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I guess everyone who were calling people idiots for thinking we'd get a brand new Fallout are eating their words now. I'm floored.
Edit: Jason at Kotaku (good journalist) is saying we're going to be disappointed if we're expecting a traditional single player RPG. Online components involved, not an MMO though. Not a good sign. Looks like this might not be what we were hoping for, but I'll reserve judgement until E3.
Edit The Sequel: More new info here from Jason: https://kotaku.com/sources-fallout-76-is-an-online-survival-rpg-1826425333
This sounds like it could work, it's still going to have the same usual Bethesda structure with a story and questing. Very cautiously optimistic.
Inb4 Fallout 4 port to Switch.
Jason Schreier is known for being pretty reliable.
Edit 2: Jason was right...
I'm sad that Madhouse isn't doing One Punch Man Season 2... I mean, J.C. Staff is OK and have done some good ones. I just wish they'd have stayed with the same studio.
Let's get one thing straight: Sony is publishing this. It is a full exclusive, and it's got nothing to do with the movie deal.
Marvel went to Sony looking for their teams to treat a Marvel property with as much care as a Sony IP. Sony ascribed Insomniac to the task, and Insomniac chose Spider-Man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=906&v=wdWt2HFvWRk
https://kotaku.com/podcast-how-spider-man-ps4-came-together-1796328173
Email from Marty to Jason Schreier:
>I’m quite relieved and happy. This was the way it was supposed to have been heard 5 years ago. > >My wife and I spent the afternoon with my now 93 year old father and we showed him that people were finally able to hear this work. It made our Christmas even better. My mother, his wife of over 60 years died a couple years ago and although she loved listening and shared it with some of her friends (she was a musician) she never understood why it wasn’t released. > >I don’t know who actually did it but they have my blessing. I honestly don’t know how anyone could begrudge this any longer.
Just a reminder that this is about more than sticking it to Bungie.
Remember the human.
Yeah, Microsoft has a Kinect patent that blocks you from watching movies until you pay extra if there are too many people watching it. This article covers it.
I also remember the Xbone wouldn't work if you covered up the Kinect or turned it away from you.
It's not even that it slipped through playtesting. They playtested it, Ben showed concern about it being batshit insane, and they released it anyway.
From a Kotaku article that goes into a lot of depth about how Bioware works and what they're doing.
>The past year has been tumultuous for BioWare and involved some major changes to the studio. One was to reboot the fourth Dragon Age, which at the time was code-named Joplin, according to two sources. (There’s a running theme here—Anthem’s codename was Dylan.) The goal, those sources said, was to implement more “live” elements into the game, although two of those sources stressed that this next Dragon Age will still have a heavy focus on characters and story, whenever it does come out.
One of the things talked about is the removal of a phrase that said "KKK" (more info about it) from Akiba's Beat. I don't really think that fits under censoring. In Japan the use of "KKK" was just wordplay and had no reference to the Ku Klux Klan. Leaving it as "KKK" would just be distracting and add in a meaning that the original developers didn't intend at all.
Not surprised at all to be honest. Just look at this famous Kotaku article and you will know they are not able to develop anything decent using their engine. This game is just ... well a poor early unlock for Humble Monthly, nothing more.
EDIT: thank you u/ploverflap for providing the link to the article I didn't provide in my original post. You can find it in here: https://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story-behind-the-making-of-destiny-1737556731
EDIT2: For the lazy ones, just a short extract from the article (which is really worth reading tbh) that pretty much explains why we got almost nothing in the DLC:
“Let’s say a designer wants to go in and move a resource node two inches,” said one person familiar with the engine. “They go into the editor. First they have to load their map overnight. It takes eight hours to input their map overnight. They get [into the office] in the morning. If their importer didn’t fail, they open the map. It takes about 20 minutes to open. They go in and they move that node two feet. And then they’d do a 15-20 minute compile. Just to do a half-second change.”
People who have worked with Destiny’s tech say the company is capable of powering incredible things behind the scenes, like player matchmaking. It’s also clear that Destiny is one of the best-looking video games ever made. But as a tool-set for designers, sources say, Destiny’s engine is subpar, and creating new maps and missions at Bungie can be grueling for developers.
MHW has many QOL improvements that drastically improved the series for many people. It might be hard to go back.
Here's a good article: https://kotaku.com/whats-new-in-monster-hunter-world-1821230810
EDIT: I'm not trying to say MHW is better than XX, just pointing out that people who started with that game may have a hard time adjusting. I myself don't have experience with World so this is gonna be a smooth transition from Generations on 3DS.
Add Valve to the list of developers who have blacklisted Kotaku.
Edit: Not sure what their status currently is but Bethesda and Ubisoft both blacklisted them at some point. Here is an interesting article about it.
r/nekoatsume! But in VR!! Too bad I have nothing capable of running it....
The second quote in the OP references Destiny 1's development, when they scrapped the "DLC every 3 month" plan.
> What if, instead of releasing two more DLC packs after The Taken King, they tried something new? What if they sold cosmetic items in the Tower? And then put out a dripfeed of free content to keep people playing in the months before “Destiny 2”—or whatever they wind up calling it—in the fall of 2016? > >“There was a bet that was, ‘Hey if we did microtransactions, I bet you we could generate enough revenue to make up for the loss of DLCs,’” said a source. “Instead of it going Destiny, DLC1, DLC2, Comet, DLC1, DLC2, they’re actually just gonna go [big] release and then incremental release. So it’ll just be Destiny, Comet, Destiny, Comet every year. It’s basically just switching the game to an annual model.”
They worked alone at that time. They apparently kept the MTX + "small DLC1/2" + "big Comet" cycle for D2, though, even with the additional manpower now.
The worst part about this is how it's idolised, and--I'd put good money on--entirely misunderstood.
It's like places that say "you can take as much leave as you want". The result, as unintuitive as it sounds, is that no one takes any leave. Everyone feels pressure to not take leave, because there is no longer a minimum amount. So a valid answer for "as much leave as you want" is 0, and to take leave becomes-- silently--socially unacceptable[1].
Similarly, when they have "no management team, do what you want", what that will really mean is that it's actually a giant secret club full of unofficial group dynamics, pressure and infighting. There are no structures to formalise what always happens when groups of humans work together.
All Valve does these days is yearn to make money. Steam is a giant cash cow. Every game they make must support micro-transactions, hats or whatever. I will bet large sums of cash that they will never, bar some kind of large management change or industry change[2], make another single-player narrative focused experience ever again.
Edit: Apparently if we all read the internet more, we would have known this 6 years ago: https://kotaku.com/5795355/valve-probably-done-with-single-player-games
[1] The way some companies have fixed this is to have unlimited leave with a forced yearly minimum. I don't think it's been long enough for those companies to report back on how that's worked, or at least I haven't heard anything.
[2] Say, Steam stops being free money or people finally get sick of microtransactions
Kotaku (insert laugh track here if you want) ran an article back in may about Twitch streamers and the things they have to deal with sometimes. One of the cases was when a Twitch streamer found a teenager who had flown in from Singapore with nothing but luggage, hoping that he'd be able to spend a night with his favorite streamer, on his porch in the middle of the night.
It's worth a read, at the very least. I imagine that for some YouTube content creators that upload multiple times a week, some of their fans probably start thinking the same of them. Best buddies, talking about their day, etc.
According to Kotaku this game is going to be taking the franchise in a new direction, so that for sounds like a valid possibility. If done well, a vault/settlement making game could be a pleasant surprise.
A lot of people here don't seem to realize that Ubisoft has multiple teams each working on their own Assassin's Creed games. This way they can keep normal development times (3-4 years) but still release once every year or two. https://kotaku.com/how-multiple-ubisoft-studios-make-so-many-assassin-s-cr-1824298939
It's already on their radar for some indeterminate point in the future.
> The Overwatch team—which is now part of a Blizzard-wide anti-toxicity initiative as well as a collaboration involving companies like Riot and Twitch called The Fair Play Alliance—is also examining the other side of the coin: how do you reinforce good behavior?
> “We can start looking toward the future and talking about things like, what’s the positive version of reporting?” said Kaplan. “Reporting is saying ‘Hey, Adrian was really bad and I want to punish him for that,’ but what’s the version where I can say ‘That Adrian guy was an awesome teammate and I’m so glad I had him’?”
> “We’re punishing the bad people, so how do we get people to start thinking about being better citizens within our ecosystem?”
I've said this previously, Nintendo and Sony made a brand out of these single-player games.
When people buy a Nintendo console, they expect to play the latest Mario/Zelda/Nintendo first party game on it (and one of the reason why WiiU failed).
PlayStation and Xbox have a different image (being a convenient dedicated all-round gaming system), but PlayStation has it's strong first party studios (western and Japanese), and whose games are sort of like console mascots.
PlayStation can be used a gamer who only wants to play FIFA/Madden/Fortnite and a gamer who wants to play the Uncharted/God of War/Bloodborne.
However, Jim is over-generalizing the situation.
There is a reason why GaaS models and market trends like Battle Royale are so popular. They are giving them more returns, because people are willing to pay to play more.
Plus, the whole streaming boom as reached out to a new audience, which is how PUBG, Fortnite got big. Casual players got exposed to them, and many have turned their consoles into Fortnite machines.
People are voting from their wallet, they want GaaS and companies are responding to that.
Keep in mind the context is very important in determining what is harassment. Complimenting a women in a bar likely isn't, shouting at a woman on the street likely is. Depending on how the YouGov surgery went down the one third that said it was harassment may have been thinking more along the lines if catcalling.
I like to share this Dr. Nerlove article where they call someone a "bad parody of a femenist" (in a loving way) for thinking that hitting on a woman is always harassment.
Its probably similar system to BF1 where people which perform 'Too good' are labelled as potential cheaters. In your case it seems to be soft auto ban.
Oh.
I mean we won't know until the game appears of course, but Andromeda was rebooted several times during production so that's probably a bad sign.
Also I don't know what 'live' elements are exactly but to me it certainly has a smell of 'unnecessary online features' to it.
So yeah, hype levels for me will remain low until more information appears.
Incidentally, I'm not sure what exactly is going on at Bioware but it seems to me as if the audiences are very clearly saying "We want detailed and story-heavy single-player games like the original Mass Effect/Dragon Age/KOTOR", but for whatever reason they seem determined to put out these hastily cobbled together things with sort of weirdly integrated online features that nobody seems to especially enjoy. And a sort of Destiny-style lootbox grinder (presumably) which I also haven't seen anyone get particularly excited for. :/
I understand where you are coming from but ultimately this will have no impact. Most people on this sub are either already not purchasing them or haven't been convinced by the many posts telling them to stop.
I feel like everyone is taking that quote way too literally. It was part of ~~a video~~ an article where he sounded like he was half joking. It's way more plausible that he did say that card seems broken or whatever, and the team talked him out of it, and he was just exaggerating to hype the card and make a more interesting story, rather than the game director having "no control".
Edit: It was an article, not a video: https://kotaku.com/hearthstone-director-reveals-the-craziest-card-weve-eve-1825114809
When their journo friend Dean Takahashi was ridiculed because he couldn't get past the Cuphead tutorial, they all started to find stupid shit to complain about in cuphead, when the game was a hit with gamers.
'Cuphead should have talked about the racism present in that era': https://kotaku.com/its-impossible-to-separate-cuphead-from-the-era-that-in-1820365021
'Telling a journalist to git gud at Cuphead is ableism': https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/10/the-physical-glass-ceiling-when-the-git-gud-mental.html
Yup... they seriously compared themselves to people with physical handicaps, using them as shield against criticism.
https://kotaku.com/over-140-000-people-are-watching-a-fallout-bobblehead-o-1826397799
"Some fans have also theorized that this might be some sort of remaster of either Fallout 4 or Fallout 3, but from what we’ve heard, this is a new game, one that takes the series in a brand new direction. We’re expecting to see more tomorrow."
I didn’t notice a difference at all. I put it all of the way up and everything looks the same.
Edit: it’s slightly bigger
https://kotaku.com/god-of-war-patch-increases-the-text-size-but-its-still-1825451101/amp
Last info I could find is Jason Schreier's article about it on Kotaku: https://kotaku.com/sources-ubisofts-watch-dogs-2-teaser-is-a-real-sci-fi-1788999298
The game was in development trouble when the easter egg was put in, it was supposed to be fully announced in 2017, and there's been nothing since, so who knows.
How do you come up with the opening lines in your articles?
Examples:
> We’re rapidly approaching the end of Destiny, a video game in which players must travel through space, finding dumb ways to entertain themselves.
> Destiny, a video game in which players must travel the galaxy fighting against powerful adversaries like the Fallen, the Vex, and Bungie.
I do hope it has good place to explore though, like a proper BGS style exploration rather than Shelter style. It will be a weird departure if exploration isn't a part of the game. But then:
and:
so they might axe the exploration altogether and might go with a mix of singleplayer and multiplayer coop. i'm just guessing, but Jason Schreier seems to know what he's talking about.
BioWare Bans Old Republic Player For Using Internet Meme
> "I'm 12 and what is this". If you don't know what that means, here. Everybody back on the same page? OK, so we can all have a laugh at this poor guy's expense when he was banned from Star Wars: Old Republic for using the line.
> Posting "I'm 12 and what is this" in a forum thread, the user was "permanently suspended" from the game for violating its terms of service, specifically - and deliciously - the fact you have to be aged 13 and over to have an account
https://kotaku.com/5878669/bioware-bans-old-republic-player-for-using-internet-meme#
To add a bit more spice to the pot, Bioware apparently has no plans at all to release any singleplayer DLC for the game. (Kotaku article)
Perhaps they completely gave up on the singleplayer part of the game and decided to remove denuvo for that reason lol.
In case anyone forgot, this is the same studio that created a nude model of Ellen Page's body without her consent, then claimed they couldn't possibly be homophobic because Page is an LBGT activist and they had worked with Page at one point.
https://kotaku.com/david-cages-quantic-dreams-accused-of-being-a-toxic-wor-1822068440
> Hennig also wasn’t used to working with a corporation like Electronic Arts. Despite being owned by electronics giant Sony, Naughty Dog had been able to operate autonomously, in large part because they were widely perceived as the corporation’s prestige video game studio. At EA, however, things were different. “She was giving these massive presentations on the story, themes,” said one person who worked on Ragtag. “EA executives are like, ‘FIFA Ultimate Team makes a billion dollars a year.’ Where’s your version of that?”
Xenoblade was a very rare game, at that time used copies were going for $90+. It was also a GameStop exclusive. New or used it was impossible to find. Then all of a sudden "used" copies started showing up in stores, with unused Club Nintendo codes to boot. So instead of selling them for the MSRP of $50 they could charge $90. Here's the article that started asking questions.
Reminds me of the most terrifying Preston Garvey that ever needed your help with a settlement.
(I know Kotaku is a pile of shit, but this is like a diamond in that pile of shit.)
Welp. According this interview from /u/bbrode himself, playtesters found this already, and they let it through.
https://kotaku.com/hearthstone-director-reveals-the-craziest-card-weve-eve-1825114809
This article barely grazes a topic which has already been thoroughly discussed. Here is Jason Schreier's article on the subject: https://kotaku.com/the-collapse-of-viscerals-ambitious-star-wars-game-1819916152
The situation was a bit more complicated than a 15 word quote can really do justice.
We shouldn't chastise a company for for pulling the plug on a project that didn't seem like it would work out for them. What we should chastise are the administrative decisions that lead to an unviable product as well as EA's definition of "a lot of money" is (incidentally, any kind of Star Wars game would probably sell millions; why this isn't enough for EA is rather alarming).
Nintendo markets mostly to kids, and kids are more destructive than fire, so basically that shit is built to last!
also relevant: https://kotaku.com/reminder-the-game-boy-was-almost-indestructible-1631762216
This reminds me of when it was revealed almost everything in WoW was tied to an invisible bunny that spawn-triggers actions https://kotaku.com/the-invisible-bunnies-that-power-world-of-warcraft-1791576630
Jeff have hinted twice at a looking for group-system in game so obviously it's not a guarantee but it seems likely to me that this feature will come to the game eventually.
1: https://youtu.be/RofvPl1zIU8?t=962
2: https://kotaku.com/overwatch-players-want-to-queue-for-roles-blizzard-say-1825028223
> Kaplan stressed, however, that he thinks the complaints that have led people to ask for role-based queuing are valid. He just wants to solve some of the problems people think role-based queuing would address before trying to implement such a system. That starts with grouping. Kaplan figures that if people grouped-up more, they’d find more people amenable to the idea of letting them play the roles and heroes they actually enjoy playing, rather than being disappointed by the hands that fate (and matchmaking) deal them. The problem, he explained, is that Overwatch doesn’t do a great job of helping players find people they’d actually want to group up with right now.
>“I do think people know what role they want to play before they play, I do think people would have more fun playing in a premade group than just sort of randomly hoping the matchmaker finds them someone with the same values as them, and I do think people’s reasons for not wanting to group are actually valid right now,” he said.
>“I think we need to address all those things at once before we can just get to a role queue.”
Tips for the RTS sections:
https://kotaku.com/5382233/tim-schafer-explains-how-to-play-brutal-legend
In short, think of it like Dynasty Warriors. You run around playing an action/brawler game with an army to help you out.
Same as that Korean chick who played Zarya (tank with high damage potential) in Overwatch insanely well at really high ranks. She had to play with a camera pointed towards her for people to believe it was her.
(Edit: Here's an article about her. My details were a bit off but anyway, she was accused of cheating because apparently nobody could be that good on Zarya, especially not a 17-year-old girl. She proved the accusers wrong by playing on stream.)
It's ridiculous the lengths women have to go to to get guys to understand that we can be good at videogames, too, and at more roles than just support.
I've been up to high Master on Overwatch and have had ~~men~~ boys literally scream at me to go back to the kitchen because we were "losing because of the girl" and girls apparently shouldn't play videogames cause they suck at it and I must have gotten a boost and so on.
> people are angry. the gaming community is seeing this as EA testing to see how far they can push the in game transactions
EA ain't the only ones who do it either. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. These guys can downvote, and get angry all they want, but at the end of the day, they keep doing the same thing: preordering video games (of which there is no scarcity), and/or buying them in Week One of the game's sale date (which is an indicator companies watch closely).
I can give no greater example than when the PC Gaming community stomped it's collective feet over a lack of dedicated servers in Modern Warfare 2, announced a boycott, and then proceeded to all buy and play Modern Warfare 2.
I swear, every few months, there's a game people are mad at EA about, and yet they keep going and buying EA titles.
Hmm...
To my understanding, the mobile version has the player go up against bots for their first few games until they level up. Probably to allow the player to get accustomed to the game controls and rules before they start getting rekt by more experienced players straight away.
Edit: Here's a couple of sources that explain in a bit more detail.
Edit 2: Sorry u/egoraptor :P
Why not link the original report from Jason Schreier? This Polygon regurgitation has less detail and incorrectly refers to "a Dragon Age reboot", which (incorrectly) makes it sound like Bioware is rebooting the series (the original article only says they're rebooting their production strategy).
Here is more information: link link
And here I am, clutching the system. http://imgur.com/mqxl4KI
It's going to be a building survival game similar to ARK, using a building system similar to the one in FO4.
4 man groups. Multiplayer only. Dedicated Servers + Battle Royale style (100v100 last I heard) matchmaking.
Obviously take these with heaps of salt, but here are some possible leaks from 4chan - posts made before the announcement.
The rust clone one sounds more in line with everything going on though, and he got the name right.
Edit: Yeah Kotaku Article says it's a rust clone, whew boy
Some anonymous people in online communities or fan bases are short sighted idiots with thought processes insulting to those with legitimate learning disabilities.
Here's an example of something that happened to a game designer for Call of Duty for minor changes that amounted to just a fraction of a second... for a VIDEO GAME.
https://kotaku.com/death-threats-follow-small-call-of-duty-tweak-888324886
Poor guy received death threats.
At the dawn of 3D gaming, <strong>Halo</strong> was originally developed for the Mac and when Steve Jobs introduced the game at MacWorld 1999, it was far beyond what anyone had seen at the time. Quake and Unreal had launched 2 years earlier and Battlefield 1942 we just reaching the end of initial development. There were no other notable First Person Shooter games at that time on the Mac.
Steve Jobs had literally placed the Mac at the forefront of 3D gaming and ultimately decided that it wasn't the type of following he wanted his Macintosh to have. Even after Halo was acquired by Microsoft and ported to PC, I don't think Steve Jobs regretted the choice. We wasn't a gamer and thought it was a waste of his company's resources and didn't care about the $108 billion dollar a year revenue it would generate.
Edit: Had to make it clear that this thread is about the Mac's gaming history and not PC or console... o.o
Couldn't you beat the Generations version of GHZ in two minutes? SEGA even had a contest for it.
If they extended it for just one more minute, this would have been a good thing to implement.
'Jon Jones the game developer — the man with the @jonjones Twitter account — estimates he received over 6000 tweets — almost exclusively hate tweets or death threats — over the course of 72 hours.' Link
The Curious Case Of The 'EA Game Dev' Who Said He Received Death Threats
https://kotaku.com/the-curious-case-of-the-ea-game-dev-who-said-he-receive-1820474458/amp
I recommend you read through the entire thing and make up your own mind, but the evidence is quite convincing for me.
You might enjoy this then:
There was a 17 year old girl that 2 Overwatch pros were convinced was cheating because of how good she was. They even said they'd quit the game if she was legit. She did a live stream showing her and her mouse and everything to dispel doubt, and Blizzard also confirmed that she wasn't cheating. The pros were forced into retirement.
https://kotaku.com/korean-woman-kicks-ass-at-overwatch-gets-accused-of-ch-1782343447
I was actually re-reading this Kotaku article that talks about how the original Destiny 1 story was scrapped
According to that, it was Bungie who approached Activision with the idea of Eververse replacing any DLC after The Taken King, with its funds being used to do smaller but more frequent updates.
As a side note, it's an interesting coincidence that Kotaku pumps out behind-the-scenes info about Bungie when the current design lead Luke Smith used to ghost write for Kotaku prior to joining Bungie...
Sadly, it's already in development according to Jason Schreier who usually seems to have insider info on Bungie.
>Kotaku news editor Jason Schreier tells me he hears that Destiny 3 is indeed already in development, as expected.
I speculate that the Live Team is the majority of those working on D2 right now. This might be why bringing us to parity with D1 Y3 is going to take a year from the launch of D2.
I think it's worth mentioning that Square Enix seemingly, for a long time, was not aware that people disliked the Steam ports of various earlier FF games, with the awful new sprite art.
> Why do they care so much?
Because > “This used to be a god damn community of gamers, nerds, kids that got bullied, kids that got fucked with, kids that resorted to the gaming world because the real world was too fucking hard, too shitty, too lonely, too sad and depressing,”...“the same sluts that rejected us, the same sluts that chose the god damn cool kids over us. The same sluts that are coming into our community, taking the money, taking the subs, the same way they did back in the day.”
Girls didn't touch their sad dick in high school and they're still angry about it as adults
That's just hearsay and conjecture, publishers do care about review scores even for games as a service. Otherwise they wouldn't do things like cancel bonuses as a result of low metacritic scores, https://kotaku.com/destiny-review-scores-may-cost-bungie-2-5-million-1635273500
Kotaku has a nice article about women in BF V
My favorite bit
>What angry dorks mean when they say “historical accuracy” is not a game that’s accurate to the time being presented, then, but accurate to the aspects of that time (or the popular historical re-telling of it) that are sympathetic to their current political and cultural beliefs.
EA does care about the metacritic.com score though... "According to one source, EA was pressuring Visceral to hit a 90 or higher on Metacritic, the video game review aggregator that big publishers rely upon as a rubric for quality."
https://kotaku.com/the-collapse-of-viscerals-ambitious-star-wars-game-1819916152
The article in question in case anybody wants a read.
Also, the movement it's about is called Game Workers Unite, and I happen to be the director of the UK Chapter. AMA if anyone wants to know about us or join if you work in videogames.
Like that dude who sued that British guy for pointing out that his games seemed liked scams and then steam started to pull that dudes games from steam.
I just looked it up. Jim Sterling was the dude who got sued. https://kotaku.com/angered-game-developer-sues-game-critic-jim-sterling-fo-1765484317 for 10 MILLION dollars. Sterling made a video about how the lawsuit was literally gibberish too. Like it made no sense. The dude insisted on representing himself.
Update: he's posted an article on Kotaku, he's heard its a brand new Fallout game that takes the series in a new direction https://kotaku.com/over-140-000-people-are-watching-a-fallout-bobblehead-o-1826397799
>this video is rather strange.
If you're familiar with its creator, Nick Robinson, that's exactly what you'd expect. For an example of what he usually does, take a look at a clip from his series Cool Games Inc, which he co-hosted with Griffin McElroy. The series was a "game design podcast," but in reality it's a sort of strange comedy podcast that borders on surrealist.
> It just really comes off as...creepy
Unfortunately that's also to be expected. Nick Robinson was later fired from Polygon, ending Cool Games Inc and a few other things he helped co-host. The reason given was that he was asking for lewd images from female fans on Twitter, which is pretty creepy.
A couple years ago, Jason Schrier wrote this article on the disaster that was Destiny 1's development (https://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story-behind-the-making-of-destiny-1737556731).
It mentions that Blizzard staff DID help a lot on Destiny 1.
> In December of 2014, Diablo III director Josh Mosqueira and a few other members of his team at Blizzard came to Bungie for a talk, according to two people who were there. The parallels were uncanny; Diablo III had launched to commercial success in 2012 but saw a great deal of criticism from fans thanks to randomized loot, frustrating online DRM, and a lack of endgame content. Both games shared a publisher, Activision, that thought Destiny could redeem itself in fans’ eyes the way Diablo III eventually had after its release.
>"They basically came in and said, ‘Look, here’s our story of developing Diablo III and then bringing in [the expansion] Reaper of Souls,’” said one person who was at the Blizzard talk. “They were saying, like, ‘Hey, random numbers are not fun—dice rolls are not fun. You can give the illusion of randomness, but you want to weight it towards the player… The only point you have to deliver on is that when people leave your game—because they will—when they leave your game, they need to be happy.’”
>People who were at the presentation say it was extraordinarily helpful for Bungie’s team. One source called it “invaluable.” Others said it drove some of the decisions they made for The Taken King. In previous interviews with Kotaku and other sites, director Luke Smith has talked openly about avoiding randomness and designing quests with guaranteed rewards, an approach that has served Destiny well throughout year two so far. Destiny’s meta-narrative has followed the same path as Diablo III’s: It had a rocky launch, then the developers found redemption.
The "satisfaction" you are describing is the exact issue with loot boxes. It's gambling, play and simple and preys on addiction.
I'm all for developers making money, but Loot Boxes are predatory.
You also gotta keep in mind what the IP is and the parent company, this is Animal Crossing a game directed towards a younger audience, and one of Nintendo's most popular IPs.
Some good articles to inform yourself on why people find them problematic:
https://kotaku.com/loot-boxes-are-designed-to-exploit-us-1819457592
Yes I used to be 500 SR I encountered these smurfs every weekend and it was horrible. Either they're throwing their way down or stomping up and it is a terrible game experience for at least 6 players. Also makes you feel you don't matter as the SR is just a playground and a joke to everyone else. I reported every single person to blizzard and with tickets, never any results or punishment. I was even told by one of these smurfs, there is a group who does this and they have a blizzard admin help them do it so they minimize the trouble they get in... but I have no proof to that claim.
Edit: Since I'm getting so much inbox grief about my last comment, I'm not saying if a staffer being involved is true or not, just had a conversation with someone who was doing the stomp back up and bragging through the whole match about it. Team Hanjo
Is that Faith from Mirror's Edge? Because Faith seems to have this "East VS West" design competition, with Asian fan art giving her larger eyes and breasts.
Why are you linking the Bungie forums, instead of, you know, the source directly? I agree that everyone should have read that Kotaku article.
And judging by that Article, Staten's storyline was a) scrapped completely (it can't "shine through"), and b) not everybody inside Bungie agreed that it was good (and, most importantly, the leadership did not).
According to an older Kotaku article, they cite it as between $5M to $10M for the advertising budget on DS2. Granted, they specifically state it was for the "Your mom hates Dead Space 2" campaign. Do you have a source for the $60M claim?
Regardless, if the marketing budget is even remotely that large, it speaks more to me of mismanaged funds than poor sales reception.
Important correction: We were blacklisted for posting that the game existed, NOT for posting spoilers. We actually got script pages that revealed the game's entire opening premise -- your spouse dying, your son getting kidnapped -- and chose not to include those because we didn't want to spoil people. You can see the article for yourself here: https://kotaku.com/leaked-documents-reveal-that-fallout-4-is-real-set-in-1481322956
Don't forget about Kotaku, paragon of journalistic integrity:
Blizzard has to be involved somehow in this. None of these articles even allude to the fact Elysium still exists.
True, but he was the one who found this in 2013. Makes me think he might actually know something. But, who knows.
It's not like development was smooth sailing and EA just swooped in and shut it down for no reason. The kotaku postmortem paints it as one big clusterfuck attributed to both EA and Visceral.
The game was stalling out and EA cut their losses. It sucks that that the gritty single-player Star Wars game wont be realized, but it's an understandable decision.
Yes hacks start popping up over a week ago, example = https://kotaku.com/sea-of-thieves-gets-its-first-wave-of-hackers-1824185739
Although an ESP hack isn't as bad of course as an aimbot or worse god mode.
I'm surprised that health is not server sided.
>ESRB does not consider loot boxes to be gambling,” said an ESRB spokesperson in an e-mail to Kotaku. “While there’s an element of chance in these mechanics, the player is always guaranteed to receive in-game content (even if the player unfortunately receives something they don’t want). We think of it as a similar principle to collectible card games: Sometimes you’ll open a pack and get a brand new holographic card you’ve had your eye on for a while. But other times you’ll end up with a pack of cards you already have.
https://kotaku.com/esrb-says-it-doesnt-see-loot-boxes-as-gambling-1819363091
They don't consider it gambling :(
https://kotaku.com/sources-fallout-76-is-an-online-survival-rpg-1826425333
Dude's being very inconsistent. He's implying there's no singleplayer at all.
I would be genuinely shocked to see the PS5 drop before 2020 at least. Jason Schreier interviewed numerous game devs, and discovered that no development kits have been shipped by Sony yet. It takes a long-ass time to make a game (at least 2 years), and probably longer considering the fact that PS5 would very likely support native 4K. Even if dev kits were shipped right this very moment, fall 2020 is the earliest date on which the console could launch.
Posted this in another thread as well, but Kotaku seems to know more.
They were teasing in the comments that they have info from people working on the project.
The article accompanying the teaser now reads:
" although the studio hasn’t yet said what it is, we hear it’s an online game of some sort. "
Kotaku
So unfortunately I am guessing some sort of MMO'ish thing possibly? I hope not.
Edit: Another confirm by Kotakus Jason Schreier on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1001832458164285442?s=20
Because runescape currency is stable in fact if i recall it 0.63=1mil for a while now i dont normally link kotaku but they have a good article on it so here it is https://kotaku.com/the-runescape-players-who-farm-gold-so-they-dont-starve-1819720013
Edit: got my exchange rate wrong sorry
Yeah Jason wrote about the alleged reboot in a post from May 2016 about the RoI leak:
> From what we hear, Destiny 2 was recently rebooted, with Taken King director Luke Smith taking the reins of that project in the wake of a Bungie staff reorganization.
This is also what I remember hearing during that time. Another thing I remember from around that time is that during the early phases development on D2 was lead by High Moon rather than Bungie because Bungie was struggeling with the D1 DLC. Not sure if that really was/is a thing or if i am misremembering this. We know high Moon helped with D2 but I'm not sure if they really lead the project at some point or not. But in any case, Bungie, a huge studio, is really struggeling to develop this game on their own and Activision uses their right to get other devs into the mix. Too bad it doesn't really show so far.
Edit: Don't want to spread any misinformation and just now got around to do some googling on the High Moon thing. It seems that I was indeed misremembering things. High Moon never lead D2 development at any point, instead they were allegedly in charge of finishing a previously cut a Mars location for D2 according to a Kotaku article:
> [Bungie] ultimately decided to focus it around a single major map—the Hive ship that had been cut from vanilla Destiny—as well as a new public space on Mars, complete with strikes and a new raid. (That entire last Mars chunk was later cut and passed to Activision subsidiary High Moon Studios to develop for Destiny’s full-sized 2016 sequel, a source said. They’re helping Bungie make the game.)
In fact that "guy" was not wrong. It was not easy to find the console in Japan, but that is because a number of retailers did not stock the Xbox One X in the first place and sold it only through pre-orders.
Lots of NDA's most likely. Jason Schreier has also had many articles (and a chunk of his book) dedicated to what a shitshow it is there using anonymous sources from Bungie. This is a good write up on it if you haven't already read it.
I really hope that Kotaku is wrong and this isn't an online game.
I just want a game that plays like New Vegas. I want varied dialogue-options, choices that matter, quests that aren't just shootouts.
I don't give a damn about online gaming at my age. Just give me an actual goddamn RPG.
Microtransactions, loot boxes and anything Eververse related were Bungie's idea, not Activision's, believe it or not.
https://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story-behind-the-making-of-destiny-1737556731
https://www.pcgamesn.com/destiny-2/destiny-2-reboot-jason-schreier
actually there's an article by him on kotaku in 2016 about D2 reboot
https://kotaku.com/the-great-destiny-malaise-of-2016-1754495561
https://kotaku.com/leaked-poster-reveals-destinys-next-expansion-rise-of-1777705438
Fun but not really fun more depressing fact: the game Runescape has a 2007 version of the game and Venezuelans are creating accounts and camping monsters to collect loot to sell for gold and sell the gold for money. They are selling pixel currency for scraps of money to put food on the table. /r/2007scape
I’ll edit this if I can find a link about it
Edit: https://kotaku.com/the-runescape-players-who-farm-gold-so-they-dont-starve-1819720013
https://www.polygon.com/2017/9/10/16283926/venezuelan-gold-farming-runescape-targets
Coding abilities as minions is really easy and not neccesarily a bad idea. Many games employ similar methods, for example Blizzard uses invisible bunnies in WoW.
Riot probably has a simple flag somewhere that tells the game to ignore these minions for all effects that would typically affect minions (or be affected by minions) and some Rioter just forgot to set that flag. That's the embarassing part.
>the sad thing is they wont even acknowledge anything is wrong until the media picks it up, just like the xp fiasco.
Kotaku picked it up:
https://kotaku.com/high-level-destiny-2-activities-are-now-locked-behind-d-1821058051
https://kotaku.com/overpowered-new-gun-dominates-destiny-2-pvp-1821046902
https://kotaku.com/destiny-2-curse-of-osiriss-campaign-has-some-good-mome-1821028759
Here's a great article about it: https://kotaku.com/5975610/the-exceptional-beauty-of-doom-3s-source-code
But you can also just take a look for yourself: https://github.com/id-Software
Edit: It's also worth reading the original code review that gave inspiration to that article: http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php
> Republican Herman Cain quoted a Pokémon movie as he suspended his campaign for President of the United States today.
> "I believe these words came from the Pokémon movie," Cain said during a speech in Atlanta. "Life can be a challenge. Life can seem impossible. It's never easy when there's so much on the line. But you and I can make a difference. There's a mission just for you and me....Just look inside and you will find just what you can do."
> Herman Cain has used those lines before, citing them to "a poet" rather than, more accurately, from the Donna Summer song called "The Power of One" that was in Pokémon: The Movie 2000. Today, dogged by allegations of sexual harassment and an extra-martial affair, all of which the former restaurant mogul denies, he gave the Pokémon movie its proper credit.
The sad truth is that the loot box fiasco that is EA's STAR WARS: Battlefront II has completely overshadowed the Visceral Games Studio shut down. EA will continue to put lootboxes/microtransactions/always online features in their games, and those studios that do not fall in line will be shut down. A quote from Kotaku:
> “Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe,” EA’s Patrick Söderlund said in a blog post. “In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design.”
I cannot emphasize this enough. EA will not produce any more games that do not have any of these features included. EA's bullshittery is way bigger than just the SWBF2 Loot Boxes, it's their entire company direction.
Did you know, Microsoft had plans to use Kinect, to determine how many people sitting on the couch, to charge each individual for renting a movie digitally?
That shit was crazy. Glad Spencer took over, even if I never owned a Xbox. Don't give other companies ideas.
EDIT: My bad, Microsoft filed the patent in the 360 era.
Marvel/Disney pulled the license from Gazillion, though I don't think the reasoning for that has been made public. The original deal for Marvel Heroes was supposed to go through 2019. It's sort of hard to know who specifically is to blame since we don't know what went on behind the scenes.
According to Massively, Marvel is the one that decided to shutdown the game earlier due to creditors pulling out, however.