Facts don’t wake up MAGA diehards. Feelings will.

Right now, they’re in the cult through tribal mentality and loneliness. Imagine if a moral compass suddenly asked you to boycott “Every website ever made”. Even if that imperative was fact-based, many couldn’t do it.

Not discounting the part where they’re insanely evil, but many are afraid to face reality at this point.

I feel a bit of shame that back in the Win7, Xbox Series S era of Microsoft I was sort of cheering them on as an underdog in several markets.

But it does seem like every large company is driving these zero sum efforts now. Anyone that high up is chomping for workforce reduction.

If larger-scale changes don’t prove possible, I still want Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism act as a way for majority workforce in a company to declare “No, this way is insane, fire whoever suggested it” earlier rather than later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw

“I’m sick of investing in video games. They’re always so unreliable.”
“You literally only ever invested in two companies.”

Does this mean in 6 years we’ll get “BelowTheWatermica Dos” by a new studio, and it will be a far better spiritual sequel?

It’s happened only a few times when a publisher cans the developers.

Anytime I see super-smooth transition animations in a demo, or even just gameplay mechanics that seem to work out way too conveniently, it tells me it’s an animated “pre-viz” demo of the game they want to make. That’s kind of the impression I got from Perfect Dark.

Any chance he’s putting the question on social media to convince other stakeholders above him?

It’s possible he was in a board meeting when some novice shareholder suggested “What if you take an exclusivity deal”? And he just didn’t have clear evidence on hand of that being vastly unpopular. Obviously that could be me being overgenerous to him.

I’ve been curious if a government-run dating app could do better - if its goal is to achieve genuine engagement, not cycles of frustration that boost subscription rates.

This is one of many subjects where capitalist concern ruins the product (and that’s not even something I say as often as others on Lenny)

When all the decisions have to come rapid-pace, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything notable. It feels like mashing out light or strong attacks and maybe some block/dodges.

I’ll admit that there have been some action JRPGs where I just didn’t understand how the mechanics worked together, even after some explanations, because I had to play it out so quickly in combat. Those games ended up having low difficulty so that people that “weren’t getting it” could still see the story.

I’m still okay at Soulslike games where there’s not quite as many meters and illogical systems. And of course I’m okay with turn-based games having those weird systems because I can process things slowly until I get it, and am taking my turns at full speed.

Has the potential to be very cool! What might be sad is that many horror games now evoke the trope of “They move when you’re not looking”. Game development takes a long time, so I can guess this was not an obvious trend when you started on it. But there should still be ways to differentiate your work.

Every screenshot posted of this game is peak content.

I’ve wanted to suggest things like this, only frustration I can think of is, could you risk glittering an innocent bystander and having people accuse them of being ICE later.

I couldn’t stand Near A Tomato but have tons of hours in SB. I grant it has nothing amazing in terms of story, but it has enough intricacies of combat to keep it fun, even if none of those mechanics were invented here.

Nier seemed to operate off a single attack button a lot of time, and working off RPG mechanics gave so many opportunities for level disparity that didn’t serve the game at all.

I think the only thing that might get me to go over the $60 line is if a publisher takes a chance on a franchise/concept I’d like to see more of, which these days is rare.

While it is fraud, it’s murky waters when you realize this is what every Kickstarter does. Gamers don’t easily fathom the full sum of what it costs to pay qualified artists for a full development cycle. Kickstarters have only existed to prove to investors that there’s monetary interest in a concept.

It is my fervent hope that in a decade or less, the next Wolfenstein-style game is about killing ICE agents.

Downvoted for censoring “Gamers”. Go back to TikTok.

I know “worst” is an adjective that triggers a lot of content farms, but I still feel bad about these situations. Even the worst games, when they manage to be completed, are mountains of effort from the people involved; and as I understand it this was coming from one of IOI’s first publishing efforts.

This happened for me with Back 4 Blood.

Turtle Rock said “Okay, we’re done developing content. We’ll move on to new things now.” And people took that to mean it was a failed, dead, and worthless game. Whereas the active state where they left it was pretty solid, still runs, and I have a lot of fun with it. It just wasn’t built to be endlessly live-service.

I feel like, though it doesn’t come up much, we should conceptually separate “owning the game” from “having a physical edition”. Some games give you a disc, but barely offer ownership (remember CD keys?) while other games are only sold digitally, but are ultra-permissive with what you do with them.

I get the sense many indie companies would like to give people as much control as possible, but also can’t afford printing box sets.