Darks wrote on Feb 8, 2018, 11:08:
Theres a new Warhammer RTS game coming out, it goes back to the basic RTS game play style of base building and massive armies. That is what I want in an RTS game. none of this bullshit they keep coming up with and limited units pop cap crap.

We'll see if it sells enough to merit. RTS games have been a dying breed for a long time now for one major reason - they just don't sell like they used to. And this comes to you from someone who worked at Westwood Studios for a while.

Kamprad's coffin was made out of lovely pressboard, and was assembled using an allen wrench in just a few minutes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/7sp4wq/legal_analysis_of_the_esl_genting_situation_dmca/

Good analysis of the issue, for those legitimately interested.

SimplyMonk wrote on Jan 24, 2018, 13:43:

ForgedReality wrote on Jan 24, 2018, 11:27:
What? I'm not clicking it because it's clearly clickbait, but DOTA 2 has always been streamable within the game itself, and there are many youtube and twitch streamers, so... Guess I don't understand why they would lie in the headline. Nobody cares about facebook.

Not clicking either because obvious clickbait is obvious, but if the reddit drama is any indication this has to do with how the latest ESL tournament organizers made a streaming deal with Facebook and as such threatened Twitch streamers with copyright strikes for streaming the tournament series.

Players don't like being forced to use Facebook and hate it when companies attack their favorite streamers... so obviously they aren't taking this well. The tournament organizers should have full streaming rights to their tournament though so I kinda side with them on this issue. Maybe next time they will learn that spurning the largest streaming service in favor of Facebook isn't the best idea for current fans.

Fans are still more than welcome to watch the matches stream through the game itself. It's just the broadcast rights for this tournament are through Facebook only, which has had technical snafus. Not to mention the majority of people prefer watching streams through Twitch. But, again, this is how monopolies get started.

A good community manager is hard to find. I'd like to think I did it relatively well for the years I did, but you'd have to back the Brinks truck up to pay me enough to do it again, considering the atmosphere in the games industry these days.

Overall, I've enjoyed my time with Stellaris and its xpacs and updates quite a bit, and this one sounds like something I will also enjoy, so I'm looking forward to it, but I fully recognize this sort of odd space-based empire building game is not for everyone.

Kxmode wrote on Jan 6, 2018, 16:03:
If you've seen the movie Brewster's Millions, remember the scene when Brewster sees what 10 million dollars looks like? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they have a lot remaining.

Chris and Sandi strike me as being fully committed to the project. A "newly built mansion in Argentina" seems superfluous to your point.

It's funny you mention this movie (and/or the old novel it's based on), because I was literally JUST thinking that this would've been an excellent way to blow through $30 million dollars with no assets at the end of it, and I'm wondering if Chris Roberts thinks he's going to get a much bigger pay out if he blows the entire crowdfunding with nothing to show for it.

Either that, or this is yet another attempt to recreate Mel Brooks' "The Producers" in the real world...

Come to think of it, that might be a movie pitch...

Cutter wrote on Jan 4, 2018, 19:38:
But tourneys in the US are still fine? gg hypocrisy.

Yeeeeeeahhhhh..... maybe you want to read up a little bit on the Philippines current state of affairs before you go throwing mindless commentary around like this...

jdreyer wrote on Jan 3, 2018, 13:51:

Ozmodan wrote on Jan 3, 2018, 09:34:
This guy does not get it, it is a fad which will be replaced with something else. The chances that this game continues with it's top ranking are almost zip.

I dunno, you might have said the same thing about Counterstrike 10 years ago, but it's still super popular.

And yet, have you seen a Counterstrike movie? A Counterstrike TV franchise? A Counterstrike band? A line of Counterstrike novels and/or comics?

Universal media franchises currently are what game developers thought MMOs were going to be 10-15 years ago - a vast untapped wealth of money just waiting to be scooped up, that will eventually be revealed as a niche that appeals to a small but loyal people who are attached to one or two, and that's it.

i.e. Many will try, few will win.

ledhead1969 wrote on Dec 28, 2017, 11:57:
Back on point, the Uber drivers I have all work for multiple ride sharing services, most have other jobs and do Uber for quick/extra cash. They were bummed about the fare reductions that Uber instituted to drive the taxi businesses out but that was just good business and the taxi companies couldn't fight it off. Maybe unfairly as they can't manage their fares but they could improve service, the quality of the cars, etc.

I guess there was a shitty corporate culture but no driver ever mentioned that (which makes sense as I could be a secret passenger or something to them).

You have not talked to nearly enough Uber drivers then. Many are struggling to make ends meet. Some of them bought cars at the company's suggestion, with promises that they'd be making enough money to pay off the car within months AND still turn a profit, and instead, are being coaxed into putting in 70 hour workweeks, and 35 hour weekends driving for the app, just to make their "bonuses," which are, let's be honest, quotas, all in order to make enough money to actually scrap by.

The fares don't adjust to the local price of gas. The amount of money a driver is paid from having someone make a mess or throw up in their car has gone down, instead of up. The surge pricing has gone massively down, meaning that the higher risk fares now pay even less, and Uber has consistently lowered the fares again and again, because they don't want to make customers pay what the ride should cost, in order to "stamp out" taxi drivers.

Did the taxi driver model need disruption? Absolutely. Is Uber doing a good job of it? Let's be honest - the company has a noted history of screwing over literally everyone.

When the driver was stabbed to death by a random passenger earlier this year, Uber's response to drivers was "we're sorry that happened, don't pick up anyone you don't feel safe with, and oh, if you decline too many rides, you may be suspended from our service."

Also, as has been pointed out in multiple articles, both Uber and Lyft are doing everything they can to discourage you from driving from multiple services, despite what they claim publicly.

I don't know how you've only encountered Uber drivers doing this as a side gig, but honestly, that isn't the majority of Uber drivers you'll find on a weekend.

Tipsy McStagger wrote on Dec 26, 2017, 14:45:

SimplyMonk wrote on Dec 26, 2017, 11:28:
Eververse is only P2W in the sense that a large part of Destiny is trying to obtain cosmetic gear and Bungie launched Destiny 2 with all the interesting cosmetics in Eververse with nothing for dedicated players to actually strive for. In Destiny 1, all the gorgeous cosmetic gear was tied to completing achievements or milestones in the game such as doing raids on Hard Mode or beating certain challenge encounters. Destiny 2 has none of that and everything that looks like it had any sort of design thought put into is in Eververse.

So yeah... You can dump tons of cash into Eververse and get a really pretty armor set, a quality-of-life ghost, sparrow, and ship but none of those are really that integral to game play to call it P2W. Comparing this bullshit to EA's bullshit is comparing shit oranges to shit apples. Both have valid reasons to be pissed at, but just removing Eververse from Destiny 2 won't fix anything. If there was actual armor sets, ghosts, sparrows, and ships to obtain outside of Eververse, then 90% of these complaints would disappear.

This is exactly what I was thinking.. I was like "did the people writing these threads even play the game?"

Glad to see it's not just me. These people are trolling about cosmetics. Not exactly what I would call P2W.

Flatline wrote on Nov 29, 2017, 17:02:

Devinoch wrote on Nov 29, 2017, 14:58:
Sure, and you could charge the $90-100 you would need to be profitable with such a game (considering development costs these days), and no one would buy it, or, conversely, you could make the game cost significantly less and people would bitch about how the graphics aren't up to snuff, and no one would buy it.

At the number of units that EA pushes of the Battlefront games, I doubt that profitability is an issue at a 60-70 dollar price point. If there is an issue with profitability, then it's EA's fault for entering into an ass-reamingly expensive license to create Star Wars games. And if that's the case, that's just bad business being passed onto the consumer.

It has nothing to do with the license and everything to do with the cost of developing a AAA game in the first place. Go look at any AAA game made in the last five years, load up the credits, and take a look at exactly how many people are working on any one project. Then extrapolate that those people probably spent between 18-36 months working on that game, and take a rough ballpark of what the human development cost is for a game.

People underestimate the cost to make a game these days by a long shot.

This is now the gaming equivalent of the Cards Against Humanity stunt, where they just kept digging a hole every time someone sent them money, except without the honesty.

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 29, 2017, 06:50:

Devinoch wrote on Nov 28, 2017, 20:40:
Oh, how I remember like it was yesterday when the most recent SimCity came out, and how the doomsayers were proclaiming it was the end of EA. When will they ever learn?

Name a new IP developed by EA in 30 seconds, good luck.

It doesn't even matter really what stock does, fact is EA doesn't develop new IP's anymore, instead it's killing them and it's more likely EA closes studio than develop a new game nowadays (Just LOOK at their closure history). They got 3 big IP's left, from previously 5 (they killed Sim City and Mass Effect) so by this rate in 14 years EA doesn't develop any new games And let's not even get started on Command and Conquer (killed by EA) or Dragon Age (killed by EA). And generally speaking you don't earn money in the future if you don't develop NEW IP's

If you look at Fifa, Sims and Battlefield, which are the remaining 3 big ones, you can also see a huge disparity (only Fifa Ultimate is truly profitable) the remaining games had negative profit developments compared to predecessors (same for COD / Activision by the way).

So I laugh at people wanting to invest in EA stock. Maybe if you think Lootboxes aren't gonna be regulated, but once they are EA's only big profitable segment collapses. Fifa with a M+ rating would kill Fifa.

Except, of course, that this has been Standard Operating Procedure for EA for a while now. See the acquisition of Respawn Entertainment, bringing Titanfall under their umbrella.

I was AT Westwood Studios right before it fell. You're welcome to look me up. I was part of the development for Command & Conquer: Renegade, among other things, and I've seen the system from the inside.

EA's typical history has been - find studio that's making something that people like (that EA's probably publishing), acquire them, get a few good games out of them, overmicromanage too much, shut the studio down, repeat.

Origin, Bullfrog, Maxis, Tiberon Entertainment, Westwood, Criterion, Dreamworks Interactive, DICE, Mythic, Popcap...

This is the way they work. Most of their original IP have been failures - Dante's Inferno, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Spore, American McGee's Alice... That's just not what EA's been good at for the last few decades.

I understand there's a bunch of people angry at EA now, but historically, that's nothing new, and they didn't do this with one of their REAL cash cows. There's no uproar about FIFA, and that's the golden goose.

theglaze wrote on Nov 29, 2017, 12:44:

bhcompy wrote on Nov 29, 2017, 12:40:
Sell hats, gun skins, and a chance at a sweet looking knife that doesn't physically alter your abilities in game, not ingame skills. Makes Valve more money than God

Valve doesn't pump out a new TF2 or CSGO every year

EA wants full game price sales plus DLC plus microstransactions... and they want to sell you the same shit again and again, year after year.

It's called greed, and +4 billion dollars in annual revenue.

Valve also doesn't make 95% of its revenue on its own games anymore. The Valve business model has been "Steam" for a long, long time now.

jdreyer wrote on Nov 29, 2017, 11:45:

Verno wrote on Nov 29, 2017, 10:51:

"We pulled-off on the MTX because the real issue the consumer had was they felt it was a pay-to-win mechanic," he added. "The reality is: there's different types of players in games. Some people have more money than time, and some people have more time than money, and you want to always balance those two.

Hahaha what the fuck? No you don't have to balance them. In a game that is primarily a MP experience the asshole who just wants to destroy balance through purchases should NOT be allowed to do that. Fuck that shit. You want to "balance" them by giving that idiot some cosmetics to throw his money at so that he feels better about himself while not pissing off everyone else who bought the game.

Or they could, you know, not have a fucking progression system at all. Then everyone has access to all weapons and abilities regardless of time played. The only reason to have a progression system at all is to entice the player to spend more money.

It's a gameplay mechanic designed to extract cash.

Sure, and you could charge the $90-100 you would need to be profitable with such a game (considering development costs these days), and no one would buy it, or, conversely, you could make the game cost significantly less and people would bitch about how the graphics aren't up to snuff, and no one would buy it.

I know it's in-fashion to bitch about EA or games trying to be profitable, but this isn't something people do exclusively for fun. Companies do have to be profitable to survive. All companies.

I'm not a capitalist by any stretch of the imagination, but until there's a solution to cost/profit for games that works on scale (i.e. something that makes AAA games make sense again), you're going to constantly see companies trying to find ways to squeeze more money out of consumers in order to stay afloat.

Oh, how I remember like it was yesterday when the most recent SimCity came out, and how the doomsayers were proclaiming it was the end of EA. When will they ever learn?

Two human factions and no Eldar? No interest, thanks.

Sadly, Malcom had been fighting dementia for several years now, which means we're likely to see the passing of Terry Jones from Monty Python in the relatively near future as well, to my great dismay...

HorrorScope wrote on Nov 17, 2017, 21:21:

Devinoch wrote on Nov 17, 2017, 16:14:

El Pit wrote on Nov 17, 2017, 14:14:
I wonder what is going on with EA right now. Emergency EA CEO conference with Disney? Why the whales didn't want to get hunted? What went wrong? They must be afraid because their customers stood up to them and the pay2win system. Nothing is worse than fans that are no longer fanatic enough to accept torture.

Honest thoughts? I think Disney is considering acquiring EA, and revamping them to fix the problems they feel they can correct for. It might not be a bad business play, in all honesty. EA has reliably profitable stuff (Madden, FIFA, NHL) and has talent and technology Disney could use to replace the basically-defunct Disney Interactive. It's not a bad proposition for either side, assuming they can some smart people to oversee it.

Disney listens to the same exact overlords.

What, the tenets of capitalism? Yep, I'm pretty sure that's true of any actual business, sadly.