Obviously this is just me, but here is a list of the last 5 games I purchased that were not smaller indie titles:

Stalker 2, Elden ring, remnant 2, bg3, dragon’s dogma 2

You could argue that remnant is intended for multiplayer and you could argue that maybe only bg3 and stalker and really narrative driven but the truth is, anymore I tend to buy single player and stream to my friends than I do actually play mp games. The only mp game i was tempted by was Helldivers and I was just too busy at the time.

Anything else are steam deck friendly indie games. I buy a lot of those, and bought a lot even before I had a deck.

In my anecdotal experience, when I see x game is multiplayer, or live service, or just not an experience I can enjoy on my own time I tune it out. For example, I always bought Diablo games but I don’t own 4.

I also immediately think of some other big ones that I opted out of, like Wukong. People fucking love single player games when they are good games. I think the real issue is developing a good game is hard. Developing a game with dark practices and otherwise addicting (but not necessarily fun) gameplay is a much easier way to make uninspired games made by committee.

It’s just easier to point the blame at the market than actually admit that upon self reflection you realized it is best to avoid the hard part of game development.

I quit a couple years ago for good, but my main account on RuneScape was created in classic as a kid. I had about a year and a half of PLAY time on the account, mind you the vast majority of that was back when you had the hard 5 minute afk timer, so that was at least moderately active play. Then if you add my ironman account I have nearly 1/15th of my whole life logged into RuneScape. I don’t regret it, my whole friend group as an adult stem from those friendships I made online during my young teen years. However, as a modern game as much as I have a place for it in my heart, I found I had more of a negative addictive relationship with it. Maybe I always did, but I didn’t feel a negative mental effect at a young age.

I have over 1k hours in The Long Dark and 7 days to die. Around 500 in space engineers, darkest dungeon, binding of Isaac, enter the gungeon, grim dawn, and satisfactory. ~300 hours in ToME4 and Caves of qud each. That’s just steam stuff though, there are a lot of games that I know are up there that aren’t on steam.

I’m sure I have at least similar numbers to 500-1k if not much higher in Diablo 2-3, and I’m sure more than a few thousand in wow though I lost my og account after wotlk because I forgot the details when I quit so I’m really not sure.

I would agree with your last statement, but in the case of Xbox i think it is by design. They already excitedly talk about windows handhelds being the future and its because the console market has almost always been a loss, even back to the Sega selling massively under production cost to try and take ground from Nintendo. Games were always what made the profit.

In the case of Xbox, their business model for a long time has been moving to a live service streaming model, i don’t think they want to be in the console market. If they can move their app on all kinds of devices, they can skip the investment of the console and instead focus on what the real profit driver was all along.

The long dark is one of my favorite games of all time and I have to say, I don’t know how you can say just the cover photo looks similar. Here are some very similar things I noticed:

1. You have a picture of an in game menu that looks exactly like TLD
2. The way the flare and torches are handled is wildly similar, especially in your video where you are holding off wolves.
3. That frozen body with snow all over it? It literally looks like it was copy pasted from TLD.
4. You mention that there will be two modes, story and endless, very much like TLD too. I would wave that as a coincidence if everything else, including the name of the game, feel like a rip of TLD.

I can’t just look at these things and think it is a coincidence, they are all so similar.

I would have been more likely to wishlist and had less of a negative reaction if you:

1. Didn’t act like there is nothing similar between the games and owned up to the fact you were inspired by such a masterpiece of a game.
2. Actually was bringing something new to the table here, most of your trailer is showing everything I know from TLD, if you have new proprietary systems and ideas, like cooking why aren’t you showcasing them? All I see is an animation for cooking.
3. The game looks really rough at the moment, and I respect the ambition. However, when I seen 2024 as the release date and this is what there is on show, I can only assume the rest of the game lacks the same polish.

I do wish you luck, but in my opinion as someone from your likely target audience I would not purchase your game.

I’ve been saying this to my friends for a good while. I would take it even further than that too.

My prediction has long been that since they were thinking about getting rid of it anyway, and they are shifting focus, that what you predict will happen and that eventually either Xbox will not exist or the Xbox of the future will just be a streaming dongle like the firestick. Just a little app store with controller and you stream all of your games over wifi.

They sell it for dirt cheap and no legit console can compete for basic gaming. Sony will still have a hardcore market, especially with vr and their first party titles, but most of the casual crowd would buy a 50-100 dollar “Xbox” so fast and just pay for game pass. It is a no brainer for Xbox, consoles are always a major loss of money and they don’t want physical media anyway.

Edit: “We have a different vision for the future of gaming. A future where players have a unified experience across devices. A future where players can easily discover a vast array of games with a diverse spectrum of business models. A future where more creators are empowered to realize their creative vision, reach a global audience, unite their communities, and succeed commercially. A future where every screen is an Xbox.”

While they announced new hardware they were real hush on it, just that it would shake up the industry. While I’m sure they would say that regardless and a lot of people say a handheld, either way I don’t think it’s just a console. A handheld would allow exactly my prediction to be possible but it wouldn’t be as cheap.

That quote feels like it nails exactly what I expected though. It might be some time but I do think it will happen and their whole narrative seems to be moving away from Xbox being a console.

No, they aren’t. DLC is an expansion upon the content. The best case scenario for mtx that do not affect gameplay are cosmetic only.

If a game in any way has anything else than cosmetic mtx, the game is worse.

“But you don’t have to buy it!” Is how I often see them defended, the subtext being that, if I don’t buy them it doesn’t affect my experience.

Here is the secret, games with mtx are designed to have problems and they sell you the solution. They are designed WORSE intentionally, so you will spend money to bypass the inconveniences. Often your time.

A perfect example is something like long standing games selling boosts to max level. They’re aware the old content is dead, and they’re aware the only people playing it are the people who don’t want to spend money. Why don’t they fix that?

The answer is they did, they decided that inconvenience was acceptable in their game in order to convince the player to spend money.

MTX is not content, often it’s used to bypass content or save time. DLC is content. DLC often expands upon the experience of the game. MTX worsens the experience of the game just buy existing. Dlc doesn’t change your experience if you don’t purchase or use it. MTX changes the game at a base level no matter if you spend money or not.

I suppose the irony of trying to make it less lGbtq and instead making it lgbTq goes unnoticed by the bigoted creator?

I have the HP envy 360, I have the Ryzen 5000 series not Intel. I’m a software engineering student that also leans heavily into the enthusiast side in terms of any kind of software, and I haven’t ran into anything I can’t do with this. I don’t game on it though so I can’t speak to that, I use other hardware for it. The touchscreen works well, I picked up some styluses for it that have different tips based on what I’m doing and I’ve done anything from note taking to art. I also fold it for watching YouTube and stuff sometimes or reading. The battery life is pretty good, if I’m doing heavy stuff i usually have to plug it in before I hit the end of the day. Lightweight stuff I’ve had it last a couple days.

The laptop comes with windows 11 but I have a dual boot setup. It runs fantastic in Linux or windows, this thing is a little powerhouse. The only issue I had on install of linux (I’m using debian) was that it didn’t recognize my wifi adapter but it wasn’t a hard fix. Otherwise it just feels fantastic to use. Its light, sleek, and stylish in a modern way if those are bonuses for you. Feels good to type on, and has an aluminum case. Other than my steam deck it’s probably my favorite piece of tech I own.

Larian (baldurs gate 3) is massive for being indie. I think where your misconception comes from is the term indie. The term comes with a lot of predetermined expectations and definitions, but in spite of this fact very large studios can be indie.

Of course it feels weird to label a studio as large as larian indie when compared to the likes of supergiant(hades) or two brothers of bay 12 who created dwarf fortress. None of the three are technically any less indie, but one certainly feels more indie, doesn’t it?

Sweet, I’ll check them out myself. Thanks for the suggestions

If you’re into gaming I would suggest

• NoClip (video game documentarians about modern video games)
• video game history hour (general video game history done by the video game history foundation)
• insert credit ( almost game show style, the hosts have only a few minutes to answer all kinds of questions about games, the gaming industry, or even opinions.)

Otherwise I really enjoy

• behind the bastards ( kind of like deep dives into shitty people of the world and what makes them tick)
• cautionary tales ( true stories about disasters, humon error, and catastrophies )
• 99 percent invisible (weekly episodes on all kinds of deep dives into things that often go without notice in our lives, the most recent episode covers the history of album art for example)