Digging on Concord was funny for longer than its server were online.

True that, the tri-core PowerPC is quite a unique challenging mess. But underneath it is just the same processor.

I know it is hard to believe. But the gamecube, Wii, and wiiu are the same machine. Same architecture and family of processors (IBM’s PowerPC). That’s why the wiiu is just a Wii with a beefier CPU (three Wii cores slapped together), and then a newer more powerful GPU sticked to the side. Thats why a single emulator can target all three consoles. The switch 2 will just be a newer version of the Tegra chip.

Have you ever sat in front of a casino’s slot machine. They are also trash, awful and disgusting. But they’re also engineered with the worst dark pattern psychology to manipulate any human being that sits on it to keep playing and be so addictive that people will burn their money just to keep playing. The qualities of fun, and additive are independent of each other. A game can be very addictive and really bad at the same time. Unlike slot machines, they have the advantage of constantly sitting in your pocket and going with you everywhere you go.

Executive bonuses, of course. Won’t you think of the poor millionaires?

/s

SC is a scam. Of course they’re willing to break the law to keep the money they stole.

SC is a scam. They sell ships for real money that only half work. The game is riddled with bugs, quests don’t complete. Users state is regularly wiped so there’s no point on progressing in it and instead of finishing the game they ask players for much more money to work on tiny niche technical problems that sound super important on presentations but don’t move the needle even a little bit towards a finished game. At best, it is video game history most expensive physics toy. In reality, when you scrutinize their finances executives have pocketed most of the money raised and devs have been paid poor wages and overworked to a constantly moving target. They have never finished a single roadmap item, but they have announced to fanfare at least 5 different development roadmaps that are the very definition of scope creep. Lots of announcements but never a release. Any competent studio would’ve delivered at least three completed games in the same timeframe for that amount of money. They’re an online asset store that sometimes let’s you fiddle with the digital models, not a video game.

In this comment: Someone who is not familiar with the history of Nintendo selling pirated versions of their own games and ripping off pirate emulators then passing them as their own.

Rom pirates usually trim and sign their releases, specially if they have to break or decode any encryption. These pirate’s signatures have been found in official Nintendo releases. Some of their own emulators have also been found to run piracy emulation software. They are pretty much hypocrites.

Give GUN JAM a try. It’s a rhythm shooting game, the stakes are as high or as low as you want them. There’s only a minimal story and you just focus on the music, aiming and staying on the beat. Can be a lot of flow state fun.

It’s technically feasible in the bare minimum “Got there” sense. Bringing someone and getting them back. But we learned a lot by the moon exploration, and that is that we aren’t ready for colonization. Living there, for a long time, let alone indefinitely, that is where the million details are still unresolved. I think that’s the problem that is worth tackling. We already know we can live in space for a long time as long as there are continuous shipments of resources from Earth. We could just flood the logistics problem with money and get to mars next year if we wanted to. Other than the psychologically horrifyingly long distances involved, of course.

In ten years? If I had to guess the average life span of live services games I’d say about 18 months. Heavily skewed by the survivors. The shortest lived one only worked for 13 days. Only the very popular ones survive past 5 years and there are a handful of 10 plus. I know it’s hard to believe, the average gamer is oblivious to how over saturated the videogames market is. Despite executive’s delusions, time and money are actually finite. Not all games can demand all of it, at the same time.

Playing Windows only games from the epic store on a steam deck running Linux is a weird but pretty awesome flex. Emulating Nintendo games on it is the ultimate fuck you to Nintendo.

If you truly break it down, you’ll notice that AAA only actually makes two or three games, open world third person action RPG with parkour, open world shooter with looting and crafting, and live-service coop/competitive shooter with loot boxes. Every iteration of these same ideas are just varnishing the same bored gameplay concepts over and over with different coats of theming and slightly different stories. I only ever find original and stimulating gameplay on indie projects and the occasional small studio. They’re the only ones actually experimenting with innovative game design and varied concepts.

AAA games don’t have a production quality or even a development time problem. They have a far more existential one. A gameplay focus problem. These are games made with profit as first priority, not fun. They have confused engagement and addiction with gameplay quality. Live services poisoned their design language. This is why they want more, faster, at higher budgets. The fallacy is that more, faster, more graphically demanding, will magically make them all the money.

I want less games, with lower budgets, that take longer to make, have less graphic and animation fidelity, that pay better to their devs to do their job well. And I mean it.

The video games market is already overflowed for its size, yet somehow these companies are inflating their budgets like balloons instead and charging ever more and more for shittier games that somehow cost more to make. This isn’t sustainable. AI won’t fix any of these issues.

I will repeat, and I can’t stress enough with this reiteration, fuck Ubisoft.

Removed by mod

It’s already being called the lowest price in a decade. Technically true, but honestly disingenuous since the massive price bump to over €100 was an anomaly caused by the pandemic that swept the entire industry, not just this one publisher. Also drivel to generate engagement. Just like this post, here we are discussing it, despite the fact that it is misleading and poor characterization of the entire picture.

Do you know how much money disappeared overnight because of this?

I do know, none. Not a single cent disappeared. Because stocks aren’t liquidity. That money was never there in the first place. Some paid some money to get those stocks, that money was real and it entered the company’s liquidity. Then they spent it on something. Those stocks are but the promise of paying some dividends, some time in the future or giving some power inside the company. Their virtual fluctuations of price over time are nothing but smoke and mirrors, people exchanging virtual titles over those rights like little kids trading collectible cards. Some people cashed out for a low price (that was already grossly overinflated from the pandemic days, so they probably still made bank) and it pushed an already correcting stock to accelerate for today. That money didn’t come from the company, it was exchanged entirely by third parties, public traders. Ubisoft didn’t participate at all in whatever pushed the price drop. No matter how much I want it to, Ubisoft is not in any more danger today than it was in yesterday. They are still filthy rich, if anything the biggest danger for this is that it gives them lee way to layoff another group of underpaid developers or gut another studio to appease the stockholders. Who are already in a frenzy for blood because Outlaws didn’t make all the money.

If you were to compare Ubisoft today to Ubisoft 2 years ago, you would see they dropped nearly 93%. Dear golly, how is this poor boutique family company in business after such a massive loss? /s

We stopped developing quality self-hosted forums and somehow now everyone is all over live chats. Chat is the worse form of communication to create permanent records of support issues. It’s the flipside of Wiki’s problems. They use hidden wikis to host discussion of wikipedia articles, moderation and other topics and the thing is a nightmare because it is not suited for conversation. FOSS development needs something that can do both. Live group chat for general discussion, with a static discussion forum for single issues, and a wiki where it can all be archived as structured articles. There’s currently nothing popular that fills the bill.