ConstableJelly

@ConstableJelly@piefed.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"My 'Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand' statement isn't aging well" - id Software co-founder John Carmack speaks out after devastating Xbox layoffs⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  “You can’t rule out the possibility that executives are idiots, but that shouldn’t be your default belief. I don’t think there is any obvious path that would have doubled the revenue from id games."Could they have gotten more with a different pricing strategy? Could they have created more things for fans to buy? Could they have cost-effectively marketed in a way that reached more players that would have loved and bought the games? Could they have changed the game designs and broadened the appeal to more players without alienating existing ones? Could they have produced the games at a lower cost, faster or cheaper? I really don’t know.”

  I’m no expert, but ya doy. Microsoft’s play to pursue low-cost, high-return recurring revenue by shoving their extraordinarily talented single-player studios (Rocksteady, Arkane) at OBVIOUSLY terrible live service titles is bad enough on its own but is also a telling reflection of the executive mindset (this goes for Sony too). Profit is king, data is infallible, and development talent is best directed at our behest and is easily expendable when needed.

  Let game devs do what they want. Some games will fail, but jesus, not at the scale and volume that they’re failing at right now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There Is No Reason To Buy Another PlayStation Or Xbox⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Understood, and I concede the benefit of being able to choose and fix on a PC, it’s definitely better. But it’s almost more of a difference in perception. For someone unfamiliar with PC builds, it’s not a matter of not having a choice but not having to choose or having to fix anything. It’s the promise that it will work on its own (notwithstanding the reality of hardware failures in general).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There Is No Reason To Buy Another PlayStation Or Xbox⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m leaning this way for the first time in decades. I’ve had every Playstation console from the beginning, plus Xbox and Nintendo systems here and there. As the indie game market has evolved in the past 5-10 years, I’ve found my playing preferences transition away from big, detailed, AA/A, as I’m sure many others have as well. I bought a Steam OS Legion Go last year and have been enchanted by the flexibility of PC gaming, even as it’s limited for me to what can be played on a handheld.

  I strongly disagree with any notion that consoles have had no value comparable to PCs for years. I think PC gamers vastly underestimate the value of being able to one-click purchase a console, pull it out of the box, plug it in, and play. I’ve explored gaming PC purchases since I bought the Legion, and there is a comparably steep commitment required to research CPUs, GPUs, storage, cooling, and RAM, and how their combination will affect performance and longevity. You can buy pre-built, but you’re looking at roughly $1k for a lower mid-level machine, plus peripherals and maintenance. Perhaps this is part of the fun for some people, but it’s definitely a barrier for many.

  On the other hand, the distance between PCs and consoles continues to widen, where the newly released PS5 was only barely a good value for its power compared to PCs when it released and quickly fell behind again. Similarly, I’ve enjoyed being able to experiment with games I wouldn’t otherwise have played via the Playstation Plus catalog, but no subscription media service has ever maintained or increased its value over time, and Sony has already raised prices while the quality of its offerings continues to wane. And of course the abandonment of physical media means that we are further locked into an already tight ecosystem.

  Ultimately, one of the big reasons I’m finally considering a PC purchase in place of the next console generation is that I’ve been playing with a home media server the past couple years and recently migrated to Linux Mint. My confidence level with feeling capable of managing a PC effectively has grown enough that the aforementioned barrier feels less intimidating. Hopefully the Steam Machine will close the gap for some console players feeling similarly, but the inability to upgrade the GPU feels too big a deal when I could just make the slightly longer leap to an actual PC.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve gotten the opposite impression, especially with all those recent AI advocates getting booed and laughed at by students during university commencement speeches. It feels like the usual ‘powerful elites with huge platforms’ - including legacy and independent media - versus almost everyone else.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of Feb 22nd⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m also playing this for the first time after owning it for a while. Took me a while to really get into it - it’s the first high-production, AAA action game that I’ve played in a while, and it felt strangely linear and repetitive. The puzzles are so clearly tailored to your specific abilities they feel kind of silly against the otherwise immersive world. The rewards and upgrades are kind of trivial on normal difficulty; I’m still mostly spamming normal and sidekick attacks for every battle.

  Eventually though I settled into the rhythm and I noticed that stuff less. The acting and scene choreography are outstanding - it feels like theater in a way that’s unique to my experience with games. And I’m enjoying it more for what it is. It’s just overall not landing as satisfyingly as the first one did, and I think that’s because indie games have done increasingly cool things since the 2018 game came out and I’ve been playing them more, and my tastes have just changed a lot.