better when I win. It just drags me down.

I have enough things in my life that I’ve accomplished by struggle that I don’t need it from games, too.

But again, if that’s what does it for you, I think you should have it, too. There’s no good reason you can’t disable it, IMO. (Other than the devs just not providing the option.)

Besides the other games mentioned here, there’s also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity:_What’s_Inside_the_Cube%3F . Read the completion section to see just how bad it was.

Back then, I think he has someone telling him “no” and filling out the rest of the game with sensible stuff.

Now, he just throws ideas at the wall (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity:_What’s_Inside_the_Cube%3F ) and sees what sticks. Since he went on his own, he hasn’t fully delivered a single game, and the ideas are wacky at best and horrible at worst.

And unlike Hello Games, when Molyneux overpromises, he doesn’t spend years implementing every promised feature.

BTW, the exaggeration goes all the way back to Fable, the launch of which was plagued by lies that Molyneux and his team told about the state of the game and the features it would have. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great game, just that it wasn’t what he promised.

Well, then there shouldn’t be any hesitation about signing up for the better protections for the actors then.

That does look good. Thanks!

I looked on the Steam page and didn’t see that, but I thought I remembered it from launch. Perhaps I was just tired and missed it, but I think they didn’t do a good enough job calling it out.

I liked Braid, but I liked his other games since then a lot more. Put out Witness 2 and I’m all over it.

OTOH, put out a graphical upgrade and a couple new puzzles for Witness and try to charge full price again, and I wouldn’t bother.

Edit: Wait, Braid Anniversary didn’t even include new levels? No wonder it didn’t sell! All it has is a documentary track and some visuals.

All we know is that the rumor is he was texting with someone underage and set up to meet them at a con. He’s admitted portions of that in his responses online, but nothing you can really pin down.

Amazon thought whatever he did on Twitch was bad enough to cut ties with him and pay him out.

No legal action has been taken, and he didn’t violate the contract, so Amazon had to pay him out to cut ties.

Do I think he’s awful? Yup, and I don’t support him at all.

But we know just about nothing, and we definitely don’t know any more than we knew months ago. Yet people are hanging on every word from the press like it’s news and not just rage-bait.

I realize I’m getting on in years, but “Skibidi Toilet movie by Michael Bay” really, really makes me feel old.

I think it’s mainly trolls that post “dead game” on games that are essentially (or wholly) single player. If you’ve got a live service game that people are saying “dead game”, then you should worry. Otherwise, ignore the trolls.

Right, which is why it’s put to a vote so that the members themselves can make that call. And that’s why I think the vote was a year ago with a contract that was probably quite a bit different.

I clearly don’t know the details and they do, but from the outside, it looks weird.

I’m going to guess “no”.

I’m not great at art, but I’m a senior software developer and amateur woodworker.

A saw that gets you a mostly straight cut when you need a really straight one doesn’t help a ton. It might help you break things down faster so they’re more manageable, but that probably actually means more waste and not a ton of time savings.

Likewise, code “copilots” right now look great at first blush, but I’ve yet to have it produce any lengthy piece of code that was correct. I had one snippet that I thought was great at first glance, but by the time I was done I had modified every single line of code. Some were very subtly wrong in ways that would create weird bugs.

As for art, I think AI is great at expressing a feeling, but a final piece is about details. Having it produce something that you can modify doesn’t seem useful for most art workflows, and it’ll trip you up on tiny details that you don’t notice until later, or not at all. There have been plenty of artists tripped up by using AI for the base art and then modifying it, and the company has even published their work publicly, only to be found out by the public because of stupid AI things that slipped past. It saved them some time, but the work wasn’t perfect and it cost them their job.

It seems weird that the union can put up a vote for a strike against an agreement and then almost a year later actually call that strike into play. So many things have changed, and I’m sure that contract has changed a lot since then.

I’d love to know what the final piece says that they just can’t come to an agreement. It’s clearly about AI voice acting, but the detail matter.

Intent does matter.

But the vast majority of complaints about a game being “woke” are just the inclusion of a character this a minority in some way. The complaint isn’t about how they’re included, just that they are, usually as a main or highly visible character.

Yeah. He deserves his success, and I’m happy to hear he’s doing good things for his customers… But this kind of reads like a slight on all the developers who release DLC for profit. The vast majority of companies don’t succeed this well on any game.

So I’m glad he’s said this, but I also don’t think poorly of devs who release for-profit DLC, either.

I have the game and a real powerwasher. The game is a lot more enjoyable, though less productive.

Asian RPGs have always used names from mythology and religion to name tons of their characters. Many of them bear only token resemblance to their original depictions, and rarely have anything at all to actually do with them other than some surface attributes like “ice” theme. It’s kind of hard to get up in arms about yet another one.

I don’t think so. It’s a pretty common style for things that are flashy but have no substance, especially video games. I don’t mind it much when I can quickly skip through it and speed-read it, but when it forces you to slow down (Genshin, Star Rail) or never shows part of the sentence if you’re going fast (ZZZ) then it makes the cutscenes almost intolerable.

I’m not surprised that it’s lagging behind the other 2. To me, it feels like Honkai Impact 3rd with a coat of Persona 5 paint on it. Everything is flashy and tries to seem complicated, but it’s dead simple so far. I imagine there’s some actual strategy to the combat later, but at lower levels, it’s painfully lame.

And the writing? Wordy as ever, and so pointless. Skipping through the text quickly makes you miss like 1/3 of it, even if you read super fast. It literally just never shows on the screen, hidden behind some scrolling text area or just not even put onscreen before advancing.

The weapons are all just balls with faces. They seem like children’s toys instead of useful items, and it’s hard to care about them beyond the stats.

I’m impressed they made even that $25 mil.

The only thing that has drawn me in so far is the daily video store thing, and I just thought to myself this morning: “Shouldn’t I just find a good store game instead?”

For bonus points, you’ll have to re-explain some of those things randomly to publish updates, which they now require about every 2 years or less or your game just disappears.

There are things that you shouldn’t do or say to minors that aren’t illegal, but anyone reading them would still know it’s it’s unethical/wrong/immoral/whatever. They clearly thought he crossed that line, enough that they’d rather fire him and take a chance on losing the court case for damages for breaking the contract. And then they lost that court case.

It clearly wasn’t just “a chat with a minor”. The rumors I’ve heard is that he was attempting to make plans to meet up with them at a convention. That would definitely be in the “big no no” category for a celebrity talking to a minor, even if nothing untoward was suggested in that conversation.

Because what he did wasn’t illegal. It was just wrong. They didn’t want anything to do with him any more, but he didn’t break the law and so they couldn’t use that part of the contract to terminate it.

They felt it was so wrong that they paid him $20mil to break that contract. They absolutely would have taken another option if it was viable.

It gives out free Steam items that you can sell to other suckers. Sometimes it gives a valuable one. It isn’t a game, it’s a money-maker.

And “100 developers working on it” doesn’t mean much when they’re unpaid and there’s no lower limit on how much they have to actually contribute.

Yeah, it was a mistake… After they got called on it.

It was absolutely in there on purpose.