I immediately need a Dan Olsen / HBomb style Youtuber to make a 1 hour long video about whatever the fuck Subway Surfer is and explain how it has 4 billion downloads.
Add Broken Arrow to that list. Haven’t tried it yet, but it’s basically supposed to be a modernised version of Wargame Red Dragon.
Personally I’ve been enjoying WARNO a lot. Lots of great QOL improvements over W:RD and the division system makes a lot more sense from a balancing perspective, although it does take some of the experimentation out of deck design.
The problem, basically, is that the people saying “buy Gamestop” originally were people who figured “Hey, this stock is probably slightly undervalued.” As in, this is $2 but it could probably climb to more like $2.50 or $3 over the next five years.
Then WSB started to meme the thing like crazy, because WSB are a bunch of degenerate gamblers who don’t give a fuck about actual sensible investment strategies, which created the conditions for a short squeeze, which pulled in a bunch of newbie retail investors who drove the squeeze even higher, but were given absolutely no realistic expectations about what that would look like.
I was one of those newbie retail investors, and I actually tripled my money on GME, because I saw the price spike, went “Yep, that’s the squeeze, I’m out” and got my tendies, or whatever the fuck these idiots call it.
But for a lot of these people, the expectations of what this short squeeze would look like had basically snowballed into “Remake the global economy with us at the top” so they bought in hard, and kept buying in, way past the point where the squeeze was done, past the point of having any reasonable expectation of cashing out at anything other than a huge loss.
So now they’re stuck basically praying for a miracle, because they’ve got nothing else left.
Or, y’know, go with the original version of the trolley problem, where you start with the classic formulation (do you pull the lever?), then move to a new scenario;
“You’re a doctor, working in a hospital that has been cut off from outside resources by a disaster. You have five patients, one in need of a liver, one a heart, one a pair of kidneys, one a set of lungs, and one a pancreas. You have no suitable organs available, and all five patients will die without transplants, but there is a healthy young janitor working in the hospital who, by a stroke of extreme luck, is a compatible donor for all five patients. You could kill the janitor, harvest their organs, and save five people. Should you do it?”
Fascinatingly, almost everyone opts to pull the lever in the first part, but refuses to kill the janitor in the second, even though they are, from a deeply utilitarian perspective, the same choice. Unravelling why we see them as different is where things get really interesting.
I have a midtier rig and get 60fps anywhere outside of the major cities. If your computer sucks this isn’t the game for you. Try Minecraft.
The game has recieved almost no optimization at this point, because it’s still an Alpha, regardless of how silly a game being in Alpha for ten years may sound. With SQ42 now in polishing, the optimisation work there will likely spill over into SC soon enough. There’s also the switch to Vulkan round the corner, and the various improvements to the underlying server tech, and so on and so forth.
None of this fucking matters, because the game is an ungodly success beyond anything that anyone could have imagined. If you’re someone who is buying in now it’s because you’re willing to go along for the ride. If you’re not buying in now, that’s an entirely sensible decision (never pre-order, etc, etc) and maybe some day down the line they’ll get the game into a state where you do think it’s worth buying. Maybe they won’t. Either way you’ve lost nothing.
There are two related games being built. One is Star Citizen (the MMO), the other is Squadron 42, a standalone single player game.
The games share almost everything, so work on one benefits the other. Squadron 42 is the one that is now feature complete.
What this means for Star Citizen is two things.
A lot of really cool tech and gameplay features were being held back until they were ready to feature lock SQ42. All of that is now coming directly to SC. Most of it probably in the next big patch (Q1 this year).
Most of the teams working on SQ42 are now being retasked to work full time on SC, so the rate of development for the latter should acellerate significantly.
If you were unimpressed the last time you checked in, now is not the time to come back. But 6-12 months from now absolutely will be. I’m not promising you’ll be impressed by then, but you should at least see something new and different.
I clicked through to the video, and then immediately changed my mind. The thought that had occurred to me was that good critics rarely, if ever, call out a specific member of a creative team by name. Even if the quality of Bethesda’s writing has gone to shit, laying the blame for that entirely on one specific person misses the incredible complexity of what writing, especially video game writing, actually is.
Good critics generally criticise the work, not the creator (cases where the creator crosses the line from “unskilled/incompetent/tried a thing and it didn’t work” to “bigoted and hateful” are the most common exception) because art is complicated. Just because you can see how and why something doesn’t work, doesn’t mean you know how and why it got that way.
The short version; it’s really not clear, but it sounds an awful lot like two guys scammed the government of Singapore for a bunch of money and then disappeared.
It’s worth coming back. The game feels totally different now. The new class system is fantastic, weapon balance is massively improved so you can actually play around with different builds without gimping yourself, and there’s loads of new character interactions and story content to discover.
All joking aside, please go and watch it immediately without looking up anything else about it. It’s genuinely one of the best shows you will ever watch, I’m not even slightly exaggerating here, and it’s soooo much better if you can go in blind.
If I had a men in black memory zapper I would erase the entirety of this show from my memory and leave myself a Memento style note to go watch it again, just so I could relive that experience.
Looking for a good, not too difficult, single player FPS that gets right into the action without too many story requirements, and is a lot of fun, and is not Borderlands (because I have played them all). EDIT: Forgot to mention I am looking for PS4, XBOX One X, or XBOX Series X. Thanks!
Not sure what you mean by finished? The game released in 2016. It’s been a complete, fully playable product for quite a while.
They’ve continued to rework and redesign various elements since then, to the point where the game as it exists now is almost entirely different from the game as it existed at launch. They’re probably going to keep doing that for the foreseeable future, and I don’t think very many people would want them to stop.
So, I guess it’s “finished” but still growing and evolving.
A while back one of the teams on Star Citizen was talking about an interesting idea they had for quest design where you would create distinct “chunks” of quests that the game would then be able to assemble on the fly. So, for example, it might start with “go to X, fetch Y”, then add “Dropoff point gets changed during the mission” and “Enemies try to intercept on the way.” But another time you might get “The dropoff was an ambush” or “The cargo is dangerous” (or both of those at the same time). Create enough building blocks, and you can start to disguise the machinery under the hood a little. Computationally this is very cheap because the computer is just doing the equivalent of rolling a handful of dice (I literally have tabletop RPG books that use this idea, with actual tables and dice).
I think some of this has even made it into the game. There were some quests they did with branching paths, that sort of thing. It’s an interesting idea that I’d like to see pushed further.
What would this solve that a simple database couldn’t? If the currency can only be used to trade for in game items, what practical value does it gain from being a crypto currency as opposed to just WOW gold or whatever? It’s just some points that the game developer tallies up in a ledger somewhere, right?
But you’re buying and selling in game items in the scenario the previous user described. So it’s already centralized.
Like, say you’re using this to trade Diablo loot. If Blizzard shuts down the servers, it doesn’t matter if you still have a decentralized system where all your loot ownership is recorded, because there are no servers to use it on. So what have you gained?
Apples to oranges comparison. CA builds a lot of games under the Total War banner. Some are very big, very expensive projects (like Rome 2), others are really just a way of testing tech and training devs (like Odysseus). Pharaoh, as I understand it, falls very much into the latter category.
While the sales numbers look bad on the surface, for what it probably cost to make, I suspect CA is prefectly happy. Remember they literally gave Odysseus away for free. That’s just how their release cadence works.
Alot of the time I’ll be playing will be in-between calls at work so being able to pause any time is important. The only one I’ve played is god of war but I never finished it .
Originally he was a well liked, well respected autuer game designer from back in the days when that was still a thing. He made games like Populous, and people thought he was pretty cool.
Around the time of Black and White, the cracks started to show. He had bought into his own hype, and had a real tendency to over promise and under deliver. But, even though it didn’t exactly match up to some of his more grandiose descriptions, Black & White was still a very good game, so people didn’t mind.
Fable was where things really went off the rails. The thing is, Fable was a very good game, a fun but largely quite contained RPG, feeling more like a western take on a Zelda game than anything (as in the N64 Zelda games).
But it was not the game that Molyneux promised. Not even slightly. The game he described was one that would have nearly photo realistic graphics, and a vast open world where you could literally see a distant mountain peak and set off to climb it. A world where you could kill a man in a duel, and his son would grow up dedicating their life to one day hunting you down and killing you. A world where you could conquer whole nations with armies of darkness at your command.
Think Skyrim crossed with Mount & Blade crossed with Crusader Kings crossed with Star Citizen. Now imagine that game releasing at the same time as Morrowind.
So by this point people were starting to understand that Molyneux was fundamentally incapable of a) reigning in his imagination, and b) operating in the modern world of game development.
And then we got to Curiosity. If you don’t know, it was a mobile game where all you did was tap on a big cube made of layers of little cubes. Every time you tapped on a little cube it got destroyed, and everyone was working together on this, so each cube was destroyed for everyone. The goal was to destroy all the layers and reveal the centre, and whoever destroyed the last layer would win a prize. Kind of dumb, very simple. But Molyneux, Molyneux hyped this to the heavens. This wasn’t just a “game”, oh no, this was a grand social experiment the likes of which the world had never seen before, and the winner would recieve something “truly life changing.” Molyneux hammered that point a lot. “Life changing.”
What they recieved was that a character would be named after them in Godus, the Kickstarter game Molyneux was making. Oh, and they’d get “a portion” of the revenue from the game (it was never publicly stated how big that portion would be).
That was back in 2013. Ten years later Godus is still in early access, backers are clamouring for refunds after basically none of the Kickstarter promises were met, and the winner of Curiosity has not been contacted by the company since 2016.
He has never seen a cent of the money he was promised.
Only this motherfucker could make a blockchain based product in 2023 and think he’s still ahead of the curve (and not, y’know, turning up to buy tickets on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg).
Honestly, it’s a really good game now. The writing is solid (not winning Oscars, but there are engaging and well written characters who will make you feel things), the combat is fun, you can flow freely between stealthy and loud as suits your preference, and there are hours upon hours of really enjoyable side missions. As a longtime Shadowrun tabletop player/gm I especially loved the gigs, each of which is just a self contained run. Go to this place, steal/plant/kill/ferry/rescue, get paid, done. They’re all great little puzzles to be solved in dozens of different ways.
I’m not trying to justify a day one purchase; I held off for over a year and I’m glad I did. But the game as it is now is well worth the money.
You’re coming at this from the angle that this is some strange new reality that the world has never encountered before, but it truly isn’t. This is not an “evolving new situation”, we’re not on the bold frontiers of strange new norms. It’s just bigotry. Bigotry isn’t new, it’s as old as mankind.
There’s a reason we’re all citing philosophical principles laid down in the 1940’s, almost like the world suddenly had a pressing need to reckon with the true cost of allowing violent intolerance to grow unchecked… Maybe some recent event prompted that?
The fact that bigots are communicating their bigotry through mods for videogames now doesn’t change what bigotry is, or how we fight it. This shit is older than any of us here, and the tools and principles are well established.
And the fact that bigots will frame their bigotry in dog whistles with just enough ambiguity that people like you can say “Maybe this was completely innocent” isn’t an accident, it’s by design. That quote from Lee Atwater I shared earlier? He’s talking about the politics of the early 1970s. Most of us weren’t alive then. Again, this is nothing new. The only change is that right now their target is trans people, because they always point their hate at the target society is least willing to defend. Pick off the weak from the herd.
If you’re trying to better understand how this stuff works, I respect that. Just because things have been understood for a long time, doesn’t mean everyone knows them. I didn’t start out magically knowing this stuff either. In my college days I styled myself as a free speech absolutist, someone who would on sheer magnificent principle defend the rights of a Nazi to be a Nazi. I learned better when I actually met and talked to the people that my “principles” were actively harming. So yes, I get it, and if you’re here to learn I commend that.
But please, don’t frame it as a debate. “Should we tolerate the free speech of bigots” is only a debate for the bigots, because like any guilty party they will never stop trying to relitigate their case. They can only benefit from this “debate” and the rest of us can only lose.
They will say things like “You’re just as bad as us if you censor us” to which we say “No, we are not, because our refusal to engage comes from clear moral principles, while yours comes from hatred.”
They will say “If you censor us, where do you draw the line?” to which we say “At the limits of your intolerance. We will tolerate, within reason, everything that is not an expression of bigotry and hatred.”
They will say “You cannot judge our intent or know our souls. How can you assign blame to our actions?” to which we say “We will judge you by your actions. The drunk driver doesn’t mean to cause harm, but we still criminalize the behaviour because it is harmful. If you do not intend to be a bigot, but you choose to actively express bigotry, we will hold you accountable for your actions all the same. A racist prank is still racist. Saying ‘Just kidding’ doesn’t undo the harm spread by your words. It is on you to learn these things and be better.”
They will say “But you could get it wrong. What if you misjudge the innocent?” to which we say “This could apply to any action of society. The innocent are convicted of crimes they did not commit, but this does undermine the value of having laws, it only reinforces that we must apply those laws as carefully and as justly as possible, that we must never forget the human cost of these decisions. It does not invalidate the decisions.”
They will find every angle, seek every accommodation, because they have nothing to lose by trying. They will never stop, and we can only let their arguments fall on deaf ears.
I’m not saying that there is absolutely no room for discussion to be had within this realm. There is always room for discussion in any subject. But you need to be mindful of the difference between “I think our models of climate change could be improved in this specific way…” vs “Is climate science real?” You won’t get any traction by arriving at a school and trying to dig up the foundations. Educate yourself on the fundamentals, and from there you can seek out specific areas where meaningful argument can be made, without needlessly relitigating core principles.
capitalist rule #69420: have sex (media.kbin.social)
Payday 3: Our Plans Going Forward (store.steampowered.com)
deleted_by_author
RTS games like Wargame?
Does anyone know any good, deep RTS games similar to the Wargame series? Especially Cold War or NATO vs Russia/China?
GameStop axes its short-lived NFT marketplace as it retreats from crypto (www.engadget.com)
Games that force you to make hard choices
Hey all!...
Star Citizen Performance Is Still TRASH In 2024 (www.youtube.com)
[Creetosis] Bethesda's Emil Pagliarulo is an Incompetent Writer (www.youtube.com)
[Matt McMuscles] The Day Before - What Happened? (www.youtube.com)
Anti-Caking Rule (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
THIS IS AN ANTI-CAKING AGENT HATE ACCOUNT. MY CHEESE WON’T MELT PROPERLY >:{...
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is worth revisiting after a year of updates (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
How Baldur's Gate 3 Becomes Game of the Year? (youtu.be)
Godus and Godus Wars to be withdrawn from Steam Store (steamcommunity.com)
The Embracer curse continues: Insurgency dev suffers layoffs as unannounced project is cancelled (www.vg247.com)
Insurgency Developer New World Interactive Shut Down (insider-gaming.com)
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/10438175
Madoka Rule (i.imgur.com)
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide - The Traitor Curse Anniversary Update Part II | Teaser Trailer (www.youtube.com)
Tribes 3: Rivals - Official Gameplay (www.youtube.com)
FPS Recommendations
Looking for a good, not too difficult, single player FPS that gets right into the action without too many story requirements, and is a lot of fun, and is not Borderlands (because I have played them all). EDIT: Forgot to mention I am looking for PS4, XBOX One X, or XBOX Series X. Thanks!
PUBG Studios' Project Black Budget will release sooner than expected, says publisher Krafton (www.eurogamer.net)
Outer Wilds finally launches on Switch next month (www.eurogamer.net)
HP Printrule (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
Stellaris: Astral Planes | Release Date Announcement Trailer (www.youtube.com)
This Fallout New Vegas Mod introduces an infinite number of dynamically generated quests (www.dsogaming.com)
Humble Bundle IGN Editor's Choice: The 9 and Above Club Game Bundle (www.humblebundle.com)
Unity's controversial Runtime Fee policy was "rushed out", says report (www.eurogamer.net)
Over 10 Years After It Was Announced, Star Citizen’s Single-Player Squadron 42 Is ‘Feature Complete’ - IGN (www.ign.com)
World of Horror - Launch Trailer (www.youtube.com)
Rule (sh.itjust.works)
[Jauwn] The Epic Games Store is a Landfill for Crypto Shovelware (www.youtube.com)
Just Stop Oil protestors interrupt UK’s biggest games event EGX (www.videogameschronicle.com)
Total War Pharaoh is struggling, with fewer players than another TW game from ten years ago (www.pcgamesn.com)
Thanks to everyone who suggested i play Titan fall 2 (lemmy.world)
What a fun game . Wish it was a little longer though .
Having trouble deciding what game to play next . which one of these games should i try (lemmy.world)
Alot of the time I’ll be playing will be in-between calls at work so being able to pause any time is important. The only one I’ve played is god of war but I never finished it .
Peter Molyneux is ready to disappoint us again with his latest game, a blockchain-based business sim (www.pcgamer.com)
Cyberpunk 2077's Ukrainian localisation takes the piss out of Russia's war (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
Reworked skill trees and new minigames aside, Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 update includes a Ukrainian localisation of the game…
Helldivers 2 - Automaton Pre-Order Trailer | PS5 & PC Games (www.youtube.com)
deleted_by_author