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Open Thread #380: Gaming

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37 thoughts on “Open Thread #380: Gaming

  1. Sony’s Concord is arguably the biggest flop in gaming ever. After eight years in development and hundreds of millions of dollars burnt, the game will be shut down after less than two weeks on the market and all players who bought the game digitally will get a refund:
    https://archive.ph/FpTV5
    On the positive side, the DEI consultancy Sweet Baby got paid.

    1. Killzone 2 was a phenomenal game and one of the best games on PS3. I own a physical copy of it. That guy has some pretty good content on his channel. I liked his nostalgic “gaming in 2009” short:
      https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NBFO2dnXBaA
      In all seriousness, when was the last time you really looked forward to a new game release? Yes, MGS4 may be pretentious and perhaps it does not hold up that well, but it was a huge game. People still talk about it. In contrast, I cannot quite see people talking about any game released this year in 2039.

    2. Killzone multiplayer on pS2 was a blast 👌
      Heaps of Split screen fun. Not sure which version. The map was a concrete bombed out building with suspended walkways is all I recall. And there were Noob Tube grenade launchers as a second function on the machine gun 😀

    3. This seems like a lot but even if $400m is an exaggeration, the loss is surely in the region of a few hundred million dollars, plus the cost of the studio acquisition, plus the opportunity cost of not putting out a game that would have sold millions of copies, like Days Gone 2. Sony cannot afford a lot of such failures. It surely would not hurt if they hit a home run. It has been a while.

    4. Speaking of Days Gone, I actually have that game from a while back but never played it much. Is it something you’d recommend? I’m just not in the mood for open world atm.

    5. I have never played Days Gone, but it was a respectable success for Sony. As it features a white, straight male as the protagonist, a sequel was never greenlit even though it probably would have been a good commercial decision. Interestingly, Days Gone has sold better than Ghost of Tsushima, despite a complete boycott by the gaming press. The latter got a meaty DLC and will soon get a sequel. Sony really must not like money very much.

  2. The Chinese use hot chicks for motion capture. Here is a clip with highlights from the mocap sessions for Zenless Zone Zero:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLUi0WUH1_Q
    I quite like the channel. It is remarkable that China trains attractive women to act in exaggerated or endearing ways in order to create games that better appeal to customers:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9rfsnseak0
    Meanwhile, Western studios like Naughty Dog apparently use men to mocap female characters.

    1. I saw this girl on youtube. She is very attractive. I think she has a background in professional dancing. In dancing, you learn body-mechanics and how to maintain balance. She is fantastic in her job really.

  3. I really like the art direction of Sand Land:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtuVeC8Uxjw
    Bamco is technically very good. I think most if not all their games look visually quite appealing. Scarlet Nexus is on my list and so is God Eater 3, which was recommended to me in case I wanted Monster Hunter in anime and without the tedium.

    1. Obvious Toriyama art style. Upon further investigation it turns out this game is based off a manga from the year 2000 written by the late Akira Toriyama.

  4. I just noticed that Stellar Blade has subtle facial expressions. Pay attention from 2:09 onwards in the video below. The level of detail on display here is quite impressive.

    EDIT: Eve even looks at you if you ogle her too much. The developers clearly knew what they were doing, not that there was any doubt.

    1. I don’t even get the outrage with this game. Many of the characters appear to be based off of animals and as far as I know, there are no sexual references in the game, so there is no need to delve into the orientation etc. of the characters. Also, why would anyone expect the Chinese, of all people, to bastardize their traditions in order to conform to Western sensibilities? It’s as if they’re panicking and running damage control because this shows that woke gaming is getting well passed its peak by this point, as demonstrated by Dustborn, Concord and Outlaws.

    2. There may be animal-based characters in the game, but there is a death of black, lesbian, female characters. That is one problem. Also, the protagonist seems to be asexual whereas, at a minimum, “modern audiences” expect a clear commitment to pederasty and homosexuality.

    3. Their characters were based off the classic novel “Journey to the West” (西游记). The Monkey was named Wukong (悟空), means to “realise/awaken to the emptiness), a Buddhist nickname for the Monkey. Wukong was an extremely efficient combattant who protected his master on his journey from Tang China to Hindus kingdoms to retrieve buddhist scriptures.

      Everyone from China and Vietnam knew this reference.

      @picklenanny I do understand your sarcastic tone.

  5. Warner Bros. wants to lose some money, which is why they are working on an ultra-woke movie adaptation of Minecraft. Retardedly, is is called “A Minecraft Movie”:

    1. Hmm, none of the other Astro Bot titles appear to have made it to Steam. Is it possible Sony would keep it exclusive as a system seller?

    2. I have not played the Astro Bot games but I am under the impression that they rely on the various PlayStation hardware gimmicks. Thus, they should be quite difficult to port. You would have to ask people to buy a PS5 controller to play this game on Steam for the full experience and that is not an attractive proposition considering its MSRP of $75.

    3. This game is selling quite well. There is quite some symbolism in Concord causing a $200m crater in Sony’s finances and the gameplay-focused Astro Bot probably breaking even within hours. Of course, this is mere speculation, but I would be surprised if this game has cost more than $20m to make, and even that may be generous figure. Sony likely does not even have to sell one million copies to earn a decent profit.

      EDIT: I looked up budget estimations online. There is the claim that 65 people worked on this game for three years and the total budget was about $20m, as I also had guessed. This number is probably based on a back-of the envelope calculation, i.e. roughly $100k per developer times 3 years times 65). Developer salaries are the biggest factor but this is fine because rounding up the lower salaries of, e.g., administrators and people in marketing to $100k adds buffer that accounts for rent, hardware, license fees, and other business expenses. This game surely was not in full production for three years, so if there were 65 people working on it at its peak, the average was a lot lower, with a resulting budget of perhaps $10m.

    4. Those figures are eye opening. I would not be surprised if soon in the future more and more games get scaled back and begin focusing more on the basics—a fun and satisfying experience with minimal political fluff. Of course, this is assuming no more funny money trickling down from investors.

  6. I just came across the meme below, which visualizes the exclusive games for the five generations of the Soy-ny PlayStation:
    https://files.catbox.moe/bv7ggk.jpg
    This is of course an exaggeration, but the observation generally holds true. It is also the case that Bloodborne is arguably the most important PS4-exclusive game, if not the only relevant one. According to Wikipedia, these are the numbers of exclusive games for each generation:
    PS1: 461
    PS2: 515
    PS3: 180
    PS4: 58
    PS5: 21, of which several are timed exclusives

    To put the PS5 in context, Wikipedia lists 177 Switch-exclusive games and does not even have a page with XBox Series S/X-exclusives. I would not be surprised if there are none.

    1. I believe XBox is going to be going multi-platform, but I’m not entirely sure of the details. Halo is on PC, so the only exclusive game franchise I can think of is Gear of Wars.

    2. Some of the Gears of War games are also on PC, and the next entry in this series will also be on PC. However, Gears of War, just like Halo, is just a shadow of its former self. Arguably Gears peaked with the second entry. I just looked up sales figures: Amazingly, Gears 2 did not even manage to match the sales of its predecessor. Thus, this series has been on a long slide down into irrelevancy.

      The Xbox used to be known as the Gears/Halo/Forza box. None of these franchises are console sellers anymore. I really wonder what the plan of Microsoft is. Surely, there has to be more than buying up every studio that is for sale and putting an endless stream of B-tier games on Game Pass.

  7. There are rumors that the PS5 pro will cost $700. You’re looking at 1100 for the console And 5 years of online before any games or accessories. That’s not that far off from a 4070 super PC.

    1. The value proposition of even the base PS5 is no longer there. Of course, there is convenience but the “Big Picture” mode on Steam is really good. Tech gets cheaper and cheaper over the years. Yet, Sony frequently raises the price of their console. This is pure corporate greed at this point, aiming at exploiting the least tech-savvy customers. On a related note, the Radeon RX5700 seems to be roughly equivalent to the PS5 GPU. I can get the former, which has long disappeared from store shelves, for about 120 Euros used. The GTX 3060 is still available new. It can be had for about 250 Euros and it is quite a bit faster than the RX5700.

    2. The PS5 Pro is indeed $700, and does not even come with a disc drive. For that, you need to pay an extra $80. Oh, and the controllers just got a little bit more expensive, going from $70 to $75. I think that the PS5 Pro is a pretty sleek piece of hardware. It is certainly visually much more appealing than the original design, and smaller too. The price is quite ludicrous, in particular in the current macroeconomic environment.

      EDIT: A vertical stand is also not included. That is another $30.

    3. In Europe, the MSRP is 800 euros, which is about double of what you can get a new PS5 for on sales. This is a really bold move by Sony.

    4. In addition to the ludicrous price point, factor in ever increasing sale prices for games that aren’t even appealing. There’s not even a decent backlog of games to justify buying one of these machines, unless you’re a tool.

  8. I just read this in-depth article on principles of charater animation, applied to one of the classic Capcom fighting games:
    https://archive.ph/g1KlC
    It is probably of interest to any of you who likes animation, be it in movies or games. Among others, it highlights why some animations feels comparatively lifeless.

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