Mine was the laser as well. Unfortunately it was years and years ago and I just tossed it away like an idiot. My collection from then on began collecting dust until last year when I decided to take one of my old Android Phones and a Razer Kishi and turn it into a handheld emulator.

thanks, I just edited it out

Some “DLC happy” games seem to work in niches while mostly avoiding the micro-transaction trap. I’m thinking of Frontier’s “Planet” games, or some of Paradox’s stuff.

I’m confused at some games not taking the DLC happy route, TBH. 2077, for instance, feels like it’s finally fixed up, and they could make a killing selling side quests smaller in scope than the one they have.

Games are ok, meaning there are good ones. Trying to release more and more to get more and more money - that’s going to fail, yup

Also, look out the window: we have so much more to spend time and resources on

I find the QA potential to be enormous. I’ve seen my share of good EA games and the paper feedback is really what makes the difference. You’ll have devs revisiting assumptions that would be really difficult to challenge if you didn’t have a stream of real reactions to what you’re doing.

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. Just look at Kerbal Space Program, for example. It pretty radically changed a few times through Early Access.

That era also has good control schemes. I went to replay Perfect Dark on my analogue 3d and hoooooooo boy, those layouts are like wearing beer goggles or trying to ride a reverse handle bar bike. I’ll need to try the dual controller layout but I am considering butchering a cheap controller to make something that matches modern layouts.

“Popcorn movies” are a big thing, and most of those big investments are these. They’re “turn off you brain for two hours and chill” events. A game, even the most chill ones, almost always last much longer and require more engagement. That is the defining trait of the medium. If you can totally turn your brain off then you didn’t make a game, you made an expensive movie. Games, for players, are an investment. Movies often aren’t.

Speaking of DLC happy, hi, I’m the blood DLC for Total War games!

I think the last AAA I tried was Baldur’s Gate 3.

Pretty good tbh.

Like a gambling addiction if you think about it. “No no no, THIS will be THE game that will make us Fortnite money!!!”

Even then, turn your brain off and chill only fits a certain market segment. Sure, it’s a large market segment, just look at how popular the Marvel films are, but it’s not the entire market, and just like with gaming when something truly compelling comes along it tends to shake things up a bit.

Suppose this is why Marvel films just don’t work for me. Like, I can appreciate the artistic talent that went into things, I can appreciate that they’ve got impressive budgets and teams working on it, but narratively they kind of suck.

Sat down and watched Antman with a friend recently. I liked the moments the main character had with his kid. I liked it when the step-dad showed equal care for the kid as the father, and them sort of resolving some of their differences in that moment. That was nice.

I’m still bothered by the whole “when you shrink you retain your mass, so you’re essentially like a bullet” part, and how that concept got completely shit-canned for the rest of the film. You can’t just punt an ant-sized object weighing 90 kg, yet I think there was a moment where he literally got flicked away. Why even bother with some scientific-sounding BS if you’re not going to adhere to it?

Guess you’re just not supposed to think about it. But then, what is the point? I don’t read books to not think, I read books to experience something new, and have something to think about. Film works the same way for me.

It’s interesting because the live-service formula is kind of antithetical to what they want. They essentially want a low-effort low-cost perpetual money-printing machine. They really should just invest in actual money printing machines and churn out fake money, because that’d be a more successful endeavour.

The live-service games that live on do so because of a constant investment and commitment to the game and the community it harbours. The moment people think the writing’s on the walls, they jump ship.

It’s just so bizarre to me that they want people to invest time and more importantly, money into the game, when they themselves aren’t willing to do so.

Yeah it’s always funny to see these quotes about games being bad, from people who make games of questionable quality

Meanwhile I’m still very happily playing Neverwinter Nights & Civilization 4.

It’s weird to think of a top-down historically-isometric RPG as “AAA”. We’ve come a long way, baby.

BG3 is technically an indie game if you go by the literal definition of the term!

Have they considered not spending half a billion dollars giving hair strands shadow effects, and instead developing interesting stories?

Losing the hardware constraints made devs less innovative too. The Crash Bandicoot devs had to hack the PlayStation’s system memory allocation to squeeze a bit more out of the machine so their game could be better.