Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

It was literally just posted.

Nevermind original post.

Jim's rave dance made me lol so hard.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Nov 25th 2019 at 6:31:39 PM

Well that was weird.

The sheer number of subscriptions these days kinda sounds like the sheer number of game consoles that existed before The Great Video Game Crash of 1983. Obviously it won't be that big, but hopefully the oversaturation of subscriptions will lead to most of them dying off.

I would not be surprised to see a lot of the smaller contenders (CBS for example) die off.

That subscription to bacon though

the only subscription I'm on is PS Plus and only for multiplayer. The benefits are...eh. If I get a Switch and that miiiiight happen soon, I'll give Nintendo's a try since the year long sub is shockingly cheap compared to most.

Now subbing to bacon is more my thing. Bacon's the one food fully preventing me from becoming a vegetarian because its almost always so fuckin good

Chicken wrapped in bacon is as close to Godhood as it can get.

I really am peeved at these "solution selling" dirty tactics. Why is it a game can be barely functional, barely fixed or patched can have a store full of fully functioning items you pay with real money? Why are in-game subscriptions, microtransactions, whatever passes so damn functional and why can't people catch onto that?

I just read a comment that Dead By Daylight has such issue.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Nov 25th 2019 at 6:53:56 PM

Because it's more important to the publishers that they establish a solid revenue stream than that they release a finished product. Duh.

Another reason to stick to old games.

At least mods wouldn't ever backstab me, even if the engine in question is a massive POS *coughsGeneralscoughs*

As Jim points out in his video, the idea of asking for a subscription for an ongoing game like an MMO is not inherently evil or predatory. What is predatory is when a game that you've already paid for is released in a deliberately frustrating or incomplete state and offers to sell you "convenience" features to fix those problems.

That is annoying. In a perfect world, companies would be sensible to make it worth every buck you spend. As in they try everything to make game fresh, have new stuff and everything that costs but it's money well spent you won't ever feel guilt or remorse about it.

Not just do it like this, exploit consumers spending and bait them with a carrot on a stick. Fuck that "Selling Solution" method so badly.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Nov 25th 2019 at 8:40:55 PM

There's a fundamental problem with a growth-based economy, and that is that the metric for a company's performance is based on growth. Each year, you can't just make money; you have to make more money than you made last year. If EA made literally all of the money in the world this year, then next year, they would be expected to make 4% more money than exists in the world.

The unsustainable requirement for all industries to always experience infinite growth results in the creation of "bubbles". These are points where it becomes simply impractical or downright impossible for the industry to continue growing. They're already at a pretty strong level of profit and there's no reasonable way to continue cutting costs and increasing revenue every single year.

That's where the video game industry is now. They hit a plateau years ago. Companies like EA and Ubisoft are being strangled to death by their own level of success, and are forced to desperately pursue any possible way to milk more and more money out of cheaper and cheaper products.

God help you if you release a game that becomes a smash hit and blows all your previous releases out of the water. In a growth-based economy, it is literally possible to succeed so hard that you bankrupt yourself by making it impossible to follow up on the next year.

And so shit like microtransactions and subscription services have become life jackets for the unsustainable business model that is our economy as a whole.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 25th 2019 at 1:54:39 PM

And yet, I don't think that video game innovation has peaked, not even close. The problem is that we are in a marketplace where innovation no longer sells copies, at least not on a predictable level. Rather, what makes money is repetitive, addictive, grindy content that lets you pay extra to feed your addiction and/or skip the grind.

It's always been the case that the bigger AAA projects have less room to take risks and innovate because of all the money riding on them; executives tend to prefer something more reliable/safer. It's only getting worse now since games are costing increasingly large amounts of money to make; companies are still making plenty of money off videogames anyway but to them it seems an even worse prospect now since they can easily just make a "live service" and get a more reliable revenue stream (even if many of those live service games don't pan out).

Innovation and Growth do not always go together. The Industry right now is about refinement and exploitation to encourage 'Growth'. Innovation actually is counterproductive to that.

Eh, innovation is slightly overrated. Actually, this is something Sterling himself talked about. A game designer's job is to be entertaining, not necessarily original. Mind you, it helps to innovate sometimes, but there's a lot of trying to fix what isn't broken, too.

A great example, actually, would be Fallout 4 having a voiced protagonist or embracing the ME dialogue wheel. I suspect the people at Bethesda noticed silent protagonists were rapidly becoming a Dead Horse Trope without realizing it worked for their games.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have Doom 2016.

Even then, I would argue that Doom 2016 brought innovation in the form of physical characterization for the Doom Slayer. Even if he doesn’t say anything he still manages to express his character and his line of thought through his actions.

Usually what you need to make a successful game is time and a clear vision of what you want the game to be from day one. A lot of games that turned out to be failures were failures simply because they didn't have enough time to develop things properly (and trying to compensate with crunch which only makes things worse) and because the people at the top change their minds too many times throughout the development cycle (or get replaced).

Essentially you've got to start off strong from the starting line and maintain a consistent pace throughout the race. And above all you can't fall into the mindset that you can make up for any delays or problems with crunch (or as Bioware called it "magic").

Edited by M84 on Nov 25th 2019 at 9:44:55 PM

Doom Slayer is one special cookie alright,

Here's a blast from the past!

His body, his body motions and language say a lot. It's amazing how much he does not end up being a Flat Character as he has genuine Hidden Depths too.

All in all, DOOM Eternal is gonna build/show more off his character. Beyond DS and his characterization, gameplay took some modern cues but still does its own thing, for the most part. It was criticized for some aspects, like lockdowns where you gotta kill everything to progress but nothing too much. I wouldn't label it as "back to old-school" it just isn't old-school enough to have maze-like design, lots of monsters on screen at once but I argue it doesn't have to, it does secrets and keycards/skulls thing well in its own way.

And on DOOM Eternal, they just want to make the best experience they can, and just improve/add more and spice just about everything up. It's not that innovative but it's not a flaw.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Nov 25th 2019 at 4:06:17 PM

The positioning and lighting give Blue Boglin the a sexually predatory expression.

2K announces that Battleborn will be closing down it's servers in 2021.

In other news, Battleborn's servers were still active in 2019, which is the part that really surprises me.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Nov 26th 2019 at 3:04:02 PM

Yeah, that was my first reaction too.

I prefer Greymane to Battle Born.