Jeffool
@Jeffool@lemmy.world
- Comment on One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years, GDC Study Reveals 5 days ago:
I completely agree that huge teams aren’t needed. That said I think at least some of that is exactly because smaller studios full of expert talent were getting funded for several years, because those big studios weren’t making the games developers wanted to make. And those devs understood that “fun” wasn’t the same as “top of the line presentation”.
ARC Raiders’ Embark Studios has a lot of people from DICE. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s Sandfall Interactive has a lot of people from Ubisoft. Even Dispatch’s Ad Hoc is a lot of Telltale people (at least some of them by way of Ubisoft.) They knew a lot about their process, but their big companies weren’t making the games they were interested in. So they got funding elsewhere (and famously Ad Hpc’s funding dried up mid-development.)
I’m curious about Wikipedia’s sourcing here. Granted there’s the Balatros and Stardew Valleys of the world, and Helldivers did well. But do smaller games really make up half? Year after year the big ones are usually COD, two big sports game, a Nintendo game, another big fps, a big action game, and a few others.
Again I agree with you when it comes to good games. By man, those big ones are huge sellers. I just wish we had clear insight into sales. But that’s been a thing for a long time now.
- Comment on One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years, GDC Study Reveals 5 days ago:
Investment money is not as plentiful as it was several years ago. I’ve heard it in several interviews with developers or devs themselves. (Game Maker’s Notebook, Mike and Rami are still here, and a few devs on YouTube )
- Comment on With all this talk about Ai not being profitable why aren't we using it in video games? I dont mean replacing developers I mean in NPCs in the game. I make them more realistic. 1 week ago:
AI in games (using code for entities to make non-player decisions) is about being good enough, cheap enough. It’s just like how games determine their physics. The existence of large scale “black box” AI like OpenAI does not reflect what’s good or cheap. It can’t play chess. You think it’s going to understand The Sims and make reasonable choices in that system?
They’ve already created well tuned system to give your Sims in obtaining their needs. It leads to you having to manage the chaos, and that’s what the fun is. To better hone that is to have the AI play the game for you. And even that, if efficiency of play is the goal, is better done by TASbot and machine learning.
That generic black box style of AI like popular LLMS is like creating a hammer. Now everyone is treating every problem like nails. AI decisions making in games is like washing windows; don’t use a hammer.
The problem is that “AI” is a poorly defined, very vague, and widely used term. Most people here have assumed you meant LLMs because everyone pitches those as ways to solve everything. “Oh, irer up an agent, give it instructions, and let it make requests that are context dependent”. Then, like everyone says here, that usually turns into people testing boundaries and breaking your game. So that makes it both “not good enough” and “not cheap enough”.
Now, look at AI with the term “machine learning” in mind and it’s different. Games like ARC Raiders use machine learning to teach NPCs movement behavior, and to train AI voices like Siri so they can’t add things without further paying people. They think that up-front investment is worthwhile. But those are both far cries from “uploading it to Claude or ChatGPT and see what happens”. Especially when you would have to teach that black box AI your system anyway, for it to use it. And you’re already doing that with current “good enough, cheap enough” bespoke methods, for much cheaper, and they’re good enough.
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 3 weeks ago:
I started the first one and really liked the little walking I did in the first hour and a half, but I just tapped out after that because of the ratio of cutscene to game. … I should play them.
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 3 weeks ago:
I’ve often wondered why some more advanced games like Elder Scrolls don’t keep track of dramatic actions in some way and offer them up to you when you leave the game for a while. A “previously…” kind of element. Big budget action games too, like from Rockstar.
Obviously they just don’t think it’s worth the work, but I do wonder if it would affect completion rates.
- Comment on Pet Peeves with Games? 3 weeks ago:
You’re completely right of course, but I’ll say it bugs me too at times. I was always able to forgive it but as we got more advanced visually it bugged me more. Then finally in Oblivion it was too much for me. I still love and respect the game, but it actively bugs me there are portals around the world that are just waiting for me to decide I want to fight. I know it’s dumb, but it is what it is.
- Comment on Ron Gilbert cancels RPG project due to lack of support and funding 2 months ago:
He’s been talking about it on Mastodon for quite a while now. It’s a shame.
- Submitted 2 months ago to games@lemmy.world | 39 comments
- Comment on Best vertical games on Android? 2 months ago:
Downwell and Holedown are both fantastic games played in portrait. But I won’t lie; lately I’ve fallen back into Marvel Snap and I live it. (Not love, live.) But never spent a dollar on it.
- Comment on A cool feature/mechanic you want to see in games again 2 months ago:
There’s plenty of better deep dives on YouTube, but basically it’s a system in Shadows of Mordor (and moreso in Shadows of War) that would take a random NPC you were fighting and were joined by (or almost killed,) and elevate them thematically. If one knocked you down there’s a chance they would pick up your sword and break it, smack talk you, and walk away. That guy, of his name was Doug, became Doug the Sword Breaker. Never time you saw him, he’d get a short introduction and a quip or two to remove you of who he was.
If you died, since you were a spirit they’d just mock that they already best you before. But if you were killing them, they might get a scene where they manage to get away to amplify the story. Or maybe you’ll just kill them. It was random and happened with random NPCs, elevating them in the enemy army.
I believe in the second one you could even mind control someone, and take out the people above them, and have a spy in the upper ranks.
Imagine an action game with some Crusader Kings plot drama happening.
Honestly I think there’s probably enough prior art to get away with using whatever you wanted from it. But a) I’m no lawyer and b) I’m not risking millions of dollars making a game.
- Comment on A cool feature/mechanic you want to see in games again 2 months ago:
there’s a grappling hook in ARC Raiders (called the snap hook) and I have one but have never bothered using it. I should change that some day.
- Comment on After Apple originally announced the first version of Halo in 1999, Xbox apparently called Bungie and said "'Steve Jobs can't have that. We're going to buy you.'" 2 months ago:
It’s a popular misconception that Halo was intended to be a Mac exclusive when it was revealed. It was going to be released on Mac and PC.
You may know that, but a lot of people think that it was revealed at Macworld because it was exclusive. But it was just a headliner in a statement of “hey, we can play games too!” In fact the literal game they were running on stage was actually running backstage on a PC.
- Comment on Valve Addresses Steam Machine Anti-Cheat Concerns, Says It's Working Towards Support 2 months ago:
Yeah, a lot of gamers know nothing about any of this conversation. I mean, my coworkers who game and mentioned the Stream Machine this weekend. Of course one was talking Fortnite. So that’s where we’re at. I didn’t even get into why this “console” won’t have one of the more popular games that’s literally free on every other machine including their phone. (I can already hear people saying “is a computer! It should run everything!” And then getting together when you explain how, and saying “it should be simple! It’s a console!”) It’s months away at best anyway. Who knows.
- Comment on Valve Addresses Steam Machine Anti-Cheat Concerns, Says It's Working Towards Support 2 months ago:
I think the hope isn’t that “maybe this will be big enough”, but “maybe together they’ll be big enough”. Who knows, though. It got a lot of hype on reveal but people are fickle sometimes.
- Comment on Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever 3 months ago:
I respect where you’re coming from, but a) “fool” is literally in my name. And b) you’re saying “there are other good games, leave those games you’re enjoying.” But you’re also saying “there are other people, leave your friends and family that you play with.” And that’s a little different.
- Comment on Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever 3 months ago:
Kernel level anti-cheat is what’s probably going to keep me on Windows for a while. I get those games aren’t for everyone, but I like them well enough, and that’s what my friend group plays. Warzone, DMZ, and going to try RedSec tomorrow. Kind of a shame. Otherwise I’d love to make the jump. As it is I’ll probably see about dual booting when I get my next PC in a year or two.
- Rock Band 4 to be delisted on tenth anniversary following the expiration of its licenseswww.gamesindustry.biz ↗Submitted 3 months ago to games@lemmy.world | 50 comments
- Comment on New EA Owners Hoping AI Will Cut Costs And Boost Profits, It's Claimed 4 months ago:
Delta Force has a Battlefield-ish multiplayer mode. It’s free to play and you unlock new characters and guns as you advance. (Then there’s an extraction mode too if you’re into that.) I just tried it for the first time after the beta several months ago and I thought it was alright. No jets, but still solid.
- Comment on Xbox fans are compiling lists of all the Activision, Bethesda, and Microsoft games still missing from Xbox Game Pass — and it's pretty huge 4 months ago:
I can’t go that far. I can’t be upset at people for looking at deals and NOT thinking “but what about the companies?” Granted this hits differently as a field I love, but still, I get it.
- Submitted 4 months ago to games@lemmy.world | 6 comments
- Xbox fans are compiling lists of all the Activision, Bethesda, and Microsoft games still missing from Xbox Game Pass — and it's pretty hugewww.windowscentral.com ↗Submitted 4 months ago to games@lemmy.world | 26 comments
- Comment on A live-action Call of Duty film is on the way 5 months ago:
Some scenes in MW2 stick out so strictly to me still. ::: The march through the neighborhood, the White House, the knife throw at the end … ::: It’s funny to me that the controversial moment won’t be a big deal at all in a movie, as there’s no player control.
- Comment on ‘Escape From Tarkov’ Coming To Steam In the Coming Weeks 5 months ago:
You got lots of downvotes, but assuming you’re earnest, the game has a reputation of being rife with cheaters. Here’s a popular video that showed how bad it was a couple of years ago: youtu.be/p5LfGcDB7Ek
There’s also lots of allegations about the developers but being great people, which you can read in this thread. I have no idea about that, though. But complaints are not rare.
- Comment on ‘Escape From Tarkov’ Coming To Steam In the Coming Weeks 5 months ago:
This is why I loved the DMZ mode of Warzone when it launched. The stronger bots were mother fuckers but there were missions to finish, so the players (all fresh from Warzone and new to having prox chat,) were mostly carefully happy to talk and often helped each other. It got pretty sweaty over the next two seasons though. After that it was kill on sight.
A few weeks ago, soon after they spun it off to its own download apart from Warzone, someone cracked it for solo play. I’d love someone figuring out a way to let people play private servers for that.
- Comment on ‘Escape From Tarkov’ Coming To Steam In the Coming Weeks 5 months ago:
I agree with you, but there are people who enjoy moving over others’ sandcastles more than making their own. Some people enjoy ruining things for others. Others believe everyone else is cheating too, and their cheating is evening the playing field. The latter is a very common defense when asked directly.
Several content creators lose to cheaters and manage to interview the blatant cheaters who admit to it. There are also relatively popular YouTubers whose entire channels are accusing pro players and streamers of cheating in COD and games. Lots of people assume good players are all cheating, and that it’s approved (if not facilitated) by the developers. (Which is a necessary belief for them, considering these players will also often perform very well on LAN tournaments against other pros.)
- Comment on "Multiple" future Hardspace projects are coming, as Hardspace: Shipbreaker devs Blackbird Interactive take full ownership 5 months ago:
As much as I’d love the ability to have mods, and I’d love that, I’d love multiplayer even more.
- Comment on Battlefield 6 players are crying out for a 'real' server browser, and it's about time we demanded the basic FPS feature that Call of Duty killed 5 months ago:
I think the general idea is that if I want to spin up a server for my friend group that’s been gaming together for 20 years, we can buy the game and do just that. That’s opposed to the money I spent on the game being useless when they decide they want to stop paying for servers.
- Submitted 5 months ago to games@lemmy.world | 15 comments
- Comment on Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth 5 months ago:
Then they’re not really trying. I get what @Hobo@Lemmy.World is saying, but I find it hard to believe. If their bar for “respectable charities” leads to them not being able to find charities, then just lower the bar. Or just give money to people.
- Comment on what video game deserves to be in a museum? 5 months ago:
Didn’t even know that was a thing; that’s how long it’s been since I looked at it. Thanks!