• 3 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Cause it doesn’t matter if they are still profitable. If you aren’t MORE profitable than your last outing, then you aren’t growing, and if your business isn’t growing, it’s dying.

    However, I wonder if the premise is flawed here. In 1999, you could probably get a somewhat accurate idea of a game’s profitablity by comparing dev cost vs units sold. However, with live service being the AAA fascination du jour, and Call of Duty in particular having a whole game mode siloed off into the free to play space, I question if “units sold” is indicative of financial success anymore.


  • Yes and no. There is an absolute avalanche of Star Wars media with knotty, interwoven stories charting all sorts of characters and their escapades before, during, and after the films’ time periods. However, 99% of this was jettisoned when Disney bought it. I believe they brought forward the original films, the prequels, The Clone Wars, and maybe a handful of other things, but all other media was siloed into the “Legends” continuity. Frankly, it’s a move I understand. While there are standouts among the Legends stories, there’s also a ton of dreck, made quickly and cheaply to cash in on the Star Wars boom of the 90s.

    Whats funny, though, is that Disney’s Marvel style approach to Star Wars (interconnected TV series, movies, games, etc.) has just started the rat’s nest of continuity snarls and incomprehensible lore all over again, with the same highly uneven results as far as quality goes.




  • So, to be clear, the gameplay is not a reimagining of the old Lion head tycoon game “The Movies”, and is more similar to the KairoSoft style of management game? I.e. no machinima-lite actual direction of your features?

    If so, that’s a little disappointing. I feel like no one ever picked up the torch after Lionhead, and with the availability of The Movies and it’s expansion limited (I don’t believe they are available for digital purchase anywhere), the itch those games were reaching for goes unscratched.








  • I think it might be helpful to really drill into what you want vs what you’re experiencing. You state you have a desire to grow socially, but your attempts to do so have left you feeling symptoms of burnout.

    More information about what you feel is expected of you, socially, at work, and what the specific triggers for your negative emotional reactions are would be useful to identify strategies to ameliorate those responses.

    Doing some real specious armchair psychoanalysis here, but you’re statement that you do not want to be somewhere where you might be recognized indicates to me, specious armchair psychologist extraordinare, that you perhaps have some self-esteem issues which are going to be a significant impediment to socializing in any context, let alone work. I’m casting aspersions from within my glass house here, but in the worst troughs of my depression, I rationalize self-isolation as a protective measure so that I don’t have to converse with anyone about my life, since I’m not proud of anything I’ve done in those moments. It’s only when I get myself back into a headspace where I have things in my life that I’m excited about and want to share with people that socialization begins to look attractive again. If any of that rings true with you, you might recalibrate your focus from trying to force yourself to enjoy your professional social life and instead focus on the thing that’s actually holding you back from making that a reality.

    Good luck, and I hope you find a solution.


  • Remakes are not inherently devoid of creativity. And, frankly, Capcom seems to have a pretty decent track record when it comes to revisiting their IP, at least as far as the Resident Evil series. Case in point, the remake of RE1 from way back in the GameCube days is, arguably, the definitive way to experience that story. It retained the core features of the OG game, but expanded upon them, and remixed certain aspects to keep the experience fresh, even for a diehard fan of the OG. I would like to have seen the face of someone who played the hell out of RE1 watching a dispatched zombie resuscitate as a Crimson Head for the first time.

    More recently, the RE 2 and 3 remakes offer a wildly different experience from their original blueprints, what with the change in perspective and what not. However, rather than overhauling everything about those games into RE4 style action games, as the perspective would imply, they maintain an emphasis on inventory management, puzzles, and evading danger rather than confronting it. This keeps the remakes feeling like the games that they are based upon, but offers a different gameplay experience, one that is less of an ask for modern players to adapt to.

    So, idk man. Call me a simpleton lining up to suckle at corporate teats if you like, but I’m pretty fucking excited over the idea of a Dino Crisis remake.




  • I believe I have a similar issue as you. I’ve described it as being caught in a maximization trap. See, I spend all day thinking about the fun things I’ll do when I have free time. However, when I get home, I have a huge amount of difficulty selecting what activity to engage in from my plethora of options. I’m inexplicably terrified of making the “wrong” choice. Like, what if I choose to play Game A, but that only offers 6.9 units of fun per hour, when I could be playing game B, which offers 7.1? So, instead of actually doing anything, I sit down at an intersection of options and have a panic attack about my inability to actually do anything.

    I wish I had a silver bullet recommendation for you, but this is an ongoing struggle for me. I try to be cognizant of when I’m starting to fall into the thinking trap of “maximizing fun” and shut it down before it spoils the evening. As others have said, taking notes throughout the day when inspiration does strike, rather than telling myself I’ll remember when I get home does help to some extent. Additionally being open to alternative forms of entertainment helps as well. What I mean is, sometimes when I’m upset with myself for not being able to force myself to just start a game and see if I like it, I’m so hyper fixated on the gaming aspect that I ignore the possibility my body/brain is saying, “probably enough screentime for today, don’t you think?”, and select a book instead. Or go for a walk. Or “meditate” (read as: listen to music while stoned).

    Good luck buddy, keep your stick on the ice, and remember, we’re all in this together.





  • He was dismissed for “gross misconduct” following an investigation into his involvement in sexual harassment. One of the articles has the guy’s lawyer saying it was a sham investigation because he was not involved in it (as in, was not questioned). Which, if this were a court of law, where a defendant has the right to confront their accusers, then sure, he’s got a point.

    But it wasn’t that, and clearly Sony/Bungie felt that he was a greater liability than an asset. That leads me to believe that they DID find evidence of wrongdoing on his part, convincing enough that questioning him was unnecessary, and severe enough that they felt they could terminate him for cause. In taking those steps, I’m certain they cleared it with legal to ensure that their case was as airtight as they could make it, especially if there was a 45 million dollar payment at stake.

    So, maybe he’s being truthful, and he was a convenient fall guy for Bungie to throw to the wolves during the height of the scrutiny on them. However, until there’s more convincing evidence available than, “well they didn’t ask ME if I harassed my colleagues”, I’m not buying it. Discovery will be interesting.