• 0 Posts
  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 14th, 2023

help-circle



  • I had a friend doing mobile gamedev, making near unheard-of money for their then city of residence, had everything going well for them… except the job was soul-crushing and draining, eventually giving them severe depression.

    When I was getting my first dev job, they said I’d be really sorry about doing outsource, and I just thought that out of us two, I’d be the really happy one, even making much less than them.






  • Star Citizen is a game that’s been in development forever, all while attracting money in forms of donations and sales of in-game ships. A single-player game by the same devs, Squadron 42, is a somewhat similar story, except that people can’t even play it yet (as far as I remember).

    A whale is a tern that often means someone/something that brings you the substantial part of your revenue, so in case of the games above, whales would be the players that spend most money on the in-game ships or donations to support development.

    The “whale fracking operation” in this context probably means that the entire trailer is a yet another bait for the community to go crazy and bring in the money so that the devs don’t starve and finally deliver finished products.

    The punchline is, however, that it’s likely not gonna happen anyway lmao


  • AI dungeon is the shit. I trained a few games to be very much identical to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe, incorporating elements from both the games and the books. The best part about it is that you can always modge it in the desired direction, either by rewriting its prompts or doing something that essentially negates or ignores them.

    Doubt we’ll see anything worthwhile like that in any 3D capacity, though, as there’s much more limitations there - primarily the corporate KPIs





  • We’re getting really lengthy here, and while that was fun while it lasted, we’re clearly both set in our ways, so I’ll answer to only a few topics that don’t simply revolve our beliefs. I know we’re just going to back and forth, ultimately saying “I’m right, you’re wrong” anyway.

    I mean at that point why play it though? I figured you’d just see the gameplay videos and move on. Maybe you want to go in entirely blank? Honestly, and controversially I feel the same about a recent purchase I made, Red Dead Redemption 2. I played 26 hours and feels like I barely played 2 hours worth of enjoyable content for myself. That said, my friend’s dog did the mo-cap for the dogs in the game and it’s nice to see.

    You’ve proven my point by saying that despite having spent 26 hours playing the game, barely 2 of them were worth it, and no Steam refund is going to listen to your definition of the amount of hours that count for an actual refund. You had no demo to try, and no amount of gameplay videos is going to answer the questions like “How would I play the game?” and “How would I enjoy that?”; to a certain extent, demos don’t either, because they’re not a complete experience and complete experiences count, but they’ll definitely give you a much better feeling of whether you should spend your money on the game.

    That’s one reason to pirate a AAA game: you know you might like it, but you don’t want to become a metric on another chart for the sharks to pat each other on the back and say “See? We did it! We were right! They bought the game!”, even if for a 0.001% of the original price.

    Kudos for casting your dog there, though. Good boy/girl.


    I’ve seen it with a few streamers, it’s uncommon but it happens. Now we are also seeing the rise of paid pirating platforms which are clearly making money off of others’ work as well.

    Now, we all generally denounce people making money off any sort of pirated content, be it cinema, books, games, or anything else. It’s about a lot of things, really, but none of them is profit - certainly not these days.


    Yeah, that’s absurd but the point is that clearly there is a line there and it’s not yours to draw. It’s the copyright holders. Some people offer Steam family sharing, being there physically or sharing a Steam account requires 1 copy of the game and can only be played by one device at a given time. That’s the line developers draw and it’s on us to determine how we want to share our artwork. I think that’s pretty fair. If I make something, I can determine how I share it, it’s not up to anyone else to take my creation from me, even if that means I don’t lose the original copy.

    I buy a book you wrote. Would you insist that I don’t share that book with anyone else and instead tell them to go get their own copy? You’ll most likely say ‘no’ once again, that’s something we both agree on, and a game is no different. Nobody is taking your book away from you, it still is yours in every regard, but you don’t get to control whether people can lend it. It’s sharing, i.e. caring, and sharing often leads to increased sales and exposure through various channels.

    You even said it yourself that “there is a line there and it’s not yours to draw”, yet in the same paragraph you say “If I make something, I can determine how I share it, it’s not up to anyone else to take my creation from me, even if that means I don’t lose the original copy.”

    Make what you will of it, but you stumbling like that over there clearly shows how neither approach is universally correct and simple, especially given the amount of people and their individual circumstances involved in each case of sharing, piracy, or buying a single copy exclusively.




  • I am going to try and say something I haven’t yet seen in this thread.

    1. The ship builder gets a big like for me because I always wanted to wander around big spaceships. I really like the fact that I can walk around the interiors and build my own designs, even if I’m bad at it.
    2. The POIs are identical, and that’s horrible. As much emphasis was put on exploration, this is even a bigger disappointment, because once you’ve seen one X, you’seen every X, down to every single entity placement. This really kills the joy of the entire game for me and I feel angry thinking back to Howard’s words about how the game could be played for hours, months, years - like, doing what, exactly?

    Aside from that, yeah, pretty much what everybody said: dialogue is boring and censored (like, advertiser/stakeholder friendly), the game is very “take it safe” in important regards, but there’s enough story and quests to have fun with the mechanics that actually work.

    Overall, it’s flawed, but a definite 6/10 - it’s just not the game Bethesda made us think it is, again.



  • So as a game developer

    Oh, now that’s the real culprit! That honestly explains a lot in this conversation and makes me see you less of a corporate ally for absolutely no good.

    As for the “piracy le hurts” reports, I’m really not surprised that you were able to find these, mostly debunking anything stating otherwise. As if we didn’t live in the massively lobbied society where corporations and money-turners have much more leverage than anything else to manipulate the popular opinion on anything that “hurts” them, be it anything legit or simply perceived.

    So first that isn’t true, people pirate games and stream/create videos of them to gain views which converts to monetization.

    I don’t really know where you got that from, as any content creator that has any worthwhile numbers to make their monetization off of pirated content a problem, in fact, never mentions anything positive above piracy. Following your logic, though, are these content creators supposed to share their revenue with you if their content is based on your game?

    Second, we can both agree you gain something. Does money have to be the thing you gain to see it as wrong or does enjoyment count as well? Or are we in such a monetary society that we must have monetary gain from work you didn’t make for it to be wrong?

    By that logic, I can’t share games with my friends and family, because while they get some fun time, they pay nothing for the game. I’m sure that’s an absurd idea even in your books - consider every pirate my friend and family, especially when it comes to distributors and publishers I have zero respect towards. Sometimes a game is made using and promoting damaging practices, and while the game is good in its own merits, I choose not to support the developers or decision-makers monetarily.

    While I’m at it, you seem to think that I just don’t for any games, like, ever, which I assure is not the case - I have a massive Steam library and some games I bought in EGS and GOG, many of which I deliberately bought as a thank you and a sign of respect only after I’ve played/beaten their pirated copies.

    Demos, though, are still a minority. Starfield doesn’t have a demo, neither does Cyberpunk 2077, nor most (if not all) games that have prices so high that people even consider piracy in the first place. You strike me as a smaller developer that I may actually find during Steam Next Fest (love these, by the way, barely skip any), and you may provide demos, for which I say thank you, and it may even earn a purchase from me specifically; however, it still is an exception more than it is a rule these days.

    If you have any games on Steam, I’ll be happy to check 'em out, either during a Steam Next Fest or otherwise. Most likely, you’re not charging an absurd amount of money on a bunch of lies and predatory practices, and if that’s the case, I won’t think twice about paying for a digital revocable ticket that I can only access via a single gateway (being Steam), but you won’t suddenly find yourself with less money if I simply choose to ignore your game, and you certainly won’t start losing money from your bank account if I download multiple copies for free or even make multiple copies of a legally purchased one.

    But if you’re Bethesda, telling me that I can do impressive rounds of exploring in your game for dozens or hundreds of hours, or even months, or even years, but I have to pay at least $60 to enjoy the game… only to find out that this massive selling piece was a lie and once I’ve seen one POI, I’ve basically seen every POI of that type, down to enemy, object, and loot placement, yet you’re still going to sell me DLC(s) and expect the community to patch the game for free, then sorry (not sorry), I’m not going to spend any money on your product and make you think that treating your customers like that is okay in any capacity. Is it possible that I enjoy the game despite such flaws? Yes, but it doesn’t mean it’s worth the money for me, not now, not later, because it’s a predatory marketing strategy built on deceiving your buyers, and if you believe that pirating games hurts the companies that are supposed to receive the money, then I’m happy to pirate their games thousands of times to punish them for being absolute dickheads.

    The reports and courts supporting those with the big wallets in this regard is identical to how climate change is still a prevalent problem that’s being put on shoulders of people like you and me, while oil and gas and tech and other industries get subsidies, leverage, and bail-outs from the governments.


  • Except I’m not profiting off the games I pirate, and neither does anybody else these days (hasn’t since 00s).

    You don’t even see the dissonance in your arguments: you’re trying to tell me how bad it is and how nobody should pirate of they can’t or don’t want to pay, but the benefactors don’t get paid either way, but I case of the latter, we’re somehow not talking about ripping someone off; it’s a sale that’s not being made either way, and assuming that the people pirating the content would’ve bought it if it wasn’t for piracy is just wrong as evident by a lot of research done on the topic.

    I still haven’t seen your arguments as to how exactly it hurts people outside not closing the deal that, again, wouldn’t have been closed anyway had piracy not been an option.