I’m not sure customers are falling for it - this is why voting with your wallet doesn’t work. People rage against games that launch in an unfinished state, particularly when they’re full price. Steam reviews often incorporate price point - statements like “don’t buy this at full price” or “this might have been worth it at $20, but this is not a $70 game” come up a lot

Sales for AAA games are way down, we just saw the biggest failure in gaming history. Casual reading of steam reviews show people clearly have different expectations based on price, Twitter sometimes explodes with anger at specific moves (like Helldivers requiring PSN) and they back off (temporarily), but they always go back to the bullshit

The feedback mechanism of “voting with your wallet” doesn’t communicate this message. Metrics show purchases, refunds, and active users… That’s what fits on a spreadsheet. They see a game failing, but that doesn’t mean they’ve understood why

AAA studios don’t want to understand what makes a game succeed or fail - they just want a formula to min-max ROI. They want strong numbers at launch, but they also want to minimize production costs, and they treat costs (like developers) as line items - they learn the wrong lessons, because they aren’t concerned with the creative part of game design. They want to be the next Madden or assassin’s creed, they want to figure out how to get players to pay $70 + micro transactions (or better yet a subscription too), but they also want their employees to be interchangeable cogs they can push to burn out then replace

AAA gaming is dying from this, but it’s an oligarchy at this point - large corporations are unable to understand nuance or truly innovate - these are things people do when they have autonomy. They don’t do team building or R&D anymore - that’s a gamble that sometimes pays off big, but not in a quarter or two. They aquire then kill off what made the team work in the first place - any individual can tell you that’s a recipe for failure, but by nature they keep the decision making far removed from the people actually doing the work

But then someone will see a spreadsheet and calculate the “missed” revenue, and whoever made that decision either gets replaced or given strict orders next time

Even if they manage to dig their heels in, it will come up again and again. It looks like a money shaped hole, and so organizationally they’ll keep coming back to it

It is a great way to make games, many indie games do this. A team can do this, but a corporation can’t - subtlety doesn’t fit on a spreadsheet

Sure, you can do that. It’s obviously on you to figure out how you want to do it, but that’s exactly what no DRM means

And I don’t mean it’s technically possible, you can backup the game files through steam and put them on a flash drive, and there you go

That’s the thing - AI isn’t about size, it’s about categorizing the state of the world. If you can understand an action in context and possible responses, a Markov chain can learn and respond appropriately with the processing of a calculator - it really doesn’t take much

But it’ll probably show 3 orders of meatballs, and she saw him get 3 meatballs. He just has to keep her from looking too closely

Oh, it works… It turns the group against the kid. They may or may not attempt to police the behavior, but they won’t do it effectively. They will resent the kid though

And isolated kids are famous for being obedient

Wait, our hat has oil? Eagle screech intensifies

I think an individual opinion can matter, even k the face of commercial success

But here’s the thing - “I don’t like it” doesn’t cut it. If you can’t tell me why you don’t like the beetles, your opinion is less than worthless

Personally, I think the beetles were great, and I think rush of rain was too. It was the first rouglike platformer shooter I’ve ever heard of… The beetles consistently pushed boundaries, doing it once doesn’t put you on their level

On the other hand, the beetles were able to to that because no one was there to tell them no. I agree with the sentiment - games are art. I’d happily overlook a dozen failures for each success

They’re trying to hedge their bets. Nintendo effectively dropped out of the home console market, Microsoft has transitioned away from the console, so Sony is dipping a toe in

Going along those lines, treat your people better. Retention is always important, but every role in game creation is inherently a skilled artistic job

You can swap out one cashier or factory worker for another, and after an adjustment period, your revenue won’t change much. You can’t swap out one programmer for another - that’s like changing the artist halfway through building a sculpture

You will not get the initial vision, and you need someone far more skilled to make something good out mid way through

Would you give a few hundred dollars and couple dozen hours of learning? Because this is a very achievable goal

I like watching stream highlights, occasionally I’ll watch one live. But they’re generally pretty boring, even as background noise - they’re on there for hours at a time

I don’t think the relationship itself is bad, but it’s a relationship between you (massively plural) and an individual. It’s like being part of a crowd. I get that people like it, but I don’t get much out of it

It just makes too much sense… The only way to get past electron is a better electron. Or just fix electron

We’ve been going after this concept for decades now. That’s what java swing was supposed to be, what python gtlk was supposed to be, and I’m sure there were others before that and there’s been a hell of a lot since then

It’s all trade-offs between flexibility, ease of use, and performance. Also between maintenance cost, portability, and existing library support

Electron is a good compromise. The execution could be better, but it’s come a long way. There is no one size fits all solution, but there are some decent options that handle that compromise differently

Honestly, wouldn’t this work? So long as the proteins aren’t denatured, they should still work in your stomach

So blended raw liver bombs it is

You guys are circling around the answer

Aero looks, better menus (I refuse to believe nested drop downs are peak layout, but ribbon stuff looks pretty, at the cost of useful organization)

And finally, make it look good in dark mode. We aren’t a print-first culture anymore, and I prefer my retinas intact

I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Could you explain it in assembly?

Yes, the fact you explained it, as well as formatting it in a spoiler for those who want to think it over a little longer (like me), made me feel slightly happier

To be honest, I don’t remember the original post at the moment, but I remember that you explained a post in a way that made me feel appreciative that you’re on the platform. I want to be the kind of person to express that.

That’s the person I want to be, and I’m glad that you are who you are

I like that you bothered. Good on you

Embracing lack of meaning is nihilism talk!

Take in existence as it comes and laugh at the absurdity of it all

Just to put this in context:

There’s only so many ways to turn a bunch of files into one - mainly, you stick them back to back. Easy.

Then, there’s an infinite ways to compress that file… You could come up with you own method, but what good is that? It’s better and smarter to use a format already supported by your users

So of course most bundles are the same archive type under the hood. Everything from backups to installers - you shouldn’t be inventing new formats without a damn good reason