Yeah I posted the vid over on the News thread.
"Screwed" is maybe a bit over dramatic, but the points she raises about why are pretty bang on. All comes down to the games industry not hitting the projected growth (which was really based off some runaway successes and companies promising their investors that their new game would have similar success, mobile gaming and then Covid) and essentially stagnating in terms of growth or even dropping compared to social media, and so investors are throwing their money behind the likes of AI instead. And ultimately the games industry is trying to appeal to and appease shareholders/investor, not the consumers.
I don't know if you could look at the massive amount of layoffs happening in the industry and not think it's screwed, to be honest.
Honestly think that saying the industry is screwed is hyperbole. Alannah is pretty great for insider knowledge of the workings of the industry but she's not an industry analyst.
What's happening is exactly the same thing that happened in the industry that I worked in last, pet pharmaceuticals. All it is is the capitalist expectation of constant growth and the effects of COVID. Both games and pet pharmaceuticals saw a surge in growth due to COVID and an idiot could see this was a short term growth spurt spurned by fluke global event. It was never sustainable.
However you then have executives seeing this growth and selling even more growth to shareholders, as selling them a more realistic version of events where they can expect a drop in growth is taboo.
Everything then gets over sold and over invested in and when it returns to a baseline level (which is actually growth when you remove the outlier of COVID) then shareholders and executives panic and start cancelling projects and firing people.
The sad thing is they will then be understaffed and have rehire in a couple of months.
I do however agree that Sony and Microsoft seem to be losing customers and appeal to other markets since they became laser focused on the gamer market. Sony really need to get that mass market appeal of the PS1 and PS2 back although they seem to also be pricing themselves out of that market and losing it to Nintendo. They're also losing out in emerging markets where PC is still dominant.
And microsoft really need to stop being complete **** ups.
The most galling thing about these new Xbox increases is the fact that we're subsidizing the Yanks, as they're not getting hit with their full tariff increase.
This has been coming regardless of tariffs anyway, as the usual ways that the cost to manufacture consoles reduces no longer work as they used to. Process nodes are no longer shrinking as they used to, Moores law has so many caveats that it's essentially worthless, crypto and AI now mean that silicon production is even harder to come by, all of which combine to push the cost up just to make a console.
Anyone that's looked into the production side of things in this, longer DF or Gamers Nexus have all highlighted that these increases are inevitable, and have been warning about this for a while.
Still though, that's some increase on an unpopular product that most people see as a loss leader. I know that it was in the other thread, but yeah, I do think that the industry is screwed. It's not going to disappear or anything like that, but the level of disruption that we've seen so far is minor in comparison to what will happen over the next few years
The rest of the world subsiding the yanks for their **** up in electing a moron and inflicting this on themselves really frustrates me and honestly has really soured me towards Sony. Especially considering the correct course of action is to raise the price of games and consoles over there, cause some gamer outrage and watch a bunch of cowards roll over on the tariffs.
Obvious where the budget for this went.
That might be the worst presentation of a game I've ever seen. Forget the goober bait but I was bored after 2 minutes and skipped through it and halfway through I saw the MC squeezing through a tight space. Was there even combat shown? It looks boring as ****.
It's as if someone was playing through Mass Effect 2 and thought, "yes, let's make a game, but it's just Miranda's Arse."
Like literally Miranda's ass, the game.
Ass Effect.
Why is her arse going 3 feet into the air during the crawling section. I hope this wasn't mocapped or else there's probably footage of a director shouting "I NEED THAT ARSE HIGHER IN THE AIR!".
So, this is clearly not Dino Crisis
Dino CrisAss
@Penn writing these puns:
Since the Oblivion hype I've finally been getting into Daggerfall, through the unity version. It's basically a Theseus ship of a rebuild of the original as they did the whole thing over again in Unity but from what I see largely kept it faithful. There's options to make certain things easier, or keep it 'pure' to the frustrating madness of the original like keeping its massive dungeons with their needle-in-a-haystack design (I've opted for the madness). The biggest difference to me, comparing with the DOSBOX version, is that moving a mouse doesn't make me want to vomit and the framerate is 144fps
The best way to describe it is an incredibly in-depth character creator with a procedurally generated world wrapped around it. It's sort of underwhelming at first but oddly gets very immersive once you lock into what its world is doing, the scale of it. Even the mundanity of it and the idea that it's largely populated by people and places which aren't important in the video-game sense of the word. The 'negative space' provided by the proc-gen towns and cities creates a different kind of immersion that can't be reproduced by a meticulously authored town.
There's not a quest lying behind every door, well some of them do have quests that are proc-gened for you. But largely it's just a world, you can ask these people for directions or the latest gossip on realm developments, but it doesn't have that theme park feel of Oblivion onwards that is fun in the moment but makes the place feel a bit frivolous and overly player-centric. It's more of an RPG framework, with the world and its quests providing a series of obstacles and progression opportunities, ranking up in factions is really important here cause you really want to be able to craft spells or potions or whatever.
What I do miss tho are the stories that games like Oblivion have, you have to create your own a bit. Which I don't mind, there's a flexibility to that that you don't get with heavily authored approaches. But I feel like a great TESVI would try to strike a balance between this type of design and something like Oblivion. Morrowind comes to mind as well, what that game would be like with the sense of scale that Daggerfall has.
Anyway, I'm making my case here for playing old games if the cost of buying new ones has you down. This is nowhere near as good as Morrowind, maybe the best game I've ever played, but it is my current obsession all the same.
Are you main freebasing the main storyline and side missions or enjoying the exploration?
I'm not sure what freebasing means in that context but I'm sorta doing 80:20 in favour of side missions, cause the factions rank up is really useful. Also given that the game is level scaled, which makes more sense here than in Oblivion, it feels like you'd miss a lot of stuff by just doing main story.
The exploration isn't really there, it's basically just fast travel. You can go out into the world if you want but it will take literal days to reach certain settlements. There is a mod out there which fills out the world with more unique and consequential discoveries, and adds foliage and things and enhances the FT system to be a bit like Baldur's Gate where you can get caught out and attacked on the way, requiring you to make itineraries and stop over in certain towns. Which sounds really cool, but I want to keep my Theseus Ship as close to vanilla as possible for the initial playthrough so I can appreciate all the mods later on
The exploring in dungeons can be rough, cause they are so huge and you can spend hours in them. But it is also sort of the gameplay of Daggerfall, leveling your character to handle these dungeons and completing them before the timer to turn them in expires. Which is why I didn't want to use small dungeons cause it would neuter the decision making a bit imo
The recall spell is invaluable, as is a high speed stat to zoom through them. Early on I did a lot of running away from skeletons, so levitate is also nice to take shortcuts until I leveled blunt skill to smash them
And the correct course of action for you and others in Europe, Australia, etc. would be to not buy Sony products. That won't happen either though.
Told you so.
Too soon? 🫢
Remember i said half life 3 is coming and no one believed me? I was only out by 10 years
So 2039 for Left 4 Dead 3 then. Sweet.
You had an excuse to resurrect the Half Life 3 thread again and didn't do it? Shame on you!
I loved left for dead 1 so much, one of the best online gaming experiences I've had, helped we had a squad every night but they just nailed the mechanics of the human controlled infected, the hordes, level design and weapons. I know everyone's sick of remasters but I'd love one of that.
I finished playing GTA Vice City. Great game.
Exactly my experience with it too. I was friendly with a Total War clan of all things at the time, and L4D just grabbed our attention by the throat! We put hundreds of hours into it, having some amazing laughs along the way.
I fecking looked for it yesterday, and when I couldn't find it, I forgot all about it. Damn it.
Was that your first time playing it? Remaster or original?
Well I tried the version ported to the PS4 in 2017, but I didn't get far as I found it a pain to play.
The one I played from start to finish was the definitive edition.
Just a reminder of the poll that was added to it 😂 if HL 3 does get announced, I want that thread renamed to it's original and the **** bumped out of it.
566 notifications?!
