It definitely doesn’t look like it would be fun to play; but having played PowerWash Simulator, there is something very relaxing about the gameplay loop.
It definitely isn’t for everyone, and it isn’t the most challenging game; but that doesn’t mean it can’t be relaxing and fun.
In any case, I don’t expect this to turn you around on the game, but it’s not as ridiculous a premise as you’d think.
Honestly, I would hope for that as well; but it seems very similar to the enshittification of Amazon (Wired link, archive link):
Marketplace sellers reached huge audiences and Amazon took low commissions from them.
This strategy meant that it became progressively harder for shoppers to find things anywhere except Amazon, which meant that they only searched on Amazon, which meant that sellers had to sell on Amazon. That’s when Amazon started to harvest the surplus from its business customers and send it to Amazon’s shareholders. Today, Marketplace sellers are handing more than 45 percent of the sale price to Amazon in junk fees.
Basically the notion is once a storefront has captured the bulk of potential customers, they are able to extort their suppliers however they want, since it’s the only way the suppliers can reasonably reach the customers.
Hopefully in this case, the publishers can explore other sales avenues; but it all depends on the reach of the subscription service.
Part of this article just feels like the capitalistic notion that profits should only increase and anything but that is failing:
"Expectations for Devolver this financial year were $115 million to $120 million, and they’ve had to go back to $90 million. The majority of that is the delay of big releases into 2024. I think those are decision for the right reasons, although investors won’t like it in the short term.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if the subscription model WAS actually hurting smaller developers. I remember hearing people hypothesizing that would be the case for a long time.
If you have Gamepass or PlayStation Plus Ultra, you can play almost any small publisher game for free. With that set up, there’s a very large incentive to only play the games on the subscription service, instead of buying a full priced game to try out.
The problem is that once a small game is on the service, a large number of potential sales are going to be cannibalized by people playing on the subscription service instead of buying the game.
This leads to a scenario where your game needs to be on the subscription service and you have less sales because of it. This means that Microsoft and Sony have a large amount of power over the small publishers’ vitality, since a lot of money now needs to come from deals with them.
As Microsoft starts tightening its purse strings trying to make Gamepass profitable, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more small publishers suffering as a result.
Basically, I think it’s exactly what @Gaywallet@beehaw.org was saying: these decisions aren’t being made with any actual facts/ data as the basis. The decisions are solely based on “gut feelings” of the higher-ups. Attendance is the only way the higher-ups know how to gauge productivity, and that is going to trump any actual productivity data.
Remote work is such a boon to workers, and from my perception there is not a lot of benefit of mandating in-person work.
It really feels like the push to return to in-person is primarily driven by a combination of propping up the industrial real estate industry as well as managers not trusting their employees, and perhaps some level of maliciousness towards employees.
The return on investment on operating an office space for the nominal increase in productivity really makes in-person work feel like it’s only for the managers’ egos.
The fact that the Zoom CEO is pushing for this to me does not represent a lack of faith in their product, but a strong desire to squeeze every drop of productivity out of their employees regardless on quality of life and regardless of return on investment of the cost of operating the office.
Do you know what aspects of Roblox you’re brother likes (crafting, game building, the social aspect, etc)?
For a more crafting heavy game, there’s Minecraft or Terraria (I think). For game building, Game Builder Garage on Switch, or Dreams on PlayStation might be nice. Unfortunately, I don’t have any good social game recommendations, though.
I personally disagree.
While cash is the most useful gift, gifts aren’t a utilitarian practice. A gift is an opportunity to show someone that not only do you really know them enough to choose something they would enjoy; but also that you’re thinking about them, and that they are worth effort and thought to you.
Of course, good gifting gets harder as your giftees can afford what they want on their own, but that just makes the sentimental aspects even more important (in my opinion).
Honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t have a lot of experience with PC gaming (or its related piracy), but there seems to be a lot of drama in the pirate community due to the difficulty in bypassing Denuvo.
In this particular case, a good Switch emulator may be enough to bypass it; but my guess is it’ll be more complicated and resource taxing on the Switch than a simple hardware check.
Personally, I’m not much of a PC gamer, so I don’t have a lot of personal experience with Denuvo; but this sounds pretty concerning.
My understanding is that by Denuvo LoJacking into every part of the game, it seriously hampers performance; and the Switch is underpowered enough as it is. I can only imagine how poorly games will run if the Switch has to devote resources to Denuvo as well.
Plus, from a preservation standpoint this is terrible too. Even if the studio drops Denuvo down the line, it will forever be included on the cartridge. This means that in the future, the only way to play this game will have to be an emulated copy, since you won’t be able to get the update to clear the (no longer supported) Denuvo from the game.
Personally, I don’t see any draw over just using a Kishi style controller with your phone.
Even if you wanted a standalone device. It would be cheaper to buy a cheap phone to go with the controller, and then you could use it for local emulation.
I wish it had the WiiU style connection (instead of going through WiFi), since at least then it could be used for interesting asymmetric multiplayer games, or multiplayer games without screen splitting. Maybe they’ll add that down the line, though…
Xbox’s Backwards Compatibility is definitely a big deal; but as someone who loves old games as a concept and has never thrown out a console, it’s not as big a selling point as you would think/ hope.
I personally wanted to try some of the PS2/PS3 only games and didn’t have a PS3, so I bought one used a while back. I probably only logged maybe 10 hours in it before getting completely side tracked by my backlog of modern games. And while I know that’s anecdotal evidence, it really seems like the allure of classic games might not be enough of a selling point.
This is something I think Xbox had the right idea about. While BC is very useful in concept, there aren’t so many classic games that would draw people away from modern games; so you only have to support those few games.
With that in mind, I think Sony could offer BC for their relevant PS2/ PS3 exclusives since they would only need to guarantee emulator performance for a much smaller number of games. I don’t think it’s likely for Sony to do this until they are no longer the dominant console, though, as they can make more money selling their PS3 subscription service.
From a game presentation standpoint, BC is a huge issue and I would personally love to see it happen for the PS5 (and I’d like to see it expanded to all games for the Xbox as well); but I doubt there would be much return on investment for developing the BC features, and that’s the only motivation for corporations.
It’s very interesting to see console games moving to mobile more and more (especially as phones get more powerful). I am curious if more game devs will plan on that as they design a game from the ground up, especially since designing for the Switch means the processing power is already limited somewhat (though the control scheme would certainly be an issue to a degree).
Bugsnax is a fun and engaging game that doesn’t (to my recollection) have a ton of fast paced elements, so a mobile port would be quite at home (even with mobile controls), though I suppose I would’ve preferred to see the resources going into this port go into a new game from Young Horses since I really enjoyed Bugsnax.
This is largely off-topic; but for anyone who is interested in playing Hogwarts Legacy without supporting JK Rowling, I would highly recommend checking out your local library.
If your library carries videogames, it is highly beneficial to support your library AND it doesn’t directly support JK Rowling, so it is helpful on two fronts.
While I personally really enjoyed playing Stray, I’m having a hard time imagining it as a straight narrative.
While the setting was immersive and gorgeous to look at, and the gameplay was quite enjoyable; the narrative was quite light. The cat cannot speak and doesn’t have much motivation beyond going home. Though the robot companion does have motivations and the ability to speak, it is not the main character of the game.
Regardless, I will be interested to see how the movie turns out.