Random video game news... Games are the most elevated form of investigation

[Malcador]

No one should take Steam Awards seriously, right ?

[Gfted1]

Bethesda's Biggest Game Ever Is Free And Remastered (kotaku.com)

[Keyrock]

4 hours ago, Malcador said:

No one should take Steam Awards seriously, right ?

No one should take any media awards seriously, they're all shameless circle jerks. Here's a slightly less shameless but significantly more snarky circle jerk:

 

Edited January 3 by Keyrock

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

On the whole I doubt that many awards are that big of a deal on our end as players/consooomers. With the beeg game awards where Yung Wonka and True Detective showed up, the biggest thing about it I heard was that people were mad the winners got less time to talk than people hyping AAA projects. Like when I think about the people I know personally who ended up buying and playing the GOTY 2023 it had nothing to do with the awards it won from Steam or the Dorito Pope but stuff like memes, word of mouth, or one guy buying it to play with his daughter.

[MrBrown]

6 hours ago, Malcador said:

No one should take Steam Awards seriously, right ?

It's voted by users, so it's kinda interesting compared to stuff just selected by pundits.

[Keyrock]

4 minutes ago, MrBrown said:

It's voted by users, so it's kinda interesting compared to stuff just selected by pundits.

Fair point, if for no other reason than as a contrast to awards voted on by journalists and/or industry professionals. Awards and accolades have zero impact on my purchasing habits, so I don't care who is awarded what and how little or much they gloat about it. It goes back to when I saw Two Worlds: Game of the Year Edition. Having played the game previously, the phrase "Game of the Year" lost all meaning at that instant.

[Hurlshort]

As was already stated, Steam awards are voted on by the public, so they aren't quite the reviewer circle jerk. Also as much as Keyrock doesn't care what gets an award, publishers do tend to look at that stuff, and that directly affects what games get funding going forward. So I'm bummed when a game like JA3 doesn't get the recognition, despite knowing that it was better than everything else that got awards this year. Hopefully the sales numbers were big enough for awards to not matter.

It's always good to remember that Fallout: New Vegas got shafted by Metacritic ratings and Obsidian nearly was shuttered because of that. 

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/obsidian-denied-bonus-over-new-vegas-metacritic-score-studio-head/1100-6366337/

Edited January 4 by Hurlshort

[HoonDing]

I thought Atlas Fallen was most fun game of 2023...

[melkathi]

Against the Storm should have won all the awards.

[BruceVC]

15 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Fair point, if for no other reason than as a contrast to awards voted on by journalists and/or industry professionals. Awards and accolades have zero impact on my purchasing habits, so I don't care who is awarded what and how little or much they gloat about it. It goes back to when I saw Two Worlds: Game of the Year Edition. Having played the game previously, the phrase "Game of the Year" lost all meaning at that instant.

Maybe you guys are unhappy with the Steam results because its games that millions of gamers enjoy and you dont? And its never nice to be in the minority of  this type  of gaming sentiment 

Take BG3, it understandably won its nomination but maybe you angry about that because you dont think it should have? You never know 

[kanisatha]

13 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

As was already stated, Steam awards are voted on by the public, so they aren't quite the reviewer circle jerk. Also as much as Keyrock doesn't care what gets an award, publishers do tend to look at that stuff, and that directly affects what games get funding going forward. So I'm bummed when a game like JA3 doesn't get the recognition, despite knowing that it was better than everything else that got awards this year. Hopefully the sales numbers were big enough for awards to not matter.

It's always good to remember that Fallout: New Vegas got shafted by Metacritic ratings and Obsidian nearly was shuttered because of that. 

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/obsidian-denied-bonus-over-new-vegas-metacritic-score-studio-head/1100-6366337/

Very true. That's why for me it doesn't matter whether the awards are being made by biased insiders with their personal agendas or the masses who are generally know-nothing asses. Either way the results usually don't reflect quality or merit. And sadly nowadays, this has become true even with the Nobel prizes.

[BruceVC]

14 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

Very true. That's why for me it doesn't matter whether the awards are being made by biased insiders with their personal agendas or the masses who are generally know-nothing asses. Either way the results usually don't reflect quality or merit. And sadly nowadays, this has become true even with the Nobel prizes.

Kanie thats a terrible thing to suggest,  you cant say the masses are  know nothing asses ...thats  a betrayal of the liberal code. You a very bad liberal 

[Keyrock]

15 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

As was already stated, Steam awards are voted on by the public, so they aren't quite the reviewer circle jerk. Also as much as Keyrock doesn't care what gets an award, publishers do tend to look at that stuff, and that directly affects what games get funding going forward. So I'm bummed when a game like JA3 doesn't get the recognition, despite knowing that it was better than everything else that got awards this year. Hopefully the sales numbers were big enough for awards to not matter.

That's a fair point. With awards given by journos or those in the industry, I have no control over that, I don't see the point in stressing over something that I can't do anything about. With Steam awards I at least have some input, even if I'm just one of thousands or millions. I only voted in like 3 categories, though, because the other categories either were types of games I flat out don't play (can't very well play VR games without a VR headset) or every choice offered to me was a game I didn't play. I guess awards may have some impact on how publishers fund games, but we're living in a time when we're, quite honestly, spoiled for choice. There's such a massive amount of games coming out all the time that even if a decent percentage of them are shovelware, that still leaves a lot of quality games of all types arriving regularly. So even if some publishers pass on a game that I would have likely enjoyed because it didn't receive accolades, or whatever, I'm quite confident someone else will make that type of game for me to enjoy, so I don't bother worrying. Time and again my apathy has been rewarded, so I'm sticking with it. I might maybe have a different opinion if I were a RTS fan, that seems to be the most underserved part of the market. However, I don't play RTSs because they don't appeal to me, and also because I'm terrible at them.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm having a hard time remembering a time in the relatively near past when I didn't have anything to play. In fact...

/looks at backlog

Furthermore, all those other awards are just lame also-rans, the one award that actually matters is the prestigious, world renown Keyrock's Game of the Year 2023 which I am awarding to The Talos Principle 2, because it's awesome.

 

Edited January 4 by Keyrock

[Mamoulian War]

4 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Kanie thats a terrible thing to suggest,  you cant say the masses are  know nothing asses ...thats  a betrayal of the liberal code. You a very bad liberal 

But he is right . Popular votes in every category ever invented were always just a showcase of bad taste among “common” populace.

[ShadySands]

JA3 is probably my best game of the year and probably the best comeback of a series as well. I struggled with BG3 but I struggle with pretty much all Larian games so I think Larian plus 5th edition was probably never going to do it for me despite Baldur's Gate being one of the foundational series of my gaming life along with Fallout and MechWarrior.

Edited January 4 by ShadySands

[Keyrock]

14 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

JA3 is probably my best game of the year and probably the best comeback of a series as well.

I completely agree about JA3 being the best revival of a series, not just last year, but since Mimimi revived the real-time stealth tactics genre with Shadow Tactics (ok that was a genre revival rather than a series revival, but close enough). Especially given that there have been several previous attempts in the 20+ years since JA2 to revive the series and nobody ever talks about them, which should tell you all you need to know about how good they were.

[Zoraptor]

I need to go back to JA3 now I've got a new graphics card and it's had a few patches. It was a very odd experience on the old 580, the stats suggested it was running fine but the practical experience of the visuals was... off, quite disconcertingly. Like it was running at a quarter the frame rate it said it was.

11 hours ago, melkathi said:

Against the Storm should have won all the awards.

Best Game You Suck At and the Sit Back and Relax awards?

(It'd do pretty well if there was a Digital Crack category though, for sure)

[melkathi]

NCSoft gave Homecoming the licence to run their City Of Heroes community server in an official way.

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/47223-ncsoft-homecoming-license-announcement/

 

City of Heroes was a super hero mmo that NCSoft eventually shut down.

Homecoming was a relatively recent attempt at a fan-run revival of the game.

[Hawke64]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/prince-of-persia-the-lost-crowns-accessibility-options-are-a-neat-deconstruction-of-metroidvania-design

Quote

The game also eschews QTEs and colour-based feedback, while using large text by default. As regards the acrobatics, the developers have found that wall jumps - a modern-day Prince of Persia staple - can be difficult for people who aren't used to platforming, so they've introduce some sly "invisible" assists. And then there are the high contrast vision modes - the first for an Ubisoft game, apparently - which let you tag and highlight certain objects, plus lots of granular difficulty settings around enemy health, environmental damage, parry difficulty and the like.

I would say that the Eagle Vision was the (temporary) high contrast mode in the previous Ubisoft games. Still, more options are welcome. The Ubisoft DRM is not.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/maplestory-publisher-nexon-fined-record-89-million-for-misleading-loot-box-mechanics

Quote

Korean publisher Nexon have been fined 11.6 billion won - around $8.9 million - for secretly altering the drop rates of coveted items in free-to-play MMO gacha game MapleStory. The fine, issued by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, is the largest penalty ever doled out for violation of South Korea's Act on Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce.
...
Nexon have yet to say much in public about all this, but are apparently thinking about challenging the commission's decision, or even taking them to court.

I am unsure if the fine is sufficient (doesn't sound like it), but it is something. Banning the loot boxes would be preferable, though.

[kanisatha]

22 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Kanie thats a terrible thing to suggest,  you cant say the masses are  know nothing asses ...thats  a betrayal of the liberal code. You a very bad liberal 

Well, what do you want me to say? I've always been anti-elites. But in recent years I've also become completely disillusioned with mass publics. As with so many other things so too with society and the world, I no longer belong or fit in anywhere.

[BruceVC]

9 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

Well, what do you want me to say? I've always been anti-elites. But in recent years I've also become completely disillusioned with mass publics. As with so many other things so too with society and the world, I no longer belong or fit in anywhere.

But you not a liberal so its okay, I was  just  teasing you 

[InsaneCommander]

January 11:

 

[Bartimaeus]

According to Gamers Nexus, Starfield being nominated for and winning "Most Innovative Gameplay" was a meme campaign started on reddit to dunk on it, not that it stopped Bethesda from accepting it as sincere. Guess that's what happens when you let the common clay of video games (you know, morons) decide the awards. We all know these awards are a bit of a joke for one reason or another (simple popularity contests inevitably result in whatever's most popular winning awards rather than any honest evaluation of an entry's individual qualities in relation to what award they're up for - an especially prominent problem when most people have only played a fraction of the nominees!), but not all of us actually take the time out of our day to prove that they're a joke. Sigh.

10 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

January 11

Momodora

Oh, that's really soon. I can't help but notice that the main character seems to increase in size with every new game in the Momodora series...think Momodora 3 is kinda where I thought it most appropriate to stop, but certainly no farther than Reverie Under the Moonlight. Eh, as long as the developer didn't try to integrate anything from their awful Minoria spin-off, it should be fine.

Edited January 6 by Bartimaeus

[MrBrown]

https://www.ign.com/articles/star-citizen-introducing-a-48000-ship-bundle-but-only-for-players-who-have-already-spent-10000

[Keyrock]

9 hours ago, MrBrown said:

https://www.ign.com/articles/star-citizen-introducing-a-48000-ship-bundle-but-only-for-players-who-have-already-spent-10000

Harpoon master Chris Roberts relentlessly hunting whales.