BougieBirdie

When my cat does this, I sit on her (gently).

I figure she does the same to me, so it’s fair play.

Generally speaking, games don’t fail because of the decisions made by the developers. That’s usually caused by people higher up the food chain, you’d think a film/tv producer would know all about that

I read the headline and thought “RIP for a real one”

Then I read “He was 69 years old” and I thought “Nice”

Wtf is wrong with me?

I’m looking over his IMDB page now and it’s a lot of memories. I always knew him as a B-movie horror legend, but it looks like he didn’t shy away from voice acting for films and games. A lot of good stuff there that I had no idea he was in

Goodnight, Candyman

“Why do you want to live? If you had learned just a little from me you would not beg to live. I am rumour. It is a blessed condition, believe me. To be whispered about at street corners. To live in other people’s dreams but not have to be. Do you understand?”

Oh yeah, and if you want any online services, you’ll want to look up what those cost. I don’t know if they offer a family discount for multiple accounts

I guess ultimately it depends on what kind of games your family likes

As you mention, party games you only need one. If your family’s into single player or portables then each person needs one

How is it affordable? Well, it isn’t really. Although I guess a switch probably retails for about half the cost of a PS5

It’s funny though, if you compare it to other consoles, I think people are far less likely to buy an Xbox or Playstation for each family member. And yet, people would do that for the gameboy and DS without batting an eye. The switch is trying to be everything, for better or worse.

When we got ours, we were pretty content having just one and then playing party games or taking turns on single player games. Sooner or later though, we had to get another so we could play pokemon together. Which is a shame because my interest in pokemon seems to have suddenly fallen off a cliff and now my switch is collecting dust

So I guess all that to say: your mileage may vary

Who is protected by rules that keep you on the path? Who am I impressing by taking the ten seconds out of my day to stay on the pavement?

I don’t have much respect for grass. Take the shortcut and relish the rare opportunity to be near nature in the city

My wife would probably do the same, because if she expected me to keep a real plant alive I’d surely disappoint her.

What, do you use the mouse?

That last bit sounds like him. That’s how you end up with the fun roles, like the talking mould that grows on somebody’s toilet.

You don’t expect Herbert West: Reanimator to be the voice of reason… yet here we are

What a funky timeline

This looks like a screenshot from 7 Days to Die

This appears to be a farming plot that a player has buried into the terrain. Due to limitations in the engine, the terrain renders weirdly when it’s deformed this way. This creates a weird sort of edge in the terrain, which appears to be made of dirt, stone, and grass

Don’t forget to cough-sneeze on the salad-bar to share your personal dressing with your fellow man-things

Personally, I like the southern twang.

It feels almost lyrical

Doctoral degrees are geared towards applied studies such as practising medicine or law.

PhDs are more research-oriented and theoretical.

To further muddy the waters, all PhDs are doctoral degrees, but not all doctoral degrees are PhDs

I’m surprised and relieved to hear such a salient take.

It’s not really surprising that if the big names in gaming spend an enormous amount of budget on a game that it’s not automatically going to be a hit. After all, a large chunk of that time and money is spent on further monetizing the game. The more monetization features they work on, the less attractive a game becomes to the player. It feels like that should just be common sense, I’m surprised a bunch of business majors never learned that they need a good product.

Like, honestly, a game isn’t going to automatically generate enormous profit just because a lot of money has been spent on it. It also has to be a decent game in its own right.

This is something that indie gamers have been saying probably as long as there’s been indie gaming. Maybe it will carry more weight when a suit says it. But then, he’s a former executive, so maybe it won’t have as much impact as it should.

Time for an anecdote:
I can think of two Blizzard games that I really enjoyed until they had a 2.0 release. Both used the 2.0 as an opportunity to change their monetization model in favour of squeezing more cash from players. They’re Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch.

Heroes of the Storm was free, but had a cash shop where you could buy cosmetics. Each cosmetic was listed for individual purchase. There were bundles, but if you really wanted just a single skin you could buy it for about $5-$15. That’s not an unreasonable price and I was happy to support a free game by buying the occasional skin for my favourite heroes.

When Heroes of the Storm had their 2.0 rework, they changed the cosmetic shop to be based entirely on lootboxes. You could no longer get the things you specifically wanted and had to rely on random chance. You could of course get more lootboxes by throwing more money at the game, but you’d have to buy way more lootboxes for a chance to get the thing you wanted. That turned me and a lot of players off of the game, and it wasn’t long after 2.0 that Blizzard stopped active development and put the game in maintenance mode.

Funny enough, Overwatch did the opposite, but it was still a step towards greed and super frustrating. In the original release, you had a lootbox based economy and a cosmetic shop where you could spend currency earned from the lootboxes to buy skins. Lootboxes were available for free as you played, but also available for purchase. You could ultimately get whatever you wanted just by playing the game enough.

When Overwatch 2 came out, the model switched to free-to-play and battlepasses. The free stuff you could get was limited to something like half the battlepass cosmetics (you can buy the pass to unlock more), and the cosmetic shop became a cash shop with insane valuation of skins. I think the average skin is like $30, and often they’re only available in bundles where you have to spend even more to also get skins that you might not care about.

In an attempt to reach more market, Overwatch 2 was released on Steam. This was the first (and I think only?) platform that Overwatch got released to where users can leave reviews on the game. It has a 20% recommendation rate, which is categorized as “Mostly Negative” and makes it one of the worst releases of all time on Steam. And this is for a game that you can play for free - it costs you nothing and people are trying to warn you not to waste your time.

The reworks between Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch are both examples of studios taking a beloved game in its own right, and lobotomizing it to make it more profitable. Never forget what they’ve taken from us.

Geez buddy, that’s rough. Give me your payment info and I’ll send you a dollar

If the company admits that the cost of wrongdoing might be worth a billion dollars, and then still engages in a billion dollars worth of wrongdoing, maybe the fine ought to be two billion

Hello, I’m here for the group hug 🫂

I’m pretty dialed into indie games. What kind of games do you like? I might be able to recommend some. I get most of my indie recommendations through word of mouth or curators.

The steam store page has an algorithm tuned to your preferences. If you’ve already been playing a lot of live service games, then it assumes you must like them. Once you start showing an interest in other games, you can probably just cruise through your discovery queue.

To skip the algorithm, you can try looking at the steam store web page in a private / incognito window. But if most of the money makers are live service or free-to-play then that may just be the default offering.

I’d love to see more developers with this attitude.

Atmosphere? Love it. Dread? Great! Darkness? Tolerable. Jump Scare? No thank you.

Jump scares are like the fart jokes of horror. Cheap thrills, low craftsmanship, and turns people off of the market.

And that’s not to say I don’t appreciate the occasional jump scare. They can be tastefully made, or used sparingly. Less is often more with these, and it helps add to the tension knowing it might come up again. But if they’re just non stop they lose their payoff quickly.