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Valheim v1.0 just came out
I think we need to find a happy middle ground with these “early access” games. That game is now old enough that most people who would enjoy it have already played it so much that they have had their fill and moved on.
Honestly it’s been so long that I’ve had my fill but also haven’t played in so long that I might just boot up a new game server to give it another go. The modding scene seem to be alive and well too - https://thunderstore.io/c/valheim
They buffed mist torches thank god
yeah, a land of creativity like metroidvania #3764917. ok, that was a bit cynical, but lets not pretend like indie is bastion if endless creativity, but I admit that the lack of dependency makes the creativity much easier there.
“This story has words in it, how unoriginal.” /j
You need to find reviewers with similar tastes as you do.
Not every game needs to invent a brand new genre to be worth your time.
Good source of free real indie games (even the Portal devs are from there, hired by Valve after presenting Narbacular Drop there)
At this point the only AAA games I touch are those from at least 10 years ago. Warframe and PoE2 scratch the AA/live service itch without overstaying their welcome, and for everything else, indie releases have it covered.
Been working through a bunch of new and older titles this year - in the past month or two alone I sunk so much time into Look Outside, Inscryption, and Endacopia, and just picked up Sprawl Zero which looks phenomenal. I’m working through the MGS series right now which I’ve somehow never played (hence the “older AAA” exception), and got a good handful of backlog selections lined up for after this binge.
PoE2 is going free to play soon. End of the year I think.
In the past, making money and making great games had a lot of overlap.
But then the big studios realized how much some people are willing to spend on either the latest version of the same thing, to not have to wait for a timer, to skip a grind (especially one tuned specifically to make people want to skip it), to gain an advantage over other players, plus a bunch of psychological tricks and are so often chasing that money, which probably kills a lot of the passion for their staff that actually knows how to make good games until they either leave or start phoning it in.
But indie studios, while they can also be run by people just chasing the money, can also be run by people more interested in the creating a great game aspect than the money aspect.
You can see the same thing across the entire economy. The main difference is that regulatory capture and the amount of resources required to make a video game aren’t set up to prevent new players from entering the market and since games are digital they scale much easier than physical objects. Like some people have de-enshitified their cars or even made their own from scratch or an older one, but it’s not like they can just sell those de-enshitified cars to anyone, they’d need to ramp up production quite a bit to get the same reach viral indie games can get.
We went from “build a better mouse trap” to “seriously cheap out on the parts”
Unfortunately indie devs just don’t have the resources to make the kinds of immersive story games I really like (think Uncharted, TLoU, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc.)
There could totally be an indie game like Uncharted. Why not?
i assume they wouldn’t be able to pay for the actors and motion capture setups, or all the detailed game assets, the super realistic graphics, the music and sound effects, and just the sheer amount of time they have to spend coding up the whole thing. I’d love to be proven wrong though.
I played marvel snap cuz of the draft release. I saw so many predatory practices I ought right uninstalled the game once draft was over
Indie studios can be just as bad honestly. A lot of indie devs are only decent when they’re smaller, the moment their project blows up they begin selling out and enshittifying usually.
What’s the difference between giving valve a 30% cut, relying on their algorithm for marketing, using their infrastructure, and a publisher?
A publisher has creative control over the games, and can make you make changes for profitability and veto creatively risky games. There are definitely good publishers out there (e.g
Annapurna the publisher of outerwilds seems pretty chill), this meme is about AAA studios and how the massive studios have all gone to shit.Annapurna the publisher of outerwilds seems pretty chill
You mean the publisher owned and operated by the fascist Ellisons? The one that had its entire staff quit en masse in protest of management abuse?
The games are good though.
Huh I had no idea, certainly looks bad tho, I retract my statement.
Tbf you can also get unlimited keys to sell and use elsewhere without issue. You’re paying for the audience, convenience and trust.
No ones stopping you from posting to itch.io or handing out USBs, but Steam will always be preferred because of the user experience.
