Are you under the impression that people donate money to politicians as an investment? For some of us, our sights are on yknow… not letting our country slide into a fascist state. My personal wealth is not as important as that.

Last year, I did another trilogy playthrough as FemShep while I also happened to be playing Guild Wars 2 as a Sylvari woman. My double take when I realized was pretty funny. Jennifer Hale is supremely talented and she lends an air of gravitas without getting into comical over-acting. She just has a perfect voice for a badass!

This is the second time I’ve seen right wing talking points associated with this game and it’s so pathetic to try and use that to cover over your middling review scores. I mean, you run a business. If you’re not going to self-reflect on why your product didn’t do as well as you thought, not sure you’re being honest with yourself on why your product failed. That same thinking would have been present in the design and development process, preventing their product from ever getting any better. One of those reasons companies even pay lip service to DEI: it genuinely brings fresh perspectives and refines your art and product.

Anyway, I even liked this game. It’s honestly pretty fun and the zombie hordes are relatively unique for the genre. The main character isn’t some right-wing asshole and even comes off as pretty empathetic and kind, if I remember correctly. It just came out at a time of open world oversaturation and played into almost every trope of the time. I think if it came out today, (and they managed to not show their ass online) it would do a lot better. As usual, the right-wing malding is weird on top of being gross and unnecessary.

People really don’t understand how many players there are who just don’t care about this stuff. They get none of the gamer rage, they don’t check reddit or lemmy, they’re not watching Twitter to see what the game journos are pissed about. DLC and MTX make buckets of money, even when compared to the profits from most full games, and they’re magnitudes cheaper and easier to develop. They’re not going away as long as they’re bought and they’re going to be bought, I guarantee it. It’s not even a bad thing, per se, as long as the player feels they’ve gotten their money’s worth.

If anyone is looking to return gaming to a pre-“horse armor” state where big DLCs were the only option, you are looking for a fantasy that will never, ever happen. I’ve seen the numbers for some of the orgs I’ve worked for and it’s hilariously skewed toward that stuff. The real answer is to pivot to different games. Embrace indies and games that don’t have MTX. You’re never gonna get the AAAs back in the bottle.

Give me Donkey Kong Country HD you cowards

Thanks for the info! I might check it out then, seeing as you mentioned FC3/4. Not my favorite games but they can be enjoyable when I want to turn my brain off and stealth kill across the land.

I think you’re in luck on your final point. This trailer is for the steam release this week, I think.

Anyone played this enough to compare it to something else? I’ve never seen the movies but I usually don’t mind a generic open world rpg-lite if there’s plenty to do.

There’s nuance in it, for certain, but there is a large contingent of people who play games that find most open worlds boring. I love a big open world, even a lot of the procedurally-generated ones are fine with me when it’s done correctly (looking at you, Starfield 😒). There are myriad options in between there, where it sounds like you might fall as well.

The key is, as you say, making the world in such a way that it drives the core gameplay loop. This is such a bizarre example, but I just played Animal Well recently and I think it’s actually a fantastic example of this. Every area of this large map that you retread over and over again has hidden, intentional elements that clearly drive at the core gameplay loop of “discover secrets everywhere”. It’s also a 7 year passion project not likely to be replicated. I do think though that the lessons can be learned and applied on less intense projects.

Sit down, consider your loop. Why is the player here, having fun with your game? Is it to discover secrets? Hide secrets everywhere. Is it to drive around in a souped up car? Add more space and interesting driving conditions. Is it to kill big enemies? Add huge roaming bosses. I think after that focus is determined, then you should shrink it as much as possible while still fitting into your design constraints.

This is all layman’s conjecture though.

I also love the Hinterlands, but you and I are in the vast minority based on the initial feedback to Inquisition. It was super common to hear “just push past the Hinterlands, it’s so much better afterwards”. Even more generally, I’ve been hearing “why are all the devs making all their games open world for no reason?”

I’m also an open-world junkie because I love exploration. I’m saddened by this design choice, but I do completely understand where it comes from. It can still be done well and I love the lore of Thedas, so I’ll be there to see, I guess.

Yep and that’s a separate issue I think you would be perfectly entitled to be upset about. I’m just thinking through serving something as complex as anticheat to an audience the size of Fortnite’s for the potential gain of a small Linux footprint (for now). Not many businesses would jump for that.

The wording in the tweet in the article is a little less bombastic. He’s concerned about maintaining anti-cheat for custom kernels and other Linux-exclusive issues at the scale that Fortnite runs at. Given how large the audience for that game is and the age range (which has a lot more time to dedicate) I can see how that would be a costly endeavor and look at TF2 right now as an example of what happens if you fail to do so. Combine that with the much smaller footprint of the Linux base (which is changing!) and thus, less incentive to tackle any of that in the first place.

Maybe I’m just trying to not read ill intent, but I see “Linux gamers are a hard audience to serve” as “You guys use an OS focused on freedom and customization, which means it’s literally harder to serve you all effectively” and not as “Linux gamers are mean”.

Okay, maybe you can help me out. I loved Doom 2016 but bounced off of Eternal because the beginning felt so arcade-y in tone compared to 2016’s “wake up in a tomb full of dead scientistsand punch the monitor” intro. Then I saw the DLCs and this newest game’s trailer and they look so cool again? Did I read Eternal wrong, does it just have a weird intro, or do they somehow integrate that arcade-y feel?

Big win for non-Hindu, non-nationalist people in India. This is going to do a lot to blunt the worst of Modi’s intent. Also, the polls proved to be super off-base. I wonder where that discrepancy came from? Could just be heightened enthusiasm on voting day or something, but it’s always interesting when polls miss the mark heavily.

This guy is living the game dev dream. Built his project that’s relatively simple as far as upkeep goes (which is full credit to him for building it that way), a darling in the industry, and he’s just independent. He’s working on other cool stuff at his own pace with no need to placate any audience or publisher. It’s beautiful.

This is dumb. The government does thousands of disparate things every day. It’s thousands on thousands of people. Having the government chase single issues as a whole would be asinine, ineffective, and the definition of bad government.

Secondly, the radicalization of our citizenry into authoritative tendencies is one of the most pressing issues we are facing. I’m not sure a video game is going to be the solve, but I’m happy to see the government support the arts regardless.

Even the US constitution had to be amended to even include voting rights at all. Until the 15th, which we all more popularly understand now to grant voting rights to racial minorities, was actually the first guarantee of voting rights for white men as well. Before that, the Supreme Court could have very well found the same result.

I just do not understand how voting rights aren’t the very first thing you establish after the preamble, even if it’s for your dominant demographic in a shittier time period. It completely boggles the brain.

It’s funny. I have enjoyed all of those games now. TF2 isn’t for me, but every game in the Box was a certified classic. When it came out though, these games being bundled together under a generic label gave me the impression that it was low-quality, so I skipped it. I was from a rural area with essentially no internet access and there weren’t a lot of other PC gamers out there to correct that misconception, so I didn’t play these games for way too long.

I did not play prior to this release and my group has really enjoyed it so far. I highly recommend for anyone who is interested in the idea of a survival crafter set in an SCP/Control -style facility.

Tunic is phenomenal and I cannot recommend it enough. It’s one of those experiences that I highly recommend going into blind. Even some of the smallest bits of info can ruin parts of the experience. If you’re into puzzle games that require some out of the box thinking, just give it a shot!

I am someone with no Tarkov experience, but I like the idea of the formula and would like to play a PvE experience. I have seen Gray Zone and a few other options. Is anyone able to speak to the quality of the options out there right now without comparisons to Tarkov?