this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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On the one end, you've got the F2P game that offers you a zero upfront cost to downloading and playing the first few levels, then slowly constricts the quality of the gameplay until you pay them to relieve the pressure.
On the other end, you've got the AAA game that hypes release for months and tries to get as much money out of you as physically possible at launch by flooding social media with FOMA. Then they rapidly sheds support for the product until its another forgettable crap title on the pile of forgotten sequels.
In either case, it almost feels like the goal of modern video games is to inflict anxiety and distress on their audience. Like, the point of the game industry is to make the player miserable and then accept payment to provide relief.
You forgot the part where the AAA product is released in a beta state and doesn’t get up to proper release-level quality until a few months worth of patches.
I won't lie, I was really enjoying D4 until the end. And then I just kinda went slack jawed because... oh, its a cliffhanger. They're never going to resolve this, are they? Season Passes? No. This is fucked. Oh well...
If you're talking about Swery's D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, that whole business still depresses me to this day. He signed on to make a Kinect-focused episodic adventure game (never do episodic anything, at least we've all learned this by now) only for it to come out just after Microsoft finally dumped the stupid thing
The whole debacle soured Swery's relationship with his old company and he got hoofed after the unsuccessful PC version and his career has never really recovered
I've never played that game, but now I'm intrigued.
No, I'm talking about Diablo 4.
Heh when Batman Arkham Knight released it was literally unplayable unless you had like 12GB VRAM in 2015. I would say that it wasn’t even in beta since it didn’t even work once on recommended specs
I could go on a whole fucking rant about how whatever potential good things about the Early Access model (and basically anything that isn't "release the full game as a complete product with no other potential added features. aside from DLC that are purely further additions to the game and not part of its main functionality", including seasonal games) have been almost totally subsumed by it just being an excuse to release games shittily and then go "Oh no worries, we're going to keep adding and developing it over time!" and then either don't, or spend three times as long doing that if they had just kept the whole project under wraps.
look at Elden Ring for instance. the game was kept so under wraps by Miyazaki and co that even like a year before it fully released, there was virtually no information about it at all. no early access period, no "Welcome to the April 2019 Elden Ring Early Access Update #3, where we have added Caelid! Go explore and give us tips on how to improve!" no, the dev team just dumped the whole game on us (aside from very minor things like the pvp colosseums and pvp was already a full feature before this) and it's already probably in the top 5 games of the decade and it was only 2022.
it's one thing if it's legitimately a small company doing this shit, I get that you need finanacing under capitalism and shit sucks in general, it's another thing entirely for larger, proven companies
not sure if every single professional game tester has just dropped dead in the last 10 years or what, but I'm not sure why we have to be unpaid game testers now. hell, we have to pay to be game testers in fact.
Baldur's Gate 3 is the exception that proves the rule
It’s the capitalist pressure to constantly be hitting those quarterly profit goals. These AAA studios are typically part of larger tech/media conglomerates whose shareholders want to see those steady profit streams and so they stick to these release schedules even if the game needed another six months to a year in the oven. And the gamers have made it clear they’ll eat up the slop regardless so there’s no real pushback.
It’s interesting that you mention From Software as an exception as the other company that comes to mind like that is another Japanese company, Nintendo (who of course have their own problems and sometimes suffer from that issue). Apparently on the new Mario Wonder game, corporate gave the devs no deadline to complete it, just “work on it until you think it’s release ready.” Might be a different attitude with CEOs/board members over there.
this is precisely why I avoided BG3 early access. I was excited to play it but I wanted a full experience. I've previously had a sort of grudging acceptance of playing Early Access games like Satisfactory for instance, but now I'm so tired of it that I'm just going to avoid certain games altogether until they fully release.
indie games good
sad Miegakure waiting noises
That’s just capitalism.
I think it is more intrinsic to video game marketing than, say, grocery shopping.
I only eat AAA vegetables
Just realized we 100% have this to look forward to
Shopping for apples sometimes makes me think we're already there
Okay, but honey crisp apples do go hard.
Red Delicious apples are indeed red, I’ll give them that much. Otherwise they’re the shitty free to play of the apples. Hell, half the time you do get them for “free” (school/work provided lunch) and you still don’t wanna eat them.
the bazinga marketing factor can be utilized in both domains, even if it is a better fit in one over the other
just walk down the cereal aisle though
I don't think I've ever been convinced to spend an extra $20 to get Coco-Puffs 24 hours early.
ya, it's at a different scale
but very similar mechanics involved:
Ah, fair enough
gamers are truly the most oppressed class
genosh impact is free and good throughout 😤
Working my way through a pirated copy of BG3. But I'll keep an eye on it.
does pirated BG3 get the patches and updates? They're releasing major content and bug fix patches like every couple days
No, but I'm not going to sweet it.
I’m fairly certain they’re further incentivized to put out a shit product because the incessant patches they have to quickly back to back deters pirates. Not that it’s a reason to do that, but it’s another reason to not give a shit about trying to fix the reason that cause them to put out unfinished games.
The base game on day 0 is still an extremely solid game, if you're talking about BG3
I was writing up an edit defending BG3 as an exception that proves the rule and it got deleted when the page refreshed, lol.
I had one bug on the base version, near the end, and it corrupted my save file, but I had some backups and all was good. The year of early access probably helped with bug testing.