First year recorded.

Considering we’ve already got the one former Larian employee speaking out against this, it’ll be interesting to see how many more show up off the record (or maybe on the record anonymously). I’m sure there was an internal battle over it.

There aren’t many (possibly none) with more goodwill banked among enthusiast gamers than Vincke, so I feel like we’re about to see just how far a popular figure can step into this particular puddle without coming out soaked.

Yeah, pound-for-pound, as far as collecting stuff goes, these games get crazy expensive. Some of them are more generous than others with the in-game currency outlays, but that can become its own problem with daily grinds.

There is some very high quality writing and gameplay in the genre right now. A lot of talented people are working on these games. And generally speaking, yes, you don’t need to spend a dime to see the main content.

I tend not to recommend them because you never know who has a gambling problem (and sometimes people don’t know until they are exposed to it for the first time). There’s also the other odd quirk–not just in gacha, but in live-service and other self-insert media in general lately–where character romance is omitted from the game world because they don’t want to offend insecure people. Can make things feel flat at times.

If one knows they are fine with both of those issues, there’s a lot of great content out there.

Close enough

The game’s press kit has a few hints. Sounds like a similar RPG style as Larian’s last few games, the question is what kind of combat.

Their reviews aren’t frequent. This is more of a “we ask around the org for what everyone liked this year.” It’s a consistently good list year after year.

In my experience this is the biggest knock against it, and it can be fatal for multiplayer games. I had to wait several days for a patch to get pushed to continue my Baldur’s Gate 3 campaign with a friend because she’d picked it up on Steam. We eventually had her keep Steam offline.

Considering the condition games can be released in lately, it can really suck to wait in general, too.

It’s also far from the first time Steam’s content review process has stirred up controversy–even before Collective Shout–which is ultimately the reason why this is getting so much run in games media right now. At some point Steam has to get their shit together, start hiring people, and revamp their scattershot content review system before they get on the wrong side of an incident by either letting something through that stirs up a shitstorm and Congress gets involved, or pissing off the wrong publisher and having the ESA come down on them.

That said, I don’t think this particular game is the horse to back for this effort, so to speak.

I’ve noticed this is especially bad in Japanese games for whatever reason.

Could be? I know Beehaw is defederated from a lot but I haven’t kept up. The community is definitely active.

It’s not explicitly 30+, but I think [email protected] is one of the best active gaming communities on the Fediverse with a good mix of links and discussion, and the nature of the content certainly attracts older gamers.

I’m in the same boat, want FemShep, always romance Tali. The ME2 LE romance mod is pretty painless. Unfortunately, last I checked, the modder never finished the ME3 LE mod. There’s a way to force it in ME3 by hacking the save file and it’ll still get you there, but it won’t be as seamless.

Holy hell. I have some bad GameStop trade-in stories, and that’s just from taking in normal trade-ins. I can’t even imagine the clusterfuck this would be. I’d be calling in sick.

A small AAA production in 2000, maybe. E33’s was only a fraction of a small AAA budget today.

TGA calls it “a game made outside the traditional publisher system,” which fits. I’d agree that we’re looking at wildly different scales of production in the same category, though.

Good showing for E33 but I’m not convinced it’s a shoo-in for GotY. It’s a media-run event and the press adored Hades 2. Plus there’s always the Kojima factor and it would be the first time TGA’s ever given it to a studio’s first game.

If you’re still playing it, feel free to message me for tips on the Fediverse or on Discord. I love talking TO.

Difficulty definitely starts picking up chapter 4, so you’ll have to start finding creative ways to work within the level cap. Gear crafting is one of them.

A lot of the sports subs’ better content is instant reaction. Harder to fake. The only participation I still have on reddit is a similar community for a large video game. It’s more like a chatroom than a message board. Small wonder I spend way more time talking on Discord than anywhere these days.

Something’s that’s easy to forget is barely half of US households were even online by the 360’s release. Under a third had broadband. Even the Nintendo Power hotline ran until 2010.

I sold thousands of book guides at Gamestop, and the retailers also pushed them because they were higher margin than the games themselves. Yes, back then, the gaming enthusiasts knew GameFAQs was the place for info, but the mass market? The vast majority still got their info from guides and magazines, or word-of-mouth.

It’s like social media adoption. The mass market didn’t jump in until a generation later.

Even just revising my guide for the new Final Fantasy Tactics remaster is way too big a project for me right now. It’s amazing how much work it is.

Staff shake-up last year. Phil Savage and Tyler Wilde have really stepped it up and let their writers sound off.

Like any of the major sites though, the news side still has its share of articles generated from one-liners sourced from interviews ran elsewhere.

If an Internet infrastructure giant can’t make MMOs work, I don’t see how these smaller MMO projects that keep popping up are going to, either. Greg Street also recently just talked about how his isn’t getting funding.

It’s too bad, I think SpaceCraft looks interesting but I don’t know if it’s going to make to 1.0, much less stick around.

I get the feeling the people at Aftermath are just hungry to poke the bear. I imagine it’ll eventually catch up to them, but hey, more power to them for now.

Maybe it’s because my experience with it goes well back into the print era, but very little of it is actual fact-finding capital “J” journalism, and even that part has only come on in the industry more recently. I’ve always put the games press in its proper buckets of “previews for access” and then game criticism. Quality for both varies, but I’m rarely disappointed when I stick to a publication I like (until the inevitable EIC churn, anyway).

If I had the money I’d definitely do the same, but for now I do RSS instead of link aggregator communities if I’m being serious about it. Takes some curation, but at the very least it’s not being run through a vote algorithm first.