The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[Jacob]

Is it a better risk/reward?

... yes?

Making those games as a service seems to have resulted in many spectacular financial failures.

For sure, but are those financial failures orders of magnitude more spectacular compared to the financial failures of game-in-a-box-plus-a-few-DLC failures? I don't expect so.

Conversely, compare the profits of successful game-as-a-service games vs game-in-a-box-plus-a-few-DLC. Are they sometimes orders of magnitude greater? Yes, I expect so.

I mean this is also a world where Minecraft and Undertale were huge smash hits. Granted AAA games would need to be better looking than that, but why do you HAVE to have super fancy graphics and tons of content?

Minecraft is the most popular game in the world, so yeah, it's a counterpoint on the graphics, but it is also game-as-a-service so not much of a counterpoint there.

Undertale is a successful indie game, but that's an entirely different business model.

The reason you HAVE to have super fancy graphics and tons of content is that those are things that (semi-) reliably improve sales and that you - as a publisher - have control over and can (semi-) reliably add. That they (semi-) reliably improve sales is based on empirical knowledge of the market.

So not all games have to have cutting edge graphics and significant amounts of content. There are literally hundreds of thousands of games that don't. However, if you're making a big bet and putting lots of money in to develop a game in the hopes of having massive sales, then it's a ballsy move to come out below consumer expectations on graphics and content. And typically decisionmakers in large publicly traded companies aren't rewarded for making ballsy moves like that.

[Grey Fox]

We can see that example happening live right now with Biomutant. THQ Nordic made a 30$ game with 60$ game graphic & are selling it for 60$.

Will that be enough? The coming weeks will tell us.

[Grey Fox]

It's the generational shift. The triple A market skews younger for customers and since it's soul crushing it also does for its workforce. They are not interested in making a new GTA, they want to make the new Fortnite or LoL.

I've been looking on with confusion when someone genuinely asked if there was/expected there to be a league of legends mod for ck3

Well, it's getting a show on Netflix (or was that DOTA?), so I guess some people are invested enough in the lore?

You were right, there is a LoL one too.

[Syt]

I completely forgot about Mech Warrior 5, but it's now out on Steam and GOG after being an Epic exclusive for well over a year:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/784080/MechWarrior_5_Mercenaries/
https://www.gog.com/game/mechwarrior_5_mercenaries?pp=10594093386de500e04b3fdabcce7ec3ff556dc5

[Syt]

Creative Assembly stops working on Total War: Three Kingdoms. Fans appear to be unhappy, as they were originally promised expansions that would cover much that is still missing (e.g. Northern parts of the map, iconic leaders etc.), and apparently some bugs are still in the game.

[Josquius]

That's sad. I never got around to buying that yet but was looking forward to it.
Guess it hasn't sold well?

[Tamas]

Incidentally I have just returned to it a week ago. I think it's great. Quite very possibly the best Total War game. It most definitely is from the strategic layer's perspective, but the tactical options are not as varied as in Rome TW2 or Warhammer.

[Syt]

I've given AC: Origins another shot, and I'm into it now. I made it to Alexandria, and damn, this might be one of the finest in game ciities I've seen. I feel like a tourist with all the pictures I'm taking.

And I love the details - the mathematicians in the library, the theater that has a play about Cleopatra getting Caesar to kick out her brother, etc.

[Syt]

Game Makers Toolkit on how to make better tutoprials for complex games (Paradox, Total War etc.): https://youtu.be/-GV814cWiAw

[Syt]

I find it interesting that some of Total War Saga: Troy's characters seem based on actors:













Unfortunately, a recent patch seems to have introduced an extremely annoying bug that makes the sound in battles stutter and cut. The developers confirmed the issue in April, but so far no patch to fix it has been released.

[Syt]

Someone creating assets for American Truck Simulator is a fan of Frasier, I think.

[Syt]

Been in Idaho and Washington today in ATS.

[Syt]

New trailer for Elden Ring, From Software's next game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6pCyV7PnqI

[Syt]

Trailer for Trek to Yomi. Basically, "What if Akira Kurosawa black and white movie, but side scrolling fighting game?"

https://youtu.be/vnkk00iSHGM

[celedhring]

Just noticed it's been a year since I last bought a game (Shadow Empire). I just don't have time to play games lately (well, I do have it, but I find myself using it more on Netflix et al), but in the interim I've got so many games for free that I just don't see me buying another one in a very long time.