bigsocrates

I've now gone back a few times to clean up achievements and just mess around (quick resume works well with this, which makes it easy) and I regret to inform everyone that the music WILL stick in your head if you dip in once too often.

I am changing my rating. This is the worst game ever made.

@chamurai: Yeah I understand your perspective. I just think the fact that you played so much of the game on the Wii U because you "needed a game for [your] new system" but then never felt the need to get into any of the other similar games shows how mediocre the launch really was. We've all played launch games that we might not have under other circumstances, but I can't say I've ever had one be in my top 5 all time for a system and then never really looked into sequels.

If you own Age of Calamity and you like Breath of the Wild (which it seems you do!) it's worth at least messing with. It's not an all time great game but it's pretty fun.

I really want Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD ported too. That would be awesome.

But you have to tell us all what the dumb reason you stopped playing was. You can't just dangle that out there and not resolve it. I added Peppa Pig to the UUGPGC list for you. We're both going to have to play that. We're trauma bonded.

eh

#GuessTheGame #725

🎮 🟥 🟥 🟥 🟥 🟩 ⬜

#MasterGamer

https://GuessThe.Game/p/725

@zombiepie: Yes I am aware that Japan's work culture is screwed up. Sakurai has been hospitalized for overwork. And he's Sakurai! It's worth noting that the games industry is notoriously bad in the West too with crunch and our own suicides. I have not seen a direct comparison between the game industries, just the economies as a whole. But also, more importantly, those issues are not specific to the Japanese GAME industry but Japanese work culture as a whole. It doesn't make the situation better for those caught in it but it makes the solutions a lot more complicated.

And of course Spencer should be blamed. I never said he shouldn't. I have no idea if this came from him or higher up, but at the end of the day intentions don't matter. He's responsible for the division and the division has gone through painful contractions under his watch. I used to be a Spencer fan and I'm not anymore. It might be time for someone new. But this probably would have happened under them too.

You can assign blame for sure, I just think it's less important than what happened. We don't know Spencer's intentions, maybe he begged for these people's jobs maybe he laughed while he signed the order to cut them, at the end of the day the lost jobs are what matter.

@zombiepie: I don't know if this was directed at me and what I said about Nintendo (which was only partly about their labor practices but also about their game making practices) but I also don't think it actually matters all that much why companies do the things they do. Yes, Japanese companies are not more moral than Western counterparts and in some ways are worse (their gender stuff is often even more screwed up, which is pretty impressive when you think about how bad American companies are about gender). But Japanese labor law IS different, and that leads to different outcomes for employees. That's important. It's not because Japanese companies are inherently nicer or better (we see that with Sony, which does much of its development outside Japan and acts much more like a Western company, and with how Square Enix treats its Western subsidiaries)

At the end of the day what's important is not assigning blame, it's people being able to plan their lives without the constant fear of being fired for no reason, and there are big differences between the West and Japan there.

@brian_: Yeah you're right about that but Matt Booty doesn't even understand why there's conflict in that.

It's just business, bruh.

@ben_h: Microsoft wants its games to make an absolute ton of money. Nobody actually knows how Hi-Fi Rush did in terms of profitability but it certainly got Microsoft positive attention in a year where most of its big releases were busts and you'd think that'd be worth something to a company trying to sell Game Pass subsciptions.

The cycle that gaming is in is very depressing. To be fair most media companies are being run like shitty tech companies these days, with every major studio putting out a bad streaming product and shows being pulled down to accelerate tax write offs (short term profits over all else.)

Something will probably rise from the ashes eventually but the current trajectory is neither sustainable nor fun.

I will say that there is an exception. Japan in general (and I am not including Sony) has been better (there's a reason that From is ascendant) but Nintendo specifically has not fallen victim to this disease.

Nintendo doesn't do mass layoffs nearly as much, continues to make complete games with a focus on player satisfaction, and keeps their teams and talent together. And the Switch was the best selling platform of the last 10 years.

But other Japanese companies have done better too. Sega did try to get into the GAAS "megagame" business but has bowed out and it's LAD games continue to sell well, as does Sonic.

I'm not saying Japanese companies haven't dabbled in the same bullshit, Square specifically seems to leap towards any horrible trend, but as a general rule this has affected the Western companies much more.

@broshmosh: I don't know where it's from but it's comparing the price in US dollars inflation adjusted vs nominal of presumably the modal physical game (I will admit that 'mode' is an assumption here because it doesn't say) during the launch year of certain consoles that represent their "generations." The graph is subpar but the point it's making is that game prices have fallen in real terms and stayed relatively flat in nominal terms for a long time.

@brian_: I actually think that there's not a conflict there because not every game is intended to be a blockbuster. I don't think anyone working on Pentiment thought it was going to be a Starfield level release. But this was done pretty disrespectfully.

Also buy the brand new controller color from Microsoft!

@mach_go_go_go: It's obviously nothing YOU'RE doing, but it's pretty obvious (not just from MS) that people are not buying enough smaller games or playing enough via subscription for the big companies to want to stay in that business.

As for the Shareholders of Microsoft...they don't care. Microsoft buys and shuts down companies all the time. All the big tech companies do. In this case Microsoft bought Bethesda to get Elder Scrolls and Fallout (and Fallout's hot right now) and the rest of the company, well, shed the less profitable parts like a spoiled kid throwing out the colors of Skittles he doesn't like because he knows mom will buy him a new bag if he wants more of the ones he likes.

The truth is that Microsoft shareholders are focused on "AI" right now and not even paying attention to gaming except in how it impacts the quarterly statements. That's part of how these megacorps operates. To us $7.5 billion for Bethesda is enormous money, and to Microsoft shareholders it's barely even noticeable.

And everyone who loves Double Fine should be very, very, worried. What are they even making these days?

Can they do Call of Duty support?

@broshmosh: I don't think that was a "plan" though it is how things worked out. I think Microsoft probably planned on delivering the DLC, the payoff on interest on the at most tens of thousands of dollars of DLC Microsoft sold is such a pittance it's not worth it.

But it is how things worked out and I do think that part of the "plan" behind pre-order mania and selling season passes of content not yet produced IS something similar. Except they don't keep the money in a holding account they use it to fund other operations or investments or dividends or whatever. Pre-order money isn't in escrow and interest is higher than it has been but still pretty low.

@av_gamer: A couple things. The first is that Bethesda was already huge before Microsoft bought them, unless you're talking about Arkane, which has been owned by Bethesda for most of its existence, or Tango, which was bought soon after it was founded because it ran out of money and would have had to close otherwise. I don't really think that the lesson here is "don't get acquired by big companies" because Bethesda was a big company already. And smaller companies have not been spared the bloodletting in the industry. Developers are just at the whim of their employers like everyone else, and whether you start working for a huge company like Bethesda or you join Shinji Mikami in his small start up, which he had to sell to keep the lights on, you're likely to get caught up in the machine. And even if you don't you can easily get laid off from small companies, which capsize constantly (as Tango almost did.)

The second question is "work out for whom?" It generally worked out well for the people who actually made the decisions to sell the companies. If Bethesda closed tomorrow Todd Howard would still be incredibly rich off the sale.

I think the real lesson here, beyond Microsoft being totally heartless, which we've known, is where the industry is going, and it makes me sad. I'm probably going to write a whole post about it at some point soon. Suffice it to say that Microsoft is not the first company to close its smaller studios to focus on "impactful games" in recent days.