Judging by a quick counting action, it seems like the Anniversary Edition of DXN - Deus Ex: Nihilum received 1.1k downloads last year (868 for the updated main download, 331 for the separate "anniversary update patch" that's now been relegated to a "Old Version of DXN" d/l). The vast majority by spambots, obviously. It took TODOA over a year to reach that number, so I guess that proves that in 2018, Deus Ex was still a bit more popular of a cult game than JK was in 2010.

Anyway, it's a new year, so that means another Nikumuattempt at covering my favorite Duke3D track:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/taa6bb35uj1njjj/Future%20Military%20Conquests%20%282019%29.mp3?dl=0

(Reid's mention of Das Boot on the other thread also made me retouch my Das Boot-ver a bit https://soundcloud.com/virtual-studio-abuse/cover-dasboot)

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is free to play now, and I already played a few rounds. Certainly brings back memories from high school blasting fools with my m4a1. BAM BAM pure headshots.

Still a good game.

I would highly, highly recommend Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I'm in love with the writing. The dialogue is believable, the writing is coherent, the characterization is clever and good. The only complaint, and this is super minor, but it has some general "hero's journey" tones at the beginning which you can hear if you're used to that kind of thing. But this is a minor complaint to what is otherwise an amazing story (so far).

I also realllly love that you're just a talentless commoner and the world doesn't give much of a **** about you. It's the antithesis of how most games are written and it's just great.

I'm quadrupling down on my recommendation. Storywise, this game is one of, if not the, best game I've ever played. The writing is just ****ing perfect. I'm not dropping spoilers but some cutscenes are so great they top blockbuster films in my eyes. Seriously 10/10 in the writing.

Game is a bit buggy at times, but otherwise is like a version of Oblivion where combat, etc is actually fun.

I'm honestly kinda shocked to hear this reaction from you, given the beatings I've seen the game receive for its bugginess, the wonkiness of the physics and combat, the dubiousness of its claims of authenticity, and its developer's *~ problematic ~* attitudes about representation, etc.

I wouldn't let the fact that KC:D was Gamergate's darling release from 2018 stop me from playing it, if not for the fact that every other opinion I heard was lukewarm at best.

That said, if all that hubbub missed you, I'm interested to hear your unbiased, in this sense, reaction to it... huh!

So I believe much of the bugginess has been patched out, from what I read of early reviews. There are still areas where I encounter minor bugs, especially combat can get wonky in places, but I've encountered no major bugs yet. As per claims of authenticity, that wasn't a selling point for me. I'm not a medieval historian anyway so I wouldn't know the difference. The reason I like the setting though is it gets away from fantasy stuff, which by this point I find really tiring.

WRT representation, how much trouble will I get in if I say I don't really care? I tend to ignore such debates and let that fall to the people who want to yell at people. I guess when I think of it, the game only has white people, and in reality it's not like black people would have never appeared in 15th century Bohemia. I guess it wouldn't have been a big deal to include some, but I also don't think it's worth hounding the developers to create content they don't really want to for their game. IDK, I just don't care that much if I see a black character or not. Maybe that's a problem.



Never heard any of the Gamergate stuff. I picked it up on a whim because it was on sale and a friend's description made it sound good.

Even if it does embed some alt-right viewpoints, the alt-right apparently can write better than AAA devs, so there's that. The game does well in avoiding common RPG tropes, such as you being the savior of the world. It's refreshing when, for instance, your character interrupts a nobleman to insist on something, and they shut you down with a calm explanation of why your idea is stupid and you need to learn your place. And it's not like the nobleman is wrong, their explanation make a ton of sense when you hear it. When I see this, I'm like, "oh thank god, I'm not playing a brilliant omniscient genius with the hand of god supporting him, I'm playing a believable person". A person who really exists in a world that's doing its own thing with or without him. In a world of Skyrims, Witchers and Superhero crap, this is a massive diversion and relief.

So I did a bit more reading and it sounds like there is a bit more reason to be critical of the game in some respects, and some people in the project don't seem that great. Kind of a disappointment. The game does have strengths, and where it works it works well.

I need an aspirin after reading all of that though. Nothing gives me a headache faster.

Haha, yeah. For what it's worth, I'm glad you didn't know too much about it going in. Sounds like it was a really refreshing change of pace compared to some other AAA stuff.

I’ve barely heard of this game and I have no idea what the the controversy is. What does problematic attitudes toward representation mean?

Alright. So for background, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is set in Bohemia (Czech area) in 1403 during a Hungarian/Cuman (Turkish) invasion. From what I understand, the writer/lead dev/whoever was asked about racial representation, and has basically emphatically said "there were no people of color in medieval Bohemia". He apparently has ties to GamerGate and some allege he has worn neo-nazi band shirts, but I have not confirmed either of these. He also mockingly posted a photoshop of the lead in KC:D replaced by a black American. In any case, it seems to be the case that he has strong perspectives on racial representation in medieval Europe which aren't about accurate history.

However, some of the response also strikes me as wrong. Unfortunately for us, medieval kingdoms didn't collect data on their country by modern racial lines. So, we definitely know black people would have been around Europe in the middle ages. Many people would have seen them or experienced them in their lives. But it's difficult to say what proportion people around in the Czech area would be categorized as black today. If I followed my gut, I'd really have to say, probably not too many. For people in rural areas it would probably be an event to see a black person come around. In any case, it's categorically false to say black people didn't exist in medieval Europe. Some people think that saying so is an excuse to cast only white people.

You can also go too far into the reverse direction. What you have today though is people like the Tumblr blog "MedievalPOC", who give very bad arguments and support conspiracy theories about who was colored in history. Of course, you also have the "Egyptians were all black", "Mozart was black", "Egyptians were so advanced they traded with native Americans" and etc. historical revisionism about race. I find these people are going the opposite direction in that they try to make it sound like 1 in every 5 people in medieval Europe were black skinned.

Basically, people who think it's fine to misrepresent history so long as it benefits some marginalized group.

So if you take for granted that someone wants to just make a game as historically accurate as possible, how would you handle race? Well, if you're choosing, better to not err on the side of the Nazis. It's a shame the lead dev had to be an alt-right kind of guy, because he could have argued racial representation much better from a neutral standpoint.

Moral of the story, when you combine history with modern political agendas, you get stupid ****.

From what I've read, I find far worse the treatment of women and cumans (Turks) by the game. No female characters are given much agency, apparently, and Turks are basically portrayed as evil invader rapists. The devs try to excuse the treatment of women by saying society was patriarchal, but even in that context it's not like women were all passive and submissive to the system, so yeah.

Some people (apparently) take this stuff way too seriously (thanks for the rundown).

So basically it’s idiots vs nazis.

That reminds me of Metro 2033 (Ukrainian game). And a quick rundown on the dev of KCD reminds me of the creator of Hatred (Polish game). Not to mention the stories about how certain employees were treated at CryTek (German company).

In other words, all in line within what I know of Central and Eastern Europe.

Must have been pretty bad if you could tell it apart from the way game companies normally treat employees and customers.

: |

You could say that. No problem.



Basically.



Yeah, I heard of Metro 2033 having some issues as well.

What the hell.



Turns out Mike Morhaime was pushed out of Blizzard because he was blocking the board from voting away profit sharing from lower level employees. Just to piggy back on this. The video game industry is trash.

https://clips.twitch.tv/ThankfulCrazyShingleBIRB

I love the creator of Diablo playing Path of Exile and talking **** on Blizzard.

If I am to believe the random bits of nostolgia I glean in the comments sections of random videos of old Blizzard games (Starcraft and Diablo II mostly) I occasionally watch, then the truly ingenious work coming out of Blizzard through the 90's was the product of Blizzard North.

Although I take that back somewhat, since the very important cinematic cutscenes in both those games (StarCraft and Diablo II) seem quite similar, but it was only the Diablo games and not StarCraft that Blizzard North was responsible for.

That said, I heard Diablo III really sucked.

Edit: although I do wonder what could have come of this!

The downfall of Blizzard began with StarCraft II, when they split the game into three and forced an internet connection, even for local multiplayer. And then even demonstrated on select events that the game was perfectly capable of being played in a LAN.
Before SC II you could more or less blindly buy a Blizzard game and be sure that you would have very much fun playing it. After that you would have to at least like the genre. Could be that that also applied to WoW, which I never played because I didn't want to pay monthly for a game.

It began 3 years earlier, when Activision and Blizzard merged.

But to most people it wouldn’t have been obvious until SC2, which was the first major product cycle post merge.

Warcraft III was a great game, too. It and the custom map system was a revolution in gaming. I can hardly remember anyone gaming circa 2004-2005 who didn't play at least some custom map on WC3 obsessively.

Early WoW also was like crack. Basically was the best moment of MMO history in my opinion.



P much. I played about 40 hours of it before I got bored. I've played more Diablo II in the past two years than I have played Diablo III altogether. I'd rather speedrun a cold sorc or hammerdin to hell than pick up a D3 expansion.

SC2 was a good game, at least. The model did reflect a different take but at least the underlying product was still good.

What we've seen increasingly is the original talent of Blizzard leaving the company and being replaced by whoever else they're finding. As such, the average quality of their products is decreasing relative to cost as we move forward.

It's like a log being eaten out by termites in slow motion. The value of the Blizzard brand is still being used to sell games, but it's not the same entity anymore.

Don't get me wrong, they still do put out pretty decent stuff. But I think we all see the sign of the first derivative.



I remember being worried at the time (2008?) that it would result in a drop in quality of Blizzard games. I was wrong, because I thought it would be sooner. But I was right if you fix my incorrect timeline.

In any case, WoW expansions on average have been getting worse, with the general trend in comments I've read being "I'm unsubscribing".

Speaking of Youtube being a cesspool of alt-right talking figures.

I never understood the point of the Blizzard Activision merger. Blizzard was a profitable, popular company with many valuable properties and unlimited access to the best talent in the game industry. Activision, on the other hand, was a widely hated mismanaged disaster that published exactly one noteworthy game series (not even developed it). It seems like Activision’s shareholders got all of the up-side from that deal.

Apparently Blizzard was some standard private equity bull****, total cluster**** of an ownership structure and owner-management way out of their league. They probably would have sold Blizzard to anybody.

Interesting to try soothsaying information about how popular games are using streaming data:

https://sullygnome.com/game/Fortnite

https://sullygnome.com/game/Overwatch

Compare the long-term graphs for viewer counts. Kind of interesting how Overwatch has the highest consistent viewers right after launch, but seems to stabilize downward, whereas Fortnite starts at 0 at launch and builds up smoothly. Suggests Overwatch was extremely marketed whereas Fortnite spread by word of mouth, to me.

If we use this as a proxy, do we think Overwatch has stagnating player counts?

https://clips.twitch.tv/PatientBlindingChamoisSmoocherZ

In any case. I mean I'm not 14 but I really don't get the popularity of Fortnite. Epic Games came out of left field with that one.

So I guess, after all those Quake 2/3 v. Unreal Tournament debates from 20 years ago, Epic Megagames won?

I don’t think so. Fortnite looks that way because it flopped hard at release. When they made Fortnite Battle Royale they had to work against marketing headwinds to convince people it wasn’t just an also-ran survival crafting game that came out 6 years too late.

Overwatch is what a hit looks like. Compare to Dark Souls 3 or Breath of the Wild: huge spike immediately at release, which exponentially decays into the core dedicated audience. This isn’t because of marketing, it’s an essential characteristic of what most games sales and active players curves look like. The fact that Overwatch had a relatively small exponential decay suggests it has a pretty huge core audience, which is healthy for a game that makes most of its money by bilking them.

id software got bought by Bethesda and is making award winning premium single player games, leveraging some of the most valuable IP in the history of gaming. Epic got ‘bought’ by Tencent, had most of their creative staff walk, and put out exactly 1 actual game in the last 8 years: an also-ran premium survival game that flopped hard, which they turned around by stealing a slightly newer fad and riddling it with microtransactions.

So Epic “won” in the sense that fortnite is currently a popular meme among the childs with their stolen credit cards and whatnot. That audience is fickle though and I’m not sure I’d bet on Epic being able to recapture it once Fortnite dies down. Given its development history I’m not sure Epic understands why Fortnite was successful; it wasn’t because of fad chasing but I’m sure that will be their main takeaway, since doing that “worked”. Their most valuable non-Fortnite properties are probably degraded beyond usefulness, since the people who made Gears magical are gone and they don’t even have the rights to it, the next UT has been shelved indefinitely and even if they started it back up today the last time Unreal was relevant would have been before the average gamer was born. Their engine tech is getting pushed down-market as AAA developers become more consolidated and pursue in-house engine development again, still huge but the prospects are AA prospects (not good). Lastly, on a more personal note, I wouldn’t want to work for either company but I’d much rather work on games like Doom 2016 than Fortnite. Wouldn’t even hesitate.

To be clear, I’m not saying Epic is doomed or anytning. I’m just saying that the question of who won is complicated, and the answer is highly temporary. Long term I’m not sure either of them won. Despite having all of the opportunities in the world neither of them managed to grow beyond game studio. The 1990s first person shooter war ended up being won by Valve,.

I see. Man, I thought iD had dropped off the radar after RAGE. And that was 8 years ago. 'oof!

I also remember how Epic tried to make their own Overwatch type thing with something like "Paragons", but since that one gained no traction, they ended up releasing its assets for free on the UE4 marketplace. Dunno if anyone reused them to make a better game or anything.

Also, only now did I realize that Shenmue I + II were released for PC already last August, so theoretically I could have gotten them during the Steam holiday sales for cheap. Damn.

(Maybe one day Oni will see a re-release, then my "collection" would be "complete")

I even forgot about Paragons. Yikes.

So they’re, what, 1 for 4 on chasing fads? And the one they successfully outcompeted was an indie asset flip. Unless they did a MOBA that I forgot about too lol.

Speaking of flops, I have a question id like to ask. Not for myself or a friend, for a stranger.

Suppose you were a highly influential game designer, a celebrity basically. You’re put in charge of your own studio and given huge budgets to make milestone games, games so big and widely loved that they define their decade. Life’s pretty good.

Then your awful parent company starts changing stuff. First they order you to cut a bunch of features and planned expansions for one of your most recent games, then they fire your award-winning composer (who among other things made you one of the most iconic theme songs in gaming history). Then, after all of that, they order you to drop everything and make a micro transaction ridden live services game.

Your little studio doesn’t have any online expertise. None of you know how to make that kind of game, balance it, and you aren’t given enough time to populate a world that will be interesting for thousands of players each investing hundreds of hours. Your studio has a highly distinctive design style, and whatever you make is just gonna be that plus multiplayer (something you’ve never even tried, knowing that it wouldn’t fit your design). You know that whatever kind of online service game you make is going to be a boring, buggy, unbalanced, terrible mess.

So what do you do? Do you expend political capital futilely trying to get your awful parent company to change course; do you comply as best as you can in order to preserve your job for a few more years at the expense of your future opportunities; or do you resign in protest, reputation intact, and start your own studio to make The Selder Erolls VI on your own?

Two of these have any dignity, so definitely not the middle option.

I can't back it up but I feel like the AAA video game industry just wastes good talent and talented people.

I can't back it up but I feel like the AAA video game industry United States economy just wastes good talent and talented people.

I don't know whether Fallout 76 was Todd Howard's idea, whether he tried his best, or whether it was some attempt at malicious compliance - but I honestly feel like it's put BGS on track to be shuttered, and it's gonna take Todd Howard's personal brand with it.

By the way, in case you hadn't heard, this is what Jeremy Soule (The Elder Scrolls composer) posted to Facebook a few days ago: "As so many of my fans have asked... While I’ve not said much about this out of courtesy to Bethesda, I would never turn my back on TES, and I believe that my involvement would hinge on a creative decision on their part and where they want to take the franchise. To confirm, I am currently not involved with TES VI."

YouTube recommended me a video about "why Law/breakers failed" and despite all of the rambling in the video all I could think was, "maybe it's because they dumped millions of dollars into something that would have been a free mod 15 years ago"



Like I know CliffyB can design a good game, and I know he's not an idiot. So what the hell is this ****?

OH NO! My one-gametype multiplayer arena shooter died! How could this have happened?? But there was just SO MUCH to hook new players! Did you not see our PBR materials??

No idea either. It was a seriously weird idea. Bethesda has no experience in this area too, I think they licensed out Elder Scrolls for ESO, right?

I mean FO76 has problems. Like amateur mistakes:

https://clips.twitch.tv/AmusedColdKimchiEagleEye

There's no way most people haven't quit and this game is probably hemorrhaging cash.

https://sullygnome.com/game/Fallout_76

If you're right, it looks like the game had massive popular interest at first but has dwindled down to very little. Not a hit like Overwatch..



Huh. Not sure what that signals. Maybe there won't actually be a VI.