ampersandrew
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world
- Comment on Gaming market melts down after Google reveals new AI game design tool — Project Genie crashes stocks. (A.K.A . Investors panic because they don't understand what "real" videogames are) 2 hours ago:
You just described why it won’t be widely adopted.
- Comment on Games you really want to play, but can't or won't? 2 hours ago:
I’m a very recent fan of loot games, and I only briefly tried Torchlight 1 as more of an academic exercise to see how the genre evolved over time. There was some special sauce that I observed starting around Borderlands 3 or Pre-Sequel (that I suspect originated in Diablo 3) around class design that was still absent from Torchlight. Other than that, I didn’t form much of an opinion on it.
- Comment on Games you really want to play, but can't or won't? 2 hours ago:
I’d argue that a game like Fallout, 1 or 3, is not 99% combat, and that’s probably where the disconnect is. They intend for you to do some detective work and even solve problems without combat plenty of times too, even when you have a combat-heavy build. Pokemon is a strange one here too, because that series is built around a rock paper scissors system such that you should be regularly be switching up which attacks you’re using. I’d love to see if your complaints hold up to Larian’s games on tactician difficulty.
- Comment on Games you really want to play, but can't or won't? 18 hours ago:
Would you mind listing some of the ones you’ve tried? Describing melee as spam clicking sounds like you’ve either only played real-time RPGs or didn’t understand the tactics that come with the trade-offs on your character sheet. Fallout itself comes in a ton of different flavors across the series.
- Comment on Games you really want to play, but can't or won't? 20 hours ago:
Diablo III and IV don’t have a monopoly on the genre. There’s Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, and the Borderlands games, all playable offline, even in multiplayer. They’re not exactly Diablo, but you’ll hardly get closer than Grim Dawn, and there’s no reason you need to be married to the Diablo IP anyway. That kind of brand stickiness is how you get taken advantage of.
Personally, when something like that doesn’t respect my values, I’m not even finding myself tempted by them these days. Oh, it’s always online? It’s dead to me. There’s a deluge of other stuff to play, including games that are similar but respect my values.
- Comment on PC gamers win the first battle against Valve Corporation as £656m competition claim receives judicial approval 20 hours ago:
You’ll have to convince those other developers to release on GOG. It’s not Valve preventing them from doing so.
- Comment on Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead 20 hours ago:
I think you just internalized this to be only about online shopping, but that was never what I meant.
- Comment on Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead 20 hours ago:
If consumers’ regular buying habits at the time were not to buy on Steam by default (which they weren’t), then it’s unimpressive, and not a feasible poster child, for one’s game’s ability to survive in the modern market without Steam. That’s the point I was making. Brick and mortar was the de facto storefront for PC games at the time that most of those games came out, so it was not strange for an always-online game to sell itself online-only on their own web sites. These days, skipping Steam is not a path most will take, and for good reason.
- Comment on Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead 21 hours ago:
Steam was a launcher for games most people still bought on discs back then. I remember 2007 was the first time I bought a game on Steam, and it wasn’t a regular habit for years after that. It wasn’t about which other digital store you used; it was that, as a digital store, it held no power in the market compared to brick and mortar. Plus, back then, PC gaming was definitively second fiddle to consoles.
- Comment on Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam? 21 hours ago:
Of course, but…broken clock, you know? A large percentage of personal computers will be freed from Windows in large part because of Valve, even though they profit off of legalized child gambling addiction. And walled gardens in mobile will be broken down in large part because of Epic, which uses dark patterns to trick people out of their money in pursuit of a cultural hodge podge of nonsense that won’t even exist in a few decades.
- Comment on Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam? 23 hours ago:
To be honest, Epic is doing a good job of tearing down walled gardens in places like mobile, and we’ll probably be better off for it. But yeah, they’ve done a terrible job of competing with Steam.
- Comment on Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead 1 day ago:
In 2005 when Roblox came out? No. League of Legends came out in 2009, and I had barely started shopping on Steam for non-Valve games back then. Most of us were still buying games on disc at Walmart. Minecraft was doing early access before Steam had the feature.
- Comment on Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead 1 day ago:
I’d love to see this as an official tag on the store page.
- Comment on Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead 1 day ago:
A software company can run its own store, and make its own launcher. Just look at so many of the big titles over the last two decades: Minecraft, League, Tarkov, War Thunder, Roblox, and more recently Hytale.
This is also survivorship and selection bias though. Not only would you not have heard of the ones that failed, but these are the games confident enough to not launch on Steam in the first place. Several of them are so old that Steam was in its infancy and not the de facto storefront when they came out.
- Comment on Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead 1 day ago:
Plenty of great games are not immune to failing even when they’re on Steam. The market is tough. But at the same time, it makes perfect sense that Steam has a rule preventing you from taking advantage of their infrastructure for marketing and communicating with customers while you make it available on Epic first for less money.
- Comment on Video games, random friend requests, and scammers! 1 day ago:
The only people I’ve friended online that I didn’t know in person were other people who play Skullgirls, because it was the only way to pick their brain on how I can improve, or even just to send a “ggs”. These days, we’re basically all in the same Discord server, so I can usually start typing @ and a few letters of the name they used in quick match and find them pretty easily, so it’s been a while. Still, those people are mostly strangers to me, and sometimes their accounts get hacked. The scam I’ve seen multiple times at this point is that they need people to go to an external site and vote for them to get approved for a Counter-Strike ranked league or something. I don’t know how it works, but I’m not clicking that link. If that’s how that CS ranked league works, find another one with a better method of letting you in.
- Comment on Baldur's Gate 3 director agrees with No Rest for the Wicked lead that Early Access is "a positive thing" for games like their two RPGs – when it works 2 days ago:
Neither of these are redemption arcs where a company was let off the hook. They’re using early access the way it’s intended. The biggest thing stopping me from playing early access games is the deluge of finished games coming out all the time.
- Comment on Austrian Supreme Court rules that FIFA loot boxes are not gambling 2 days ago:
The argument they gave, cited in the article, is that there’s a skill component to them. By which I’m guessing they mean playing Ultimate Team with the contents of the loot boxes, but it doesn’t get specific. And I still don’t think that would add a skill component to the loot boxes themselves.
- Comment on Turn-based RPG People of Note reveals its voice cast alongside new Nintendo Switch 2 release | RPG Site 2 days ago:
Iridium Studios? Man, I thought this studio closed down or something. Their last game was a long time ago.
- Comment on Austrian Supreme Court rules that FIFA loot boxes are not gambling 2 days ago:
I’d like to see these justices demonstrate the skill involved in opening these loot boxes. What are the hot strats?
- Comment on Stop Destroying Videogames initiative to get a public hearing organised by the European Parliament 3 days ago:
With any luck, it’s because this issue is such a slam dunk that it’s got broader support than more divisive initiatives. In reality though, it’s most likely just because YouTuber drama got more eyeballs on it; and if that’s the difference here, the EU really ought to re-examine how they do these initiatives. 1M signatures out of a population of 440M is a tough bar to clear.
- Comment on GOG job listing for a Senior Software Engineer notes "Linux is the next major frontier" 3 days ago:
Sure, but you take the good with the bad. Most games work, and you get to actually own a copy via GOG. Hopefully they do proper integration with Proton in the future, and this position they’re hiring for may very well lead to that. There’s the option to buy games through Heroic, which gives Heroic a cut of GOG sales, so I’m sure to always do that so that I send the signal to GOG what’s important to me and how they can earn my whole dollar.
- Comment on GOG job listing for a Senior Software Engineer notes "Linux is the next major frontier" 3 days ago:
There’s also a very generous 30 day refund policy, so if you’re at all unsure, make sure it’s working in that first month. I was pretty close to refunding The Alters, because that game just barely works via Proton, even with the right workarounds. Hell of a game though.
- Comment on GOG job listing for a Senior Software Engineer notes "Linux is the next major frontier" 3 days ago:
It is the role of government to regulate those problems, but you can’t uninvent a technology. As for me in my work, the most I can say is that I almost used AI once; a coworker did it for me before I could get to our company approved AI page. That, plus other companies mandating its usage (if it was really so great, it wouldn’t be difficult to convince anyone to use it) is why I’m not confident that it is one of those inevitable technologies. But if it is, being a dick to people about it is stupid.
- Comment on GOG job listing for a Senior Software Engineer notes "Linux is the next major frontier" 4 days ago:
I believe I did answer your question, though I’d disagree with the idea that I’m “defending” anything. There exists nuance between “pro AI” and “anti AI”.
- Comment on GOG job listing for a Senior Software Engineer notes "Linux is the next major frontier" 4 days ago:
I used an example of two technologies that were destructive and inevitable, now both definitely parts of your daily life, to show how silly it is take a stance against a technology like that. I don’t need to work at GOG for that to be the case. And to reiterate, AI might not be inevitable. If it’s not, this problem takes care of itself economically, and you don’t need to shame anyone.
- Comment on GOG job listing for a Senior Software Engineer notes "Linux is the next major frontier" 4 days ago:
Both of those things put a lot of people out of work, but our economy adapted, and there was nothing to be gained by shaming the people embracing the technology that was clearly going to take over. I’m not convinced AI tools are that, but if they are, then nothing can stop it, and you’re shaming a bunch of people who have literally no choice.
- Comment on GOG job listing for a Senior Software Engineer notes "Linux is the next major frontier" 4 days ago:
Would you have taken a moral stance against automated telephone switchboards or online shopping?
- Comment on Finally, the FPS I keep asking for: Deep combat, classic modes, and an honest-to-god server browser 4 days ago:
I never recalled seeing a wall run in Quake, and now that I’ve looked it up, I think it’s the same words to describe two different things. Less “taking advantage of weird math for optimal speed” and more “kung fu action movie with guns”. They’ve got similar DNA, but this isn’t just Quake. For wall running in particular, think of The Matrix, which inspired GunZ: The Duel; the author seems to think that’s the closest touchpoint. I played the demo a while back as well, and I felt some influence from F.E.A.R., if that helps you.
- Comment on Finally, the FPS I keep asking for: Deep combat, classic modes, and an honest-to-god server browser 4 days ago:
Out of Action’s big hook is its wild movement set: you can dodge, dive, dive roll, slide, wallrun, and double jump. The only thing you can’t do is, surprisingly, sprint. Getting around efficiently isn’t just about speed—it’s about chaining together maneuvers so you don’t faceplant into a wall and discovering shortcuts across the map.