Solo Queue

what is this

edit: not sure that watching jeff sit in empty game lobbies is exactly hot video content, even if it was based on a decent joke

I'VE BEEN WAITING ALL DAY FOR THIS I AM READY

EDIT: Egg, Inc is a good video game

l a t e n i g h t r e l e a s e s

I love this idea!

Let's watch...

I've been waiting for this

This is perhaps one of the strangest GB ideas in years. Excited to watch!

This a great idea, a very Giant Bomb one.It's kind of sad for these games since they might actually be good, but just never got out from under the mountain of other games on Steam. This shows how difficult that really is.

ONE MAN

lol was blockyanubis cheating? he didn't seem to be going down and there sure was a lot of dead bots on that ramp...

OMG this editing is great! Props to whoever is responsible for that.

A GREAT alternative to Lady Gaga. Thanks Jeff!!!

From a random twitter idea to a full on show. Cool.

Oh, if Jeff was right that he might be the developer, and he was cheating that would be the best. "Someone's playing my game? Let me get in there and show him THE TRUE EXPERIENCE!"

Fuck the Super Bowl!

Thanks from the non-football watching audience.

No date or part in the title means this will be the only video in this feature? But this is the most premium of premium features!

Oh cool, thanks Hive Jump for introducing me to the made in St Louis thing.

PSYCHE!

Hot 1am content.

That hot Super Bowl counterprogramming I was waiting for.

I don't like most free-to-play models, but man... When you're an unknown company with zero marketing releasing a game on steam that requires a healthy online community in order to even be playable... Asking $30-$40 is just suicide.

Volume is very low.

boy that trailer for Batttlecrew was The Worst

Make that 4,288 #corneringthemarket

Quick Look: Tap Titans 2

You can playing the video game!

to be honest i feel like this may be a touch mean-spirited (not that jeff is trying to be mean towards these games, just the nature of the feature), but then again the games get at least some exposure. so i guess it's all good.

@ripelivejam: I don't think it's mean spirited. Jeff wants to play these games. What he is showing is that he can't, because a multiplayer only shooter for 20-30 bucks is a death sentence for unknown developers. No one is going to spend money on a game they know nothing about, from a developer with no track record, that they assume no one else is playing for the same reasons.

I'm with Jeff in that it is just a bummer. You put so muuch work into a game, but it is just so misguided because instead of creating something new and original it's aiming to be the next big thing. He mentions Rocket League, but even then Psyonix had experience from contract work and a small success with SSARPBC, so that RL could be the refined game that it is. They didn't come from nowhere. And I think these devs need to learn that.

Fuck. This is such a bummer.

Information on how long these games have been out as well as a simple yes/no on if Giant Bomb tried to cover these games at launch would go a long ways towards making this seem like less of a low blow. If the site can't take a look at them at launch, then doing this as a post mortem seems kind of unfair to these developers.

This just reminds me that Lethal League never really got much of a community behind it which is a real shame. Even around launch it was difficult to get into online games.

I needed this video, thanks Jeff

I dunno. When a company is asking for $40, I think customers have a right to know that their game is essentially unplayable. Granted, Steam refunds work, but even so. I don't know that it's necessarily "mean" to point out that a multiplayer-only game has absolutely no community.

Time for sadness and depression.

The return of the no-go show

I wonder if the hitbox was the creator and if he has an alert set up for when anyone is playing his game?

In a way I feel quite sorry for the developers of these games but at the same time the model they have decided to go with just seems completely insane when your game relies on a healthy online community.

Wasnt hitbox an iOs game? Im pretty sure there was a game on there that looked t very similar yeeeeaaaaars ago.

Edit: Oh no, crash force looked pretty fun, thats too bad

@sparky_buzzsaw: With the exception of the Umbrella Corps game that Jeff mentioned releasing as a hot mess back in June/July/whenever, all of these came out at the end of January. A few launched less than a week ago. From the intro it sounded like they were all things GB maybe would have liked to have had a look at, but the lack of playerbase prevented it.

Some of these seemed kinda neat, and all except for UC were generally well-received. It's a rough situation.

@illrepute: Then maybe put out a call for people to join them so they can do proper coverage? This still seems awfully damning.

>what is this

+1

I remember last gen when I could look through XBL and PSN stores and I pretty much knew what everything was. Now when I browse those stores half of the games I've never even heard of.

I don't want to be harsh towards the people who made these games, but I'm finding it difficult to be constructive in this matter. If a developer has so much faith in their game's concept that they're willing to make it a multiplayer-only thing, they deserve every bit of critique that comes their way when it fails to build a community. In today's over-saturated market, most of these games are just dead on arrival and you can't tell me that most of these developers didn't know that when they pushed their game onto Steam. Going all out on multiplayer is a big unnecessary mistake that these devs could have prevented.

Battle Crew looks like The Showdown Effect but trying too hard

Oh shit, he actually went and did it.

Jeff made me watch the Up In Smoke tour and it was great.

This speaks volumes about the current state of the indy market. Despite getting the games into the players hands is easier than ever, the market is so unbelievably saturated that it's not happening. Short of funding, the most important role of publishers have seemingly shifted violently from distribution to marketing. Good luck out there, devs!

@jeff@unastrike

I think this is nifty but an actually solid, worthwhile series would just be playing the games (not just multi-player) on the New Releases tab. Maybe do 5-10 an episode or something, depending on the games? There's a lot of wtf stuff that hits the store constantly that would make good content. (I'm looking at YOU, Panty Party)

I mean...Imagine it..."Ranking of New Releases"

Could always throw in some rules, 5-15 mins per game, Trip A or QL games can be skipped, Visual Novels (There's a lot) are skipped, etc. Rank the top 1 or 2 out of each episode, make a flow graph. GRAPHS. YES.