https://nitter.net/unormal/status/1701673961795313778
haha that's what I thought it was going to be about when I clicked the picture
On the one end, you've got the F2P game that offers you a zero upfront cost to downloading and playing the first few levels, then slowly constricts the quality of the gameplay until you pay them to relieve the pressure.
On the other end, you've got the AAA game that hypes release for months and tries to get as much money out of you as physically possible at launch by flooding social media with FOMA. Then they rapidly sheds support for the product until its another forgettable crap title on the pile of forgotten sequels.
In either case, it almost feels like the goal of modern video games is to inflict anxiety and distress on their audience. Like, the point of the game industry is to make the player miserable and then accept payment to provide relief.
You forgot the part where the AAA product is released in a beta state and doesn’t get up to proper release-level quality until a few months worth of patches.
I won't lie, I was really enjoying D4 until the end. And then I just kinda went slack jawed because... oh, its a cliffhanger. They're never going to resolve this, are they? Season Passes? No. This is fucked. Oh well...
If you're talking about Swery's D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, that whole business still depresses me to this day. He signed on to make a Kinect-focused episodic adventure game (never do episodic anything, at least we've all learned this by now) only for it to come out just after Microsoft finally dumped the stupid thing
The whole debacle soured Swery's relationship with his old company and he got hoofed after the unsuccessful PC version and his career has never really recovered
I've never played that game, but now I'm intrigued.
No, I'm talking about Diablo 4.
Heh when Batman Arkham Knight released it was literally unplayable unless you had like 12GB VRAM in 2015. I would say that it wasn’t even in beta since it didn’t even work once on recommended specs
I could go on a whole fucking rant about how whatever potential good things about the Early Access model (and basically anything that isn't "release the full game as a complete product with no other potential added features. aside from DLC that are purely further additions to the game and not part of its main functionality", including seasonal games) have been almost totally subsumed by it just being an excuse to release games shittily and then go "Oh no worries, we're going to keep adding and developing it over time!" and then either don't, or spend three times as long doing that if they had just kept the whole project under wraps.
look at Elden Ring for instance. the game was kept so under wraps by Miyazaki and co that even like a year before it fully released, there was virtually no information about it at all. no early access period, no "Welcome to the April 2019 Elden Ring Early Access Update #3, where we have added Caelid! Go explore and give us tips on how to improve!" no, the dev team just dumped the whole game on us (aside from very minor things like the pvp colosseums and pvp was already a full feature before this) and it's already probably in the top 5 games of the decade and it was only 2022.
it's one thing if it's legitimately a small company doing this shit, I get that you need finanacing under capitalism and shit sucks in general, it's another thing entirely for larger, proven companies
not sure if every single professional game tester has just dropped dead in the last 10 years or what, but I'm not sure why we have to be unpaid game testers now. hell, we have to pay to be game testers in fact.
Baldur's Gate 3 is the exception that proves the rule
It’s the capitalist pressure to constantly be hitting those quarterly profit goals. These AAA studios are typically part of larger tech/media conglomerates whose shareholders want to see those steady profit streams and so they stick to these release schedules even if the game needed another six months to a year in the oven. And the gamers have made it clear they’ll eat up the slop regardless so there’s no real pushback.
It’s interesting that you mention From Software as an exception as the other company that comes to mind like that is another Japanese company, Nintendo (who of course have their own problems and sometimes suffer from that issue). Apparently on the new Mario Wonder game, corporate gave the devs no deadline to complete it, just “work on it until you think it’s release ready.” Might be a different attitude with CEOs/board members over there.
this is precisely why I avoided BG3 early access. I was excited to play it but I wanted a full experience. I've previously had a sort of grudging acceptance of playing Early Access games like Satisfactory for instance, but now I'm so tired of it that I'm just going to avoid certain games altogether until they fully release.
I think it is more intrinsic to video game marketing than, say, grocery shopping.
Shopping for apples sometimes makes me think we're already there
Red Delicious apples are indeed red, I’ll give them that much. Otherwise they’re the shitty free to play of the apples. Hell, half the time you do get them for “free” (school/work provided lunch) and you still don’t wanna eat them.
the bazinga marketing factor can be utilized in both domains, even if it is a better fit in one over the other
just walk down the cereal aisle though
I don't think I've ever been convinced to spend an extra $20 to get Coco-Puffs 24 hours early.
ya, it's at a different scale
but very similar mechanics involved:
Show
Working my way through a pirated copy of BG3. But I'll keep an eye on it.
does pirated BG3 get the patches and updates? They're releasing major content and bug fix patches like every couple days
I’m fairly certain they’re further incentivized to put out a shit product because the incessant patches they have to quickly back to back deters pirates. Not that it’s a reason to do that, but it’s another reason to not give a shit about trying to fix the reason that cause them to put out unfinished games.
The base game on day 0 is still an extremely solid game, if you're talking about BG3
I was writing up an edit defending BG3 as an exception that proves the rule and it got deleted when the page refreshed, lol.
I had one bug on the base version, near the end, and it corrupted my save file, but I had some backups and all was good. The year of early access probably helped with bug testing.
it sure is fun having every form of art and media in your life experience enshittification
profits are high as ever, but wages and quality are just as low
No they aren't, profits have been continuously falling since WW2. They are as low as ever.
really? companies have been pulling in trillions in profits
falling rate of profit doesn't mean there was a loss. Just less profit (by percent, ROI) than previous years
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/12/18/the-us-rate-of-profit-in-2021/
https://thenextrecession.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/usrop1.png
You need to take into account inflation, how much was invested vs. how much profit was made & various industries across different sectors. The overall trend has been less and less profit over time, which means companies have to be more and more exploitative or delivery a shittier product over time to keep getting the same returns they have been used to. Eventually it will reach the point of no profit, which is the end-point of capitalism in which it will start another world war or implode to reset.
this is why i feel lucky to have been able to use my stimulus checks on music production gear bc the golden era of cool cheap music equipment is almost over. everything is gonna get shittier but at least i can make annoying music in my apartment.
Nothing specifically is being taken away but a lot of the gear companies like Akai, Moog, Avid (maker of Pro Tools) have been bought out by venture capitalist firms. Akai is actually good example of this. One of their flag ship devices is the MPC line, which has barely been updated since 2017 (the updates they have done recently don't really amount to much, just extra memory and RAM with a giant price jump to match.) They also use worse parts in some of their newer models so things like buttons and drum pads are more likely to fail in comparison to the older ones. They also allegedly don't sound as good as the older ones but you can kinda fix that in a DAW or through external processing if you know what you're doing.
I might be exaggerating a bunch since Behringer is still around and making cheap stuff is their MO but I feel like what's gonna happen is a lot of brands will stop selling their budget lines or make their budget lines way shittier. there's also a good chance a lot of the more innovative/weirder equipment gets discontinued as these VC owned brands focus on the more popular stuff that sells better.
in terms of what I got, I got a crazy deal on a Korg Monologue, which is a pretty cool analog synth that Aphex Twin helped design. I also picked up an Arturia Microfreak which is still getting cool free software updates 3 or 4 years after it originally came out and a Roland SP-404 mk2 sampler and I picked up an old 2012 macbook pro that somehow still runs all the music programs I want after I swapped out the hard drive for a solid state.
The microfreak is easily going to be a classic. That touchbed is super fun to noodle on and cv out is awesome for eurorack
And if you need a more advanced engine then Gadot, then you can always use O3DE.
It gets even worse:
https://unity.com/pricing-updatesCan I get a discount on the Unity Runtime Fee?
Qualifying customers may be eligible for credits on the Unity Runtime Fee based on the adoption of Unity services beyond the Editor, such as Unity Gaming Services or Unity LevelPlay mediation for mobile ad-supported games. This program enables deeper partnership with Unity to succeed across the entire game lifecycle. Please reach out to your account manager to learn more. For details on Unity LevelPlay, please contact your account manager for ad monetization, or contact sales here about ad monetization.What is Unity LevelPlay?
Unity LevelPlay is an industry-leading end-to-end ad mediation platform for game and app developers. It supports everything your business needs to scale. With Unity LevelPlay, you can:- Generate revenue with monetization tools and ad sources through Unity LevelPlay mediation’s competitive real-time auction and optimization tools.
- Gain transparency and data availability with granular breakdowns to pinpoint opportunities immediately. Acquire users at scale using exclusive user acquisition solutions and automated targets.
Just what the games industry needed, even more advertising.
Also, according to my friend: "Unity Execs sold shitloads of their own shares days before announcing a change to the engine pricing structure that makes this meme a reality"
Rip any company that made a game with Unity. Hollow Knight Silksong, if it is being made with Unity is never coming out.
Even if you take this in good faith the "distribution via streaming" clause could be very liberally interpreted.
It's 20¢ per install max so even if that policy is literal it isn't quite that extreme. But I do wonder if they'll have a policy for someone downloading repeatedly. I have my browser disk cache disabled so I wonder if it's actually literal in terms of install/initialization or if it's more about having some kind of Unity tracker cookie that identifies users.
It isn't extreme until you realize it forces game companies to collect and share a bunch of
monetizable personal datasorry "telemetry" from their users, and will probably preclude installing games offline.Unity already provided data for a study about the effectiveness of China's gaming time limit laws for kids, so they definitely already collect your data
They are going to use unity's built-in telemetry, so you'll have to trust their numbers on top of it all
1 cent per install would be extreme. It's a preposterous proposition, devs already pay for the fucking engine.
Not only is it per install, it is also retroactive.
It's also ridiculous. They already have their deals in place for successful games made with their engine. Why they don't simply increase the royalty fee instead is beyond me.
Why they don’t simply increase the royalty fee instead is beyond me.
To set precedent if they can get away with it
The old contract applied to the unity engine, the new one applies to the unity runtime, it'll apply to older projects too because they think they've found a loophole.
