I sort of picture this happening more often at the graphical plateau. It used to be that these franchises needed big face lifts to stay relevant, but even that can sometimes happen with a lighting update.

The other reason might be if they want to do subtractive redesigns of the core concept but I’m still not sure what that should be for The Sims.

It’s a small measure, but I’d really like to see a law where gacha games need to publicly advertise their odds and allow independent verification.

The biggest effect it would have is, the odds would need to be static. Many gacha systems have been accused of putting a hand on the wheel, assuring someone “so close to their needed item” must keep going through a series of failures.

I honestly tried to get back into it with an old account. Apparently, the entire world went up in power level with no exceptions, but not my character - meaning there was literally not a single enemy I could kill across the PVE environment to gain better gear/levels to contend with enemies.

I did not feel like making a new character or redoing the tutorial so I decided to not even bother, taking it as a sign the game was poorly thought out.

The article author honestly made a very valid point, but wrapped it up with a terrible headline.

I even feel like the PS4 and Xbox One currently serve the use case of being “the cheap consoles”. There are a number of games they cannot run or would run poorly - but for their price point they’re much more of an option for the non-wealthy, primarily in other countries. It’s like it’s all one console generation with no signs of ending, and a varying range of specs.

I’m going to agree with you, but only in the sense they hired more people than they should’ve, not that they should be firing people.

I really blame Telltale Games as one studio that demonstrated this issue in a microcosm. They had some successful games. Then they hired enough extra hands that they MUST make excellent games. Their next few games were not excellent. Then, everybody gets fired.

I mostly play new games, but I respect admiration for old games. It’s fun to see people speedrun old SNES games - but it’s disturbing to think an entire generation will just become inaccessible to history, even if a lot of the games in question were kind of bad.

I actually agree with you in the case of online multiplayer games - I don’t think the devs can keep them available forever. But when a game is singleplayer, like The Crew, it feels like planned obsolescence.

Downvoted for censoring Gamers. I will always downvote people using that stupid fucking asterisk. Don’t be a child.

It’s hard to tell if this would have been the case in past generations. I think this only became true once we crested the graphical plateau where all games look “good enough” in HD.

Myself, I count the catalog of PS+ as an “exclusive feature”, plus it’s nice to play some of the PS4 games that struggled on a better machine. I loaded my God of War save and went from 30 to 60fps, which was great (sad that it was one of few games to offer PS5 enhancements in the PS4 version)

If a PC GPU is only slightly better than a console counterpart, typically its games will run slightly worse - since it loses the benefit of devs spending time optimizing for that profile.

They do exist; but also constantly debate with stores like Steam about what can be allowed since Steam is ultimately much more visible. They make it murky with the occasional VN that’s “90% cryptic folk mystery, 5% romance, 5% visuals of non-consenting animated minors in the nude being victimized by a tentacle”.

Steam, for very understandable reasons, has waffled back and forth on whether to allow those games.

They can still kind of kill physical games with good service. The whole “honey rather than vinegar” argument.

That’s what happened with the PSVita. While overpriced game cartridges existed, most of its lifespan people were buying its games digitally which worked great for indie developers that didn’t have a budget for physical releases.

I was very close to getting a digital PS5, but I still need the drive for my old PS4 games and movies. If I were just getting into Sony now though, I imagine the story would be different.

Much as I’ve come to hate Xbox, this could be the beginning of signs of monopoly - they don’t have so much competition anymore, so they can do what they want. Certainly doesn’t help that unofficial controllers have never been good.

I won’t claim high confidence on this, but the overpenetration thing sounds wrong to me. I thought the chambering for AR-15s was naturally FMJ and piercing to some degree. Meanwhile, buckshot from a shotgun splits into many lighter projectiles that would stop at the first soft layer.

I even remember a talk from COD developers where they admitted the loud, powerful boom of a shotgun would make you think it’d go straight through walls, so they coded the game that way even though the buckshot would stop early.

I’d feel fine with someone carrying a weapon if it’s based on a reasonable fear, and they make an effort to stay trained/safe with the weapon. For instance, they exited an abusive relationship with a significant other who feels they “belong” to them.

But there’s a lot of people who stretch the statement of “I don’t feel safe” to far more cases than make sense.

To the people that worked on it, even when the result kinda sucks, there’s some level of attachment. They spent literal years of their life investing into it. That might be where the tone is coming from.

Marketers actually place these into different categories of advertising goal. One kind might just exist to make people aware of a product and its role (eg, vacuum cleaner attachment) whereas others spend longer convincing customers it’s something they want/need. There’s yet another category that I think relates more to direct advertising and isn’t as common for mass products like games.

There have definitely been times that copying other people worked out well.

Fortnite and Apex copied the BR trend when PUBG wasn’t satisfying everyone’s needs. The former even lazily reskinned a zombie defense game for the battle royale approach. Lots of games reskin the theme of Dark Souls and do okay.

Even if it’s lazy or uninventive, once in a while one of those reskins has a particular element of the concept it reinvents in a much better way. Seems Concord never came up with any such ideas, which could have been great since many people are currently tired of Overwatch specifically.

Or, The Bunkererer: Also called “Conscript”, another survival horror game about World War 1.