I figured I'd make an /e/ equivalent of that great, big /beat/ thread.
Recently I have been slogging away on XCOM: Enemy Within with the Long War mod. Humanity is doomed as I'm simply incapable of holding back the torrent of battleships the aliens keep hurling at me.
>>23206 Definitely not the best RPG ever, but despite feeling more like an old school adventure game than an RPG, it's miles ahead of any RPG released in recent years when it comes to choice and consequence and reactivity, which are the bread and butter of any proppa RPG. That's probably why its cock is getting sucked so hard.
In contrast, I played The Outer Worlds before Disco Elysium and it found it to be an utter travesty of an RPG. People were hailing it as the spiritual successor to New Vegas but it had only about a tenth of the soul, charm, and depth of New Vegas.
>>23206 >she generally enjoys anything you read more than play.
That may be the issue. I love to read, I don't love having to wait while a character awkwardly pathfinds around a screen to get to a position they can reveal the next sentence that turns out to be irrelevant or some tedious backstory. I don't love to have long filler conversations with NPCs on the offchance it might progress the story and I definitely don't love having to reread the whole thing simply because I triggered a game ending mechanism for non-obvious reasons.
I've discovered Quake Injector, a neat little java app that automatically downloads, installs and launches Quake map packs. Amazing how just one less step of fucking around changes your attitude on things sometimes, but anyway.
There's a lot of boomer shooters out at the minute, but fuck me, nothing beats the originals does it. Mappers are putting out some truly phenomenal stuff to this day. Arcane Dimensions is a must play for anyone who likes their old-school shooters. A lot of the modern map packs are using its content as a base too, so it really feels like a fresh, modern game, with those janky OG Quake quirks smoothed out, and a very subtle, but huge improvement to the weapon and enemy balance.
I'm going to get into mapping for a bit I think, and use the excuse to fanny around making loads of daft white noise and dark ambient custom music.
I like the current burst of oldskool shooters as it gives something fresh to play and I like to support people who've clearly put a lot of love into making something nostalgic to them. Most have been great fun too.
But you're right about map packs and mods. I've not even touched on any quake stuff, I'm still sitting on Doom and the absolute endless amount of content it's had produced over the years. I love the gameplay feel in it more than most properly 3D games, it's shocking how well it was nailed so early on.
I'm giving The Outer Worlds another try, but I just can't get into it. On paper it's everything I want, a worthy successor to New Vegas, but it's not gelling with me.
It's like an entire game of that one bit in Bioshock Infinite where you visit that tycoon's factory, and all the workers are competing for the lowest pay. It's trying to be a critique of capitalism but it's so blunt and direct it's saying nothing anybody with their brain switched on in 2019 doesn't already know; and then you're supposed to think it's clever.
Blade Runner, Alien, and Robocop are all 30 odd years old, the evil corporatism thing isn't new or exciting. But if you're a Reddit using pleb who only GOT WOKE after Trump was elected, you'll lap it right up.
It's almost like video games are designed for children isn't it? I can't think of many 12 year olds who will have seen Blade Runner, Alien and Robocop so I'm glad there's a new generation of media they engage with which lays evil corporatism out for them in a way that encourages entry level critical thinking.
>>23235 >It's almost like video games are designed for children isn't it?
Absolutely stonkingly bad take. Don't know much about Outer Worlds, but don't be a dafty.
>>23236 Equally I think the open kid appeal of the CoD franchise has rather undermined the ratings video games receive.
You appear to have caught me with my trousers down. I just really cannot think of a response rooted in reality which refutes your assertion that age ratings are in any way relevant outside of bible belt America.
>It's almost like video games are designed for children isn't it?
Video games are made by almost-children. The industry knows that there's an endless stream of bright-eyed developers and artists coming out of university, who will (for a time) tolerate 60+ hour work weeks for below-market wages. It's simply untenable for anyone with a family to stay in the industry, so the average age in most game studios is in the mid-20s. The average age of game buyers continues to increase, so there's a growing gap between the life experience of people who make and play games.
Can the same be said of creative leads, writers and senior artists? It seems we're in agreement about games being designed for children, where we differ is the mechanism behind this outcome. You seem to believe it's because young men and women don't have many stories to tell, I believe it's because adults can be convinced to dumb themselves down, children don't have the capacity to make themselves more intelligent on demand. You can sell more things by appealing to the lowest common denominator, in this case children.
There may have been a time when games were built to be enjoyed by adults, it's hard to say whether I'm simply looking at the past through rose tinted spectacles, but if there ever was that time has long since passed. If that time existed it created a market of adult men willing to talk about video games on camera in an adult fashion, reducing the stigma around adults playing video games and leading us to the current era where the mantra "games are for adults" has become ingrained on the generation unfortunate enough to have been the unwitting guinea pigs of the accidental mass marketing campaign trying to convince us that playing video games is an adult hobby. I'm not shitting on "the other" here, I'm an adult who plays video games myself but I won't delude myself in to thinking it's adult or masculine in any way. Playing video games is a childlike escape from reality and social expectation, any claim to exploring deep concepts is from a bygone era though again I can't be certain that era ever existed.
Whether it's because head writers are childless 20somethings or because making a game with pretty colours and a story understandable and enjoyable to everyone from ages 7 to 99 makes that game sell more units I think it's clear mainstream games at least are designed for children. Maybe some niche studios do some deep thought stuff and explore concepts in a way which only interactive visual media can facilitate, but for the most part I just find them to be time sinks which overweight men who are older than me make a lot of money from by creating a narrative about a game that just wasn't there.
I won't stop playing games, nor will I encourage anyone else to stop playing games and get a life, but I'll be thrice damned if I allow myself to be convinced that I'm doing anything but wasting my time in a childlike fashion.
The quality of the output of Obsidian games is directly proportionate to the involvement of Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone. The Outer Worlds had neither.
>Can the same be said of creative leads, writers and senior artists?
Mostly, yes. They might be pushing 40, but they've mostly been in the industry since leaving university. The tech industry in general has a problem of arrested development, but it's particularly acute in the games industry. You don't have much opportunity to mature and grow as a person if you spend every day hanging around with a load of young nerds and don't have any real free time.
I think they're genuinely trying to be serious artists, but they aren't sufficiently cultured or well-rounded to pull it off. They all want to be Francis Ford Coppola, but none of them have gone to film school. They write scripts, but they don't read books. They have high aspirations, but everything turns into a clumsy pastiche because they're all recycling the same set of influences and references.
FWIW, children are resolutely not the primary target market for video games any more. We have an ageing society, the generation of gamers who grew up in the 80s still have an interest in gaming and adults have a lot more disposable income. There are more gamers aged over 40 than under 18.
>>23243 I imagine that what's happened is that the primary target market for video games hasn't changed in around two decades. The target market for major titles has been mainly millennials since the late 90s. That cohort are now in their thirties and forties.
>>23243 I've never really paid any attention to have the first clue, but I don't see why the scriptwriters for a game would need to be of same social strata as the no life devs and artists. Why can't they get proper lads in?
>There are more gamers aged over 40 than under 18.
I put it to you both that these over 40 gamers are playing games designed for children, because a 40 year old can be compelled to act like a child but a child cannot be compelled to act like a 40 year old. If you made a game for 40 year olds you could sell it to 40 year olds but not children, if you made a game for children you could sell it to both children and 40 year olds.
>>23246 What is a 'game designed for children'? Does a game become 'for children' simply by being bereft of adult themes e.g. Mario, Tetris? Is Candy Crush, a game entirely themed about sweets, 'for children', despite 80% of players are aged over 21?
>I won't stop reading books, nor will I encourage anyone else to stop reading books and get a life, but I'll be thrice damned if I allow myself to be convinced that I'm doing anything but wasting my time in a childlike fashion.
Ehh. I see what you're getting at but I don't think it's as black and white as that. Mainstream games are of course designed in such a way that they will appeal to kids; but only in the same way The Terminator appealed to me when I was six. That's why I made the comparison with 80s sci-fi films like Robocop in the first place, what they have in common is that they are at first glance quite infantile, but entirely capable of concealing much deeper themes. The Outer Worlds was just shit at it.
I actually thought a lot about this while me and the Mrs played through Borderlands 3 recently. It occurred to us both that the writing felt peculiarly dated, like it was an out-of-touch grown up trying to keep up with memes and zoomer culture. But then, we realised the original came out ten years ago. We played it in our late teens, now we're both nearing our 30s, and the people who worked on it back then are presumably nearing their 40s.
I don't think it's as simple as saying "games are made for kids". Some of them are, undoubtedly, but games are a bigger industry than films, books and TV put together. There's more than enough room in the market to aim different games at different demographics.
It's also pretty hard to compare to other industries really, because gaming has grown in such massive proportions over the lifetime of even a single millennial. Even someone born after the turn of the millennium has been alive long enough to remember a time before games were truly mainstream.
You hit and miss on the same issue, films are not games. A film that appears infantile on the surface can explore deep themes because the story continues regardless of the viewer, you can miss a reference here, misunderstand a theme there and the story ploughs on regardless of how dissatisfied you feel until it returns to a point where you're comfortable again. Games are inherently the opposite, if you feel uncomfortable at any point you're likely to switch it off and stop engaging because it requires your consent to continue at each and every point. Complex themes cannot be presented to the target audience of children at any point because they will make memes about how the game had a dumb storyline and turn off other potential customers. For the case and point here see the latest MGS games. I don't pretend to understand what Kojima was getting at before he was fired but I'm smart enough to understand that I didn't understand his point. I didn't make memes about it, but lots of children did.
When you and your wife played Borderlands 3 you were building experiences together, which is the fundamental building block of any teenage relationship. When you both move on to doing meaningful real world things together you will see how these two things differ. Thankfully for you both the out-of-touchness of the creators of Borderlands 3 has turned you both off to games slightly and you should get out of your rut together soon, maybe after your next favourite tool of interacting without interacting is ruined by out of touch 40 year olds.
You're right that my comment was superficially sweeping, something like The Lion King is clearly for children no matter how much an adult can learn from it. Something like Band of Brothers is clearly for adults no matter how much a child can learn from it. There is always an overlap in content in any media, my point is all, with a reasonable tolerance, games are designed to be able to be enjoyed by children. It would be like Band of Brothers being refilmed in the style of The Lion King. Any video game today first and foremost has to be accessible to children because adults like yourself and your almost 30 year old wife can be convinced that acting like children is normal. Children cannot be similarly convinced to act like adults. More units can be sold by appealing to both groups.
I'm not opposed to the intellectually inferior such as yourself and your mate jumping in to a heated discussion on children's entertainment, but you need to do as instructed by your betters if you want to be part of it.
I don't think The Outer Worlds is designed for children. It's designed for thick people who can't read subtext. The sort of person who is really surprised when they read on the internet that Golden Brown by The Stranglers is about drugs.
What a tune it is though - seems like the original video with the dude playing the harpsichord is long gone. I was 11 when this came out, but it seems like yesterday.
There are plenty of games with 'adult focus' from those triple AAA titles pretending to be films to games based on detailed alternative history to system management sims,
I can picture a child taking joy the same way watching aliens at age 10 brought me joy from an uncharted game or god of war. And until they got in over their head something by paradox/ creative Assembly with all the big battles.
But I couldn't imagine a child deriving much pleasure from shaving the margins and tuning the efficiency of the system/business sims I play unless they were purposefully child friendly themes and simplistic. They would over reach, fail get frustrated, and give up.
Well, I don't have much to say other than I disagree with a lot of your points in this post. And I'm entirely unconvinced that there really is much of a difference between playing games together or taking selfies on holiday together, or buying each other bottles of wine for successful job interviews, or whatever it is you imagine grown up relationships look like.
This I more or less agree with, that said I still got plenty of enjoyment out of games I was entirely unable to comprehend as a wee 'un. Alpha Centauri comes to mind, I had no idea what was going on but it undoubtedly led me into that kind of game as a teen and later adult. Definitely not designed for kids, in the same way something like a Paradox strategy game today isn't.
Assetto Corsa starts stuttering very badly whenever I alt-tab out and go back in, but stops if I press the Windows key and have the start menu taking up half the screen. I'm not looking for answers because there aren't any, it's just one of those computer things, like that time your sound stopped working until you restarted the PC itself then it never happened again.
Completed Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw recently. Excellent old school space game in the vein of Freelancer and is tied with Disco Elysium as my favourite game of 2019. Had to make it a tie because I played half of Disco Elysium drunk, whereas I was stone cold sober for all of Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw.
It's better than Freelancer in some ways because of the cockpit view, decent joystick support, and energy management system in the same vein of the old X-Wing games.
Tetris 99. It's like PUBG but everyone's playing Tetris. You send lines over to other people instead of just into the void. Winning it feels fucking incredible. There are also daily challenges which are teaching me things like T-spins.
Bloodborne, again. Hands down my top game on PS4, I enjoy it more with each play through.
Beat Saber. I had almost entirely written off VR, I brought the PSVR setup over to the folks' place at Christmas and we all had a great time. It has quickly became my favourite rhythm game since Guitar Hero.
>>23283 >There are also daily challenges which are teaching me things like T-spins
m8 i was pulling those moves when i was a kid - didn't know they had a name.
Makes me wish i had a Switch so i could join in the fun.
>>23291 If you mean the singles/doubles, then yeah, that's pretty normal. I'll be really impressed if you ever pulled off a triple, though. Check 50 seconds in:
Games that have "seasons" or twice their cost in DLC before I even knew they'd released just make it impossible for me to motivate myself to play them, I wish it would stop, but it won't.
>>23309 >seasons
Really we have WoW to blame for nearly every sinister trick and dark pattern in gaming today.
But the gates to hell really opened when we established the idea that people weren't willing to pay more than 99p upfront for a mobile game. Now the games industry supports it self by actively making things shitter in the hope's of exploiting whales.
>double the price DLC
I have to disagree with you on this one, as I think this is very different. This is perfectly honest business in my mind it is just the reality of adding additional time and effort to a product. Of course it depends from example to example. I wouldn't fault the business practices Paradox games. But when a company releases day 1 dlc it is a piss take.
>>23311 Fighting games from the 90s were worse offenders for exploitative business practices than WoW. A game like Street Fighter II being rereleased half a dozen times, with each full priced iteration featuring maybe a couple of extra characters and some balance changes. They kept that shit up for several game generations and people still lapped it up even if they were spending hundreds of pounds to keep up with what was at the time the 'definitive' version of the game.
I don't know if the current business model is much better - multiple seasons drip feeding characters and features over the course of several years. Particularly egregious when some of these DLC characters are well loved and established ones which were removed from the base roster only to be released for extra money.
>>23311 >I have to disagree with you on this one, as I think this is very different. This is perfectly honest business in my mind it is just the reality of adding additional time and effort to a product.
But that's the thing, in many cases it just isn't. The new Total War games are litered with "culture packs" that are just making me think about how unfinished the base game would feel, or the way I need a guide to keep track of what's relavent to XCOM2 and what I can ignore. None of this makes the games bad, but it makes me not want to buy them, even heavily discounted, because it puts me off when there are walled gardens within it.
I did buy and start playing Subnautica tonight though, which I'm very intrigued by even if it took me two hours to properly figure out what to do.
I think with some games like Total War, it's not so much of a problem because the base game is big enough and will occupy you for long enough that you'll never feel lost because of DLC; you'll just take it as another part of the game you hadn't experienced yet. I mean I have several hundred hours in Warhammer 2 and only completed campaigns with about four of the factions.
With your average single player action game though, I'd say almost 100% of the time nowadays you're better off just waiting for the inevitable GOTY: Blood Covenant- Super Enhanced Murdeluxe edition in the steam sale a year later. For any game that offers decent re-playability, you want to play it in a big chunk and not feel as though you'd already had your fill of the base game, but then those extra DLC tidbits scarcely offer enough new to keep you interested.
