“The team today is about the same size we were when making Doom 2016”

This quote is an interesting point. It’s still gone through some really bad churn, including Mick Gordon, which doesn’t make me trust them. But I would at least agree most studios have been over-hiring around COVID times into 100x their original size to try to make games 100x more epic. Telltale Games was the one I could most easily point to - having completed one major hit (TWD) and then trying to put their hands into 20 different pies to make 20 hits.

There’s some MBA views on growth that are just over-fantastical around game development. Nintendo and Valve have both done some shitty stuff, but they at least hold their cards, maintain cash reserves, don’t buy into sectors, and thus don’t end up nuking their own company.

What I would’ve liked to see from studios like id is: “Okay, we only need our team to be this large for Doom 2016. Now that we’ve hired this many people, we could split them into multiple studios each trying out interesting new ideas”.

That’s risk-prone, but if they want to avoid risk…just get out of game development. They’re even seeing failing returns on things like Call of Duty (and in the past decade, Halo) when those franchises get over-saturated.

The Republican investments into Umbrella Corporation really paying off.

To his credit, I seriously never thought console holders would be THAT hostile about purchases. Up until now, the “Sony might delete your digital games” line was always a phantom theoretical.

This suggests they’re capitalizing on the financial benefits of having low account security. Not a good look for their profit motives.

Personal ownership of games is definitely a problem we should try to solve, but I have doubts that forced use of expensive cartridges are the right way to do it. Devices are just simpler without the need to interface with those mediums. Supposedly many console failures related to the disc drive.

SKG’s approach is legislative - mandating an end of life plan for any games using servers. Even something as simple as use of Denuvo servers might need to become DRM-free if the alternative is to just takedown the servers (but honestly, it’s surprising they don’t just end the Denuvo subscriptions when sales taper off, which would basically serve the same case)

Supposedly, this is a lot of the job of prostitutes now.

Although strangely, the specific example I’m reminded of is Manny in Grim Fandango luring the security guard to a back room, only for her to want to give him her life story.

I readily acknowledge mobile numbers have risen fast across the board, but I think a lot of people are wrong about it being quickly comparable or “taken” from console sales. They’re just not as convertible as industry pundits might claim.

Finally relented to an upgrade to get new drivers and stop Resident Evil Requiem from freezing.

Much love as this grants me, I still hope for a modern game about killing Nazis.

I still don’t think nuclear war is quite as likely as we picture.

You ever see the clip of two dogs barking at each other through fences? Then the fence opens and they go super-tame?

Cowardly despots like threatening action, and sending action out long-distance. But they piss their pants about any action that might come anywhere close to them, and there are no fully effective nuclear defense strategies.

I’ll try not to water the hope too much, but the other issue is the vast number of people who supported and still supported him. That much willful hatred of America (wrapped in wordy claims of loving America) is potentially very damaging regardless.

The good news is, a lot was developed into religious fanaticism around the man himself. The GOP has been trying to harness and weaponize it, but mostly seems to fail.

This is a valid observation, but also much more widespread than just Sony.

Xbox, Google Android, Apple, Oculus; there’s probably others. Many electronics companies have made devices that can only interface with their own App Store, in a digital fashion.

And that’s not me excusing it. A perfect world should probably have alternatives - but it does also make one worry that in that future, manufacturers wouldn’t have any incentive to sell their consoles under manufacturing costs.

Something the lawsuit may have to deal with is whether Sony can be aggressively forced into building a disc reader into consoles, in a world where many devices have no such thing.

To be clear, at this point you are not insulting Graham Platner on the idea that he’s a Nazi. You are directly insulting every single voter that doesn’t recognize all Nazi symbols offhand; because all of them were identifying with his excuse. I’m not a Mainer, but otherwise I was one of them.

Easy on a technical level, yes, but also harder to define in a legal document level.

A game counts - obvious. Does a game demo count? Does one piece of microtransaction DLC count in a F2P game? How does a legal document define those things?

Now that scrutiny is on it, it seems like people would’ve preferred they define this granularly. But at the time, I’m going to guess they decided it wasn’t worth legal risk of having people they did not reserve the right to delete, but also needed to delete for GDPR.

I was that day years old when I learned what a totenkopf was. A basic picture would’ve made me say “Oh, nice pirate tattoo.” Even after he gets the tattoo, it wouldn’t come up in conversation much if it’s under his shirt, and not in his own field of vision.

I have watched movies about the holocaust and that particular symbol never comes up. I don’t know why people so readily assume it must be common knowledge.

“But you know now!” Yes! And so did Graham! So what’s the point?

2B is a combat android built to fight machine lifeforms. Moreover, she’s staunchly anti-emotion, a veil which only breaks slowly over the course of the game. She wears a miniskirt and a provocative thong. The resulting outfit just feels kind of brazen, as well as staunchly contrasting the scifi mood of the game. Satisfying, if you swing that way, but if you don’t, it just feels like a loud reminder: “This game was made by a basement manga author”. What’s worse, there ARE many character designs out there that would fit the theme of “Emotionless combat android who slowly admits to her emotions” but also have a sexy appearance. Horny kinda overrode fitting character designs. Oh yeah; and they build in a mechanic to strip her clothes.

XC2 builds half of its premise around an intrinsic “bond” between Pyrah and Rex. It’s often very physical, and Pyrah is kind of forced into it. In addition, there’s a pretty large number of scenes that are very factory-printed gooner anime moments: Trying to get the girls to wear maid outfits. An inventor making his own cute-girl android. A Hot Springs scene with zero creativity to it. On top of that, the core gameplay involves a gacha to draw other “blades”, many of whom fit right in with something like Goddess of Victory.

When I know what I’m getting, I’m totally okay with horny-driven designs. When someone is baited by other elements like a fun adventure, I can’t totally blame them for feeling they were trapped into scenes like those.

And, just to calm some statements: I do think a game can be based around sexy women without being misogynistic. It’s tricky, Bayonetta is definitely a great example though.

“Rent everything, own nothing” is a complete non sequitor. Ori and the Will of the Wisps came out. I could buy it, in which case I own it forever on my Microsoft account, or if it’s a game I have less confidence in, I could play it on Game Pass. And if I only have mild interest, then at some point if/when it’s removed or I unsubscribe, I don’t care.

I get so fucking irate at these doomfantasizers that claim because a rental method exists, games are being “stolen” from them and the purchase option is being killed. This is why no analyst worth their salt listens to gamers.

Ensuring games we buy still run after 10 years is mostly a technical challenge, which we should still try to push devs to finish by legislation. It is not a war game makers are actively fighting against (Xbox even put HUGE amounts of effort into helping you emulate your old x360 games). I’m all for preservation, but so often picturing it as a battle against a corporate boogeyman really exaggerates their role.

Make this claim about a city’s subway system. Or Market Basket’s rotisserie chicken.

Your numerical claim around profit is irrelevant because it gets people in the door - both new gamers, and new developers. They were making bank not just on game purchases, but DLC, games outside of Game Pass, etc.

They could make a new Halo, that goes past even normal numbers. They don’t even have to settle for billions of gamers. They could call it…Halo Infinite.

Do they?

Please prove that every single PSN account has digital software purchases on it. EVERY single one.

If you fail, you’re liable for GDPR and are holding customer data past its use!

Yes, but not every single PSN account has any software licenses. Some people are just playing F2P games or subbing to PS+.

But, it’s trickier to word their clause in such a way that it only specifically applies to free accounts.