RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS - NOW IN 5$ LOOT BOXES

[Lexx]

Yeah, if a mod has the necessary quality, why would it be bad having to pay for it? What makes such mod teams different than "real" game developers that they aren't allowed to get anything but fancy words back from it?

 

Making mods isn't cheap. In fact, all of the great mods that have been and will be released cost actual money to make. Development time, voice actors, final polishing, etc... the list is really long.

[Gizmo]

I am fine with paid mods... in theory, but in practice, a modding community shares insight... until it becomes profitable not to; and this creates the problem of selling insight that was freely shared.

People bundled up other people's mods as their own, and tried to sell them.

Answering modding questions, becomes training your competition.

 

I write scripts all the time, but I am not sure that I would choose to freely build the parts of a commercial product for someone else.  I worked with two dozen others for a year on a mod, and we additionally released the source project, for others to learn from it.  I wouldn't mind someone making their own mod with insight learned from that project, but I would not like to find that project (or slight variation of it) offered for sale.  

Edited February 28, 2018 by Gizmo

[Lexx]

Thanks to the forums quote system, I'm going the Volo-route now.

 

 

"I am fine with paid mods... in theory, but in practice, a modding community shares insight... until it becomes profitable not to; and this creates the problem of selling insight that was freely shared."

 

Meh, I've seen that happening already with unpaid mods. Depending on the game, some folks get really butthurt about their files.

 

"People bundled up other people's mods as their own, and tried to sell them."

 

That's where the game owner (Publisher, etc.) needs to step in. Really, this is all on them. If they accept such packages, then they don't do any QA either, which is bad not only for the developer, but also the consumer.

 

"Answering modding questions, becomes training your competition.

I write scripts all the time, but I am not sure that I would choose to build the parts of someone else's commercial product."

 

Well, paid mods doesn't mean *everything* will be sold. There should be a certain standard that can't be reached by just about anyone (look around at e.g. Nexus and you see that rarely anyone manages it anyway). This needs a bare minimum of QA from the game owner, to make sure everything is in order. It's not just about copyright infrightments, but also not alienating your games community with rip-off products.

 

Paid mods *is* a tricky thing, but if done right, everyone can profit from it. Look at Bethesda and you see how not to do it. Look at... I don't know, Train Simulator, and you see that it can work (as far as I am aware, this is why they have a bazillion DLCs).

Edited February 28, 2018 by Lexx

[ShadySands]

No problem with paid mods* or the hosting provider taking a cut but I do have a problem if they take most of the revenue which they supposedly do

 

*I'm not buying them though

[Gizmo]

Meh, I've seen that happening already with unpaid mods. Depending on the game, some folks get really butthurt about their files.

And it either doesn't matter (or doesn't sting as much) if it is their hobby project. It is immediately different once it becomes paid work.

 

 

The academic system sometimes uses a database to check for copy/pasted work turned in by students... perhaps something similar could catch blatantly copied script code, or art assets.  Obviously not rewritten scripts based on understanding the original... but that's not blatant copying, at least they wrote it.  

 

I've seen a lot of mods that use commercial assets, and under the naive defense that it's not for profit... but even that won't fly when they are selling it.  Too  many people have the notion that they need it, so they are entitled to it... Like stripping out Warhammer armor models instead of creating one's own—ignore the fact that even that is an infringement.

 

**You and I have both done a FO3 Enclave armor mod yes?  (If you are the same Lexx I am thinking of)

But that was for use in FO3, and free.

Edited February 28, 2018 by Gizmo

[Gorgon]

I am fine with paid mods... in theory, but in practice, a modding community shares insight... until it becomes profitable not to; and this creates the problem of selling insight that was freely shared.

 

People bundled up other people's mods as their own, and tried to sell them.

Answering modding questions, becomes training your competition.

 

I write scripts all the time, but I am not sure that I would choose to freely build the parts of a commercial product for someone else.  I worked with two dozen others for a year on a mod, and we additionally released the source project, for others to learn from it.  I wouldn't mind someone making their own mod with insight learned from that project, but I would not like to find that project (or slight variation of it) offered for sale.  

My sense of the brief paid mods for Skyrim debacle was nothing less than that Steam almost destroyed a vibrant, crazy and weird and wonderful thing by inserting a profit incentive.

 

How can you say that people who make mods don't deserve to reap some benefits, they do, and how can you argue that having 100+ mods in your Skyrim directory which used to be free should now cost a thousand bucks, you can't. Like you said it makes people aware that sharing and helping others is not in their own interest in a competitive and at times predatory environment. 

 

The whole community almost committed collective suicide.

 

In a perfect world there are many more examples like Pavonis interactive, they made an Xcom mod that everyone had and went into business for themselves. 

[Zoraptor]

 

My sense of the brief paid mods for Skyrim debacle was nothing less than that Steam almost destroyed a vibrant, crazy and weird and wonderful thing by inserting a profit incentive.

 

Steam and Bethesda almost destroying, especially given that Bethesda now has a new paid mods system operating outside Steam. Tons of blame to go around both parties there and everything about it was utter debacle and a poster on how not to do things- crap mods, no oversight, non existent support, expensive, tiny cut to mod devs etc- and managed to generate just about every potential bad facet of paid mods in its first few days.

 

Steam gets the blame for setting up the workshop system, clearly aimed at walled garden-ing mods into its own ecosystem for future exploitation, but Bethesda was equally clearly keen on exploiting it for their benefit as well. And when it comes right down to it Bethesda games needing tons of mods to be good is because, well, Bethesda makes games that aren't much good without mods. With paid mods it's in their active best interests to make their games even more bare bones to encourage even more paid mods to be necessary for a good experience.

[Keyrock]

[Katphood]

 

[SonicMage117]

 Steam gets the blame for setting up the workshop system, clearly aimed at walled garden-ing mods into its own ecosystem for future exploitation, but Bethesda was equally clearly keen on exploiting it for their benefit as well. And when it comes right down to it Bethesda games needing tons of mods to be good is because, well, Bethesda makes games that aren't much good without mods. With paid mods it's in their active best interests to make their games even more bare bones to encourage even more paid mods to be necessary for a good experience.

I think you mean Valve... Valve put Workshop on Steam. Steam is just the store, gotta blame the store-owners here.

[the_dog_days]

Illuminati confirmed.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRjp433nW3g

[Gizmo]

I'm going to have to buy it... It's a BUILD engine game.

 

https://kotaku.com/duke-nukem-3ds-creators-just-released-a-new-shooter-bui-1823408327

 

**But it looks like they ripped of the RIFTS RPG... and it pre-dates their engine.

Edited March 1, 2018 by Gizmo

[Katphood]

I'll play this from start to finish on my SONY CRT...you all have been warned!

[algroth]

Again, not sure this belongs here, but this is a great video (even if I don't agree with all of it):

 

[Katphood]

 

The upgraded Xbox One X bc version looks better in some scenes.

 

Again, not sure this belongs here, but this is a great video (even if I don't agree with all of it):

 

That was awesome. Didn't that guy used to have another channel called SinglePlayerGamer?!

Edited March 2, 2018 by Katphood

[algroth]

 

Again, not sure this belongs here, but this is a great video (even if I don't agree with all of it):

 

That was awesome. Didn't that guy used to have another channel called SinglePlayerGamer?!

 

 

I don't think so, but I know he's written for a few media before he had his channel. Also... Here's my reply to him in full with regards to his Planescape: Torment breakdown (I'll deal with his Tides critique in a later reply).

 

 

 

Great video as always, Noah! It's interesting to see how, even as we both seem to love Planescape: Torment and agree on a lot of things about it, we can also take pretty different things from our playthroughs and from the content in the game, all generally surrounding the same themes. It's telling of just how dense the content is in this game. So... Allow me to touch on a few thoughts I had with regards to the video:

 

So firstly, I think we have interpreted several characters and parts of the story rather differently. I think we overall agree with Nordom and Ignus for one, and whilst I don't disagree with the others I find it interesting how we've decided to focus on pretty different aspects across. So as for *Dak'kon* , I may be opening a can of worms here but one of the more fascinating aspects to his character I find to be how his particular story reflects rather deeply on the condition of transracialism, showing him as someone who's condition of slavery was enforced by his not knowing himself, as well as the ever widening breach with the rest of his culture as he embraced this new apocryphal history more and more. Dak'kon's torment comes by means of several aspects at once which are all deeply woven with one another: one being his condition as a slave, but likewise his condition as an exile and pariah and the way his crisis of faith and culture, and thus his identity and his sense of self, also reinforce his state as the former. His teachings, redesigned by his 'master' and used to hone him further as a weapon or a tool, are not altogether unsimilar to the many means in which slavers would seek to strip their 'property' from a sense of self partly by the suppression of their former culture and beliefs in the face of a new one. Though the game gives us precious little insight on what would Dak'kon's future as a githzerai be, by the end of the game the breach with his people hasn't really closed - it's remained constant, he's still an exile, he's still the Jemmy Button of the story in some strange fashion - but maybe he has found some sense of identity and worth in his newly reforged faith that he may move forward and come to terms with how he's been changed, and be his own free man once more, maybe he can be the "cultural anthopophagist" of sorts and come to terms with his faith and culture being no longer neither githzerai nor else, but something new with elements appropriated of the same. And one of the brilliant touches to his character is just how he's able to speak of all these matters, about race and cultural identity and so on, without actually calling attention to the fact that he is doing as much, for any one race or culture or dynamic between two specifically.

 

With regards to *Morte* , there are many little nuances here and there that make him very interesting to my eyes. You mention in your review that maybe all that Morte wants is a friend and I wouldn't entirely disagree, but for me at least what keeps him hounding the Nameless One for so long is his *guilt* before what he did, or may have done. So, firstly we have to look into what condemned him to the Pillar of Skulls in the first place: this... isn't really explained, all we know is that be *believes* he may have gotten the Nameless One killed in a past life, but we also know from him that he doesn't actually remember (of course, belief in this setting is everything, so it might as well be that he did). This can of course be read as that he might have, but I'm inclined to *also* argue that the alternative, that this might all be false, is also as interesting a consideration about his character, as it would also suggest that he is projecting into the Nameless One something - he's seeing in the Nameless One an opportunity to right his wrong, to redeem himself and thus be rid of the guilt. I feel he is in some way the best-informed character in the party of the consequence of your actions, through his own suffering as a petitioner, as part of the Pillar of Skulls: I find it interesting that amidst all the characters we are able to recruit into the party, above the likes of Dak'kon, or Annah, or even Grace, he is the *only* companion to be of an actual GOOD allignment - and this is a character who has already in a past life been condemned to the Hells. I suspect that he's a character who, when read between the lines, has suffered an indeterminable amount of time in the Hells for his deeds and, really, how would a man not change his nature in the face of such suffering as well as the awareness of where his actions would take him? His guilt seems to be almost corroborated by the Planes' very decision of where he was bound to go following his death, and seeing it in this light I feel it makes him more aware of where his past deeds have got him, and might ass a newfound urgency to why he needs to correct them, even if by helping out this one man who gave him this second chance outside the Pillar of Skulls (and who may or may not be the one he wronged).

 

As for *Grace* , initially I feel like she was probably my least-favorite companion, inasmuch as I found her "chaste succubus" dichotomy too obvious and straightforward and inversion so as to even be a cliché of its own, something akin to the "vampire with a soul" or the "good drow" or so on, so forth. But I've warmed up greatly to her, and I think that's due to a number of reasons. For the sake of what relates to your video, I will say that my interpretation of this character was pretty different all in all. I don't think she's exactly *strived* in the conventional sense to defy her nature or to be better than she is - as a matter of fact I think her name is telling that the opposite may be true in her mind, that she has "fallen" by means of defying her nature, that she's broken in some essential fashion. I find it interesting that despite often coming across as the most traditionally 'good' character in the game, her allignment is still 'lawful neutral' - this feels weirdly contradictory with some of her words, either as if her nature were keeping her back... Or if she refused to be viewed in such a way, as if she still clung to some possibility of maybe "rising" back to grace in some fashion or other. Her dysfunction as such has already been born out of millennia of servitude to a very different species in a plane that contradicts her nature: the Baatezu, lawful evil devils that rule the Lawful Evil plane of Baator and whose evil is in some fashion that of an oppressive, regimented system of injustice, the kind that would bend and mold a person into a tool for the very same; no doubt her first shift away from her nature came here, under these conditions, an embodiment of a passion made to be part of this regime. Therefore I don't believe her defiance of her very nature came across as a desired one, it is merely the byproduct of this same rupture, made from millennia of suffering, and hence, again, why she's 'fallen' and not 'risen'.

 

And with regards to *Annah* , finally, I also think that you might be underselling her suffering by focusing exclusively on her love towards the Nameless One. I think this same love is merely a byproduct of her actual torment, which is actually loneliness. I think this is especially evident with her reaction to Pharod's appearance in the Pillar of Skulls: Pharod's the character closest to her, an 'adoptive father' of sorts who only saw of his daughter a use for his line of work; he was more of a boss than an actual father, hardly of the nice kind either. And yet she's distraught when she sees him there, she seems to want to help him somehow... Because it's the only person she's ever had in her life. She seems to exhibit throughout an attitude that seems hardened to strangers, but which belies a passion and clingy attachment to those she eventually does let in, which in the Nameless One's case seems to manifest into love. Maybe for her desire or need of the very same. There is something about her that seems to call Harry Harlow's experiments to mind, of that need for tighter attachment in the face of greater hostility and isolation, and ultimately this is what I feel makes her character very interesting, and much more layered than your "tsundere love interest".

 

And speaking of Pharod, I find it curious that you should not mention him at all. I find his overall arch to be brilliant, quite tragic and ironic, and much like Dak'kon, also the product of a great deception in seemingly several layers as well. Also I'd like to point out... How *brilliant* is the reveal for what the Bronze Sphere actually is? You could make a whole video breaking apart this element, as an example of a great way of handling a twist. It's precisely brilliant because it's one of those elements you don't even realize until you get to the actual pay-off that you've been set up to it before: the sensory stones are introduced as part of the Sensate beliefs and seems like a convenient bit of magic to allign with their philosophy, allowing the members to experience themselves things that they would never be able to get. Obviously the importance of a device that houses memories is hugely significant in a story about an amnesiac in search of his past... But you *assume* the payoff to be the memories in the private sensoriums that relate directly to *you* and your own experiences. For the most part you assume that's their purpose within the narrative and conveniently forget about it... Until, upon revelation of what the Bronze Sphere truly is, you come to understand *that* was the real payoff - and by that part it seems such a simple and natural device within the setting even that it just seems to satisfying in that same simplicity as well. It's wonderful.

 

Finally with regards to PS:T, I will leave a quote from a Borges story called "The Immortal" which I feel really gets down to what the game is about, for me. To me the question of "what can change the nature of a man" is... Interesting, but more so by the questions that are asked implicitly by it, like "what does one *mean* with the 'nature' of a man?" or "how does one define the nature of a man?". As with many great artworks, what makes Torment such a brilliant piece is that ultimately this is a game that also largely reflects on the *value* of your actions, not necessarily in the face of how your character ultimately changes the outcome of his life, but how ultimately these same, held within a finite stretch of time to only develop up to a certain point, ultimately determine a character, determine an individual, and determine the "role". It is a game in which playing the game itself is in some way to create the actual character, whereas also approaching eternal life as a means of an individual's actions to proliferate to the point that they lose worth, to the point that every action, every dialogue or every choice ultimately is bound to cancel another and make one less of an individual, or make his person and his individuality less valuable in turn. The game's objective is to make your life finite once more, and to therefore lend your actions and your very person worth once again. So here's the quote:

 

“Taught by centuries of living, the republic of immortal men had achieved a perfection of tolerance, almost of disdain. They knew that over an infinitely long span of time, all things happen to all men. As reward for his past and future virtues, every man merited every kindness -- yet also every betrayal, as reward for his past and future iniquities. Much as the way in games of chance, heads and tails tend to even out, so cleverness and dullness cancel and correct each other. Perhaps the rude poem of El Cid is the counterweight demanded by a single epithet of the Eclogues or a maxim from Heraclitus. The most fleeting thought obeys an invisible plan, and may crown, or inaugurate, a secret design. I know of men who have done evil in order that good may come of it in future centuries, or may already have come of it in centuries past... Viewed in that way, all our acts are just, though also unimportant. There are no spiritual or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; given infinite time, with infinite circumstances and changes, it is impossible that the Odyssey should not be composed at least once. No one is someone; a single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, hero, philosopher, demon, and world -- which is a long-winded way of saying that I am not.”

[Katphood]

I agree with you on Pharod and Anna, that moment near the Pillar of Skulls was truly a gut-wrenching moment. I personally couldn't connect much to Dak'kon since his pain was...not really *known* to me.

[Gfted1]

Celebrate 20 Years of StarCraft with Free Goodies.

[marelooke]

Looks like we might be getting Prey DLC after all: https://twitter.com/PreyGame/status/969702812912320514

 

Edited March 5, 2018 by marelooke

[Katphood]

That's cool. Bought the game a while ago and I'll be playing it once I'm done with Fallout 4.

[Keyrock]

Monster Hunter World has become Capcom's best selling game of all time:

 

http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/news/html/e180305.html

 

Well deserved. Capcom pulls some shady stuff sometimes, as do the other big publishers, but in this case they released a really awesome game without any lootbox bull**** and it sold like hotcakes and was nearly universally well received. Turns out that if you make a really good product, promote it properly, and don't try to rip your customers off, you can still make money. Who knew?

[Mamoulian War]

With Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 6 comming to the West soon, let’s see what Jim Sterling has to say about it and it’s OpenWorldedness.

 

[Katphood]

If you haven't played Bloodborne already, better start right now: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-03-05-bloodborne-community-rallying-together-for-return-to-yharnam-fan-event

[Malcador]

 

Sadly no mariachi

[Katphood]