June 2024 PC Gamer Article Discussion

[ZedClampet]

Wildermyth developer Worldwalker Games is 'going into hibernation,' not because it has to but because it wants to: 'We did what we set out to do'

"Wildermyth has been wonderful, but nothing goes on forever."

www.pcgamer.com

Wildermyth developer is shutting down, mostly because it just couldn't figure out what game to make next.

 

[Pifanjr]

Wildermyth developer Worldwalker Games is 'going into hibernation,' not because it has to but because it wants to: 'We did what we set out to do'

"Wildermyth has been wonderful, but nothing goes on forever."

www.pcgamer.com

Wildermyth developer is shutting down, mostly because it just couldn't figure out what game to make next.

I suppose that's better than starting on a new project they're not passionate about and spending a ton of time, energy and money on it, with the end result probably being underwhelming because of that lack of passion.

 

[Zloth]

It's interesting to me how that is playing out. The big publishers are all cutting and streamlining like they are running for their lives from insolvency. Meanwhile, Worldwalker is like "OK, let's just slow down, take some sabbaticals, and give ourselves time to see what we want to do next." That STILL means dropping a lot of people. I guess they didn't make so much that they could afford to pay people to sit on the bench for a year or two and I'm not sure how many people would even want to do that - it's hard to keep your skills up when you're just sitting at home.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

It's interesting to me how that is playing out. The big publishers are all cutting and streamlining like they are running for their lives from insolvency. Meanwhile, Worldwalker is like "OK, let's just slow down, take some sabbaticals, and give ourselves time to see what we want to do next." That STILL means dropping a lot of people. I guess they didn't make so much that they could afford to pay people to sit on the bench for a year or two and I'm not sure how many people would even want to do that - it's hard to keep your skills up when you're just sitting at home.

They did say they have a profit sharing scheme that will continue and they paid severance. At least the employee quoted in the article seemed to be reasonably happy with how it was handled. Still a shame to hear they dont have any other ideas though. Wildermyth was fun and had a pretty unique thing going on with the story telling.

 

[Hveðrungr]

Videogames aren't like widgets. You can't just keep making the same thing for the rest of your career. If you don't have the creative concept you need, you don't have it. Better to wait for the muse.

 

[Brian Boru]

shame to hear they dont have any other ideas

Some great creativity motivational tips over in the June Games thread—assuming Worldwalker devs are human, of course.

It's interesting to me how that is playing out

Nice to see a company not outstay their time, such a rarity these days. I'm not sure how much the studio system still operates in Bollywood, Hollywood etc, but as far as I know most movies are one-offs these days—the company is dissolved at the end of it and everyone moves on.

You can't just keep making the same thing for the rest of your career

The Sims have invited you to dinner. ✔️ ❌

 

[Pifanjr]

Pax Dei is an exciting 'social sandbox' from EVE alumni where you can be a medieval monarch, pope, or just make trousers all day—and it's out soon

Find your place in a new civilisation from June 18.

www.pcgamer.com

I really hope this takes off, if only because it sounds like it'll generate some good stories to read about, just like EVE Online.

 

[ZedClampet]

The future of gaming belongs to weird little games

After Balatro, Animal Well, Content Warning, and Abiotic Factor in 2024, small games from small studios are innovating as well as anyone else.

www.pcgamer.com

The future of gaming belongs to small(ish) indie teams.

I'm not sure the games they are calling small are small, though. In no way do I consider Abiotic Factor and Palworld small games. It takes 30 hours or so to complete Abiotic Factor. It's a large world and has several complex systems. Palworld has a pretty large map, tons of Pals to catch. Complex crafting systems and base building. It's got dungeons, breeding, farming, cooking, a bunch of boss fights, etc.

Meanwhile, I'm sure they would consider God of War a large game, even though it's really just a big map with a lot of fights and some cutscenes.

 

[ZedClampet]

I tried to recreate Marvel's Iron Man in this movie studio sim, and my version was so bad my own father stormed out of the theater

Create and edit your own films while managing a movie studio in Blockbuster Inc.

www.pcgamer.com

A funny read about Blockbuster Inc, which comes out this week.

 

[Hveðrungr]

@ZedClampet When they say “small games” they're not referring to the length of the game to play or the size of the game world (though those can be incidental side effects); they're referring primarily to budgets. The “small games” they mean are those with small teams, small marketing budgets, and especially a smaller price than AAA games' current £70 ask:

• Abiotic Factor: £21
• Balatro: £13
• Palworld: £25
• Animal Well: £21
• Manor Lords: £35
• Pacific Drive: £25
• Content Warning: £7
• DRG Survivor: £10
• Backpack Battles: £11

Those are all small prices for a computer game in current year!

 

[ZedClampet]

@ZedClampet When they say “small games” they're not referring to the length of the game to play or the size of the game world (though those can be incidental side effects); they're referring primarily to budgets. The “small games” they mean are those with small teams, small marketing budgets, and especially a smaller price than AAA games' current £70 ask:

• Abiotic Factor: £21
• Balatro: £13
• Palworld: £25
• Animal Well: £21
• Manor Lords: £35
• Pacific Drive: £25
• Content Warning: £7
• DRG Survivor: £10
• Backpack Battles: £11

Those are all small prices for a computer game in current year!

That's a pretty nonsensical definition of a "small game". It's like calling a cheap SUV a small car. Small cars are all the rage! *shows picture of a Ford Bronco*

****

Qualcomm CEO says 'you should expect to see Qualcomm in every PC form factor: From desktop to mini PCs, to tablets'

Are we getting closer to a Snapdragon-based gaming PC? Maybe, just maybe.

www.pcgamer.com

Didn't see this one from a couple of days ago.

 

[Hveðrungr]

That's a pretty nonsensical definition of a "small game". It's like calling a cheap SUV a small car. Small cars are all the rage! *shows picture of a Ford Bronco*

Respectfully I think it's just a different definition for a different context.

 

[Pifanjr]

Indie dev baffled after acquaintance clones his game, puts it on Steam, and acts like it's no big deal: 'Happens every day homie'

Dire Decks creator kindanice is at a loss after a fellow indie dev remade his game and refuses to take it down.

www.pcgamer.com

I wonder if this could be solved with a single DMCA claim.

 

[ZedClampet]

Indie dev baffled after acquaintance clones his game, puts it on Steam, and acts like it's no big deal: 'Happens every day homie'

Dire Decks creator kindanice is at a loss after a fellow indie dev remade his game and refuses to take it down.

www.pcgamer.com

I wonder if this could be solved with a single DMCA claim.

I don't see why not. Shouldn't even need an attorney.

Oof: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League lost Warner Bros. $200 million—which is $25 million more than the original 2016 movie cost to make

Repeated zig-zags left developers, among other things, confused as to why "Captain Boomerang, known for fighting with his namesake weapon, would suddenly pivot to gunplay."

www.pcgamer.com

So besides the live-service problem, they tried to make a superhero game where the heroes drove their cars to the baddies and then shot at them with guns. Do you really need to be a superhero to do that? Imagine getting a Dragon Ball game and Goku drives everywhere and fights with a pistol. That's going to be hugely disappointing.

 

[ZedClampet]

Palworld's first major update, Sakurajima, lands on June 27 with a new island and new Pals

The new update has lots of new tech, pals, and some handy new crafting stations too.

www.pcgamer.com

Palworld with its first major update. Given that it's been 6 months, I'm surprised that it currently has over 11k concurrent players. Pretty good for a mostly single-player game. Should get a big boost with the update. Personally, I think I'm going to wait until full release before going back to it.

 

[ZedClampet]

Hello, PC gaming here: Are the consoles OK?

With sales dropping and confidence declining, how close are we to the end of consoles as we know them?

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Frindis]

I own a PS2 and Xbox 360 console stored in the attic. Xbox 360 I didn't play much, but the PS2 (GTA: Vice City was my favorite game) is a great console. As for now, I use a Nintendo Switch and I'm not lying when I say that Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom is one of my top five favorite games of all time! It is just mind-blowingly good and it does something when it comes to exploring that I have rarely seen since Morrowind. Sure, it's only 30FPS and I am bad at using the controllers, but it does not matter, the game is pure magic

 

[Zloth]

Hello, PC gaming here: Are the consoles OK?

With sales dropping and confidence declining, how close are we to the end of consoles as we know them?

www.pcgamer.com

You know, 40 years ago, something like this was happening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983

The conditions aren't the same now at all, though. PC gaming has way more shovelware games than consoles and there's certainly no glut of console systems.

I kinda want to throw the economy out as the reason. A huge portion of PC gamers are playing OLD games. Like 10+ year old games. Even your dad's old college laptop can get through LoL. But the consoles have been around for quite some time, too, and a lot of people bought a lot of them for the pandemic.

<shrug> Well, whatever. I just hope we don't also have a repeat of the early 90's when so many of our beloved PC gaming studios decided to switch to consoles. Thems was hard times...

 

[Brian Boru]

GOG will let you bequeath your game library to someone else as long as you can prove you're actually dead

Accounts aren't transferable but GOG is willing to make it happen, with a little help from the legal system.

www.pcgamer.com

So we'll have to spend time haunting the GOG legal dept, when we could be getting our first tastes of true cloud gaming.

 

[Pifanjr]

After playing the deckbuilding RTS just revealed at Summer Game Fest, I believe in better, simpler realtime strategy

With Battle Aces, Uncapped Games is making strides towards an RTS renaissance.

www.pcgamer.com

This sounds really interesting to me. I'm terrible at doing both base building and controlling my units, short games fit great in my limited available time and I love deckbuilding.

 

[Brian Boru]

This sounds really interesting to me

Why are they calling it RTS? There's no strategy, it's all tactics—could be a fine RTT game. Unless there was something cut from the start of the video, the sides were engaging within ~10 seconds.

Fine maybe if you're a Starcraft-style APM player, but that's a sub-genre of RTS. Sounds like this is an original dev, yeah? Just that it looks so much like a mobile port, and the gameplay seems mobile-oriented too—reminds me of slow Match 3.

Not for me, but could be a fun little shmup.

 

[Pifanjr]

Why are they calling it RTS? There's no strategy, it's all tactics—could be a fine RTT game. Unless there was something cut from the start of the video, the sides were engaging within ~10 seconds.

Fine maybe if you're a Starcraft-style APM player, but that's a sub-genre of RTS. Sounds like this is an original dev, yeah? Just that it looks so much like a mobile port, and the gameplay seems mobile-oriented too—reminds me of slow Match 3.

Not for me, but could be a fun little shmup.

The deckbuilding part is where you plan your strategy, which you then have to execute in real time.

 

[Zloth]

Tactics - the methods you use to win a battle
Strategy - the battles you're going to fight to win a war

RTS games are often more about tactics than strategy.

(We're pretty terrible when it comes to ship sizes, too, once they get out into space.)

 

[Hveðrungr]

In practice, modern gaming usage is that “tactics” is a proper subset of “strategy”. “Strategy” is used as a sort of synecdoche for the wider concept of which it is formally only a part.

 

[Brian Boru]

In practice, modern gaming usage is that “tactics” is a proper subset of “strategy”.

Yeah that seems to be the case. But what do we call real strategy games then? Slow Tactics?

The deckbuilding part is where you plan your strategy, which you then have to execute in real time.

Sure, that's fine, but it's the execution part which bothers me from a strategic viewpoint—maybe the video was very unrepresentative but I didn't see anything strategic in it, just a sequence of pre-planed tactics. The problem with that is…
“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”—Helmuth von Moltke
or more poetically
"The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley"—Robert Burns

In older RTS, the 'S' part initially involves deciding whether to favor early attack or defense, when to start ship building, will we spend on air force or air defense, and so on—generally decisions re resource acquisition and spending.

After enemy contact beyond scout level, the 'S' part changes to involve assessing enemy action and how to counter it or take advantage of it. Gameplay becomes fluid and tactics come more into play as opponents seek to capitalize on strategic omissions.

Tactics - the methods you use to win a battle
Strategy - the battles you're going to fight to win a war

RTS games are often more about tactics than strategy.

Tactics: ; How to;
Strategy: What to.

RTS can absolutely be played as mostly tactical—ref the infamous 5-minute rushes in C&C multi or the APM play in Starcraft. But that's a different genre, not RTS—it's the Get my name higher on Leaderboard genre And it's fine, but please call it what it is—RTT—so we still have a name to distinguish games with strategy once the real-time part of the game has commenced.

Blitz Chess gets a different name.