An argument I heard, and adopted is that it’s never “just” cosmetic. Your enjoyment of the game is impacted by how you perceive your avatar. This is why fortnite skins sell so well to new players. It’s not just cosmetic to drop $20 on Cuddle Team Leader. It makes a user feel silly and increases enjoyment running around as an obvious pink mascot costume. It prolongs how long you play both by increased enjoyment, and sunk cost fallacy. In any game with cosmetics, purchases drive playtime.

It’s fly as hell?

I love a good Good Place meme. Especially one tucked away and not often used!

My catchphrase when driving has become “It’s always a fucking pickup”

That’s fucked up I’m sorry, I’d have eaten an entire plate of cheese hors d’vors myself and taken half that chicken with me afterwards. I’m not even into wrestling and I’d have come for that food.

You’re a good friend for providing that for a watch party (on top of paying for ppv) and I’m sorry your friends don’t appreciate how well you maintain your half of the bridge. The least the 2 could have done is tried the cheese and chicken.

Edit holy shit are those pre stuffed pretzel bites. Bro wtf is wrong with these people I’d have asked if anyone wanted any and eaten the entire plate. (I may or may not have portion control issues but seriously, they didnt touch any of that delicious looking food)

This is probably the most honest review I have seen, that points to gripes I would have playing through it, as opposed to the way other articles and videos have glossed over those very concerns I had while watching gameplay footage. Thanks for including it!

Oh shoot I knew I missed one! The battle pass is weapon is op and then we will nerf it just before the next battle pass drops, to ensure an OP/Nerf cycle to enforce you always have the newest battle pass and buy tiers and have more time than filthy grinders to abuse it’s OPness

Scrumptious Billabong

But not more effort than management put into ruining a game

The meme is because Skull and bones is so bad of a fumble, to also just fumble its name. I picked it up from some review but I can’t remember who it was. Dunkey? Ah too long ago.

To elaborate a bit more than just budget/marketing, AAA games used to be distinguished from AA titles. Modest mid level titles from a studio between tentpole releases that would pay your bills and didn’t break the company if they didn’t sell well. It also generally related to the price you would be expected to pay. These days a AA/Indie game is $40, and a AAA title is $60/70. The rise of AAAA is a self aggrandizing to try and justify slapping a higher pricetag on products.

A great example would be an excerpt from Activision in 2004. Doom 3 in August would be AAA, then in September a bunch of AA games - cod game “united offensive”, X-Men legends, Rome:total war, and Shark Tale. Then in October a AAA title with Tony Hawks underground 2.

And for $70 more you can play it 2 days early! For why? No fucking reason other than to flex! Gotta flex on those poors by getting it earlier than them amirite?? This ensures you will be invested in our product from the very start and you are the type of person who we can do no wrong.

And for $30 there’s 2 extra skins that are just the worst looking piles of shit. But again if you don’t have them how will you flex on the poors? This is lumped in with the earlier assurance that we can do no wrong in your eyes.

And the battle pass is $10 - every 30 days. It has nothing of value except at tier 150, which is a new flagrantly pay to win weapon. This ensures we own your time, every month.

But also we didn’t finish the game, instead we released a roadmap. We will scrap this roadmap a week and a half after the disastrous launch because the game sucks so my donkey dick we cannot possibly add content to the absolute bugfest of a game. This is an abuse of loyalty to our brand, but you’ve stated you don’t care as long as you get to play it.

Now that the game is out for a month, we’ve added a cash shop. This flies in the face of regulation on the box not indicating gambling elements, but fuck those stooges standing in the way of our profits! We can make a new box with the proper markings on them in a month. Surely you would like to buy a sword skin or character skin beyond looking like normal Mario right? Also there will be at least 1 skin that blends in with the background a little too well and attracts p2w allegations for the multiplayer mode. We don’t care and neither do you because you will buy it. You wanna be a winner right?

We noticed you’re already level 8, congratulations! We halved level reward drops, but increased rarity of those items by 30% but from here on we tripled enemy hp at every 10 levels to make sure the game is a slog, so you buy overpowered shit from the shop and battle pass.

You reached level 10 in only 5 hours? That’s amazing! How about a XP Booster? Like the above we actually made progression become ungodly slow after level 10 unless you pay us $35 for an XP booster - in a single player game. We will make sure this pops up every time you level up to remind you we intentionally slowed progression so you make this purchase.

Also we can’t help but notice you picked up a Fancy Locked Box. You can divert from the main quest to grind the crafting materials and it will take 6 hours to craft, OR you can buy a key for ONLY $5! This will pop up EVERY time you pick up a Locked Box with the option to go to the shop, and be SUPER disruptive, to get you to cave.

And lastly, a “donate” button on the main menu where you just give us money for nothing, because at this point why not right?

Every time. Seems more like companies aren’t “hit with” them at all, more like… They “get to participate” or “decide to indulge” in layoffs.

indulged in. When a company does not lay off people from the upper tier, they are indulging in layoffs.

“Hit with” implies an unavoidable, tragic, and forced event. They knew this would happen months ago when KTJL face planted. Videogame companies complain about the “cost of making games” but they’re the fucks what spent the money. Maybe spend less on your marketing and budget, and when a game doesn’t sell well it isn’t a cataclysmic event that sinks the whole company.

But really, if game companies weren’t constantly at risk to have implosions from bad decisions, the board wouldn’t get their “please don’t leave us” money. So really this always comes back to - fuck the management, and the board. Videogames are treated as products so here we are.

Not surprising, Journey to the West is really popular, and even western societies like Ancient Chinese mythos stories. Wukong and Nezha are probably the 2 most popular, if I had to guess. On top of this not surprising a Chinese publisher making a game about a Chinese mythos is doing well in China, when almost no one is competing in that regard so the market is hype for representation and seeing “their” story made into a playable game.

Engagement go brrrt.

Number not go up?

Abandon ship to the next company where accountant promises number go up.

Yeah that’s pretty shitty to continue to sell a part that they know is defective.

“select the bikes” That’s a motorcycle and that’s a moped. Those don’t count-uh I fucking guess they do?

“Select the bus” Bro that’s an intersection at 200 feet.

“Type the Captcha letters” Is that a lowercase r or a capital T?

“JASON figured it out? Yeah…this one hurts.”