October 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[ZedClampet]

I said that I'd be back when I was done with Satisfactory, but today as I made my way to the top of an amazing rock formation and looked out upon the world, I realized that now that the game is released to 1.0, I will never be done with it.

Hopefully PC Gamer uses some sense and names it Game of the Year instead of that JRPG with the story straight from My Little Pony that they gave a 95 review score to. Next year no one will remember that JRPG, but people will be playing Satisfactory long after I'm gone from this world.

So since I'm not going to ever finish the game, I've decided to ease myself back into the rest of life

My plan had been to come back with a satellite picture of my ridiculously large and beautiful factory, but it's taking a lot longer than I had anticipated, and I'm very happy about that. When I first launched the game to start my new world, I took a breath and said, "This is not a race," and I'm relaxing and taking my own sweet time. In fact, I'm still on Tier 2 technology, which is crazy for how much time I've put into it.

Another goal I have for this world is that when it comes time to send up the space elevator for the final time, that it takes me less than 1 hour to make what I need. My previous record was 36 hours. (I think they've cut that requirement by quite a bit, though. They said it was so high because they didn't want people doing it, but admitted that we all did it anyway.)

******

By the way, I needed a new cable for an external SSD. Because this is for my laptop that moves around a bit, I was having problems finding a cable that didn't work itself loose because they are all so cheaply made. But I finally found a brand that seems to be good: CableCreations. Until further notice, everything USB cable related that I purchase will be from them.

 

[Colif]

Endless games do have an end. When you get bored of all the mods.

AudioQuest Forest USB-A > B High-Definition Digital Audio Cable - 0.75M (2' 6")

Forest USB features high-purity 0.5% Silver conductors and a Metal-Layer Noise-Dissipation for the most efficient dissipation of radio-frequency noise.

www.audioquest.com

not all usb cables are cheaply made but then, some are also over priced. That isn't even the most expensive I have seen.

Audiophiles are taken for a ride when it comes to cables.

I actually need a cable like that but I can get one for one third the price.

 

[ZedClampet]

Endless games do have an end. When you get bored of all the mods.

AudioQuest Forest USB-A > B High-Definition Digital Audio Cable - 0.75M (2' 6")

Forest USB features high-purity 0.5% Silver conductors and a Metal-Layer Noise-Dissipation for the most efficient dissipation of radio-frequency noise.

www.audioquest.com

not all usb cables are cheaply made but then, some are also over priced. That isn't even the most expensive I have seen.

Audiophiles are taken for a ride when it comes to cables.

I actually need a cable like that but I can get one for one third the price.

I was mostly interested in finding something that was a step up from the cheap garbage I kept finding on Amazon. I don't really need the absolute best cable. I just want one that reliably does what it's supposed to do. Although I might try Audio Quest next time I need a cable. I need one C to A for my controller. Any old cable will run a controller, but since the controller moves around a bunch, it actually needs to be a tight fit. Have you actually used Audio Quest or have you just window-shopped them?

 

[ZedClampet]

I forgot to mention a cool feature of Satisfactory. It's just a small thing. Anyone you invite into your game, their character stays in your game forever. Wherever the last place the player was, their character model just sits down right there.

So I don't get to play with Guido anymore. He's just too busy and he's also really enjoying being independent, and having weekly gaming time with his dad is just messing that up. But I had him come into my Satisfactory game (we've put hundreds of hours into this game together) and stand in my HUB and log out. Now every time I go there, there's my boy.

That may sound kind of sad, I guess, but I've pretty much gotten over the empty nest depression I suffered for a whole year. I just like seeing his character there.

Hopefully as he gets older he'll start to want to have some game time with his dad again. If not, I can't say I didn't take full advantage of it while it lasted. Were some great times.

 

[Brian Boru]

Trying to make classics is a valiant ideal

Only for amateurs, for a company it would be totally irresponsible and sink them immediately—apart from maybe 1 in 1,000. If it was a good ideal, every game-book-track-film would be a classic, wouldn't it? Does anyone know of a professional new IP—ie non-sequel—which had the publicly stated aim from inception of being a classic? In-house mission statement or external marketing BS don't count, got to be credible adult-class statement.

As Ive understood it, most indie games have a much spikier sales chart over their lifetime than most big AAAs

I don't have good data on this, so just my partially informed opinion Based on sales data from sister industries—books, music, movies—the big shakers have a huge spike in sales on release, far more 'out of kilter' than small guys. This is due to their extensive marketing which crucially generates pre-orders and release hype.

At Amazon for sure, and probably many other retailers, pre-orders get lumped in with first-day sales to give an unnaturally high single day of sales. Again at Amazon for sure, prob elsewhere too, this in turn drives the placement algo to treat the product as a real winner for the store and subsequently promo the pants off it.

Most of this market manipulation is not available to small guys, so they see a much more even sales profile. The 'graph' is so consistent in some product sectors that the movie guys can now predict overall USA revenue based on the opening weekend's performance.

Could the strategy be that … would seem like a much more sustainable way of doing things

As said above, you can't start out to 'make' a classic—that is 99.9% a hindsight thing. It would be fabulous if possible tho—reduce Steam releases from ~40/day to 40/year would be so much more sustainable. Of course loads of people would ***** about 99.9% of studios closing and 99.9% of devs laid off, but hey, no free lunch—you want planet or jobs?

releasing a new one every other year and exploiting (as Bobby Kotick put it) the franchise until its dry

Blame Steve Jobs who in 90s mandated Apple should bleed the Mac dry and get in front of the next big thing. Surprise, the Mac is still a cash cow.

But of course it's not companies' fault if customers buy their products, and unreasonable to expect them to say 'Ooh that's a reliable seller, let's dump it and close a few studios and lay off a few thousand'.

Once you charge the public money for your product, you enter the commercial sphere.

I wish all companies had the same aims

Countries which implemented such a strategy have historically lagged behind economically.

20k likes

Grats!

You have my PayPal right? It was $1 for each, so that's $8K

 

[Brian Boru]

FromSoft … not publicly traded

Only in the sense that EA Mobile isn't public—all 3 From owners are publicly traded, so From is definitely subject to the increased requirements of the public interest.

Keeping income steady and regular looks great for investors

It's not mainly for investors, it's more for lenders. Investors of course eventually benefit from lower lending costs making their way thru the financial performance.

CableCreations

Cable Creations Bridal & Tuxedo

Ah, it's CableCreation

 

[Zloth]

Solasta? Edit, oops totally forgot you were playing B3. Look after that little one, you hear?

So I hear about this owlbear in its cave earlier. I see the cave and stay well away - I know an owlbear would be far too much for my party of level 3s to deal with.

Then, while looking for a back entrance to a dubious looking village, I found a crevasse. It was small, so only my halfling ranger was able to get in. I found myself at the back of the owlbear cave, perched up on a high ledge! Woo hoo!! Owlbears don't have any ranged attacks, and this game doesn't even track ammo for normal arrows. I'll just plunk away at it until it dies. Easy xp!!

I gave it a couple of good shots. Then it takes its turn and, ghaaa! It leaps up 30ft/10m onto the ledge and whacks my poor little hobbit to within an inch of his life! I was still near where I came in, so I was able to sneak right back out again.

Hopefully PC Gamer uses some sense and names it Game of the Year instead of that JRPG with the story straight from My Little Pony that they gave a 95 review score to.

Wow, there must have been a lot more political intrigue in My Little Pony than the commercials led me to believe!

 

[ZedClampet]

Wow, there must have been a lot more political intrigue in My Little Pony than the commercials led me to believe!

It's a morality play on a 5-year-old's level. You can make a sex scene all about the letters of the alphabet if you want. That doesn't make it good for either adults or kids. This isn't 1960s Memphis or Birmingham. If your moral stand is that racism is bad, did you really have anything to say?

But it's remarkable that PC Gamer keeps being obsessed with stories since they are only tacked on at the end of making a game. To developers they are a barely necessary evil. if you went into a studio's offices and pitched your game by telling them a story worthy of a Nobel Prize, they'd yawn and ask you what the game is.

Story is not game. It should be almost irrelevant here, but because these folks said, "Racism is bad" some games journalists are falling all over themselves. But then again, they loved Dear Esther for it's writing, and no game has ever been more poorly written than Dear Esther. It would make a literature professor cry.

These are both prime examples of exactly what you are taught not to do in college writing classes.

Games journalists aren't qualified to write about writing. They should be writing about games. Letting them tell us what is good and bad writing just makes everyone more stupid.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Only for amateurs, for a company it would be totally irresponsible and sink them immediately—apart from maybe 1 in 1,000. If it was a good ideal, every game-book-track-film would be a classic, wouldn't it? Does anyone know of a professional new IP—ie non-sequel—which had the publicly stated aim from inception of being a classic? In-house mission statement or external marketing BS don't count, got to be credible adult-class statement.

Thinking about it a bit more making classics is not necessarily possible and probably a bad word to use here. .....

Further to say, that if talented people try and make interesting games with enough time, there less chance of a miss. What constitutes a miss is another problem, if everything has to be a bigger hit than the last, then we get boom and bust, which doesnt seem sustainable to me. Sometimes in creative endeavours theyre going to miss and I think it would be sensible to try and cost that in and manage profit expectations better. Theres probably a few ways to do that that people in the business could work out, but its quicker and easier to exploit a name so most go that way.

Hell Remedy have signed deals for a connected universe of TV and potentially movies. They may end up going the same way in the end, but Id love it if someone found a way around it.

I don't have good data on this, so just my partially informed opinion

This is what forums are for.

Based on sales data from sister industries—books, music, movies—the big shakers have a huge spike in sales on release, far more 'out of kilter' than small guys. This is due to their extensive marketing which crucially generates pre-orders and release hype.

At Amazon for sure, and probably many other retailers, pre-orders get lumped in with first-day sales to give an unnaturally high single day of sales. Again at Amazon for sure, prob elsewhere too, this in turn drives the placement algo to treat the product as a real winner for the store and subsequently promo the pants off it.

Most of this market manipulation is not available to small guys, so they see a much more even sales profile. The 'graph' is so consistent in some product sectors that the movie guys can now predict overall USA revenue based on the opening weekend's performance.

This was implied when I said

As Ive understood it, most indie games have a much spikier sales chart over their lifetime than most big AAAs. Mostly due to the lack of big marketing budget meaning they spike in sales as and when they release new free updates or get word of mouth from other places over time.

Ive only anecdotal stories over time from Indie devs who came from AAA. Enter the Gungeon, Dead Cells, Flame and the Flood devs, probably others who dont come to mind right now.

As said above, you can't start out to 'make' a classic ...... you want planet or jobs?

Ill take the planet please. I answered the other part above though

Blame Steve Jobs

I'd love too, dude was a grade A scumbag.

But of course it's not companies' fault if customers buy their products, and unreasonable to expect them to say 'Ooh that's a reliable seller, let's dump it and close a few studios and lay off a few thousand'.

Exploiting something to death and dumping it entirely are not the same thing only choices.

Only in the sense that EA Mobile isn't public—all 3 From owners are publicly traded, so From is definitely subject to the increased requirements of the public interest.
FromSoft … not publicly traded

They are also a small cog in the machine of their main owner.

And therefore not under constant scrutiny because they arent the only or main source of revenue. Easier to demure to higher ups and say its better in the long run to make things well rather than rush them to hit arbitrary growth targets. How long that lasts if they dont produce another Elden Ring for their next big game we will have to see. Blizzard did this for many years under Vivendi.

It's not mainly for investors, it's more for lenders. Investors of course eventually benefit from lower lending costs making their way thru the financial performance.

Potato, potato. Tomato, tomato.

Blame Steve Jobs who in 90s mandated Apple should bleed the Mac dry and get in front of the next big thing. Surprise, the Mac is still a cash cow.

Seems to me from a consumers point of view treating games solely as products to exploit means you end up with stale and uninteresting products after a while. New Iphone anyone? It has a slightly better camera.

I think there's room for a wide middle ground with varying approaches. It doesnt have to be that everyone loses their jobs if we dont exploit everything to the bone, as long as not all companies are solely interested in increasing stock prices. Indie publishers like Annapurna and Devolver among others have seemed to find a middle ground by searching out talent and minimizing risk by going with multiple smaller scale games for example. More of that would be nice, scaled somewhere in between half billion dollar 8 year dev cycles and indie, we'd get some pretty sweet games out of it I reckon.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

So I hear about this owlbear in its cave earlier. I see the cave and stay well away - I know an owlbear would be far too much for my party of level 3s to deal with.

Then, while looking for a back entrance to a dubious looking village, I found a crevasse. It was small, so only my halfling ranger was able to get in. I found myself at the back of the owlbear cave, perched up on a high ledge! Woo hoo!! Owlbears don't have any ranged attacks, and this game doesn't even track ammo for normal arrows. I'll just plunk away at it until it dies. Easy xp!!

I gave it a couple of good shots. Then it takes its turn and, ghaaa! It leaps up 30ft/10m onto the ledge and whacks my poor little hobbit to within an inch of his life! I was still near where I came in, so I was able to sneak right back out again.

Hah! Dont think I found that entrance.

 

[Colif]

Audioquest: no, I used them as an example of spending too much on a cable, especially a digital one. I would only buy it if it's connection was better than a $10 cable, if it was more securely connected.

That was one of their cheaper cables, below is a stupid one.

Buy AudioQuest Diamond USB Digital Audio Interconnect Cable

AudioQuest Diamond USB Digital Audio Interconnect Cable. USB (Universal Serial Bus) Audio:USB (Universal Serial Bus) Audio:For many applications, the speed of digital communication is important. Most visibly, “speed” is about transferring large files as quickly as possible, or carrying enough...

www.klappav.com.au

Digital connections don't need all this stuff. It doesn't make any difference.

 

[Brian Boru]

if talented people try and make interesting games with enough time, there less chance of a miss

I hope you're right. I've seen too many excellent TV shows get dumped after 1-3 seasons tho to have faith in the quality consciousness of the consumer, while the sales patterns of books is a complete mystery to me.

The big problem is "interesting". You've got reliable revenue spinners like game shows and reality which are dirt cheap to make, yet command big audiences who are obviously interested—Survivor has 47 seasons so far

'Enough time' is another problem. That's only feasible if the company is in a strong enough position to up-front fund all the resources needed during the years of development.

You mention Devolver who do seem to have found that happy middle ground as a publisher, despite being publicly traded. They built a nest egg via remakes and spinoffs which gave them a cushion to suffer some losses as long as there were accompanying successes.

Main thing for them is they got lucky early on with Hotline Miami—companies' success often hinges on luck, which of course the principals will deny unless it's bad luck Plus they probably had a good CEO, another key factor in how a company progresses medium- to long-term.

It is however more difficult for a smaller dev to diversify their portfolio. One can publish many more products than one can dev, so the risk is much greater. A wild guess is that every success story we get to hear about is accompanied by 100 which silently fail.

Sometimes … theyre going to miss and I think it would be sensible to try and cost that in and manage profit expectations better.

Right, every company which releases new products deals with that problem. It's very easy for NP sales forecasts to be off by a factor of 10, so the main way to keep financial projections credible is to have reliable revenue generators be the main bulk of company performance so that new product devs are only 10-15% of the cost.

Remedy have signed deals for a connected universe of TV and potentially movies. They may end up going the same way

Fyi Annapurna and Devolver are also in the TV-movie game

This was implied when I said

"indie games have a much spikier sales"—my point is they have much less spikier sales.

Ill take the planet please

I think I misinterpreted your use of 'sustainable'
I'm so used to seeing the word in an environmental context that it didn't occur to me you were probably talking about company financial sustainability.

dude was a grade A scumbag

No argument here.

Exploiting something to death and dumping it entirely are not the same thing

Right, they're opposites—that was my point

therefore not under constant scrutiny because they arent the only or main source of revenue

If top-level execs are lazy or incompetent, yeah. But you're right, if a studio is unimportant then it can fly under the radar to a degree if there are unexpected events and crises in important areas— sometimes for up to 3 months!

Potato, potato. Tomato, tomato.

Lettuce turnip and pea

Point was that lenders are usually much less patient than investors. Look how much rope investors gave Jeff Bezos—you can bet every penny you will ever own that the banks would've descended on him like a ton of pbricks if he'd missed a couple of payments… and made mashed potatoes and tomato puree of 'im.

New Iphone anyone? It has a slightly better camera

Apple is a fashion company, so that's how it goes. I haven't any knowledge of games as fashion, but looks like many are headed that direction with regular 'refreshes' 1-4 times a year. Which is fine for those gamers who follow fashion, their purchases should provide more stability to companies' financial performances.

from a consumers point of view treating games solely as products to exploit means you end up with stale and uninteresting products after a while

Works that way for the indies too, my guess is their ratio of shovelware is a lot bigger than the rubbish from larger studios—latters' costs would quickly sink them, whereas indie is less likely to be thrown out of the basement. The market doesn't reward what the customers don't want.

Sometime last decade I worked out that there were ~2,000 books being published per day. Shovels are cheap, anyone can own one

there's room for a wide middle ground with varying approaches

I agree, and happily it already exists—largely hidden tho by the concentration of attention on a small subset of the industry. To your two examples, I'll add in Firaxis and CD Project—and there are a bunch of others, plus a few breakthru indies and many more getting-by indies.

Gosh, is that the time?

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I hope you're right. I've seen too many excellent TV shows get dumped after 1-3 seasons tho to have faith in the quality consciousness of the consumer, while the sales patterns of books is a complete mystery to me.

The big problem is "interesting". You've got reliable revenue spinners like game shows and reality which are dirt cheap to make, yet command big audiences who are obviously interested—Survivor has 47 seasons so far

'Enough time' is another problem. That's only feasible if the company is in a strong enough position to up-front fund all the resources needed during the years of development.

You mention Devolver who do seem to have found that happy middle ground as a publisher, despite being publicly traded. They built a nest egg via remakes and spinoffs which gave them a cushion to suffer some losses as long as there were accompanying successes.

Main thing for them is they got lucky early on with Hotline Miami—companies' success often hinges on luck, which of course the principals will deny unless it's bad luck Plus they probably had a good CEO, another key factor in how a company progresses medium- to long-term.

It is however more difficult for a smaller dev to diversify their portfolio. One can publish many more products than one can dev, so the risk is much greater. A wild guess is that every success story we get to hear about is accompanied by 100 which silently fail.

Talking about medium large fairly established devs here like we were, they already have a good handle on what people think is interesting from them. When theres a reputuation already and people have trust they can take a little time over what theyre doing, as long as they arent pressured too much from above, and as long as they dont take too long that their money runs out of course.

"indie games have a much spikier sales"—my point is they have much less spikier sales.

I meant than AAA single player games have traditionally relied on the first weeks and expect sales to go slowly down to nothing thereafter. With indies often relative lack of marketing it can go up and down depending on what popular streamer gets into it, articles published, new free updates over time and so on. Like irregular spikes rather than an initial jump and slow decline to background noise.

With indies I guess another factor is they arent on the cutting edge of graphics and so dont lose as much shine over the years as a lot of AAA games might compared to the newest ones. I would hazard another guess that going forwards it will be less of a factor as tbh some AAA games from 10 years ago still look pretty good.

Right, they're opposites—that was my point

Check my edit, wrote it fairly quickly and missed that in the original.. Meaning they dont have to release a game every other year in a franchise, how about every 5 years and some other stuff in between? Then in 30 years there will only have been 6 games in a series probably of better quality, maybe they will have had some other hits as well and jobs will be more secure. A steadier line on profits, employment rate and turnover of franchises rather than staffing up and staffing down to make quarterly reports look better.

If top-level execs are lazy or incompetent, yeah. But you're right, if a studio is unimportant then it can fly under the radar to a degree if there are unexpected events and crises in important areas— sometimes for up to 3 months!

May well be that Vivendi had incompetent leadership with Blizzard, but how is competence is defined? Letting a studio make multiple best in class game franchises that were hugely profitable may have been a happy accident because of lacksadaisical leadership, but if thats the result maybe that says something about the received wisdom?

Perhaps it would be better on a case by case basis managed by people who truly understand and love the market and product for itself, and not just as numbers.

The market doesn't reward what the customers don't want.

True, but quite often they need to see something before they know they want it.

I agree, and happily it already exists—largely hidden tho by the concentration of attention on a small subset of the industry. To your two examples, I'll add in Firaxis and CD Project—and there are a bunch of others, plus a few breakthru indies and many more getting-by indies.

A lot of it got eaten up by people like Embracer and Microsoft and spat out when the wind changed over the last year or two. Itll probably grow back, but the larger companies could also occupy some of that space to incubate new megafranchises for when their big ones are no longer hitting the mark.

Time to play some games anyway, now the world is entirely put to rights and all is well.

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued my Minecraft game with the Craftoria modpack and progressed into the Theurgy mod this time. It's a mod about the principles of alchemy, which eventually allows you to transmute any material into any other material. However, I eventually ran into the problem again where I needed stuff from the Nether to progress, something that I got stuck on with the other mods I had been progressing through.

So I decided to just take a peek into the Nether to see how bad it would be. Turns out, it's bad. I immediately got attacked by two ghasts and the area I spawned turned out to be only one block thick around the portal and right above a lava lake, so each ghast projectile created both more fires and more holes straight to the lava sea.

If that wasn't bad enough, this modpack also lets Wither Skeletons spawn anywhere and apparently there are two spawn spots right by my portal, so I kept getting shot with fire arrows as well.

It took some effort and two deaths, but eventually I managed to get rid of the ghasts and Wither Skeletons long enough to build a little shelter around my portal so I could enter the Nether safely and had somewhere to retreat to.

Next time I just need to figure out how to (safely) get down to get the last ingredient I need to progress in Theurgy. Once I have that set up I can start automating it, which should make getting ingredients for other mods a lot easier.

 

[Brian Boru]

Like irregular spikes rather than an initial jump and slow decline

Ah yes, figured we might be talking about two diff things—you frequency, me range… all good

in 30 years there will only have been 6 games in a series probably of better quality, maybe they will have had some other hits as well and jobs will be more secure. A steadier line

I doubt any exec would forego a good selling release every 2 years in favor of a potentially better selling one every 5 years. Time for RoI is a major business metric, and not knowing how 5 years of investment will play in the market is a lot more insecure than gambling with 2 years. Loss of key people is another problem, they'd lose 2½ times as many over 5 years v 2 years and that could derail things.

If they have other IPs which might be simultaneous hits, then sub them out to other studios or buy other studios to dev them.

Quality is a dangerous goal to aim for in entertainment—lots of high-quality stuff sells poorly, lots of dross sells well. Sales is the only true metric in that it's measurable—that's what 'metric' means—whereas quality is in the eye of the beholders.

May well be that Vivendi had incompetent leadership with Blizzard

I wouldn't be surprised, Vivendi were a real mess 10-20 years ago so there were plenty of crises to distract leadership. Plus Blizzard would've been a very small cog in V's wheel—a lot of V's mess stemmed from the plethora of industries they were involved in, and there were a bunch of other game studios also under the umbrella.

Vivendi always reminded me of the Korean chaebols, must be great fun to manage. Altho as it's more of a holding company, maybe it's not too bad from a performance POV—I would guess products are not looked at, merely financial performance and realignment of the group as a whole, with products being the purview of managements closer to the action.

What's the betting some Vivendi execs thought Blizzard was one of their their catering companies in the Alps? If they were aware of it at all…

people who truly understand and love the market and product for itself, and not just as numbers

When a company goes public, it changes from a product and customer oriented operation to a money game. Suddenly the fortunes of millions of ordinary citizens are dependent on the financial performance, and the law and industry watchers take a much bigger interest. Management has much less room to maneuver, to the extent that a few companies go private again to regain control—eg Dell.

What you describe is unlikely to ever make much of a mark in the industry, as without the transparency of public scrutiny, it will be much costlier to get financing if it can be got at all. It does however make for a company which is much easier for customers to understand and relate to.

quite often they need to see something before they know they want it

Oh absolutely, the market speaks after product launch, not before. There is of course the considerable water muddying by the deception and manipulation known as marketing, which may create artificial demand before and soon after product launch.

now the world is entirely put to rights and all is well.

Time much better spent! Enjoy

 

[Zloth]

It's a morality play on a 5-year-old's level. You can make a sex scene all about the letters of the alphabet if you want. That doesn't make it good for either adults or kids. This isn't 1960s Memphis or Birmingham. If your moral stand is that racism is bad, did you really have anything to say?

Is that game really about racism?? I've played quite a few JRPGs and the only one I can think of that even tried to do something with racism was Valkyria Chronicles, which was trying to make fantasy-WW2 hybrid. They all but dropped that whole aspect of the story in VC4. You see plenty of writing against classism, but not racism.

Looking at the reviews, it sounds like racism is a big part of Metaphor ReFantazio, and sometimes it does fall into cliches, but it's also talking about how racism can be used in elections. That takes some serious guts - more than I've seen from any other game company.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I doubt any exec would forego a good selling release every 2 years in favor of a potentially better selling one every 5 years. Time for RoI is a major business metric, and not knowing how 5 years of investment will play in the market is a lot more insecure than gambling with 2 years. Loss of key people is another problem, they'd lose 2½ times as many over 5 years v 2 years and that could derail things.

The short term thinking Ive been describing.

I wouldn't be surprised, Vivendi were a real mess 10-20 years ago so there were plenty of crises to distract leadership. Plus Blizzard would've been a very small cog in V's wheel—a lot of V's mess stemmed from the plethora of industries they were involved in, and there were a bunch of other game studios also under the umbrella.

Vivendi always reminded me of the Korean chaebols, must be great fun to manage. Altho as it's more of a holding company, maybe it's not too bad from a performance POV—I would guess products are not looked at, merely financial performance and realignment of the group as a whole, with products being the purview of managements closer to the action.

What's the betting some Vivendi execs thought Blizzard was one of their their catering companies in the Alps? If they were aware of it at all…

As I said. They were a small cog and the Blizzard leadership was able to point at their successes and tell anyone who asked they would produce if they were given time for those years, according to interviews with Blizzard staff around the time.

Suddenly the fortunes of millions of ordinary citizens are dependent on the financial performance

Nonsense. Nice bedtime story though.

What you describe is unlikely to ever make much of a mark in the industry, as without the transparency of public scrutiny, it will be much costlier to get financing if it can be got at all. It does however make for a company which is much easier for customers to understand and relate to.

You may have heard of privately owned companies like Valve or Larian. Perhaps you are aware of Epic games? Theres more at the medium to smaller level obviously. Its not easy for them to exist but its possible.

Good talking.

 

[Brian Boru]

You may have heard of

Of course. With thousands of companies there will always be the exceptional few. I'm making a general observation on the industry, ie the thousands, not the few.

Valve has Steam cash cow, Epic has Fortnite cash cow, and Larian was very lucky that their talent was rewarded by great sales:

How Divinity: Original Sin almost bankrupted Larian Studios

Larian founder Swen Vincke recounts the enormous financial hardships the studio went through to release Divinity: Original Sin.

www.pcgamer.com

I understood you started talking about the industry in general, not a cherry-picked lucky few.

The short term thinking Ive been describing

Are you still criticizing it, or do you now see why it's necessary in most cases? It's one of the weak points of Capitalism as an economic system, but it's part of how it all works.

Nonsense

I take it you are not familiar with the economy-wide profile of the main stock markets. I don't have the smaller markets info offhand, but over half of US citizens are invested.

Good talking

To clarify: have you been talking about the industry, or about a tiny few exceptions? Or perhaps you changed from one to the other and I missed that?

 

[Otto Levin]

I’ve been enjoying some downtime with Baldur’s Gate 3 as well—just wrapped up my first playthrough. The level of detail in the storytelling and character interactions is fantastic, though I agree, Pillars of Eternity 2 has a unique charm when it comes to the depth of its combat system. The turn-based mode there is a bit more tactical, which I appreciate when I'm in the mood to really slow things down and think.

I’m also keeping an eye on Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty. I know the game had its issues at launch, but I’m curious to see how far they’ve come with updates and this expansion. God of War Ragnarok is on my radar too—loved the first one on the PS4. Haven't looked much into Black Myth Wukong yet, but it sounds like it's shaping up to be an exciting one!

What about you? Planning to dive into Phantom Liberty soon or waiting for more reviews to roll in?

 

[Colif]

Bans the other mods from using quotes... sure would reduce length of the posts

 

[Colif]

People upset that GTA 6 ingame doesn't look like cut scenes... lol. Watchdogs again

We not at the stage yet where in game looks like cut scenes, especially on consoles.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Of course. With thousands of companies there will always be the exceptional few. I'm making a general observation on the industry, ie the thousands, not the few.

Valve has Steam cash cow, Epic has Fortnite cash cow, and Larian was very lucky that their talent was rewarded by great sales:

How Divinity: Original Sin almost bankrupted Larian Studios

Larian founder Swen Vincke recounts the enormous financial hardships the studio went through to release Divinity: Original Sin.

www.pcgamer.com

I understood you started talking about the industry in general, not a cherry-picked lucky few.



Are you still criticizing it, or do you now see why it's necessary in most cases? It's one of the weak points of Capitalism as an economic system, but it's part of how it all works.



I take it you are not familiar with the economy-wide profile of the main stock markets. I don't have the smaller markets info offhand, but over half of US citizens are invested.



To clarify: have you been talking about the industry, or about a tiny few exceptions? Or perhaps you changed from one to the other and I missed that?

Ok Brian

 

[Brian Boru]

Bans the other mods from using quotes.

But then our posts would be like yours, one long ramble thru the linguistic undergrowth *shiver*

@Kaamos_Llama Gracias amigo, I was ready to post the same thing!

 

[Pifanjr]

I continued my Minecraft Craftoria game. I didn't feel like going back into the Nether, so I gave up on progressing through the Theurgy mod and started on the Modern Industrialization mod instead, which is all about automation. Like Occultism (and Theurgy), it also allows you to triple the amount of ingots you get out of an ore, but while it's easier to automate, it also costs a ton more resources.

Luckily the mod includes a drill that works off of fuel instead of durability, which should make it very easy to mine vast amounts of ore, and it has silk touch, which I think means I can get 9 ingots out of every ore.

 

[BeardyHat]

People upset that GTA 6 ingame doesn't look like cut scenes... lol. Watchdogs again

We not at the stage yet where in game looks like cut scenes, especially on consoles.

I don't want to watch some lunatic man child ranting, so I just scrubbed through a bit. Had no idea this was a thing, but people need to get their brains checked out; the moving gameplay I saw looked pretty good to me. But I also think stuff like Gothic 2 looks pretty good, so...