Game Mess Mornings 01/12/23

Ubisoft has a lot of problems, but one of the biggest ones is that despite having a lot of, in theory, different IPs, I'd argue they really only manage make one game - the giant open-world, climb-a-tower, map icon-vomit, MTX game. To the extent they make things outside of that lane (like Rabbids or Just Dance), those titles tend to be pretty niche or release on a single system like the Switch.

For players, this means Ubisoft isn't really providing a different gameplay experience as much as a slightly different sub-genre. Do you want your open-world game to be Modern Military Bearded Dude flavor, Techno-anarchist flavor, or Ancient History flavor? It's a bit like a Sno Cone. No matter what flavor you pick, they are all ultimately just crushed ice with different hues of food coloring.

That's a problem from a business perspective, because not only are games that large ruinously expensive to produce, they aren't varied enough to attract a particularly diverse audience. If you don't like one of their IPs, chances are there isn't much for you in the rest of their catalogue. Their similarity also doesn't allow one IP to be used as a "palate cleanser" for another. If I've burned already out playing Watchdogs, why should I buy Assassin's Creed when it's more or less an identical gameplay loop?

It honestly doesn't surprise me that they're having a tough time, even before you get to the workplace environment stuff.

The link to this on the front pge has a typo and redirects to a forum post. It has an extra / in it.

Is the 'entering' of topics a vMix thing? How does it work?

I've hated that we can't avoid filling the pockets of anti-human-rights regimes ever since I learned about Tencent buying everything and the Saudis with SNK.

But what do we do? Unless we go full distopean cyberpunk but we'd literally have to steal everything, including net access 😅.