Maybe, but if it does ever happen, we’re still very much in the embryo stage. Like, behind VR or at the level of 1990’s-era game streaming services.

What was most telling to me was even Hasbro seemingly chose not to chase the fad with Magic: the Gathering. Depressingly, it was presumably because even NFTs would be more friendly to players than their tightly-controlled market.

For specifics, I’d like to see consistent, transparent censorship standards, and Steam Workshop files made publicly available.

Steam’s censorship issues are only going to be more of a problem as the Japanese PC market continues its explosive growth. The platform’s inconsistency is surely frustrating Japanese developers, and the lack of transparency is giving fuel to a (not unearned) narrative that its content reviewers are arbitrary and xenophobic.

The Workshop matter is far smaller in comparison, but Steam is gatekeeping crowdsourced work product.

It’s 2024. National defense infrastructure isn’t just oil and steel anymore, it’s silicon.

No editorializing was done here. That’s the title provided by the metadata, which is the easier option Lemmy provides when posting links.

Unfortunately, NIMBYism comes into play should teens start making heavy use of any outdoor spaces, including trails and parks. Low or zero-cost can’t be the only factor in providing places for kids, there also have to be protections against or ways to assuage older persons that are being fed constant streams of fear.

Yes, it’s a light remaster of the 2005 release. Seems to be part of a larger effort on Falcom’s part to get their older games more accessible on newer hardware. Players have needed a PC to have access to their catalog.

This isn’t an anthology like most games in this genre (or video games in general). It’s a continuous narrative, like a long-running novel or TV series. Newcomers could get on board with this one, since it’s introducing a new cast and location, but they’ll have to go back at some point. Otherwise, they should start at the beginning (Trails in the Sky). Even if newcomers start with this one, they are going to be lost in Daybreak 2.

That was Matsuda. He was replaced last year.

I suppose this is newsworthy because Kiryu’s biggest splash so far has been saying they were cutting back on smaller projects.

Wish Capcom had learned from this, too. Monster Hunter World’s multiplayer restrictions were so backwards, and now they are bringing them back for Wilds, ugh.

Much of this isn’t unique to PC gaming. And if there ever was a dark age for PC hardware, we’ve recently crawled out of it, thankfully.

What bugs me the most right now (and doesn’t quite get addressed in this article) is low performance standards. Everyone’s pushing 4K and ray tracing, which makes it hard out here for us framerate nerds. It’s starting to feel like every major release that comes out is Crysis, something for my hardware to grow into. Only with blurry anti-aliasing/supersampling techniques now.

One new, big positive I’m not seeing talked about much is a growing variety of Japanese publishers are taking PC seriously now, and that hasn’t happened in over thirty years. I’m including Sony in this, even with their recent missteps in the space, and Square Enix’s recently announced restructuring suggests simultaneous PC releases in the future for their games. That will inject some competition in PC gaming, although be aware that Japan has its own share of publishers that release broken ports.

Been a while since I’ve seen that name. One of a long line of very meh Star Wars games.

Which includes the pricing model. Some regions even saw a price increase.

A lot of corps threw out the whole concept of a demand curve over the pandemic.

So what’s the top alternative? I’ve had quality issues with the last two Acer monitors I bought 😭

Finishing up Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. I wish it were polished, but it’s still thoroughly scratching the Suikoden itch.

Am I the only one that liked the ending? Maybe I just set the bar low after the endings in Fallout 3, 4, and Skyrim, but I thought it was well above any of those three. I felt like the game book-ended well: solid start and finish.

Almost everything else in between? Yeah, they obviously didn’t flesh out the story much.

The space elements were a big part of the marketing. I knew better than to expect atmospheric flight or anything but simple space combat, but intra-system travel being only done in menus and the space sections being put in small lightboxes with planet renderings was rather shocking. That’s 20th-century stuff. It’s especially bizarre given how much of the Bethesda magic has leaned on roads in the past, and there aren’t any roads outside of cities. Even the cargo runs are 100% in menus, without talking to a single person.

Us space sim types would tell you it took a few steps back as far as genre standards go. And I wasn’t even expecting much on that side of it.

Starfield only getting one nomination–and in a category it has no chance of winning–is not at all what I would have expected going into this year.

I don’t know if that speaks to how nuts this year has been for new releases or to how much Starfield fell short, in light of the fact that its player counts on Steam are starting to fall below Skyrim.

Well, a bunch more talent just hit the job market with The Escapist melting down, too.

I encourage anyone that hasn’t yet to try any subscription-based journalism for a month just to see how different the writing is when it’s not beholden to advertising and SEO.

Heh, yeah, that’s one of the popular styles right now. I’d rather see more detailed sprites.