bigsocrates

They've already apparently closed Roll7, who made Rollerdrome and OlliOlli, and the Kerbal team. Also apparently big layoffs in other offices.

At this point it's hard to not just feel a general aching sadness for those affected and for the games industry as a whole. Of course this is another big publisher pulling the plug on teams that made interesting, creatively successful, projects. Of course they're going to triple and quadruple down on the big live service projects (though Take Two's Grand Theft Auto live service at least prints money, as opposed to so many others.)

Of course they're going to lay people off and disrupt lives in pursuit of "cost cutting" even as they get ready to launch a game in GTA VI that is all but guaranteed to be among the most profitable games ever launched and to provide them literally billions of dollars of profit in the years ahead.

What else is there to say but I'm sorry for the people who lost their jobs. They made good games. Rollerdrome was a really good and unique game. Just the kind of project that the big publishers have less and less space for these days.

What hurts more is that they just bought Roll7 a few years ago. So they are pursuing the EA model of buying studios just to shut them down.

@nodima: It's not about the "default" things not being adequate to get the job done. Even in most games that are deemed pay to win or pay for advantage you CAN get things done with free stuff. It's about the paid stuff opening up more options or advantages and being useful (and for the record the mech isn't paid; you can only get it through leveling and req points that can't be bought.)

The grenade pistol gives you more options for how to handle your explosive loadout. The newly buffed revolver can give you more armor penetration. There are, of course, other ways to get those functions but being able to offload them to your sidearm frees up precious slots. And none of the free sidearms can do those things.

Those are just examples. So yes, there's no job you have to pay to do, but paying can get you the ability to do jobs in different ways and optimize your loadout differently. And again we are only a few months in. Over time power creep is inevitable. It always happens.

I just think non-cosmetic items in paid content almost always goes poorly. I honestly can't think of many examples where it didn't eventually become very problematic. Right now in Helldivers II it is only slightly problematic, but the structure is there for it to get much worse.

NBA 2K and MLB The Show didn't start out as used car salesmen. But once they introduced the structure to become that they started down the road.

Helldivers II is just at the start of the road, which is why I didn't attack it too savagely, but it's a road it should never have started on, and already it has taken several steps down it.

@nodima:I will go further than you. I have been a horny gamer. I not only bought but played Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, and while it did, in fact, play a good game of Volleyball that wasn't the only reason I played it. IT WASN';T THE ONLY REASON.

I have also played as Ivy in Soul Calibur, and not just because she is masher friendly. There were other reasons. I PLAYED AS IVY AND I SET UP IVY IVY MIRROR MATCHES.

I have sinned with the photo mode in multiple games.

But while I have been a horny gamer, what I have not done is demand that developers develop to my specific horny gamer needs. A lot of people have been horny gamers. There are horny women gamers, as we know from numerous visual novels that cater to them. There's nothing wrong with being a horny gamer.

What's wrong is throwing a fit when your minutest whim is not catered to.

If you want to be horny be horny. We all know that a lot of game characters are designed to inspire horniness. There's a reason that Dante from Devil May Cry never wears a shirt under his coat. But to make a huge deal over every costume change and to act like this is an important moral stance is just...cringe. Well not just cringe. Also deeply misogynistic and dangerous, as Gamergate showed.

A number of people have reported receiving 3DO reissues from Limited Run Games that are on CD-Rs instead of pressed discs.

This is problematic for a number of reasons. Not only do CD-Rs tend to have limited lifespans but there are some 3DOs that do not read them. Meaning that Limited Run is shipping games that they know, or should know, that some of their customers won't be able to use, without any kind of warning.

This seems...incredibly stupid. When you're selling a reproduction version of Plumbers Don't Wear Ties you're doing so knowing that the people who buy it will all be hardcore collectors either of 3DO games, oddities, or Limited Run releases. Those groups are all among the most pernickety of game buyers, the types of people who are still outraged that games no longer come with manuals and consider Day 1 patches to be personal affronts. To think that you could ship a game on a CD-R, especially for a system that struggles with them, is the height of arrogance. Maybe they thought their buyers don't play the games and just use them as display pieces. Maybe they just don't care. Regardless, it's a terrible look for a company that has a mixed reputation at the best of times (with incredibly late delivery of products and their entire business model seemingly based on FOMO) and really makes the whole licensed reproduction market look even sketchier. I am on record as being somewhat confused by this market, but even if I don't personally understand it people should still be getting what they paid for.

Just an awful, baffling, decision if true, and a demonstration of a company that absolutely does not understand its customer base.

@spacemanspiff00: Maybe it happens from time to time, and I'd imagine re-editing or changing things in post via looping lines or some VFX touchup is more common, but I think most shows don't really do that much directly in response to feedback unless that feedback is overwhelming. It's not like TV shows are constantly fine tuning stuff based on what fans like or don't like. If there's a breakout character they may get more time, or if something is seen as super offensive it might get cut, but barring those extremes I think most feedback has a minor impact on shows.

@spacemanspiff00: A lot of crews work multiple shows, often in a rotation. But most industry people want to work.

Cartoons were always sweatshops with terrible working conditions, but to be fair you can also churn out more episodes with more animators. Voice over work does not take long and it's one of the TV shows where you really can just throw money and labor at something. Live action you need the actors for every take so while you can shoot some stuff in multiple locations if there are scenes without overlapping cast (though they generally don't do much of that) there are more limits.

But I also do not think for all of these broken seasons they are shooting at different times. At least some just keep the stuff and release it later. It's harder to schedule and more expensive to break up shooting like that, because you need to take sets down and put them back up etc... and if you have a star with other projects you need to schedule the time.

A large part of the model is people not just signing up to watch and finding a reason to stay but forgetting to cancel. They want to make managing your streaming a huge hassle so you just say "screw it it's $10 a month" and leave it on. Works for a lot of people!

I think it's dumb. Just call it different seasons if it's split like that. A small pause is okay (and that happened back in Broadcast days when shows would go on hiatus during the holidays) but when you get these long multi-month breaks it often screws up the flow and makes it hard to follow things, and I think also hurts ratings because you may not remember that part 2 of season 6 got uploaded.

Streaming is just an economic mess and they want to make it more and more like cable, including making you wait between episodes so you have to keep paying.

TV has many of the same issues that games do, they just manifest differently because the microtransactions aren't a part of the shows themselves, they're just in how you are able to access those shows.

@imunbeatable80: It's your list and run it how you want, but you're at 189 now so why not wait until 200 or 250 for cleanup? Cleanup sounds like a round number thing.

But I also think the concept of "cleaning up" a list like this is inherently a bit flawed. It's just impossible to really consistently rate games you played years apart. You have to rely on flawed memories, and we are constantly changing in our tastes and preferences. I change from day to day whether I'm enjoying a game or not, let alone year to year. Plus now the games themselves are changing. Maybe All Walls Must Fall got patched and is now the best game ever made. Better replay the whole thing to be sure!

All that is to say that moving something around when you have a reason (like you go back to it with one of your kids and love it this time) but "cleaning up" the list is just substituting old memories for fresher ones.

I don't think your "gut" is wrong because it's your list. Everyone's list will be different. Your wife's list would be different from yours.

The Wii U defense force will come at you if they ever find this post! Be prepared. I don't know if it's the best game on the system when all is said and done, especially when you include Breath of the Wild, but some still hold it in high regard.

Here's a list where it's ranked 2 after BOTW.

In this list it sits at 13.

Personally I think it's hard to argue for anything other than Mario Kart 8 as the "killer app" for the system, though maybe not the best game. Of the Wii U games I've played (on Switch) that are not just ports from other systems (Arkham City is not really a Wii U game for me) I'd rank 3D World pretty high but not at the top. I don't think it's as good as Mario Kart 8 and I probably like Bayonetta 2 more, though I haven't finished that yet (currently playing through it.) I do think it's better than Hyrule Warriors and New Super Mario Bros. U (a game I feel about the same way you feel about 3D World).

But I respect your right to dislike the game and I think you should stick with your feelings. At least it makes the list more interesting.

I hope my threats to hit you with Dedede's hammer didn't keep you up at night.

I like the series and I'm glad to see an anime fighter that doesn't do the bad 3D fighter style that so many of them employ and just uses what looks like a fast 2D engine (seriously, does anyone like sloppy 3D arena fighters?)

That being said...

Ooof those graphics are bland. They're not even "bad" in the sense of being technically poor or sloppy or whatever, they're just incredibly bare bones. The backgrounds especially are horrible. "Rocky canyon." "Forest." Seriously? Street Fighter 2 had much more engaging backgrounds in the early 1990s. And the character graphics and attacks are equally bland.

Graphics aren't that important but part of what made Marvel Vs Capcom a hit was how flashy it was. That was actually a huge part of it. MVC but incredibly bland looking might work for the hardcore fighting community but is that enough to make this game commercially successful?

@imunbeatable80: I'm not going to lie. Probably. I personally don't really care what you rank things, that's your personal opinion, but I do find this one pretty funny. I never owned a Wii U but I followed some Wii U owners at the time and Super Mario 3D World was seen as the savior. Just this month I saw a Wii U retrospective where the guy said that when Super Mario 3D World hit all the Wii U owners instantly recognized that the Wii U had a killer app and a game of the year contender.

And you're like "Nope. Below average. Not just below average, but the Switch version that fixed some of the issues with the original AND added the critically beloved Bowser's Fury is STILL below average. And that's on a list that includes a lot of absolute garbage like The Mahjong Huntress and Adam's Venture: Origins. Still, BELOW AVERAGE." That's pretty funny!

And Lord Winklebottom seems like it's probably a fine game but by your own review it has a large number of flaws. Your review has huge 6.5/7 out of 10 energy. Maybe 7.5. It seems like it's a kind of amusing game with some neat adventure elements and some low key comedy, that also has some substantial flaws in terms of being very rigid in structure and having limited production values. That's fine, and I do get that you are a particular fan of this subgenre of mystery adventure, but it's funny to rate a game like that as significantly better than the Wii U's savior!

I'm not wrong!