Second - Helldivers ain’t Flappy Bird. Making an online multiplayer game that needs the ability to do reliable matchmaking across multiple platforms with hundreds of thousands of players out there needs MASSIVE network and infrastructure support…
So you may say “don’t take money from the mob,” but this is more a situation of where if they HADN’T taken Sony’s support, they likely wouldn’t have been able to have the resources to have done all that themselves which could have made the difference between their great success and failure.
Remember that the first helldivers game was also a Sony published title where everything worked out fine for everyone then… but mostly because it wasn’t near as big a success story and making headlines but was instead a far more niche title lost mostly in the noise of smaller dev Sony titles.
I’m sure arrowhead has learned its lesson now and it will likely able probably to flex its muscles in the future thanks to its success financially - as I’m sure lots of publishers will be now coming at them with much more lucrative and favorable contract deals going forward, but they probably would not have been able to do what they wanted to do at the scale that they have been able to had Sony not been there to help provide that initial capital and infrastructure support.
This is Sony’s fault fully. The guys at Arrowhead are just wanting to have the means to make good games. They needed the resources to launch successfully and pretending it would have been feasible otherwise without said resources is sadly… naive.
Not defending Sony, but I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to make a game that can have hundreds of thousands of players playing multiplayer matches simultaneously all over the world, but it needs a lot of infrastructure, and network support and other expensive hard to do stuff that you can’t just shit out like it’s Flappy Bird.
The problem is is they probably needed capital and support to get it off the runway, and Sony attached strings to the capital and support they gave them.
Now that it’s a hit, Sony is trying to flex its legal power via said strings - I’m guessing - and probably have all but threatened this relatively small dev with pulling the rug or taking them to court if they don’t follow orders.
TL;DR - Making games is expensive. Sony probably offered the small dev with limited resources a Faustian bargain and now the Devil is calling for his dues. They probably never had a choice.
Below is a look at the most exasperating news from streaming services from this week. The scale of this article demonstrates how fast and frequently disappointing streaming news arises. Coincidentally, as we wrote this article, another price hike was announced....
They still could have it on rails, just use magnets to secure rather than a latch that can get stuck or broken as easily. I would worry more that magnets = no Hall effect joysticks.
Any time I hear this “calls on” bullshit I see a useless politician saying weakly “come on, guys… stop it.”
Instead of a hard-fisted “fix this or I will use executive power to make you do so directly and in such a way that I do not attempt to preserve any position the ownership class would want me to consider.”
Fucking DO something. I don’t care if it gets overturned or Republicans whine. The people will LOVE you for it you feckless old farts.
For some reason I imagine that scene in of one of the first few episodes of the HBO mini-series Chernobyl, when they wade into the water near the exploded reactor and their flashlights just immediately die due to the massive amount of radiation and the episode ends in darkness with the crew’s Geiger counters just going absolute ape-shit sounding like a singular continuous tone.
To most of us, this is probably just a summary of events over the past year or so. But, it’s good to know that this sort of news is reaching non-gaming channels.
No, the people who deserved it are the ones at the top with garages full of supercars and fleets of private yachts. The Bobby Koticks, the Don Mattricks, etc.
The ones who I guarantee you are NOT suffering or losing their livelihoods.
The tens of thousands of devs who got into making video games because of their deep love of them… devs who have worked countless hours and crunched over the holidays while missing out on sleep, family events and more all just because management won’t plan, can’t stop chasing trends and pivoting the project, and because they fired 10% of the team last quarter to boost the share price by $0.02.
The devs didn’t deserve any of that.
They don’t deserve to lose their jobs right after some game ships and it turns out no one wants to pay $70 plus micro transactions shoved in their faces every other round between matches.
AAA gaming is broken and many of my peers from that industry seem to be in a bad spot now at no fault of their own… but their boss’s boss’s bosses who keep steering the ship into rocks are the ones you should be throwing rotten produce at.
My god… are you… me? Same exact shit. Created my YT account 14 years ago. Made some vids… some got some views… eventually I got a few dollars deposited like for 3 years. Probably totaled the same $100 you mentioned then boom. Shut down.
That was your first thought watching the Halo show? 😅 I mean… yeah that’s important but uhhhh… I’m not ashamed to admit that wasn’t probably my first thought.
Right, but this does seem stupid in a way that makes them seem petty.
And yeah, we never know those things would pass, but if they were to bring them to the table in earnest, they can point over and over again how the Republicans reject sensible healthcare proposals instead of saying how they totally were going to own Trump with this petty stuff.
This is some tired 2018 late night monologue tier eye-rolling stuff, but if it makes you feel good, enjoy I guess.
Car seat adjustment, above seat vehicle interior lights, steering wheel adjustment, door handles, door locks, main rear view mirror, climate controls for vents and seats, car starting, and trunk and seat releases should all have controls that can be operated either directly or with physical buttons.
If there is ALSO a screen driven element, that’s fine, but this stuff needs to work without a screen.
This stuff is not being done for the sake of UX. It is for saving money at the expense of consumer safety.
Democratic mayoral candidates are engaging in games of one-upmanship by launching conservative-sounding plans to increase law enforcement and force people into addiction treatment.
It’s a city run by multi-millionaire landowners who refuse to support big expensive tax-paid projects that would address the issue of homelessness such as :
A. allowing tall more densely populated housing to lower their property values and “ruin the view…”
…or…
B. high speed rail that could allow for Tokyo-like commuting from long distances to cheaper living areas for a working populace.
Anyone who would support left-leaning legislation has largely been priced out of living in SF for like a decade now.
Now, unless you have $5k to set aside for rent every month, you are living outside the city.
AUSTIN, Texas – Leaked video shows Hood County Constable Scott London, Hood County GOP Chair Steve Biggers and Hood County GOP Chair candidate Greg Harrell attending a meeting held by Abolish Abortion Texas (AATX) where they supported the death penalty for women who seek abortions or use IVF, including pregnant minors. London...
“Both sides” are not equal in every way, but they are in enough in some certain aspects (NOT ALL) that it merits making criticisms and comparisons on at least some aspect of the actions of the Democratic party.
All that being said, you should still support Democrats over Republicans, but we - as voters - should be pointing out at the ballot box - especially in primaries - what sort of behaviors will get you replaced by a better candidate within the party.
A Telegram user who advertises their services on Twitter will create an AI-generated pornographic image of anyone in the world for as little as $10 if users send them pictures of that person. Like many other Telegram communities and users producing nonconsensual AI-generated sexual images, this user creates fake nude images of...
Stable Diffusion has been easily locally installed and runnable on any decent GPU for 2 years at this point.
Combine that with Civitai.com for easy to download and run models of almost anything you can imagine - IP, celebrity, concepts, etc… and the possibilities have been endless.
In fact, with completely free apps like Draw Things on iOS, which allows you to run it on YOUR PHONE locally - where you can download models, tweak, customize, hand it images directly from your mobile device’s library… making this stuff is now trivial on the go.
I like Phil more than Don Mattrick, but the real honest truth of why this is happening is a combination of factors that has made things terrible finally coming to a head.
The biggest long-term one is the fact that the game industry has leaned for too long on the fact that they would always have a new steady reliable crop of disposable eager young developers and has made being a game developer of any kind a completely untenable long-term career.
We have no “grizzled ancient” masters. At least not in the US or any Western dev house.
It is a completely horrible career. I dreamed as a kid of making games when I grew up. I went to grad-school for it and worked in it for only 5 years before being at a studio that closed only 2 years after we were making $8 million / day at our peak daily revenue.
After that, I found a job that paid 2x with zero crunch at a regular software company that I remained at until literally January this year.
Why would I go back to the far more unstable field of game dev when I have a family to take care of, and a mortgage I need to be able to pay reliably?
At this point, we have only maybe a handful of game dev studio heads that have been involved in designing games for more than a few years.
We have Ken Levine - who has changed studios multiple times. We have Joseph Staten - who did his best to push for the good parts of Halo Infinite. We have Cory Barlog - who made modern God of War and is still working for Sony Santa Monica for now. We have some good long-term indie devs, we have Insomniac and to a lesser extent Respawn (as Apex Legends seems to have become their only focus anymore) as game companies that are doing things pretty well practice-wise… and that’s about it.
Cliff Blezinski quit and got into investing. Neil Druckmann is focused more these days on the Last of Us TV show.
Everything else is either Valve - who doesn’t actually make games anymore - or a garbage company that is absolute shit. Our studios are mostly run by trend-chasing bean-counting executives like Bobby Kotick who never touched game dev from any place except a quarterly earnings perspective and looking at whatever type of game is making the most money that they can try to force their devs to poorly emulate and pivot whatever their current multi-year project is… more toward - regardless of what the game’s original design was.
This means nothing is being spear-headed by anyone who has learned to figure out what they’re doing.
Meanwhile, people like Shigeru Miyamoto has been making games at Nintendo for 4 decades at this point. The top guys at all the major Japanese studios (especially Nintendo) have become the masters when it comes to game design because they’ve literally done it all their lives.
As such, they know how to make fun games, and are a part of games studios now generally run by older people who have been making them for a long part of their lives.
TL;DR - the games industry in the West didn’t give a shit about retaining talent long-term - and as such is run only by bean counting trend-chasing MBAs and staffed by 20-somethings who are learning as they go, burning out, and then pivoting to general software when they decide to start a family.
Slightly off-topic, but I really hate that the Rs are so goddamn horrific that the Ds can just gesture at how bad the Rs are and not actually do much tangibly for their voters compared to… say… like how LBJ did with the passing of the addition of Medicare and Medicaid to Social Security or FDR with the “Rural Electrification Act”… because they know that the alternative for voters not voting for them = enabling of fascists who will speedrun the 4th Reich.
I really wish the left was even half as powerful as what the demagogue-spouting right-wing news stations pretended.
I kinda feel like this, too, but unlike when I first began working in games, I now have a family to take care of.
Also I like the 2x pay, relatively higher job stability, and overall work-life balance with basically zero crunch… so assuming nothing changes in the games industry, it looks like my stepping away from making games starting 11 years ago is still a permanent move.
A president’s budget proposal is seldom passed into law. Instead, it’s an expression of the priorities the president promises to fight for, often coming on the heels of an agenda laid out in the State of the Union address....
"PSN isn't supported in my country. What do I do?" Arrowhead CEO: "I don't know" (lemmy.world)
Arrowhead CEO on negative reviews: "I guess it's warranted. Sorry everyone for how this all transpired. I hope we will make it up and regain the trust by providing a continued great game experience." (twitter.com)
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/4dddfb0c-e6d2-4ad8-b1c8-2a2c89d6f912.png
All the ways streaming services are aggravating their subscribers this week (arstechnica.com)
Below is a look at the most exasperating news from streaming services from this week. The scale of this article demonstrates how fast and frequently disappointing streaming news arises. Coincidentally, as we wrote this article, another price hike was announced....
Roku OS home screen is getting video ads for the first time (arstechnica.com)
Nintendo Switch 2 report details magnetic Joy-Con, Pro Controller compatibility (www.eurogamer.net)
cross-posted from: sopuli.xyz/post/11963267...
White House calls on pension funds to adopt stronger labor standards (wapo.st)
What happens when every time your browser sends data to a tracker it makes a beep sound? (infosec.exchange)
video...
Tesla slashes vehicle and self-driving-ish software prices as shares plummet (www.theregister.com)
How Greed Ruined Gaming (www.youtube.com)
To most of us, this is probably just a summary of events over the past year or so. But, it’s good to know that this sort of news is reaching non-gaming channels.
YouTube’s ad blocker crackdown now includes third-party apps (www.theverge.com)
DeSantis signs controversial bill banning civilian boards from investigating police misconduct (www.sun-sentinel.com)
Hollywood writers went on strike to protect their livelihoods from generative AI. Their remarkable victory matters for all workers. (www.brookings.edu)
Democrats introduce bill to name Miami prison after Trump (thehill.com)
European car safety body is coming for touchscreens. The European New Car Assessment Programme mandates that key controls need physical buttons or switches (www.politico.eu)
Carmakers are equipping their latest models with fancy touchscreens, but that could cause problems with Europe’s largest car safety authority....
San Francisco Democrats are locked in a race to the right (www.politico.com)
Democratic mayoral candidates are engaging in games of one-upmanship by launching conservative-sounding plans to increase law enforcement and force people into addiction treatment.
LEAKED VIDEO: Texas Republicans Attended Meeting with Group That Suggested Violence and Jail For Women who Have Abortions and Use IVF (www.texasdemocrats.org)
AUSTIN, Texas – Leaked video shows Hood County Constable Scott London, Hood County GOP Chair Steve Biggers and Hood County GOP Chair candidate Greg Harrell attending a meeting held by Abolish Abortion Texas (AATX) where they supported the death penalty for women who seek abortions or use IVF, including pregnant minors. London...
‘IRL Fakes:’ Where People Pay for AI-Generated Porn of Normal People (www.404media.co)
A Telegram user who advertises their services on Twitter will create an AI-generated pornographic image of anyone in the world for as little as $10 if users send them pictures of that person. Like many other Telegram communities and users producing nonconsensual AI-generated sexual images, this user creates fake nude images of...
Majority of Americans now use ad blockers (www.theregister.com)
Phil Spencer on what the hell is happening in the games industry (www.polygon.com)
Power-mad modder puts Sonic the Hedgehog at the heart of the most tedious game ever made, so you can speed boost to the end in 3 straight hours instead of 8. (www.pcgamer.com)
The House GOP just gave Biden’s campaign a huge gift: Roughly 80 percent of House Republicans just lined up behind a plan to cut Social Security and ban all abortions (www.vox.com)
Donald Trump would be on track to win a historic landslide in November — if so many US voters didn’t find him personally repugnant....
How did Canada end up with worse air quality than the US? (www.theguardian.com)
Year of devastating wildfires meant Canadians were breathing worse air than southern neighbours for first time ever...
'You will not enjoy videogames anymore if you work in a big game studio:' New Blood's boss weighs in on what sets it apart amid an industry crisis (www.pcgamer.com)
Biden’s populist budget marks the overdue end of trickle-down economics (thehill.com)
A president’s budget proposal is seldom passed into law. Instead, it’s an expression of the priorities the president promises to fight for, often coming on the heels of an agenda laid out in the State of the Union address....