FromSoft reported sales of Elden Ring increased by over 200% following its GOTY win, if I remember right. It definitely has an impact. I can’t imagine it’s irrelevant in terms of attracting or keeping talent either, and it probably would help maintaining creative integrity and sticking to your vision in talks with investors.

I have a very hard time seeing any of those competing with either Clair Obscur or Death Stranding 2, apart from maybe Silksong (if it actually ever does come out). But even then I’m not sold.

Mina the Hollower will probably duke it out with Blue Prince for the indie game of the year.

So it’s this versus Expedition 33 for GOTY then? I feel for Sandfall, that’s some unfortunate timing if they end up upstaged by Kojima.

It’s not quite as weird, but Alan Wake 2 as well qualifies I think.

Yeah it’s convenient to blame Pearl Abyss for everything wrong with EVE, but truthfully CCP were making moves of dubious quality way before they got bought up by them.

There are probably better owners than Pearl Abyss, so in a sense that could be a reason for hope. Though I don’t know how much of a hand they have had with all the crap CCP have failed with over the years. Peak EVE was so amazing, but I honestly have no real idea how or if it’s possible to get back to that.

There’s definitely weird people making games on itch and sometimes in the depths of Steam.

Oh yes. Ever heard of Beautycopter?

I tried using Heroic to install Alan Wake 2, but it didn’t recognise me owning the DLCs. Only worked through the actual Epic Launcher. YMMV

Pretty much every single game has a massive drop off in concurrent players after the initial spike. That’s just how humans work, not everyone who tries something will like it.

PC Gamer has given it 60/100 (which some take to mean a terrible, terrible, scathing review but to me, idk, 60/100 seems like a fun time?)

This has been a thing for ages, and I suspect it’s got some psychological explanation in how our brains are wired. But 5/10 is not an “average game”, it’s a quite bad one. In fact, anything below 5 is usually literally unplayable, despite 4/10 really being just below average. 7/10 is typically the score for “a fun time if it aligns with your interests, but by no means a great game”. Everything below 7 tends to be actively bad.

Yeah that’s about what I expected. Fucking hell.

Aren’t Hasbro the villain moreso than WotC?

I’ve probably talked more about XV than any other supposedly bad game, so maybe I’ve developed some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. But for an objectively pretty bad game I enjoyed parts of it and it did elicit emotions out of me at times.

The game has many problems, but maybe the biggest is the huge overambitious “multi-media experience” they attempted. The game itself suffers because its content is spread so thin as it’s stretched out over a movie and a comic and the DLCs and I don’t remember what else. An anime? Even the Royal Edition still suffers for not integrating the DLCs, and it’s kind of awkward to have to stop playing at the appropriate times to go so the DLCs for the maximum impact. And even then the planned Lunafreya DLC would have added so much to the story, but they never got around to that as the game flopped (in large parts because crucial story elements were scheduled for fucking DLCs instead of included in the game!)

I do agree that the combat is fun, and they did have a really good vibe going with the bros and the road trip. There are some really nice heartfelt moments where the game shines. And the fishing minigame is absolute top drawer, one of the best in gaming. But ultimately I look at it as a huge pile of wasted potential.

Absolutely gorgeous music though, some really powerful leitmotif work like Sunset Waltz/Valse di Fantastica and Ardyns themes.

He does deserve that, but I wish the single biggest modding hub on the internet and a load bearing pillar of an entire gaming culture wasn’t sold off to an unnamed party with no transparency and only vague reassurances that “nothing will change”.

What with the late stage capitalist society we’re living in, I’ve been conditioned to think that good things being sold off rarely amounts to good things.

Let’s hope this is one of the few exceptions.

God damnit we just can’t have nice things.

Even though Greedfall is hardly a great game I think it has too much charm to really fit here. I found it too memorable to really be a “mediocre slop” contender.

I said any Call of Duty from the past decade as answer to the original comment, and I still think that is a solid candidate. However, another game I played recently that qualifies I think is Sleeping Dogs. Perfectly cromulent 7/10 GTA clone but ultimately not pulling up any trees.

Bruh, FFTA is a great game and I will hear no slander of it.

These posts are some of the best content on Lemmy and bring me back to the early 00s days of reading the physical PC Gamer magazines in all their glory.

I knew what that video was before even clicking the link. Great insight into the horrible people ruining the games industry.