TurtleFish

I'm now pretty much a 'check-in every few months' type of guy at this point. FWIW, it's still decent content when I see something interesting, but the flavour is completely different now, and it's not my type of flavour, I'm sad to say.

It's really only GB in name.

I wish they had rebooted everything when Gerstmann left -- I think one of the things holding the staff back IS the fact that there's so much previous history. Almost better for them to start with a clean page and let them establish their own brand, as opposed to trying to take over the brand of something that means so much, and that had a certain brand of entertaining zaniness beyond simple podcasting.

Like, how many websites do you know of where people will still listen to podcasts recorded over 10 years ago for entertainment? That's a hell of a long shadow to get out of. I don't envy the current group as they wrestle with that legacy and the endless comparisons.

Still, the only constant is change. GB is dead, long live GB. Good luck to everybody still holding the torch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JoQZs72JKE&t=12s

Thx for collating this info!

@bisonhero: Totally agree with you - and not just in the video game space. A LOT of media venues are going this way.

The problem is that it's always easier and more likeable to hear the stuff you want to hear, as opposed to hearing the stuff you NEED to hear. Though, to be fair, in the streamer space, I think a lot of people out there really are trying their best, trying to avoid conflicts of interest, trying to provide something resembling journalism, even if they've had no formal training or real self-reflection.

The big problem is all the people who don't actually know what they're doing, or are only going for clicks, or who don't give a damn about conflicts of interest. When you get on a soapbox, you immediately take on a responsibility to society, whether you recognize it or not.

RIP Waypoint - good luck to everybody involved.

While pacing plays a part, I think the big difference is learning curve and complexity. More realistic tends to imply a steeper learning curve... and anything that has a steeper learning curve creates a larger barrier to entry, especially in a world where there are literally hundreds of different games to spend your leisure time, not to mention all the other options outside of video games.

You can tweak around the edges (a good tutorial and exciting source material helps), but, in the end more people are going to play Afterburner than Ace Combat, and more people are going to play Ace Combat than DCS. Or pick any other genre. Anything that increases your training time before you "get good" means less people are going to commit to that training time.

It is important to note just how good it is that we have the full palette available to us now. This discussion is a great example of how increases in computing power increases the options that game designers and programmers have to build the game they want with less concession to constraints. My first encounter with a "realistic" flight simulator was the original Sublogic Flight Simulator, and my first encounter with a "realistic" racing game was the original Accolade Test Drive. We've come a long way. :)

Good luck Rorie, thanks for all the work and support over the years!

@junkerman said:

I don't want to single the poster out as it's up to everybody to decide how the feel about this issue, but, this thought process is exactly why always on has become a problem. A lot of people think this way - the game is good, I'll take the hit to my consumer/privacy rights.

As long as people are still willing to buy games even it's always online and/or intrusive DRM, it'll keep on happening. "Regularization of the norm" -- if you keep crowding in on consumer rights, then people stop realizing what they've lost. The real tragedy will be when things like the first-sale doctrine and such get eroded away for remaining physical goods, because people are just used to giving all control to whoever sold them the product, even though they keep getting burned over and over again.

Outside of legal rights, there's just the plain old long term unsustainability of the system. Hell, I'm waiting for the day when some manufacturer decides their IoT Fridges need to be always connected to a server -- and those Fridges stop working when the servers go down. We've seen it for speakers, cameras, home automation, coffee makers etc. It's only a matter of time.

You should always remember, the server ALWAYS goes down. Might take years. Might even be a couple of decades. But someday, it'll all be gone. If you don't have a local/physical copy, too bad.

@skuski: The creative content of many outlets (not just gaming), has suffered in the pandemic/post-pandemic world. Largely attributable to the many delays and weirdness of everything being remote.

Ever since the pandemic, I keep thinking about something Jeff said way back when GB was rediscovering the CBSi studio -- Ryan fooling around with the control panel and joking about not having to see anybody except through his monitors, and Jeff replying something like "Great, all the immediacy of a Skype podcast."

Remote meeting software has come a long way since the days of real media streams being shared -- but there's an energy about having everybody in the same room that you can't replicate with remote screens, full stop.

My point of view - my first game memory was playing Pong in 1978 as a 5 year old. I've been playing games for a LONG time.

The happy bit is that there are a bazillion games out there. While the big companies are still trapped in the world where "this has to sell millions of copies or we're not going to recoup our costs", indies to medium publishers are pushing all sorts of weird and wacky and interesting games. And that's not counting expanded international distribution, the retro/emulator scene, subscription services for a more curated approach, and all the other way people distribute games. No matter your interests, you can find something that will keep you entertained -- not to mention the sheer creativity some game developers/designers are showing. And the computing power available is just crazy. I remember when seeing PONG was a revelation -- now you can have real-time photo realistic image generation at resolutions unimaginable to a kid born in the early 70s.

The sad bit is that there are a bazillion games out there. Game journalism, RIP -- there are still a few bastions holding on, but, there's so much out there, there's no way to survey the industry anymore -- and that's assuming you can find a business model where you could even try. You either specialize in your gaming niche OR you just go full content creator and you're selling your personality and your likes/dislikes as opposed to trying to provide any sort of contextual coverage of the industry. Getting into the industry has never been easier, but making a living off of it has never been harder. And if you want to take full advantage of the power now available, the price of developing AAA games keeps going up. And while it's never been easier to find something to play, the amount of games being thrown at you can be overwhelming, especially if you're going outside your normal comfort zone.

So, if you're somebody who just wants to consume games, it's probably the best time ever, even with the challenges of sorting the wheat from the chaff. However, if you're somebody who wants to make a living creating games -- that's probably never been harder, especially if you want to go the indie/small developer route.

There are so many ways to get around a statement like that in the fine print of the contract. It comes across as an act of desperation more than anything else at this point. Sheesh.