#and just assuming you want to work at AAA studio and just not only want to with at indie or what not

[autistichansolo]

Every time this professor who is an advisor for a club i’m part of talks about how the economics and economy supposedly works it just annoys me and i disagree so hard (also feel like his advice in regards to that really sucks and just doesn’t seem very good imo)

[devsgames]

On Scoping And Idea Management for Games

I started my teaching gig (which is incredibly chaotic but I'm very much enjoying it despite that) and I noticed a really consistent theme with some student project pitches around the idea of planning and scoping projects. Some advice that I gave them that I think is worth repeating and reinforcing here:

You are not a AAA studio. Do not plan to make games like a AAA studio.

If your concept, premise, pitch or idea of a game that you actually want to finish contains elements, mechanics or concepts that is predominantly executed by AAA studios, please for the love of god don't expect to be able to execute them without brutally interrogating them first.

Things like: Soulslike game balance, 'open world', heavily systemic design, online multiplayer, complex mechanics, etc. You know, things you largely only see AAA studios (or very experienced dev teams) complete with any semblance of success. There's a reason many of these are only executed by large teams.

This isn't to say it's impossible to execute on these ideas or that it's not worthwhile experimenting with it a little, but if you're going into it with little previous development experience and expect to come out the other end with a 'finished' thing, you're overscoping and setting yourself up for failure.

Ever notice how AAA studios even struggle to execute complex concepts like that? It's not (always) because of mismanagement, but also because it's often overscoped for them too and they are incredibly hard to execute. AAA studios often work on concepts and premises which require a lot of resources to do so effectively. Indie studios don't often make these kinds of games for the same reasons, because conceptually it will easily explode your scope out of the water. Some try, and you can often feel how stretched thin they were.

The point is, you (assuming as a reader that you're an individual with no 'fully' shipped titles) are equivalent to...basically 1/2 a person at an average indie startup. If you have a team, then you're basically the size and scale of a small indie team. Realistically, in all likelihood, you do not have the knowledge, experience or time to do it anywhere nearly as well as a full-time studio production.

And I get why people fall into this trap!

We draw inspiration from what we see most and what we like, and don't often challenge our assumptions about them - it's why we see something like a Batman Arkham Asylum combat system or Photorealistic graphics and say "yeah I could do that easy" without realizing it's actually really really hard to do in the first place, let alone really get right. Studios are notoriously secretive about process, and the reality is there's months and months of unseen work behind pretty much everything.

We also tend to use blanket terms we're familiar with to define our works, as opposed to more fitting terms. For example, some people might call something like Journey an "open world" game, despite the fact it's not strictly an "open world" but rather a linear one with a non-linear presentation.

As a solo developer I too constantly make this mistake of over-scoping or underestimating just how hard it can be to execute on certain concepts or ideas.

Avoiding It

So how do you get around accidentally writing cheques only well-equipped studios can cash? You need to interrogate your ideas a lot more.

Okay, now ask yourself: Is it mostly a premise that is done by people operating at around your level of resources, or by dedicated groups with tons and tons of employees? Has anyone done your mechanic at a small, simple scale? How many studios have done it? What size were they? How many resources do they have? If anyone has executed a similar idea, how many resources did they seem to have to do it? What corners did it seem like they need to cut to get there? Ask yourself how often you see concepts like yours, executed at scale like yours. Ask yourself why that might be.

A generic example to run with: "I am going to make an open world exploration game where you can climb anywhere, with tons of content and things to do".

Ask yourself some of the above questions, and also interrogate all your definitions. What do you define as "open world"? "exploration"? "tons"? "anywhere"? "Climb"? What do these words, specifically, mean to you? Are these reasonable and realistic expectation for the amount of time you have for this project? Have you already executed on any of these before, and how many are unknown to you?

"But Devon, my idea is unique and no one has done it before! I have nothing I can compare it to!"

Nope. Sorry, just no - you're wrong. Maybe they've not done it exactly like you envision it, but I promise you that at this point in time someone has done virtually everything in games before, you've just not heard of it yet. I have yet to hear someone describe a game that didn't do anything I hadn't heard of before to some degree or another. Ask some friends for references and take more time to do research - you'll find parallels if you dig enough.

Execution

If by now you've realized you might be in over your head, you might still be able to do it if you plan very smartly around it and accept scoping down.

I could talk forever about how to break down your scope into something that is more manageable (and probably will in the future), but I'll keep it focused on this idea of interrogating definitions for now.

Running with the "open world exploration game where you can climb anywhere, with tons of content and things to do" example.

Plan to do only one of the verbs in your game really well.

"Climbing" - you could spend forever building a game just around that verb, and people have! Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy. Doodle Jump. Grow Home. People have done this, and even those games tow the line of being complex to make.

"Open world" - this one is very heavy, but make it just about walking around. Challenge the assumption that an open world isn't enough and that it needs 'content' - just make walking around the world really fun. Dear Esther, Proteus, Passage, Beginner's Guide.

"Exploration" - this verb is vague and takes many forms, and while it can easily be dangerous if it gets too big, it can still be small and engaging. A Short Hike, Umurangi Generation, Hidden Folks. You don't need mechanical complexity or depth to make something fun.

Start from that and then expand. Maybe you get to a point where your climbing is really fun and good and you don't even need to add tons of things to do, or open-world mechanics. Maybe your open world is so easy to do that climbing becomes the thing you spend your time on.

---

Essentially the point here is to not assume that because you've seen something done before it's easy to execute on, nor that you should simply run with concepts without fully understanding what you mean when you come up with them first. It's going to not only save you a lot of time and stress, but also more likely to put you in a position where you'll be able to actually finish what you started.

This is also only the tiniest portion of my thoughts on scoping here, so I'm sure I'll add more to this down the road. :)

[pinkyjulien]

I really, really hate the "Female V is canon" vs "Male V is canon" debate that been popping here and here in the tags those past weeks

Cyberpunk 2077 is a Role Playing Game, there is no "canon" protagonist, that's the whole point. We all have a different playstyles, different stories and headcanons, our custom V is The Canon V of Our Own playthroughs!

After Phantom Liberty dropped, I've seen a lot of players, on Tumblr or Twitter, voicing their concerne and disappointment in how much more Female V focused the official promo, videos and even in-game credits became

I was one of them too, expressing my feelings multiple times, sometimes awkwardly, frustrated that Male V players were once again brushed to the side, because that's how it feels like, right?

Well, it might feels like it, but this isn't the case AT ALL, far from it. This is only what I would call a "Fandom Phenomenon" and I want to talk more about it a bit

I had a great conversation with a friend of mine who works in the game industry and it opened my eyes on the matter, and I've since been really interested in seeing RPGs statistics!

Because it's really, really important to make the difference between the Casual Player Base (majority of players) and the Fans / Fandom Base (minority of players)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I always been lurking in fandoms here on Tumblr, since Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and now with Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3

First I want to drop some stats- might be completly wrong, but I'm only sharing my point of view here, in an attempt to explain why some people are frustrated with Female V being the focus (and why we shouldn't be!)

I think it's not wrong to say that fandoms are mostly occupied by women and fem-identifying individuals; fandoms are a safe place for players and fans to share their passions. Women are STILL HEAVILY harassed and hated in the gaming industry as a whole, it doesn't take a lot of digging to catch a vile comment on Twitter or on Twitch for example, you cannot go far without seeing someone either attacking or sexualizing them

This is a huge problem in the industry still, every games that release with a female protagonist get trashed- just look at the bullshit surrounding GTA 6 just because players will be able to play as a woman as an option

Fandoms are also safe for non-gender conforming people, non-binaries, trans people and queer men, but I think fem individuals and women are a clear majority, at least on Tumblr (only talking about genders identity here and not about being queer or not, not talking about sexualities or attraction) (not an official stat at all and only my point of view and experience from being on Tumblr since ~2012)

Now let's talk about Cyberpunk 2077- because this is my main fandom since 2020, and what prompted me to write this post in the first place

CDPR didn't share any stats recently, but it's REALLY SAFE to assume the MAJORITY of players are playing a straight Male V romancing Panam, followed by a lesbian Female V romancing Judy, but the player pools for both options are still majoritarly cis hetero men (and they are still the focus for AAA studios to sell their games, this is sadly just how it is)

However on the fandom side, Fem V was always the focus; virtual photography, mods, ships, OCs... She was always more popular than Male V, getting more interactions and notes and why trends like "Male V monday" were created and why there is still a lack of male V focused mods (non-binaries and trans fem folks and characters are also sadly under-represented in all type of content and art)

So, being yourself as a non-fem player, playing as a Masc V, seeing CDPR officially make the switch from Male V to Female V, when the space you've been in for the past 3 years has been overwhelmingly Female V focused on all front, was a bit of a punch in the guts; like I said earlier, I was reaaally frustrated with this too!

And I'd say it's "normal"? or at least "ok" to feel this way, it makes sense considering how little attention Male V in general get in the fans community

BUT. BUT... It's REALLY important here to realize how we sound and how we look like when we voice our frustrations on the matter; we sound and look just like all the misogynistic people over on Twitter who screams about "woke games" everytime there is a female protagonist in their "non political games". We have to remember that fandoms are suuuch a small part of the game industry

Baldur's Gate 3 recently shared their stats and this interesting tweet got into my dash

▶ tweet

Astarion is nowhere to be seen in the official most romanced companions statistic, but I'm sure a lot of people will agree that he's probably the most popular one in the fandom side!

Another stat here from Mass Effect and really interesting info coming from David Gaider about how the hardcore fanbase aka fandom's choices were WILDLY different from the casual / main player pool

▶ tweet

Getting my head out of the fandom bubbles and seeing the bigger picture, how much under-represented women still are in official medias (not talking about fan content) and how insanly misoginistic the game industry still is, both on the player and devs sides, helped me handle my own frustration on the matter, accept and even celebrate Female V being the focus for the Phantom Liberty campaign

With all that said tho, we all should be able to vent about the lack of Male, Masc and Non-Binary content in the fandom side, while still being aware of the industry state, it CAN co-exist! It doesn't make anyone a bad or misogynist person!

We are all humans and can be awkward and make mistakes, especially when voicing frustration or talking while in a negative mood. Let's educate one another in good-faithed manners when we slip instead of jumping to conclusion and throw accusations

Not gonna lie I kind of lost my train of thoughts and not sure how to finish this post, but I hope this can enlight some people on why CDPR made this choice!

Repeating this as a finale note; this doesn't mean that Female V is the "main" V or "canon" V . It's simply her time to shine, and it's well deserved! The industry needs it

[rinion-b]

"this is why i have attachment issues" is really not how i planned to start this, but that's kinda where i'm at after a few hours to sit on it all.

this is about the whole limbus/pm situation today, for context (i won't be giving any more because i don't know if what i have is accurate, and i hate the idea of me spreading any misinformation when it's already a fucked situation). purely a word vomit, trying to not give any judgement on anything non-objective since there is still a lot of room for followup from project moon once things settle

my overall sentiments on this situation from just seeing updates every hour or so in between work:

what the fuck!

damn it was that serious?

that's...not a great solution...

well shit, was there any reasonable good outcome to all this?

i do want to clarify, i don't intend for any of this to idolize project moon or idealize the indie developer, as easy as that would be. at the same time, i hate the concept that they should be condemned immediately because they fucked up on responding to this situation (outside the context of some other complaints that i've seen from some illustrators and translators in the past).

there is no 'perfect' indie studio. project moon should not be excused for their own failings, especially not on account of them being a small studio. those things can coexist with the concept that, maybe they didn't have much of a choice with how to deal with this? and i've seen all the comparisons with their commentary on society, i get it, i understand and honestly you have a great point. but you cannot escape the impact of capitalism, and i don't think that yelling about the values they portray in their stories is particularly helpful when the situation might affect their ability to continue operating as a company, or at the very least continue providing more limbus content and running the servers.

now, this is predominantly hearsay, but is a believable heuristic. i have heard from a few different friends on separate occasions that project moon is not the most well off financially, either because of development costs outweighing the performance of their older games, or their older games not being quite as profitable as they should objectively be given their quality (indie games are very undervalued often to compete in a space where the 'value' of a game is fucked over by AAA microtransactions and industry trends squeeze what they can out of a commonly accepted price point, but that's a separate discussion altogether). and limbus is their sort of 'last shot' to break into something sustainable.

assuming that this is true, and despite the issues with trusting hearsay especially in this scenario i would prefer to have reasonable evidence to change my mind on something like this, this puts project moon in a really fun situation when you look at the threat of having limbus taken off the korean app store (i'm not sure if this is The App Store in its entirety? there was a lot going on today so i might be missing details on that).

from my perspective as an observer who can neither read korean nor understand more than a few words of it spoken, the only conclusions i can draw from what i have seen in the short span of time since the announcement is some combination of the following points:

project moon either fired the employee to protect them from harrassment (current and future), or fired them because they judged that the loss of one employee in this state was less harmful in the long run than giving up a major source of revenue. maybe both! who the fuck knows!

i still don't know how to feel about all this

people online suck, gacha addicts suck, and being on twitter (or, well, X now) is terrible for my mental health because so many people act in absolutes on the slightest prompt and i can't fucking stand it

people are going to harrass project moon for responding to the harrassment the way they did and i feel like that says a lot about society

this has somehow not ruined my want to play limbus in the future, but idk if i will have any other inclinations to draw it. i don't want them to perish as a company from this one slip-up.

if limbus ends up dying i will probably never play another gacha game again, because despite everything my standards for game quality are through the fucking roof

i...think that's everything. lightly tagged because it would be nice to know how other people think about all this on a site that can handle conscious thought better but this is mostly just to get things out of my head rather than for conversation purposes.

everything fucking sucks, but at least we're still here to watch it burn, eh?

[gamer2002]

If you are interested in my arguments against piracy.

It is true that digital content is unlike regular material items. Unlike them, the digital content can be endlessly reproduced from a single copy, at zero cost.

But, the digital content still needs to be created in the first place. Costs, resources, and work hours go into crating the original functioning version.

Even if you argue that indies deserve support more than big studios, big studios also need to get their profit. Otherwise, they will simply stop making further contract. I mean, I don't play AAA games myself much anymore, they are same shit like the recent Skyrim IN SPACE, but that's beside the point. We assume the game is of a good quality.

There is a debatable point how many sales should be needed to return profit from the game, which affects the price. But game pricing is another can of worms. But still, there are sales as well, if you are willing to wait.

The bottom line is that digital content is not a necessity. It is a luxury in the form of entertainment, while you do have cheaper/free alternatives of the same kind of content available. More of it than you can consume in a lifetime. You are not entitled to play/watch/read the thing you pirate. Not more than the providers of luxury content are entitled to profit from you getting it from them.

And while marketing's job is to convince you that you need it, falling for that is your own fault. If you decide to play Skyrim IN SPACE, instead of picking one of the available free RPG Maker games, you owe Todd Howard his reward for duping you into getting a copy of Skyrim one more time. Stupidity has a price.

The only argument pro piracy is the situation above, where the purchase is not a guaranteed ownership. There is a term for putting a time frame on consuming content, it is called rental. But it has to be explicitly called that. Back in the day of VHS tapes, you whippersnappers, when we wanted to just play the tape once we explicitly rented it at a cheaper price. There was no situation during which the shop owner has offered us a purchase, just to show up at our home after some time and take the tape back.

Purchase is a purchase. It doesn't matter if the digital provider states deep in the TosS that he can block access to your purchased content. The moment he says we have purchased it is the moment he has recognized our ownership of it. This is the definition of purchasing. If he wants to put an unknown possible time limitations, he should call it renting. Words matter.

The digital content provider can only reasonably limit the amount of our installed copies, to prevent us from pirating it to others.

If our legally obtained digital ownership is violated by the provider, it is ethical to pirate said content.

I don't pirate stuff, but this sort of practice undermines ethical arguments against it.

[jackdawyt]

Your bird is back with another Dragon Age 4 News Update!  🐦

For the first time this year, I’m doing a massive monthly news recap of everything we learned about Dragon Age 4 going forward (JUST) in the month of March, because slap my arse and call me Andraste, this month was huge for Dragon Age 4 updates, we’ve got a lot of exciting info to get into!

(Romance Tweets)

Calling all romance fans, you can bank on Dragon Age 4 to fulfil all of your intimate desires, perhaps even more so than the previous games. Jon Renish, Foundation Programming Area Director working on the next Dragon Age had a few things to say whilst watching a romance scene script read through:  

“Don't want to alarm anyone, but I'm starting to think 'Dragon Age' games might be a bit randy.” (March 3rd)

‘Randy’, according to the Oxford Dictionary, means ‘sexually arousing’ and ‘exciting.’ So, we can prepare for that, whatever that is! Jon continues his tweet thread with:

“Well now it's all sad and sweet and emotional. I was not prepared for this rollercoaster.”

In true BioWare fashion, we’re going to have a lot of sexy times, however, brought together with moving and character developing moments – y’know, the ups and downs of the romance as the relationship builds and grows throughout the entire game experience.  

“Oh, nothing like that.  Just watching a script read through.”

Jon confirms that this was indeed a script read through, as we can tell reviewing a potential romance scene. As a romance advocate myself, I am very interested in the direction romances will be going in for Dragon Age 4. That is something that I will especially be keeping my eyes on. 

(E3/EA Play 2020 Update)

EA Play and E3 2020 are generally the most expected places to see a new Dragon Age 4 reveal trailer.

E3 2020 has been cancelled due to the current outbreak, however, we’ve yet to be updated on the status of EA Play 2020. Of course, it is most certainly cancelled since the tickets for the show were supposed to drop this March. But, we still don’t know what will replace the show.  

The teams behind E3 2020 are supposedly working on a digital showcase to display new announcements that would’ve been revealed on stage. We can only assume that EA will follow suite and do the same for EA Play, making it a digital show, like Nintendo’s Direct conferences.  

Regardless, this is something that we’re going to have to wait and see until EA speak out, and when they do, I’ll be sure to cover that in a news update. I feel we could have a Dragon Age 4 reveal, with an expected release of 2022/2023, but with everyone hectic right now, I’m unsure.  

(C Virus Update)

Speaking of hectic... with the current outbreak, EA have spoken and shared a statement about health and safety during these times:  

(March 13th) “These are challenging times for everyone.  We’re working to look after our employees and their families, and make sure we’re doing the right and responsible things to fight this pandemic illness.”

Thankfully, everyone working at BioWare have been asked to work from home. Justin Masse, Experience Designer working on the next Dragon Age tweeted he’s “working from home until April 1st", confirming the length of this situation.

According to Crystal McCord, Associate Producer of Performance Capture and VO, working at home has been very productive for the team at BioWare as they have “exceeded all expectations.” 

So, it’s great knowing that despite the crazy situation in the world right now, BioWare developers are staying safe, working from home and progressing hugely on the next Dragon Age title!  

(Slack Server)

(March 13th) While Mark Darrah was working from home, he tweeted a picture regarding his tiling progression, as he’s currently redesigning aspects of his home. However, in the very corner of Darrah’s picture lies a laptop screen with a Slack Server revealing many Dragon Age development secrets!  

The server shows plenty of channels for the BioWare developers regarding specific work notes on all aspects of progression. A large amount of the channels are abbreviated to “MOR_” - which is most certainly shortened from ‘Morrison’, Dragon Age 4’s current project title as we know.

This list of the channels are endless, and I could spend forever looking into what exactly they all refer to regarding the production of the next Dragon Age game. We have one channel called ‘mor_announcement’ - does this hint at a new trailer to soon be showed off, or is it an old channel since The Dread Wolf Rises teaser? Are they planning an upcoming announcement? Surely, they would be right? Is that anytime soon?  

Another channel is called ‘mor_da_week’ which from what I can assume stands for Dragon Age week? We have a Dragon Age Day created by the fans and made offical by BioWare, but a Dragon Age week, that’s something I’ve never heard of...  

And there’s just plenty of channels referring to Dragon Age 4’s current development, there’s even a bad design ideas thread, an ask Mark anything chat, approvals on key aspects of the game, marketing assets, and so on!  

It’s a gold mine of tidbits, orchestrated by none other than Mark Darrah, the Executive Producer on Dragon Age. He has once more tweeted a cheeky little tease that may appear mundane, passing a blind eye to it, however, when you take some time and actually look at what he’s posted, it reveals a nug-ton of info we can speculate on.

(New Associate Producer / Jobs)

Illustrator and Creative Professional “Mad Bee” has returned to work at BioWare, they previously worked on Anthem as an Art Quality Analyst. However, this time around, they are an Associate Producer, most likely working on Dragon Age 4. 

And, following that, BioWare are currently hiring! I’ve seen this news piece get quite the few news articles, but I figured I could break this one down better, rest in peace PC Gamer.

So, indeed BioWare are hiring for many roles at the company, the most prominent role is a ‘Technical Director’ for ‘the next major title in one of BioWare’s most prestigious franchises.’  

Considering Mike Gamble, the new project lead for the next Mass Effect game tweeted this hiring out, I’d assume this position is needed for the Mass Effect team who are also in Edmonton, opposite the Dragon Age team.  

What’s most concerning about this job listing relating to the future of Mass Effect is that, according to the job requirements, the applicant needs to have experience ‘developing, debugging and optimizing AAA multiplayer games on PC or console.’  

To throw away my suspicion that Mass Effect or Dragon Age are going to have a heavy multiplayer experience, I looked at the other job listings located at Edmonton’s studio and I discovered other job listings, like an Engine Programmer which require the same experience of developing and debugging games, however, without the multiplayer element.  

So, perhaps BioWare have two teams, one working on the main single player element and the other working on the much smaller multiplayer aspect? I’d be naive to not reiterate the fact that future BioWare games are going to be live service, however, we still don’t know to what extent that will look like.  

(Tevinter Nights)

Patrick Weekes teased that Dragon Age 4 is most certainly in Tevinter following there Tevinter Nights Book plug, however, Patrick still calls the next Dragon Age game an unannounced project? Which I don’t understand because The Dread Wolf Rises teaser trailer at The Game Awards 2018 most certainly confirmed that a new Dragon Age game is currently in production and has been announced.

Unless Patrick is calling it ‘still-unannounced' because they’re planning an announcement soon...

I feel like Patrick is just joking at the fact that the next game is most certainly set in Tevinter, considering PC Gamer made an article a while back stating that Dragon Age 4 is set in Tevinter based on the Tevinter Nights book reveal, it made plenty of the BioWare staff and community laugh at their credulous Journalism. So, it could just be that.  

Anyhow, March has actually been an amazing month to be a Dragon Age fan! We had the final issue of Blue Wraith and the release of the anthological Tevinter Nights!

Tevinter Nights dropped plenty of story hints for the future of Dragon Age. I was lucky enough to receive an early copy, as of which, I’ve created plenty of content regarding all of the story threads uncovered in the novel that you should check out once you’ve read the book for yourself, I’ve still got more to content to come from Tevinter Nights too!  

However, if you have not read it and very much care about the future of Dragon Age, which if you’re watching this video, you most likely do. So, you should go and read this book because we learn A LOT going forward for the future narrative of Dragon Age. The book is a huge spring board for the next game, so go and read it!  

(Blue Wraith)

The final issue of Blue Wraith launched and as much as I enjoyed it, the comic ended on a cliff-hanger!

The lead writers Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir are hopeful for another comic to come, stating:

The two also spoke in a comic-centred interview by Deconstructing Comics about the direction of their entire Dragon Age comics. That since Knight Errant, their comics are created to prepare for a hypothetical Dragon Age 4, but not as a prologue or a plot for the next game. Nunzio suggested that fans should instead look at Tevinter Nights.

Nunzio shared on BSN Forums that hopefully the wait for the next comic won’t be as long as last time. Dragon Age: Deception came out through October – December of 2018, whereas Blue Wraith came out through January – March of 2020. So, perhaps the next comic run could come mid-2021.

(Future Books/Comics)

Speaking of future books and comics, just after I finished Blue Wraith and Tevinter Nights, I was asking myself what’s next to look forward to regarding Dragon Age content. However, on March 23rd we got not one, but two book announcements coming later this year.

Dropping on the 13th of October, BioWare are revealing a new development book, charting the legendary game studio's first 25 years in a massive retrospective hardcover book at $39.99. Perhaps we’ll learn more about Dragon Age 4’s previous iteration, project Joplin?  

Following that, on October 27th, the five Dragon Age graphic novels are being put into a massive collection for $29.99.

This book collects Dragon Age: The Silent Grove #1-6, Dragon Age: Those Who Speak #1-3, Dragon Age: Until We Sleep #1-3, Dragon Age: Magekiller #1-5, and Dragon Age: Knight Errant #1-5.

But not Deception & Blue Wraith? Potentially they’ve left these two out because Dark Horse wish to progress with these comics, foreshadowing more comics in the future to come?  

(Reddit Leak)

Moving on to a slightly weird, and most certainly fake-but-take-it-as-you-will-update... we have a reddit leak showing many upcoming games release dates, with some actually being accurate. Dragon Age 4 is listed here, and according to this leak, it’s releasing the 15th of November, 2020. Again, most certainly fake, but take it as you will.  

Speaking of fake leaks, a 2018 leak for Dragon Age 4’s contents has resurfaced, and oh boy is this thing fake. I feel like dissecting this thing as a separate video just for a laugh, but tell me down below if that’s a good idea or not.  

With that, that’s all the updates we had in March! We’re three, almost four months into 2020, as crazy as this year has been so far. I’ve already created plenty previous news updates, so if you need to be caught up to date, or you’ve missed an update, or you’re just stuck inside and need something to put your mind at ease - I have a news playlist with every single major update regarding Dragon Age 4’s development, so be sure to check that out. 

I hope you all are holding up okay and staying safe, distract yourself by telling me some of your own hopes for the next Dragon Age game, it can be anything you'd like to see! Personally, I'd love to see Vaea make any appearance in DA4!

[adastraperfortuna]

I Played Cyberpunk 2077

Ultimately, Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s hard to talk about it without acknowledging the backlash that it received around its launch, but the backlash was directly proportional to the amount of marketing that it got. This happens to a lot of games – and frankly, a lot of my favorite games. If I were working at CD Projekt RED and I was responsible for the kind of marketing that resulted in the kind of expectations that they built for themselves, I’d have to take that sort of stuff into deep consideration. But, as someone who bought the game, enjoyed the game, and desperately wants to talk about the game, I’m not sure that it matters. So, to reiterate: Cyberpunk 2077 is good.

There’s so much game to Cyberpunk that it might be easier to start by talking about my favorite part of it that isn’t a game: the photo mode. I’ve joked before about my favorite gameplay loop in Star Citizen being “taking screenshots,” and that’s not my intent here, but some of my favorite games in recent memory have made it easy to look over the memories I made during their runtime. Interspersed within this review will be some of my favorite screenshots that I took – the inclusion of precise controls for things like depth of field, character posing/positioning, and stickers/frames helped to make my screenshot folder feel less like a collection of moments in a game and more like a scrapbook made during the wildest possible trip to the wildest possible city.

And what a city it is. Night City is my favorite setting in a video game in recent memory. It’s not incredibly difficult to make a large environment, but to make a meaningful environment where every location feels lived-in and the streets are dense with things to see and do? That’s a challenge that very few studios have managed to step up to. More than that, Night City feels unique in the landscape of video game cities – whereas a city like Grand Theft Auto V’s Los Santos is rooted in a reality we’re familiar with, Cyberpunk’s retro-futuristic architecture (and overall aesthetic) help lend it a sensibility that we’re unfamiliar with. It really feels like stepping into another world - fully fleshed-out, fully envisioned.

The environment is obviously beautiful and unique, but I was surprised by just how ornate it was. The thought and consideration that went into details as minor as the UIs you’ll encounter in and on everything from car dashboards to PCs and menus both diegetic and otherwise helps the entire world feel diverse, detailed, and cohesive. While everything feels of a kind and everything is working towards the same design goals, the sheer amount of variety was shocking.

The biggest thing that stuck out to me about Night City itself within just a few hours of playing was how vertically oriented it was. Not just in the “there are tall buildings” sense, though there certainly are tall buildings – I’m talking about the way that Cyberpunk uses verticality to tell stories. The first time that you end up high enough above the skyline to see rooftops will inevitably be during one of your first encounters with Night City’s elite. The hustle and bustle of street life fading away as an elevator climbs up the side of a building and you emerge into a world you aren’t familiar with was astounding. That claustrophobic feeling of being surrounded by monoliths isn’t only alleviated by attending to the rich, though – for similar reasons, my first journey out of the city limits and into the “badlands” will stick with me. Cyberpunk successfully manages its mood and tone by controlling the kind of environments you’ll find yourself in, and while that may seem like a simple, sensible, universal design decision, its consistent application helped ground the world for me in a way that made it feel more real than most of its contemporaries.

Something else that makes Night City feel real is how Cyberpunk implements its setpieces. In a decision that reverberates throughout the rest of the game, CD Projekt was clearly all-in on the notion of immersion and seamless transitions. While it was consistently surprising and exciting to find bombastic moments embedded in the world’s side content (one standout involves Night City’s equivalent of SWAT descending from the sky to stop a robbery in an otherwise non-descript shop downtown), it never took me out of the world. And, on the other end of the experience, the number of memorable, exciting story moments that were located in parts of the city that you had wandered by before helped make the world feel almost fractal, this idea that every building and every corner could house new adventures or heartbreaks.

One thing that did take me out of the experience, unfortunately, were a few of the celebrity (or “celebrity”) cameos. While I think that the core cast was well-cast, with Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand in particular being an inspired choice, the game, unfortunately, wasn’t immune to the tendency to include recognizable faces just because they were recognizable. Grimes plays a role in a forgettable side quest that felt dangerously like it only existed because she wanted to be in the game. There are also an almost concerning number of streamer cameos (“over 50 influencer and streamers from around the world,” according to CD Projekt), and while most of them completely went by me, the few that did hit for me only served to disrupt the world. The only perceived positive here is that most players won’t have any idea who these people are.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing that broke immersion in the game. Due to what I can only assume are particularly harsh memory restrictions imposed by the game’s release on last-generation hardware, the game has some of the most aggressive NPC culling that I’ve ever seen. While NPCs don’t strictly only exist in screen space, it often feels like they do, as simply spinning the camera around can result in an entirely new crowd existing in place of the old one. This is obviously rough when it comes to maintaining immersion in crowded spaces on-foot, but it gets worse when you’re driving. Driving on an empty road, rotating the camera, and finding that three seconds later there was an entire legion of cars waiting for your camera to discover them, far too close to slow down, was always a deadly surprise. It doesn’t help that your cars take a while to slow down.

Cyberpunk’s approach towards cars in general is interesting. While I certainly had trouble with them when I began playing, I eventually began to get into their groove. If you want to learn how to drive effectively in Cyberpunk, you have to learn how to drift. After the game’s latest substantial patch, the team at CD Projekt finally fixed my largest problem with the game’s driving – the minimap was simply too zoomed-in, making it difficult to begin to make the right decisions on when and how to turn when traveling at speed. Now that that's resolved, however, whipping and spinning through the streets is fun, and the cars feel appropriately weighty. I’ll still occasionally boot up the game just to cruise around its streets and listen to the radio.

Speaking of the radio, did I mention that Cyberpunk 2077 has one of the greatest game soundtracks that I’ve ever heard? The radio is filled with great original songs from some pretty great musicians, but that’s not where the soundtrack’s beauty starts and it certainly isn’t where it ends. The original soundtrack (composed by P.T. Adamczyk, Marcin Przybylowicz, and Paul Leonard-Morgan) was consistently beautiful, moving, and intense. The world feels gritty and grimy but ultimately beautiful and worth saving, and a great deal of that emotion comes from the soundtrack. While the heavy use of industrial synths could’ve lent itself towards music that existed to set tone instead of form lasting memories with memorable melodies, the sparkling backing tones and inspired instrumentation helped keep me humming some of its tracks for months after last hearing them in-game. I’m no musical critic, I don’t know how much I can say about this soundtrack, so I’ll just reiterate: it’s genuinely incredible.

It certainly helps that the encounters that so many of those tunes are backing up are exciting as well. I was expecting middling combat from the company that brought us The Witcher 3, and while the experience wasn’t perfect, it was competitive with (and, in many ways, better than) the closest games to it than I can point to, Eidos Montreal’s recent Deus Ex titles. Gunplay feels tight, shotguns feel explosive, and encounter spaces are diverse and full of alternate paths and interesting cover. My first playthrough was spent primarily as a stealth-focused gunslinger, using my silenced pistol to cover up the mistakes that my feet made when trying to avoid getting caught. Trying to sneak into, around, and through environments helped emphasize how complex the environments actually were. While it’d be easy to run into a wealth of the game’s content with your guns loaded and ready to fire, that may contribute to a perceived lack of depth in the game’s world design. I’m trying to write this without considering what other people have said about the game, but this particular point has been something of a sticking point for me – there are individual, completely optional buildings in Cyberpunk that have more interesting, considered level design than some entire video games, and the experience of evaluating and utilizing them was consistently mechanically engaging and exciting.

The sheer number of abilities that the player has can be almost overwhelming. While leveling does encourage the player to specialize into certain traits, especially when said traits can also serve as skill checks for the dialogue system and some traversal opportunities, every trait houses a bundle of skills that each house a sprawling leveling tree. Far from the kind of “three-path EXP dump” that you’ll find in a great number of AAA titles, Cyberpunk’s leveling experience can be legitimately intimidating. It’s difficult to plan the kind of character you want to play as when you’re trying to project eighty or a hundred hours forward for a character that will be constantly encountering new kinds of challenges. I certainly didn’t begin my playthrough by wanting to be a stealth-focused gunslinger – in fact, I was originally aiming for a melee-focused hacker build. While I was drawn to what I was drawn to, hearing stories from other players about the kind of builds that they ultimately considered to be overpowered made one thing exceedingly clear: Cyberpunk is a game that rewards every kind of play, possibly to its own detriment.

Cyberpunk’s main story is notably short. I wouldn’t consider this to be a problem, considering the sheer amount of engaging, exciting, heartfelt side content, but it might be the core of the difficulty scaling plateauing so early on. As you progress deeper into the game you’ll find that almost every build, as long as you are willing to commit to something, is more than viable. Look around long enough and you’ll find people saying that every single build is overpowered. For me, that fed into the central power fantasy in an exciting way. By the time that I rolled credits a hundred hours in I was more or less unstoppable, walking into rooms and popping every enemy almost instantly. For others, this was a problem – it can be frustrating to feel like all of your work to become stronger wasn’t met with an appropriate challenge when the time came to put it into practice. This is a difficult problem to solve, and I don’t have a solution. I’ll fondly remember my revolver-toting, enemy-obliterating V, though, so I can’t complain.

Regardless of the scaling, however, the content you play through to arrive at that pinnacle of power was consistently, surprisingly robust. While the differentiation between “gigs” and “side quests” is confusing (word for the wise: gigs are generally shorter and more gameplay-centric missions that are designed by CD Projekt’s “open world” team while the side quests are made by the same team that made the main quests and are generally longer and more narrative-centric), both kinds of side content are lovingly crafted and meaningful. Of the 86 gigs in the game, every single one of them takes place in a unique location with a hand-crafted backstory and (almost always) a wealth of different approaches. These don’t exist separately from the rest of the game’s design philosophy, even if they are made by a separate team, and you’ll often find that decisions made outside of gigs will reverberate into them (and, sometimes, the other way around). I’ve played a great deal of open world games, and never before has the “icon-clearing content” felt this lovingly-crafted and interesting. While the main quests will take you traveling across the map, the side content is what really makes it feel dense and real. You’ll be constantly meeting different kinds of people who are facing different kinds of problems – and, hey, occasionally you’ll be meeting someone who has no problem at all, someone who just wants to make your world a little bit brighter.

It’s surprising, then, that one of the most obvious ways to integrate that kind of content in Cyberpunk is so sparsely-utilized. “Braindances,” sensory playback devices used to replicate experiences as disparate as sex, meditation, and murder, play a critical role in some of the game’s larger quests, but they almost never show up in the side content. You would imagine that the ability to freely transport the player into any kind of situation in a lore-friendly way would’ve been a goldmine for side content, but its use is limited. This isn’t even a complaint, really, I’m just genuinely surprised – I wouldn’t be surprised if they used them more heavily in 2077’s expansions or sequels, because they feel like an untapped goldmine.

Another thing that the game surprisingly lacks is the inclusion of more granular subtitle options. While the game does let you choose the important stuff – whether or not you want CD Projekt’s trademark over-the-head subtitles for random NPCs, what language you want the subtitles to be in, what language you want the audio to be in – it doesn’t include something that I’ve grown to consider a standard: the ability to turn on subtitles for foreign languages only. As the kind of player who avoids subtitles when possible, I went through most of Cyberpunk with them off. Unfortunately, a tremendous number of important cutscenes in the game take place in languages other than English, and I didn’t know that I was supposed to understand what these characters were saying until I was embarrassingly far into one of the prologue’s most important scenes.

NOTE: I was pleasantly surprised to discover after replaying the ending of the game earlier today that they've fixed this issue in a patch. Nice!

I can only complain about the game’s language support so much, because there’s something important that lies between the player and the story they’re there to experience: a fucking incredible English localization. Ironically, it’s so good that I can’t help but imagine that most players won’t even think about it. It’s easy to notice and talk about an excellent localization when it’s from something like a JRPG, something with a clearly different style from what you’d expect from a work made in English, but never once in my entire playthrough did I even briefly consider the idea that it was natively written in anything other than English. I knew that CD Projekt was a Polish studio, but I just assumed that they wrote in English and localized it backwards. The language is constantly bright and surprising, the jokes land, the characters have memorable quirks, everything feels natural, and the voice acting is legitimately some of the best that I’ve ever heard in a video game. Both versions of the main character’s voice were damn-near instantly iconic for me, landing up there with Commander Shepard in the upper echelon of protagonist VO. I can’t praise it enough.

That said, even if the localization was incredible, it’d be hard to appreciate if the meat of the story wasn’t up-to-snuff. I was ecstatic to discover, then, that Cyberpunk 2077 has an incredible story. Every great story starts with a great cast of characters, and Cyberpunk hit it out of the park with that. The core cast of side characters are some of my favorite characters in years. Judy, Panam, River, and Kerry are all memorable, full, charming people. Kerry Eurodyne in particular is responsible for my favorite scene in a game since the finale of Final Fantasy XV. The quest “Boat Drinks,” the finale of Kerry’s quest line, is quietly emotional and intensely beautiful. He, and the other characters like him, are more than the setting they’re in, and the way that the game slowly chews away at the harsh and bitter exterior that the world has given them as it reaches to their emotional, empathetic core consistently astounds. Night City is a city full of noise, violence, destruction, and decay, but you don’t have to participate in it. You don’t have to make it worse. You can be different, and you can be better. You don’t get there alone, you can’t get there alone, and Cyberpunk is a game that revels in how beautiful the world can be if we are willing to find the light and excitement in the people around us.

Of course, Cyberpunk is a video game, it’s an RPG, and the story is more than a linear progression of memorable moments. Something that struck me while making my way through Cyberpunk’s story was how expertly and tastefully it implemented choice. I’m used to games that give you flashing notifications and blaring alarms whenever you're able to make a decision that matters, so I was initially confused by how Cyberpunk didn’t seem reactive to the things I said and did. The game would give me a few options in conversations, I’d select one of them, and then the story would progress naturally. However, as I continued, I began to notice small things. One character would remember me here, a specific thing I said twenty hours before would be brought up by someone there, an action that I didn’t even know I had the choice to not take was rewarded. The game slowly but surely established a credibility to its choices, a weight to your words, this sense that everything that you were saying, even beyond the tense setpiece moments that you’d expect to matter, would matter. It was only after going online after completing the game that I realized just how different my playthrough could’ve been. While nothing ever reached the level of the kind of divergent choices that The Witcher 2 allowed, there were still large chunks of the game that are entirely missable. Three of the game’s endings can only be unlocked through the completion of (and, in one case, specific actions in) specific quests, and multiple memorable quests were similarly locked behind considerate play. This isn’t really a game that will stop you from doing one thing because you chose to do something else, most of the choice-recognition is simply unlocking new options for the player to take, but it always feels natural and never feels like a game providing you an arbitrary fork in the road just for the sake of making it feel artificially replayable. CD Projekt has already said that they made the choices too subtle in Cyberpunk, but I deeply appreciate the game as it is now – more games should make choices feel more real.

It helps that the dialogue system backing up some of those choices is dynamic and the cutscene direction backing those scenes up is consistently thrilling. The decision to lock you in first-person for the entire game was an inspired one, and it resulted in a bevy of memorable scenes made possible by those interlocking systems. There are the obvious ones – being locked in a smoky car with a skeptical fixer, getting held at gunpoint by a mechanical gangster with his red eyes inches away from your own and a pistol’s barrel just barely visible as it presses against your forehead, having to choose between firing your weapon and talking down someone with a hostage when in a tense, escalating situation. There are also a million smaller ones, situations where the scale of the world becomes part of the magic. The first time that I sat down in a diner and talked with someone I had to meet or the first time that I rode along through the bustling downtown of Night City as a politician sized me up will stick with me because the perspective of the camera and the pacing of the real-time dialogue interface combine to make almost everything more powerful. There’s so much effort put into it – so many custom animations, so many small touches that you’d only see if you were staring intensely at every frame. All of that effort paid off, and the controversial decision to strip third-person out of the game was ultimately proven to be one of the smartest decisions that CD Projekt has ever made.

Another decision that helped power an exciting, engaging story was how the game freely manipulates the time and weather during key story moments. It’s a small touch, it’s one that you won’t notice unless you’re looking for it, but every once in a while you’ll walk into a place during a crystal-clear day and come out five minutes later to discover that it’s a cold, windy, rainy night and you have a city to burn. Along with the first-person limitation, this initially feels like something that could only harm immersion, but when it’s backed up by a story that motivating and scenes that thrilling you’d be hard-pressed to notice it outside of the flashes of telling yourself that this scene or that scene is the best that you’ve played in a long time. This also helps avoid a problem that games like the Grand Theft Auto series consistently face – instead of letting scenes happen at any time, compromising direction, or doing something like a timelapse, sacrificing immersion, Cyberpunk manages to always keep you in the action while also presenting the action in its most beautiful and appropriate form. There are moments where it truly feels like it’s meshing the kind of scene direction that’d be at home in a Naughty Dog game, the gameplay of Deus Ex, and the storytelling of the WRPG greats, and in those moments there is nothing else on the market that feels quite like it.

I sure have talked a lot about this game’s story, considering the fact that I have barely brought up its central hook. The early twist (unfortunately spoiled by the game’s marketing), the placement of a rockstar-turned-terrorist-turned-AI-construct firmly in your brain after a heist goes wrong and your best friend dies, helps establish a tone that the rest of the game commits to. Johnny Silverhand starts as an annoying, self-centered asshole with no real appreciation for how dire your situation is, but by the end of the game he had more than won me over. Reeves’s performance was really stellar, and the relationship between him and V is incredibly well-written. More than that, his introduction helps spur on a shift in the way that you engage with the world. The first act is full of hope, aspiration, the belief that you can get to the top if you hustle hard enough and believe. After you hold your dying friend in your arms and are forced to look your own death in the eyes, though, things begin to turn. Maybe the world is fucked up, maybe it’s fucked up beyond belief. But there Johnny is, telling you to fight. Why? Every time you fight, things get worse.

But the game continues to ruminate on this, it continues to put you in situations where fighting not only fails to fix the problem, but it makes it worse. Despite that, it’s positive. For me, at least, Cyberpunk’s worldview slowly came into alignment, and it’s one that I can’t help but love. Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about how important the fight is, how important believing in something is, even if you’re facing impossible odds, even if there’s no happy ending. It’s a story that posits that giving up is the worst ending of all, that your only responsibility is to what’s right and to the ideals that you and the people you love want to live up to. The game uses every story it can tell, every character it can introduce you to, and every encounter it can spin into a narrative to drive that home. And, when the ending comes, it was phenomenal. All of the endings were powerful, effective, and meaningful to me, but I’m more than happy that I went with what I did.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s not flawless, but no game is, and at its core it's one of the most fun, beautiful, narratively engaging, and heart-filled games that I’ve ever played. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, and I sincerely hope that everyone who has skipped out on it because of what they’ve heard is able to give it a shot someday. Maybe they’ll love it as much as I do. Wouldn’t that be something?

[pestopascal]

While I will absolutely agree that CB2077 isn’t the ONLY game doing all this bullshit, or that other AAA studios don’t deserve the flack CDPR is getting, I have to say that this is absolutely the perfect storm and I think people are FINALLY seeing the problems in modern AAA gaming. CB2077 might be fun to play, may have a good story, but it’s almost impossible to see because of the glaring issues. Which, honestly, is a good thing. I hope games change after this.

under here

AAA studios have been like this and this sort of release has been completely normalised on all accounts by both the businesses themselves and fans because of the inherent reliance on modders (bethesda at the forefront of this), as well as the pushback every time companies actually go ‘uh we need a lil more time’ (although... they just shouldnt announce potential release dates, im even of the camp they shouldnt even start releasing the game until like 6 months out from their official date because they fuck it up every time. borderlands 3 being the only game i know of being in “secret” development and then announcing itself in march for a september release. game itself aside, thats how companies should do it). easily i can remember a lot of 2011 release games which have had the exact same issues as cp77′s release, and then every other game in between since. very rarely do you actually have a game that isn’t a fucked up mess of a pile of pixels. and it is always the customisable character ones that are honestly, genuinely, ugly looking at release. but you can definitely say its been happening looooooong before 2011, with unrealistic expectations, word limits, 11 month time frames, offloading sequels to smaller companies so they can suffer if it fails, etc etc. the entire system has been like this for so long... they dont know any real different nowadays.

i mean look. tlou2 released under crunch conditions this year, and was rewarded. it was ALL over the social media feeds, it was quite the controversy because, surprise surprise, the company promised they wouldnt do it uwu and then. bam ! crunch conditions. literally around that time too, bioware employees came out with a statement saying ‘man we wish dai FAILED so that back in 2014 we couldve proven crunch was a wrong practice’. they say this as well after having to produce da2 in 14 months, which just suffered from fans and journalism for reusing environments, because it was produced in 14 months, and honestly? no one pointed that out back then, bioware themselves pointed it out again this year, 6 years after release, that that game was produced in 14 months. rdr2′s release was hounded by stories of crunch, and they all disappeared into the night because... it was heralded as the best game of all time. that was 2018, 2 years ago.

i think too is that some people get kind of ... morally and ethically concerned. which is understandable. can you consume something when you know it was made under conditions like crunch? and i think one of the most confronting things about it is that 9/10, not only has your favourite company engaged in crunch conditions, they almost actively choose to continue with them. and then that’s a whole other bag of issues blown up over there when it comes to what is able to be consumed what isn’t etc etc

i think also like a mix of marketing, promises and then the expectations of what the game will be like have really had cdpr earn the ire of fans which is just like... you don’t believe what these companies are saying. you never should, esp when it’s their ceo’s saying it who don’t work on the actual floor. bioware itself is the main culprit of doing this to the point they finally came around with all the da4 concept art and teasing to be like ‘ummm but actually dont get invested?’. remember all that qunari lady fanart that bioware management was like ... please dont get attached? yeah. yeah. like at what point as well is there going to be heavy level of apprehension to approach this? and i can’t really talk either, i cracked open the door for mass effect again. i know exactly what kind of shit bioware will pull, i know they are teasing it already on social media, but mass effect is my ride or die series. that’s why people keep opening the door on letting these companies get away with it. and you can’t fault fans entirely either because this is down to a science of how to get money. i mean, fuck, mass effect andromeda’s entire advertising campaign HINGED on the n7 logo. for the nostalgia value. and i see text posts in the same vein of both ‘guys, disney isnt gonna fuck you if you consume every remake for nostalgia value’ and ‘its understandable why people do it’.

so then you have to go ‘well are fans as just to blame’ and then that’s a whole other argument.

i think also like. i personally havent run into aaaannnyyyyyyy of the issues that you see posted online. which is ironic bc 1) i play on ps4 and 2) its an old dusty ps4. in fact a lot of ppl i have spoken to who have had issues have played on pc. does this mean the glitches dont exist? ofc not, the vids and screenshots are right there. but like... ive had a basically unhindered experience so far, and i get where ppl are coming from (i do, i promise) where theyve basically found the game unplayable. is there also a standard of what ppl consider unplayable because ive played most AAA games at launch when they basically rushed to slap the box label on the game and called it a day until they work on patches. when ppl consider unplayable is also just... different per person. some people have a slight blur on the screen when turning too fast even in an MMO and decide the game is horrible and unplayable. some people can have broken quests and npcs not loading and falling through maps and still be fine. there’s no agreed statement of what makes a game unplayable either, which is why you read threads on twitter and someone goes ‘yeah this npc t-posed so i quit in the first hour’ with a dozen replies. everyone has different levels of it.

it’s a mixed bag of issues. im not excusing cdpr, but the ppl who worked on the game are honestly likely not the ones who pushed for a release. you’ve gotta look at sony and microsoft and ceo’s with bonuses coming up and the investors and shareholders and people who sit behind computers and read numbers detailing interest and demand and supply and how every single time they had to delay this game, the loudest (but smallest) bunch of assholes on like reddit and in the twitter threads complained that it was delayed AGAIN even though back in what 2015? they said it’ll come out when it’s ready. and yeah there are times when game delays result in a mismatched half assed sort of story (kh3... p5... ffxv... dai...) and then there are times when, if they need to delay the game... they probably need to delay the game. sometimes delays are bad sometimes theyre good sometimes you are sitting there like whew if you only didn’t try to be like THIS TIME this is the release date.

the ONLY WAY this will stop happening is, quite frankly, unionising. and everyone is allergic to that whole concept so like... this is “the perfect storm” as you put it. but it’s also not. people have been so disappointed over the last 2 years alone for gaming companies, the final product, the attitudes from higher ups, that i think cdpr is receiving a good few years worth of anger. i think theyre also on the receiving end of misdirection from american fans who still don’t fucking get the company isn’t american, because that’s another bag of issues as well. like we’re holding at least 8 bags of groceries out of the back of the car now, and we don’t want to take another trip, because there are so many little bits of this entire situation to look at. there’s so much back and forth.

i think the worst, but most realistic thing is: games won’t change. how they will social media wise will. maybe. assuming bioware gets their heads out their asses but... they’re going to be a lot more careful. i mean, hell, sony offered refunds. that was just a publicity stint. they dont give a fuck if the game was bad. as i said before, if they did, they would make all companies fix trophy problems, starting from like 2010 or whenever the trophy system first came out. they just don’t wanna fall in alongside cdpr being thrown on its sword. but the companies are gonna learn from this, get smarter, still do the same shit to their employees, still pay off journalists, still do media blackouts, etc etc. and we’re gonna be here in another year’s time, with another game, having these same roundabout arguments, and cp77′s issues are gonna fade into just a wikipedia article.

[hatchermatches276]

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Paul: Our company model is growth focused and we cover 3 important areas in the gaming business. Firstly, we're a worldwide e-Commerce retailer promoting over 7,500 games from 450 publishers in more than 190 countries to millions of gamers. Secondly, Green Man Gaming has a thriving community who talk about and track their game achievements on our neighborhood platform. This data combined with the industrial information of the shop offers Green Man Gaming a considerable depth of knowledge of our customers. Ultimately, we have a publishing arm that aids developers publish their own games and bring them to industry, supporting them every single step of the way. The fusion of Green Man Gaming's e-Commerce shop, a sturdy community producing billions of information points and publisher support sets us apart from our competitors.

It is February! In 2017 that indicates that we get six a lot more weeks of winter AND your yearly dose of video game statistics and trends. We're taking a appear at important events and shifts in the gaming business and considering the current state of gaming. Take a peak, or stay for a week! All statistics are completely researched. See sources at the bottom of the web page for additional information.

Nintendo 64 and PlayStation ushered in a new era of gaming. Polygons replaced pixels, and 3D rendering entered into the gaming vocabulary. Retro gaming hits like Crash Bandicoot, Mario Kart 64, and 007: Goldeneye pushed the limits of technologies, and made the most realistic virtual environments noticed up to that point. We also have some retro games for systems that may well not really feel as old as they are, including PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and the original Xbox.

Style patterns: To shop information in DynamoDB, gaming companies partition game state and other player information working with player ID, and use the key-value access pattern (1:1 modeling). In circumstances when additional fine-grained access is named for, these companies use a sort important (1:M modeling). This permits them to access and update diverse properties or subsets of a player's dataset separately. This way, they never have to retrieve an complete dataset. In this approach, various items that retailer distinct properties can be updated transactionally by making use of the DynamoDB transactional API Some providers compress user data to reduce expense. PennyPop, for instance, makes use of gzip to compress player data and shop it as a base64 string, decreasing the player information to ten percent of its original size.

Mobile games serve as a source of speedy, boredom-beating entertainment, a bit of pressure relief and a distraction from true life worries, and just as a restful moment (such as gaming in one's downtime). Additionally, 60% of girls say that gaming makes them feel good, and given that mobile gaming is speedy and simple - the game is generally on their particular person - it really is simple to play although on the go. As Refinery29 says in their dive into girls and mobile gaming, ladies have not been historically nicely-served by the sedentary nature of video games, but mobile gaming changes the story right here, given that they can play anywhere.

Ask yourself why you happen to be considering starting a gaming weblog or youtube channel? If it really is simply because you assume you have what it requires to be the next PewDiePie or DanTDM (or TheTechieGuy ), then you're not alone. However, your principal reason really should be that you have an overwhelming love for gaming. It doesn't hurt to have a fantastic voice and a thing to contribute to the gaming network. (Of course, the perks ain't negative when they commence rolling in, either).

The gaming business saw a quantity of thrilling developments in 2016 touching on various aspects of the sector. Gaming technology is creating in really thrilling approaches. The long promised revolution of virtual and augmented reality moved closer to realization. The mania around Pokémon GO with its mass market appeal and utilization of mobile phones introduced untold millions to the possible of augmented reality. With its launch in India and South Asia it has turn into the poster youngster for the prospective of mobile games provided its advanced technologies and the huge international smartphone penetration.

Commonly utilised to refer to games that are produced by key studios with a substantial price range, requiring a high sales volume and in depth software program expansions to retain profitability. Like hollywood, these games tend to rely on reasonably low-danger sequels over larger-risk artistic projects, so anticipate to see your operate all more than billboards and Tv advertisements. You are going to be focused mostly on eeee2.site Pc gaming blog Computer, Playstation and Xbox gaming for AAA titles.

We use our GeForce Practical experience servers to determine the most effective excellent settings primarily based on the user's CPU and GPU, and target higher frame prices than 'normal' optimal settings to make certain the lowest latency gaming encounter. These settings are automatically applied when the game is launched so gamers do not have to be concerned about configuring these settings themselves.

[diaryofasupergroupie]

Groupie 101 - The Act

Your outfit is perfection and you’re backstage. The hardest part is over, right? Wrong. You may look like a groupie and you may have fought your way backstage or to the party or the studio. But that isn’t the part that will keep you under their arm. There are tons of girls wanting the exact same thing. The thing which separates the ones who stay and live their groupie dreams and the ones who are kicked out by security is how they behave. It can make you and break you.

There are a certain number of places as a groupie you may go or be invited to. I’m going to pick a handful and go over my tips, tricks and god no’s for behaviour, socialising and the like. Before I go any further let me first say I am one person and people vary. I am blunt, sarcastic and very very British. There are some differences from country to country. UK girls have a reputation for being very discreet, private and undemanding. I am no different and will always recommend that as the best way to go. In the states fans could probably name a band’s groupies. Across the pond we make it our job to be a secret – the very best kept secret. My good friend V is a sixties day dream, chilled out and high a good eighty percent of the time. My other friend M is from Texas, loud and one hell of a handful. You should never change your personality because it takes all kinds.

The places you may happen on tend to be gigs and backstage, parties, press, tour, ceremonies, studios and videos. I’ll be going over the first few in this post and addressing the rest in a second one because there’s quite a lot to get through. All equally important and different and needing a slightly different approach and some ground rules which you will be expected to know if you want to become part of the furniture. Often it’s other girls who will enlighten you on the do’s and don’t’s. Remember the boys have been doing this for a long time it’s as simple as nipping to the supermarket for them.

Gigs and Backstage

For girls who are trying to get into the scene this is the very first experience you will likely have. It’s where I started all bright eyed and full of hope. When you walk into a gig you are with sometimes thousands of fans. I am assuming you’re already backstage because read my other posts. Now you’re there you’re excited but ultimately unsure exactly what to do next. The venue can be tricky and each one is different. When you start stick to smaller ones and local venues. The last thing you want is getting lost and then kicked out. Walk backstage like you are supposed to be there. If there is any doubt then security will see it. If you look as though you’ve been there all your life then you up your chances of staying there. People say act confident and no one will question you and it is the biggest truth in the world.

You always want to find the band and depending on the time they will be in different places. A safe bet is to head to where you hear the most noise. There is a misconception about what happens backstage. People are convinced that now it is thoroughly dull. Not every band treat every gig as a party but that is what groupies are for. We make everything a good time. In comparison to the golden days we aren’t throwing things out of windows and the like. But things are not tame in my experience – just watch some tour videos. When you walk in that room with the band you can’t immediately react and by that I mean don’t scream or cry or faint if you can help it. They are going to play for crazed fans you have to be different. You have to be a breath of fresh air. Don’t ask for a hug or a photograph. The only photographs I have are ones others have taken. I’ve found bands appreciate this and like being the ones to initiate photos. If they don’t know you walk to them and smile, remember to still behave like you’re supposed to be there. That is the most important thing. Introduce yourself and tell them you don’t think you have met yet. Start a conversation and when the time is right talk about their music. Don’t over flatter them but musicians love the sound of their own voice. They love music so talk to them about music. They have hundreds of people telling them how handsome they are. You have to see something else, something to do with the music. If you’re there for the right reasons you won’t even have to think of anything.

Use your common sense and judgement. If everyone is chilled out and lounging with a few drinks then fit into the scenario. Take a drink and sit down while adding to their conversation when you have something to add. If you’re in the middle of a party with music blaring, people making out, shots being poured and lines of coke on the table then be ready to party. Above all don’t force something that isn’t there. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to but if they offer you a drink take it – even if you don’t actually drink it. They may make advances towards you, as I said you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. While you’re there you can make friends with other girls. We stick together and they can recommend you to all the right people. Mingle as you would in any social situation with girls and boys but don’t step on any toes! Girls stick together but we are territorial. If you see any girls glaring daggers at you then maybe you should back off. If you see girls with someone don’t wait until they leave and jump in her grave. If you’re unsure then ask one of the girls or one of the boys. They will hopefully give you an honest answer. If you step on any toes then you will give people a bad impression. Some bad words can quite literally ruin you.

You may be asked to watch the gig. If they ask you never say no because they will take offence to it. You’re not only rejecting the gig, you are rejecting them. Let them take you and usually you’ll be put at side stage. They’ll go preform and you can watch. You don’t want to draw attention to yourself, to run out on stage or ask to sit by the drums. Stage is busy – there are the band, the techs, the crew, managers, photographers. Try your best not to get in the way and if there are other girls do what they do. Enjoy the gig and remember that so many people would kill to be where you are. Afterwards you’ll get your chance to talk to them and they will be elated. Playing on stage releases adrenaline and they will be on a high. This is the time to show them you appreciate them. Sometimes they’ll take you to a club. Be yourself, but be not yourself. Be the version of yourself you’ve always been scared to be.

Parties

As soon as you really make some friends and get into the scene you’ll hopefully get into all the right parties. Or you’ll sneak your way in. Bigger bands have been known to throw after parties and if you’re lucky to live in the big cities like London, LA or New York you’ll make it your mission to go to every one of them. If you’ve been invited then it really isn’t a problem. Depending on where the party is you will go to the house or the club or the hotel and for bigger bands there will be a doorman. Give him your name and then walk in there like you were supposed to be there because you are. Parties are much easier than what I spoke about above. There aren’t any gigs or crew running around. So all you have to do is follow the rules above and socialise. Use it to mingle and make friends. The right conversation with the right person can mean getting AAA. You don’t have to do anything out of this world and don’t be afraid to approach people and introduce yourself. This is what parties are here for. As always only do what you’re comfortable with and never feel pressured.

Now things are slightly different if you have had to sneak in. There are a number of ways to sneak in be they through literally climbing through a window, relying on a friend, tricking someone into vouching for you or blagging your way in – all I’ve gone through in my last post for getting backstage, the same rules apply. You have to walk with even more confidence and even more determination. Find someone important at the party and make them your best friend as it’ll help you stay in the party. But you don’t need to do anything you’re not doing if you’re invited. Be yourself and be charming. The most important thing is to socialise, have a drink and enjoy. If you are standing on your own talking to no one that will draw attention to yourself. If security come blag your way out. You can blag your way in or out of most things. I once got into a party in a hotel suite thrown by one of the most famous and well known singers of the last decade through acting confident and blagging it.

Press

Press is important and one of the biggest things about being in a band. Bad press can send them down like a sinking ship. There are always press issues. It may not be something you come into contact with on the first night but when you spend days, festivals or tour with bands you’ll come into contact with it whether you like it or not. From my experience press often means interviews or photoshoots but I’m going to lump meet and greets with them too. They are all about putting the right image out there. These are important aspects of the job while despite how much you love the band is a job. Press means work. Just because you are blessed to share their job it doesn’t mean you should get involved. While press are there I have found the best thing to do is stand to the side and let them do their thing. The band will thank you and see you value what they have to do. Sometimes the band have good relationships with radio hosts or journalists and you’ll get to meet them. But it isn’t always the norm - if you can network with radio people they know absolutely everyone. While they are doing meet and greets stand to the side and let them meet their fans. This is time for the fans, you can have them all night long if you wish.

In recent years there has been a big trend in ‘rockumentries’. I know two bands who have had the cameras rolling while I’ve been there. This is a different kind of public image and one totally under the bands control. While the cameras are rolling don’t change the way you behave and don’t try to act up for the cameras. Instead relax and do what you would usually do. It’s rare you’ll come across this but if you do – relax!

Part 2 with the rest coming very soon. Any questions will be addressed at the end of part 2 as well. If there is anything you would like further explanation on or added in please message me! - K

[askagamedev]

Lightning Mailbag #2

You all asked a bunch of questions that could be answered pretty quickly, so I thought I’d go with another round of Lightning Mailbag.

Crackdown 3 has been delayed for the third time now. First announced in 2014, for 2016 release (lets assume 4 year dev cycle?), delayed til 2017, then 2018, now 2019. Dev time has doubled , so it's safe to assume so has the cost of the project. Obviously since it's a first party game, MS is fine with selling it at a loss, making it up with console sales. But twice the investment this seems like a huge loss. Why wouldn't they have canned it yet, with this many issues?

It’s almost certainly the favored project of somebody reasonably high up in the food chain.

On the unused IP thing i heard the devs of the fourth sly cooper game made an engine and rough demo of a new sly game and pitched it to Sony (who held the rights to the franchise) and they green lit it, leading to Thieves in Time. Any thoughts on why more studios don't do that?

Many of them do. Id software famously built a functioning PC version of Super Mario World to pitch Nintendo to try make a deal to port Super Mario World to the PC. The main difference is that you don’t hear about it because publishers just don’t announce games that don’t get the green light.

While Its great the Bethesda is making Starfield and Fallout 76, why would Bethesda be taking so long to create Elder Scrolls VI? Certainly its a forgone conclusion that the game would make bank.

They always need a long time to build an Elder Scrolls game because they have an enormous amount of content in them that needs to be built, plus they’re still supporting the elder scrolls MMOG and card game.

Only just now realizing your recent crunch time was likely to do with locking down your project for E3. I hope it went well! While I imagine the weeks leading up to getting demos, trailers and the like ready for the public, is the week of E3 itself a time for most devs to calm down a bit, or is there plenty of work to be done during the event as well?

It depends on when the game is releasing. For those of us who are working on titles that are still over a year out, any announcement or showing isn’t likely to require a lot of additional work because we’ve still got a lot of work to do. But for those releasing within a year, the workload is likely doubled up because we both need to get something to drum up interest at E3 and we are buckling down for the final push to finish the game and ship it. I’m currently in the second camp.

Before games were regularly online and able to send data back to the devs, how was general player behaviour judged? Was there really any way for a dev to know how many people got to the end of a PS1 game, or unlocked all the hidden characters in a SNES game or the like?

Publishers did a lot of old-fashioned market research - random samples and surveys.

Hey Mr. Developer do you happen to know why we don't see much in game advertising? With the high cost of developing AAA games and the large audience games now offer we would consider in game advertising to be the norm by now.

I worked on a game that did it. The publisher partnered with an ad agency that gave us their advertising software that would serve ads pulled from their servers. It ultimately didn’t earn enough and it cost us too much engineering/QA time to make sure everything was working. You can see some elements of advertising in games now - XBL, Steam, PSN, etc. show a lot of ads, and many games themselves will advertise their own additional DLC content . But players are very touchy about actual in-game ads and don’t necessarily respond super well to branded tie-ins.

The FANTa Project is currently on hiatus while I am crunching at work.

[What is the FANTa project?] [Git the FANTa Project]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent questions: The FAQ

[veedramon-beanie]

Ignore the empty shelf at the bottom left and the (long since disassembled and now partial) Digimon collection on the top right shelf, but here’s the result of my late night sorting yesterday!  It’s so cool to see all my Pokemon plush set up together like this, aaa....!  I’ll go through them shelf by shelf so you guys can get a better look at everything!  I’m not gonna bother naming everything, though, like I normally do with my Digimon - because that’s too much work!  I’ll mention notable things, though.  Also assume most of my non-jakks pacific plush are bootlegs lmao, I know some that probably aren’t (bought on ebay, purposefully avoided bootlegs bc the officials/a certain style of official looked nicer, or bought off of a probably reputable site) and some that 100% aren’t (bought from the store, ie english-released Tomys and Pokedolls I bought straight from a Pokemon Center in Washington)

First shelf!  Just a shelf for special plush, or more accurately, plush I didn’t have room for anywhere else by the time I remembered to put them in.  Mimikyu is probably real since I was avoiding the bootlegs (so many cheap bootlegs...!  They looked soft, but I just loved the accessories on the official one too much to go with a bootleg...because the bootleg’s look so poorly made in comparison) and the Substitute plushie is.  Well.  I honestly don’t know.  I’ll be putting all my future plush up here too even if they have a place to go because haha, whoops, those shelves are p a c k e d in case you can’t tell.

Second shelf!  Here I have my normal types and electric types.  Fun fact: that Jakks Pacific Pikachu is my first ever Pokemon plush ever!  Cliche, I know.�� But I picked him out from the only other option (bonsly) and he was the only non-bonsly plush in the store.  Also I like Pikachu, he’s cute.

Water type and Ice type shelf!  Aka best starter type shelf, even if my preferences vary over the generations.  That Keldeo secret sword form (at least I think it’s that form?) was bought from an irl Pokemon Center!  I go there every time we go on vacation to Washington (my dad has work up there every so often and we used to have family up there, but we haven’t gone for a few years...)  I wish I got that Amaura, Greninja, and Popplio from the Pokemon Center, tho, haha.  Also fun fact - the glaceon behind the popplio is probably a bootleg (it came with the same kind of tag as the vaporeon) but I actually bought it from a real store.  I felt like it had to be real if a real store was selling it for $10 and it had an alarm on it and everything, right?  I feel jipped.  Give me back my money, Universal Studios, I bought it in that Hollywood walk or w/e the fuck near your park.  Nah I’m kidding; I like getting plushies as souvenirs from places when I go on trips, and it was cool to get a Pokemon one!

Fire, fighting, rock, and ground type shelf!  That Tyrunt was also bought from the same Pokemon center (at a later date, though).  Also, that Jakks Pacific monferno in the back is the second ever Pokemon plush I bought!

Sorry for the light change on the next two, but:

Grass types and (er, some) dragon and flying types~!  The black thing in the back is a mega shiny rayquaza, but he’s actually way more massive than he appears in the picture!  Also, the smaller snivy is something I got from the Pokemon Center as well!  I actually didn’t mean to buy it, but I got it for free with one (that’s in the next picture - meloetta) and hey, I can’t complain if the machine gives me a free Pokemon!  The bigger snivy I got wayyy back when Black and White hadn’t released over here in the US yet (ah, the dark days when you had to wait for english translations of Pokemon games...) and I actually recently found his long-since-detached tag that I for some reason kept...cool!  (God I want the shiny version of this plush soooo badly though, shiny snivy was the first legit/non-event/ect shiny I ever got in the games and not to mention I have an emotional attachment to that specific plush anyways...totally a holy grail of mine!  Maybe some day I can get it....[unlikely, lmao, especially since I have cheaper holy grails I want like the porygon2 pokedoll and any Digimon beanie ever- but I can still dream...])

And the last shelf - my dark, ghost, psychic, fairy, and dragon types that I accidentally forgot to account for when doing the other shelves and then was like “well, shit” so I had to stick them here!  Yes I know tyrunt is on another shelf and noibat and noivern are flying/dragon and 100% should be on other shelves but by the time I remembered to put them + the shiny tyrantrum anywhere, I didn’t have enough room...all three of the plush are pretty big (especially noivern and tyrantrum tho) and as you can see, the flying Pokemon (and dragon too, but it’s harder to tell) and Tyrunt are some of the closest to the front and thus some of the last ones to be put on the shelf - and given that the bigger ones need to go to the back, I didn’t have a lot of options here.  PS - there’s a shadow lugia (99% likely to be a bootleg) pokedoll between umbreon and togekiss/next to the bigger shadow lugia and the purloin/absol and a Jakks Pacific lugia (100% legit, bought it from target at the same time I bought pichu a few pictures back) behind the meloetta (also 100% legit, got from the Pokemon center with the snivy) and the shiny Tyrantrum (100% fake, but it’s fuckin fantastically well-made)

Tbh though, I’d really recommend those bigger bootlegs, esp for Pokemon that are near impossible if not 100% impossible (like shiny mons that dont have actual shiny plush, or legitimately un-plushified mons) to get your hands on.  They have Digimon ones too (one of which I own - a Dracomon!) that are equally as varied and that’s pretty fantastic considering how selective Digimon is with its merchandise compared to Pokemon.  I know bootlegs are bad but they’re soooo nice, plus you can’t claim they’re stealing nintendo’s profits when nintendo (or bandai) hasn’t even made plush of those characters yet and likely has no plans to...so especially if you’re buying second-hand I’d go for it!  But of course, that’s really a matter of personal preference; you do what you’re most comfortable with ^^ but if you feel lowkey bad but still wanna buy one, just buy ones that don’t have legit counterparts, or something like that.  Or buy legitimate ones alongside the fake ones; that way you have a giant cuddle buddy that isn’t worth much collecting-wise AND a rarer, legit plush that you can put on display!

Anyways feel free to let me know if you would like to see any plushies more closely!  Always happy to do that~

[timschaffer]

It’s been a good 6 months with these new systems and here’s my long inevitable rant on them.

Ok so I beat Demon Souls and Astrobot soon after the system releasing and it’s been just me playing PS4 games since on the PS5. The frame rate/resolution does improve on some titles but it’s not many as it pretty much has a be a game where it was unlocked so it has room to fill either/both, which Xbox does the same but the difference being PS5 with 47 titles(found a good list googling) and Xbox actually with Hundreds of titles.

Than we have 120fps games and PS5 is at 11 where Xbox is at 45. I’m super into 120 frames but I get it’s not for everyone and not many even have a 120hertz TV. For me, it’s a HUGE plus though. I’ve been messing with Titanfall 2’s 120fps boost and man is it a game changer. Nioh, a PS4/PS5 exclusive also got 120 frames and it for sure makes the game. Another one that would be unexpected for most is New Super Lucky’s Tale. A good platformer at 120fps is so much fun!!

PS5 does has the cool haptic feedback and strong pressure sensitive triggers. I wouldn’t use them competitively but for single player games it does add an extra layer of immersion that I liked. It is starting to get old and I been recently just turning it off. It’s much more impressive than the Switch Joycon’s HD rumble but with both of them you just get over it after a few months. With Tony Hawk’s remake I had to turn them off as it was dramatically messing up my combo game as triggers are super important when you need to do a reverb to keep a combo going and it doesn’t register because you have to be so quick with it and any pressure you have to add only makes it harder to pull off.

Game Selection

Both currently are in the same boat of not much new for the systems to play. Demon Souls does give the edge to PS5.

Ratchet and Clank and Horizon will be out this year, Ratchet getting very close now :) , but that’s about it. And Xbox has Halo coming.

Now 2022 and beyond Xbox now has 32 studios under their belt where 2 years ago they were at like 12. And Sony with PS1,2,3,and 4 has always had stellar first party titles so it should be the same with them, about 2 huge blockbusters a year. IF Microsoft can have these studios come out huge hitters than we could see a shift in who has more AAA big hitters, 10/10 games.

Huge win for Xbox with back compatibility

Xbox has where you can play OG Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series titles. For me this is one of my favorites as for some examples...

I been playing Lost Odessey the last few days because of the new game the same people made, Fantasian, which has become an instant masterpiece for me so I wanted to go back to their last game and sure enough it’s as good as JRPGs can possibly be. Also playing an original Xbox title that is 20 years old, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic.

So having these games run so smoothly (as the original for sure had issues) and it be in 4K is just wildly cool!

Breathing fresh new life into older games is so nice :)

Game Pass - The best friend of gaming

Pay $10 a month and have access to a great selection of hundreds of games!

Some highlights

Destiny 2 + All Expansions

The Outer Worlds

Halo Master Chief Collection

MLB The Show

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Outriders

Doom Eternal

Skyrim w/ Mod Support

Monster Hunter World

Slay the Spire

Hollow Knight

Yakuza Series

Grand Theft Auto V

Tetris Effect : Connected

Hellblade

Dishonored 1+2

Nier Automata

Dead Cells

Microsoft Flight Simulator

No Man’s Sky

Anyone could find at least 10 games they’d want and instead of paying 300 dollars for those 10 games (trying to take sales and older release dates into consideration instead of just saying $600 if all new titles), you could pay $120 a year or $10 a month and have more than you could ever want.

I been playing Outriders a ton and only because of Game Pass. I played the demo(beta) and I was very meh on it, but the more I play it as I didn’t have to buy it and it was just sitting there the more I realized that if you just ignore the horrible story segments and just play the game, it’s has an amazing gameplay loop and mechanics!

There has been many examples for me where I played it because it was on Game Pass and ending up finding something great I wouldn’t have known otherwise.

Plus than you have games you for sure would have bought and spent hundreds/thousands obtaining these games and now you don’t have to.

The Bigger Picture

You have a gaming PC, a smartphone/tablet, a cheap laptop with a browser... as long as you have access to a web browser or Google Play/App Store you can now stream Xbox games on these devices. And unlike other streaming services, you can also download these games to devices powerful enough to run them.

Got a gaming PC and a smartphone? Got an Xbox and a tablet? Install it on your PC/Xbox and than continue your game with your smartphone/tablet on the go. Everything is tied to your account when it comes to game purchases, subscriptions, and save files. Being able to jump to any device and not only play but continue your progress is ... well living in the future. We’re finally there, something we thought was only possible in dreams.

Media Optics

Sony has had major mishaps and here is a good video breaking it all down in a few minutes.

https://youtu.be/u6lzBl9kUf0

If you are unable to watch or just not wanting to watch some key take aways are this

-PlayStation has a few big hitters on the way but Microsoft has far more things in the works and if they become successful games Sony is going to be in a big losing position. Sony can release 1 or 2 great games a year but it won’t be enough.

-Sony’s competitor is investing, is excited, they have interesting personalities and they go in podcast and they do live streams. And they’re far more active on Twitter. They interact with their fans. “And Their studios don’t sound like fucking robots, and they don’t have the State of Play girl voice over and that’s it” “They aren’t stuck to a PlayStation blog post, where they can’t say a bad thing about anything they make”

-“You’re not going to be able to get by in a Game Pass ecosystem in 18 months, the way you would be now, unless you have something to compete. And if your not going to compete on the subscription level, than you need to have repeatable AA and AAA. More 2nd party and 3rd party exclusives”

-“I’m nervous, I been covering PlayStation (since early PS3 days), I been playing PlayStation since the beginning. If you not a little worried right now, I think you should be”

-“It doesn’t feel exciting right now. I turn on my PlayStation 5 and I just like, eh. Like it doesn’t even feel like they are trying to draw me in.” Sony has a very assertive and very active competitor, and PlayStation isn’t doing that right now

-In other dark moments of PlayStations history they had a strong Identity and a lot of games, they weren’t always great but they were trying. Now all they want to focus on is the few huge blockbusters. Meanwhile Xbox is making moves not only for tons of big exclusives to follow but this great and exciting Game Pass movement and being constantly active with their fans and bring big updates to their games and other companies games for their platform.

“PlayStation isn’t offering much to be excited for.” “I turn on the PlayStation 5 and I don’t see anything to be excited for to play” “I keep saying I don’t feel like you need a PS5” “I also wish they would talk to us. You can’t announced something huge like PS3 and Vita stores closing deep in a forum post people have to randomly come across” “You sold us a dev kit and than canceled the console’s store the next month”. Thank god they later go back on it.

Xbox has been having big and fun announcements at least once a week

Just today they added 12 more games with 120FPS boost enabled and another going from 30 to 60..

2 days ago they made it where you can play free to play games and join party chat without having to pay for an Xbox online subscription.

3 days ago they made it where iOS and web browsers can now access Game Pass

So what is PS5 Currently offering its competitor doesn’t have?

Demon Souls

Controllers with Adaptive Triggers and Haptic feedback

PS4 exclusives

So what does Xbox Series X|S offer that it’s competitor doesn’t have

Game Pass

Account saves and instant gameplay access across PC, Android, Apple, Web Browser

Quick Resume

(Queue up to 6 games to be able to switch back n forth between without the software having to close)

“Auto HDR” on games without native HDR support

91 Xbox Series vs 11 PS5 120fps games

VRR support

(Variable refresh rate)

Playing games off external storage solutions

Having Access to 4 generations of games dating back to 2001 with higher resolution and resolved frame rate dips.

1440p support and being able to select your resolution and hertz you want to run.

Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One Exclusives

The Future

PS5 “must have” games for future we know of

Final Fantasy XVI

Ratchet and Clank A Rift Apart

Horizon 2

God of War 2

Forspoken

5 big games in the next 2 years’ish.

Xbox “must have” games for future we know of

Scorn

Halo Infinite

Starfield*

Elder Scrolls VI*

Hellblade 2

2 this year, 1 next year, 2 maybe exclusives as with * they haven’t said if they will be exclusive or not.

Xbox will be at E3 and Sony will not so there is a possibility we do see all the game announcements from the 32 studios Microsoft has under their belt now but yes going off only what we know at the moment PlayStation’s intermediate future looks brighter. I do think it’s safe to assume that at least 3 more games could be huge coming from Microsoft and we just aren’t aware of it yet.

Of what we do know, I’d say neither is enough for someone to buy a system based of the exclusives we are aware of yet (with the exception being Elder Scrolls VI for millions, just not me) but more of the promise of what’s to come.

I am a HUGE Final Fantasy fan so for me XVI is enough for me to own a PS5.

[charger-batteries]

New Nintendo Switch 2 release date, specs, leaks and more

Even with the PS5 and Xbox Series X finally out, anticipation for a Nintendo Switch 2 (or Nintendo Switch Pro) is still red-hot. According to recent reports, the next Nintendo Switch could be a beefed-up version of Nintendo's beloved hybrid console with new features and 4K gaming support.

Nintendo's next Switch likely won't deliver things like ray tracing or 8K gaming, but a more powerful Switch could help the company better compete with the latest next-gen consoles. And some rumors have pegged the Switch 2 as sporting some truly wild features, including potential dual-screen support.

Nintendo hasn't confirmed the existence of a new Nintendo Switch model, but the latest rumors indicate that a new Switch is all but inevitable. Here's everything we know about the New Nintendo Switch 2, including its possible release date, specs and features.

Latest Nintendo Switch 2 news (November 29)

The new GPD Win 3 gives us a taste of how a Switch Pro could work, with smooth 60 fps gaming on the go.

Taiwan's Economic Daily News reports that Nintendo is including a Mini-LED display on the Switch 2, and is gearing up to launch the console in 2021.

New Nintendo Switch 2 release date

Citing a Taipei-based report out of the Economic Daily News, The Edge Markets reports that a new version of Nintendo's popular hybrid console could arrive by early 2021. That was quickly followed up by a Bloomberg report that suggests that the new Switch could arrive next year complete with 4K support and an expansive new games lineup.

A subsequent Bloomberg report claims that developers are being asked to make their Nintendo Switch games playable in 4K, adding further weight to the possibility of an upcoming hardware upgrade.

Economic Daily News later reported that Nintendo was still planning a 2021 launch, and has been visiting companies in Taiwan to obtain displays for the new console.

Here's a look at when every version of the Switch has launched so far. Looking at these days, it's possible we could see an updated Switch by 2021 to coincide with the system's four-year anniversary.

Nintendo Switch: March 3, 2017

Nintendo Switch (upgraded battery): August 2019

Nintendo Switch Lite: September 20, 2019

Nintendo Switch 2/Nintendo Switch Pro: 2021 (rumored)

New Nintendo Switch 2 price

While there's no official price set for Nintendo's next Switch, it seems safe to assume it'll cost more than the $299 base model — and certainly more than the $199 Nintendo Switch Lite. In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Japan-based games consultant Serkan Toto predicts that the Switch Pro will cost around $399.

New Nintendo Switch 2 specs

The Switch Pro's rumored specs have varied based on different reports, with some claiming that the next Switch will be a modest upgrade and others hinting at a significant power boost for Nintendo's console. A sketchy, now-deleted 4chan post (via Inverse) suggests some major changes, including a custom Nvidia Tegra Xavier processor, a 64GB SSD, 4K video support, and two USB-C ports. This post also claimed that the Switch Pro would be a TV-only console, and won't be playable in portable mode.

Economic Daily News also claims Nintendo is set to include a Mini-LED display in the Switch 2, which is a big leap up from the 720p LCD display included in the original. Utilising Mini-LED tech would mean better responsiveness, contrast, and energy efficiency, all of which would be more than welcome on a new Switch.

However, a forum post on Korean website Clien (via TechRadar) suggests that the next Switch might not be a huge generational leap. The poster claims that Nintendo is working with Nvidia on a custom Tegra processor based on Nvidia's Volta architecture, and won't include the Tegra X1+ chip that many had expected the console to feature. As a result, 4K support may not be feasible for the Switch Pro.

The current Nintendo Switch packs a custom Nvidia Tegra X1 processor, a 6.2-inch, 720p display and 32GB of storage. In August 2019, the console saw a minor refresh, which bumped the battery life from an estimated 2.5 to 6.5 hours to 4.5 to 9 hours. In our own Switch battery tests, we found that the new model lasts nearly twice as long for games such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

The Nintendo Switch 2 may also feature Nvidia DLSS 2.0 support, according to an Nvidia job ad spotted by Wccftech. The posting seeks a software engineer on the Tegra team to work on "next-generation graphics" and mentions gaming consoles by name. Considering that the Switch is the only Tegra-powered console out there, it's possible that Nvidia is conducting work on a CPU for a new model. DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is an AI technology designed to boost framerates in games, which could lead to much smoother performance if it makes its way to the Switch 2.

But improved specs could just be the tip of the iceberg for the Nintendo Switch 2. A series of code found in the Switch's April 2020 firmware update reveals what could be support for a dual-screen console, suggesting that the next Nintendo Switch may be a two-display device.

This wouldn't be a first for Nintendo given the company's popular Nintendo DS and 3DS handhelds, but we'd be curious to see how dual-screen support would play into the Switch ecosystem. Perhaps you'll be able to play in handheld mode while beaming certain content to your TV, similar to how the Wii U operated.

There are also some recent mobile GPU breakthroughs that point to a promising future for upcoming handheld consoles such as the Switch 2. Samsung and AMD are expected to be working on a new Exynos 1000 chip with AMD graphics built-in, which could give the Switch 2 a massive power boost if Nintendo decides to opt for that CPU over the aging Tegra X1 found in the current Switch.

One of the most recent notable mentions of the Nintendo Switch 2 comes from the developers of Eiyuden Chronicle, a throwback role-playing game that's currently on Kickstarter. As spotted by Nintendo Life, Rabbit & Bear Studios mention "Nintendo's next generation console" as one of the platforms the developer plans to release the game for. While the studio was transparent about having no inside knowledge to Nintendo's plans, the company noted that porting the title to the relatively underpowered Switch while building it for next-gen platforms would be an expensive endeavor.

New Nintendo Switch 2 features

If Nintendo does make another Switch-like console, it seems safe to assume that it'll once again allow you to play in TV, tabletop and handheld modes. But some recent Nintendo patents hint at some other interesting features that could either make their way to the new console or serve as a complementary device.

Nintendo recently patented a unique health-tracking device, which would be able to track your sleep, monitor your mood via microphones and sensors, and even change the odor of a room. Interestingly, the patented device has its own dock (much like the Switch), and seems designed to work with health-related games a la Ring Fit Adventure. It's too early to tell whether such a device will even come to market, but it will be interesting to see if Nintendo ups its fitness-tracking game in time for the next Switch console.

What we want from the Nintendo Switch 2

If the Nintendo Switch 2 or Nintendo Switch Pro does become a reality, there are a handful of features we'd love to see that could make it a compelling high-end option for Nintendo fans.

1080p handheld gameplay: The Switch's 6.2-inch screen is limited to 720p in handheld mode, meaning you can't experience titles like Super Mario Odyssey and Pokémon Sword and Shield in their full glory. The ability to game on the go in 1080p would be a big reason to upgrade to a Switch Pro — if the console can muster 60fps at 1080p, even better.

4K or 1440p support for TV mode. Considering that 4K consoles are out there and that the PS5 and Xbox Series X will support 8K content, it'd be nice to see the Switch Pro get a resolution bump. The new console would likely need a beefy new dock to support 4K or even 2560 x 1440 resolutions, but just imagine how glorious it would be to play Breath of the Wild in 4K.  

Better ergonomics. We recently got our hands on Alienware's Concept UFO, which is a Switch-like portable gaming PC that features standard controller-sized buttons, triggers and grips. If Nintendo can devise new Joy-Cons that are bigger and more ergonomic without being too massive, the Switch Pro could be the most comfortable way to play on the go.  

True Bluetooth support. While the current Switch features Bluetooth 4.1 for connecting wirelessly to Joy-Cons and Pro Controllers, you can't pair other Bluetooth gadgets (like headphones) to the console without an adapter. Nintendo, I just want to be able to pair my AirPods to my Switch without any extra fuss — make it happen!  

Why we want a Nintendo Switch 2

The Nintendo Switch is an absolute joy of a system backed by some of the finest games Nintendo has ever released. But its hardware is starting to show its limitations more than three years after release, largely when it comes to ports of major third-party games.

Kotaku's Ethan Gach recently got his hands on the new Switch port of The Outer Worlds, which reportedly "looks so bad on Switch I'm tempted to tell even people who have no other means of playing it to stay away." Based on Gach's screenshots, the port looks incredibly blurry, and suffers from framerate drops. Gamers have had similar issues with ports such as Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2.

While Nintendo games such as Breath of the Wild and Animal Crossing: New Horizons are optimized to look and run great on Switch, the console seems to be running into a AAA games problem. And that could prove especially challenging for Nintendo, especially with a new crop of third-party games built for PS5 and Xbox Series X that may be more graphically demanding than ever.

Nintendo doesn't necessarily need a system as powerful as Sony's and Microsoft's upcoming console (the Switch has done just fine against PS4 and Xbox One), but a significant power boost could make the company's hybrid console even more appealing for fans of big third-party franchises.

Should I wait for a Nintendo Switch 2?

Considering that the Switch 2 is still a rumor at this point, we wouldn't count on it coming out just yet -- at least not anytime soon. The Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite are at the top of our list for the best handheld gaming consoles, and we expect them to continue to get supported for years to come. So if you've yet to jump on the Switch bandwagon, you can do so with confidence that it won't be replaced anytime soon.

Plus, if there is indeed a Switch 2 or Switch Pro, chances are it'll work with your existing Switch game library. Nintendo has a history of supporting its handhelds through multiple iterations, with the Nintendo DS/Nintendo 3DS family supporting the same game library for more than a decade. Given how popular the Switch is, we expect Nintendo to take a similar approach for its current console.

[davidfieldfutureworks-blog]

Contemporary Contextual Studies: Session 17 (02/02/2018)

Had a presentation today for the “imaginary game jam” thing. As TK is one of the resident technical designers my prospective role was essentially already filled, so I just said I’d handle the audio design. Strangely enough, I actually put some brief thought into it.

As the concept was essentially Twisted Metal/Crazy Taxi meets Fallout, and felt that a dark ambience-heavy metal mashup was on the cards for the soundtrack. Being based in Manchester, the use of Manc bands was essential (anything else would be punishable by being sent to live in Liverpool). The core idea would be to take the melody of one song (eg The Boy With the Thorn in His Side by The Smiths), time stretch it and play it in reverse, then lay on some guitar samples by assigning segments of guitar riffs from other songs (eg The Girl in the Dirty Shirt by Oasis) on a sampler, and just basically experimenting til it sounds good. That’s my approach to music at least...

Regarding my actual assignment work, I decided that if I’m going to do this thing properly and look into how I’m going to break into the industry and eventually land my desired role, I’d have to look at everything from a practical perspective. Therefore, I decided to do some budgeting.

Working through all my current and projected expenditure, I came to a target monthly income. I then looked into various roles available at studios in a realistic location, ranging from areas in Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Yorkshire, and Lincoln (I have family and a few mates there so adjusting to a smaller city for the sake of two or three years wouldn’t be as big of an issue if I was starting from scratch). The roles themselves however were quite frustrating.

First off, I clearly have no specialised role to begin with. I’m decent with low poly models, but not good enough for entry level art. I can do technical design, but can’t code, so that’s out (most roles require strong knowledge in C++). My level design skills are limited to real life maps and floorplans that I can draw over and make slight modifications to, leading me to conclude that looking into this particular job would be pointless. Then there’s audio. As much as I love working in a recording studio, I’m too out of practice to consider myself genuinely good, and on top of that most job listings again ask for strong knowledge in C++. It became clear that the role to look into would be the dreaded QA tester.

Going for the position of a QA tester is problematic for a few reasons, ranging from the difficulty to get noticed enough to progress through a company, to the redundancy of being a “qualified game designer” (whatever that means). Ever since I first considered the possibility of working in the industry fifteen or so years ago, it’s always been said that the way to get a job with no experience or qualifications is to go for quality assurance.

Now, obviously it does at least require a background in something related (modding, for example), however besides the knowledge and experience gained from this course (or the second year, if I’m being totally honest) it brings up questions such as “should I really have plunged myself into £45k+ debt for a job like this?” At the end of the day, I could’ve easily earned a comfortable £16-18k/annum for three years building up my portfolio on the side. Then again, would I have actually spent my time doing that, or would I just have wasted it all on going out? Resilience is a key factor in a job such as QA testing though, so it’s a point I’m going to have to moan about til I get bored in order to get it out of my system.

Another issue I’ve been having is the complete lack of information about salaries in job listings in the industry. I’ve honestly never known anything like it, and it’s quite insulting, as it seems to suggest that people should be so lucky to even be considered for a position. That has got to be the most infuriating thing I’ve learned so far about the industry. I perfectly understand a company being secretive over their finances, but to actually withhold information from potential employees is ridiculous when you consider the fact that everyone has responsibilities. How is anyone supposed to know if they’re wasting their time or not in applying for a role that may or may not be financially sustainable for them?

Anyway, putting that rant to the side, I did a little digging, and from what I can gather £15k/year seems to be a sensible figure to work with as far as QA testers are concerned. Long story short, the finances just don’t work out. The alternative is to spend the first few years of my thirties living with my mam, a prospect I refuse to consider.

From here I effectively (a word branded onto my brain thanks to Ewan) ruled out looking for a job at AAA studio straight out of uni, at least until I have some savings or pay off enough debt for it not to be considered part of my monthly budget.

Speaking to John, who I’m assuming could hear my frustration through my choice of words (which consisted of “f” words such as “[it’s] frustrating...) he simply suggested I get in contact with producers at studios around Manchester and the North West area and simply ask the questions I needed to ask. Out of my pool of ten studios that range from low level indie to not quite AAA, only two got back to me on my request for advice (which is more than I expected).

One basically suggested that the best way to find out would be to ask people in the industry (!!!) and the other went into a highly appreciated amount of depth, including personal experience. In hindsight I probably should’ve mentioned my age, as he also gave as he went onto say I’d need to get another degree for getting a “normal job” (on the off chance that anyone who hasn’t had one before is reading... no you don’t. Having a level 2 in both Maths and English, along with six level 2s in total is all you require in terms of qualifications to get such any type of “regular job”).

Nevertheless, his advice was actually quite brilliant. A basic breakdown for anyone who’s interested: - Being a game producer is a catch 22 position. You need experience to get a position, but can’t get experience without filling such a role.

- Make games no matter how bad they are just to get something done.

- Use game jams to get the experience you otherwise can’t get.

- Loving the work you do is worthy of sacrificing money. [Side note: it’s sacrificing what the money pays for that concerns me]

- Wanting to be a game producer is great, but the worst thing to want to be before entering the industry.

- Design documents are the way to go for landing the role of a “junior designer” at a larger studio.

- Quality Assurance is indeed the recommended role for a budding producer to start off with.

- Being a QA at Sony’s Liverpool branch will likely meet my budgetary needs, and is a realistic commute, though staff turnover is very high.

- It’s worth getting a PRINCE2 qualification, as it will prove true understanding of project management.

- Speculative applications and LinkedIn are a must for getting work.

So, to bring this lengthy entry full circle, it seems that my best approach is to banish myself to the city of scousers.

[spicynbachili1]

How to update the classics for modern audiences with Dotemu

From Legacy of Kain to Detective Pikachu

We stay in a time when most individuals forty years outdated and youthful had been introduced up adoring media that was designed to operate as toy commercials, childhood companions, and near-religious texts on the identical time. After I noticed Michael Bay’s Transformers film in theaters all these years in the past, I felt like I used to be seeing a lifelong good friend who I revered with virtually holy ranges of affection “remodeled” right into a crass collection of explosions, butts, and exploding butts. It’s nonetheless the worst time I’ve ever had in a movie show. Any enjoyment I could have derived from the senseless popcorn charms of the movie had been destroyed by my very own expectations. 

That is the story of a complete technology of children, now in early or mid maturity, seeing the faces of manufacturers they’d grown to like became one thing else. The Lion King, Pokemon, Thundercats, Mario, She-Ra, and Sonic are only a handful of different +20 12 months outdated franchises which have simply acquired, or are about to obtain, whole make-overs which may be interesting to new audiences, however have left at some prior followers chilly. It does not must be that means although. It is potential to make everybody blissful. Dotemu is proof of that. Their contemporary takes on Wonderboy, Windjammers, and Streets of Rage have been almost universally praised, even when adapting to new mediums and tremendously altering character designs.

I reached out to Cyrille Imbert, CEO of Dotemu, to ask for his or her ideas on 2D vs. 3D animation, retaining the spirit of a franchise with out bringing its dated baggage together with it, and much more. This is what he needed to say. 

What does it take to replace a traditional recreation for contemporary audiences, with no AAA price range to work with, in a means that brings the essence of the supply materials ahead whereas leaving the outdated design choices behind? 

It’s a troublesome course of as you may think about. Particularly as even when you attempt to be as impartial and logical as potential, there might be subjective choices. Our greatest solution to keep away from that’s to essentially focus on about all of the design concepts between us but additionally with followers, family and friends and get everybody’s opinion. As followers ourselves, we attempt to get the essence of what makes a traditional recreation nice and to maintain it in any respect price. From there, we attempt to collect info from our personal expertise and from web communities, about what would have been higher or ought to have been prevented within the authentic recreation. We set up a listing of these defaults and see how we are able to change them and whether it is technologically possible.

For Windjammers, the menus from the Neo Geo model had been virtually nonexistent so we thought it could be good to fully redo them, and that will additionally give the chance to present extra choices for gamers to customise their expertise and assist them perceive how you can play. The apparent addition was to have the ability to compete with anybody worldwide as Windjammers is a recreation that reveals its full potential when two human minds problem one another. Nonetheless, we determined to remain true to the unique inventive course in each side: menus, gameplay, advertising and marketing, and so on. It’s quaint, however that is actually what makes this recreation so distinctive as properly. It’s 100% a part of the core expertise and essence of the sport.

It is generally assumed that polygon-based graphics price way more to supply than conventional “dot artwork” sprites, however often one thing like King of Fighters 13 comes alongside to disrupt that notion. It is a good looking recreation that used polygon fashions for the bottom animations for every character earlier than drawing over them with 2D sprites, presumably as a result of animating with polygons was the inexpensive technique. What are the variations within the artistry, and price, behind “dot artwork” graphics, hand drawn animation and polygon-based visuals? Are there methods to mix the strengths of all three visible kinds that carry out the most effective in all of them whereas lowering the over all manufacturing bills?

That’s an excellent query! The reply is complicated because it is dependent upon various factors, the primary one being the gameplay and the digicam. I might say that the most affordable graphics are 2D pixel artwork in low decision, as a result of you may work actually fast and don’t want extra assets than one or two individuals. However certainly, if you get to greater resolutions and full HD in 2D, like LizardCube did for Surprise Boy: The Dragon’s Entice for instance, it turns into tougher and tougher. Certainly, as you’re animating body by body and by hand, you higher be an excellent artist and know the place you’re going. As a result of if you wish to change a colour, add a bit of armor or a tattoo, you’ll must do it yet again. 3D is nearer to sculpture/cease movement. So if you wish to change some elements of your character or object, it’s means simpler as you don’t have to transform every body by hand. Combining two strategies could be a good center floor, however once more, it actually is dependent upon what you’re aiming for by way of international inventive course. It gained’t be as clean as a 2D hand drawn animation, however it should really feel extra alive than primary 3D. I’m not an enormous knowledgeable on that although.

Enjoying 20-ish 12 months outdated video games like Avenue Fighter III: third Strike,  Garou: Mark of the Wolves and Steel Slug three reveals that the craft of 2D animation in video games might have peaked years in the past, at the least in my view. Why do you suppose these three video games have but to be topped, even by the cleaner wanting, however typically much less expressive tiles from fashionable studios? Or do you suppose that the three retro video games I discussed have certainly been outclassed by more moderen titles, and the actual subject is with my rose-tinted glasses for the previous?

These three titles are certainly the most effective references for online game 2D animation, and that is what we love at Dotemu. You can additionally add Castlevania SoTN simply with these masterpieces. These are form of video games that will make no sense to remake graphically. They’re already good. I might say that they haven’t been topped just because they’re on the high, so don’t fear about your glasses! However there are some video games which are very near that degree and Arc System Works are undoubtedly going for it. Try DB Fighters Z, that is actually spectacular, even when it’s not 100% 2). Ori and the Blind Forest, Machinarium or the Vanillaware productions are proofs that we nonetheless have very expert groups doing nice video games. Cuphead is top-notch as properly.

However again within the day, 3D was not an possibility, so when you needed to do the most effective recreation you needed to have the most effective 2D artists. That’s it.  That is undoubtedly what we’re going for with Dotemu and The Arcade Crew. We’re in love with stunning 2D animation and we’d like to contribute.

In the event you may work on any I.P., with an infinite price range, what would you make?

Hardest query ever. There are such a lot of prospects! Currently I’ve been desirous about Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen. It didn’t aged properly graphically however I bear in mind being fascinated by the environment and story of the sport. With stunning 2D HD graphics and fashionable gameplay mechanics it may actually be superior.  

I’ve heard from quite a lot of great game artists who’re pretty put off by the look of the subsequent Pokemon film. What’s your tackle the newly launched trailer for Detective Pikachu, and what would have you’ve gotten executed with the artwork course for the movie when you had been in cost?

To be trustworthy, I personally have by no means been an enormous fan of Pokemon, even when I can fully perceive the success of the video games and universe. So I haven’t got a lot of a way for a contemporary tackle that license. We will discuss Star Wars and the current tackle the IP for hours if you need, however I in all probability gained’t be capable of identify greater than three Pokemon. The film seems to be attention-grabbing, however it appears that evidently it actually will get removed from the unique IP and takes quite a lot of liberties with it. It seems to be like a distinct story in a distinct universe, which could be a genius transfer or a complete failure. Pokemon is such a mass-market license, it have to be tremendous onerous to fulfill all of the several types of followers. So long as the IP isn’t just there to promote tickets and merch although, I’d say why not. 

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