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"Amazon thought it could compete with Steam because it was so much larger than Valve"
Full headline, because the whole thing didn't fit up there: "Amazon thought it could compete with Steam because it was so much larger than Valve, but Prime Gaming's former VP admits that 'gamers already had the solution to their problems'"
"That's not to say the assessment that Valve punches above its weight is inaccurate. ... It's more the naive fascination Evans has with the idea that Steam is good that baffles me."
It's not even so much that Steam is good, really. There is an awful lot about Steam that I absolutely loathe.[1] Steam was simply lucky enough to be the first (well, no, but it was the first to actually get huge, anyway). It's just that, so far, to this day, everything that came after and tried to ride on Steam's coattails has been and is absolute rancid dogshit.
At least this Evans guy is, kind of, being self-reflective about Amazon's failure in particular, sort of (even if most of it is just "inspirational LinkedIn corporate speech"). Meanwhile, we still have fetid horseshit like Origin/EA App and UPlay (or whatever it's called now) and Epic Gluttonous Shitpile and so many other flavor-of-the-month, Johnny-come-lately digital storefronts still plodding along like they're each the hottest thing since sliced bread (and, well, since Steam), when they're actually worse-than-worthless, each and every one of them.
My own personal history with Steam is that I basically avoided it like the plague, up until the point where a game I wanted to buy was only available on Steam at the time I wanted to buy it. So, I finally bit the bullet and installed Steam. And now, today, I still occasionally might buy a PC game (and PC games are all I buy these days) if it isn't available on Steam (like, say, if it's some retro/nostalgic thing on GOG, or maybe some The Sims related thing on the EA Store, maybe), but much more often than that, I take the view that if it isn't on Steam, it may as well not exist at all (e.g. all the Epic Grotesque Scuzz "exclusives," most of which end up being properly released on the personal computer six months to a year later anyway).
[1] - All you have to do is look at my "steam" tag below to see what I'm talking about (well, the posts that are actually about Steam itself, anyway, and not just about games that happen to be on Steam or whatever).
"That's not to say the assessment that Valve punches above its weight is inaccurate. ... It's more the naive fascination Evans has with the idea that Steam is good that baffles me."
It's not even so much that Steam is good, really. There is an awful lot about Steam that I absolutely loathe.[1] Steam was simply lucky enough to be the first (well, no, but it was the first to actually get huge, anyway). It's just that, so far, to this day, everything that came after and tried to ride on Steam's coattails has been and is absolute rancid dogshit.
At least this Evans guy is, kind of, being self-reflective about Amazon's failure in particular, sort of (even if most of it is just "inspirational LinkedIn corporate speech"). Meanwhile, we still have fetid horseshit like Origin/EA App and UPlay (or whatever it's called now) and Epic Gluttonous Shitpile and so many other flavor-of-the-month, Johnny-come-lately digital storefronts still plodding along like they're each the hottest thing since sliced bread (and, well, since Steam), when they're actually worse-than-worthless, each and every one of them.
My own personal history with Steam is that I basically avoided it like the plague, up until the point where a game I wanted to buy was only available on Steam at the time I wanted to buy it. So, I finally bit the bullet and installed Steam. And now, today, I still occasionally might buy a PC game (and PC games are all I buy these days) if it isn't available on Steam (like, say, if it's some retro/nostalgic thing on GOG, or maybe some The Sims related thing on the EA Store, maybe), but much more often than that, I take the view that if it isn't on Steam, it may as well not exist at all (e.g. all the Epic Grotesque Scuzz "exclusives," most of which end up being properly released on the personal computer six months to a year later anyway).
[1] - All you have to do is look at my "steam" tag below to see what I'm talking about (well, the posts that are actually about Steam itself, anyway, and not just about games that happen to be on Steam or whatever).
"You Do Not Own The Games You Bought | Castle Super Beast 240 Clip"
No real comment on this one. The tags below are pretty much the gist of the topics this clip was about.
(Also, this is yet another "the 'diablo iii' and 'asinine anti-singleplayer trend' tags are serving as the de facto 'blizzard sucks' and 'asinine anti-offline trend' tags, respectively" post.)
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"Dragon AGED Origins | Castle Super Beast 293 Clip"
Everything about the contents of this video just screams "modern video game industry bullshit," since that shit has been shit since before Dragon Age: Origins was released in 2009, and it has only gotten excessively worse since. Remember this shit? That Penny Arcade comic there was only very, very slight exaggerating, and it is at least in part because of shit like that that the game is apparently nigh unplayable now.
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"Former BioWare dev rails against EA's newfound 'hunger' for AI"
Actual headline, which contains a whole lot of superfluous words that don't all fit in Dreamwidth's inadequate subject field: "Mass Effect and Dragon Age veteran invokes BioWare's biggest RPG flop as he rails against EA's newfound 'hunger' for AI"
EA hasn't been much in the news lately, but I guess they just wanted to remind everyone that they do, indeed, continue to suck rancid asshole.
EA hasn't been much in the news lately, but I guess they just wanted to remind everyone that they do, indeed, continue to suck rancid asshole.
EA releases a mid singleplayer game that doesn't sell well, uses it as "proof" that SP is dead
Real headline, which wouldn't fit in the Dreamwidth subject field because of course it wouldn't: "EA and a studio reportedly invested $125 million making a new singleplayer IP with zero microtransactions, no grind, a shorter running time, and guess what: 'No one bought it'"
I simply decided to replace that headline with a slightly shorter, more accurate alternative.
Also, this here article is the first time I've ever heard of this game, so it looks like all that money EA spent on advertising this crap was well spent. *eye roll* And as one of the comments mentions, Immortals of Aveum is one of the most generic, banal titles for a video game that I've heard in a while. To me, it just conjures images of garbage-tier MOBA games like Defense of the Ancients or League of Legends or whatever. *shrug*
Of course, the biggest reason this game didn't sell well is almost assuredly due to the very simple fact that it was a game that was published by Electronic Arts. You know, a publisher that has been notoriously anti-singleplayer for over a decade now. Why should anyone trust them to publish a singleplayer game that is actually worth a damn? You reap what you sow, EA.
I simply decided to replace that headline with a slightly shorter, more accurate alternative.
Also, this here article is the first time I've ever heard of this game, so it looks like all that money EA spent on advertising this crap was well spent. *eye roll* And as one of the comments mentions, Immortals of Aveum is one of the most generic, banal titles for a video game that I've heard in a while. To me, it just conjures images of garbage-tier MOBA games like Defense of the Ancients or League of Legends or whatever. *shrug*
Of course, the biggest reason this game didn't sell well is almost assuredly due to the very simple fact that it was a game that was published by Electronic Arts. You know, a publisher that has been notoriously anti-singleplayer for over a decade now. Why should anyone trust them to publish a singleplayer game that is actually worth a damn? You reap what you sow, EA.
"Being a KOTOR Fan is Suffering | Castle Super Beast 244 Clips"
Wait... how and why and when and where did goddamned Embracer Group get the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic IP (such that they are apparently the ones in the position to shitcan a remake)? I thought the KotOR games belonged to Electronic Arts, via BioWare (which was already bad enough)...?
Also, and more importantly: fuck you, Pat. ಠ_ಠ Fuck you with a rabid honey badger. Pat is full of some putrid, runny, biohazard-level, Montezuma's revenge dogshit saying that Jade Empire "sucked" and was "terrible" and "god awful." I mean, sure, opinions and all that shit, but in this particular case, Pat's still just straight up objectively wrong. I was almost going to not even post this video at all, just because of that absurd asininity spewing out of Pat's piehole. ¬_¬ Anyway, Jade Empire is probably the last truly great BioWare game that wasn't befouled by EA's trademark enshittification.
"Lawsuits & Layoffs | Castle Super Beast Clips"
As of the above video there, that is the first time I have ever heard of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. (EDIT) Which has since been renamed to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a much blander title, for whatever reasons. (/EDIT) And, now that I've heard of it, I will do my level best to go back to not thinking about it at all ever. Yeah... we're definitely well into the "Ship of double Theseus" version of BioWare now.
Yeah, after doing software testing for nine years, I definitely know about EFIGS.
The era of cassette tapes used in computing was, fortunately, before my time.
"Man, Tim Sweeney is the dumbest motherfucker in the world. Oh my god." Eehhhhhhhhhh... I agree that Tim Sweeney is indeed one dumb motherfucker, but I don't know if he's even the dumbest motherfucker in the modern video game industry, and certainly not in the world as a whole. (I mean, Donald Trump is still alive, after all.)
"Don't explain the unknowable | Castle Super Beast Clips"
Mass Effect 3: Still disappointing players a decade after its release.
Just to note, to this day, I still have not played Mass Effect 3, despite having played through both ME1 and ME2 multiple times, a decade or more ago. And at this point, unless I happen to see it on sale for like $5 or less, I probably never will, either, exactly for the reasons explained here. The series just entirely shit the bed in the final hour.
And Pat is spot on about the Borg from Star Trek, too. The Borg were great in The Next Generation. Then First Contact introduced the "Borg Queen," which basically ruined them, and the problem was then severely exacerbated in Voyager.
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"Jedi Survivor, Redfall: That'll be $10 Extra for Your Bad PC Port | Castle Super Beast Clips"
This video is entirely ranting about Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Aside from the title, I don't think they mention Redfall at all. And... I've heard some bad things about Jedi Survivor, but if even half of what Pat and Woolie say in this video is true, then it's far worse than I was aware. I'm not surprised or shocked by that in any way, mind you, it's just that I haven't really been keeping tabs on the game at all, outside of stuff like this. And though they're mostly focusing on the horrendous PC port of the game, they mention at several points that the console versions are just as fucked up broken in their own ways as well.
And on top of all of that, which Pat and Woolie don't even mention at all, the game is contaminated with the malware Denuvo on PC, because of course it is. (Which, yet again, is not disclosed on Steam [outside of the warning from the third party "Denuvo Games" curator, which wouldn't be seen by anyone who doesn't follow that curator], because, for whatever asinine reasons, Valve continually allows EA to get away with not doing that.) The Denuvo infection, in and of itself, is probably a not-at-all-insignificant part of the reason why it runs like dogshit. It's also reason #1 as to why I have zero interest in buying it, even ignoring the fact that it's still a broken piece of shit otherwise, regardless.
I bought the first game in the series, Fallen Order, back in December, when it was on a 88%-off sale, i.e. for $4.79 USD, a while after they wisened up and removed the Denuvo malware from it (because if it had still been defiled by that shit, I wouldn't have bought it for even $0.479 USD, let alone $4.79). It runs okay on my 10-15 year old PC. It's pretty fun. Mind you, I never finished it, but still. If and only if they ever get this new game into a working, optimized, non-Denuvo-infested state will I even begin to consider maybe someday getting it possibly in perhaps three to five-plus years or so.
In any case, at this point in time, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is like a textbook example of everything that is wrong with the modern video game industry.
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Sims 4 "they/them/their" pronouns
Okay, I appreciate that The Sims 4 allows you to select "they/them" pronouns for a Sim when creating them (as I did for the alien Sim in my "Cryptid Buddies" household[1]), but... the display of said pronouns in-game is completely broken in a bunch of places. As in, far too often, you'll see a "their" when it's supposed to be "them," or "them" when it should be "their," or either of those when it's supposed to be "they," or even if the right pronoun is used, the verb will be wrong, e.g. "they is" instead of "they are," etc. Things like that. It makes sense that it would be that way, if all EA did was run an automated search on things like he/she, him/her, and his/her and just replaced it with they/them/their or whatever without bothering to have a human look at the results and edit them appropriately, because in such cases, it was inevitable that the wrong word would be used. Meh, it's obviously not a dealbreaker or anything, and again I'm glad that they at least tried to do something good, but the implementation of it leaves a fair bit to be desired.
[1] - It's a household that I started with a vampire, a werewolf, a spellcaster, a mermaid, and an alien, with the alien later building a Servo. At some point, I'll probably adopt a (normal, human) baby and later make them into a PlantSim. There's also a Patchy living in the greenhouse, though he's not technically part of the household itself, as I can't control him. And, for what it's worth, some of the above Sims are friends with both Father Winter and the Grim Reaper. None of them have met a Flower Bunny yet, though. Also, I haven't bothered with ghosts much, other than using in-game abilities (or sometimes just cheats) to bring back to life a few NPC Sims that had died.
[1] - It's a household that I started with a vampire, a werewolf, a spellcaster, a mermaid, and an alien, with the alien later building a Servo. At some point, I'll probably adopt a (normal, human) baby and later make them into a PlantSim. There's also a Patchy living in the greenhouse, though he's not technically part of the household itself, as I can't control him. And, for what it's worth, some of the above Sims are friends with both Father Winter and the Grim Reaper. None of them have met a Flower Bunny yet, though. Also, I haven't bothered with ghosts much, other than using in-game abilities (or sometimes just cheats) to bring back to life a few NPC Sims that had died.
"The cinematic BioWare-style RPG is dead, it just doesn't know it yet"
Seems more like wishful thinking to me. Mind you, it's wishful thinking that I agree with 100%, but I still think it's just wishful thinking.
While I adored Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, and while I liked Dragon Age: Origins well enough (I never finished Dragon Age II and I still haven't yet touched Dragon Age Inquisition at all), and while I liked Mass Effect and, to a much lesser extent, Mass Effect 2 (still haven't touched Mass Effect 3, and I will never be touching Mass Effect Andromeda ever), I'd take a Baldur's Gate I & II or, especially, a Planescape: Torment over any of those any second of any minute of any hour of any day of any week of any month of any year. (I still can't really comment on The Witcher games or Cyberpunk 2077 as I haven't played any of those, aside from a few aborted attempts at the first The Witcher game.)
And, yeah, Disco Elysium pretty much blows all of those "cinematic" games completely out of the water, too. Prior to this article, though, I hadn't even heard of Broken Roads before. I had, apparently, heard of Citizen Sleeper at least, given that it's on my Steam wishlist, but I remembered next to nothing about it when looking at it again just now. And Roadwarden has been on my list for a while, though I haven't bitten on it yet. (EDIT 2) I've since given Roadwarden a try, and it is indeed pretty good. (/EDIT 2)
(EDIT) Just don't make the same mistake that I did of reading the asinine, putrid comments under the article. Rancid "opinions" like those are the very reason why I think the article itself is just wishful thinking. The modern video game industry, after all, is going to continue to cater to modern video game consumers, i.e. all those who have been sufficiently trained by the modern video game industry to "enjoy" (and, more importantly, to rabidly, militantly defend) the fetid slop that the modern video game industry spews out these days. *weary goddamned sigh* (/EDIT)
While I adored Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, and while I liked Dragon Age: Origins well enough (I never finished Dragon Age II and I still haven't yet touched Dragon Age Inquisition at all), and while I liked Mass Effect and, to a much lesser extent, Mass Effect 2 (still haven't touched Mass Effect 3, and I will never be touching Mass Effect Andromeda ever), I'd take a Baldur's Gate I & II or, especially, a Planescape: Torment over any of those any second of any minute of any hour of any day of any week of any month of any year. (I still can't really comment on The Witcher games or Cyberpunk 2077 as I haven't played any of those, aside from a few aborted attempts at the first The Witcher game.)
And, yeah, Disco Elysium pretty much blows all of those "cinematic" games completely out of the water, too. Prior to this article, though, I hadn't even heard of Broken Roads before. I had, apparently, heard of Citizen Sleeper at least, given that it's on my Steam wishlist, but I remembered next to nothing about it when looking at it again just now. And Roadwarden has been on my list for a while, though I haven't bitten on it yet. (EDIT 2) I've since given Roadwarden a try, and it is indeed pretty good. (/EDIT 2)
(EDIT) Just don't make the same mistake that I did of reading the asinine, putrid comments under the article. Rancid "opinions" like those are the very reason why I think the article itself is just wishful thinking. The modern video game industry, after all, is going to continue to cater to modern video game consumers, i.e. all those who have been sufficiently trained by the modern video game industry to "enjoy" (and, more importantly, to rabidly, militantly defend) the fetid slop that the modern video game industry spews out these days. *weary goddamned sigh* (/EDIT)
"BG&E2 is Stuck in Development Caelid | Castle Super Beast Clips"
There is no way that Beyond Good and Evil 2, if it ever does actually get released at some point, has any chance whatsoever of being even remotely good. (Also, Woolie, it has "only" been 15 years, not 20.)
Also, at the start, they mention Forspoken and how Squeenix dissolved the dev team that made it after, like, a month or so.
It's kind of sad how none of these companies (Squeenix, Ubi, EA, Activision Blizzard, etc.) who, when they have a dev team make a game and then the game does badly and then they punish the dev team by "absorbing" them or else just straight up firing them, have the self-awareness to realize that the common denominator in all of those cases is... those companies. I mean, this isn't (or, at least, wasn't) a post about EA, here, but just think about all the devs that EA bought up over the past two or three decades and then, after the output of those devs almost immediately turned to shit explicitly because of EA's worse-than-useless meddling, EA killed off said devs (while continuing to milk the rotting corpses of said devs' IPs ad infinitum). And yet, EA never once stops to consider the obvious fact that maybe they are the reason this keeps happening over and over and over and over and over. As usual, sadly/frustratingly/enragingly, all the other big publishers seem to look at EA as a role model, rather than a cautionary tale.
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Yep, that's totally how you milk a cow, The Sims 4.
This has to be the most realistic simulation of milking a cow I've ever seen in a video game. *eye roll*
"The Memories Remain"
Everyone in the comments is all "I cri everytiem." Meanwhile I'm sitting here more like...
...
Anyway, my own extreme apathy about this particular game series aside, this is all just yet another example, to be lost amongst dozens of other examples, of the glorious digital future. Well, that and the fact that Electronic Arts is just gonna Electronic Arts all over everything. No shock there.
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Yet another EA game on Steam that doesn't disclose the Denuvo it is infested with.
Wild Hearts. I'm not going to link to it here, because fuck off with that shit.
Steam page only says:
Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: EA online activation and EA app software installation and background use required.
Requires agreement to a 3rd-party EULA
WILD HEARTS™ EULA
And that's already plenty bad enough, but that alone would not have been a dealbreaker for me personally, since I already have an EA account an the EA App for shit like The Sims 4 and such. (I know that is a dealbreaker for others, though.) But no official admission of Denuvo being there.
Only indication that it is infected with Denuvo is the warning from the Denuvo curator, which shows up on the Steam page (maybe only if you're subscribed to said curator, though, not sure).
Fuck Denuvo, fuck EA, fuck Koei Tecmo, and also fuck Valve/Steam for letting them continue to get away with this shit.
(Note: I have not bought this game and I will not be buying this game, at least partly due to this fact that it is contaminated with the malware. It apparently has other issues unrelated to Denuvo as well.)
Steam page only says:
Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: EA online activation and EA app software installation and background use required.
Requires agreement to a 3rd-party EULA
WILD HEARTS™ EULA
And that's already plenty bad enough, but that alone would not have been a dealbreaker for me personally, since I already have an EA account an the EA App for shit like The Sims 4 and such. (I know that is a dealbreaker for others, though.) But no official admission of Denuvo being there.
Only indication that it is infected with Denuvo is the warning from the Denuvo curator, which shows up on the Steam page (maybe only if you're subscribed to said curator, though, not sure).
Fuck Denuvo, fuck EA, fuck Koei Tecmo, and also fuck Valve/Steam for letting them continue to get away with this shit.
(Note: I have not bought this game and I will not be buying this game, at least partly due to this fact that it is contaminated with the malware. It apparently has other issues unrelated to Denuvo as well.)
"Why Red Shepard Returned | Castle Super Beast Clips"
This is not just about Mass Effect 3 and Woolie's and Reggie's bizarre LP choices. Seriously, an alternative title for this video easily could have been "One Hour of Why EA Sucks Shit | Castle Super Beast Clips."
For me, the main similarity between the Mass Effect series and the Dragon Age series is that, to this day, I still have not bought or touched the third game in each series, nor do I have any intention of doing so any time soon. The main difference is that I actually finished Mass Effect 2, at least, which was not the case for Dragon Age II.
"Halo Infinite: We just can't | Castle Super Beast Clips"
I don't give the first fuck about Halo (Infinite or otherwise), and I don't care about all the multiplayer bullshit, split-screen local or whatever, that they're talking about in this video (and that Microsoft was apparently lying about), and as such I'm feeling nothing but schadenfreude here.
But then at the end, Woolie mentioned Mass Effect and Silent Hill and other big game franchises being in similar dire circumstances, generally speaking, and it made me a bit sad.
"Seriously, F!%k Origin"
Funny how, in a four and a half minute video shitting all over Origin, they still found a way to compare it favorably to the Epic Gangrene Store, even so. I wouldn't know enough to make the comparison, as I've never touched Epic Ghetto Store and never will. Origin does suck shit, though, I do know that much.