There’s more to game development than that. Setting, art style, gameplay loop, interface…
The argument being made is that a “proven” mechanism for monetization is getting in the way of developing other attributes of gameplay, as the
and
Steps are made the focus of design, and only known existing formulas for the above encourage the
step.
Pagliarulo says it’s now joined Fallout and Elder Scrolls on the podium
Pouring one out for Fallout and another for Elder Scrolls.
“New Thing Is Best Thing” is just the statement sales guys make when they’re selling the New Thing.
They’re going to re-release Skyrim for the thousandth time next week and claim it’s also the best game they’ve ever made.
I believe the Palworld devs got caught plagiarizing in their own internal messaging.
I honestly feel like Nintendo simply can’t let people do what they do, better.
Palworld was very explicitly cribbing from Nintendo IP. Down to the lead developers caught on record demanding that certain existing Pokemon be used as models for their content.
Also, the game was a bit of a flash in the pan. Idk if I’d conclude they “did it better” so much as they capitalized on a couple of popular trends to catch a surge of early adoption. Pokemon’s been chugging along since 1996. Lets see if Palworld can survive a full three years, nevermind the next 30.
If Nintendo weren’t such pricks about their IP, they would be a perfect company
They also have some atrocious work culture. Managers screaming at people. Developers routinely overworked to burnout. Leads can be egomaniacal in their pursuit of a particular vision.
The IP attitude is deeply rooted in a company culture of strict control and authoritarian attitudes.
That said, they produce some incredible art and style. So it’s hard to argue with the results.
Wish people would be more comfortable simply feeling inspired by Nintendo and doing their own things, rather than trying to harvest Nintendo IP and fight them for control. Would make everyone happier over the long term.
RIP the future of high end computer graphics. 1972 to 2024. You had a good run.
the Chinese government is trying to weave a false narrative that all of that has been instigated by mysterious western powers
The idea that the John Birch Society single handedly perpetuated the Tienanmen Protests is pretty classic “evil foreigners did this” bullshit propaganda. But I see folks on Lemmy (and even more zealous folks on Reddit) doggedly assert that you can be arrested for saying the words “Tienanmen Square” in public.
Incidentally, you can link information to the contrary on Reddit, and that’s also grounds for account suspension, given a critical mass of users slamming the “Report” button.
Every social media site has its orthodoxy and its taboos. Saying anything outside this orthodoxy opens you up to the full toolbox of censorship, depending on the zealousness of the moderators and administrators.
“Nobody in China is allowed to know what happened in Tienanmen Square. You’re not allowed to talk about it. Everything is censored. Nobody in China knows what happened.”
Pure propaganda. This shit is in Chinese elementary school textbooks. Its about as poorly disseminated and heavily censored as the Kent State Massacre or the Waco Siege or the OWS protests in the United States.
I’m not saying no one ever gets their posts removed or banned from communities or whatever
That crazy, because that’s exactly what I’m saying. And yet we’re stuck here with you calling me a liar.
This has the same vibe as the hundreds of posts that appear on there every single year around the Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary saying stuff like “Reddit is owned by Tencent!!!1! and they’re banning everyone who mentions Tiananmen Square!!!11!!!”
Yes, the anti-China trolls love to insist they’re speaking truth to power rather than just echoing a bit of recycled propaganda from the 1990s.
No, that doesn’t change the fact that Rule #1 gets invoked on guillotine posts regularly.
The guillotine joke is probably one of the most common reaction posts to any corporate news on Reddit.
Who subs have gotten shut down because Reddit administrators accused the local mods of failing to curtail it.
Pretending anyone at Reddit HQ cares about this kind of thing is peak Redditor behaviour.
The application of the ban rules tend to be arbitrary and highly political. But guillotine jokes absolutely get accounts banned. And moderators who fail to consistently ban certain accounts were targeted for removal very aggressively over the last four years.
It’s crazy how the 1980s mafia bust-out strategy for squeezing a business dry used to be the thing a district attorney would level RICO charges against.
Now its the preferred strategy of hedge funds run by the children of those district attorneys.
On Reddit, your account would be banned for contributing to an anti-social atmosphere after two dozen corporate accounts red-flagged this image and reported it to the PR staffer currently operating as the subs moderator.
Industry insiders will pay tens of millions of dollars a year to fight off the bad press of their shitty decisions, while doggedly insisting the market cannot support the salaries of a few middle income developers living in some of the most expensive residential markets in the country.
Rustler
This looks pretty great. Thanks for the suggestion.
The estimates I saw were around $650M for each. Maybe that doesn’t count post-launch DLC.
It’s also raw revenue rather than net profit (I guarantee Blizzard had an advertising budget orders of magnitude larger than Larian) so it’s very possible Larian kept more of what it made.
They are in the same ballpark in terms of successful game making, however you slice it. Both could make an argument for why their model of development worked and why this proves doing things their way is the best method for making money.
GTA’s been downhill since it stopped being a top-down sprite game.
Retvrn 2 Tradition
Start making fun of people that buy skins and horse armor and maybe people will stop buying shit that has no value.
The Team Fortress / CS:GO model of microtransactions was the least offensive and honestly not much different than the pastiche upgrades you could get before DLC, via “Special Edition” game releases and other gimmicks.
Even then, what’s obnoxious about modern gaming is the endless injection of ads. Compare Diablo 4 and Baldur’s Gate 3, and one of the first things that jump out at you is how much more BG3 is a game and D4 is just a grind that demands more and more of your money. Meanwhile, with the exception of an artbook and soundtrack, what you see with BG3 is what you get. They even tacked on incremental improvements after release that weren’t bundled as nickle-and-dime add-ons.
And look who made more money? It was a tie!
I don’t think you can strictly shame Microsoft/Blizzard/Activison at this point, because the current C-level staff can get caught in the middle of a serial sexual harassment scandal and still just shrug it off. I don’t think you can influence them with your wallet, either, because their model appears to work well-enough (even Diablo Immortal brought in half a billion dollars, and that game sucked shit) relative to BG3 which brought in slightly over $650M.
I think, at some point, you just have to ignore these games at a personal level and satisfy yourself with the knowledge that a dozen or so high quality games get released every year, even if they’re swimming in a sea of hundreds of crappy freemium over-promoted titles. Don’t worry about the Whales. Just focus on what’s good.
When I was your age, I’d go down to the corner store where I’d drop down $2.50 for a freshly printed copy of Nintendo Power and a package of bubble-gum cigarettes when I wanted to get my ads and filler squeezed between spoilers.
If I really wanted to beat a game quick, I’d buy myself a Game Genie.
A game with maps that were assembled at random from what some lead/executive thought was the best submissions out of a random assortment of amateur designs sounds like it is going to be crap.