A recent report by Newzoo has shed light on the state of the gaming industry in 2023 and what the future holds. The report discussed the top ten games on each core platform based on Monthly Average Users (MAU) in 2023, unveiling some intriguing insights.
One striking observation was that Starfield emerged as the sole single-player game to make it to the top ten on Xbox and PC in terms of average MAU (Monthly Average Users), even without PlayStation data due to it not being released on that platform. This new franchise stood out among a list dominated by multiplayer and cooperative games, where the other titles had an average age of over seven years.
Admin Note: it should be noted that these figures are only stats from major publishers who make them available publicly and does not include all stats from all games within the same time period, which means that the stats are skewed toward the available data set and not real world data.
"Big update coming really soon" has city maps and shipbuilding improvements
The update "should be" properly revealed this week
Oh stop ✋️. Starfield is a good game. But definitely could be better. Would like some quality of life changes. Although if past games are anything to go by. Bethesda is gonna rely on the community to update the game :(
Exactly Starfield is a good game and I can't wait until we get mod support. I'm looking forward to the new update and dlc.
Its not though. If it was more people would be playing it but its long forgotten. Its average at best.
@Crows90 You are looking at numbers, numbers dont tell the whole story. What about Palworlds 90+ percent drop off, or other games like that dropped lst year? People that think starfield is bad will find “evidence “ that it is, but its just confirmation bias my friend.
eh, bethesda completely killed the sense of exploration in starfield. In fallout and elder scrolls I could walk to a mission objective only to get knee deep on a random vault/cave 3 hours later because I randomly encounter other missions on the way, in starfield it's just travelling from city to objective to city to objective again...
would've been way better if they just make 3-4 planets but with big open area each full of contents.
@armageddon
There's no bias. I played the game. Beat it. There's nothing interesting throughout the entire game...half baked systems galore. Just boring content...tons of boring content.
I have more fun throwing bread and chairs at players in chivalry 2 than in the entire Starfield experience. That's not bias...I don't care about numbers. Nobody cares about Starfield. It was a failed attempt ..maybe they'll do better with the next one.
Maybe if they give it to obsidian we'll get something awesome like fallout New Vegas. Hopefully with less bugs.
@Armageddon "you're looking at numbers, Numbers don't tell the whole story..."
Seriously? You're argument is stop giving logical evidence. And giving evidence is showing bias?? Democrat much?
My my, look at all these downvotes to people that actually like the game. Time to get a mind of your own people.
How is it not having a mind of your own to not like the game. I bought a whole series x for this and was pretty disappointed. No lore, exploration(half baked unlike their other games, and it felt like a step back), lack of lore, etc. As it stands I don't really like the game. I think it's a bad game and a huge step back. Step back is the problem as well. With that said I'll try it again after some of my complaints are fixed. Sadly though I doubt my lore issue(no books or pc's to actually read like their other games) will be fixed. Trust me I didn't spend series x money to say I didn't like the game.
I highly doubt you got a X to play it. Or played it at all. The games in the future you're not gonna find booke and their are PC's to get back story.
You're lying.
This happens far too often on here.
"Whats that?!?, you like something that I don't? Here's a down-vote to you good sir for liking something..."
(Down-votes inbound)
Literally the point of down voting is to down vote takes you don't agree with. So if most people think the game is mediocre at best then yeah praising it will get down voted.
I think that's the point. I get down votes all the time because I say stuff some people don't like or don't agree with. I didn't agree or disagree because I never played the game.
Down votes mean people disagree with the statement.
For instance. You said it happens too often and assume it's simply because people don't like what you like...that's not it...that's not the reason.
And that is why you're getting down votes.
Have you seen the Steam engagement numbers? I mean don't you guys gauage a games sucess on engagement these days? This game was slated as THE game to be played for months and years.... Allow me to save you the click its low.
What if, and hear me out here, but what if... these people actually don't like the game? I know, I know, pretty profound.
My, my, look all the upvotes to people actually not liking the game. Seems like they have a mind different than yours… maybe one that we can say is their own.
Nobody’s taking away your right to freely enjoy the game. I personally, enjoy some dumpster fire trash games. This particular one just helps cure insomnia… hell, just discussing this game is making me yawn.
Lol no. Notice how it's only known Sony fanboys that have a extreme negative reaction to this game on here. Y'all Have had this reaction since the game released. I've never seen such hate and emotional reaction over a single game in my life yet leave it to Sony fanboys like yourself to set a unwritten record of most hate for a game. Clearly just look around in this comment section.
@Lightning77
I can only speak for myself, but I bought this game, yes bought, so I’m not sure where in the hell that makes me a Sony fanboy. I own all the f*cking consoles, so quit b*thing about fanboys just because people didn’t like this game. I think it’s completely underwhelming and quite frankly one of the most boring experiences I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing.
You go ahead and like the game, bub. Nobody says you can’t, but don’t get your panties in a bunch when people voice their opinion on the game and don’t go trying to make claims it’s only fanboys that hate it.
People just don’t like it, it’s just one of those things you’ll have to learn to deal with.
No one is downvoting you because you like a game that they don't. They downvote you because you're a smug, contrarian, ignorant person that seemingly exists just to tell people they're wrong for thinking differently than you do.
Thank you Todd! Thank you Phil! Thank you team Xbox!! Thank you Bethesda! Thank you to my mom for giving birth to me so I could experience this masterpiece of a game!! This is the most amazing news I've ever heard!!! DLC to the best game ever made!!!
Let's gooooo!
!!!1!!
Cool so I bet the PS5 version with all the updates and the expansion etc releases early next year then. I'm not particularly fussed or looking to buy it given my time with the game on pc was very "meh" but importantly it will help prove a point to all those in denial claiming the reports about a starfield port were wrong.
I enjoyed the game. I wasnt into Skyrim that much but using a sci fi setting got me into this one
I was honestly super excited for it. Just found it too shallow and uninteresting. Rather play mass effect.
Video games -- particularly AAA video games -- have become too expensive to make. The intel from every fly on the wall in every investor's room is there is an increasing level of caution about spending hundreds of millions just to release a single video game. And you can't blame them. Many AAA game budgets mean that you can print hundreds of millions in revenue, and not even turn a profit. If you are an investor, quite frankly, there are many easier ways to make a buck. AAA games have always been expensive to make though, but when did we go from expensive, to too expensive? A decade ago, AAA games were still expensive to make, but fears of "sustainability" didn't keep every CEO up at night. Consumer expectations and demands no doubt play a role in this, but more and more games are also revealing obvious signs of resource mismanagement, evident by development teams and budgets spiraling out of control with sometimes nothing substantial to show for it.
It’s a question that I’ve pondered myself too. How are these developers spending this much money? Also, like the article stated, I cannot tell where it’s even going. Perfect example was used with Starfield and Spiderman 2.
They claim they have to increase prices due to development costs exploding. Okay? Well, I’m finding myself spending less and less money on games than before due to the quality actually going down. With a few recent exceptions games are getting worse.
I thought these newer consoles and game engines are easier-therefore-cheaper to make games than previous ones. What has happened? Was it over hiring after the pandemic, like other tech companies?
Costs quite a bit to maintain a team of 700+ employees. Which is what it takes to create something with state of the art fidelity and scope. Just imagine how many 3D artists you'd need to create the plethora of 3D objects in a AAA game. There's so much stuff and each asset takes time and effort.
That's atleast one of the things that didn't get easier. Also coding all the systems and creating all the character models with animations and everything. Animations alone is a huge thing because games are expected to be so detailed.
Back in the day a God of War type game was a 12 hour adventure with small levels, now it has to be this 40+ hours of stuff. Obviously it didn't have to be this way of AAA publishers hadn't convinced themselves that it's an arms race. Games probably didn't need to be this bloated and they probably didn't need to be cutting edge in fidelity.
Starfield’s animation and character models look like they are from Oblivion, a game that came out about 20 years ago. I cannot tell the difference between Spider-Man 2 and the first one at first glance. It’s been a joke in some YouTube channels.
Seven hundred people for 1 game? Make 7 games with 100 people instead. I think recent games have proven that it’s okay to have AA games, such as Hell Divers 2.
I guess I’m a bit jaded with the industry and where things are headed. Solutions seem obvious and easy, but maybe they aren’t.
@franwex
I'm not talking about Starfield.
And I'm not advocating for these behemoth productions. I think shorter development time and smaller teams would lead to better and more varied games. I want that, even if that means that we have to scale things down quite a bit.
Take something like The Last of Us 2. The amount of custom content is ridiculous if you break it down. It's no wonder they have huge teams of animators and modellers. And just to make things worse, each animated detail requires coding as well.
Just to add to animation work. It can take up to a week to make detailed walking animations. A lot of these tend to vary between character types. And then you need to do every other type of animation as well which is a task that scales quickly depending on how detailed the game is. And that's just a small aspect of AAA development. Each level might require several level designers who only do blockouts. Enviroment artists that setdress and lighting artists that work solely on lighting. Level needs scripting and testing. Each of these tasks takes a long ass time if the game is striving for realism.
Personally I prefer working on games where one level designer can do all aspects. But that's almost exclusively in indie and minor productions. It gets bloated fast.
Then there's Doki Doki Literature Club which took one person to make along with a character designer and background designer and it's absolutely brilliant.
Simply because they want you to believe it’s so expensive to develop a game that they must turn into other practices like releasing games unfinished, micro transactions and in the long run adopt the gaas model in all games..
I think game budgets are falsely inflated for tax purposes.
Just look at Godzilla Minus One. It cost less that 15 million.
If they include CEO salary and bonuses on every game and the CEO takes a 20 million dollar bonus every year for the 4 years of dev time, that's 80 million the company can claim went to "making" the game.
Yep and clogged with a bunch of corporate bs that has nothing to do with making good video games. Like diversity coordinators gender specialists. Like most jobs you have 20-30% of the workforce doing 80% of the work
I honestly think this is where a large portion of the budget goes, a significant portion to the CEO, then another large portion to the "Consultancy" group they hire. The rest can be explained by too much ambition in scope for their game, or being too inefficient with their resources available, then you have whatever is left for meaningful development.
Who is upvoting this shit? They are counting a CEOs $20 million dollars 4 times for tax purposes? You have zero comprehension of how taxes work.
Spiderman 2 is so weird because the budget is insane yet I don't see it when playing
Yeah it's decent, refined gameplay, graphics and the like from the first game but it's very short, there's apparently a lot cut from it thanks to the insight from the Insomniac leak and the story was just not that good compared to the first so where the hell did all that money go to.
Even fixes to suits, bugs to wrinkle out and a New Game Plus mode took months to come out
Put it this way, the New Game Plus took as long to come out as the first games very first story DLC
I don't see it either, you have a good portion of the game already made if you reuse as much as you can for the first game, and based on the developer interviews, there was a lot of stuff they didn't implement. They also hired that one, currently infamous consultancy group, despite all this, I can't see how they spent more than twice as much money making the sequel.
There's so much more at play now compared to 20 or 30 years ago.
Yes tools have matured they are easier than ever to use we are no longer limited and more universal however gamers demand more.
Making a game like banjo Kazooie vs GTA vi and as amazing as banjo was in its day its quite dated an unacceptable for a game released today to look and run like that.
Games now have complex weather systems that take months to program by all accounts GTA vi will feature a hurricane system unlike anything we've ever seen building that takes so much work months and months.
In addition development teams are now huge and that's where a lot of the costs stem from the manpower requirement of modern games can be in the hundreds and given the length of time they spend making these games add up to so much more to produce.
Art is also a huge are where pixel art gave way to working with polygons and varying levels of detail based on camera location we are now in the realm of HD assets where any slight imperfections stand out like a sore thing vs the PS2 era where artwork could be murky and it was fine this takes time.
Tldr the scope of modern games has gone nuts gamers demand everything be phenomenal and crafting this takes a long time by far bigger studios.
We can still rely on indies to makes smaller scope reasonably priced games like RoboCop rouge city but AAA studios seem reluctant to re scope from masterpieces to just fun games
In case of Spiderman license costs were also a big chunk. And then there is the marketing, that exploded over time and is mostly higher than actual development costs.
All lies and top industries owns by elite and lying to shareholders that these are the expensive and getting expensive.
I believe that it is due to this unsustainable rise in production costs that more and more companies are looking to AI tools to help ‘lower’ costs.
The use of AI is all about greed, even for companies that are sustainable, they would use AI because it saves them money.
@Nooderus
It is if they don't care about the employees who made them all those money in the first place. Replace them with AI just so the higher ups can get a bigger bonus.
I don't believe we'll get better or more complete games, the savings will just get pocketed by the wrong people, I wish it wouldn't, but I don't have a lot of faith in these bigger companies.
I genuinely believe it's mismanagement. Why are we seeing an influx of one person or games with a team no bigger than 10 create whole games with little to no budget? Unreal Engine 5 and I'm sure many other engines have plugins that have streamlined to many things you would have had to create and code back in the day.
For instance, before the cull, there were 3000 Devs working on COD alone. I'm a COD player but let's be real, there's been no innovation since 2019s MW. What exactly are those Devs doing? Even more so when so much of the new games are using recycled content
I also think higher up leads may simply demand more based on the IP they are working on. This could explain why COD costs so much to develop.
I've stated this in many other articles, but corporate greed, mismanagement and bloat and failing to understand the target audience and misaligned sales expectations as a result are the big reasons for these failures.
You'll see it in the way devs and publishers speak, every sequel needs to be "three times the size" of its predecessor, with hundreds of employees and over-indulgence. Wasted resources on the illusion of scale and scope. Misguided notions that if your budget balloons to three times that of the previous game you'll make three times the sales.
Compare the natural progression of games like Assassin's Creed 1 to 2 or Batman Arkham Asylum to City or Witcher 2 to Witcher 3 or God of War remake to Ragnarok and countless others. How is it that From Software continues to release successful games? Why don't we hear these excuses from Larian? These were games made by developers with a vision, passion and desire to improve their game in meaningful ways.
Then look at Suicide Squad Kill the Franchise and how it bloats well beyond its expected completion date and alienates its audience and middle fingers its purchasing power by wrapping a single player game in GAAS. Look at Starfield compared to Skyrim. Why couldn't Starfield have 5-10 carefully developed worlds with well written stories and focus? Why did it need all this bloat and excess that adds nothing to the quality of the game? How can No Man's Sky succeed where Starfield fails? Look at Mass Effect Andromeda compared to Mass Effect 3. Years of development and millions in cost to produce that mediocre fodder.
The narrative they want you to believe is that game budgets of triple A games are unsustainable, but it's typical corporate rubbish where they create the problem and then charge you more and dilute the quality of their games in favour of monetisation to solve it.
Indeed, here's a good example, Assassin's Creed 1 had a budget of 10 million dollars. Very reasonable. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag had a budget of 100 million dollars, within the same console generation! Even though BF was released on more systems, its still such a massive leap in production costs.
So you ask why they're making their games so big, well the reason is actually because of micro-trash-actions. Even single player games are featured with in-game stores packed with cosmetics, equipment upgrades, resources upgrades, or whatever other rubbish. The reason why games are so bloated and long, artificially extending the length of the game is because they know that the longer a person plays a game (which they refer to as "player engagement"), the more likely they are to eventually head into the micro-trash-action store and purchase something.
That is their goal, so they force the developers to make massive game maps, pack it boring filler, and then intentionally slow down your progress through experience points, skill points, and high level enemies that are over powered until you waste hours of your life grinding away to finally progress.
A person on reddit made a decent post about AC: Origins encouraging people towards spending more money.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pc...
I've lost interest in these types of games, because the publisher has intentionally gone out of their way to make their game boring in order to try and make more money out of me. NOPE!
@Chocoburger That's exactly right, nail hit on head. But this phenomenon doesn't just apply to the gaming industry. Hollywood is just as guilty of self destructive behaviour, if you look at the massive fall of Disney in both Star Wars and Marvel.
Even their success stories are questionable. Deadpool 1 had a tiny budget of $58 million but was a massive success with a box office of $780 million. The corporate greed machine then says "more!" and the budget grows to $110 million, but what does the box office do? It doesn't suddenly double, because the audience certainly didn't double for this kind of movie. The box office is more or less the same. Is Deadpool 2 twice as good as the first? Arguably not, its just as good, or maybe a bit better. It's production values are certainly higher. I wonder what the budget of Deadpool x Wolverine will be.
Joker had a budget of $50 to $70 million, and was the greatest R rated success in history, and now its sequel has a budget of $200 million!!! Do they think the box office is going to quadruple?? Are movies unsustainable now?
My argument is that obviously we want bigger and better, but that doesn't mean an insane escalation in costs beyond what the product is reasonably expected to sell. There needs to be reasonable progression. That's the problem. Marvel took years and a number of movies to craft the success of Avengers. Compare that to what DC did from Man of Steel...
Back to games, you are exactly correct. They drown development resources and costs into building these monetisation models into the game, but you can't just tack them onto the game, you have to design reasons for them to exist and motivations for players to use them, which means bloat and excess and time wasting mechanics and in-game currencies and padding and all sorts of crap instead of a focused single player experience.
Greed from everyone involved including game reviewers, which are the greedy little goblins that help the lords screw over the gaming landscape.
One way or another, these games provoked strong reactions.
I don't think Days Gone divided fans. For the most part, gamers loved it. It was the reviewers who were divided. Self-loathing racist pieces of shit that took exception to the main character being white. This was a fantastic game, one of the best open-world games I ever played, and I've played them all.
Second you on this.. I had absolute blast playing this game!! Memorable!
TLOU 2 I thought was utter s***.. I still haven’t finished it and stopped about halfway (apparently).
It wasn’t fans divided around The Order, it was a period where xbox fanboys were thinking Rise was a more engaging game so they were spreading a lot of hate..
Today they are hibernating with nothing to play
The Order was short, no denying, but a great game with huge potential
I enjoyed days gone and last of us 2. PeoPke trippin.
I always thought the order was kinda whack seeming so I never tried it. Id like to now though.
No thr order was a short, clunky mediocre yet visually stunning game. I thoughts so and pretty much every other reviewer did too.
The Order, where length was a criterion for rating a game, but only this particular game and no others.
While I enjoy what is there in Days Gone, I mourn what was lost. The first trailers for Days Gone showed a morality system that looked interesting. For example, in the beginning when you are chasing down Leon and after you caught him, you could choose to shoot him or leave him for the freaks. You can see hints of it in other places, like if you catch a bandit unaware sometimes they will disarm and it seems like Deacon had the option to shoot them or let them go (he automatically lets them go).
Whatever...those systems unless revolutionary don't add much...they rarely do in games that do have them.
For the most part, when it comes to Last of Us 2, incels, homophobes, and closet national socialist types didn't like it. I repeat not all, but most.
Days Gone is a great game and it was attacked by the leftist socialist people that are actually closet fascists. As a great poet once said: "Socialism is the mother of fascism."
The Order got hit from anti-Sony Xbox fans.
Out of these 3, Last of Us 2 stands above as being a work of art. It's still generating a ton conversation to this day.
-"Last of Us 2, incels, homophobes, and closet national socialist types didn't like it. I repeat not all, but most."
It's so weird & cringe to see other gamers paint this broad brush of *who* didn't like Part II. Why take the "most who disagree with me are Hitler" type of mentality over game tastes?
-"The Order got hit from anti-Sony Xbox fans."
No other community I've dabbled in - be it social media or gaming forums - has built up such a dedicated defense for The Order like N4G. This attitude fundamentally blows my mind, especially in the face of similar older titles (hello Uncharted 1) that already did a marginally better job at storytelling and gameplay. It almost feels like some N4G group chat made this reflexive defense as a meme and a bunch of posters are still playing along with it. No offense to genuine Order fans, but I simply can't shake that feeling.
Well to be fair, I remember being only one of a few people on this site that actually praised The Order when it for came out and got alot of flack for it. Over time it seems opinions have changed about it.
saying something is "cringe" doesn't prove me wrong. You just throw words out and hope they stick. Bring some evidence to prove me otherwise.
I got:
Letizi, R., & Norman, C. (2023). “You Took That From Me”: Conspiracism and Online Harassment in the Alt-Fandom of The Last of Us Part II. Games and Culture, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/155...
You're up. Maybe you can change my mind.
Because NG4 defended it doesn't mean NG4 is the gospel of gaming.
Yeah Yui, it was "the game to hate" at the time. What was bizarre was the, as usual, journalists that were lying about the game and their stories were approved.
It was all clickhate all the time for the Order. I defended it too.
@Yui
-"I remember being only one of a few people on this site that actually praised The Order when it for came out and got alot of flack for it."
That could've been the case right at release, but you should see more recent opinion articles on here. There's a pretty substantial cadre who defend it on here as being "unfairly tarnished" that I simply don't see elsewhere.
Most of the backlash against The Last Of Us 2 was people upset that Joel was killed off, simple as that.
There is that too, but the other groups pilled on too, which increased the numbers. I really don't see why we have to ignore everything but Joel being killed.
I didn't like Part 2 and I'm not any of. The game sold like crazy, it's just hard for people to understand that most found the story to be arse.
Prove what I say is wrong. I will need evidence. I didn't not say all. Your exception rule doesn't work. Find evidence that counters mine. So, we can have a real discussion.
There are plenty of legitimate criticism in hours long analysis videos and reddit posts actually critiquing Part 2. The people you're talking about are such a minority, and they attack just about everything because they see the "wokeness" in the most subliminal ways. They're insignificant because the game still sold pretty well, and reviewed well regardless. Keep in mind the game released world wide, and western politics and views can't be applied to every corner of the world. I can agree that Days Gone was attacked, and unlike Part 2, due to these sites being so heavily political biased it did do some damage.
I am at least showing the group was large enough of a concern for a journal to publish an article.
Where's your evidence?
The last of us part 2 was bad story wise. Not some nonsense that you speak of...most of the negative people were random...lots of the critical reception from anything other than mainstream journalism thought that the game had huge problems.
Angry Joe and skill up being prime examples of that...unless of course like most socialists out there you wanna just lable people.
@anast
Oh geez...Twitter is full of trolls...common sense.
The YouTube critics I mentioned are innocent till proven guilty. And proven with facts not opinions. I gave you evidence of 2 prominent youtubers and yet you ask for more...either you can't read or you aren't looking for evidence.
As far as groups being "large" for journos to get their panties all tied up...well then again you must be extremely gullible. As if we haven't seen thousands of articles claiming players are offended, angry or backlashing based solely on 1 or 2 posts. They love grabbing very specific individuals and using them to represent a much larger base....whatever is convenient to them making the case that gamers bad and journos good.
-"saying something is "cringe" doesn't prove me wrong. You just throw words out and hope they stick. Bring some evidence to prove me otherwise."
It doesn't "prove" it, but I have a solid success rate with the term - which seems to be the case here too. With regards to your article, I should break this down into parts:
1.) For starters, bleating for countering "evidence" after brandishing a media analysis paper (or papers) shouldn't be treated as some kind of trump card. That's not to say these researchers did nothing, mind you. Only that expecting counter-ideologies within this field who'll make this specific kind of work for TLOU Pt. II is absurdly demanding on its face. Nevermind the probability of non-progressive types getting the administrative approval being next to nil, but that's another can of worms.
2.) While I have critiques about x or y (some anecdotes being more flimsy than others, GG speculation, etc.), let's say for this argument that it's a solid piece overall. Having read the whole thing, there is literally *NOTHING* that validates the broad brush with which you painted TLOU2 critics in your first comment (speaking as someone who thinks it's a good game). The discussion about alt-fans, anti-fans, etc. does paint an ugly picture about the TLOU subreddit, Twitter users, certain YouTubers, and more; however, there's no positive declaration about TLOU2's critics ending at these particular clusters either. Even if you say "most, not all" in your first comment, that still seems overly broad compared to the text I read. (EDIT: That's not to disregard the nastiness or modest size in its own right.)
It's also worth noting how much of that paper's material is inspecting a pre-/at-release sort of backlash. But the game's been out for several years now. More and more people who AREN'T incels, homophobes, closet Nazis have played it past 2020 and you don't really see this new broad consensus about its accomplishments; in fact, you see more of a continued split over whether or not it deserves such monumental praise. Here's just a few other sub-communities near its release that don't fit your description:
- https://www.youtube.com/wat...
- https://www.youtube.com/wat...
- https://www.youtube.com/wat...
-"Because NG4 defended it doesn't mean NG4 is the gospel of gaming."
Correct, but you're just solidifying my point. Even PS fans elsewhere (social media or gaming forums) don't go to bat for The Order with the enthusiasm and consistency they do here in my experience. That's what makes your assessment of "anti-Sony Xbox fans" so fascinating to me.
1) Speculation and emotion
2) Speculation and emotion
2a) Might be an argument if you gave me something other than your own opinion and emotions over the subject, but it's left as an anecdote without any real research. By the way, we can't negate the at release behavior, because it fits your narrative. It existed and those groups were involved.
The article is not a trump card and the fact that you seem to think so is more troubling on your end than mine. The article was to see if you could find other people that researched this phenomenon and we can have a conversation, but you still refuse to do this. Instead you wrote a sermon, which is a shame because maybe you had something with point "2a: It's also worth..." But this point still tries to side step actual events.
The final point doesn't solidify anything unless you are trying to solidify your own opinion. Albeit, it is passive aggressive, which is strange.
-"Speculation and emotion"
I mean... okay? Where am I wrong on 2.) though? Asking for a conflicting media studies research paper on this specific topic is already a random ask, given the environment with which these are made.
-"Might be an argument if you gave me something other than your own opinion and emotions over the subject, but it's left as an anecdote without any real research."
Wait. Just so we're clear: a research paper that focuses most of its attention towards a subreddit and social media comments to Neil Druckmann means you get to sustain your overly broad claims while contrary social media sources that don't exhibit the same kind of "alt-fan/anti-fan" rhetoric can't be counted? Now I feel even more confident in my initial assessment b/c all you're after is just whatever can be found with some accreditation behind it - regardless of quality.
-"By the way, we can't negate the at release behavior, because it fits your narrative. It existed and those groups were involved."
That's the thing: I never said they wasn't a sizable contingent of that either. From the start, my response was just how wild it was to paint *MOST* detractors with such a broad brush. I still don't think I'm off-base in saying it's cringe to just say "most people who shit on x game are closet Nazis or bigots of some sort," especially when your research doesn't really validate that.
-"The article is not a trump card and the fact that you seem to think so is more troubling on your end than mine."
Bro, you literally responded with "Bring some evidence to prove me otherwise.... You're up. Maybe you can change my mind." I don't really see how I'm speaking out of turn there given this and your original comment.
-"The article was to see if you could find other people that researched this phenomenon and we can have a conversation, but you still refuse to do this."
If no other people *HAVE* researched this phenomenon, then I don't see how the next best option is highly-popular sources which counter your original claim. Given that all you're promoting is a media studies paper hyper-focusing on a specific cluster of media, why wouldn't other forms of media work as some kind of substitute? That's not side-stepping events in the slightest.
-"The final point doesn't solidify anything unless you are trying to solidify your own opinion. Albeit, it is passive aggressive, which is strange."
I don't know what that first sentence means, honestly.
Look, I'll just put it like this: try to have a frank conversation about The Order on some other non-N4G gaming forum. There isn't going to be this clean split between 'Sony fans' and 'Xbox fans' that love it or hate it. Ask Sony fans how they'd feel about paying full-price for it and you're not going to get the ardent defenses compared to some of its most popular comment sections here.
Still no evidence. I ask for you to bring contrary evidence, so maybe I might change my mind, all research can be falsifiable. This is what you are missing. We are thinking in two different universes.
You are writing sermons, which is a waste of everyone's time including yours. Bring some research and we will discuss it. As of now you have only brought superstitions.
-"I ask for you to bring contrary evidence, so maybe I might change my mind, all research can be falsifiable."
But I literally read YOUR evidence and it doesn't support the broader claims you made at the start. I'm not sure where else to go with that.
-"Bring some research and we will discuss it. As of now you have only brought superstitions."
Bro, leveraging this kind of language is so wild in the face of what you've provided. It's like unless those different communities I linked where fused together in a random media studies paper, you'd magically consider it valid. I don't understand how you're leveraging that, especially when it doesn't fortify your initial claim. You're basically retorting to me writing too much, regardless of the content itself. Just the oddest conversation with you thus far and I don't quite get it.
Amazing gameplay, but TLOU2 had one of the worst, most convoluted and uneccessary plots I ever seen in a sequel. Terrible story and the characters were forgettable. I didn't give an F about anyone in the story.
I don't think any of these divided fans, other than LoU2. The rest were either victims of biased reviews or just generally agreed that they weren't as good as they could've been or just overall disappointing.
No, just no.
The ONLY single player game in the top 10... Interesting. Not Tears of the Kingdom, Not Hogwarts Legacy, Not Spiderman 2, Baldurs Gate 3... Starfield is in the Top 10. The way people talk about the game as if it's the biggest flop ever contradicts reality. Goes to show that none of your opinions on this website matters. Reality disagrees. No matter how hard you try to spin this. Starfield came in late and blew every other game that people thought were "better" games out of the water in reality. We love to see it. Congrats to Bethesda and Xbox.
LOL and how many of those actually completed the game, or even played for more than a couple hours?
Everybody would want to play it, as everyone played Skyrim. But that doesn't mean it'll have staying power. I don't believe it will have as strong legs as Skyrim had.
“One striking observation was that Starfield emerged as the sole single-player game to make it to the top ten on Xbox and PC in terms of average MAU (Monthly Average Users), even without PlayStation data due to it not being released on that platform”
There are too many caveats to parse what this is saying. The article links to a report from “newzoo” that can be sent to your e-mail inbox.