MurrayL
@MurrayL@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why is GOG not as succesful as a Gaming Alternative? 1 day ago:
I think this is missing one other crucial factor in GOG becoming established: they targeted a niche.
Seems like a lot of people don’t really know this any more, but GOG’s ‘thing’ didn’t used to be a focus on being DRM-free, it was a focus on making old games accessible again.
GOG used to stand for Good Old Games.
Until GOG came along, publishers had next to no interest in making their older games available - things like Doom, Monkey Island, System Shock, Star Wars Dark Forces, etc.
Hard to believe now, but none of these games used to be available to buy anywhere - if you wanted to play them you had to either find a torrent or visit a dodgy abandonware site. It was GOG who identified that gap in the market and established themselves as the store for legally owning digital copies of these old games for the first time.
- Comment on "Benefit of the doubt" is a very important aspect of a game's success 3 days ago:
We had to read manuals for tutorials, maps, and story exposition. Try releasing a game nowadays that does that and you’re going to get slapped with a 1/10 because people nowadays have less patience than a goldfish.
I kind of get where you’re coming from but it comes across as out of touch, ‘old man yells at clouds’ type stuff.
The shift has far less to do with patience and more to do with designers getting better at integrating tutorials into the games themselves. Games now are designed to teach you how to play through playing, so reading a manual became unnecessary. That’s not a flaw, that’s an improvement.
The only reasons this wasn’t done earlier was because the field of UX was still developing, and because cartridges limited how much text could be crammed into the games themselves.
That said, there are still well-received games that rely on manuals, but it’s now an explicit design or aesthetic choice rather than something everyone has to do to make up for limited tutorialisation. Check out Tunic, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, or TIS-100 as examples.
- Comment on Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase Announced for February 5 4 days ago:
Thanks for fixing!
- Comment on Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase Announced for February 5 4 days ago:
Please don’t post links that just tell me to download an app.
- Comment on Bash Moto is an upcoming 90s themed beat 'em up motorcycle racing game 6 days ago:
Clearly a love letter to Road Rash (1994) but nothing wrong with that.
- Comment on Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle – Dmitry Brant 6 days ago:
Pretty fascinating! I would’ve expected the dongle to be doing something more complex but, as the author says, it’s possible that these developers underused it.
- Comment on One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years 1 week ago:
Here’s an article detailing the methodology.
- Comment on One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years 1 week ago:
- Comment on One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years 1 week ago:
It’s hilarious that you think game development is a ‘cushy corpo job’.
Ah yes, all those game devs famously enjoying competitive salaries and rock solid job security.
- Comment on One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years 1 week ago:
Yep. PC players tend to be very outspoken, but they’re easily outnumbered by the console market, and the mobile market dwarfs them both.
- Comment on What should be emoji reaction for "me too" in the general sense 1 week ago:
Just don’t accidentally send 👉👌 instead
- Comment on Netflix Animation Studios are now funding Blender development 1 week ago:
You realise Blender is open source, right? If they pull shenanigans the community can simply fork the project.
- Comment on What should be emoji reaction for "me too" in the general sense 1 week ago:
If you want to express agreement, it’s usually 👆or ➕
If there was an action and you want to confirm you’ve done it, ✅ (or 👍 but that’s ambiguous between ‘I’ve seen this’ vs ‘I’ve done this’)
- Comment on Heroic Games Launcher v2.19 released adding ZOOM Platform, AppImage updates and more 1 week ago:
Seems like they’ve been around for longer than I thought, but I rarely hear them get mentioned and the barebones site doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 2 weeks ago:
Do you say the same for Epic Games Store exclusives?
Yes, actually. If they funded a game, like with Alan Wake 2, then whether or not they make it an EGS exclusive is their prerogative.
there is no pro-consumer reason that the GOG fixes could not have been given to everyone that already owned the game on Steam as a free update
I disagree. GOG invested time and resources into patching the game. Tacking the word ‘pro-consumer’ in there means nothing. They’re a business. They shouldn’t be expected to give away their work for free to customers of a competing platform.
I don’t care if 2% or whatever goes to GOG for their fixes
That much is clear. You just want something for nothing. Pirate the GOG version if you’re so desperate to play without paying, but don’t frame it as some kind of pro-consumer protest.
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 2 weeks ago:
It’s as much as anyone outside of GOG can know, based on interviews like this one.
The exact contents of the deals is not public information and no doubt differs for each game, but the overall process has been reported on.
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 2 weeks ago:
Oh, well that’s the easier part to understand.
Before they even start on any technical work, the GOG legal team contacts the owners of the game they want to sell (e.g. SEGA, in the case of Alpha Protocol) and they negotiate a deal to update and distribute the game.
Things get complicated when a game has joint owners, or when it’s not clear who owns a game, but otherwise it’s as simple as that.
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 2 weeks ago:
If you’re interested in a specific example, here’s an interview with their technical producer on how they updated and rereleased Alpha Protocol in 2024.
Lots of insights!
- Comment on How GOG fixed Cold Fear | GOG Tech Talk 2 weeks ago:
Why would GOG give the work they did to a competing storefront?
If you value the work, support the people who did it.
- Comment on Asbestos found in children’s play sand sold in UK 2 weeks ago:
“As a precaution, we have voluntarily removed the product from sale while we carry out independent testing … We will update customers as soon as we are in a position to do so.”
Sounds like they’re just waiting to confirm if there’s actually a problem, rather than issuing a full-scale product recall based on a single test result reported by a random member of the public.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Written in 2020 but still an interesting read. I wonder what the author thinks of games that have released in the intervening years, like Manor Lords, Going Medieval, and Farthest Frontier?
- Comment on What's the best free version of word? 2 weeks ago:
OpenOffice isn’t as well known now because it was replaced, for all intents and purposes, by LibreOffice in ~2010.
- Comment on Dreamcast controller 2 weeks ago:
Raphnet (and possibly others) make a USB adapter for Dreamcast pads, if you have one.
If you want something brand new, Xbox controllers have a more or less direct lineage from Sega pads, as (iirc) MS hired many ex-Dreamcast personnel to work on the original Xbox after the DC was killed off.
360 pads work well on PC and are easy to come by. Hyperkin also makes a modern version of the original Xbox ‘duke’ controller that might work well.
- Comment on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | Opening Title Sequence 2 weeks ago:
Nothing? The whole thing is couched in a metaphor of new growth to represent the reopening of the academy and the importance of building a new generation. It says at least as much about the show as watching the Enterprise D zooming past a few random planets ever did.
- Comment on Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday | Hacker News 2 weeks ago:
True, it’s not something that would kill the service. But still, I would think the prospect of migrating an entire streaming service to a completely different platform might warrant losing at least a little sleep.
- Comment on Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday | Hacker News 2 weeks ago:
Isn’t all of Dropout.tv hosted on Vimeo?
- Comment on Is there a list of important/key episodes – but not just the good episodes? 2 weeks ago:
When I was going through TNG and DS9 for the first time with my wife, I built our watchlist based on a combination of Kethinov’s and Jammer’s reviews.
Kethinov is particularly of interest here because he gives a ‘filler rating’ for each episode, separate from its overall rating, which tells you if it’s important to the longer-term story.
- Comment on You'll no longer earn Steam points from community awards, as Valve try to kill off clownface-farming 2 weeks ago:
Nope. Just useless profile decorations and people using reactions to troll on the forums.
- Comment on Ubisoft target audience when they play a good game 2 weeks ago:
I fucking love Highway 17 - it’s an atmospheric and enjoyable road trip and I will die on this hill.
- Comment on Where can I get sweet dish fish? 3 weeks ago:
Are you talking about Swedish fish?
