ampersandrew

@ampersandrew@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I think I’m saying that what we changed from is better than what it changed into. Chasing ideas being the desired goal, because it leads to permutations of those ideas. So it has changed. It can change again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m drowning in a deluge of great games to play, personally. The exception there being first-person shooters and racing games, and racing games are starting to fill in the gaps.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  “Iterate quickly” isn’t corporate bullshit. It’s just English. There are always those that tag along to something successful and find success themselves, like Terraria and Starbound to Minecraft; or Apex Legends and Fortnite to PUBG. But if you spend 4 years chasing an idea that came out in 2017, you end up with Hyperscape or Concord, unless there’s truly such an insatiable appetite that customers can’t get enough. In a world of live service games, they look to retain those players for years. Decades ago, they didn’t. We had so many first person shooters coming out every year, single and multiplayer, that it would be a full time job to count them all. Most of them brought new ideas to the table, and across many releases it would take years of iteration trying things that are slightly different than the last idea that would eventually lead to things like aim down sights becoming a fairly standard feature of the genre.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Fortnite is a still-very-visible version of this exact concept. They were able to iterate quickly. Mostly because they just adapted their dud of a horde mode game into a completely new genre using the same mechanics, but they still did it quickly and found that success. We’re also seeing it in the likes of Getting Over It, Lethal Company, Vampire Survivors, and plenty of other games that spawned imitators.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  All that to say that adapting to trends creates genres and results in honing in on better versions of the original idea. There will be bad versions along the way, but it’s good to get that much iteration. We used to get that much iteration.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Were you around to play games 20 to 25 years ago?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the dream. Even $5 is probably low-balling what they could get away with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the fear the author raises, yes. I always say people are fluid, and we expand to fit our containers, whether that’s our schedules, filling our homes with junk, or anything else. Hopefully what the industry is coming to realize is that their container is smaller than they think it is, but yes, scope creep is a real threat. I’m rooting for the industry to scope down.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe that’s the problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Who says the time getting cut is in QA? Maybe the games just scope down.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you think they get better if they take longer to make? These development times are a fairly recent phenomenon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m a coder, and I’m not in fear of losing my job. Definitely not long term. They can chase this trend all they like, but they’ll soon realize what they need people for. Or, something I find less likely, they don’t need those people, and you can’t un-ring a bell. Sometimes new technologies shrink the need for a certain kind of job, like farming, or they erase the need for it altogether, like telephone switchboard operators. I don’t see AI shrinking this profession all that much, and if it does, there’s nothing anyone can do that will undo it. Even Comcast can’t make people stick with cable using all the nastiest tricks in the book; sometimes things just become obsolete.

  by forcing the development timeline by basically any means necessary

  “By any means necessary” are your words, not mine, nor the article’s. I too took issue with the article saying that early access can just be a fallback; that’s not actually solving the problem and just kicking the can down the road. But we got tons of great games made in under 3 years, even with high production value.

  This is how the AAA industry dies.

  As we know it. But it might be how it finds a path to sustainability rather than the feast or famine of betting your career on a project that took 7 years to make. Rather than perpetually updated live service games, AAA used to make sequels on a rapid cadence. Rather than games that take dozens of hours to finish, often filled with a bunch of busy work, we used to get games that took a fraction of that, often with far better pacing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  There are, were, and always will be games made in shorter development cycles. It’s just that people are finally coming to the conclusion that longer cycles shouldn’t be the norm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Which part?

• At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinionwww.gamesindustry.biz ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩ | ⁨55⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  lacks the amazing writing and soul of the first one

  Really? The first one seemed content to just let you do mundane tasks as part of your quests, but I’ve found that this second one makes sure that there’s always something interesting along the way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’ve seen that there’s more than meets the eye, at the very least, so we can leave it at that. A friend of mine was quite sure he had almost finished it before when he was nowhere close, lol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Without spoiling anything for anyone…how uh…how far are you?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Guilty Gear Strive just got a big balance patch and a matchmaking update, and it’s great to be back. The experience of playing the game is better than ever.

  I’ve still been going through Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. It remains the best game I’ve played this year. I’m working my way through the Brushes With Death DLC, which has some interesting mission design if not the most compelling narrative. I think I’ve done all the side quests I planned to do before finishing the game, so I’ve got the last third or so of the main quest to return to after I finish the DLC. Then the second expansion comes out early next month.

  I also started playing Mafia: Definitive Edition, and boy have I missed crime drama stories in video games. This one is pretty by-the-numbers when it comes to gameplay, but after 4 hours, they’ve got plenty of interesting set pieces and narrative beats. I’m very much into this. I plan to play through the next two games before picking up The Old Country.

  Other than those, I’ve got a project I’m working on to set up a VPN that I control, rather than trusting an external service whose terms of service could change at any time, so that I can play old LAN games with my friends in this era of live service multiplayer games. Once I get it all sorted out and working, maybe I’ll write up a post here so others can do the same.

• If you ever had an interest in Guilty Gear Strive, thanks to the new ranked matchmaking, there's never been a better time to play!
  Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩ | ⁨1⁩ ⁨comment⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. The single factor that made it stick is that it is the longest game I’ve played this year. I can’t say I’m fond of the question.

• Splitgate 1 Lives on Through Peer-to-Peer Supportwww.splitgate.com ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩ | ⁨0⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollow Knight: Silksong - Release Date Trailer (September 4)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  At least what the perception of proc gen is. I can only name one metroidvania roguelike (A Robot Named Fight; Dead Cells doesn’t count, regardless of its marketing), so this genre is probably way harder to make with proc gen. To me, someone who doesn’t enjoy Hades, it feels a lot like people only played Hades, acknowledged its proc gen is bad, and then said all proc gen is bad and asked for hand crafted levels as a response. There are so many games that are good at proc gen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollow Knight: Silksong - Release Date Trailer (September 4)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Word on the street is that one is imminent too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony is raising all PS5 console prices in the US by $50, starting tomorrow⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Other countries got their price increase months ago. Ours was probably delayed so that they could tell how bad the damages of our idiot president would be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony is raising all PS5 console prices in the US by $50, starting tomorrow⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Games took way longer to make in the 7th gen and later, so 5 years for a console generation didn’t cut it anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony is raising all PS5 console prices in the US by $50, starting tomorrow⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  They will sell fine everywhere except the US.

  Nah, tariffs didn’t help, but there are other economic factors and trends here that have been slowly at work for a very long time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discoverability is the industry’s "Achilles’ heel," marketing survey finds⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Good games fail to make their money back all the time. It’s not just enough to make a good game. In the case of Apex Legends, a game that needs to keep you playing long term at the expense of others, it needed to not only be good but also be earlier to market than its competitors, which is impossible to plan for. It’s success involves a lot of luck, too, and using it as an example is survivorship bias.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨“Between 15 And 20 Characters For The Launch Roster”: Invincible VS Interview⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s plenty of variety to not end up seeing the same matchups over and over again, as long as there are no runaway top tiers to kill the variety. Really excited about this one still.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We’re Suing Minecraft in a Class Action Lawsuit⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d say he’s fighting to keep what was legally promised to him in the contract provided to customers.