Balatro is 1) a fluke, an exception, a rarity and 2) not something big studios could even possibly replicate. What would be the point of a big studio trying to make a game that one developer can pull off? The closest the likes of Ubisoft in particular are getting to games like Baltro are their Indie-esque side projects that parts of their bigger studios engage in on the side, like Valiant Hearts. Those can never be enough to finance a big operation though.

Good games don’t automatically sell, on the contrary. Your average Ubisoft open world slop is “good”, but that’s not enough. Even very good, exceptional games don’t automatically sell. Game development is inherently risky. Large publishers tried to game the system by making “safe” bets, by offering spectacle in combination with tried and true mechanics and narratives. This worked for a long time, but due to changing market conditions, the core audience for these types of games getting tired of them and younger gamers not caring about the presentation, these publishers are spending more on a shrinking segment of the market.

The problem is that they maneuvered themselves into a corner. They have built huge, art-heavy studios in expensive cities to make large games that bring in large sums of money that finance this costly development. You can’t easily downsize this kind of operation, you can’t easily change your modus operandi after having built entire companies around it. I’m convinced that this will result in the death of most large publishers and developers. Ubisoft is only the start.

Why should EA, Microsoft or Sony fare any differently? Each can only hope that enough of their major competitors die so that they don’t have to fight around the same segment of the market anymore. They are all fundamentally unable to meaningfully capture the P2W and Gacha markets (same thing, really), especially in Asia, a segment where companies that were built to serve these types of games are truly at home. Those will slowly take over, until they too are too large and bloated to respond to changing market conditions - or until some event outside of their control, like a major conflict and/or economic crisis, wipes them off the map, paving the way for someone else entirely to lead the industry. The only thing that will remain constant is millions of small Indies fighting for scraps, with a tiny handful having the right combination of luck and skill (although mostly the former) to make a decent living.

It’s actually a deliberate stylistic choice. The colors are washed out with a post-processing filter. Textures are actually much more colorful. You can fix this in an emulator, but the problem is that it’s difficult to find a color preset that works in all lighting conditions. BotW has a consistent, almost painterly art style, even if it’s relatively muted.

Sinophobia

The only people who claim that legitimate criticism of the Chinese government is “sinophobia” are 1) the Chinese government, 2) their trolls and 3) tankies.

Please don’t be deliberately obtuse. You can do better than that.

In case it was unclear, the training material of most LLMs will almost inevitably include propaganda. If that propaganda is not deliberately added to the data, then that’s unintentional, a byproduct of poor vetting at worst. That’s obviously fundamentally different from an LLM being both deliberately trained with propaganda and having hard checks built into it that filter out certain keywords the government doesn’t want citizens to inform themselves about, which is what China is doing. You can’t honestly believe that the two are the same.

There is a difference between censorship and propaganda. We were talking about the latter.

There is also a difference between government-mandated censorship and self-censorship. ChatGPT is almost exclusively doing the latter in order to avoid civil lawsuits, not the government busting down the doors. That’s obviously not even remotely the same as a Chinese LLM cracking down on Winnie the Pooh, because the God Emperor has a fragile ego.

Then there is the whole matter of training material. You won’t get most LLMs - including entirely open source ones with no commercial interest behind them - to spout your fringe political opinions as facts, because there is very little training material out there that agrees with you (or talks about how to launch an armed resistance - how many books and websites do you think exist on this topic?). A flawed democracy is still a democracy - and no serious scholar on this topic will call the US anything but that or variations of the term. Whether or not this remains the case after another four years of Trump is an entirely different matter. It’s not unlikely that the country becomes a hybrid regime like Hungary or worse, but an LLM that has difficulties with answering two questions about the past or present without hallucinating once can’t look into the future.

What annoys me the most about your comment is not that nearly everything about it is factually wrong, but that it’s nothing but whatsboutism, an attempt at defending what the Chinese regime is doing. That’s not a good look.

Try making that argument in a court of law. No, intent matters.

So factual reporting about Chinese censorship is “anti-Chinese propaganda”? Are you really that thin-skinned about your favorite dictatorship?

Most buyers couldn’t tell you what source code is to save their own lives, so that’s easier said than done.

The difference is that it’s intentional here.

The player with the highest upload speed and most stable connection should be the one running the game on their machine. You could use Steam’s family feature to create a “family” and share the game with the friend with the best Internet connection so that they don’t have to purchase it.

Note that some games explicitly block family sharing (usually titles that have their own launcher). I haven’t checked if this applies here.

How do dialogues work in coop in Larian RPGs and what makes them so disappointing? Thanks!

Anything interesting I should know as a newbie? What are some less obvious games that work well with the controls and size of the display?

Anbernic RG35XXSP, an ARM-based emulation console running Linux (not Android) that liberally “borrows” its clamshell design from the Game Boy Advance SP, although it is slightly, almost unnoticeably larger and has more buttons. Nintendo’s trained assassins, I mean, lawyers haven’t gotten wind of it yet, it seems. Games are loaded from MicroSD cards. This particular model has two slots. Ideally, you have the OS on one card and your data - including config, games and save games - on the second one. That way, you can easily update or swap out the operating system without having to back your data up all the time.

Pros (only had it for a few days): Well-built, robust materials, great screen, long battery life, WiFi, HDMI out and streaming in both directions (not tested yet), clicky buttons, sufficient processing power (up to SNES/PS1/GBA runs great and fits the available buttons, above that it’s hit or miss, at least there’s analog stick emulation with a tap on the power button; you can also play various simpler - both older and newer - PC games with PortMaster, including Shovel Knight and Stardew Valley, since this thing is essentially a Linux PC), large and active community and ecosystem.

Cons so far: Very low quality single speaker (fine for old games with harsh electronic sounds though - it’s not like the GBA had a built-in HiFi system) that produces a few interference sounds in the normal UI, but not while gaming. ROM hacks mostly don’t work, no matter which emulator you choose in RetroArch. The shoulder buttons rattle a little, buttons are fairly loud (you won’t be playing it covertly in a quiet office) and the D-Pad is a tiny bit too stiff and too flat for my taste. There’s no Bluetooth audio yet and the sleek and fast MuOS, unlike stock and Knulli, doesn’t support Bluetooth controllers yet.

Cost: About 50-70 bucks, depending on where you’re living and where it’s shipped from + import duties and shipping (which do add up though - to about €100 in Europe - which is why I got a barely used one from ebay for €70 instead). I feel like €70 is about the most this is worth. I was about to cancel the idea of getting the device entirely when I saw the total costs, but then found the ebay listing. This is subjective, of course. If you compare it to far more expensive emulation consoles from even just a few years ago, it’s definitely a bargain by comparison, even at 100 bucks.

If you don’t like this form factor, the Chinese factory behind the device churns out a different shape with the same or very similar internals what feels like very other month. There are also more powerful models with one or two thumb sticks, which make sense for emulating more demanding consoles, but are also larger. There are smaller and less powerful systems too, the RG28XX (Game Boy Micro “inspired”) and RG Nano (Pokémon Mini), although those appear to be so small that they are more novelties than actually practical, at least in adult male hands. If you have kids, they might love them though. I should add that Anbernic is far from the only game in (China)town making emulation consoles like these, but their devices are popular, well-built and have the advantage of a community having developed around them.

On a technical level, these can’t really do anything better than an Android phone with a controller cradle, are significantly less powerful than even a mid-range phone from ages ago - but those are cumbersome and annoying, at least in my experience, since you have to pry the phone out of its case without dropping it, fiddle with getting the cradle around it, connect it, launch the emulator, etc. This is more of an old-school single-purpose device, just for gaming, one that you take out of your pocket, switch on and 20 seconds later you’re playing (or one second if it’s on standby). Following the advice of another user, I’ve got it configured to continue the last game exactly where I left off after turning it on, which makes it ideal for pick up and play.

The aspect ratio of modern displays is also not very suitable for older 2D games and you are simply more immersed playing especially GBA games on a device that looks and feels almost exactly like a GBA SP with a screen mod. This particular 640x480 screen is - while not a perfect match - much closer to the aspect ratio of old portable and home consoles. Since it’s not 100% pixel-perfect, by default, both the stock OS and MuOS (which is what I would recommend) even come with a screen bezel that simulates the bezel of the GBA SP, which elegantly solves this issue, since otherwise, there would be one or two black bars (unless you’re a barbarian and like to stretch old games).

The form factor of this particular device is both a blessing and a curse. It’s faithful to the original, it makes the device very portable - but it’s of course not ideal for long play sessions. You can 3D print yourself an ergonomic cradle, but that’s not really the intention. This device is meant for 15 minutes bursts of classic gaming at work, on the bus or in bed before sleeping, even though the battery can probably last until well after your digits have succumbed to arthritis. The RG 34XX (styled after a normal GBA) is more ergonomic, just like a GBA is more ergonomic than a GBA SP, but the screen isn’t protected and it’s a larger device to carry around. It depends on your priorities.

No, I have no idea why I wrote this huge text either. Bit of a habit, unfortunately. Originally, this was just three short paragraphs, but I guess I wanted to sort my own thoughts on the device. I hope you appreciate it though.

I appreciate the info. Why does that lack of style inheritance remind me of making PowerPoint slides?

So you didn’t install the game from within Portmaster on the device itself?

Excellent idea. It feels much better than having to manually launch the last game. I’m assuming you’ve already configured Rertroarch to create a save state any time a game is being closed.

Is there a way to have the hinge work as a power button even if the device is fully powered down? I really don’t like that you have to hold the power button for several seconds.

Neat theme, by the way. How difficult is it to create one of these?

Have you tried out this huge theme pack? So many fun themes in there.

https://github.com/MustardOS/theme/releases/tag/2024-12-14_0720

My current favorite is the SteamOS facsimile.

I’ve only had the device for a few days and barely scratched the surface. Anything less obvious I should know?

Thanks for your helpful answer. I’ll investigate this further, but it would probably be simpler to remake the game from the ground up. I’m hardly the best programmer in the world, but even I could probably pull this off in a relatively short time - I just need the motivation.

If I do, I’ll send you a copy. Maybe this would be a fun first Godot project. I’ve been meaning to look into this engine for a while now.

Have you tried MuOS instead? Portmaster works just fine with that on this exact device - and it’s a great OS for it.