I completely agree that huge teams aren’t needed. That said I think at least some of that is exactly because smaller studios full of expert talent were getting funded for several years, because those big studios weren’t making the games developers wanted to make. And those devs understood that “fun” wasn’t the same as “top of the line presentation”.

ARC Raiders’ Embark Studios has a lot of people from DICE. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s Sandfall Interactive has a lot of people from Ubisoft. Even Dispatch’s Ad Hoc is a lot of Telltale people (at least some of them by way of Ubisoft.) They knew a lot about their process, but their big companies weren’t making the games they were interested in. So they got funding elsewhere (and famously Ad Hpc’s funding dried up mid-development.)

I’m curious about Wikipedia’s sourcing here. Granted there’s the Balatros and Stardew Valleys of the world, and Helldivers did well. But do smaller games really make up half? Year after year the big ones are usually COD, two big sports game, a Nintendo game, another big fps, a big action game, and a few others.

Again I agree with you when it comes to good games. But man, those big ones are huge sellers. I just wish we had clear insight into sales. But that’s been a thing for a long time now.

Investment money is not as plentiful as it was several years ago. I’ve heard it in several interviews with developers or devs themselves. (Game Maker’s Notebook, Mike and Rami are Still Here, and a few devs on YouTube come to mind.)

I started the first one and really liked the little walking I did in the first hour and a half, but I just tapped out after that because of the ratio of cutscene to game. … I should play them.

I’ve often wondered why some more advanced games like Elder Scrolls don’t keep track of dramatic actions in some way and offer them up to you when you leave the game for a while. A “previously…” kind of element. Big budget action games too, like from Rockstar.

Obviously they just don’t think it’s worth the work, but I do wonder if it would affect completion rates.

You’re completely right of course, but I’ll say it bugs me too at times. I was always able to forgive it but as we got more advanced visually it bugged me more. Then finally in Oblivion it was too much for me. I still love and respect the game, but it actively bugs me there are portals around the world that are just waiting for me to decide I want to fight. I know it’s dumb, but it is what it is.

He’s been talking about it on Mastodon for quite a while now. It’s a shame.

/edit: It wasn’t the game he talked about on Masto; that game finished/released! My dumb. I thought it was continued development.

Downwell and Holedown are both fantastic games played in portrait. But I won’t lie; lately I’ve fallen back into Marvel Snap and I live it. (Not love, live.) But never spent a dollar on it.

There’s plenty of better deep dives on YouTube, but basically it’s a system in Shadows of Mordor (and moreso in Shadows of War) that would take a random NPC you were fighting and were joined by (or almost killed,) and elevate them thematically. If one knocked you down there’s a chance they would pick up your sword and break it, smack talk you, and walk away. That guy, of his name was Doug, became Doug the Sword Breaker. Never time you saw him, he’d get a short introduction and a quip or two to remove you of who he was.

If you died, since you were a spirit they’d just mock that they already best you before. But if you were killing them, they might get a scene where they manage to get away to amplify the story. Or maybe you’ll just kill them. It was random and happened with random NPCs, elevating them in the enemy army.

I believe in the second one you could even mind control someone, and take out the people above them, and have a spy in the upper ranks.

Imagine an action game with some Crusader Kings plot drama happening.

Honestly I think there’s probably enough prior art to get away with using whatever you wanted from it. But a) I’m no lawyer and b) I’m not risking millions of dollars making a game.

there’s a grappling hook in ARC Raiders (called the snap hook) and I have one but have never bothered using it. I should change that some day.

It’s a popular misconception that Halo was intended to be a Mac exclusive when it was revealed. It was going to be released on Mac and PC.

You may know that, but a lot of people think that it was revealed at Macworld because it was exclusive. But it was just a headliner in a statement of “hey, we can play games too!” In fact the literal game they were running on stage was actually running backstage on a PC.

Yeah, a lot of gamers know nothing about any of this conversation. I mean, my coworkers who game and mentioned the Stream Machine this weekend. Of course one was talking Fortnite. So that’s where we’re at. I didn’t even get into why this “console” won’t have one of the more popular games that’s literally free on every other machine including their phone. (I can already hear people saying “is a computer! It should run everything!” And then getting together when you explain how, and saying “it should be simple! It’s a console!”) It’s months away at best anyway. Who knows.

I think the hope isn’t that “maybe this will be big enough”, but “maybe together they’ll be big enough”. Who knows, though. It got a lot of hype on reveal but people are fickle sometimes.

I respect where you’re coming from, but a) “fool” is literally in my name. And b) you’re saying “there are other good games, leave those games you’re enjoying.” But you’re also saying “there are other people, leave your friends and family that you play with.” And that’s a little different.

Kernel level anti-cheat is what’s probably going to keep me on Windows for a while. I get those games aren’t for everyone, but I like them well enough, and that’s what my friend group plays. Warzone, DMZ, and going to try RedSec tomorrow. Kind of a shame. Otherwise I’d love to make the jump. As it is I’ll probably see about dual booting when I get my next PC in a year or two.

Delta Force has a Battlefield-ish multiplayer mode. It’s free to play and you unlock new characters and guns as you advance. (Then there’s an extraction mode too if you’re into that.) I just tried it for the first time after the beta several months ago and I thought it was alright. No jets, but still solid.

I can’t go that far. I can’t be upset at people for looking at deals and NOT thinking “but what about the companies?” Granted this hits differently as a field I love, but still, I get it.

Some scenes in MW2 stick out so strongly to me still.

You got lots of downvotes, but assuming you’re earnest, the game has a reputation of being rife with cheaters. Here’s a popular video that showed how bad it was a couple of years ago: https://youtu.be/p5LfGcDB7Ek

There’s also lots of allegations about the developers not being great people, which you can read in this thread. I have no idea about that, though. But complaints are not rare.

This is why I loved the DMZ mode of Warzone when it launched. The stronger bots were mother fuckers but there were missions to finish, so the players (all fresh from Warzone and new to having prox chat,) were mostly carefully happy to talk and often helped each other. It got pretty sweaty over the next two seasons though. After that it was kill on sight.

A few weeks ago, soon after they spun it off to its own download apart from Warzone, someone cracked it for solo play. I’d love someone figuring out a way to let people play private servers for that.

I agree with you, but there are people who enjoy moving over others’ sandcastles more than making their own. Some people enjoy ruining things for others. Others believe everyone else is cheating too, and their cheating is evening the playing field. The latter is a very common defense when asked directly.

Several content creators lose to cheaters and manage to interview the blatant cheaters who admit to it. There are also relatively popular YouTubers whose entire channels are accusing pro players and streamers of cheating in COD and games. Lots of people assume good players are all cheating, and that it’s approved (if not facilitated) by the developers. (Which is a necessary belief for them, considering these players will also often perform very well on LAN tournaments against other pros.)