Miles O'Brien

“hey let’s release the same thing over and over again, charge almost full game price for it, and whenever something new comes out, just delete everything they’ve already paid for.”

“hey why aren’t people continuing to buy our game…”

Yeah. Great mystery, that one.

Bungie will never get another dollar from me.

As someone who never planned on playing Balatro, and was kind of getting tired of seeing it on my feed the way I got tired of helldivers 2 stuff right after release.

I would happily toss a tenner to the dev for a lawyer over this.

Five) is a good one. Like “oh shit… I fucked this one up too much, I guess I’ll see how it turns out but I’m gonna start over with a new batch”

I’d love to see someone more creative with writing than me do some writing prompts with that premise. Maybe have someone from this universe ascend or something and actually confronts god as they’re spending time with their new family creation.

六> is also a good one, it reminds me of the idea that every single person is God. And when all of humanity has finally lived and died, god will become a single consciousness and join the rest of their kind. It kind of pairs poetically with Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot.

The way I figure it, one of a few possibilities is true:

1 there is a god. He lets all the bad shit happen, and therefore isn’t worthy of dedication.

B: there is no god. Shit happens. Nobody is there to be worthy of dedication.

III- there is a god. It kicked off the big bang and sat back to watch. Either it has the ability to affect positive change and doesn’t, or it can’t. In which case, it’s still not worthy of dedication.

The end result is the same for me

I thought that was the expectation?

They introduced us to a younger Witcher that the Geralt was training, Geralt’s story came to an end…

It felt like that’s what they were intentionally setting up, a totally Ciri-focused next game.

surely they’ll follow up with investments into US-produced solar equipment to boost the economy and bring prices down to competitive levels, right?

… Right?

… And?

Why do we give a shit?

Why is this newsworthy?

Are we going to hear about his time working in retail soon? I’m sure it will provide deep insight to find out which store he worked at for 3 months, 8 years ago. clearly that’s relevant information.

I see their junk at every thrift store and flea market in Ohio.

I legitimately thought they went out of business.

we can’t figure out how to take the mega-rich’s thumb off the scales of democracy/justice

Well, one of us did yesterday at least.

Absolutely can’t stand watching people play video games. They play wrong.

And the only videos I watch of a game are ones to see what kind of game it is when I don’t know too much beyond word of mouth “this game is great” kind of thing. Sure, you’ve described the game as an action-packed romp with tons of weapons and semi-open world, but the video shows it’s a 2d side scroller with variations of the same 5 pixel “guns” that all shoot the same ball. Not interested.

Beyond that, I have no interest in watching videos. And if companies started trying to somehow cram even more ads into their games to advertise to people watching a stream then I’m even less in than before

I mean, it would have been nice if the game had been finished when it came out…

But hey, they’ve fixed nearly every problem I had with the game on launch. Which is infinitely more than most of the companies who release shitty broken games.

I think after years and years of 3d games, I just don’t like 2d anymore.

I’ve become institutionalized by a third dimension…

I don’t even enjoy Castlevania anymore and those games were my jam back in the day.

I never could get into terraria, but some days I want to buy it just to support a good developer.

Most people are too lazy or stupid to take the initiative though

Full stop, go fuck yourself.

Being a first time, or even just smaller developer is a nightmare when you compare it against large companies.

You basically don’t have a chance if you try to carry your dream yourself, because you lack funding. But getting in bed with larger companies for funding and marketing puts an insane amount of pressure to perform well or go under.

I can totally understand why so many things were over-promised. I can’t excuse what we got on release, but I do understand why he lied, even in the weeks leading up to release where everyone who plays immediately knows what’s bullshit.

And to be honest, I would likely do the same in some situations.

Like the multi-player aspect where supposedly you would be able to see each other in-game. They really thought with the size of the procedural generation it would take a lot longer for people to meet, even if they were trying to meet up. Unfortunately they forgot to take statistics and probability into account. With the large amounts of people playing, two were bound to end up close enough to meet in the finest few days.

I think they really thought they’d have time to fix it before anyone met.

You’ll say anything when it’s your future, and the futures of all the people you work with, on the line.

The best time to fix your game is before you fucking release it

The second best time is right now.

They may have ignored the first half, but when they screwed up they tucked tail and got to work.

Nobody in their right mind would say they’ve been given a pass for NMS because they have been improving it, especially when you consider the straight up LIES Sean told during interviews. Whether it’s because his expectations were too high for the engine and dev team, incompetence and inflated self-image, or he was trying to build hype for the game knowing they could never fulfill all their promises, it doesn’t matter.

They improved what they made, but they still haven’t delivered what they promised for months leading up to release.

It’s a mixed bag. You take the bag with the good.

NMS is worth playing for the 0 dollars I spent on it, and I could see myself tossing upto $20 for it, but at no point was it worth a full price game IMO.

Yes, someone would have. Eventually.

But valve did it early.

It’s easy to fill a niche once it’s formed. Not so easy to do before, or as it’s forming. Or predict if one will form.

I’m not saying valve or Gabe had some kind of foresight or wisdom, I still think it was a gamble. It just happens to be a gamble that worked.

I mean… It was a gamble. Internet was still young. Speeds weren’t keeping up with game sizes outside a few major cities. I was mailed a few large files because it was quicker than downloading them. Not to mention the desire for physical copies over a digital thing you can lose with a bad hard drive was at an all time high.

Then people realized the internet wasn’t just nerd shit, ISPs slowly ramped up their DL speeds and suddenly the thing people mocked for not being feasible is doing well because of how convenient it became.

Gabe even admits he had doubts for awhile.

I wonder where gaming would be if he had listened to the doubters. There’s no denying valve has had a major impact on modern gaming

Having done exactly 0 research, I going to assume it’s one of those “DO NOT PRESS OKAY UNLESS YOU ARE EXPERIENCED AND KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING” and someone went “pffft I know what I’m doing. click now what does this option do…”

People talk about being there “for” someone. Here being there “with” him is more important.

When I’m depressed, having someone sitting on the couch in my living room scrolling on their phone is infinitely more meaningful to me than someone who is miles away and texting me a lot or offering to help with things. It’s probably part of my neurodivergence but having the person close in proximity while at least sort of paying attention to the room makes me feel less alone than having 10 people trying to check in on me all day.