Let's colonise a distant galaxy. What's the worst that could happen?
The Outerhaven says: $80 video games, Grand Theft Auto VI delay, Polygon and Giant Bomb gutted, and the lack of crossplay in Elden Ring Nightreign in Spectator Mode Podcast Ep. 186.
Former Santa Monica Studio writer Alanah Pearce has shared some insight on the game industry, and it's not great.
AAA has gone downhill as they focus on huge profits. Indie and other smaller games however have been amazing not chasing trends and the next big thing.
In all honesty, a significant majority of indies and smaller games fail. At best a you might hear about 10-20 indies that get attention or do well, but 100s more fail. AAA games can still be the bread and butter of the industry, but greedy executives would kill a good game if it doesn't make them a lot of money
I don’t game much anymore as i used to. Last big game i played was Stellar Blade. Almost didn’t touch the console since.
I don’t have much backlog for the first time in a long time. Maybe others enjoy what’s coming, but I’m losing feeling a little
Nail on the head. AAA has lost the magic and focused on profits and "player engagement". Gaming is an art form, and like always the CEO fat cats roll in to capitalize at the cost of innovation, passion, wild experimentation. We need a major realignment in the industry and it starts with gamers voting with their wallets.
I think that's already happening, we're seeing commercial successes in studios like Larion and whoever made Kingdom Come for example. Double Fine is another good example. Studios who are filled with and run by people who give a fuck that aren't hamstrung by money men. That's the answer and consumers are favouring it more than the soulless AAAs that have been put out. I don't doubt there is talent at Ubisoft for example but when they're told exactly what the end product needs to be by people who don't know what consumers actually want, it's always going to result in the same rehashed but slightly shinier slop.
Exactly. I do believe we are starting to see a shift in consumer habits. The market is saturated with GaaS and battlepasses, seasons, etc. We can't all play the same four games until the end of time. Fatigue is setting in and the industry needs to get back to making new experiences rather than chasing the latest "money maker".
I was wondering whether this is perception or actually happening but it feels to me, as a semi old gamer, there is more choice than ever and as such people are now much choosier about how they spend their time and money gaming. Certainly noticing this when it comes to GaaS as you mentioned, the question always has to be why would I play this instead of what I'm already playing. Anthem is going to have a real hard time prying away people, especially with a premium price tag that screams money men as a decision.
Nah. Devs need to pay the bills. Uninspired games fail, but artsy games usually fail even harder.
Gamers are voting with their wallets, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Expedition 33, games made by passionate developers who are not being controlled by money men are seeing their work get universal praise and selling extremely well. Meanwhile Outlaws and Veilguard are underperforming. I wonder how many people Ubi and EA had working on those games, in comparison Sandbox have just a core development team of 30 and managed to put something out EA and Ubi can only dream of.
The underlying problem though lays with how EA and Ubi execs react to these sort of things. Seems like they'd rather just lay off good developers and focus their efforts on their cash cows as opposed to change their development philosophies.
She didn't even call out Stanfield's PNG file planets when she flew through one. She just 'yelled' something stupid like 'flat earth'. She wasn't even taken aback in the slightest. I am not sure she isn't a part of the problem.
She's always been a narcissist bimbo, I'm even more surprised she's not in only fans yet.
I wasn't sure of the actual number of years just seemed like it wasn't that long ago when I heard that she got a job as a writer there, guess time flies. 4 years being "pretty good" or not is subjective depending on ones perspective. The question might be, was four years long enough to make a discernible writing contribution to a video game based on how long development cycles are these days?
She left SMS because she needed to go back to Australia to support a parent with cancer.
She quit SM studio to focus on her own stuff, There was a video where she explained all of it.
Okay, explain like the other 50 jobs she's had and hasn't held......
I think she likes to bend the truth a ton on how involved she is and when her lies catch up with her she moves on to start a new batch.
Greed , lack of innovation and agendas
Why do we rave about a good indie game but we avoid a AAA game.
The Nintendo Entertainment Podcast is here and with another wide week of news and topics to discuss, including Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition, Marvel Rivals, and of course, the Nintendo Switch 2.
First time i can say kotaku is not typical, i thought they were going to be biased like usual, omg jrpg 10/10, ew another type thats not jap!
But i stand corrected
After having played this game for about 20 hours after I started over from the trial I have done the first planets main story and set up the first colony and all I have to say is this game is actually really good. The scope of the game is so big there really hasn't been a game with such a big scope I feel. And while the planet exploration does feel a bit Like DA:I there are still set piece "dungeons". The first main "dungeon" was huge and the art was fantastic and some of the scenes were unexpected and really well done.
The story is really well done and engaging. And the companions and new main story characters are much better than I expected. I really like they if you have certain characters in your party even NPC's may have different things to say or or may not say things if a companion is with you, it's cool how they interact with your companions. This is really neat and something that they never did before that really adds depth to the companions. Starting a new colony was actually a great way to create a new beginning for the series.
I think as far as glitched animations go which aren't even that bad and probably won't even happen in your play through people need to understand that this is by far the biggest Mass Effect game to date. Things like mo-cap simply aren't reasonable expectations for a game on a scale this big.
It's really unfortunate that this game is getting bad reviews over things that are so inconsequential to the the actual game. I'm starting to get the feeling a lot of the reviewers wrote their reviews before they got far enough into the game to see what it actually has to offer.
It's sad that people I guess aren't buying this game it only hurts the series and means if there is another Mass Effect game they will scale it back. We're the losers if that happens, the gamers will get less of a game in the end. People are really missing out on what is defiantly the biggest Mass Effect and may well end up actually being the best.
I really recommend people over look what are really minor shortcomings and realize how much is really good with the game and how HUGE this game is.
You can read my prior comments which were critical of this game but please note I was always careful to point out I hadn't really played that much of it and that none of my opinions were meant to be final. Which is the same with this one, I have not yet finished the game.
I have played about 15 hours+ give or take and I agree overall with this. It is a good game with lot of content, but I feel I am hammered with so many side quests that as someone who is OCD, it feels so overwhelming to work on. I really wish all missions were broken up by planet then by priority or side quest. I am not arguing about a lot of sidequests, just so many are thrown at you all the time it's so hard to keep up and keep the balance between side missions and priority missions. The two biggest issues with this are; 1) Doing a sidequest only to get to "progress on hold" after several steps and 2), have part of the sidequest make you go to a new planet that is linked to a priority mission and going there will just add so many more side quests that trying to shrink down your list backfires.