October 2024 PCG Article Discussion Thread

[Brian Boru]

games industry is undergoing a 'generational change,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney

The games industry is undergoing a 'generational change,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney: 'A lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling'

The world of videogames is changing, and the Epic chief believes the future is social.

www.pcgamer.com

'Dungeon crawler' enters the Merriam-Webster dictionary

'Dungeon crawler' enters the Merriam-Webster dictionary alongside 'touch grass' and 200 other new words and phrases

Sometimes language evolves. Other times, it gains a level as a dwarven fighter.

www.pcgamer.com

Woohoo, fewer typo warnings in RPG forum!

 

[Colif]

games industry is undergoing a 'generational change,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney

Metaverse talk... what year is it again? NFT/Metaverse trying to come back?

Just like before, they all want to start the first one but no one wants to share.

took how long to get Dungeon Crawler in? And yet its just part of other games. Diablo is a dungeon crawler but not all the time. Wizardry is a dungeon crawler... nice, so a game from 1982 is finally recognised in Dictionary.... so all the modern genre only have to wait 42 years?

 

[Brian Boru]

a game from 1982 is finally recognised

Lucky to get in anytime, given its association with RPG—clearly Merriam-Webster are feeling the pressure and are now bottom-of-barrel crawling!

Metaverse talk... what year is it again?

Don't get hung up on the term or one particular implementation or other. He's talking about the phenomenon, whatever label you want for it. 'Metaverse' as a term is a distraction from FB, what it represents has existed for a couple of decades.

 

[Colif]

its a stretch saying its a word... its two words. Same with touch grass. Some of them are far worse... 3 words said in order= one word?? When do we stop putting the space between them?

200 New Words and Definitions Added to Merriam-Webster.com

Including beach read, street corn, touch grass, and nepo baby

www.merriam-webster.com

Have they redefined Dictionary? I mean, they could... its a "Book for whatever we decide"

I know language is not set in stone, and someone has to do it... but it shouldn't be a business trying to justify its existance.

 

[Pifanjr]

games industry is undergoing a 'generational change,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney

The games industry is undergoing a 'generational change,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney: 'A lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling'

The world of videogames is changing, and the Epic chief believes the future is social.

www.pcgamer.com

What we're seeing is a real trend where players are gravitating toward the really big games where they can play with more of their friends.

I feel like this isn't new. Game companies have been trying to lock players into their live service models for years now and most of them have faded in obscurity. I mean, WoW released 20 years ago and other companies have been trying to replicate its success for almost as long, usually without success.

 

[Colif]

That is true, article is just a sales pitch for Fortnite really
Live Service games aren't selling as well as they wish.

Honestly, I don't want to play games I can't pause.
I don't want to play multi player games most of the time.
Its over a year since I last had too. Diablo 4. Ignoring expansion for first time in.... two decades?

live service single player games only benefit the company who made them. It just lets them attach a shop... I much prefer past where all the cool designs in game were drops/things you could make in game... not extras on a shop. Selling costumes in a single player game is greedy.

 

[Rolfil]

I think we are at or near the limit for live service games. I mean there are only so many people with so much time to play them. We've seen a number of recent games fail spectacularly because they've tried to compete with established games.

I'm ok spending a bit of time playing PoE and Diablo 4 but more of my time is spent on single player games, a lot of which are indie/smaller studio produced. I would far rather support these that some huge company churning out the same old AAA games.

 

[DXCHASE]

Lets not forget were taking talking points (sweeney) from someone whos company fired over 800 workers to come out and say that his company "is now financially sound". Yea on the backs of these workers who are now out of a job and scrambling while your bankroll gets fatter.

I think we are at or near the limit for live service games. I mean there are only so many people with so much time to play them. We've seen a number of recent games fail spectacularly because they've tried to compete with established games.

I'm ok spending a bit of time playing PoE and Diablo 4 but more of my time is spent on single player games, a lot of which are indie/smaller studio produced. I would far rather support these that some huge company churning out the same old AAA games.

As long as somethin like Fortnite exists, there will always be studios who want to capture that success, hence why there is so many failures. We def. have enough already but its a genre that i feel will not personally die out any time soon esp. with the handful of live service games set to come out.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Fortnite isn't the future, it's an anomaly, and Tim Sweeney is just another CEO wrongly predicting the death of big singleplayer games

Singleplayer and multiplayer games will continue to coexist, just as they always have.

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There can only be one Fortnite. But there can be many Baldurs Gate 3's, Black Myth Wukongs, Elden Rings, etc etc. You cant talk about gaming as if its homogenous, its like saying all sports fans are the same market. Theres crossover in places but the Figure skating people dont usually hang around with the MMA crowd.

 

[Brian Boru]

There can only be one Fortnite

I'm not up on these, but aren't there also others doing well like PUBG, Apex Legends and Warzone?

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I'm not up on these, but aren't there also others doing well like PUBG, Apex Legends and Warzone?

I dont think you can compare them anymore, theyre popular competitive Battle Royale games AFAIK. Fortnite evolved into one of those when it piggy backed off of PUBGs success but its turned into a whole other thing now on top of that. 110million concurrents across Fortnite modes vs a few hundred thousand or maybe couple million at their peak.

Theres crossover in places but the Figure skating people dont usually hang around with the MMA crowd.

This was poor way to put it. My meaning was just because Football/Soccer is the most popular thing is doesnt mean people wont still prefer Formula One or or play Snooker instead.

 

[Brian Boru]

Fortnite evolved

Bejapers! I had no idea. Talk about leveraging your assets.

 

[DXCHASE]

Bethesda honcho says Starfield is 'the best game we've ever made' in massive bout of amnesia

To be fair, Skyrim came out ages ago. Maybe he forgot.

www.pcgamer.com

View: https://giphy.com/gifs/oscars-awards-academy-Ho2mVZ5dvsW7S


What are they drinking over there at Bethesda?

 

[Colif]

What are they drinking over there at Bethesda?

No idea, they too busy blowing smoke up each others backsides.

Its expansion is sure evidence of that
4 hours gameplay, 8 quests, 1 new planet... 100+ loading screens... what? you don't like loading screens? Why are you playing Starfield then?

 

[Zloth]

What are they drinking over there at Bethesda?

Like I posted in Disqus - they're messing with ya by calling it a space sim RPG. There are VERY few of those. RPGs in space, sure - Mass Effect for the big win. Space sims, sure - X4, Elite Dangerous, Kerbals, and so on. But games that are both are rare. Games that are both and known by more than 2% of the PC gaming world do not exist, leaving them free to say it's the best.

I'm a bit dubious that Starfield even fits in that genre. From what I've seen, it's more space-shooter than space sim, but I haven't played it at all. Maybe the videos I've seen just don't show those bits.

4 hours gameplay, 8 quests, 1 new planet... 100+ loading screens... what? you don't like loading screens? Why are you playing Starfield then?

Loading screens? Come on, Colif! It's been years since I ran into a loading screen that took more than 3 seconds. Who cares about those??

(They still like putting tips on them, though. The best hidden use of Steam's new always-record feature is that you can use it to finish reading the tips!)

 

[Pifanjr]

Bethesda honcho says Starfield is 'the best game we've ever made' in massive bout of amnesia

To be fair, Skyrim came out ages ago. Maybe he forgot.

www.pcgamer.com

What are they drinking over there at Bethesda?

I think on a technical level, it's probably their best achievement yet. It's just too bad that it doesn't seem as fun to play as their other games. But I'm happy they're not giving up on it yet, because from what I've read it seems like it should be possible to fix most of the player complaints.

 

[Colif]

Loading screens? Come on, Colif! It's been years since I ran into a loading screen that took more than 3 seconds. Who cares about those??

3 seconds x 100 sure adds up.. okay, not by much. Still prefer not so many in a 4 hour expansion. 5 minutes staring at loading screens.

 

[BeardyHat]

Starfield is pretty much on par for any particular Bethesda game for me. I got 85 hours of out of it and still intend to go back for more eventually; I got the same amount of time out of Fallout: New Vegas, but only 35 out of 3 and 120 out of Skyrim.

Their best game? I don't know, but it definitely doesn't feel much different from most of their output, but I enjoy their formula.

 

[DXCHASE]

Gaming is a good thing for the workplace, apparently—so if you'll excuse me, I'm off to 'do some extensive training'

It's for the good of us all, honest.

www.pcgamer.com

I have a co-worker who uses a backbone at work "in-between" his duties on the line and he seems perfectly relaxed and level-headed during a 12 hour shift. But it could also be the 🍃

 

[DXCHASE]

Diablo 4's once extraordinarily rare 'uber' uniques will be easier to get next season, but with a small catch

Vessel of Hatred significantly reduces the grind to get the rarest, most powerful gear.

www.pcgamer.com

Good. For some reason Diablo fans love spendin years tryin to find 1 thing that never drops for them and act like thats how it should be. No, not at all and even still Mythics are annoying to get. I would say i have killed roughly 100 tormented bosses (maybe like 90 somethin idk) and have gotten 1 (the one mentioned in the article actually) and it has nothin to do with my class outside of gettin random abilities.

So i always wind up finishing a season early because after getting to 100, leveling up gear to quickly kill tormented (lvl 200) bosses and not getting any mythics is boring and im not spending real money for materials to farm the bosses. So this is good news.

 

[Zloth]

At least it's farming something respectable. In Yakuza: Like a Dragon I spent some time farming cockroaches. I needed them to improve the whip one of my characters used in her Night Queen job. The things games get you to do....

 

[neogunhero]

The new iPhone's beta AI has been summarising breakup texts and we can't figure out if that's taking the sting or the soul out of interpersonal communication

This is just one more reason to break up with someone in person.

www.pcgamer.com

This is quite hilarious. I recently got a iPhone 16 Pro and have been using the AI beta features but haven’t ran into something like this yet. So far the only summaries I’ve seen are for YouTube and Steam notifications. I'm don’t think it’s particularly useful but you can always turn off specific AI features you don’t like or don't want to use and keep enabled the ones you do want. I think some of the peoples reactions are a bit overdramatic considered that fact I just mentioned, this isn’t a feature that is going to be forced onto every iPhone user even once Apple Intelligence is fully available to everyone.

Speaking of Apple’s AI, from all the other AI models I’ve seen, theirs seems to be the most “practical”, though probably like 75% of its advertised features I will never use. If you’re someone like a content creator or do major business from your phone, the features would be a lot more useful. For me, I’m just waiting for the image generator to come out.

 

[BeardyHat]

Steam's new disclaimer reminds everyone that you don't actually own your games, GOG moves in for the killshot: Its offline installers 'cannot be taken away from you'

The concept of a "digital license" isn't new, but there's no pretending you didn't know about it anymore.

www.pcgamer.com

I've been trying to download more of my Steam library to my home server this year. I know not everything works, but there are quite a few games that will run independent of Steam.

But I do also try to keep my money spread out a bit more and do tend to buy stuff on GoG semi-frequently; buying Peglin this week put me at 230 games on just GoG. I do tend to prefer Steam though, as it's easier to get things working easily on Deck, as well as being able to take advantage of deep discounts on third party sites that activate on Steam.

All that said, there is the elephant in the room that quite a few games on GoG require third party launchers.

 

[Zloth]

The mastodon in my room is that I spend maybe 3% of my gaming time re-playing games. And the ones I want to re-play all together wouldn't cost $100.

 

[neogunhero]

I think Valve should give developers and publishers an option to download a DRM free version of their game if they choose to do so. If that were to be the case, I’m sure ~95% of games in Steam won’t have that option, but it would be nice as the customer to have the option. Of course though, that’s just not how Steam operates, so it’s just wishful thinking.