Are there really that many games shutting down so soon after release? I know there’s a handful of games that basically just flopped out the gate and got canned soon after, but nearly everything I’ve encountered has run for 5+ years, or at least is in the position to do so if it’s not that old yet. Is it just that I’m over in the corner where the games don’t suck and I’m out of touch with how things are?
While I agree that anti-cheat software is spyware, server side moderation by humans would be incredibly costly on the company.
It would also do a poor job at quickly responding to cheaters. Which is fine in some games, but in more competitive titles, the difference between a cheater getting caught in a round or two and a dozen or so is a big deal, with how many people had games effected.
My vote is to just not have official servers for games anymore
Nah, official servers are great for anything competitive, since they provide a single definitive competitive ladder and player base. Nobody gives a fuck about challenger rank 1 on Joe schmoe’s home server where it’s him and his buddies from school. Not to mention how difficult 8t would be to balance a game with next to no data to use.
Given how much of a janky mess the original psvr was, my money is definitely on technical problems in making compatability actually work to an acceptable level for a commercial release. Because the only thing worse than not releasing compatability would be doing it badly, such that increased support issues and development costs would outweigh however many people would buy it.
“Heartbreaking news today as Something Wicked Games had to lay off most of their staff. As someone who has been in the industry for nearly 25 years, I understand the challenges of finding a new position during these tough times. I specialize in human and creature locomotion and Mocap, with some key framing experience as well,...
He’s getting downvotes because he’s acting like a jackass. Like yeah, I’m pretty sure everyone here has some axe or another to grind with Nintendo, they do plenty of shitty things. But to act like their games are somehow objectively bad and that everyone who likes them is just stupid? That’s just divorced from reality and overall pretty immature. Obviously it’s plenty possible for someone to not personally enjoy the games Nintendo puts out, art is highly subjective, but their games are generally solid.
During a game’s development, narrative consultants will be hired by studios to help with fleshing out or tweaking narrative elements, Kenney said. “Narrative consultants do not get final say,” Kenney reiterated. "It doesn’t get into the game if we [as the developer] don’t approve it....
Sounds like a skill issue tbh. I’ve never run into one drive trying to grab up my entire documents folder, across 4 separate windows computers and multiple installs. And I doubt Microsoft has just decided to bless me, personally, in this regard.
I just find this specific complaint to be absolutely perplexing because not only has one drive never just started syncing random stuff, I have to make sure the things I put in actually get synced and aren’t just lest waiting when I close the system. And this is on factory installed windows where I’ve largely not messed with anything.
3 are old laptops, 2 of which are updated to current windows 10, one is on a crusty windows 10 because of hardware problems. My main desktop got a perfectly fresh windows install when I got it October of last year. All are fully signed in to Microsoft and have access to my one drive. Did I just like roll the roulette wheel of hitting every random edge case where onedrive makes it’s own separate folders or something?
I guess I’m just lucky then. The laptops are all old enough that they wouldn’t have gotten hit with factory onedrive settings, 2 were windows 8.1 upgrades and one was an early windows 10 (before the creator update, or whatever that refresh was). And my desktop was just a clean installation from the Microsoft create boot media tool.
I hear people talk about ads in windows 10 all the time, but I can’t say I’ve ever personally run into them, unless you’re one of those people who calls the “try switching to edge” in your browser settings an ad
Which video games have been trapped on a hardware platform (console/handheld/headset/etc.) that you wish would be ported well?
I was reading about Oculus accounts that haven't been assimilated into Meta accounts being erased, & it got me thinking about games trapped on hardware platforms again. What are some of the games you wish would have good ports across different hardware?
Honestly, I feel like any manner of integrating the game pad screen is going to end up feeling like a downgrade, simply because of how information dense the map is compared to the minimap on the main screen. I’ve been emulating it, and playing it on a multi monitor setup has been absolutely amazing.
The story is what a middle schooler thinks constitutes “deep writing”, and the gameplay felt like a tacked on mess made by someone who saw a video game on the internet once without a single clue of what makes them good
On the other hand, the entire ad was about the “shiney collectibles” aspect, and the actual utility of those cards (ie, battling) was barely an afterthought. That doesn’t say great things about their priorities here
I mean I know they said battling would be streamlined, but realistically the entire format is basically already laid out for them, since it’s literally just taking the tcg and making it digital. As a result, there’s very little to actually show off on the front of gameplay, especially considering that everyone who cares probably already plays tcg online anyway.
I finally bothered to set up dolphin on my (vaguely) new computer and get all the roms transferred over, so I’m enjoying a challenge run on pokepark Wii where I don’t upgrade anything at all. Overall the game is pretty easy, but there have been a good few challenges that require either a lot of luck, or really figuring out the games AI.
It’s a balance, no? Yeah, you can’t always just throw more money and staff at the project for infinite gains in speed, but on the other hand, there’s absolutely studios that suffer from understaffing, where just bringing on employees to get tasks done would massively improve the speed.
I was thinking of things like gamefreak, where they’ve been chronically understaffed to the point where they simply can’t get enough work done on the timelines they need to meet. I’d imagine that something like “model and animate 1000 pokemon” is the kind thing that can fairly easily be sped up by having a larger body of people doing the work, and the time spent bringing them all up to speed would pay off over the totality of games they end up working on.
I always find it interesting how many people are welcoming kernel-level anti-cheat software
Imo it really depends on the game, and how much cheating can actually effect things, and as time goes on and technology develops, it will only become more relevant. I remember a headline a while back about a monitor that used machine learning to track the enemy team in league of legends by “watching” the map, and marking whenever an enemy is crossing a ward.
The problem is that most cheating is subtle. Sure, theres the idiots who just throw every cheat in the book, but especially at higher levels where people care most about the integrity of the competition, cheating is a lot more subtle and within human limits, such that “I’m just that good” or “I got lucky” would be an entirely valid defense.
If you don’t like anti-cheat, don’t play games with it.
If you like it, feel free. But it still isn’t particularly conducive to debate if it’s just your own line in the sand and you don’t particularly care what anyone else thinks.
if every game has one cheater in it, no one will play your game
Exactly this. Any game that even hopes to have a remotely decent competitive community needs to have a solid way of not just targeting cheaters after the fact, but in keeping them out of games. Because even if it’s just something like 1 in 5 games being decided by cheats, if people become aware of it, any value people placed on a competitive ladder are going to evaporate overnight.
And for what it’s worth, I fully support the ability to do things like local matches or private servers where anti cheat is partially or entirely disabled. I love modding and letting people play their own game their own way. But when it starts impacting other people’s experiences, there need to be rules in place and enforced.
Oh, and for those people saying that no anti cheat should exist, go hop in an online match of splatoon 1 on Wii u, and honestly tell me if that’s what you want out of a competitive game. Because that’s what not targeting cheaters gets you
Thanks for making my point for me. It doesn’t matter if mtx are completely cosmetic and don’t particularly have any effects on gameplay. People are just going to complain about it existing at all
But I just don’t see how the skins in these games bring joy anywhere near the money charged for them.
The simple answer is that, for a fair amount of people, $30 isn’t a notable purchase, such that it’s not particularly a substitute for anything else they may be interested in doing.
Maybe the people spending money on this trend wealthier?
I mean we’re already looking at a fairly expensive hobby in gaming, which is going to skew towards people with more money in the first place.
And just speaking from my own perspective as solidly middle class, $30 is pretty comfortably within what I can spend without particularly thinking about it. Like yeah, I obviously can’t just throw $30 at everything I see, it adds up over time, but it’s low enough that I don’t particularly have to think about exactly where it will come out of my budget.
And fwiw, I tend to avoid most in-game micro transactions, because I simply don’t value them all that highly. I barely even care about getting free unlocks in most games.
Pokémon GO’s new Avatar update is (unfortunately) live (pokemongohub.net)
After Palworld Was Accused of Ripping Off Pokémon, Its CEO Has Accused Other Companies of Making Palworld Clones (www.ign.com)
Rediscover the adventure of Pokémon GO with new ways to express yourself, enhanced visuals, and a GO Snapshot upgrade (pokemongolive.com)
'Make a private hosted version of your game': Knockout City dev's top tip for studios shutting down a live service game is to give players the keys (www.pcgamer.com)
Weekly what have you been playing discussion - week of March, 18th, 2024
Easy Anti-Cheat: We have investigated recent reports of a potential RCE issue within EAC. At this time - we are confident that there is no RCE vulnerability within EAC being exploited. (twitter.com)
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/9633f178-e6e7-441e-8ba7-89da9cb1c708.png
PlayStation VR2 production paused as stock "piles up" - report (www.eurogamer.net)
Something Wicked Games (ex Bethesda veterans) laid off most of it's staff (www.linkedin.com)
“Heartbreaking news today as Something Wicked Games had to lay off most of their staff. As someone who has been in the industry for nearly 25 years, I understand the challenges of finding a new position during these tough times. I specialize in human and creature locomotion and Mocap, with some key framing experience as well,...
Video Game Makers Are the Next Target For Actor Strikes, SAG Chief Says at SXSW (observer.com)
Tim Sweeney emailed Gabe Newell calling Valve 'you assholes' over Steam policies, to which Valve's COO replied internally 'you mad bro?' (www.pcgamer.com)
Why So Many Games Journalists End Up Going Into Game Development (aftermath.site)
MAR10 Day 2024 - Nintendo (www.youtube.com)
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door releases 5.23.2024...
Spider-Man, Alan Wake, Ridiculous Fishing devs speak up in support of consultancy studio Sweet Baby Inc (www.eurogamer.net)
During a game’s development, narrative consultants will be hired by studios to help with fleshing out or tweaking narrative elements, Kenney said. “Narrative consultants do not get final say,” Kenney reiterated. "It doesn’t get into the game if we [as the developer] don’t approve it....
OneDrive is ruining my PC gaming setups (www.digitaltrends.com)
Stellaris announces DLC subscription (store.steampowered.com)
Last of Us director Neil Druckmann says he doesn’t think he has many more big games left in him (www.videogameschronicle.com)
Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket | Announcement (www.youtube.com)
Nvidia GeForce Now is putting video ads before play sessions on their free tier (sh.itjust.works)
This is just peak enshittification at this point.
Helldivers 2 CEO talks DLSS and FSR: 'When you are in a prio meeting and it's more awesome content vs more tech the decision is easy…' (www.pcgamer.com)
Weekly what have you been playing discussion - week of February, 26th, 2024
Investors on the state of video games: "We are investing, but the bar is so much higher" (www.gamesindustry.biz)
Palworld studio admits it can't "keep up" with cheaters, says anti-cheat solution on the way (www.eurogamer.net)
Epic Games Store 2023 Year in Review (store.epicgames.com)
[Reddit] Tekken 8 is adding a MTX Tekken Shop weeks after release to dodge lower review scores. The ESRB rating is updated post release to accommodate in-game purchases. (old.reddit.com)
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/11b19d67-f715-47e9-bc1c-3fce16671591.png
Weekly what have you been playing discussion - week of February, 12th, 2024
Diablo 4's latest microtransaction controversy is a $30 portal recolor: "You can get Palworld for this price" (www.gamesradar.com)
Microsoft’s recent layoffs contradict what the company promised of its merger, the FTC says. (www.theverge.com)