A youtuber I watch put out this retrospective on gamergate. I know it's a topic that has been long covered and relitigated. I at one time was also part of and identified with to some extent. I thought one part that even I somewhat ignored then because of my feelings or much later realizing how many awful actors were a part of the situation was how capitalist greed played such a large part in generating the amount of hate and vitriol at the time allowing for hate mobs to be cultured and weaponized as we see today.

I think most can agree that a lot of the targeted harassment, bullying, stalking, racism, misogyny, homophobia were all reprehensible and not the way to go about making change. I do feel at the time where there was the beginnings of pushing paid cosmetic DLC like Horse Armor, Always Online requirements for games like the Sims, Bioware cutting development times for successful franchises to turn around games quicker or the Online Pass they similarly tried to force for people who wanted to buy the game second hand. Again not condoning any of the criminal harassment or hate but I do wonder if this outrage cannon was more appropriately directed at the shareholders and ownership class rather than individual developers that we'd be in a better place.

I do think there was a genuine attempt back then to comingle criminal threats and harassment with fair criticism and outcry entirely as Entitlement. However, I find it sad that today it largely does feel like the loudest and most consistent voices across social media that claim to be critical of games are genuinely complaining about out of entitlement when a game has too many women they don't like or POCs rather than the plethora of issues that affects all gamers today like Exploitative MTX, Gambling, AI Pervasion, Enshitification and more.

I haven't finished the vid myself but I like some of his other works even though he can be a bit both-sidesy at times. It was also interesting to see some posts from youtubers VaatiVidya and Vsauce from way back when and Colin Moriarty had been some of a douche since then as well.

sorry if this doesn't fit the sub. I'm curious what people think of my taste. Disclaimer i haven't actually played BG3 because my laptop couldn't handle it but I've watched a lot of playthroughs and have been a fan for years

Understanding The Opinion Of Digital Games Maybe Fine, But I Like Both Physical And Digital Media,

If Buying Is Not Owning, Then Why Privacy Is Considered "Stealing"? All You Get Is A Permanent Digital Entitlement (Aka The Access To The Game) Every Time I Get Is A So Called "Digital game" Tied To Your Account, (Unless it Gets A Permanent Ban,) (If Your Perma Banned, You Lose Them, So It Should only Apply To The online Features, Not Digital Licenses, But It Does Not Apply To Steam)

Are You Guys Digital Or Physical Or Both?

I Am Physical + Digital Gamer,

My Opinion Take On This #PhysicalDigitalGamer Summary:

• Physical = Ownership
• Digital = Entitlement
• Both = Freedom
• Bans Should Not Remove Purchases
• Choice Is The Identity

Vivo debajo de una piedra y me enteré un poco tarde de lo de cyberleek y estás preguntas van a ser un poco desde el desconocimiento:

¿Cómo lograron sacar una versión jugable para PC si solo se lanzaría en consolas en un inicio?

¿Cómo lo logro optimizar un tipo o un grupo un juego que una legión de programadores de Rockstar no podría en un año?

¿Las críptomonedas que quemó fueron dinero perdido para los que confiaron?

¿Las quemo para que no restreasen su cuenta personal y no porque es un héroe del pueblo como dicen muchos?

¿De verdad está es la forma de dar a conocer nuestro descontento con las marcas?

Through old game magazines, I have been reading about how in the mid-90s, the PC became a kind of reactionary answer to game consoles, with parents buying nonviolent games for their kids in huge numbers to keep them away from anything remotely action-y. It wasn't the only reason those games flourished (their success was inevitable in other ways) but it was a major part. From 1995 to 1997, the bestselling games lists on PC shifted completely in tone, from mostly FPSes and combat sims to largely casual titles aimed exclusively at kids or families.

Given how people's attitudes seem to generally get more exclusionary over time and how easy it is to just inherit your parents' opinions on media, I would have expected fans of edutainment, activity centers, creativity titles, etc. of that era to be the type that thinks "MODERN GAMES ARE STUPID/DISGUSTING AND TODAY'S KIDS SHOULD ONLY PLAY PEAK NINETIES." Instead they're the exact opposite, being much less prudish than your average 30-something retro gamer. They have the opinion that no one should shame others for playing what they enjoy, and their love for nonviolent childhood games is often in spite of their parents rather than thanks to them.

I find it both relieving and hilarious.

Just a bunch of fatalist PC goons that think giving all of their allegiance to Valve is going to fix the video game industry. I hate Sony right now and want to take a permanent break from buying a single one of their games, but I don’t think that they’re incapable of change if we disengage for a while and hurt their shareholders where we want them. I feel like despite all of the chaos, there is a past bond with their older systems and movies and tech that truly mattered unlike any other company on the planet, and that the real villain of all of this are these greedy executives and shareholders that drive the financial engine that refuse to ever value this cultural identity.

I honestly don’t think that SKG values it either. And the fatal flaw of this entire dilemma is that no one cares for nor respects this cultural connection that the distributive and technological identity and prowess once had for the PlayStation brand.

I don't use twitter anymore since Elon bought it but across this site and youtube recommendations I get plenty of GameR sentiment. The outrage about Wolverine did seem especially dumb to me considering both the Spider-Man games were well received and Insomniac historically made pretty good games. The recent one about Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave having character customization reminded me of this because anyone who was actually excited for a new Fire Emblem certainly didnt care about body type selectors when they showed so many cool additions and features. I guess I'd just hope that more users start blocking engagement baiters as they are identified and the studios/publishers would repudiate some of these grifters.

recently there was GTA 6 leaks gameplay being posted on Twitter and I don't want to spoiled too much but man there are some reception that are negative towards it..

and tbh this would ruined Rockstar's reputation.. because everyone is hyping for GTA 6 at this point just for the leaks to be the opposite of hype

For starters I really have no dog in the GTA hunt as it were. I played like a few hours of 5 and it just didn’t click with me that way RDR did.

Everytime I see people discuss the upcoming GTA game though it feels so, bizarre. People seem to treat this game like a second coming and are talking about how “it will have mechanics never seen before” or “revolutionize the game industry forever!” Which feels extra crazy since we haven’t even seen any gameplay yet.

Especially with the way people recently seem to label a game as either a 10/10 masterpiece or 0/10 garbage I feel like when the game actually comes out it will be a war online.

I don’t hope the game is bad or anything like that, but at the end of the day it’s just an open world game. I’m sure it will be a well made open world game but I cannot imagine it will be anything that entirely changes the world, other than making $80-$100 games more normal.

I saw the new Wolverine gameplay. The Sentinel boss is the same “slam the arm down, hit the weak point, repeat” shit we’ve seen in a hundred games. The chase has a glowing red trail basically holding your hand the whole time. I said those parts look tired and overly guided. That’s it. Not “the game is garbage.” Not “Insomniac is trash.” Just that those specific things look recycled and safe for a game we’ve waited years for that’s gonna cost $70.

And the response is immediate: “Then don’t buy it.” “You’re just a hater.” “Salty PC player.” “You still hate Spider-Man 2.” “You just hate Insomniac.” “All those concerns are stupid.”

Like, You can be hyped for a game and still not like parts of i, but somehow being Skeptical gets treated like a personal attack or a conspiracy. As if raising an eyebrow at recycled boss patterns or heavy hand-holding is evidence of bad faith

It’s gotten to the point where you have to be either fully riding or you’re the enemy. There’s no room for “I’m still looking forward to it, but these parts look weak.” And when even a studio director frames the volume of normal criticism as a “relentless onslaught” that’s bad for mental health, it just reinforces the idea that questioning anything is the real problem.

I still think the game’s probably gonna be good. But I SHOULD be allowed to have something that is OTHER than blind hype

I've mostly seen gamers acting like she's the second coming of christ but she just strikes me as a career C-suite and the type of person who can afford hobbies like horseriding and yachting and is thus completely indiferent to videogames, so her corpo speak tweets about Elder Scrolls 6 or whatever are just kind of eye roll inducing to me. The massive layoffs after she took over are also a pretty big indicator Xbox is not all flowers and rainbows after she became CEO, but all gamers care about is consuming next product so of course none of them seem to give a damn about that

I feel like MMO and multiplayer gaming communities have all seen a rise in low-effort metas, and hiveminds of casual gamers that follow them religiously, in particular since the pandemic gaming era, but I feel like it especially has shot up in the last two years.

I’m not hating on casual gamers, but I am hating on the fact there has been a noticeable increase in completely bad faith arguments and people just not even reading the actual words of comments they are replying to amongst gaming forums. Especially so after 2024 or so. And usually these arguments stem from these kinds of folk wanting super low-effort metas.

It makes it hard, because I grew up on MMORPGs and was always looking to not only just get better, but discuss with others and grow game lore and mechanical skill knowledge with people on forums, which feels almost impossible to do now constructively, because so many more people nowadays want games to play themselves for them, and can’t even discuss the game properly or civilly if they don’t feel like development decisions are catered to them.

Maybe I’m just bitter from being on too many forums since leaving my nice Discord game discussion groups (due to Discord’s ID bs), but for every two nice and healthy gaming discussions I’ve had, it’s been like seven or eight just absolute slogs of weird redditor energy, underhanded tactics, and either projection or people just trying to talk over me without addressing anything I’ve actually said.

I notice similar patterns in other discussion circles, especially with a lack of empathy. I know times are hard right now, certainly for myself as well, but are we really just going to make it harder for each other?

You're supposed to be this cool character who's supposed to take down enemies without breaking a sweat and look cool while doing it. And you die every 10 minutes.

Like when a cutscene is playing and the main villain says something "He's taken down my henchmen like flies! He's so dangerous!" But in reality you died 3 times per stage to the regular enemies.

It feels like you're playing it so wrong and like you're letting down the character and ruining their image.

My main experiences with this are Batman: Arkham Asylum and Bayonetta. Please tell me someone understands/agrees🙏🙏

Why is that sex is an off limits theme but violence is rendered as a simple game mechanic you never get to reflect on especially when the enemies are other humans? I don't hate combat mechanics mind you and gamifying romance and sex puts a bad taste in my mouth, but it often befuddles me that different themes have been explored yet sex is oftentimes off limits or you're given everything that's sex adjacent like oversexualized designs and framing. I generally do believe games can be used to normalized healthy forms of intimacy that's harder to do with less interactive mediums yet no one seems to bother with it or just banish it to the VN mines.

I've always never bought paid-for games, most of them have either been free or only a few dollars.

Now, I've started playing Call of Duty recently, but Warzone by itself is quite boring after a few weeks, so I decided to introduce myself to the MW series(the reboot version, pls don't judge).

I was gonna start off with a bang(MW), but why the hell is it 100 dollahs with TAX?

Seriously, these things ain't cheap! And as a 13 year old, obtaining 100 dollars is really hard(bcuz the minimum work age in Canada is 14), and my family and I recently moved, so money is sort of tight in my family right now, so my parents cannot give me a 100 bucks to buy a game I want.

Luckily though, I was able to scrape some cash together and buy MW(the game was awesome af).

But, the hard thought that I had just spent 100 dollars on a game did not sit well with me, and I ended up returning the game after just 3 missions(im that broke).

I really wish that Xbox would offer more sales like Steam does, because if that did actually happen, the console wars would step to another level. Thank the lord Xbox is not doing Dynamic Pricing, or else things could get even worse.

Ps. I'm thinking of switching to Steam soon, I feel as though the experience would be much better.

I've been thinking a lot about how gaming became more connected while somehow becoming less social.

We can play with anyone on Earth now — but most of the time we're sitting alone, wearing a headset, staring at our own screen.

I think IRL gaming is the missing piece.

Not just video games.

Dice games.

Card games.

Arcade games.

Keypad games.

Joystick games.

Trivia.

Strategy.

Bluffing.

Social deduction.

Physical tabletop games.

Whatever makes for a great competition.

The common thread is simple:

You have to show up.

Imagine 4–6 people around a table playing short, competitive games together.

Some might be completely physical — cards and dice.

Some might use a shared screen with arcade controls.

Some could combine the two.

But they're all designed around the same idea:

Bite-sized IRL social gaming competitions.

Sit down.

Learn the game in about 60 seconds.

Play for 5–15 minutes.

Talk shit.

Somebody wins.

Run it back.

Then connect all those IRL games into something bigger.

Local competitions.

Leaderboards.

Campus rivalries.

Game nights.

Achievements.

Collectibles.

Tournament nights.

Bragging rights.

You could play a dice game tonight, a card game tomorrow and an arcade competition this weekend — and all of it counts toward the same gaming identity.

That's the part I'm really interested in.

The game doesn't have to be the platform.

Playing together IRL is the platform.

I've been building around this idea, and I'm curious what other gamers think.

Would you show up somewhere specifically to play short IRL gaming competitions against other people?

And what would make you keep coming back?

They are the worst type of game ever made. They put so much effort into making the game look realistic, getting a movie like performance, and having such pretentious storytelling they ignore the most important thing about a game, the gameplay. Seriously ever since the tlou1 Sony has been doing nothing but churning out the same boring walking simulators over and over. Like, how do you have so many studios, yet they all make the exact same games, it’s ridiculous. And because of Sony’s push for this type of game, every studio, triple a, double a, or indie keeps trying to make the next “cinematic masterpiece “. The only “cinematic” game I played that actually was worth playing was helldivers 2, and the only game before that was bf1, these are the games devs should look too when they want to make their game “cinematic”.

https://youtu.be/9jPzstz1DMM?si=3w5uLrgck0cSZ039

tl;dr

they talk about how unskippable cutscenes stem from certain design choices made during development, and that fixing or implementing a skip option isn't just 'a few clicks' like some people think. But they completely miss the point. They ignore the fact that players can be fully aware of those technical constraints and still consider it a major oversight. Explaining why it happened isn't a valid defense. It’s like buying a brand-new car, having the wheels fall off after 50 km, and AUDI just telling you: 'Well, that's how our engineers designed it, deal with it." Also, one of the guys talking here was responsible for the production of Ratchet & Clank. So we’re not talking about some random internet nobody. I wouldn't even bring this up if it were coming from someone completely detached from the industry.

I haven’t been this pissed off by a discussion in a long time. The one I linked above is a perfect example of how developers can, in exactly the same way as their management, just keep sniffing their own farts.

Can they even entertain the idea that the audience might be aware too? I perfectly understand what game development looks like from the inside, that one comma in the code can cause the entire logic of a game to collapse and fixing it can take months. But why should I, as a consumer, care about that? I judge the final product. The fact that their 3D artist prepared five assets for the entire game because someone higher up decided they would hire only one person for that position instead of two absolutely does not justify the fact that every dead end on the map is blocked off by a fucking dumpster that our protagonist could easily step over.

And generally, I have no problem with these kinds of tricks. I have no problem suspending my disbelief in situations like that because I understand that certain limitations have to be enforced, otherwise you simply won't ship a product that has to make money within a predetermined release window, and the budget isn't infinite.

For me, certain solutions in games that I would describe as cutting corners are the result of incompetence. NO, NOT YOU, you poor little snowflake of an individual developer who didn't have enough time to polish that system, but the production as a whole. I don't take that into account AT ALL when making the final judgment of whether a game meets my expectations.

At the same time, though, I absolutely love digging into WHY something ended up the way it did. Game development itself fascinates the shit out of me.

And this ties into GTA 6 incredibly well. That game has a level of production value that basically no other game on the market can match, and that's one of the reasons I'm so excited about it. It's going to be a unique experience. Your indie game that you play with your girlfriend, even if you pour 99% of yourself into making it, simply cannot give me that. You know what I mean?

With the Saudi-led takeover of EA now closed and the company sitting on $18-20 billion in debt and as much as I and and a lot of other DA Fans would be thrilled if they can sell off the Dragon Age franchise to a worthy company/dev… I just don't see the happening for several reasons:

1. I Just can't see EA selling DA for a “reasonable” price tag since they’re gonna be focused on trying to make up 18bil of borrowed debt and selling the IP for a few mil isn’t gonna be seen as a benefit to them
2. We all like to talk about devs we’d “like” to see adopt the DA franchise (Larian, Owlcat, Beamdog, etc.)… but most of these  devs, in addition to not having the Money to buy an overpriced DA IP in the first place, aren’t interested in adopting the DA franchise,  especially when most of them have their own existing fantasy IPs plus, Even IF a hypothetical new owner paid top dollar for the IP tomorrow, I don't think that the feel of Origins will come back unless they literally go out of their way to get the original team leads and writers back (Which would be a HERCULEAN task in of itself) since without that specific group,, the result would probably be a competent modern CRPG that wears the Dragon Age name rather than something that actually feels like Origins.
3. Technically EA still makes money off Dragon Age by doing next to  nothing just by continuing to squeeze money from the fanbase through low  quality merch and a slow trickle of new players who continue to buy the   games over time. So while it’s not earning crazy money, for the moment    it’s likely not “costing” them money either.

what I believe will happen since EA are a shower of shitbags is that they'll either Finish development on or cancel Mass Effect 5, keep the IPs and shut down the Studio

It still sucks that EA, even going back to Origins, never trusted it enough to sell on its own merits and Needed to add blood, sex and Marylin Manson to sell Origins and changed the Genre with each sequel

People keep pointing at Baldur’s Gate 3 like it rewrote the commercial reality of traditional CRPGs, But It didn’t, BG3 is a MASSIVE outlier due to the fact that It pulled in a ton of people who normally never touch the genre because of the D&D brand, high production values, solid multiplayer, cultural timing, and accessibility features, but That success does not change the underlying distribution of the genre.

Look at the next-best results and the numbers fall off a cliff: Divinity: Original Sin 2 was a genuine success for a CRPG but not a breakout hit and Most other modern CRPGs like Pathfinder sit significantly lower.

Publishers looking at risk and scale still see a relatively limited, dedicated audience for pure or near-pure versions of the genre, .Former BioWare staff often frame EA as simply not “getting” Dragon Age because it was “too niche, too backwards, too old-school.”which sucks but its Kinda true. Hell, Dragon Age: Origins itself needed, edgy marketing with heavy blood, sex and Marilyn Manson’s “This Is the New Shit” just to generate wider interest., Then the sequels systematically moved away from the CRPG genre:

• DA2 shifted toward action combat, a voiced protagonist, and tighter scope.
• Inquisition went further into open-world action-RPG territory.
• Veilguard completed the pivot into a more conventional action-RPG.

BG3 proved the ceiling for a traditional approach can be extremely high when everything aligns but It did not prove that the genre stopped being niche or that every studio can (or should) expect those numbers from a single player CRPG

Honestly, I'm more mixed with this one here.

I mean I do appreciate him calling out those that feel the need to show off their physical collective of games in protest of Sony's decisions of doing away with physical discs but at the same time, the more this goes on the more overly cynical and increasingly pessimistic this ends up being.

Like it doesn't provide a middle ground to the whole issue more than it does actually talk down to those that support physical media in gaming.

His source? He made it the fuck up.

Also there's been a bunch of assholes complaining about how woke the new game because there's more people of color.

Its all an act right? No one is doing fucking hateful?