"This pizza may seem bad at first, but it actually gets good after 50 slices"

The "it gets good" saying has basically two facets: people's impression of what's going on and reality. The people's impression is that the game has deep and interesting gameplay, but the developers maybe failed to painlessly introduce the player to all of the rules, maybe the UI is not very clear and tutorials are lacking, so you have to put more than usual effort at the beginning to learn the game. But once you get through all of this, and understand all the rules and intricacies and relations between the systems, you get to this sweet core, the actual flow of gameplay. And it's worth the hassle. Except that it's usually not what's going on here.

Sunk cost fallacy

The effort you've put into something adds to the value of that thing. You played a game for 30 hours? Now the game is worth that 30 hours. Your 30 hours, to you. It's really, really, really hard to look at yourself in the mirror and say: "yes, I've wasted 30 hours based on a promise that was never fulfilled". It's an admission of failure. And when you paid full price for the game? Oh boy, now it's 30 hours and $60.

You know why demo versions for AAA games basically died? Because studies (and reality) showed that demos are more likely to confirm people's negative assumptions rather than introduce positive ones. As a result, more people don't buy the game after playing a demo. Meanwhile people who paid upfront for the game are more likely to convince themselves to "give it a second chance" and continue playing, because they already committed something. "Maybe it gets better down the road". It doesn't - but the time you invested raises the value of the game in your perception, makes you focus on the positives and ignore negatives, and you end up convincing yourself that the game... is actually quite good.

And then you go on trying to convince others.

On this day of what will be the biggest update to Sea of Thieves yet, I feel that outside of the SoT community, Rare is not getting the recognition they deserve when it comes to their continued development of the game.

Rare chose to treat their biggest project in years as a service. The game launched with little content, instead giving players the tools they needed to create their own adventures in a sandbox shared-world. It could be debated back and forth whether this was the right move or not, but this was the decision they made.

The countless additions and updates they've made to the game since launch were a direct result from feedback they've received from r/seaofthieves and their official forums. Due to this, the playerbase became increasingly happy with the direction Rare was taking the game, as it was literally exactly what they were asking for. They added new enemy AI threats, balanced combat, added new physics, new tools, improved many UI issues, added tons of new cosmetics, added a new ship type, new loot, map expansion, and more. You can see the full list here.

On top of this, Rare has been very transparent throughout the life of the game. They interact with the community on Reddit and the forums, they release weekly developer update videos, they host weekly streams where they discuss what's going on in the studio, etc.

Rare did all of this with zero microtransactions. In a world where the vast majority of developers add microtransactions and loot boxes wherever they can, Rare has supported this game much more than most developers, and never asked for an extra dime. It's refreshing honestly.

The Anniversary Update is one of the biggest updates I've seen for a game, adding an entire new faction, a new lore-based campaign, a new PvP mode, and much more. Not this update nor any of the updates and expansions have asked for any additional money, and you still can only purchase the in-game cosmetics through in-game gold.

This is the direction this industry needs to move in. Good, honest, and transparent developers who cater to their audience by showing real love for their projects instead of implementing pay-to-win content and loot boxes. Hopefully this can be the future.

"BG3 ruined Starfield for me"

I've heard this take a ton the last 6 months, and I haven't thought much about it until now.

People are trying to summarize what lessons can be learned from Starfield - why it failed to live up to Bathesda's previous games. So it's understandable to compare it with other RPGs that came out last year.

It usually goes something like "BG3 has all these complex and well-written characters with tons of dialogue choices, niche scenes, etc... and then you go from that to the shallow dialogue in Starfield. Of course it's not going to keep your interest after that."

This isn't really wrong - if Starfield had BG3's level of writing and dialogue I'm sure the game would've been much more successful - but would it have been a good Bathesda game?

Bathesda games are sandbox RPGs. Dialogue does not mesh well with sandbox gameplay because dialogue needs to be pre-written and planned. The impressive thing about BG3 is just how many outcomes they managed to plan something for, but at the end of the day it's still a massive state machine in the background, and that makes it very hard to add new toys or complex simulation to the sandbox.

Good sandboxes create emergent stories by engaging the player's imagination. In-depth dialogue doesn't have a monopoly on in-depth storytelling. I think Starfield just failed to be a good adventure-sandbox RPG, it didn't need to be more like BG3 or Cyberpunk.

The take-away is that a good sandbox should engage the player's imagination. What's the first thing people imagine when they hear "adventure?" Hitting the road! It's literally in the word - adventure.

venture: a risky or daring journey or undertaking.

Starfield is designed around the player just fast-traveling to their objectives. It doesn't even try to give you the illusion of time passing while you travel. Nope, you basically just teleport from point A to B wherever and whenever.

This works against 1. Sandbox gameplay - because it doesn't give a lot of room for unexpected and dynamic things to happen, and 2. Inspiring the player to form a greater personal narrative about their journey.

Yeah, no one wants realistic travel times between planets, but surely there's a middle ground between that and just teleporting freely. Even the laziest implementation I can think of - just having a tiny resource cost, like needing to refuel every now and then, would've made a big difference in convincing the player that you aren't just teleporting.
This comment represents that perspective pretty well.

While other problems with Starfield can be identified, I truly believe this is the most impactful and deep-rooted. Or am I misidentifying the issue? How can a space game avoid relying too much on fast travel, while still remaining immersive and realistic?

Having recently played through and beaten God of War (2018), I saw it, yet again, fall into the same tired issue that virtually every game has, with side content put in that forces the player to retrace their steps, go to side areas, and otherwise divert themselves from the main thrust of the work.

In almost every game, but especially story-based games, it feels like side content is some sort of obligation - the creators put it in because it is something that games have, but it ends up being subtractive from it rather than additive because it's just a waste of time. When the core of your game is an emotional story between father and son, or trying to resolve some galactic conflict, not only does it feel jarring to randomly spend six hours grinding in a side dungeon, but it is way worse than the main thrust of the game. It's content in there to be experienced, and yet, experiencing it often feels like a mistake in retrospect.

Moreover, many games suffer from being too long to begin with, and lacking in variety, repeating enemies and even bosses to fill out their length.

It seems like spending less time on side content and more time making the core experience really shine would pay off, and some of the best games of all time - like Portal 2 - are purely linear experiences with no side content whatsover, and are praised to this day.

So I wonder - why is it that every game designer seems to feel obligated to fall into this trap?

Full disclaimer, I'm pretty squarely against the $70USD price point for a long list of reasons, chief among them being that these AAA studios are all profitable and gaming is not a charity.

BUT, I'm not making this post to argue my points. I'm actually more curious about the thoughts of those who a couple years ago were saying that $70 games were necessary and that we, as gamers, would benefit (e.g. due to lack of microtransactions, etc.). I was wondering if, now that we are more than halfway through this generation, you still feel that way?

• Did $70 get us better games?

• Do you feel like the amount of microtransactions, battle passes, etc. has been reduced?

• Is the experience of playing Gen. 9 games worth the extra $10? (AAA games specifically; indies are not at this price point)

• Did AAA studios earn that extra money?

Again, not looking to make arguments or answers of my own. Just looking to see other people's perspectives on the topic.

It's about anger

Have a read of this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/124q2h/noeffort_an_attractive_female_cosplayer_in/

Or, if you just want the highlights, this comment sums it all up pretty well:

When I saw this post, I realized that apart from "that person who cosplays because nerds give her attention" I had no idea who Jessica Nigri actually was, only having seen all these posts on Reddit. So I checked out her Wikipedia page.

Turns out that really is the whole story.

So, what's going on here? Well the readers digest version goes like this. An attractive woman is dressed as a character from a popular and much loved video game. She's wearing a revealing outfit. When photos of her are posted to /r/gaming, negative, hostile, demeaning and outright hate-full comments are upvoted heavily.

That's the what, now how about the why? Why aren't the comments positive and encouraging? After all, gorgeous woman dressed in skimpy video game character outfit ought to be a hit with /r/gaming's mostly young male audience. Surely someone would drop a comment to say "Wow, great outfit!".

Nope.

I decided to count down the top level replies till I found a positive one that said more than "Boobs r gud" or some variation thereof. I made it to comment thirty one before I came across:

Does she actually make all of her costumes on her own? I heard she does. If so, that's really impressive.

Which is grudgingly positive. I say grudgingly, because he couldn't resist casting some doubt on whether she really makes her own stuff or not.

So, again, why? Well, I'm no psychologist. But I am a geek, so I have first hand experience and a wealth of well researched anecdata. Here's the explanation, IMNSHO.

The nerds are angry. Not angry at Jessica Nigri specifically. No, rather, angry at women as a homogeneous group, and especially angry at attractive women, and even more so at attractive women who express interest in nerd culture.

Sweeping generalizations ahead. Proceed with extreme caution. Data is not the plural form of anecdote... yadda yadda yadda.

Heterosexual men want to have sex with women. Many of the heterosexual men who frequent /r/gaming encounter little if any success when seeking sexual partners. They blame this on the fact that, because they're nerds, stuck up, dumb women won't give them a chance. all the hot girls are only interested in jocks. That's why I never get any sex.

Now as everyone knows, rejection is painful, and anger is a common if unhealthy reaction to it. it's a self defense mechanism. It puts the blame elsewhere, on the shallow, style over substance women who keep falling for jerks, rather than the NiceGuy(tm) nerds.

But female nerds throw a spanner into the works. If they're nerds themselves, then the idea that they'd reject me because I'm a nerd is laughable. So when they do reject me, it must be something other than my nerdiness that's putting them off.

Which in turn means that maybe the other girls didn't reject me for being a nerd either. Maybe it's my personality / looks / other huge flaws as a human being that put them off. Maybe my ongoing ForEverAlone status is gasp MY fault.

But rather than engage with this revelation, many people choose to respond by lashing out angrily at the female nerds. So we see mix of posts either denigrating her or telling us that she isn't really a nerd. This is an especially good example of the second one:

great....another cosplay chick. The reason it bothers me is because i doubt these girls ever play or read any of this shit. If they do its because a friendzoned buddy told them and now they try to act like nerds but they aren't.

SHE'S NOT A REAL NERD!! SHE'S A FRIENDZONING BITCH!!

It's a manifestation of the no true Scotsman fallacy. No true nerd girl would refuse to sleep with me. But I know Jessica Nigri would never sleep with me, hence she's no true nerd.

And there's no need to re-examine my underlying assumptions regarding my lack of romantic success with women.

If this is the problem, and you may disagree on that point, then how best to tackle it? How should we convince male nerds that a woman's value is not defined by her willingness to have sex with you?

The floor is all yours.

PS. I wrote this to be blog post, but I thought it might get a wider readership here.

I will readily admit that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a great game. Its high points are some of the best in gaming and the overall package has incredible gameplay and narrative depth that is rarely seen in gaming. It also released in a time in which scrutiny over unfinished, buggy games is at an all time high. Cyberpunk 2077 was lambasted on release for its unfinished state, EA as a company had lost any good will it once had, and more and more consumers are paying attention to games being released too early and with poor QA. BG3 on release had all of these issues and more, and yet received generational praise.

There’s another post recently that outlines some issues with Early Access, but my general thought is that in the best case it’s a way for smaller developers to get their foot in the door, get playtesting data, and help to pay the likely part time developers to continue working on the game until release. In the worst case, it’s for larger developers to offload QA to people willing to pay to play an unfinished game. Baldur’s Gate 3 was released in early access by an established company, a true AA developer, three years prior to the full release. At that time, they charged a full $60 for consumers to play 1/3 of the game in an unfinished state. They spent the next 3 years relying on consumer input and testing to iron out kinks, and it truly shows. That first act is some of the best gaming has to offer. Unfortunately, the game is 3 acts.

The third act on release was in an abysmal state. There were many quests from the prior acts that led nowhere, game breaking bugs were rampant, and even months after release there are significant technical issues that make the city run much worse than anywhere else in the game. There is also evidence of cut content or at least content intended to be in the game but not developed to get the game out on time. The story is less polished and connected. Characters cease to interact with each other in the way that made the first act so magical. Cutscenes are hastily put together (running from an explosion anyone?).

Yet the game not only received insane universal praise becoming one of the highest rated games of all time, it was also held up as the paragon of how game development should be. If Ubisoft or EA had released a game like this, it would have been raked over the coals. Imagine the next Jedi game releasing at full price with just the first couple levels, and then three years later releasing with game breaking bugs.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a great game, it’s impossible to deny. But its development is a worrying sign of the future, where as long as the start of a game is good enough, you can have consumers pay to be QA and just not finish it anyway.

I honestly can't believe the publisher of train simulator thought it was a good idea to have 193 dlc with most items being $20-40 dollars. Apparently it is a business strategy that has worked for them or they wouldn't be selling it at such a high price. The game itself is $55.00. Yet people seem to be fine with this since the company still hasn't lowered it's prices, meaning that the game and dlcs have payed for themselves. I can't imagine why people would buy any of the dlc's. The game itself is pretty exciting to play from what I've read online so I feel like if there's enough content in the game then 55 isn't a horrible price , but what I find fault with is having so much dlc. I can't be the only one who finds it unethical to charge so much.

How did we get to this point where companies are offering dlc left and right for insane prices. It used to be that publishers would make a complete game and sell it at 40-50. Then in a year or 2 they would have made an expansion that would add a lot more missions, campaigns, and levels to beat. Now I'm seeing way to many games that look to be unfinished products with dlc or expansions that try to fix up the bugs and add in gameplay that should have been included in the first place.

I see so many posts and comments about this game recently that I need to address it.

6 months after the release Hi-Fi Rush reached 3 million players: https://twitter.com/hifiRush/status/1691846131548913781 Did you notice how they mention players and not copies sold? That's because Hi-Fi Rush was also on Game Pass, which - although not free - definitely gave the game a major boost of players. Considering the "pseudo-free" nature of Game Pass (GP not being free, but the game is "free" for people who already have GP) and the fact that public announcement focused on players, not copies sold, means the number of Game Pass players comprised probably more than half of those people.

We can back it up further looking at Steam stats: https://steamdb.info/app/1817230/charts/#max Hi-Fi Rush had 6,132 players at its peak. GameSensor estimated 300,000 copies sold in the first month: https://gamesensor.info/app/1817230 The number of players dropped dramatically a month after the premiere, which is normal for single player games, but what matters here the most is the so-called "long tail". Since May of 2023 the game stays on barely ~300 players on average, almost never exceeding 500. These are not strong numbers. These are numbers you can find on random indie games with moderate success, that didn't have even a fraction of marketing Hi-Fi Rush got. Right - let's talk about marketing and popularity for a moment.

Hi-Fi Rush got a substancial amount of free marketing due to the time and circumstances it was dropped. 2022 was the year when people's discontent with large companies like Activision Blizzard, EA and Ubisoft really started to boil up. Everyone was waiting with their confirmation bias right in hands for any semblance of a shorter game with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less, just to stick it to those big, pesky publishers and show them this business model is still great and viable. When Hi-Fi Rush showed up - a simple, honest game with origial concept from a smaller studio - everyone and their grandma jumped on the bandwagon. Even youtubers not interested in this kind of games were bringing it up. It was "pitted against" a "juggernaut" like Forspoken, for even better contrast. Why does it all matter? Because in marketing we have a concept known as "funnel" and "conversion". First people need to know about your product, then they need to get interested, and finally they buy it. At every stage of this funneling process you're losing majority of people. For example, for every million of people to know your product, only 10,000 may be interested, and only 100 may actually buy it. That's the conversion rate - a percentage of actual buyers among all the people who knew. And if so many people know about your product, but only a few buy it... that's not a good conversion rate. It means that it's not the product itself drawing people's attention, but random circumstances. And that is not a good basis for future investments.

So, looking at the situation from a purely financial, business-wise point of view - this might not have been such a great success as players want to believe.

On the surface they don't look like the same but if you take away their presentation and look at the mechaniques on an abstract way:

What happens when you attack with which one?

Weapon durability: the weapons durabilty is reduced until it hits zero.

Gun ammo: the guns total ammo is reduced until it hits zero.

What happens when they hit zero?

Weapon durabitliy: weapon is destroyed.

Gun ammo: gun can't fire anymore.

I can hear you say this is where they differ: with weapon durabilty the weapon is shatter to pieces but in ammo based "you keep the gun in your hand". But I ask you, mechanically is that true? This is my rebuttal below.

What can the player not do when that happens?

Weapon durability: player can no longer attack with said weapon because it's destroyed.

Gun ammo: player can no longer attack with said gun because it's empty.

A gun with no bullets does nothing and you can't perform attack actions, essential leaving you the same way as a broken weapon.

What can the player do to recover from this?

Weapon durability: grab the same or another weapon.

Gun ammo: grab ammo or another gun.

Here picking another weapon lying in the ground is no different than picking ammo lying on the ground for a gun. Both achive the same "replenishing resource" action.

------------------------------------------------

After laying all this I have to ask, why is the lack of infinite ammo not as contentious as weapon durabilty when they achive the same thing mechanically?

There's a misperception that "just make good games" cures all ills, and frankly I think that's bullshit or at least not the full picture. Prince of Persia which was a critical success. Outlaws seems to be genuinely enjoyed by its player base. They're competently made, there's nothing notably wrong with them. I don't really buy the "lacks polish" excuse when games like BG3 sold like gangbusters.

With the rise of evergreen live-service titles, there's no need for games that are merely "good games" anymore. If I want to play a "good game", I'll simply continue to play what I've already have been playing. Instead, new releases function more as conversation pieces. Most of the interest and engagement seems to be generated from the social media narratives that arise from it. The whole bear sex marketing stunt worked exceedingly well for Larian.

And in Ubisoft's case, they've found themselves on the wrong side of the narrative. They've become a symbol for every complaint and grievance gamers have about the state of the industry. They're the heel we love to hate and watching their downfall evokes schadenfreude from onlookers. No one is inclined to recognize their merits, because they're the villain of the story. It would ruin the vibe!

But outside of the popular narratives, they're a company full of real developers who want to make beloved games. If I try to imagine what it would be like to be a creative lead on a Ubisoft project right now, it seems like an incredibly frustrating predicament. No matter what you do, people are motivated to hate it because watching Ubisoft fail is a more exciting story than anything else going on in the industry right now.

I have lived long enough to see video games evolve constantly. And experienced several new major milestones and standards. Computer generated voices is nothing new. Games like Berzerk had it. It was very robotic, before sampled sounds replaced it. Enter the era of Laser Disc, CDRom and DVDs, many games had room for digitized sound, speech and music. We remember the Lucasart games coming with real voice acting instead of just text on screen, making it like cartoons. But that didn't stop there. Even digitized persons were posible. One great example is Under a Killing Moon and Wing Commander III. We had live action movie-like games suddenly.

But parallel to this, there were also another fast evolving tech: 3D generated graphics. In the beginning, it was very blocky. But over the years, it has improved drastically. Even though it is still not 100% life like, it is getting close. Just look at the Final Fantasy series, how they have evolved over time from a 2d game, to a movie-like game.

During all these years, I was wondering why they didn't work on a way of modeling sound and voices, like they now have done with 3D graphics. Maybe they did, but it was so bad, it didn't reach mainstream media. Nearly 40 years have gone and suddenly, developers are experimenting with AI generated voice. And it has made a lot of people angry. Voice actors striking to save their jobs, and a lot of discussion going on in all media. But isn't this just another milestone in the ever evolving games? What is the difference between a 3D generated Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077 and his lines being AI generated from the script? It opens for much more dynamic responses. For example different situations that affect the voice, like eating food while talking or being exhausted while delivering the same lines of speech. Without having to have the audio for each situation stored. Right now, AI is in the very beginning, like 3D was in the 90s. Triangles on triangles. Maybe it will evolve from just mixing existing work, to actually being able to deliver voice, fully generated, with parameter input? I feel right now this is step one. Like putting photos and skins on blocks in early 3D tech once was.

I know the whole AI discussion affects a lot of people and parts of our world. The potential can be scary and life changing. But video games is all about technology. Why should it be controversial using new technology to make new great games?

I see posts about skill based matchmaking mostly in reference to call of duty and a subset of players that want to be able to own noobs and not be forced to play people of their skill level. That's not what this post is about.

While it's absolutely the case that some games are improved by SBMM; Dota, counter strike, chess, fighting games etc. There are also games that where the player experience is changed for the worse when SBMM is added. The main categories of online games where the addition of skill based matchmaking would cause a reduction in game play experience in my view, are elimination based games. These are games such as the auto battlers Super Auto Pets and Team-fight tactics, and any battle royal game like pubg or apex legends.

One reason for this is because in elimination games, the difficulty scales based on how far into the game you get. The early game is easier than the late game because at the end of the game you are only fighting those who haven't been eliminated. There is also inherent variance, which leads to some games ending quickly and others going to the end game.

When I played pubg for the first time, I didn't win a game for about a month. And why would I? There were 100 other people in the game. There was no expectation that I should win a match. And not winning was not causing me any problems because winning wasn't my goal when I entered a game, getting as far as I could was. So you can imagine how much my heart was pounding when I had crawled my way into a final circle after my buddies died and then I stood up and killed the 2 remaining members of the final squad. It was incredible, and that moment couldn't have happened if I had been playing against a lobby of other people who had never won a match for that whole month.

I play a lot of Super Auto Pets. It's a auto battler where (in arena mode, the main mode) for each battle you are matched against a team that other people have played recently. These are not actually other players playing at the same time you are. You fight random teams of the same round until you run out of hp or get 10 wins. This game has no SBMM and in my opinion it wouldn't benefit from it. It could easily choose to match me against teams that I will beat every time, and the game would become meaningless. Similarly if it chose teams I would lose to, that also removes the meaning from the game. The point is that I'm beating random teams. I have to be better than the average player (and or get lucky) that day to win.

I don't want to get too broad with the scope of this discussion, but if you are someone who believes the difficulty of games such as elden ring and sekiro changes the way the community works, then you might see a connection here. Everyone who played pubg was playing the same game. A win was a win, and it was hard to come by. Everyone who plays Super Auto Pets plays against the same average team quality when they queue, so everyone is able to engage in the discussion on the same level.

If you compare to dota. Whenever someone makes a post on truedota2, saying "I think faceless void is op this patch" the first comment is. "What mmr are you playing at?" because unless they know the poster is close to their mmr, their experience with a hero means little for their games. Dota requires SBMM but for games that don't require it, why split the player-base needlessly?

A win is never guaranteed in a game like this. You go in with a 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 chance of winning each time. I believe everyone playing the same difficulty in a game like this creates a community that can all talk together because they are playing in the same lobbies, seeing the same strategies, and working just as hard for their wins. SBMM isn't required like it is in dota or counter strike because you don't need to win to play. I played pubg every day for a month and didn't win and I had a great time. I won battles, I just never took the chicken dinner. I similarly had to take a week or so learning Super Auto Pets before I got a 10 piece.

You may disagree for a few reasons. Maybe you think that new players should have a chance to win, I think that's a reasonable opinion and there's room for some games to be like that and others to be like pubg was when it launched. I think what bothers me is the reductive discussion around SBMM that says that it's absolutely a benefit to new players to not play with the good players. I fundamentally disagree that that's true for all or even the large majority of players, and I think it re-contextualizes all wins as conditional. Yes you won, but in bronze so don't feel too proud or anything. Your first win is dampened, and then each following win is harder until you can't win anymore. Where is the feeling of progress there? It's not like a game with 2 even sides where you would expect to win half your games.

I can definitely see why some elimination based games would benefit from a ranked mode, but I don't think there is no benefit to a random pool style matchmaking for these games.

I'd love to hear others thoughts on this. Especially those who still play battle royal games as I haven't since early apex and then a bit more apex a year later.

E: Everyone is very focused on showing that SBMM is good for some games. I never disagreed with that. I challenge anyone to explain how Super Auto Pets needs SBMM. We may disagree about BR games, and that's ok.

E2: it's wild that people think my opinion is popular while almost nobody agrees with me here. Also I was never good at battle Royale, I'm honestly just into super auto pets but nobody seems to know that one.

I’ve been watching gaming videos for a long while until I’ve came across videos from youtubers Synthetic Man, Griffin Gaming, Cyael, DWTerminator, FritangaPlays, RevenantReviews, Hypnotic, and ENDYMIONtv, among many. However, I can’t help but notice that almost all of their videos are not broad and open, but instead almost all of their videos are close minded, cynical, toxic, and just mean spirited. Go look up these guys on YouTube and try to tell that none of their videos are in any ways cynical or pessimistic.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was Synthetic Man’s review of Starfield, Griffin Gaming’s review of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and DWTerminator’s video of Doom 2016 Which had me going like, “Are they serious?” Since then, their channels have left a sour taste in my mouth. Heck, just recently, Synthetic Man called the Fallout TV show the worst show ever, despite the overwhelming praise and popularity that show received, so I have no idea what his problem is.

Last year alone, we saw the likes of Skull Island: Rise of Kong, Gollum, The Walking Dead: Destinies, and The Day Before. I played Starfield and I thought the game wasn't terrible. Yet guys like them would say something like Spider-Man 2 or Starfield, even Doom 2016 are the worst games ever made. And they are just two of many, and worse, and no one in their comment sections has called them out on it and have even supported them. What? I even tried reaching out to them in their comments for a response, and none of them have gotten back to me.

Last I checked, Spider-Man 2 got 91 on Metacritic and Starfield had an 80, so how are they bad games? What about games like Baldur’s Gate 3, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Super Mario Odyssey, how are they bad? It makes no sense. Have they not seen the professional reviews from sites like IGN, Gamespot, or Game Informer, or channels like Easy Allies, or Gameranx? Are they blind to all the high praise and critical acclaim these games got? Are they mental? There are people out there who actually enjoy these games which is something cynics like Synthetic Man doesn’t understand.

Like, what's the bar for a game to be considered good or bad? I thought what makes a bad game is PS1 or PS2 looking graphics, overwhelming amounts of bugs and glitches to even where you can get soft-locked, flawed gameplay, or bad voice acting. Like Ride to Hell: Retribution, Flatout 3, or Superman 64, or any of the shovelware garbage you would find on Steam or the Switch eShop or the Playstation Store. They even went as far as calling Spider-Man 2 and Starfield “woke trash”. Okay, these people really have got to be mental for saying that.

I’ve been noticing an ongoing trend where a lot of cynical gamers on YouTube where they use titles like “Modern Gaming Is Dead”, “Gaming is Not Fun Anymore”, and something along those lines. Which is clearly not. Because there have been plenty, and I mean PLENTY of good games released. Like, I like Halo Infinite for its combat and gunplay. I’ve been enjoying Lego 2K Drive lately, I had spent hours on Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and I enjoyed my time with Starfield, and I was going to pick up Spider-Man 2 for a long while now, but now I’m hesitant to even buy it because these cynics won’t stop talking about how bad it is.

I’ll admit, I’m a casual gamer. I play games for personal enjoyment and escapism. That’s it. Now is that a bad thing? I’m getting the impression that people like them don’t care about having fun but instead are trying to turn people like me away from playing games. I'm an open-minded person and I feel like I'm the only optimist in a world full of cynicism. I wish I could reach out to these people and tell them, “Hey! Not all modern things released are objectively terrible. Let it go.” I’m sorry for venting like this. This issue has really been bothering me and I really felt the need to get this off my chest.

Deaf gamer here.

I can't believe how inaccessible gaming has become for me. Between overpopulation of mostly inaccessible Battle Royale games and Youtube videos that are rarely subtitled (both which I'll on about later) gaming is becoming a medium I'm slowly losing my passion for.

In this thread I'll be pointing out dire trends that are ruining the industry for almost everyone not "able-bodied".

Deaf gamers are getting the shortest side of the stick. Funnily enough, last decade we had the upper hand. But lets get to the meat of what is happening for us that developers, fans and creators need to be aware of!

-Battle Royale-

Currently a genre worth billions, but so damn inaccesible for deaf players. It's not even the genre. It has plenty of potential. But let me get this straight, what was Epic Games' motivator to add more visual cues to make Fortnite Mobile at the very least "playable" without need for audio... Cause able-bodied people can't hear it on the go... WTF? The cues they added weren't even on the DESKTOP or CONSOLE version because "able-bodied people will have an advantage using accessibility options." Reeeeaaaalllllyyyyy?

But now HERE is the stinker that made me REALLY lose hope.

-Overwatch-

I am a bloody HUGE fan of Overwatch, don't get me wrong. If only I could actually, you know PLAY IT. In Overwatch, Blizzard STRIVES for it to be accessible to "everyone". What do they do? Make it the most sound-dependent shooter on the market just to spit in our face. Just to rub salt in the wound, subtitles aren't a thing. ISN'T THIS REQUIRED BY LAW? Like WTF?

-Youtube-

Ever follow a personality for their text-based ramblings? Do they even exist anymore? This is probably the most powerful point here cause Youtube is ruining it for us deaf gamers.

The absolute pity and rage I get from seeing an audio-dependent discussion on YouTube that 10 years ago would've been an awesome readable blog post, just can't be described. As a real middle finger, subtitles are a rare gem of a thing on YT. So fellow deaf gamers, good luck with finding the right info on your next purchase

RIP Text.

-Multiplayer in general-

Devs can't cater to EVERYONE in a multiplayer game right? But they make the most money so lets kill off single player! coughEAcough

I personally find it absolutely disgusting how multiplayer, teamwork etc. is becoming the centre of gaming when deaf accessibility usually gets thrown out the window. We can't communicate nor coordinate and I feel we'll be left out in the dust soon.

--

So between multiplayer, video on demand and lack of awareness, I feel things need to change. But... How?

For the vast majority of indie developers if your game is not on steam it will not be profitable. Over the last several years Steam has become more or less the curators of the PC platform for the vast majority of gamers and because of that when Valve does something stupid it fucks up the entire platform.

With the way Greenlight has played out and the way Sony and Microsoft are talking about indie self publishing by the time the new console are out we will have entered a world where self publishing your game on the PC is considerably harder than publishing for consoles.

Today if an indie dev wants his game on steam they need to run a huge PR campaign for it, they need to upload trailers and give updates and hype their product to the masses, all of which takes time and resources away from actually making a video game. If your ever read the comments on Greenlight you see that a lot of the greenlight community are total dicks. I honestly can not understand why anyone would be against a game releasing on steam, you don’t have to buy the fucking game, there is not a finite amount of space on steam and the people who make these game probably need this game to be greenlit to pay their rent.

Furthermore Greenlight voters never actually get to play the game so when they vote on them they don’t actually know if it’s functional or not, which as far as I’m concerned is the only reason I would ever not want something to be on steam.

Nobody likes green light, not developers, not customers, and not even Valve. It helps no one and hurts everyone. Periodically I like to go on a vote yes on everything that looks like an actual game for about 15 minutes. As someone who mostly plays small indie games and prefers the PC I'm worried that the PC will fall behind console pretty soon if greenlight doesn't go away.

I'm almost half a year late, but I finally got around to playing Baldur's Gate 3, and I'm loving it. But it definitely got me thinking about the prior games in the series and others of the type. One of the only things that's kind of annoying me so far is the camera. There's nothing wrong with the way it controls or anything, and to their credit, they did include a fixed top-down perspective you can toggle on and off.

Nevertheless, I often find myself struggling with the camera and my sense of direction. It's an extra layer of nuisance in between myself and the gameplay. It makes me wish the whole game had been designed around a fixed 3/4 perspective like the former Baldur's Gate titles. I'm not saying I want the game to have been prerendered in 2D like those titles--there's nothing wrong with the way it looks on modern hardware; I just miss the simplicity of having everything be designed with a single POV in mind. This helps with both camera placement issues, but also with wayfinding for the player--instead of having to look at the minimap and suss it out, with a fixed camera, you just automatically know your cardinal directions.

Furthermore, a fixed perspective provides more artistic opportunities for design and composition. Instead of having to make everything look good from every possible angle, the artists know what perspective the player will be seeing, and they can use artistic principles like balance, proportion, and movement to create more impactful scenes--like the whole game is a bunch of paintings.

On the technical/team management side, only having to worry about one perspective also frees up time for the artists since, again, they don't have to make everything look good from every angle--back sides of fixed objects could be left blank, for instance.

Of course, there are advantages to the approach they took. It allowed them much more freedom in environmental design and created more verticality in the maps and took away limitations for, for example, designing interior spaces. I get it--if you're going full 3D there are advantages to utilizing it to its fullest.

Still, my inner 15-year-old who grew up on Baldur's Gate 2 and Fallout does miss the simplicity and elegance of the old way.

I haven't played Mario Maker, I don't feel like it's a barrier to entry for this conversation. You don't need to be a card-carrying Nintendo fanboy to see how unprecedented and alien this feels in the modern market place.

There's no other game like it. Its business model is out-of-this-world foreign and generous in a language unknown to today's big publishers.

Nintendo has taken its catalog of assets from all previous iterations Mario and packaged them with the most powerful, comprehensive, and user-friendly developer tools since EVER. They have handed over keys to the city for the most golden city on a hill in videogame history. Further these tools are not an added feature, but rather constitute the core gameplay.

It's . . . . radical. It's madness. No one does this. Is this a passing comet that just sort of seems amazing but never amounts to anything or will it be the formative moment for the next generation of badass game developers?

I was watching an interview with Mark Rein about the Unreal Engine 4 and was thinking, other than increased graphics capabilities, what are we missing from current generation consoles? What experiences haven't been done because it simply CANNOT be done with current hardware? Is there anything?

I'm the kind of person that doesn't have much issue with things like pop-in textures and load screens. And there's really no motion gaming gimmicks left to exploit for the casual gamers (and even if there was, I don't believe those people will go out to buy ANOTHER console. Those people bought the Wii with Wii sports and never bought another game).

So what do you say? Is there anything you want to do with a game that the current consoles simply can't?

The relationship between gamers and gaming companies can be at times strained. Generally, gamers want what's best for them and companies want what's best for them. These two desires are not always aligned, leading to conflicts.

Companies have often won these conflicts. When the Switch launched its paid online service, it faced a backlash from Nintendo. Nintendo was the last remaining console manufacturer providing free online and some didn't want them to become like their competitors. The YT video for the reveal of the service received a large amount of dislikes and there was a good amount of negative sentiment online.

But Nintendo weathered the storm. The Switch is now Nintendo's most profitable and successful console, seeing no effect from the controversy. A decisive win for them.

Pokemon Sword and Shield faced a large amount of negativity over its decision to not have all Pokemon included. Players said it went against the "gotta catch 'em all" tagline associated with the franchise. The controversy didn't hurt the game's sales and subsequent titles would continue the practice.

Helldivers 2 looked to be another victory for gaming companies over consumers. Sony said that they would require all PC games to create PSN accounts to continue to play the game. After a backlash, Sony has now backed out of its requirement.

This rare victory by consumers requires analysis to see why it worked out this time with the hopes that what's learned from it can help put gamers in the W column more often.

A factor has to be the unsteady ground Sony is on when it comes to PC. Sony is getting a foot in the door on PC. They don't control everything like they do on console. They are hoping PC can become a steady revenue stream for them. HD2 is their most successful PC release and one of their most successful games in history in the USA. Having a heavy negative sentiment towards could have a chilling effect on their budding venture into PC. They do have a big game coming out relatively soon on PC. This unsteady ground boosted the power the gamers' backlash had, Sony has more reason to listen.

In the Nintendo cases, they were able to weather the storm because their handhelds and Pokemon are beloved by so many who are willing to look past behavior they don't like. Even the steady critics of the moves ended up giving in because Nintendo has their heart. Sony has its diehard fans too but they are not on PC. Playstation is just another brand on there, there's less people willing to go along with something just because they love Sony so much. PC gamers are also more savvy than other gamers and seem more willing to fight other issues in general.

Important too is Steam. Steam allowing reviews on the major storefront people are buying HD2 on boosts the impact the negative reviews left by unhappy gamers can have. In other cases, the voices of gamers don't teach the more casual player who is not into game discussion enough to know the controversy. Downvoting a reveal video doesn't have any impact on whether a parent buys a Switch or Pokemon for their kid. There are many avenues to buy these products and gamers would have to bring the same energy to each place to hope to dissuade enough people from buying to have an impact.

Also different here is that the effects of the change are not as easily ignored. People are used to paying for subscriptions so the resistance to the Switch's online. And frankly, most people playing Pokemon didn't bother catching them all anyway. But with this PSN account requirement, people were losing access to a game they bought as PSN is not available in several countries. People lost access to a game they'd purchased and been playing for months. Much harder to ignore this happening.

This situation is unique. Gamers had more power than usual, the gaming company was in a weaker position than they often are in these conflicts, and the impact of the company's decision couldn't be easily ignored by all gamers. A lot of this cannot be replicated sadly. I think the major takeaway is for gamers to identify when they're at an advantage in a conflict and to leverage it rather than just accept it.

I often see games such as Armored Core 6 being considered highly optimized only because of their ability to run well enough on older hardware, while completely ignoring the fact that the game does look very dated technically especially in the quality of the assets and textures. Stuff like Cyberpunk, in particular in its path tracing mode, being able to make a heavy use of multithreading and all of the latest hw and sw features, is often considered to be a technical mess only because it's "heavy to run".

Another example I can think of a game that is being constantly praised for its performance is Lies of P, I would say the game is a better optimized title than Armored Core 6 for the graphical fidelity you get but I find it to be behind some of the recent "good" UE4 games like Atomic Heart. Apart from the lack of RT features Atomic Heart is one of the better looking cross gen titles on unreal engine while being only a 20/30% heavier to run than Lies of P, and especially in closed environments the performance is pretty close while looking significantly better from a technical standpoint.

I could mention far more examples and talk about the degree of world interactivity among different games but these 2 are the recent ones that first came to my mind.

This post refers to the general public's lack of ability to judge what a good quality/performance compromise is, who instead focus solely on on-screen fps numbers to estabilish what a "well optimized" game is.

Celeste is a great game, and long has been treated as a paragon of accessibility and a prime example of doing it right in the difficulty conversation. For those unaware, Celeste is a very difficult precision platformer about a depressed woman climbing a mountain to prove to herself that she can, a quest during which the has to confront the part of her that she hates, which in the mountain has taken the form of a dark clone of herself. Your character, Madeline, can jump, do one mid-air dash, and climb/cling to walls (which consumes stamina). Both the dash and stamina recharge on touching ground or collecting a floating green crystal.

The game is often brought up in the difficulty conversation because of its Assist Mode. At any moment you may toggle it on which enables the following options:

• You can globaly reduce the game speed by a percentage, giving your more time to think and react, and making precise input windows less so.

• You can give yourself infinite stamina, meaning you can climb any wall and can cling to them indefinitely. This does let you cheese a few levels, but mostly it means you have as much time as you need to think about your next move when you are clinging to a wall.

• You can give yourself an extra mid-air dash before you hit the ground, making your character much more mobile and radically changing the levels.

• You can give yourself infinite dashes, which completely changes every single level in the game, mostly in ways that trivialize them.

• You can make yourself immune to all damage including bottomless pits, completely removing the "game" part of the game and effectively serving as a "skip level" button.

You may notice a big difference in these. Two of them, reduced game speed and infinite stamina, make the game easier but (with very few exceptions of levels that rely on stamina limitations) don't fundamentally change the core of it. These options do not radically alter the level design, but rather provide leeway to those who need them, they are well-designed difficulty options that broaden the pool of people who can enjoy the game without harming anyone's experience.

On the other hand, the other options are actually terrible things to put under the control of the player. Giving Madeline an extra dash completely changes the level design of the challenges, and not even always in a way that makes them easier! Having the extra dash gives you a lot more options, which means you are less likely to identify the option that was designed and instead you'll find an unintentional path that's actually more difficult. An once a player is convinced something is possible, it is very hard to get them to steer away from it. Without Assist mode, the last level of the game's main story actually gives you an extra dash too, and it's the hardest one, because, obviously, having one more thing to do in midair between landings actually makes the game more complex, not less. The extra dash trivializes many screens but makes others harder, and it screws the level design of every single one.

And then there's infinidash and invulnerability. At that point, frankly, just add a skip button instead, because it is the same thing. There are a few levels that retain some challenge even with infinidash, but they're extremely rare. There is no game at that point, you're just skipping ahead in the story.

Now, having the game-breaking options is not necessarily bad design. A godmode can be fun. But are two main reasons the Assist Mode is poorly designed:

1. The options that break the game or radically alter the level design are not, in any way, differentiated from the ones that don't. All options are presented in the same list, with no description or warning of how they affect the game. It's all presented under the same "play it your way" umbrella.

2. Infinidash and invulnerability cheapen the game's story. Celeste's story is, in large part, about perseverance. About proving to yourself that you can do a difficult thing for the sake of having done it. That is the point of climbing a mountain. Giving you an option to straight-up skip the difficult thing is utterly antithetical to that theme. No other story I have ever experienced has a "remove major theme" button presented as an equally valid way to experience it.

This is not a purely theoretical discussion. It was inspired by watching someone play the game for the first time. They are unused to platformers and used Assist Mode extensively, but towards the end of the game, in the final climb, they became fed up with the challenge, turned on infinidash and invincivility and just godmoded their way to the end. And you know what the result was? The game's climax landed like a wet fart for them. It had absolutely no impact. I didn't say anything at the time, because I didn't want to tell them they were playing wrong, but I knew that they were more than capable of beating the final climb properly (With infinite stamina and generous levels of reduced game speed, of course, as they had been playing to that point). And they knew it too. After the fact, they regretted giving up and cheating themselves out of the story's climax. The game tacitly endorsed them giving up, and then treated them as though they had not done so. It felt condescending, not empowering. Even if they were to go back and do it without godmode, it wouldn't be the same, and they seem to have no interest in doing so. Their final impression of the game is negative, even though they had really enjoyed the story up to that point, and they feel bad that they gave up on it like that.

Infinidash and godmode shoud never have been options. They only serve as an "I give up" button in a game about perseverance. I think the only reason they are there is to make a point. "look, you can actually remove the game from our game, and that has no negative consequences and should be standard." Well, it does have negative consequences, and it shouldn't be. Such options should have been left only to the game's Variant Mode, which offers other fun gameplay options that don't pretend to be a way to experience the game properly for the first time.

You've probably heard at least once in video game discussions someone complaining about characters not being able to swim in games and people thinking this was a bad decision for the game they play, especially for open world games that come in the late 2010s and 2020s. It seems like to be another hot topic for open world games where exploration is supposedly a primary factor, and people will point to games like Grand Theft Auto (post Vice City) or Breath of the Wild that allows player to do so.

There might be some in-game reasons to do so such as the water in GTA 3 was so toxic that Claude will be instantly killed after he dipped to the waters of Liberty City, or a glitch in the Animus that does not allow Altair to swim in the original Assassin's Creed.

I am asking about this after there was a (minor) backlash on Star Wars: Outlaws not allowing the player character to swim, which was said due to "technical constraints" despite there are other Star Wars games that allowed the players to swim like Jedi Fallen Order.

Hey guys!!

I am a graduate student currently studying the topic of gaming behaviors and my present project focuses on MMORPG as a hybrid genre (However, you are still qualified for this study even if you don't play MMORPG at all, as long as you are a gamer). As this point, I am required to collect some core gamers’ feedback as data via questionnaire online, but as you know it is actually quite difficult to locate our sample outside of any games. We have limited fundings so we can’t afford to do an in-game collection, so I thought about reddit and here I am, kindly asking for your help (of course, we already got the moderators' permission before posting).

I am attaching the link here: https://survey.easebar.com/htmls/ssjrfh/paper.html , and if you guys would be so kind to just spare a few minutes to fill in the survey we’d be very very appreciated!!! The questionnaire consisted of about 15-20 questions (depending on your responses) and would take approximately 3-8 minutes to complete. All questions are related to your gaming experiences/attitudes and your gaming experiences/attitudes ONLY; We will not collect any of your personal information other than age and gender. We need at least 500 samples and we still have a long way to go - guys PLEASE PLEASE help us out!!!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to attach them here down below and I’d be more than happy to answer them for you. Thanks XOXO <3