Goboard

@cikame: What about their response to a deluge of hate, slurs and homophobia made you have such a negative response? When they announced the deal they were as honest about their reasons for accepting the termed exclusivity as Unfold Games was in their declining one. I don't dispute that Unfold Games was violating any trust with Epic when they initially disclosed their refusal, but using that as marketing, intentionally or not, that speaks to segment of the gaming audience that would act in such a disgusting way about a termed exclusivity deal shows a lack of judgement. It does long term harm to the people who work in the industry. Any post release content does nothing to undo that harm and is immaterial.

@unfoldgames I'll also add that the OP made this exact thread in the Ooblets forums on steam so clearly they're out there being a menace in your name beyond here. Just one of the likely innumerable examples of the ramifications of your comms strategy.

First off that link is busted, second if you read the medium post by the developer from a year ago it contains an email with the rep that contacted Unfold Games about a 1 year deal. What is described in that email is in no way a bribe or strong arming. The biggest issue is one of timing on Epics part in contacting Unfold Games after making an announcement of a Steam release. The subsequent gravitational attraction to what happened with Ooblets is a mistake on Unfold Games' part by even mentioning to the people concerned that they've had a conversation with Epic about a deal. Just saying there is no deal suffices and would not have brought DARQ to the attention of media outlets as they initially wanted.

I was initially going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but upon further reading it's clear that since the incident with Ooblets and Unfold Games' public declaration of refusing the Epic deal that they decided to use that event as marketing. That is such a fucking disgusting thing to do given what the Ooblets team went through. A Reddit AMA with a link to a thread about rejecting other publisher deals by Unfold Games on release day is the clearest example of this.

Weapons don't degrade when she uses them and she's immune to the effects of rain when climbing. Really that's all I ask of the game regardless of who you can play as.

I don't think a game running well even needs to be a qualifier for this. If a game works as an experience so well those things disappear or are easily looked past as you play the game. That speaks just as much to the qualities that would bring someone to call a game perfect. The briefest way I have for how to define a perfect game is that while playing it's frame falls away and then your just in it. This is really the same for way any piece of media I'd describe as perfect.

Games I'd add:

- Spelunky - I watched Dan play it for the first time last night on his stream and it was an excellent encapsulation of why this game is, in fact, perfect. Over the course of an hour he came to and recognized so many small and subtle details, then started using that knowledge during play unprompted by the game. Moments of failure felt like success and not a result of the a failing on the games part, but his own. It so easily facilitates player intuition and internalization of it's ideas indirectly. It's both challenging and effortless. Hundreds of hours later and the game still has ways to surprise.

- Kentucky Route Zero - A sense of place and approach to dialogue and dialogue choices that all build on the atmosphere, characters and larger story in beautiful and impactful ways. It's use of interstitial games as part technical test and preview for each act is a really fantastic addition to the experience of waiting for each ones release. I've also said it before in other threads, but this is a game that sticks with and becomes a part of you well after you've played it.

- Halo: Combat Evolved - Decades later and this game still feels contemporary. Level design, the feeling of using the controls, The way it moves from moments of action to calm is so natural. Recently replayed it as part of the MCC, and even with it's original art its still striking.

- Riven: The Sequel to Myst - Still the apex of Cyan's body of work. The world building, design and sense of place is evocative and beautiful in such a rare way. It's one of the many examples of how a strong art direction can help a game hold up more so than anything made after it. Art direction so phenomenal that the act of finding it's box on my Grandfathers bookshelf felt like a part of playing the game.

People's fixation on the dog/s should be a pretty clear indicator of how much more effectively those people were able to empathize with an animal more than the people that make up it's story. From my own experience with the TLOU1 (which I played pass the controller style with 3 friends) the only outwardly strong emotional response that we had in that game, across it's entire length, was for the horse Ellie has during the snow section when it was shot and Ellie was flung from it. Years past that experience and the one thing we all remember and respond to is that moment.

TLOU2's use and framing of animals in the game and story just runs into this particular response with greater frequency and ineffectively accounts for how that response influences the end experience.

@kmj2318:Of course games are built on illusions, but it's about how aware one is of the artifice as they play or experience a form of media that can make this understanding a problem. The better a game is at leading you along and lulling you into it's desired state the more effective it will be at achieving it's own goals. For enough people this has become an issue with regards to TLOU2 is illustrative of it's inconsistency or lack of tangible enough means for those people to meet the game on it's own terms.

@mellotronrules: If it wasn't clear I haven't actually played Death Stranding, just that the ideas it plays with by means of gameplay and story, as well as where they're in dialogue with each other, have me more interested in giving it the time of day. It's still rife with dumb shit that make it hard to just jump in and go, but at least the shots it takes appear interesting enough in passing to have that feeling linger. Everything I've seen of TLOU2, and my lack of enjoyment of it's predecessor, hasn't given me that same kind of impression.

Sure, but this is fundamentally the case for any implementation of any thing in any work irrespective of it's uniqueness to a medium. It works if it's done well and doesn't if it's not.

The instances that always come to mind for me are who I chose to save in the first Chapter of The Walking Dead Season 1, What I chose to do in a critical moment of the last act of The Walking Dead Season 3, and The concert in Act 3 of Kentucky Route Zero. The choice/s I made in those parts of the game don't dramatically or at all alter the narrative arc, but the character work that happens from them became why I appreciated and was moved by the story. Experiencing it by making a different choice doesn't hold the same weight and feeling as it did the first time.

Trying to play those moments another way after having made that initial choice feels hollow by comparison because my experience of the story and what works or doesn't as part of it's whole is shaped by the initial decision making process as it ebbs and flows across the whole story. It doesn't need to be a choose your own adventure narrative structure that can end in any number of ways. This type of choice based collision of game and story can work in a linear narrative outcome just as well.

So rarely do bigger budget games take on a type of risk that isn't primarily pushing some part of the visual envelope. I'd have been more interested in TLOU2 if it at least tried/committed fully to other risks. Death Stranding can at least be said to do that (Kojima games in general have some degree of this for the most part) and it's why I'm at least tempted to try it at some point compared to TLOU2. If other games do take on some of Death Stranding's design/narrative choices, it will at least have been deserving of the phrase "move the medium forward".

As a last general plea, people should play more smaller games. You'd be surprised how many of them do things new and medium moving even if in small ways.

Power went out for Vinny yesterday so it's recording was delayed and will most likely happen today instead.

https://twitter.com/alex_navarro/status/1290727600223068162

Humble Bundle, the culture of huge sales on digital stores, and F2P with frequent updates has already done the damage to perception of smaller games and their value. Most of the smaller games that I've seen (I only have PC Gamepass) didn't hit Gamepass until well after their initial release so It seems like most indie and smaller game developers are probably using it as a trailing income source. Any that launch on the platform hopefully did so by striking a deal that made enough to cover what they would need from full purchases for the duration of the time the game is on Gamepass. It's also not in Microsoft's, or even developers, interest to have a lot of games that people can finish quickly only to then cancel their subscription once they're done. If anything I would expect it to influence game length in the opposite direction.

The worst case I can imagine is the furtherance of the kinds of bloat that open world games continue to suffer from, but in all types of games. However that is already somewhat present because, increasingly, singleplayer games incorporate some kind of hook to encourage additional purchases in-game, DLC Pass or free content updates. If a smaller developer was going to adjust their design it would be to meet this shifting player expectation that exists independent of any subscription model. This trend is also similar to what happened overtime on mobile platforms.

There's also an important distinction between music and movie streaming subscription services in that most of them don't offer a means to directly buy a song, album or movie on the platform. Some may link to external retailers, but this comes through deals they make with those retailers and undoubtedly cuts into what the creator gets on that click-through sale. There's also a very different cultural element among game players to own and have access to older games. The importance of ownership and access generally occurs within smaller or niche parts of film and music culture.

Gamepass has direct purchase built in from the jump, with an option to buy it as a gift too. I've also seen it expressed a lot that people use Gamepass as a way to demo games that they might not have previously considered only to then buy it once they realize they do enjoy the game. There hasn't been any rumblings from smaller developers that it's not of financial benefit so it seems like Microsoft's approach to payment has been good thus far. Time will tell if this holds, but with the way all this shit shifts so much, often and fast it can really go in a number of directions from here.

It took around 2-3 months into the pandemic before I started to see a majority of people wearing masks in the part of NorCal I live in. I only really go out every 2 weeks early in the morning to get groceries and that's pretty much the only time I've left the house to go anywhere. With the infrequency of my outings and the number of people I encounter the numbers only imply what is apparent from the nationwide discourse, enough people just couldn't give a shit. They could give so little of a shit that the bare minimum is too fucking much for them.

The area I live in is also one that had around 15 days of power shut-offs from Sept-Oct last year due to high winds and fears of fires caused by PG&E's abysmal management of their infrastructure. Last year I went to local coffee shops to work, but with the pandemic and lack of effort on the part of the public it's unlikely anyone will have anywhere to go and safely work when that time comes. Even if the issue is half the scale it was last year that's still well over 500k people without power, many working from home will be put in a similar position public facing workers have been in from the jump. I've seen no signs from the state that there are any plans on how to handle this, so I can't even begin to imagine how much worse that situation will make an already unfathomable one.

What gets me the most is that even when numbers climb 4-5 times where they were when shutdown began initially, the general tenor has remained the same. The scale of death, job loss, pain and trauma shows no signs of bearing any change in the weight of the moment on a vast enough number of people. Only a small amount of change in the actions they take, but none in the emotional toll. If it weren't for the BLM protesters and folks working in hospitals continuing to hold the banner of something better my ability to see any meager future would be lost.

For those who have read The Peripheral by William Gibson, the present moment really feels like it's approaching an inflection point of The Jackpot.