Remember when Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Huawei, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Nvidia, Samsung Electronics and Tencent all had to come together and form a super group to develop a royalty free video codec because something as simple as compressing and decompressing video was so god damn patent encumbered by people who just existed to suck money out of everyone.
Literally, every time software is patented, it ends up being used to screw with everyone, then eventually the patent expires ten years after the software was useful, or we have to waste huge amounts of effort to sideline it.
You sound like you need a history refresher on patents in the software industry and the disastrous effect that it has had in hurting innovation and consumers and how it is dominated by trolls and squatters.
I don't know how to convey to you how important it is to incentivize innovation without worrying someone else will simply steal your ideas to make millions from your hard work you did inventing something while they literally did nothing.
If I make something and someone else can simply take it and dominate the market with it and pay me nothing for the work i did, why the fuck should I even bother making anything?
Again, look at the history of software patents. Tell me a single time it incentivied innovation and wasn’t just used by patent trolls and wasn’t just a huge waste of time and money for the industry to spend time on.
I think you are wholey unfamiliar with software patents in general and are just going on some basic guiding principal and I can tell you right now, history has not played out in your idilic description at all and you are just coming off as ignorant on the topic.
This is literally just whataboutism. You must be degenerate if you think that there’s a correlation between the research performance of the listed countries and their patent laws. There are dozens of more useful and much more relevant indicators for why these nations are disadvantaged in this regard. But just stick to your belief that North Korea is what it is because it doesn’t have patent laws lol.
Also, for you to better understand the harm that software patents caused and are causing, consider reading Free Software, Free Society by Richard Stallman.
There is literally a 1:1 correlation between protecting IP and R&D and innovation. Start ups that patent their ideas are genuinely more successful. You’re naive if you think IP only helps protect large companies.
My mistake, you're right. We should completely remove the incentive to innovate novel ideas and no longer protect them if they are created to allow theft.
I am a hypocrite thief that uses free software in my daily life.
I don’t know how to convey to you how important it is to incentivize innovation without worrying someone else will simply steal your ideas to make millions from your hard work you did inventing something while they literally did nothing.
If I make something and someone else can simply take it and dominate the market with it and pay me nothing for the work i did, why the fuck should I even bother making anything?
Oh sorry, I was under the impression that you had at least a basic knowledge about software and software development.
I now see that that’s not the case.
Open source is an area where software patents don’t generally protect the product, and yet it’s the most innovative space out there. And in cases where patents are brought in (see the rust trademark incident) they are rejected by the community. And yet open source is still around, and powering most of the internet and present in most devices.
If what you said about patents were the case, that would not be so.
As someone who is in the field of intellectual property, Lemmy’s views on IP boil down to “I attended Marxism 101 and want to pirate games”. Most here don’t have a clue how much time, effort and money is spent on innovation. They couldn’t even begin to fathom why protecting intellectual property helps people actually helps people get paid for their work, which is ironic as they are all for people being rewarded for their actual labour.
Patents genuinely are wonderful. The rockstar devs are going to be rewarded for their innovation. They will hire out licenses so that other games can use the tech they developed.
I wish people who base their entire knowledge of intellectual property on video games would just stop attempting to have opinions on things they don’t really understand.
If you think it’s fine to have a world in which people aren’t protected for their fruits of their labour, then by all means advocate against IP. I would rather live in a world in which people are actually paid for the ideas they come up with and don’t have to excessively keep corporate secrets.
Open source software is different due to informed consent. When working on an OS project you are doing it out of altruism and/or fun, fully realising that you will never be compensated for this work. That doesn’t mean software devs should never be paid and work for free indefinitely on anything they do. Its still a skill that should be compensated for.
I cannot see how they can reasonably copyright the idea of having characters remember you which is basically all the nemesis system is. There are many ways to implement it that wouldn’t violate patent, of course it’s in WBs interest to not nose that one around too much
You can try, but WB will troll you in court for years and drown you out on legal fees to prove it isn’t a violation of a patent. So, most consider it not worth it.
You think that patent abuse is right, and that’s why everyone in this thread hates your comments. You think the system is fine. The fact that you are inside but can’t understand how corporations abuse the system and think others are wrong or misinformed when they oppose this abuse, is troubling. You think we are ignorant or misinformed, but no, we do know how intellectual property works. We disagree and find it disgusting for moral reasons that it works that way. That’s very different.
Everyone in this thread is downvoting me because they are trying to out Marxist each other. I have never once claimed the patent system is perfect, but the people in this thread clearly don’t actually understand what is required to even receive a patent.
It’s typical, people know what systems they are against but never know what they are actually for. People say patents are unfair but never propose viable alternatives. The political analysis on Lemmy is frankly juvenile and utopic. People base their opinions on what team they support rather than any sort of analysis of the problem. Populism is rife here and people gravitate toards populist narratives in lieu of thinking. I’m very glad the demography of Lemmy is not representative of society at large.
Patents genuinely are wonderful. The rockstar devs are going to be rewarded for their innovation. They will hire out licenses so that other games can use the tech they developed.
I said they’re wonderful, not that they’re perfect. Clearly you need to work on your reading comprehension. The alternative is giant corporations stealing everybody’s ideas without anybody trying to stop them in any way.
Fuck off corpo.
Cringe. One day you’ll have to grow up and get a real job. Then you’ll look back at how embarrassingly assured you were of having the answers to everything after real life smacks you in the face and makes you realise you don’t know shit.
Go on then. How do we replace the patent system whilst still acknowledging mental effort and research as being valued forms of work? Tell me all about it mate, I’m interested in your ideas as you’re so convinced it’s all a big con.
Now you’re all riled up and acting stupid. You are the oh so claimed expert who works at patents offices. No, you tell me what does your majestic and awesome field of expertise do to prevent corporate abuse and patent trolling? Tell me, evangelize to me, convince me that the patent system has safeguards to prevent theft of intellectual work, how does patent enforcing works? what do you do, that you work there, to make it a more ethical field? what are the practices and procedures in place to avoid a corporation from using patents to monopolize, bully industries and stifle creativity and innovation?
I’ve protected people who have been attempted to be bullied by a larger company into ceasing production of a product. That’s literally my job.
Patent attorneys are a highly regulated profession which have to adhere to strict ethical standards and rigorous training in the law. I serve the interests of my clients. It doesn’t matter if you’re a large or small enterprise, the law is interpreted exactly the same throughout the process.
I would suggest reducing official fees to make it easier to purchase a patent, but that just reduces the quality of examination. In reality there is a balance to be struck between affordable patents and quality of patents which isn’t always struck correctly. I would advocate for government funded organisations that provide pro bono legal support for small enterprises as a way to make the system a little fairer. In the US they have a tiered system which makes patents cheaper for smaller companies, which is also something I think that should be adopted as standard.
Overall there is no simple solution. Life is complicated and messy and anybody who claims it isn’t is and that there are simple solutions to very layered societal problems are snake oil salesmen with an agenda.
Joycon drift, and all other thumbstick drift, is already a solved problem.
Use bushings that actually have some abrasive resistance and aren’t softer than a fingernail.
Use a non-contact based sensor to determine the XY position of the stick. Hall effect, optical, strain gauge, whatever, we’ve had the tech for 50 years.
The reason why they haven’t done this is one very simple reason: $$$
N64 does use optical sensors, the n64 stick is actually super precise and doesn’t suffer from drift. The n64 is a goofy controller but it is simply a great and accurate input device, and a lot of the games were really designed with that stick and notches in mind.
But it is made of all plastic and features plastic on plastic moving parts, without lubrication, so it suffers from wear of the plastic. Worn n64 sticks will actually be filled with plastic dust from the stick and gears literally sanding themselves down. The only problem with the controller is the premature wear of the stick.
It’s crazy to me that no company ever made a decent 3rd party N64 controller. The 3rd party ones were all as ridiculous as the defaults. Great console that I loved, but would have gotten a lot more out of with better controllers.
there was a hori n64 controller that looked like a normal double handle controller and it was really good, but it’s crazy expensive these days on ebay. I’ve also heard good things about the new brawl64.
The Hori Pad Mini? I had never seen that before, leagues above anything I remember being available at the time. The other looks amazing, definitely a modern controller that I would have killed for back then.
Yup. If they’d just made the bowl out of something OTHER than ABS, they would have been good. Delrin, PTFE, even a thin layer of brass or broze, and those controllers wouldn’t have had anywhere near the amount of issues they’re known for having.
There are third-party manufacturers who sell replacement bowls and sticks, made from everything from POM to steel.
the reason the n64 sticks suck is down to the stick tension construction and not really the sensing mechanism. Pretty much the thumbstick was pressed against a plastic bowl that wore away into white dust through use, making it floppy. it didn’t really have anything to do with the fact that it was an optical stick
The sensors on the N64 are basically the same kind you’d find in a mouse wheel. They work fine.
The crap part is the physical construction. There’s a lot of parts that wear down with use and cause the joystick to become loose due to the plastics wearing away.
Yeah, Yahtzee and ZP was what kept The Escapist alive (Pretty sure there was a point where ZP was their only content). Cold Take was the other thing that was interesting and they lost that too. I don’t think they have any other content without those guys.
I mean, it should have died years ago the last time they unceremoniously dumped talent over apparently ideological reasons, but they survived.
Granted, this time is different because now they are losing their primary breadwinner. They plodded along before because ZP still brought in people. This wound may actually be fatal.
Seriously what were they thinking? I’m literally only subscribed to their YT channel for Yahtzee stuff. Everyone who bought a membership is gonna cancel now.
They probably had no idea Yahtzee and co were that loyal to Nick. That said, I’m shocked Yahtzee was never given an ownership stake, as an insurance against… Well, this exact scenario.
It’s the dairy farmer selling his only milk cow for all that sweet, sweet cow-selling cash, failing to see that this may potentially have an adverse effect on his milk-selling cash henceforth.
Every copy has to be hand made by routing bits around the copper highway ar ludicrous speeds, and rearrange them manually to form what is called “a game”.
Firstly, how dare you! Secondly, unity is made from a limited resource, which is whale balls. For every download of unity, a whale loses one of its balls. Think of the whales!
So if Microsoft published a Unity developed game on Windows, Microsoft could easily charge a $0.20 free to the unity team for installing the Unity Runtime on their OS.
Not being completely serious there. Honestly thought, did the CEO not realize if they start doing this, what’s to stop another company from doing that to them. Things like mp3, where developers need to pay a license for, could then be charged in a similar fashion for each install.
If Nintendo being “one generation behind once again” means I get more games like Breath of the Wilds, Mario Odyssey, Metroid Dread, and Tears of the Kingdom (just to name a few of the incredible first-party games this generation), then I’m fine with that!
But how will I know I’m better than everyone if everything isn’t shiny and I can’t see the reflection of my hot pink leopard striped assault rifle in every sweat drop on my enemy’s forehead?!
Granted, Nintendo does know how to make their sub par hardware seem better than it is. But can you imagine what they could do with actual up to date hardware? Might not be as easy a sell at $400-500 though like PS/Xbox. So if they can keep sub $300 system it’s an easier sell as a secondary system to the others or pc.
what they could do with actual up to date hardware?
It’s honestly hard to tell, given their history. When they first got 3D hardware, their first attempts resulted in a literal revolution in game design, with Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time changing how 3D games would look and control from that point onwards.
Their first time getting access to HD hardware? They didn’t have the experience and tools to design HD assets, which delayed pretty much all internal projects and resulted in several drought periods that helped kill the Wii U.
So if the Switch 2 suddenly had much better hardware… Would Nintendo make the most beautiful game you’ve ever seen, or would they stumble around and ship yet another booster pack to Mario Kart 8 with barely improved graphics? Would they struggle with balancing realistic ray tracing with their cartoony look? Hard to tell.
The switch is like 1/4th the steamdeck and much more comfortable as a handheld
I still use the steamdeck more due to a larger library, but for the games that switch does support it's usually much more comfortable. There's definite tradeoffs to top of the line hardware on a handheld, and Nintendo has known that since that beat out the game gear with the Gameboy, mainly due to battery life back then.
I feel like people downplay the size factor either because they don't use it for it's handheld properties or for them personally they have issues making it comfortable.
And honestly I don't see the issue with it being a gen behind. Games will still be made for it, and if it's a top of the line turbo graphics game I'm just going to use my Desktop. I probably wouldn't have used the Steamdeck anyway because if Switch is low range, steamdeck is midrange, and still not where my desktop is.
But the idea of great hardware and great software is still a mixed bag. And Nintendo's titles show that it's not so much the hardware holding them back but that companies won't make their games with the switch in mind, which is both fair but also gives expected results (such as the recent MK game)
That’s true, but using older, less expensive hardware had almost always been part of Nintendo’s business model. A cheaper console allows them to invest in game development–time, talent, and just money. If they used cutting-edge tech, they would have thinner margins (or even lose money on the console at first as Sony and Microsoft have done in the past), which would give them less to invest into game development. Nintendo spent an entire (extra) year just tweaking and polishing TotK; if they had thinner margins from the Switch, there would probably have been more pressure to release it earlier, which would have given us a less refined game.
I’d love it if we could have both great games and cutting-edge graphics, but at the end of the day, I’ll still take good games every time.
If they used cutting edge, you’d be able to not just play all 5 great Nintendo first party releases but the hundreds of other AAA and great titles that release each year on every other platform but which no one wants to back port to the Switch.
Frankly, comparing the PS5/XSX exclusives to the Switch’s latest releases I think Nintendo is doing better than the others. We are hitting diminishing returns as far as gaming hardware advancement goes. The PS4 was already capable of outputting great visuals in large screens, and even as far as 2023 very few games really needed more than that. The Switch as it is can even handle most indie and double-A games.
This is not even bringing up that higher definition games necessitate additional work and therefore have longer development times.
To me, a new Switch that is as capable as the PS4 sounds pretty good.
Good, I hope this means we get even more turn-based RPGs again. I’m 100% fine with people enjoying the new action-oriented RPGs like Final Fantasy has become, but I love turn based so much more. I didn’t like that it felt like there couldn’t be both on the market. There is just something way more enjoyable to me about turn-based as opposed to mashing buttons and twitchy moves like I’m playing God of War.
I agree, I’m glad games like this (and baldur’s gate!) are enjoying so much success and attention right now. It’s better for everyone if we have a variety of polished experiences in different genres.
That being said I don’t often find myself enjoying turn based games lol. Even going back to the super nintendo, I massively preferred Secret of Mana (with it’s real time combat system) to Final Fantasy. There’s just something extremely satisfying to me about a well done action-oriented RPG, where you feel like your skills are improving alongside your character’s.
“Well done” is not to be overlooked, of course. I was quite disappointed with final fantasy 16, as it truly did just feel like mashing buttons
I never really liked turn-based RPGs until I became an adult with a full time job because they’re perfect for when I’m burnt and wanna play video games but I’m also too burnt to play most games.
I imagine there’s a lot of millennials/early gen-Z that feel the same way. A whole market that is just starting to be tapped
Final Fantasy moving away from turn-based because it's "outdated" is peak Square silliness. Have they ever heard of chess, card games, board games, DnD, Civilization, Persona, Dragon Quest, XCOM, Pokemon, Darkest Dungeon? If anything, DMC-style character action games are far more niche.
Funny enough Yoshi P was the one that said turn-based was outdated and he's worked on DQ before but only the MMO, arcade games, Minecraft clone and a Wii FPS thing. I think it's pretty obvious he just doesn't like the genre. DQ11 was the breakthrough hit in the West and he had nothing to do with it.
I seem to remember them being surprised by the success of Bravely Default, not expecting a deliberately old-school RPG to appeal to modern audiences.
The cynical part of me believes this is performative on their part - they know a game like that will be popular, but it won’t be the most popular thing ever and they won’t make all the money. So, they try to push bigger games that are more easily monetized in hopes that people will just forget their own preferences.
Could also just be their own tastes evolving. I used to love turn-based combat RPGs and the RTS genre but I’m kinda over both of them now. If game makers lose passion for those kinds of games, then the “it won’t appeal” might even be more of a “I’m not into it, so if I do make it, it won’t be very appealing” than a “no one wants this kind of game”.
It turned me off the FFVII remake, which is a shame as I really wanted to experience the original but in a modern style. I guess I may actually boot the original up instead; I wonder if there are mods to make it more playable.
I've got the benefit of nostalgia I guess, but I played through the original a few months ago for probably the fifth time in my life and still enjoyed myself. The main things that has aged is the ugly character models, this mod can improve those. Might want to look as some of these as well. You want to play through the original+crisis core first before the remake for... reasons.
Yeah it’s far more relaxing to play a jrpg with good music, nice looking environments when I can actually listen to the music and look at the world instead of focusing on the enemies tells and dodgeroll at the exact perfect moment. Nothing wrong with perfect dodgerolls. But I don’t want them in all my games.
I have the feeling there are like 20 turn-based rpg going out every month, it’s one of the most seeked genre out there. Sure, AAA titles kind of strayed away from it but the AA and indie markets are still very much into them.
Would it be so bad if games didn’t have insane budgets? Most of my favorite games from the past decade are from small studios operating on pizza and hope.
Lower budgets would probably be better. High budgets mean high risk, developers and publishers try to minimize that risk and you get bland games that try to cater to too many tastes. Movies suffer from the same problem. They get budgets in the hundreds of millions and you wonder what they spent it all for.
I can’t remember who it was. A famous actor, anyway. They were talking about what’s happened with movies. There’s nothing in the middle.
It’s either $100m+ or less than $3m. Either it gets a big producer and they pump so much money into it that it must be safe because it can’t lose money. Or is a small producer doing it for the love, but a small budget doesn’t go very far. The risky narratives done well would be funded somewhere between the two extremes but it’s just not how it’s done anymore.
In a strange way, to get more money in for the riskier productions, we need to get the money out of Hollywood. Can’t see it happening, myself.
Edit: I forgot the reason I told this story: it won’t be much different in the game industry.
You can’t? We just had a summer filled with high-budget flops, and now both the actors and the writers are on strike meaning that the studios won’t be able to recoup their losses any time soon. Add the reduced to non-existent theatre turnout in the first couple of years of the decade due to COVID and there’s been a hell of a lot of money “getting out of Hollywood.”
I disagree that a flop means lost revenue. This is an industry that’s so adept at hiding income to avoid paying taxes, actors, and every other studio worker that dodgy accounting is known as ‘Hollywood Accounting’. Maybe we’re talking about different things. When I say Hollywood, I mean the movie industry as a whole.
Hollywood has failed to capture some income streams. From theatres, for example, as you say. But there’s still too much money to be made (and too much propaganda potential) for enough big money to leave that the problems of monopoly finance capital go away.
High budgets are killing the film industry. In the case of gaming, it plays a factor, but greed is probably the main issue. Most big budget AAA games in the past made large amounts of money even if they didn’t have universal appeal. Because companies realised that they could make large amounts of money off loot boxes, microtransactions, cash shops and battle passes, they started trying to funnel players into games, mainly so that players would buy things. That’s one of the main reasons the AAA industry is getting worse: games need to appeal to as many as possible, while coming out as fast as possible, all so that players will buy the overpriced in-game items endlessly shoved in players’ faces.
I love me some good AAA games and want them to stick around. But I think it would be much better if they were a bit fewer and further between, and the big studios shift to more regular AA games, and give their devs chances to do some more oddball stuff with even lower budgets. More expiremntation and risky projects can only enrich the industry.
You never know what those experiments can lead too. There will be a lot of failures however someone is going to look at the failure and realize what needs to be need to be tweaked.
Good point. And it’s a lot easier to accept ‘failure’ (there could still be something learned in a game that doesn’t quite hit the mark) if the budget isn’t astronomical.
There are games like FFXV that get quite creative on a big budget. (Not sure if it’s AAA.) I enjoyed that game but some of the novel features bugged me a little bit and they skimped on some important features, I thought. Maybe there’s a better formula for trialling novelty than an all or nothing approach.
Yep. The final fantsay series was a bunch of lads in an attic. Now those lads are legends… with a fantasic legacy. Yet I’m still waiting for ES5 and GTA 6…
BG3 did have a pretty huge budget though. I would totally be fine if games took notes from BG3 but reduced scope a lot. Bioware used to make games similar to BG, but they stopped and now make garbage. The idea other studios can’t make similar games is wrong. They can’t make games this big usually though without publishers telling them they need to include microtransactions and other bullshit.
Black Isle was the publisher, Bioware developed the game. Baldurs Gate lead to BG2, which lead to Neverwinter Nights, which lead to Knights of the Old Republic.
Kind of! Though if we are being entirely honest, the real thing to blame is the head writer being replaced and the dev time cut by almost a year.
Personally would have enjoyed it more if they went with the Biotics/Dark Energy that Drew Karpyshyn had put down groundwork for, rather than the AI subplot that Mac Walters hastily slapped together for ME3 that directly contradicted ME1 threads and subplots.
True, but IMO the link wasn’t nearly as strong between KotoR and ME as any of the previous games in the link which were all clearly D&D based systems. ME1 had a lot in common with KotoR but there were some major deviations too as they moved away from the table top standard.
Yep, you’re right. I didn’t realize they were a studio at that point. Yeah, they have no reason to complain about new expectations. They could have created BG3 if they had kept doing what they were known for, but EA and the money were too good…
You could give studios unlimited budgets and they’d still complain they don’t have enough time / money to get things right. The rhetoric is that “games are just so complex nowadays” and that justifies their 4/5/6 year development periods.
I’m not seeing the complexity that warrants that type of long development period. The visual fidelity on some games is impressive, but is it actually worth that 5 year dev time?
It requires a surprising amount of digging to really try and figure out what started all this, but from my rudimentary research, it seems to me that this is a problem that's existed for a few games now and has steadily gotten worse, stemming from high DLC prices and an equally high number of, potentially game breaking, bugs, across multiple games that don't get fixed as it's very quickly on to the next one for CA.
There's rumination that it's because the studio is constantly working on multiple games at the same time and just shoves everything out without having the proper time to go back and make sure everything works like it should.
This seems like it came to a head with a recent DLC pack's price increase while containing equal or lesser content than Warhammer 2 DLC, which was cheaper on release. This prompted review bombing from the community, which prompted a response from one of the lead devs, Rob, who basically said (paraphrasing here) "Costs are up, there's no good time to do this, but we have to raise the DLC prices and challenge ourselves to make the content better to match".
Turns out the community doesn't think the content is better to match. CA doubled down on that position, and here we are.
Right, I can't remember the Creator's name, but apparently they supported a boycott and got banned for it, removing access to their workshop account as well, and they created one of, if not the most subscribed mod for the game. Maybe you know that, I haven't played Total War since Rome 1, so I'm way out of touch
Cheap money (in the form of loans) has reduced. This means that investors are suddenly putting a lot more pressure on the top. In good companies, this is dealt with by the leadership team. Unfortunately, a lot just let the shit roll downhill.
There is also the issue of compartmentalization. In larger companies, the people dealing with the complaints have little to do with the people who actually need to change things to fix the root cause. This leads to the schizophrenic/sociopathic behaviour we see. The mouth has very little idea what the hands are doing.
I think customers forget about the, like what, 20-25% inflation in the last few years. Either they f+ck over their employees or they have to charge more
Everytime there's a change in pricing that was already a set precedent there's a hurdle to overcome like this, and it becomes extremely important to handle the situation delicately since 95% of possible ways to handle it could go very wrong.
I feel like the only way to really deal with it correctly if it truly must happen because of rising costs is to just admit that, like they did, but then stick to that and only that message, and just wait for the community to come around. If it's possible to provide any sorts of even vague math around sales and cost to produce this content then that context would help people understand, but there's almost no way to change a precedent for the worse on the consumer end without some amount of backlash.
Well it’s not very complex. A software company has a lot of its cost coming from wages. If the employees see their cost of living increasing by 20%, they’ll expect to see their wages rise to compensate.
Consumers will bitch, but eventually accept the higher cost of the software
That inflation is a large part of why consumers are sensitive to this price increase. This is fundamentally a purchase with disposable income. Inflation reduces the disposable Income of the population until (if ever) wages catch up with inflation.
Or they could lower their corporate profit margin so neither is necessary. Don’t make excuses for them and act like there’s not a huge amount of money being hoovered up by profit.
Except they have been increasing the prices this whole time... Most of the prior race packs which focused on 2 factions from Total Warhammer 2 were 10 dollars per pop. Hell the last 2 dlcs were so much bang for the buck since they basically made a pair of 19$ dlc obsolete (yes, with the new pack you only get 1 lord each but having 1 lord but a whole new faction for 10 bucks is good value and that doesn't even count that you also get a number of units from a different faction as well). So Total Warhammer 3 comes out and to say it was a fucking mess at launch is an understatement. Their first new dlc is a race pack at the price of 16 USD. So we see an increase of about 60% right there for many units that simply should have been in the game at launch since the chaos roster was very light compared to the other 2/3 factions in the game as well. So come around to when we get a new faction, prior to this factions cost around 19$ and the price increases to 25$ and personally the community was angry but I was 100% fine with this since yeah prices increase and factions have been this price since 2016. So its fucking insulting they do a new race pack and give us a bullshit letter saying I quote
To get right into it: our costs are up. Unfortunately, that means that prices have to rise. We know any increase is going to be tough, which is why our prices have remained fairly stable over the past few years. The downside is that any increase today is going to be more noticeable.
When this is a blatant lie, this new race pack that gives us less content than prior is now an increase of 150% from 10$ it used to be in total warhammer 2 but a ~60% increase from the last fucking price they had from a year prior. It also doesn't help when they haven't patched the fucking game when there is obviously broken shit. For instance they dropped a patch for the honorable frenchmen (Bretonnia) but some faction features were broken for nearly half a fucking year until after this whole. Hell Nakai the kroxigor (A big fuck off giant lizard alligator man who can do a death roll) lord for again half a year couldn't recruit his special units and kroxigors. This anger is coming from a place where obviously the money they earn is being misused on other projects that end up crashing and burning. Like a fucking new extraction shooter that was a money pit gets canned that was DOA (technically never got released but I know they were running beta test and I imagine it getting canned was based on how much engagement was around it, I remember seeing so many fucking ads that beta test). A reskin of Total war Troy (A newly released AAA priced game that had a peak of 5,424 user), which has failed by basically most margins. So its god damn insulting to hear a lead say basically if you don't buy this dlc expect this game won't be supported anymore even though it is literally CAs only cash cow right now. People want better support for this game, it is under horrid management. A ton of anger is strictly coming from how poor a game WH3 released as and the continued support it has seen. We need a proper custodian team who can actually patch this game more than once or twice in a span of half a fucking year.
Edit: I also want to hammer home how fucking bad TW Pharaoh did.
Peak users
TWW3: 166,519.
Shogun 2: 10k or 50k (can't get an accurate count since Steamcharts only goes back to 2012 but SG2 came out in 2011) was 10k (as long as we ignore when the game was given away for free then it was at 50k).
Rome 2: 118,240
Attila: 26,237
Rome Remastered: 18,407
Three kingdoms: 191,816
Considering how consistent the complaint of how much SEGA is forcing CA to act like a shittier version of Paradox, that’s not surprising.
Since the niche of players that buys Total War games will hardly budge upwards, the only way to maximize profits is to squeeze those suckers with endless DLC. No wonder every game since Shogun 2 has had blood as a separate DLC.
Early access is the new fad, because it costs nothing and has value to some players. The increasing drive for more monetization is Activision’s influence, Blizzard was really lazy about it before being bought.
At least early access makes a little sense in an mmo. The new areas are super crowded on launch, so letting some get through early does help.
Because it works and makes them money! You can bet that other publishers will take notice and you’ll see such money grabbing schemes becoming more and more common.
I still have Diablo II Resurrected added to my Steam Library as “Blizzard’s remaining dignity”. And even that is because it’s made by Blizzard North. Apart from maybe WoW (at least the golden years, not necessarily the current state), I can’t think of anything else that has kept its perceived value.
I remember when Overwatch came out. It was so damn fun. Then they ruined it with patches and finally deleted it, only for it to be replaced by that shitty money making machine “Overwatch 2”. It’s kinda sad to know that some games can’t be experienced now in the same way they were when they first came out. Same with WoW.
It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve played WoW.
I remember the days of the spiffworld youtube videos, where Jonathan Coulton songs were played in the background while WoW characters dancing/acting along to the lyrics.
When I was playing through the campaign of the last SC2 expansion I couldn’t help seeing the story/dialogue through the lens of, Artanis = how Blizzard executives think of themselves. Was really bad IMO
Alanah is a great creator. She worked for IGN as a reporter for years, then at Funhaus as a host/editor, and finally broke into games writing, which was her goal for a long time. She also hosts an excellent cross discipline gaming podcast with gaming actors/musicians/devs talking about all things gaming.
Shes seen the industry from every angle. Its telling that her conclusion as a whole is “this is fucked.”
I don’t think you need that much insight to see that the whole institution is fucked.
Rampant “frat bro” culture
Frequent cases of sexual harrassment, and assault
Cases of suicide
Cases of burnout
Layoffs like clockwork
Often deliver rubbish products
Frequently employs consumer-hostile and manipulative tactics
What is even the point, really? Maybe I’m an outlier but I don’t feel like the AAA gaming industry provides enough good to warrant all the crap they put their workers through, and the way the sentient wallets customers are treated.
The point is to make as much money as possible while paying the workers as little as is possible. Same as it ever was.
They could always pay us more, but we’re just supposed to be happy they aren’t sending the Pinkertons to shoot our women and children anymore, I guess?
By asking “what’s the point” I meant less “what’s their goals” and more “what benefit do they serve?”
I’d love for some big swoop to just upend the entire industry. Create better conditions for the workers. Stop the companies from stealing from artists. Have actual consequences for nepotism, corruption, and abuse of power. Like crunch and all that BS is just expected as though it is because of the job, but it’s not, it’s because of the system.
I guess the “benefit” they serve is to increase the payout % for the people at the top of the ladder and their goal is to do that until the breaking point that some higher up takes the blame and they fall with a golden parachute before landing at another company exactly the same as the last one.
Rinse and repeat until you’re Summering on a yacht? Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Yeah, all that you described? That’s what a union does. points at WGA They did it against some of the biggest multimedia companies. The only people who are going to fix the gaming industry are the workers and that takes a union.
She’s been great for a long time. One of the few people with public comments on the industry that has a really great intuitive grasp on the business side of it.
I mean honestly it makes sense. If we assume that the average game dev is similar to the average “hardcore” gamer, then we can only assume that they’re toxic little shits 😆
She has a great deal of respect for the devs/writers/artists/workers. Its the system itself and the execs that are fucked. The toxic atmosphere they cultivate keeps churn high so profits stay high. They build a bad place that attracts bad people that stay and good people that should leave, and they dont give a fuck as long as “number goes up.”
Give the video a watch. It’s a very candid take from someone immersed in all the layers of the field.
This bit got me: Evidently, all of Epic Games’ business had been “heavily funded by Fortnite” in the last six years, and different parts of the company became “disconnected” from their revenue streams.
…Did you not see this coming? Have you really not had a plan for when Fortnite started to lose momentum? I get that having a product blow up will leaf to a period of manic spending because your cash flow suddenly feels infinite, but come on. You’re not a small player in this, Epic. You’ve been around since the 90s. You know better than to mindlessly ride the wave of a success.
Of course the Fortnite money was going to run out. That’s why you invested so heavily in UE5, right?.. Right?
But wootz! Don’t you see! Fortnite was making inroads into the metaverse, and we all know that whoever cracks the metaverse concept is going to reap infinite profits right? Because that’s certainly not a weird dystopian sci-fi pipe dream or anything! It was going to be all smooth sailing straight into forever profits!
Not to mention the amount of money they literally burn through EGS. If I remember correctly, the plan was that it wouldn’t be profitable for another 3/4 years (by 2027).
Fucking idiots. I swear, i dont know why we place CEOs and richer folks, in general, on a pedestal so much. Minecraft has longevity because its basically digital legos. Fortnite is a FPS with buildable aspects.FPSes come and go with the winds.
People have this tendency to associate wealth with knowledge, or business savvy. For many companies, it’s just a matter of “creative accounting” coupled with a psychopath CEO and lucking out. Epic lucked out with Fortnite Battle Royale, don’t forget their original “save world” was a total flop as a paid product
Their plan for when Fortnite stopped pulling in money was for their Epic Games Store (that they propped up by paying devs lump sums just to not launch their games on Steam) to actually make Steam levels of money because surely exclusives and freebies will make people spend money on their store. Turns out there’s a lot of people that will never spend a dime on EGS, either because they won’t install it or only use it for the free games.
So all that Fortnite money they used to pay devs to not release their games on Steam ended up being a failed investment, and they’ve had to change their incentives from “we’ll give you a huge lump sum that’s about equal to what you’d have made with a successful Steam launch” to “well we’ll give you a better revenue split if you launch exclusively on our store that guarantees you get 10% of sales volume compared to Steam”. Turns out 60% of 1m sales is better than 80% of 100k sales.
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