people continue to misunderstand the AW2 gambit. basically they got a blank check for it from Epic, which allowed them to make a big swing to revitalize a frankly moribund series and to put it back on the map. it did that. that something that wantonly overbudgeted and ultimately slightly niche has managed to break even means that A LOT of people bought that game who wouldn't have if it were budgeted more reasonably. which means that they now have a much larger built-in audience for when they do make a more sensibly budgeted and scoped AW3.
I'm all for games that are of smaller, tighter scope; Control 1 is testament to how a AAA studio working with a AA budget and scope can be absolutely fire.
@TruestoryYep I've not really played any Metro yet to compare—but AH plays really well (I love the ability to soak up everything from cabinets instead of having to loot them all individually—more games should do that) and the art direction is obviously incredible. if you've not heard **any** good things of it, you've not heard much worth hearing about it.
that said, it's far from the bestest thing ever and the story kinda bites.
> Bad Guitar Studio, meanwhile, is a subsidiary of Thunderful, which in turn is a subsidiary of NetEase Games,
was wondering where you got Thunderful's name in there, because I know for certain that they're not a subsidiary of NetEase—turns out you meant Thunder Fire Games.
game titles are not the realm of copyright, but of trademarks. you can't copyright a title of something, that would be disastrous. trademarks are specifically for brands (logos, company names, titles of projects); copyrights are for the ideas contained within the project—its world, characters, prose, etc..
if Sony's lawyers actually said it was for violating their copyright, they need to go back to law 101 because the distinction is simple even for a layperson. (though I assume the taxonomical mistake is on Lance's end.)
regardless, surely the patch has mirrors elsewhere and it's simply a matter of finding one that isn't dead and won't give you a virus.
@Northern_munkey the co-op in DS3 was originally supposed to be a real experiment for the time, from what they've shared about it since. a lot more of each player seeing things that the other doesn't, etc.. and it was supposed to be its own campaign.
sounded like a really good idea that got watered down to meet deadlines and to be more in line with the trends then.
@alienwithin several of these aren't even games (Source SDK Base, Wallpaper Engine, and arguably Banana) and most of them are free upfront (CS2, DOTA 2, PUBG, Marvel Rivals, Naraka, Apex Legends, Banana, Delta Force). cut them out entirely and your longlist is suddenly a shortlist.
POE2, GTAV, Black Myth, Rust, and COD.
of those, two of them have been around for a decade. two others, plus GTA, are sequels to extremely established franchises. the only one here that has had an actually breakout mega-success like HD2 is Black Myth: Wukong—which has benefited from a dearth in new AAA single-player titles on Steam this year, as well as its obvious status as a game that launched day one in China, with dizzying levels of hype there (you know. China. the largest country by population).
calling Helldivers 2 a "giga-hit" is entirely merited. especially considering how it's a colossal hit on PlayStation too—by far Sony's greatest success this year commercially.
> Bastion, which seems like an indie game, is published by Warner Bros, one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world.
no, it was. now it's published by Supergiant.
"indie" has multiple contexts in games; independent developers (IE, one without a parent company, that isn't publicly traded), independently published (IE, when the developer publishes the game), independently distributed (IE, when a dev publishes their game on their own distribution platforms, like their own website, without a distribution partner). obviously there are some subjective ideas of how they ought to be applied (many would argue that "indie" oughtn't apply to relatively small studios run by industry heavyweights). but those are the base, objective definitions.
the idea that "indie" is meaningless because it has different contextual meanings is an absurd leap in logic.
therefore, YS Net is an independent developer working with publishers. CD Projekt is NOT indie because they are publicly traded—they independently publish, and in some cases are fully independently distributing (GOG), but they will occasionally work with a distributor... like WB Games on consoles for The Witcher III, lol. Bastion IS independently published now, despite previously having been published externally. it was also crafted by an independent studio in the first place.
see how simple things are when you don't mix up multiple different contextual meanings of a word? imagine if you tried saying that "jump" is meaningless because it can mean the act of leaping, the act of powering up a car battery, the act of getting attacked apropos of nothing, etc., etc., lol.
can't say that I agree with the characterization of shmups as being "once great". it's just a niche genre now. lots of really excellent ones still in the indie scene which run the gamut of traditional vs. subversive/innovative. a fantastic modern example hewing closer to the classics that comes to mind is Project Starship X. (Panda Indie Studio are actually super prolific in the genre.) on the other end, you have something like Swordship, which takes the genre conventions and flips them on their head; you can't shoot in it, so the gameplay revolves around you getting enemies to shoot each other instead.
I've had my eyes on CYGNI since before Konami was attached (≈5 years, I think?), so I am certainly interested in it. I just don't like when folks conflate a genre being not mainstream with it not being good or interesting.
@Yorozayu sarcasm aside, CYOA comics can and do work. but only as one-shot stories. a CYOA series is not practically doable, but something like the excellent Rogue Sun #7 is.
depends on the creative team as to my interest. after a few fallow years of mostly just publishing Hellboy, some Matt Kindt books, and Black Hammer, plus licensed Halo, Cyberpunk 2077, and Avatar comics that (no offense) nobody but diehard fans care about (plus localized manga which is a whole different beast, obviously), Dark Horse is finally back to publishing new stuff that's interesting and bringing in top talent.
if this is on par with the Halo, etc. comics in terms of "this is only for diehard fans" then no. if it's a good standalone comic (like the recent Transformers, Universal Monsters, and Dick Tracy series at Image/Skybound and Mad Cave, when it comes to licensed comics), then absolutely. I love comics and Returnal seems cool (though I have yet to play it), but I want something that is a ***good comic*** first and a brand extension far, far, far second.
@PaperAlien over-expansion due to minimal interest rates, remote policies leading to companies actually needing to compete nationally in terms of pay and now they can start going back to paying people less for the same amount of work—lots of factors like that.
it's absolutely tanking companies that rely on investments—which goes for most publishers, and development studios with large teams. which then cascades and hits developers who require publishers, investors, funds, etc. to remain open.
so the industry is constricting because of short-sighted execs and the like over-investing¹. investors realized that it wasn't a golden goose, that there is a ***** ton of competition, that even if you toss a bunch of money at a big AAA company who supposedly makes lots of money and is a good bet, they can still get lapped in sales by some random indie on Steam—like Balatro outperforming Skull and Bones.
(FWIW, Balatro is amazing and it deserves that success, but investors look at that and see, "oh, this industry is really unpredictable, I can invest in something else more reliable instead.")
¹edit: not to mention the nonstop, aggressive M&A plays everywhere, which led to other studios panicking and reactively over-investing too, in order to shore up their core developmental partners. there was an interview over on gamesindustry.biz a few months ago with one of the main brains at Devolver Digital that is INCREDIBLY revealing in this regard.
the idea that any "killing" of these characters could be "disrespectful" is extremely funny to me as a comics nerd.
Batman has died a million different times in all manner of ways. these are superheroes we're talking about. I guarantee you if Kevin Conroy was still with us, they'd be using this as a lead-in for a resurrection story for the Arkham iteration of Batman in whatever the next installment of it would('ve) be(en).
they were not doing anything wrong by playing fast and loose with the characters' lives—the world of Arkham is ultimately a high profile Elseworlds tale—and they could not have known Kevin Conroy would pass after recording his performance in this.
that being said, I have no interest in yet another "live service" using characters from The Big Two to bilk diehard comic fans, people with impulse control issues, etc.. DC already swindles readers enough with the nonstop crossover events where you need to buy all of the tie-ins to get the full version of what is ultimately a mediocre story. (not that Marvel is innocent of this brand of bs—in fact, they're way worse in this regard.) #GoReadRadiantBlackInstead
PS: to everyone wondering how this Suicide Squad could beat this Justice League roster:
they're comics characters, lol. writers can do whatever the hell they want with the villains—making them stronger or weaker to suit the story needs. you can just say, "Brainiac doesn't know how to use their powers quite as well while mind controlling them, especially simultaneously" or whatever.
Comments 13
Re: Control 2's Budget Won't Be as Big as Alan Wake 2, But Remedy's Confident It'll Be Excellent
people continue to misunderstand the AW2 gambit. basically they got a blank check for it from Epic, which allowed them to make a big swing to revitalize a frankly moribund series and to put it back on the map. it did that. that something that wantonly overbudgeted and ultimately slightly niche has managed to break even means that A LOT of people bought that game who wouldn't have if it were budgeted more reasonably. which means that they now have a much larger built-in audience for when they do make a more sensibly budgeted and scoped AW3.
I'm all for games that are of smaller, tighter scope; Control 1 is testament to how a AAA studio working with a AA budget and scope can be absolutely fire.
Re: Next Metro PS5 Game Reworked to Tell Darker Story as Series Turns 15
@TruestoryYep I've not really played any Metro yet to compare—but AH plays really well (I love the ability to soak up everything from cabinets instead of having to loot them all individually—more games should do that) and the art direction is obviously incredible. if you've not heard **any** good things of it, you've not heard much worth hearing about it.
that said, it's far from the bestest thing ever and the story kinda bites.
Re: FragPunk Dev Apologises For Making Fun of Spectre Divide Shutdown
> Bad Guitar Studio, meanwhile, is a subsidiary of Thunderful, which in turn is a subsidiary of NetEase Games,
was wondering where you got Thunderful's name in there, because I know for certain that they're not a subsidiary of NetEase—turns out you meant Thunder Fire Games.
Re: Sony's Bloodborne 60fps Mod DMCA Takedown Was About the Name, Not the Patch Itself
game titles are not the realm of copyright, but of trademarks. you can't copyright a title of something, that would be disastrous. trademarks are specifically for brands (logos, company names, titles of projects); copyrights are for the ideas contained within the project—its world, characters, prose, etc..
if Sony's lawyers actually said it was for violating their copyright, they need to go back to law 101 because the distinction is simple even for a layperson. (though I assume the taxonomical mistake is on Lance's end.)
regardless, surely the patch has mirrors elsewhere and it's simply a matter of finding one that isn't dead and won't give you a virus.
Re: EA Shot Down Creators' Dead Space 4 Pitch in 2024
@Northern_munkey the co-op in DS3 was originally supposed to be a real experiment for the time, from what they've shared about it since. a lot more of each player seeing things that the other doesn't, etc.. and it was supposed to be its own campaign.
sounded like a really good idea that got watered down to meet deadlines and to be more in line with the trends then.
Re: Sony's Giga Hit Helldivers 2 Blows Up on PS5, PC All Over Again
@alienwithin several of these aren't even games (Source SDK Base, Wallpaper Engine, and arguably Banana) and most of them are free upfront (CS2, DOTA 2, PUBG, Marvel Rivals, Naraka, Apex Legends, Banana, Delta Force). cut them out entirely and your longlist is suddenly a shortlist.
POE2, GTAV, Black Myth, Rust, and COD.
of those, two of them have been around for a decade. two others, plus GTA, are sequels to extremely established franchises. the only one here that has had an actually breakout mega-success like HD2 is Black Myth: Wukong—which has benefited from a dearth in new AAA single-player titles on Steam this year, as well as its obvious status as a game that launched day one in China, with dizzying levels of hype there (you know. China. the largest country by population).
calling Helldivers 2 a "giga-hit" is entirely merited. especially considering how it's a colossal hit on PlayStation too—by far Sony's greatest success this year commercially.
Re: Shenmue 3 Publishing Rights Passed to ININ on Fifth Anniversary
@Matroska
> Bastion, which seems like an indie game, is published by Warner Bros, one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world.
no, it was. now it's published by Supergiant.
"indie" has multiple contexts in games; independent developers (IE, one without a parent company, that isn't publicly traded), independently published (IE, when the developer publishes the game), independently distributed (IE, when a dev publishes their game on their own distribution platforms, like their own website, without a distribution partner). obviously there are some subjective ideas of how they ought to be applied (many would argue that "indie" oughtn't apply to relatively small studios run by industry heavyweights). but those are the base, objective definitions.
the idea that "indie" is meaningless because it has different contextual meanings is an absurd leap in logic.
therefore, YS Net is an independent developer working with publishers. CD Projekt is NOT indie because they are publicly traded—they independently publish, and in some cases are fully independently distributing (GOG), but they will occasionally work with a distributor... like WB Games on consoles for The Witcher III, lol. Bastion IS independently published now, despite previously having been published externally. it was also crafted by an independent studio in the first place.
see how simple things are when you don't mix up multiple different contextual meanings of a word? imagine if you tried saying that "jump" is meaningless because it can mean the act of leaping, the act of powering up a car battery, the act of getting attacked apropos of nothing, etc., etc., lol.
Re: CYGNI: All Guns Blazing Set to Light a Fire Under Shoot-Em-Ups on PS5
can't say that I agree with the characterization of shmups as being "once great". it's just a niche genre now. lots of really excellent ones still in the indie scene which run the gamut of traditional vs. subversive/innovative. a fantastic modern example hewing closer to the classics that comes to mind is Project Starship X. (Panda Indie Studio are actually super prolific in the genre.) on the other end, you have something like Swordship, which takes the genre conventions and flips them on their head; you can't shoot in it, so the gameplay revolves around you getting enemies to shoot each other instead.
I've had my eyes on CYGNI since before Konami was attached (≈5 years, I think?), so I am certainly interested in it. I just don't like when folks conflate a genre being not mainstream with it not being good or interesting.
Re: Tomorrow's Returnal News Is Likely a Comic Book Announcement
@Yorozayu sarcasm aside, CYOA comics can and do work. but only as one-shot stories. a CYOA series is not practically doable, but something like the excellent Rogue Sun #7 is.
Re: Tomorrow's Returnal News Is Likely a Comic Book Announcement
depends on the creative team as to my interest. after a few fallow years of mostly just publishing Hellboy, some Matt Kindt books, and Black Hammer, plus licensed Halo, Cyberpunk 2077, and Avatar comics that (no offense) nobody but diehard fans care about (plus localized manga which is a whole different beast, obviously), Dark Horse is finally back to publishing new stuff that's interesting and bringing in top talent.
if this is on par with the Halo, etc. comics in terms of "this is only for diehard fans" then no. if it's a good standalone comic (like the recent Transformers, Universal Monsters, and Dick Tracy series at Image/Skybound and Mad Cave, when it comes to licensed comics), then absolutely. I love comics and Returnal seems cool (though I have yet to play it), but I want something that is a ***good comic*** first and a brand extension far, far, far second.
Re: Suicide Squad Woes Continue As Hackers Make Free with Unreleased Character, Skins
@JaBrony123 it helps if you actually read the article and see that the rumor is that Deathstroke is intended for season 4 in 2025.
Re: 900 PlayStation Employees Laid Off, London Studio Closed
@PaperAlien over-expansion due to minimal interest rates, remote policies leading to companies actually needing to compete nationally in terms of pay and now they can start going back to paying people less for the same amount of work—lots of factors like that.
it's absolutely tanking companies that rely on investments—which goes for most publishers, and development studios with large teams. which then cascades and hits developers who require publishers, investors, funds, etc. to remain open.
so the industry is constricting because of short-sighted execs and the like over-investing¹. investors realized that it wasn't a golden goose, that there is a ***** ton of competition, that even if you toss a bunch of money at a big AAA company who supposedly makes lots of money and is a good bet, they can still get lapped in sales by some random indie on Steam—like Balatro outperforming Skull and Bones.
(FWIW, Balatro is amazing and it deserves that success, but investors look at that and see, "oh, this industry is really unpredictable, I can invest in something else more reliable instead.")
¹edit: not to mention the nonstop, aggressive M&A plays everywhere, which led to other studios panicking and reactively over-investing too, in order to shore up their core developmental partners. there was an interview over on gamesindustry.biz a few months ago with one of the main brains at Devolver Digital that is INCREDIBLY revealing in this regard.
Re: Fans Outraged at Rocksteady's Handling of Hero Deaths in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
the idea that any "killing" of these characters could be "disrespectful" is extremely funny to me as a comics nerd.
Batman has died a million different times in all manner of ways. these are superheroes we're talking about. I guarantee you if Kevin Conroy was still with us, they'd be using this as a lead-in for a resurrection story for the Arkham iteration of Batman in whatever the next installment of it would('ve) be(en).
they were not doing anything wrong by playing fast and loose with the characters' lives—the world of Arkham is ultimately a high profile Elseworlds tale—and they could not have known Kevin Conroy would pass after recording his performance in this.
that being said, I have no interest in yet another "live service" using characters from The Big Two to bilk diehard comic fans, people with impulse control issues, etc.. DC already swindles readers enough with the nonstop crossover events where you need to buy all of the tie-ins to get the full version of what is ultimately a mediocre story. (not that Marvel is innocent of this brand of bs—in fact, they're way worse in this regard.) #GoReadRadiantBlackInstead
PS: to everyone wondering how this Suicide Squad could beat this Justice League roster:
they're comics characters, lol. writers can do whatever the hell they want with the villains—making them stronger or weaker to suit the story needs. you can just say, "Brainiac doesn't know how to use their powers quite as well while mind controlling them, especially simultaneously" or whatever.