Why I caveat with words like “relatively”. I know game dev is a volatile industry, but that’s why I’m happy to see a small team put out a second game.

I’m very happy whenever a smaller studio (this game was developed by the Shovel Knight team) not just sees success, but becomes a stable small team able to put out multiple games.

This structure of small, but relatively stable and established teams seems like a much healthier gaming ecosystem than the bloated quadruple-A studio with hundreds of developers and a focus on mind numbing photorealism over actual gameplay.

More like “Guess I’ll just print this file labeled ‘hyper realistic movie prop lazer blaster’.”

There’s just so much insane bloat in the industry. It feels like every game made by a AAA studio has a hundreds of millions of dollar budget, and hundreds of people working on it. A lot of people are just completely unfazed by the novelty of high production value anymore. Not a majority, but the number of people checking of AAA seems to grow constantly a little bit over time.

There’s obviously an audience for these massively produced games, but I just don’t understand how every AAA game is expected to be successful like this.

Meanwhile digital publishing, with Steam Early Access being the default example, has lowered the bar to entry in the market to basically nothing. Indie and “AA” games are on the front page of the storefront next to multimillion dollar AAA games.

Sure the vast majority of Early Access games never get finished enough to grab attention, but given the sheer volume, even a tiny fraction of those games releasing and getting traction dilutes the hold of AAA games.

People spending time playing Zomboid or Kenshi aren’t spending that time playing AAA next big thing.

I’m not deluded enough to think anything like a majority of gamers are playing mostly indie games, but a noticeable enough amount might be to reduce the needed profit margin of a bloated production.

That’s how this goes every time a question like this is asked. I agree. There’s a lot of games I personally don’t enjoy at all, but I can understand the appeal to a certain audience.

Someone already linked it, and amazingly the horse electrolytes weren’t even the worst thing going on with that guy.

Mark is the stupid one here.

Spoilers etc for show only watchers. People get big mad over odd things.

It’s not out for Halo 2 yet, but the Halo CE Ruby Rebalance is very good. A lot of thoughtful changes, some obvious (new weapons and enemies) some more invisible (tweaks to weapon stats and enemy spawn logic). It is respectful and high quality enough to the original that if you’d never played CE or hadn’t played in a long time, it would be hard to tell what the mod content was.

Keep an eye out for the Ruby Rebalance mod for the MCC.

MCC are remasters not remakes. This entire discussion got beat to death when the Halo CE remake was announced. The remakes will be completely new games, not visual facelifts on existing ones.

Get a load of this guy not even understanding even the simplest fiat currency analogy.

Caesar 3 has different “levels” where you have different cities and have to meet different demands from Rome with them. If you play this game I highly, highly, highly recommend using the Augustus mod from the get-go to have modern quality of life features. Also look up some tutorial videos as there are some counter intuitive mechanics.

This is a standalone program.

Fortunately this person waited until it was playable to reveal it, so you can download it now before it gets zapped. Many projects show off footage early to build buzz and get killed before dropping a download.

Not offended, not all jokes are for all folks. It’s not a terribly deep joke, which does make the apparent lack of understanding it a bit worse. You should play Deus Ex, it’s a good game.

The joke is so far above your head that it is orbiting above you at an altitude of approximately 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) and travels at a speed of around 28,800 kilometers per hour (17,500 miles per hour), completing an orbit roughly every 92 minutes.

Anger does drive up engagement, but the point of engagement farming is supposed to be so that you keep coming back to the content (YT videos, articles, whatever) and therefore it gets more exposure so that the attached ads get more exposure.

The ads themselves designed to make you angry at them doesn’t seem to make sense, at least as a default practice. There’s really only hyperspecific niche scenarios where the ad itself making you angry at the ad is beneficial to the people paying for it.

That’s the craziest part isn’t it? All of this data collection so they can build profiles of us, and then they just don’t apply any of it to ads.

I don’t like watching ads, but it would at least be slightly more tolerable if I got ads for things I actually wanted. On my TV I watch YT unfortunately not adblocked, and never once have I seen an ad for anything that appeal to me.