Rahf

In this case, post-legitimacy, I'd like to say that "Stealing is the greatest form of flattery."

Love the art in those videos.

Some of these shots are not quite blowing me away like Witcher 3's spectacular distance shots did in 2015/2016, but it is about as close as can be.

What about a bag of Doritos, Domo-kun, or a really popular streamer with no controversies behind them?

@wchigo:

Only watch Tales From Earthsea when all other options are exhausted. It really is a poor film.

Needless to say, it was a more innocent time as a gamer. The darkness of these men previously listed not yet discovered by the public at large.

Was I happy before meeting them? Yes.

Were they about to take me on the strangest ride of my life? Absolutely.

People think Willy Wonka was a fictional character. They never knew fiction sprung from reality, and that Willy Wonka's weirdness was simply a thimble's worth of inspiration from mr. Willy Wright. An all too real facet of his lunacy, yet just a hint after going through the gentility of mr. H.C.

It was one Boston week. For Willy Wright and his crew, it was just another short blink of entertainment.

For me, it was eternity.

Cool story, bro.

This is where you have to trust that the reviewer has a firm ethical stance on reviews regarding their work. If there's one thing I can say about Jeff Gerstmann, it's that his review ethics are rock solid. Hell, the reason Giant Bomb exists is because of this.

It is a commonly occurring phenomenon in all enthusiast press. Cars, fishing, hunting, model trains, vape smoking, you name it. The enthusiast press is a vector for new product exposure, which means the brands behind the product will be motivated to advertise coming products through that press. So my choice of segment within that sphere is the one that openly says, "I can't be bought, but I have to put food on the table. I present exhibit X, Y, and Z as proof why my opinion is not affected by advertising money."

This sounds like a poorly disguised dig against Crunchyroll.

I find it serviceable. Along with Netflix it covers a pretty broad span of cartoon stuff, most of which I'll never watch.

Perhaps, but publishers have been making bank on microtransactions, but also perhaps adjusting their strategy because of differentials in that revenue stream. I'll use one example:

Activision Blizzard's revenue in microtransactions amounted to approximately 4.203 BUSD in 2018. This number then dropped to 3.366 BUSD in 2019. Quite a severe slip, but perhaps also natural given the competitive online landscape. In total, their revenue was something like 6.5 BUSD with a 1.5 billion profit. So 1500 million dollars in pure profits, which is seemingly not enough.

That games would cost $70 could then be their way of saying, "We want to secure our investment upfront, so that any missed revenue from microtransactions don't severely impact our bottom line."

I constantly have to remind myself of one thing: the big publishers are completely beholden to their shareholders, and that's it. Increase revenue and profit while minimizing cost, we don't really care about the rest. "Beat your budget or face our wrath."

In today's age we're at a juncture where cost has become a necessary factor to produce competitive products, so they have to look elsewhere.

A sidebar example:

Was thinking of World of Warcraft as an example of content increasing in scope and size, but another thought struck at the same time:

Blizzard does not update their old content to any real degree as I can recall. A vast swath of it is left to wither away in historical record as something nobody bothers with anymore. When a new expansion hits, "the Expansion Formerly Known as Current" is almost completely abandoned. So their issue isn't keeping a growing amount of content up-to-date, because they simply leave it behind.