Almost certainly not, but it’s probably not far down the list.

They did.

Roblox gets mods and UGC because people wanted to be there to begin with. Mostly children, but still people. I don’t know how to make an apples to apples comparison about how prevalent modding was back then, because there are just way more games out today in general; but there were still tons of mods. Elder Scrolls and the mod community have always been intertwined, and once again, people like what’s there in the first place. Even with the reputation of Elder Scrolls being a game you install mods on, it’s only something like 10% of players that ever install them. I have never modded Elder Scrolls.

The third-most populated game on Steam right now is Dota 2. Dota 1 is a mod. Counter-Strike was a Half-Life mod. PUBG came from the designer of a Battle Royale mod for Arma.

Were you playing games through the late 90s and early 00s, by any chance? Because we’ve been here before. At least three of the most-played games on Steam right now came from mods.

FPS is a genre usually designed around something that’s easy for a computer to do but difficult for a human to do (aiming). It’s kind of inevitable. I tend to like the ones with small player counts that I can play with a few friends and fill out the rest of the match with bots, and there aren’t many of those these days. By now, I’ve gravitated toward fighting games, where cheating is often difficult for a computer to do by comparison, because any attack a player makes tends to also leave them vulnerable. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but in order for someone to win by cheating in a fighting game, you’re hardly touching the controller anymore, because the computer has to do all of the playing for you.

Google couldn’t make cloud gaming work when the entire world was stuck inside with a sudden desire to play more video games. They were given an underhand toss for the best possible scenario to get cloud gaming off the ground, and it didn’t take. The math doesn’t work out.

We’re also losing the ability to shrink our transistors at this point, so the things that made old tech cheaper before don’t really apply anymore.

Speaking to BL4 in particular, it certainly doesn’t make me feel good to have to parse a chart to see which DLC I have to buy to get the thing that I want, but with Paradox games, I definitely don’t want all $300 of DLC, especially at the start and they’re all in a readable linear list. I think I bought 3 expansions for Cities: Skylines, and the others didn’t speak to me, so especially on a sale, it’s not a high buy-in. The “whole package” would include tons of stuff I had no interest in using.

Why was it not an option to buy just the DLC you wanted?

With the exception of Pre-Sequel (which came out after 2 but takes place between 1 and 2), I liked each new game more than the last, so I’m glad they kept making sequels. And unlike Destiny, adding new content doesn’t mean erasing what came before it, so you can still go back and enjoy one that you may have liked better for one reason or another.

I get how that can be a hard sell at $30. I did buy the deluxe edition of the game, so I’ve got this in my account, but I haven’t played the DLC yet because my co-op partner doesn’t have it. You can make an argument that the new character class bundled with it makes it worth it, if you’re in the market to replay the game again with a new play style, but that’s only going to appeal to so many people. I did have a great time with the game, and I will be checking out the DLC sooner or later. I would recommend it on a sale, if nothing else, especially since a few years down the line, whatever your new PC is will be able to brute force its way paced the unfortunately high system requirements. The game still excels in combat design, character class design, and encounter design. They made a really good looter shooter, and unlike most of its contemporaries, they actually let you own it without always-online bullshit.

She’s written for IGN as games media before going on to write for video games themselves. She had a stint working at Sony Santa Monica writing for Cory Barlog’s still-unannounced new game, and she’s now working on a handful of upcoming indie games. She’s done at least one indie film project and she’s done a handful of VO roles in games. Most recently, you probably heard her as Malevola in Dispatch.

The first game system I ever had was a Game Gear when I was 6, but I think every game I ever got for it was a gift. We got a Sega Genesis the following year, when I was 7 (1996). Little did I know at the time it was actually obsolete at that point, but that’s why my parents got it for me when they did; it was dirt cheap. So were the games. I kid you not when I say I could walk into a FuncoLand with $10 and walk out with 20 used Genesis games, most of which were $0.25 each. So as a result, I have no idea what the first game I bought was, because my brother and I bought a plethora of games all at the same time. In that haul though, probably, was Vectorman, Jurassic Park, Clayfighter, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (we already got Sonic 1 and 2 with the console, as well as a couple of Mortal Kombat games that our parents made us return when they realized how violent they were, because I guess the title left it ambiguous).

That’s why I said it was the up-front cost that’s cheaper. This is how it’s been for a long, long time now.

Analysts have been calling that this price increase would come to consoles too, and it’s already come for the Xbox. What firm do you work for that your data is telling you otherwise?

Because the equivalent graphics card is about $450, and you still need to buy a CPU, storage, RAM, PSU, and case. And it’s only the up-front cost that’s cheaper.

Memory. Xbox raised their prices already.

The “bulk” of that Steam Deck compared to Switch 2 is what I’d call ergonomics. I was actually shocked that Nintendo didn’t reevaluate their joycon design more, because the Switch sucks to hold for long periods of time, and alternate joycons are one of the most prominent third party peripherals.

Even without getting into piracy territory, yes. You need a subscription for online play on console, and there’s a lot of competition among PC stores to keep prices low during sales, including bundles of games. So for perhaps most use cases these days that involve some amount of online play and playing a certain number of games per year, PC ends up cheaper.