deckard

@chaser324: I’m all for unionization too, and I get that RV is a private company. It’s an uphill battle. Maybe the more realistic solution is for someone in the games industry (journalism side or otherwise) to work toward setting up an effective, credible reporting mechanism for these kinds of abuses outside of any one company’s corporate/HR structure. For me it just gets old seeing the same sequence of events over and over:

1) AAA games company has some massive scandal

2) Enthusiast press/ influencers beat the drum of unionization being the ultimate panacea

3) Unionization is hard so the whole thing gets dropped and we move on

After last week’s podcast discussion on the current Activision Blizzard fiasco I got to thinking: if unionization is a significant step toward dealing with and preventing worker abuse, why doesn’t Giant Bomb lead by example and push for unionizing themselves and Red Ventures? All of the points they made about Activision and corporations in general still apply:

- HR is not your friend

- Unionization can help punish abusers and more importantly help PREVENT abuse in the first place

- A union can help empower employees

I’m not trying to point fingers but it does seem a bit disingenuous when the GB crew keeps bringing up unions as a balwark against corporate overreach - but only when it comes to “other” corporations.

I agree with all of the points made in here - looks great but the UI/ QOL issues keep me from really looking forward to returning for significant periods of time.

@apewins: it’s funny that you bring up Apex since that’s literally the only game I’ve been playing since April/May. I don’t mind giving them $10 for a season or two. And like I mentioned earlier - I know myself well enough that I’m not going to be playing BF for years on end. Apex would be my case in point: I’m playing it 1-2 hours per day throughout the summer but I know that once new stuff starts releasing in the fall I’ll be moving on.

Just Apex until The Ascent hits Game Pass on the 29th

For some reason people still associate signing up to a subscription service as analogous to paying for cable, i.e. as soon as you sign up you’re locked in forever. As some other people have mentioned one of the main advantages of Netflix/Game Pass etc. is that it’s very easy to turn on and off these services at will. For example: the “Premium” version of Battlefield 2042 is $90 on PC. For $90 I can get about 6 months of EA Play Pro and get the opportunity to play other games besides BF. I also know that there’s about a 95% chance that I won’t still be playing BF regularly 6 months down the road. So as long as I subscribe for 5 months or less I’ll be saving money over buying it outright.

Since I've literally played one new game so far this year, I guess Resident Evil Village is GOTY!

@nameredacted: I think the big difference between "Old Netflix" and Game Pass is that Microsoft is doing what I thought Netflix was going to do: buy up studios. I'm still surprised it took until 2021 for Amazon to buy MGM; MGM has barely been anything other than an IP holder for the 10-15 years. Netflix could have bought them as the major studios started withholding their own properties and they would have had an instant back catalog plus a few different IP's to spin into new series etc. Business-wise Netflix has turned out fine but I think Microsoft's approach makes more sense for games: take control of known studios and projects (especially ones known in enthusiast circles) and guarantee their old and new releases end up on Game Pass.

@creepingdeath0: I play some indie stuff here and there, as long as they're not:

- A roguelike

- A deckbuilder

- A Souls-like

- Turn-based

- A visual novel

Also, indies are another area where Game Pass has completely rearranged my expectations - even if I do find an indie game that looks interesting (like "The Artful Escape" or "Demon Turf" for example) I might as well wait and see if comes to GP because why not?

Now that the majority of the Summer Game Mess is behind I've gone through my list of anticipated games and realized something: the vast majority of the games I want to play in the second half of the year will be attached to some sort of subscription service. Here's the list:

Aside from Nintendo and the occasional third-party title I'm can pretty much avoid paying $60/$70 per game for the next 6 months at least. I've been a Game Pass subscriber for a while but since I'm PC-only it hasn't really been that useful. Now that Microsoft is ramping up their GP plans, however, I should be getting a bit of use out of it. I really have no interest in owning a bunch of games anymore (and as has been discussed many times we really don't "own" many of the games we purchased these days anyway) so this situation is ideal for me. Anyone else viewing upcoming releases through the same lens?