@zhoont They already have. AI has been the main focus of Nvidia for the past few years. While gaming press only tends to talk about their gaming GPUs (for obvious reasons) a much bigger part of Nvidia's operation is now providing specialised hardware for AI.
@RobN Remember one of the reasons why QA testers are professionals who are separate from the people who actually made the game is because part of their job is doing bizarre, crazy weird stuff actual players will do but which the game designers would never think of, because only a crazy idiot would do something like that.
That is, good QA work is very creative. It's about coming up with the weird things no one in their right mind would ever think to do and seeing if it breaks something. As you say, AI is bad at creativity.
EDIT: Good QA testing is skilled work. It's not mindless grunt work anyone can do. One of the reasons why buggy launches have become much more common is because people (including gamers) have stopped giving QA testers the respect and resources they need, which means the bugs aren't being caught before launch.
"Company about to leave the console market with it's tail between it's legs believes the strategy of both successful console manufacturers is antiquated"
@ShogunRok Thank you. As much as I and others loved the original, it did take so long to not be a commercial flop that it killed the developer. A new Bloodlines game had to both have everything that made the original great while also being something people who never played the original want to play. It doesn't seem that this game has managed either of those sadly.
@ShogunRok You mention the original several times, but being a cult classic it's a game more people have heard of than actually played. Have you played it? Also, how familiar are you with Vampire the Masquerade?
One thing I really loved about this series is how the karma upgrades influenced playstyle. Typically, the goody upgrades would be things like "enemies have glowing weak spots that do bonus damage if you hit them" while the evil ones would be things like "rapid fire" or explosions.
This means that if you're a goody your powers push you towards you a very precise playstyle, while if you're evil your powers are pushing towards a playstyle that creates much more "collateral damage".
"The players outside looked from Diablo IV to Diablo Immortal, and from Diablo Immortal to Diablo IV, and from Diablo IV to Diablo Immortal again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
@TruestoryYep I don't think you understood my comment. At no point did I say or suggest that art and media weren't allowed to explore real world issues. I agree with you that they can and in many cases, should.
The original Deus Ex also spoke about real world issues (and philosophy- so much philosophy!). From this I'm going to assume you never played the original, otherwise you'd know that it did talk about relevant real world issues- including every issue you mentioned- in a much more intelligent and considered way than Human Revolution or Mankind Divided did.
These newer games didn't discuss these issues in the same depth as the original game did, they merely inherited bits of setting due to being a prequel. Straying away from the well written core of the original is why today when people talk about how great Deus Ex is it's the original that gets reinstalled, and people only mention the Adam Jensen duology to meme about people not asking for things.
I'm assuming a new Deus Ex game would be a reboot- after all to quote the creator of Deus Ex, if you made that game now "it might be perceived as a documentary". So it would have to be about contemporary conspiracy theories. Otherwise you're throwing out a key part of the series identity, so it should be a new series. If not, you're just mangling an IP in the hope that name recognition will increase sales but all that ever does is dissapoint fans of the series because they know it's soul is missing.
When you consider how sinister modern conspiracy theories are- the way they're weaponised by online influencers and have caused riots and real people to be murdered, I don't think a game about those is a good idea. By all means explore real world issues, but if you make a Deus Ex game- make a proper Deus Ex game. But right now that would be a game about the world as QAnon sees it, and I don't think making that game is a good idea. I think it crosses the line to "deeply irresponsible".
@RBMango Proximity chat is a feature that works better in theory than in practise, precisely because of how people behave on the internet. Running a community (which is what anyone running a multiplayer game is doing) requires deciding standards for behaviour that are enforcible. The general situation we have is that those standards are lower in online spaces than in face to face ones. It is not foolish to think "well how can we prevent our new games community devolving into the endless stream of slurs that every other online shooter has become". It's not a waste of time to think about how the gameplay and social features of a game will shape it's community, it is something that not enough game developers are putting thought into which is why so many games communities are cess pits where people behave in ways that they never would in a face to face interaction. It is in fact crucial especially with how much more focus certain interests now have in how online interactions work. And if a feature isn't working in practise how it is in theory, then whether or not it's actually working at all is debateable (especially if the problem is the community abusing the feature to misbehave online)
I am genuinely fascinated by how many people seem to think that Bungie and other developers just shouldn't think or do anything about how people behave in their games community. Especially as you all seem to acknowledge that well adjusted people in face to face interactions or phone calls etc don't behave anything like the way online gamers do. Why are we so opposed to dragging online gamers up to the same basic standards of decency and civility that western civilisation agreed upon decades ago?
@RBMango I don't think you understood my comment. The points I made were about implementation of a feature and how that implementation would effect the games community, which is a developer focussed view of a proximity chat toggle feature. Choosing not to play extraction shooters is not really an option for Bungie when deciding how this feature should work.
@LifeGirl Well, actually no. People in real life physical spaces treat each other much better than people online do. It's a form of minor sociopathy- when a human being is in front of you and you can see them your brain registers them as human and you end up treating them with basic human decency. Too many people are incapable of making that realisation during online interactions, and so behave much worse. You don't need "censorship" to make people behave better. It is not censorship for online spaces to expect people to treat each other the way they would if they were speaking face to face.
As for a toggle to enable or disable this- how would you implement it? Do other players know if you've turned this off? Will they then find other ways to harrass you for that choice? Does the way disabling this feature effect communication give your team a disadvantage (and thus create more toxicity for players choosing to disable proximity chat?)
Crossbit is right. When it comes to high end PC gaming, that's the pro. No compromises- no choosing "graphics", "performance" or "balance"- just crank everything up to max and play at high frame rates anyway.
The con is that the hardware to be able to do this costs about as much as between 6-8 PS5 Pros (depending on how much shopping around you do)
This is like comparing a toaster to an oven. Both are food preparation devices but the use case of each is so radically different a direct comparison is utterly meaningless.
This is a terrible idea. There isn't a worse year to start making a Deus Ex game than 2025. Look back at the original- it's about chem trails, men in black, black helicopters- the idea behind Deus Ex's setting isn't "Look! Cool cybernetics!" it's "this is the world where every conspiracy theory is true", with 1990's conspiracy theories.
Do you really want to see the 2020's version of that?
Conveniently for the genre of the game he's starring in, he does have a punchable face.
(Not a serious call for violence, just a nod towards the weirdness of these "celebrities" saying "yeah, sure I think it's great to put my face on a virtual punching bag!")
I have paid £80 for a game before, that was when I was a kickstarter backer for Pillars of Eternity (and £80 back then was more than it is now due to inflation). I didn't regret paying that much for this extremely not AAA game because the amount of enjoyment I got from that game was worth it. That's what determines how much I'm willing to pay for game- how much fun I think I'll get from it.
So, yeah, if the game really, really appeals to me on a "need to play this ASAP" level, I'll pay £80 for it. But games like that only come out once or twice in an entire console generation.
First it was "ah but those are just players, lets see what the sales are like!" (as if putting a game on a subscription service for the purpose of attracting subscribers and it doing so was somehow failing), now it's "ah, but sales don't matter because share price."
At this point this game could cause the second coming of Jesus and ensure our salvation from all Earthly ills, and some oik on YouTube would still tell us it failed, because what about unearthly ills?
I agree that holding back on marketting is a good idea. Don't let the hype train get to full speed until it's close to it's destination, because the longer it spends at top speed the more likely it is to go out of control and end up off the rails. And that's a great way to have a dissapointing launch.
If some developer has an idea to do something cool with an IP Sony's not using, it makes perfect sense to license the IP out. Sony gets some extra money for basically doing nothing, the developer gets a bit more media attention by bringing back a cult classic (which helps the games find an audience and be successful) and fans get to see dormant things they love revived. As long as the game is good it seems like an easy "everybody wins" kind of deal.
@glennthefrog Tentpole releases as important to a company as AC Shadows is don't get released on a subscription service as anything other than deliberate strategy. It is on a subscription service, Ubisofts primary goal with this game is to get subscribers. Therefore the only sensible ways to measure the games success should include it's performance with subscribers. Trying to measure the games success without taking subscribers into account is foolish at best, disingenuous and deceptive at worst. I would prefer to see figures like "how many people signed up to [whatever Ubisoft are calling this cursed thing this week] and then played AC shadows before anything else" (that is, how many people subbed for AC Shadows) and the average playtime of subscribers (that is, how long did it hook in and keep the interest of those subscribers). But that sort of info will take a long time to measure. Subscriptions are a long term strategy. By the time Ubisoft have that information, the grifters will have moved on and no one will be talking about AC Shadows anymore.
@KawakiisaFraud Why would Ubisoft launch a game on their subscription service and then measure it's success in a way that doesn't take into account people playing it on that subscription service? Don't they want people to subscribe to their subscription service? If not, why did they put one of their biggest games on it?
The mental gymnastics to discount player numbers as a metric of success when the publishers primary strategy is subscriptions- not sales- is ludicrous.
Ah, but will it be better than Zvitor's fan games? I'm looking forward to this, I was just thinking earlier today that we're about due an official Marvel Beat Em Up.
Real people in fighting games is weird, because you're going to have three camps. 1: Gamers who don't care. 2: Gamers who do care and want to play as the real person because they're fans. 3: Gamers who do care because they hate the real person and would like to simulate eviscerating them.
I'm wondering if anyone mentioned the folks in camp 3 when they were discussing this idea with Ronaldo.
If you're interested in thought provoking story telling, Pentiment and The Forgotten City are both all time classic games I can't recomend highly enough.
While in many fighting games blocking attacks (punches, kicks- non throws) deal some chip damage, in Tekken blocking blocks all damage. IIRC in 8 there are some heat attacks which deal chip damage- I stopped playing Tekken 8 13 months ago- but the rule in Tekken is "no chip damage" and always has been.
So throws dealing chip damage when most attacks don't is especially strange- much stranger than throws doing chip damage in (say) Mortal Kombat.
The funny thing about all the "FFXVI failed because it didn't launch on multiple platforms" thing is... well, Final Fantasy doesn't usually launch on multiple platforms. Only twice has a mainline Final Fantasy game launched on more than one platform*- XIII and XV. Neither of which are hailed as high points for the series' success. And in both cases, the two platforms at launch were a Playstation and an Xbox, and the sales split between those platforms was roughly 80/20 in favour of Playstation. And both of those launches were before Gamepass (which has, whether we like it or not, changed people's purchasing habits especially on Xbox)
The narrative about FFXVI being a flop is a game of telephone. The quote you see is "didn't meet SE expectations", initially reported as "didn't meet SE high expectations". The actual quote from the shareholder briefing that this came from was "didn't meet the high end of SE expectations"- which implies that it hit the low or mid range of SE expecations. This meeting also stated that FFXVI was profitable. It's not "a flop" if it's made a profit.
*Even XI and XIV- the two MMO's announced for multiple platforms had styaggered launches between those platforms. XI launched on PS2 then PC 6 months later, and while FFXIV was announced for PS3 and PC, the initial launch of 1.0 in 2010 was PC exclusive, PS3 didn't get the game until A Realm Reborn- almost three years later (which was for the best)
@SleepyNick Player numbers mean everything. The games industry has changed. Ubisoft put this on their subscription service day one because their primary goal isn't to sell copies of this game, it's to sell subscriptions. Player numbers (that is, a metric that includes how well Ubisofts primary goal of using this game to keep and increase subscribers) is the only metric for measuring "success" that matters now. They're "hoping" for 0 copies sold because that would mean everyone playing it did so by buying their subscription. That is, they'd rather have 2 million people playing it on the subscription than selling 2 million copies of the game.
This is because due to how people think about subscriptions, they often end up paying more money to play a game on subscription than if they'd just bought a copy. People will sub for a month to play the new game, and then forget to unsub and 8 months later they're still subbed for that one game, having paid more in sub fees than a copy of the game would cost.
One issue with the live service market compared to other genres is it doesn't let players go. I'll use an example. You play Astrobot, you have a wonderful time with it, you finish with the game and you think "I'm going to see what other platformers are on PS5!"- that is, liking one platformer puts you in the market for more platformers. Similarly, liking Dark Souls puts you in the market for more soulslike games.
But live service games don't end- if you like one of them you keep playing that one game. You don't finish with it and start thinking "Oh, I really liked this live service game, I'm going to see what other ones I can play" because the live service game you liked didn't end. The game never lets you go and so you don't go looking for more games like it.
This means that it takes fewer games in this genre before the market is saturated and can't support more games in this genre.
It sucks as always that people are losing their jobs and I hope these folks can quickly get jobs elsewhere in the industry. I also hope that publishers stop trying to further saturate what is already a full market place because at this point it's just throwing away money and people's livelihoods.
So I like the new design. Frankly, Anna is exactly the sort of person who would only ever wear the same outfit twice if it was complete unavoidable so it's entirely in character for her to turn up in a new, cool, stylish outfit. However, if you've been keeping up with Tekken 8... the classic Anna looks are almost certainly going to be in Tekken 8. They'll turn up in the Tekken Shop, and each cost 400 coins. And no, ofcourse you can't just buy 400 Tekken coins- the smallest amount you can buy is 500 coins. TLDR- classic Anna costumes coming soon to a microtransaction near you!
It is a first world problem, but it's a first world problem that only exists because companies created it. And maybe they shouldn't be creating problems.
For context, the single best selling games console of all time is the PS2 on 160 million units. This one game (due to people double and even triple dipping) has sold more units than any console ever produced. And GTAV is not even that good.
@twitchtvpat A microsoft account is required for most games on PC- not only microsoft ones. You need a Microsoft account to run Windows, and most PC games (including every Sony one) lists a version of Windows in it's spec- meaning these games do not (officially) work on other operating systems.
@Oram77 Yes, there are reasons Jade Empire didn't sell well. But when judging the statement about Veilguard being "Bioware's worst performing game"- a statement made without caveats- all that has to be done to disprove that statement is pull out one game with worse sales figures. There can be all sorts of reasons why a game performed less well than Veilguard did, but those aren't relevant to the question of "did Jade Empire perform less well than Veilguard did". Only the number is relevant for that. But Oram, the fact that this is a Bioware action RPG from peak Bioware that you have never heard of speaks volumes as to how well it did.
I agree completely that Veilguard has done badly though, but you need extensive caveats to claim that it's "Bioware's worst performing games"- caveats that basically rule out Bioware's entire back catalogue. UnlimitedSevens point about how sales figures expectations have changed is a fair one after all. But it does mean the only meaningful comparison you can make sales figures wise is with Andromeda and Anthem (especially as Veilguards "12 million sales" figure took about a decade to get to). When you're only talking about three games from a company that's been around for a quarter of a century, statements like "Biowares worst performing game" just feel dubious to me.
@UnlimitedSevens I hope you do check out Jade Empire and that you enjoy it as much as I did!
@Oram77 Over roughly the same period that Veilguard sold 1.5 million units, Jade Empire managed 500,000. Because 500,000 is a smaller number than Veilguard, Jade Empire is closer to being "Bioware's worst performing game" than Veilguard is. I couldn't say for certain that other games performed less well- Baldurs Gate 2 taking 10 years to get to 2 million sales suggests that at the three month mark it also hadn't hit 1.5 million, but I can't tell you that for certain. Neverwinter Nights also took about 4 years to hit Veilguard's sales figures (and due to it's almost Elder Scrolls modding scene NWN has had a ridiculously long tail) But yeah, this saddens me because Jade Empire is an amazing game and if sales figures were related to quality, it would be one of if not the best selling Bioware game.
@RBMango this looks very much like it's from the corner of horror movies where you find things like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Halloween" which are traditionally lower budget movies (all horror tends to be, to be fair, but these sorts of films are cheap even by horror movie standards).
I think this could be quite good. I hope they've not spoiled too much of it in the trailer though. At the very least Peter Stormare will be fantastic, because he always is.
@JokerBoy322 The reason why a policy like this has examples listed within it is so that moderators know exactly what the policy means by "socially acceptable behaviour". But even so, a well adjusted person can criticise a corporations products without engaging in "action against one of our employees or partners"- that is without making it personal. I am fully confident that I can continue to criticise SE and this policy won't effect that, because I can do that without harassing a person.
If you're capable of criticising without making personal attacks, there is no part of this policy that can be creatively misinterpreted against you. I am sanguine about people who can't do that getting bans.
@JokerBoy322
So, the term we're defining is "actions that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful." The only difficulty here is that this is actually two definitions- "socially acceptable behaviour" and "harmful". Lets start with “Socially acceptable behaviour”- it means “act like a well adjusted and sane member of society”. If you’re not sure what that means, ask your parent or guardian as it’s their job to teach you this.
“Harmful” means “causing or likely to cause harm”. It’s a word in the dictionary so it’s not vague at all.
The examples they give of the sort of thing they’re trying to clamp down on tend towards “harmful” rather than “exceed socially acceptable behaviour”. But the sort of actions they’re trying to discourage are made clear by the examples listed.That is, the policy itself defines this phrase through the examples listed.
I don’t think they’re doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. I think they’ve seen what some of their voice actors et al have been put through over the last year by morons on the internet and felt they had to do something- but then realised all they could do was this frankly weak response. The most significant part of this policy is “Where such action is egregious or with malicious intent, Square Enix reserves its right to protect its employees and partners and to take legal action or criminal proceedings upon consulting the police and/or lawyers “- you don’t think someone at SE is going to phone the police on you just for criticism, do you?
You are projecting- a tactic I’ve seen many people like you use. The idea is to accuse other people of what you are doing. You are trying to gaslight people into thinking a policy made in response to people like Sena Bryer being inundated by death and rape threats, and whose wording makes it clear that it’s trying to protect SE’s employees and contractors from disgusting behaviour is attempting to regulate interactions that don’t involve SE’s employees or contractors at all. That is a misreading of the policy that seems intentional. Your only weapon is misinformation, because the facts don’t support you. The reason you didn’t provide a quote that could conceivably mean what you claim this policy is saying is because no such quote exists.
@JokerBoy322
I have presented quotes that reinforce my argument that this policy does not prevent criticism. You have failed to provide quotes to support your interpretation. I have asked you to explain what set of behaviours would fall foul of this policy but you think is an acceptableway to behave. You have failed to give an example of what acceptable behaviour would be disallowed by this policy. I have explained how this policy does not do what you claim it does. You have presented no evidence to contradict any of the points I have made.
You said the policy says that they’ll ban you for criticising them. Quote the part of the policy that could conceivably be interpreted in that way, remembering that the policy is very clear about it being about actions "that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful".
@JokerBoy322 The policy is about behaviour that is "that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful" and helpfully includes examples of this. In the context of what SE employees and contractors have been subjected to recently this is clearly a reaction to that in an attempt to protect their employees and contractors. Asserting otherwise with no reasoning or evidence is not a convincing argument. As I said, SE executives have already publically asked people to stop harrassing their employees and contractors.
As for the idea that this is somehow about "bullying customers" to protect against criticism, I'm not seeing how. I can (and will continue to) criticise SE without resorting to actions "that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful" (because I have thoughts about Chaotic Alliance Raids and TT card drop rates!) and I'm sure many others are capable of that to. Do you have examples of what sort of behaviour or criticism you think this policy is designed to protect against that doesn't involve behaviour "that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful"? Or failing that, can you explain why you think anyone should be allowed to behave in a way "that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful"?
@JokerBoy322 With what's happened to Sena Bryer since she voiced a character in the latest FFXIV expansion, they are absolutely talking about harassment. This isn't the first time in the last 6 months that executives from SE have publically said "hey, stop harassing the voice actors".
It's not terribly surprising that if you look at how much a PS5 pro costs and think "I'm going to spend more than that on just the graphics card" that you end up with a machine that runs games better than a PS5 pro does.
@PuppetMaster While true, PMG were working on this video since September last year, and also covered the issue of how outsourcing in SE Asia studios (including Brandoville, and another studio called lemonsky) treat their employees back in 2021 (a video called "How Game Publishers Buy Crunch Overseas"). Also, it's old news but as the video states, it's not being reported in the west that studios working with a lot of AAA games (Brandoville worked on The Last of Us remember and others) is treating it's employees like this has gone shamefully under reported by western gaming media such as, you know, this very website (and every other western gaming media type magazine and website).
This reminds me of when FFXVI has been out for three months and in an investor call SE's president that the game was profitable but "hadn't met the high end of our expectations". And everyone reported that as "FFXVI hasn't met SE's high expectations" and claimed the game was a commercial failure. While it's clear that many SE games aren't meeting the high end of their expectations, that doesn't mean they're commercial failures. If FFVII Rebirth failed, they won't expect the third one to succeed and therefore won't make it. But as far as I can tell, cancelling that game hasn't been considered, so Rebirth probably wasn't a disaster.
@get2sammyb I understand what you're trying to say, but the way the games industry wants to use it is an evolutionary dead end. AI is (at best) generating work derivative of what human beings have already made- AI generated content will never innovate, that is simply not how this technology works. However, these AI models improve by being fed more and better data- AI image generation improves as it looks at more images. Therefore in order for AI image generation (for example) to get better it needs human artists to be imaginative and to create new and interesting art.
Now executives in the games industry want to use AI to replace human created work. If they succeed in doing that, where the does the new and imaginative artwork that the next generation of AI models need to improve come from? Now it's already been noticed by fans of AI that some models feel like regressions on previous models- this is because these models are learning from other AI generated content and thus rather than improving, they're just reinforcing the standard errors AI generated works already have. The amount of AI content out there is already making some models get worse over time, not better.
The other use of AI I hear people talk about is minor writing. Ambient dialogue, side quests etc- not main story writing though. But those are the entry level jobs of writing in video games. You look at most writers in video games and you'll see there earlier credits are doing the stuff companies like Ubisoft want AI to be doing. So if AI is going to take the entry level writing jobs, where does the next generation of main writers come from?
And that's before we get onto discussing quality. Have you ever played Sleeping Dogs? Do you think an AI doing ambient dialogue could come up with a character as memorable as the Pork Bun vendor?
Short term using AI could save a lot of rich people a lot of money, but long term it's going to lead to even less innovation and even less new ideas- which is not the direction the games industry should be moving in if we want PS7 to have great games. I do agree that the technology has potential use, but I think the plans the games industry currently has are not good.
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Re: This RAM Crisis Is Looking Like a Nightmare for the PS6
@zhoont They already have. AI has been the main focus of Nvidia for the past few years. While gaming press only tends to talk about their gaming GPUs (for obvious reasons) a much bigger part of Nvidia's operation is now providing specialised hardware for AI.
Re: Square Enix Wants 70% of Its QA and Debugging Work Done by Gen AI
@RobN Remember one of the reasons why QA testers are professionals who are separate from the people who actually made the game is because part of their job is doing bizarre, crazy weird stuff actual players will do but which the game designers would never think of, because only a crazy idiot would do something like that.
That is, good QA work is very creative. It's about coming up with the weird things no one in their right mind would ever think to do and seeing if it breaks something. As you say, AI is bad at creativity.
EDIT: Good QA testing is skilled work. It's not mindless grunt work anyone can do. One of the reasons why buggy launches have become much more common is because people (including gamers) have stopped giving QA testers the respect and resources they need, which means the bugs aren't being caught before launch.
Re: Xbox Boss Believes Sony's Strategy of Console Exclusives Is 'Antiquated'
"Company about to leave the console market with it's tail between it's legs believes the strategy of both successful console manufacturers is antiquated"
Re: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 (PS5) - A Disastrously Paced, Technical Mess of a Sequel
@ShogunRok Thank you. As much as I and others loved the original, it did take so long to not be a commercial flop that it killed the developer. A new Bloodlines game had to both have everything that made the original great while also being something people who never played the original want to play. It doesn't seem that this game has managed either of those sadly.
Re: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 (PS5) - A Disastrously Paced, Technical Mess of a Sequel
@ShogunRok You mention the original several times, but being a cult classic it's a game more people have heard of than actually played. Have you played it? Also, how familiar are you with Vampire the Masquerade?
Re: UK Players Using Death Stranding 2 on PS5 to Bypass Porn Blocks
I'm told clips from the 1980's music video "Never Gonna Give You Up" work to.
Yup, if you're in the UK you can now rickroll the online safey act.
Re: Best inFAMOUS Games
One thing I really loved about this series is how the karma upgrades influenced playstyle. Typically, the goody upgrades would be things like "enemies have glowing weak spots that do bonus damage if you hit them" while the evil ones would be things like "rapid fire" or explosions.
This means that if you're a goody your powers push you towards you a very precise playstyle, while if you're evil your powers are pushing towards a playstyle that creates much more "collateral damage".
Re: Astro Bot Is Getting Even More Free DLC Challenge Levels Next Month on PS5
Astrobot truly is the gift that keeps on giving. Don't think I'll ever get to a point where I wouldn't welcome more of it!
Re: Diablo 4's Berserk Crossover DLC Costs an Insane $150
"The players outside looked from Diablo IV to Diablo Immortal, and from Diablo Immortal to Diablo IV, and from Diablo IV to Diablo Immortal again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
Re: Until Dawn Game Writers Aren't in the Movie's Credits, and Some Aren't Happy About It
If this movie was based on a novel called "Until Dawn", the author of the book would be in the credits.
Re: Rumour: New Deus Ex Game Pitched, But Publishers Aren't Biting
@TruestoryYep I don't think you understood my comment. At no point did I say or suggest that art and media weren't allowed to explore real world issues. I agree with you that they can and in many cases, should.
The original Deus Ex also spoke about real world issues (and philosophy- so much philosophy!). From this I'm going to assume you never played the original, otherwise you'd know that it did talk about relevant real world issues- including every issue you mentioned- in a much more intelligent and considered way than Human Revolution or Mankind Divided did.
These newer games didn't discuss these issues in the same depth as the original game did, they merely inherited bits of setting due to being a prequel. Straying away from the well written core of the original is why today when people talk about how great Deus Ex is it's the original that gets reinstalled, and people only mention the Adam Jensen duology to meme about people not asking for things.
I'm assuming a new Deus Ex game would be a reboot- after all to quote the creator of Deus Ex, if you made that game now "it might be perceived as a documentary". So it would have to be about contemporary conspiracy theories. Otherwise you're throwing out a key part of the series identity, so it should be a new series. If not, you're just mangling an IP in the hope that name recognition will increase sales but all that ever does is dissapoint fans of the series because they know it's soul is missing.
When you consider how sinister modern conspiracy theories are- the way they're weaponised by online influencers and have caused riots and real people to be murdered, I don't think a game about those is a good idea. By all means explore real world issues, but if you make a Deus Ex game- make a proper Deus Ex game. But right now that would be a game about the world as QAnon sees it, and I don't think making that game is a good idea. I think it crosses the line to "deeply irresponsible".
Re: Marathon Maker Thinks Players Are Too Toxic for Proximity Chat in New PS5 Game
@RBMango Proximity chat is a feature that works better in theory than in practise, precisely because of how people behave on the internet. Running a community (which is what anyone running a multiplayer game is doing) requires deciding standards for behaviour that are enforcible. The general situation we have is that those standards are lower in online spaces than in face to face ones. It is not foolish to think "well how can we prevent our new games community devolving into the endless stream of slurs that every other online shooter has become". It's not a waste of time to think about how the gameplay and social features of a game will shape it's community, it is something that not enough game developers are putting thought into which is why so many games communities are cess pits where people behave in ways that they never would in a face to face interaction. It is in fact crucial especially with how much more focus certain interests now have in how online interactions work. And if a feature isn't working in practise how it is in theory, then whether or not it's actually working at all is debateable (especially if the problem is the community abusing the feature to misbehave online)
I am genuinely fascinated by how many people seem to think that Bungie and other developers just shouldn't think or do anything about how people behave in their games community. Especially as you all seem to acknowledge that well adjusted people in face to face interactions or phone calls etc don't behave anything like the way online gamers do. Why are we so opposed to dragging online gamers up to the same basic standards of decency and civility that western civilisation agreed upon decades ago?
Re: Marathon Maker Thinks Players Are Too Toxic for Proximity Chat in New PS5 Game
@RBMango I don't think you understood my comment. The points I made were about implementation of a feature and how that implementation would effect the games community, which is a developer focussed view of a proximity chat toggle feature. Choosing not to play extraction shooters is not really an option for Bungie when deciding how this feature should work.
Re: Marathon Maker Thinks Players Are Too Toxic for Proximity Chat in New PS5 Game
@LifeGirl Well, actually no. People in real life physical spaces treat each other much better than people online do. It's a form of minor sociopathy- when a human being is in front of you and you can see them your brain registers them as human and you end up treating them with basic human decency. Too many people are incapable of making that realisation during online interactions, and so behave much worse. You don't need "censorship" to make people behave better. It is not censorship for online spaces to expect people to treat each other the way they would if they were speaking face to face.
As for a toggle to enable or disable this- how would you implement it? Do other players know if you've turned this off? Will they then find other ways to harrass you for that choice? Does the way disabling this feature effect communication give your team a disadvantage (and thus create more toxicity for players choosing to disable proximity chat?)
Re: PS5 Pro Version of Assassin's Creed Shadows Rivals Ultra High-End PCs, Says Ubisoft
Crossbit is right. When it comes to high end PC gaming, that's the pro. No compromises- no choosing "graphics", "performance" or "balance"- just crank everything up to max and play at high frame rates anyway.
The con is that the hardware to be able to do this costs about as much as between 6-8 PS5 Pros (depending on how much shopping around you do)
Re: PS5 vs Switch 2: Full Tech Specs Comparison
This is like comparing a toaster to an oven. Both are food preparation devices but the use case of each is so radically different a direct comparison is utterly meaningless.
Re: Rumour: New Deus Ex Game Pitched, But Publishers Aren't Biting
This is a terrible idea. There isn't a worse year to start making a Deus Ex game than 2025. Look back at the original- it's about chem trails, men in black, black helicopters- the idea behind Deus Ex's setting isn't "Look! Cool cybernetics!" it's "this is the world where every conspiracy theory is true", with 1990's conspiracy theories.
Do you really want to see the 2020's version of that?
Re: As If Ronaldo Wasn't Enough, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Adds Real-Life DJ to Roster
Conveniently for the genre of the game he's starring in, he does have a punchable face.
(Not a serious call for violence, just a nod towards the weirdness of these "celebrities" saying "yeah, sure I think it's great to put my face on a virtual punching bag!")
Re: Talking Point: What Are Your Thoughts on Potential $80 PS5 Games?
I have paid £80 for a game before, that was when I was a kickstarter backer for Pillars of Eternity (and £80 back then was more than it is now due to inflation). I didn't regret paying that much for this extremely not AAA game because the amount of enjoyment I got from that game was worth it. That's what determines how much I'm willing to pay for game- how much fun I think I'll get from it.
So, yeah, if the game really, really appeals to me on a "need to play this ASAP" level, I'll pay £80 for it. But games like that only come out once or twice in an entire console generation.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows a Big Sales Hit in US, Beaten Only By Monster Hunter Wilds
First it was "ah but those are just players, lets see what the sales are like!" (as if putting a game on a subscription service for the purpose of attracting subscribers and it doing so was somehow failing), now it's "ah, but sales don't matter because share price."
At this point this game could cause the second coming of Jesus and ensure our salvation from all Earthly ills, and some oik on YouTube would still tell us it failed, because what about unearthly ills?
Re: GTA 6 Building Anticipation by Holding Back Marketing Until Closer to PS5 Release
I agree that holding back on marketting is a good idea. Don't let the hype train get to full speed until it's close to it's destination, because the longer it spends at top speed the more likely it is to go out of control and end up off the rails. And that's a great way to have a dissapointing launch.
Re: Reaction: Sony's Licensing Strategy May Be the Best Route to Reviving Some of PlayStation's Lost Classics
If some developer has an idea to do something cool with an IP Sony's not using, it makes perfect sense to license the IP out. Sony gets some extra money for basically doing nothing, the developer gets a bit more media attention by bringing back a cult classic (which helps the games find an audience and be successful) and fans get to see dormant things they love revived. As long as the game is good it seems like an easy "everybody wins" kind of deal.
Re: Ubisoft Spins Off Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six into New Subsidiary with Tencent
@glennthefrog Tentpole releases as important to a company as AC Shadows is don't get released on a subscription service as anything other than deliberate strategy. It is on a subscription service, Ubisofts primary goal with this game is to get subscribers. Therefore the only sensible ways to measure the games success should include it's performance with subscribers. Trying to measure the games success without taking subscribers into account is foolish at best, disingenuous and deceptive at worst. I would prefer to see figures like "how many people signed up to [whatever Ubisoft are calling this cursed thing this week] and then played AC shadows before anything else" (that is, how many people subbed for AC Shadows) and the average playtime of subscribers (that is, how long did it hook in and keep the interest of those subscribers). But that sort of info will take a long time to measure. Subscriptions are a long term strategy. By the time Ubisoft have that information, the grifters will have moved on and no one will be talking about AC Shadows anymore.
Re: Ubisoft Spins Off Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six into New Subsidiary with Tencent
@KawakiisaFraud Why would Ubisoft launch a game on their subscription service and then measure it's success in a way that doesn't take into account people playing it on that subscription service? Don't they want people to subscribe to their subscription service? If not, why did they put one of their biggest games on it?
The mental gymnastics to discount player numbers as a metric of success when the publishers primary strategy is subscriptions- not sales- is ludicrous.
Re: Marvel Cosmic Invasion Is Your Next Must Play PS5, PS4 Beat-'em-Up
Ah, but will it be better than Zvitor's fan games?
I'm looking forward to this, I was just thinking earlier today that we're about due an official Marvel Beat Em Up.
Re: Cristiano Ronaldo's Inclusion in Fatal Fury PS5, PS4 Is Confusing Some Fans
Real people in fighting games is weird, because you're going to have three camps.
1: Gamers who don't care.
2: Gamers who do care and want to play as the real person because they're fans.
3: Gamers who do care because they hate the real person and would like to simulate eviscerating them.
I'm wondering if anyone mentioned the folks in camp 3 when they were discussing this idea with Ronaldo.
Re: 80+ PS5, PS4 Games You Should Buy in PS Store's Spring Sale
If you're interested in thought provoking story telling, Pentiment and The Forgotten City are both all time classic games I can't recomend highly enough.
Re: Of Course Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Has Been Delayed Again
This game has spent more time in torpor than most antediluvians.
Re: Tekken 8 Set to Make Baffling System Change in Season 2, Fans Lose Their Minds
While in many fighting games blocking attacks (punches, kicks- non throws) deal some chip damage, in Tekken blocking blocks all damage. IIRC in 8 there are some heat attacks which deal chip damage- I stopped playing Tekken 8 13 months ago- but the rule in Tekken is "no chip damage" and always has been.
So throws dealing chip damage when most attacks don't is especially strange- much stranger than throws doing chip damage in (say) Mortal Kombat.
Re: Journalist Apologises for Adding Fuel to the 'Final Fantasy 16 Flopped on PS5' Fire
The funny thing about all the "FFXVI failed because it didn't launch on multiple platforms" thing is... well, Final Fantasy doesn't usually launch on multiple platforms. Only twice has a mainline Final Fantasy game launched on more than one platform*- XIII and XV. Neither of which are hailed as high points for the series' success. And in both cases, the two platforms at launch were a Playstation and an Xbox, and the sales split between those platforms was roughly 80/20 in favour of Playstation. And both of those launches were before Gamepass (which has, whether we like it or not, changed people's purchasing habits especially on Xbox)
The narrative about FFXVI being a flop is a game of telephone. The quote you see is "didn't meet SE expectations", initially reported as "didn't meet SE high expectations". The actual quote from the shareholder briefing that this came from was "didn't meet the high end of SE expectations"- which implies that it hit the low or mid range of SE expecations. This meeting also stated that FFXVI was profitable. It's not "a flop" if it's made a profit.
*Even XI and XIV- the two MMO's announced for multiple platforms had styaggered launches between those platforms. XI launched on PS2 then PC 6 months later, and while FFXIV was announced for PS3 and PC, the initial launch of 1.0 in 2010 was PC exclusive, PS3 didn't get the game until A Realm Reborn- almost three years later (which was for the best)
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Now Surpasses 2 Million Players in Two Days
@SleepyNick Player numbers mean everything. The games industry has changed. Ubisoft put this on their subscription service day one because their primary goal isn't to sell copies of this game, it's to sell subscriptions. Player numbers (that is, a metric that includes how well Ubisofts primary goal of using this game to keep and increase subscribers) is the only metric for measuring "success" that matters now. They're "hoping" for 0 copies sold because that would mean everyone playing it did so by buying their subscription. That is, they'd rather have 2 million people playing it on the subscription than selling 2 million copies of the game.
This is because due to how people think about subscriptions, they often end up paying more money to play a game on subscription than if they'd just bought a copy. People will sub for a month to play the new game, and then forget to unsub and 8 months later they're still subbed for that one game, having paid more in sub fees than a copy of the game would cost.
Re: Another PS5 Live Service Title Does a Concord, Game and Dev to Close Two Weeks After PS5 Launch
One issue with the live service market compared to other genres is it doesn't let players go. I'll use an example. You play Astrobot, you have a wonderful time with it, you finish with the game and you think "I'm going to see what other platformers are on PS5!"- that is, liking one platformer puts you in the market for more platformers. Similarly, liking Dark Souls puts you in the market for more soulslike games.
But live service games don't end- if you like one of them you keep playing that one game. You don't finish with it and start thinking "Oh, I really liked this live service game, I'm going to see what other ones I can play" because the live service game you liked didn't end. The game never lets you go and so you don't go looking for more games like it.
This means that it takes fewer games in this genre before the market is saturated and can't support more games in this genre.
It sucks as always that people are losing their jobs and I hope these folks can quickly get jobs elsewhere in the industry. I also hope that publishers stop trying to further saturate what is already a full market place because at this point it's just throwing away money and people's livelihoods.
Re: Tekken 8 Boss Katsuhiro Harada Schools Fan Over 'Disrespectful' Response to Anna PS5 DLC
So I like the new design. Frankly, Anna is exactly the sort of person who would only ever wear the same outfit twice if it was complete unavoidable so it's entirely in character for her to turn up in a new, cool, stylish outfit.
However, if you've been keeping up with Tekken 8... the classic Anna looks are almost certainly going to be in Tekken 8. They'll turn up in the Tekken Shop, and each cost 400 coins. And no, ofcourse you can't just buy 400 Tekken coins- the smallest amount you can buy is 500 coins.
TLDR- classic Anna costumes coming soon to a microtransaction near you!
Re: PSN Downtime Raises Fresh Questions About PS5's Future Functionality
It is a first world problem, but it's a first world problem that only exists because companies created it. And maybe they shouldn't be creating problems.
Re: GTA 5 Sells an Utterly Ludicrous 210 Million Copies
For context, the single best selling games console of all time is the PS2 on 160 million units. This one game (due to people double and even triple dipping) has sold more units than any console ever produced.
And GTAV is not even that good.
Re: Following Ferocious PC Backlash, PSN Accounts Will Become Optional But Offer In-Game Rewards
@twitchtvpat A microsoft account is required for most games on PC- not only microsoft ones. You need a Microsoft account to run Windows, and most PC games (including every Sony one) lists a version of Windows in it's spec- meaning these games do not (officially) work on other operating systems.
Re: Square Enix Backtracks, Suggesting Tifa Isn't Best Girl After All (for Cloud)
Well, there is an objective way to measure this. Who has the best Gold Saucer date in the original game?
That makes the best girl Barret.
Re: Dragon Age: The Veilguard, FC 25 Underperform, Force EA to Lower Financial Forecast
@Oram77 Yes, there are reasons Jade Empire didn't sell well. But when judging the statement about Veilguard being "Bioware's worst performing game"- a statement made without caveats- all that has to be done to disprove that statement is pull out one game with worse sales figures. There can be all sorts of reasons why a game performed less well than Veilguard did, but those aren't relevant to the question of "did Jade Empire perform less well than Veilguard did". Only the number is relevant for that. But Oram, the fact that this is a Bioware action RPG from peak Bioware that you have never heard of speaks volumes as to how well it did.
I agree completely that Veilguard has done badly though, but you need extensive caveats to claim that it's "Bioware's worst performing games"- caveats that basically rule out Bioware's entire back catalogue. UnlimitedSevens point about how sales figures expectations have changed is a fair one after all. But it does mean the only meaningful comparison you can make sales figures wise is with Andromeda and Anthem (especially as Veilguards "12 million sales" figure took about a decade to get to). When you're only talking about three games from a company that's been around for a quarter of a century, statements like "Biowares worst performing game" just feel dubious to me.
@UnlimitedSevens I hope you do check out Jade Empire and that you enjoy it as much as I did!
Re: Dragon Age: The Veilguard, FC 25 Underperform, Force EA to Lower Financial Forecast
@Oram77 Over roughly the same period that Veilguard sold 1.5 million units, Jade Empire managed 500,000.
Because 500,000 is a smaller number than Veilguard, Jade Empire is closer to being "Bioware's worst performing game" than Veilguard is. I couldn't say for certain that other games performed less well- Baldurs Gate 2 taking 10 years to get to 2 million sales suggests that at the three month mark it also hadn't hit 1.5 million, but I can't tell you that for certain. Neverwinter Nights also took about 4 years to hit Veilguard's sales figures (and due to it's almost Elder Scrolls modding scene NWN has had a ridiculously long tail)
But yeah, this saddens me because Jade Empire is an amazing game and if sales figures were related to quality, it would be one of if not the best selling Bioware game.
Re: Full Until Dawn Movie Trailer Reveals New Time Loop, Out 25th April
@RBMango this looks very much like it's from the corner of horror movies where you find things like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Halloween" which are traditionally lower budget movies (all horror tends to be, to be fair, but these sorts of films are cheap even by horror movie standards).
I think this could be quite good. I hope they've not spoiled too much of it in the trailer though. At the very least Peter Stormare will be fantastic, because he always is.
Re: Square Enix Vows to Deny Toxic Fans Its Wonderful Games, Services
@JokerBoy322 The reason why a policy like this has examples listed within it is so that moderators know exactly what the policy means by "socially acceptable behaviour". But even so, a well adjusted person can criticise a corporations products without engaging in "action against one of our employees or partners"- that is without making it personal. I am fully confident that I can continue to criticise SE and this policy won't effect that, because I can do that without harassing a person.
If you're capable of criticising without making personal attacks, there is no part of this policy that can be creatively misinterpreted against you. I am sanguine about people who can't do that getting bans.
Re: Square Enix Vows to Deny Toxic Fans Its Wonderful Games, Services
@JokerBoy322
So, the term we're defining is "actions that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful." The only difficulty here is that this is actually two definitions- "socially acceptable behaviour" and "harmful". Lets start with “Socially acceptable behaviour”- it means “act like a well adjusted and sane member of society”. If you’re not sure what that means, ask your parent or guardian as it’s their job to teach you this.
“Harmful” means “causing or likely to cause harm”. It’s a word in the dictionary so it’s not vague at all.
The examples they give of the sort of thing they’re trying to clamp down on tend towards “harmful” rather than “exceed socially acceptable behaviour”. But the sort of actions they’re trying to discourage are made clear by the examples listed.That is, the policy itself defines this phrase through the examples listed.
I don’t think they’re doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. I think they’ve seen what some of their voice actors et al have been put through over the last year by morons on the internet and felt they had to do something- but then realised all they could do was this frankly weak response. The most significant part of this policy is “Where such action is egregious or with malicious intent, Square Enix reserves its right to protect its employees and partners and to take legal action or criminal proceedings upon consulting the police and/or lawyers “- you don’t think someone at SE is going to phone the police on you just for criticism, do you?
You are projecting- a tactic I’ve seen many people like you use. The idea is to accuse other people of what you are doing. You are trying to gaslight people into thinking a policy made in response to people like Sena Bryer being inundated by death and rape threats, and whose wording makes it clear that it’s trying to protect SE’s employees and contractors from disgusting behaviour is attempting to regulate interactions that don’t involve SE’s employees or contractors at all. That is a misreading of the policy that seems intentional. Your only weapon is misinformation, because the facts don’t support you. The reason you didn’t provide a quote that could conceivably mean what you claim this policy is saying is because no such quote exists.
Re: Square Enix Vows to Deny Toxic Fans Its Wonderful Games, Services
@JokerBoy322
I have presented quotes that reinforce my argument that this policy does not prevent criticism. You have failed to provide quotes to support your interpretation. I have asked you to explain what set of behaviours would fall foul of this policy but you think is an acceptableway to behave. You have failed to give an example of what acceptable behaviour would be disallowed by this policy. I have explained how this policy does not do what you claim it does. You have presented no evidence to contradict any of the points I have made.
You said the policy says that they’ll ban you for criticising them. Quote the part of the policy that could conceivably be interpreted in that way, remembering that the policy is very clear about it being about actions "that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful".
Re: Square Enix Vows to Deny Toxic Fans Its Wonderful Games, Services
@JokerBoy322 I suggest you read the policy as that is not what it says.
Re: Square Enix Vows to Deny Toxic Fans Its Wonderful Games, Services
@JokerBoy322 The policy is about behaviour that is "that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful" and helpfully includes examples of this. In the context of what SE employees and contractors have been subjected to recently this is clearly a reaction to that in an attempt to protect their employees and contractors. Asserting otherwise with no reasoning or evidence is not a convincing argument. As I said, SE executives have already publically asked people to stop harrassing their employees and contractors.
As for the idea that this is somehow about "bullying customers" to protect against criticism, I'm not seeing how. I can (and will continue to) criticise SE without resorting to actions "that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful" (because I have thoughts about Chaotic Alliance Raids and TT card drop rates!) and I'm sure many others are capable of that to. Do you have examples of what sort of behaviour or criticism you think this policy is designed to protect against that doesn't involve behaviour "that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful"? Or failing that, can you explain why you think anyone should be allowed to behave in a way "that exceeds socially acceptable behaviour or is harmful"?
Re: Square Enix Vows to Deny Toxic Fans Its Wonderful Games, Services
@JokerBoy322 With what's happened to Sena Bryer since she voiced a character in the latest FFXIV expansion, they are absolutely talking about harassment. This isn't the first time in the last 6 months that executives from SE have publically said "hey, stop harassing the voice actors".
Re: PS5 Pro Bettered as Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Reveals PC Specs, Features
It's not terribly surprising that if you look at how much a PS5 pro costs and think "I'm going to spend more than that on just the graphics card" that you end up with a machine that runs games better than a PS5 pro does.
Re: Ubisoft 'Deeply Disturbed' by Abuse Allegations at Assassin's Creed Shadows Support Studio
@PuppetMaster While true, PMG were working on this video since September last year, and also covered the issue of how outsourcing in SE Asia studios (including Brandoville, and another studio called lemonsky) treat their employees back in 2021 (a video called "How Game Publishers Buy Crunch Overseas"). Also, it's old news but as the video states, it's not being reported in the west that studios working with a lot of AAA games (Brandoville worked on The Last of Us remember and others) is treating it's employees like this has gone shamefully under reported by western gaming media such as, you know, this very website (and every other western gaming media type magazine and website).
Re: Square Enix Insists Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Hasn't Been the PS5 Sales Disaster It's Been Painted As
This reminds me of when FFXVI has been out for three months and in an investor call SE's president that the game was profitable but "hadn't met the high end of our expectations". And everyone reported that as "FFXVI hasn't met SE's high expectations" and claimed the game was a commercial failure.
While it's clear that many SE games aren't meeting the high end of their expectations, that doesn't mean they're commercial failures.
If FFVII Rebirth failed, they won't expect the third one to succeed and therefore won't make it. But as far as I can tell, cancelling that game hasn't been considered, so Rebirth probably wasn't a disaster.
Re: Random: Former IGN China Editor Refutes Game Science Crying Claim
@get2sammyb I understand what you're trying to say, but the way the games industry wants to use it is an evolutionary dead end. AI is (at best) generating work derivative of what human beings have already made- AI generated content will never innovate, that is simply not how this technology works. However, these AI models improve by being fed more and better data- AI image generation improves as it looks at more images. Therefore in order for AI image generation (for example) to get better it needs human artists to be imaginative and to create new and interesting art.
Now executives in the games industry want to use AI to replace human created work. If they succeed in doing that, where the does the new and imaginative artwork that the next generation of AI models need to improve come from? Now it's already been noticed by fans of AI that some models feel like regressions on previous models- this is because these models are learning from other AI generated content and thus rather than improving, they're just reinforcing the standard errors AI generated works already have. The amount of AI content out there is already making some models get worse over time, not better.
The other use of AI I hear people talk about is minor writing. Ambient dialogue, side quests etc- not main story writing though. But those are the entry level jobs of writing in video games. You look at most writers in video games and you'll see there earlier credits are doing the stuff companies like Ubisoft want AI to be doing. So if AI is going to take the entry level writing jobs, where does the next generation of main writers come from?
And that's before we get onto discussing quality. Have you ever played Sleeping Dogs? Do you think an AI doing ambient dialogue could come up with a character as memorable as the Pork Bun vendor?
Short term using AI could save a lot of rich people a lot of money, but long term it's going to lead to even less innovation and even less new ideas- which is not the direction the games industry should be moving in if we want PS7 to have great games. I do agree that the technology has potential use, but I think the plans the games industry currently has are not good.