All Activity

Yes thats all true It doesnt explain much but its not suppose to because they only had 30 seconds. Its not about the policies of the DA Its just another example of a sensationalized political advert but the point is really the overreaction to this advert from ANC which is also a political response Its been in the news the last 2-3 days and some people are literally " outraged " because they think its treasonous and racist Like I mentioned with the ANC grandstanding about taking legal steps because of the flag burning But a flag wasnt burned. Its just a political advert

Honestly? All I see is a political ad so typical it could almost be invisible because there is nothing distinguishing it from any other the last 50000 political ads. It's all about what they don't want, not a single word about what they can do, that would benefit the people of SA? I.e. the only change offered it's us instead of them? Disclaimer, I know nothing about the party, their ideology or otherwise, just going by the ad

Did they ever stop?

South Africa is having its national election on 29 May and we in full season of populist and utterly unrealistic campaign promises from numerous political parties that are ubiquitous with the " silly season " reality in any Democracy with different political parties The party I vote for, the DA, released this campaign video of the " South African flag burning " and it received the expected immediate criticism around "racism, treason " and " abhorrent and unpatriotic " comments from the ANC and other political parties The ANC even going as far to say " Sport, Arts and Culture Minister, Zizi Kodwa, is considering taking further steps against the Democratic Alliance over the party's ad depicting the South African flag burning" https://www.enca.com/top-stories/mi...action-against-da-after-flag-burning-campaign Here is the actual advert and its clear most people who are " outraged " haven't watched it or havent bothered to understand its political message In summary the advert doesnt show an actual physical flag being burnt, its a digital AI piece of paper and the " flag" gets restored its a political metaphor about the state of the country under a coalition of the ANC and other parties like the EFF But watch this video and tell me if you think its "treasonous " and legal action needs to be taken against the DA

Russia is slowly resuming strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Seems a little sub-optimal to do this only after the winter.

This is a bit simplified. They only really "split" by the time Dishonored 2 and Prey were being developed in tandem. But even then, people switched places (I mean, Colantonio is from France himself). Also, even Redfall lists almost two dozen people from Lyon in the credits. Or, to let Raf Colantonio do the talking (note his huge follow-up post to this also). But in general, what happened in Austin is a good example of destroying studio culture. Arkane have been a very specialized company since their very inception. This naturally included what people they at all hired. And now they were tasked to do a multiplayer, open world CoOp shooter kind of game. It's akin to Hollywood encouraging Sofia Coppola to do the next Furious movie. Why? Becuz popular. In fairness, this started under ZeniMax. I personally didn't get much Arkane vibes upons Redfall's release. And had looked up the game's credits before it became public what happened. By watching the credits as well as checking people on Linkedln, it was apparent that a lot of people were brought in from all over the open world gaming action industry. This included Anthem's OW lead designer, and numerous other people who prior worked on Mafia, Destiny, Saint's Row et all. Some of those joined as late as a year prior to Redfall's release. So Arkane lost people that were hired specifically for the type of games they were specializing in, those people quit and left. To hire new ones just for Redfall. However, if it weren't for people working on a Marvel IP in Lyon, they may be in trouble now as well. Not sure if posted already. But 'd love if Arkane had gotten a chance at that announced Indiana Jones game rather than MachineGames. For a start, perfect fit for their type. See Thief's grave robbery missions, with fantastic in-universe maps for all your archeological needs. Secondly, Indy is still strong enough an IP, even if the last movie disappointed. Is it really the CORE of their very type of game that's not blockbuster worthy? Or is it rather their package? Until Baldur's Gate 3 came around, party-based tactical RPGs were seen as a niche as well. Turn-based ones even moreso. The notion was: No matter the rest of the game or what you're aiming for as an OVERALL EXPERIENCE: If you include THIS feature, you're going to go niche.

I mentioned elsewhere, Grounded being Obsidians most successful game to date... Not sure why, but I seem to remember it started out as a "small thing" with a limited team and then sort of exploded in scope with growing popularity. If not already, I hope some day we get a post mortem on the game with its history These are Steam numbers only, not including GamePass/XBox https://vginsights.com/game/962130 4,381 active players (42 min ago) 7,841 active players (24h peak) 88.9% positive reviews $55.8m gross revenue 2.2m units sold 49 hours avg play time 22.5 hours median play time While they (Obsidian) usually know how to make crpgs, survival games and base building is not what they're known for. Edit: Scratch that part about XBox... no idea if Steam also sells XBox games Edit2: Adding GamePass players, it had 10 million players in 2022 https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/02/10/grounded-reaches-10-million-players/

Hello Grounded，这个游戏非常有趣，但不幸的是它以后不会更新太多。你能开一个像Project Zomboid这样的创意工作室吗？谢谢。

Very similar situation there to Arkane I would have thought, they made games that review well, generally, but didn't sell well. Hi Fi Rush had great word of mouth, but it still took 5 years to develop and didn't sell (or 'sell', for gamepass) as well as its reviews or word of mouth implied. The main difference seems to be that Tango got chopped off earlier in the process, before making a Redfall but after the founder left.

Split off from previous thread...

Random interruption of gaming news... continued here

I am not surprised. This is Arkane Austin - they have done Prey and its DLC and Redfall. Prey is an acclaimed, if not particularly profitable, and Redfall is a flop, that allegiedly drove away about 70% of staff that made Prey. So it's not even the case of "abandon Refall and work on something else", as the folks who made Prey are mostly gone and you have a live service oriented studio, that clearly didn't come together very well (not aiming on judging individual devs of course - **** happens). Tango is what surprised me. Sure, it probably didn't break the bank, but they made THE game that delivered some positive buzz for XBOX. Even if it somehow a perfectly sensible move (like keeping the talented devs and putting them to work elsewere, but shutting down the studio now when the founder is gone) it is still a terrible look.

New York Times: RFK Jr. says "[parasitic worm] ate part of his brain".

Let's be honest, Arkane's last commercially successfully was the first Dishonored. Everything they've made for more than the last decade has flopped. Not sure why everyone's surprised.

I also watched the first fallout season. It started a bit mixed and turned out really good. I think they got the recipe largely right. There is a ton to chose from in all the games and having three characters just kinda move through it all, The good, the bad and the ugly style, while keeping the characters in focus enables all the lore not to become baggage.

It's also a natural evolution of kinds. Similar to how Call Of Duty has seen sequels developed by various studios since forever -- and their games released in turns. That's why they can serve the COD crowd regularly, while it's a TV series currently keeping the Fallout name alive in popular culture. Studios under the MS/Bethesda umbrella have already helped each other too, or co-developed -- id helping out Arkane on Redfall, Arkane co-developing Wolfenstein Youngblood with MachineGames. So having multiple studios working on projects of the most popular IP is one next logical step for bigger corps. Wouldn't say the only one. But it is one. Even if tools improve and AI will offer helping hands, the development time of blockbuster games isn't going to come down. The tech is getting ever more advanced, expectations go up accordingly. People entering the blockbuster gaming industry may eventually help developing but a couple of games in their entire career. It's crazy to think that even the core team of Doom³ still consisted of ~20 people 20 years ago... and that game was seen as the most bleeding edge thing ever -- on a technical level, anyhow. Similar to the first Pillars Of Eternity, relative for their type of game, The Outer Worlds was also a rather modest budgeted game with modest expectations behind. The sequel, just like Deadfire, seems to ramp it up quite a notch. I think expectations are much higher on TOW2 than 1.

speaking of bethesda https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-closes-redfall-developer-arkane-austin-hifi-rush-developer-tango-gameworks-and-more-in-devastating-cuts-at-bethesda

Also, because they add things for every new release and things don't always fit neatly into existing canon

Just an update: I installed something called Emu Deck on my Steam Deck and oh my god.. it's so good I actually played through the entire Dragon's Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King (PS2) again. That's a 200 hour game.. I let my cousin try it too. He was a huge Halo fan back in the original Xbox days and he was in awe when he got to try it on the Steam Deck. It's just so accurate. Best emulation device I've ever owned, it feels like it was made for it.

What.. what year is it?

the music is supposed to be terrible, it's tradition

The lore tends to be a mix of contradictory on purpose at times, because they like to throw in the unreliable narrator of Imperial History as controlled, redacted, and redefined by various parts of the bureaucracy.

Glad to hear you didn't die, Guard Dog.

Good read Gorth.