Imran Khan

I always turn speaker sounds off at the beginning if I can.

I guess it's the former from the perspective that selling games is a tertiary benefit and the first is to sell hardware on which they get a 30% cut of GTAs and Calls of Duty. The PC ports are neither boon nor huge burden, which makes them expendable cuts.

It can be, but using relative comparisons, RE9 did better than any of them. Doom: The Dark Ages outperformed everything but Tsushima. When Erdtree came out, Elden Ring did five times the best-performing PlayStation port.

Paired with internal numbers, it's probably not pretty.

Jason has been talking about this out loud for a few days and it prompted me to check the Steam concurrents for single-player PlayStation ports. And they're not, like, amazing.

Which isn't surprising, they're years-late ports for largely narrative-based games. But I can see why they tire of it.

If Talarico does win the general (which is not guaranteed)

I honestly wonder

Do they blame Bari Weiss?

If I had to speculate, my guess at the order of operations here is:

- Kushner and Saudi invest in EA
- They like the prospective ROI and see more gaming companies like Riot as opportunities
- They use Trump to force Tencent out with added sinophobia
- They pick up the pieces financially

fellas drop everything , cancel all your plans and take your girl to this . and i Fucking Guarantee she will nut you off

A friend was so proud to show me the new french doors in his house but when -I- tried to slip the doors some tongue, I was asked to leave. Genuinely an insane response.

Aw, this was a good feature idea I was tossing around in my head but didn't pull the trigger on. Good read!

I just

I'd love it if I could not be morally embarrassed to like stuff in Shonen Jump

Boy gas prices sure did go up 50c a gallon in a day, huh.

The dark GAAS secret no one wants to admit is that Fortnite would not have become a success if not for:
- Pivoting heavy and established dev resources to it
- Having a wildly successful game engine
- Luck
- The gumption to just rip PUBG off that they had been helping optimize for UE

Now you might say, okay, but how is that riskier than making a GAAS that fails? And it’s not! But every money-person in games now thinks they have the golden goose and is willing to sacrifice whatever to get there.

Because they see it as a passive moneymaker. The idea of games as a single-sale product makes executives crazy because the idea of 4-5 years for something you sell once doesn’t make mathematical sense to them.

A boom-or-bust game industry is partially to blame, but a company not preparing any runway to pay employees for at least six months outside of an infamously capricious Tencent has to take some of the blame here.

Generally yes but Pokemon is a specific sickness of only using revives because otherwise the game is too easy. It's only been a thing since Exp. Share became mandatory.

I assume that's normal and I'm a weirdo for never using items in Pokemon runs.

The feeling I have gotten, even from people who think Marathon rocks, is that it takes a little bit and some struggling for it to click. I think the value proposition on how willing people are to let that happen is different for a released game than a beta, but it's not necessarily easier.

Bloop Rinse

It is nice to have an indie world where all the games aren't running terribly, tbh.

Anyway these are ultimately just kind of hypothetical complaints about the game. I imagine any remake would further smooth it out but I will always be fascinated by how Bloodborne as designed would have been accepted in that hypothetical world.

One thing I think gets the short shrift because of this change is weapon transformations. They are designed to feed into rallying because they make your weapon longer mid-combo, so you can time a combo to bleed out a back stepping enemy.

But if you don’t need to rally quickly, who cares?

It’s not game-ruining, but it is game-changing. I think people would have been more challenged and frustrated with 1.0 Bloodborne but it also would have been more interesting.

When they let you store 600 of them, you can grind that decision away and only rely on blood vials, and that sucks. It’s one of the few times I can remember From just completely capitulating on a mechanic and going “Fine, do whatever you want, it’s easier now.”

Blood vials, as they are in launch Bloodborne, are an extremely fast estus flask that you can use between dodges. The main healing mechanic in Bloodborne is -supposed- to be rallying.

So when you use a vial, you’re supposed to go “Fuck, I can only do that a few more times before it’s a problem.”

The game was pretty clearly rushed out the door a bit! But so is every FromSoft game in some way or another.

My toxic opinion is that they never should have backed down on blood vials and let you store 600 of them.

They genuinely seem to think people are stupid enough to just be fine with that and they seem to largely be right.

Time to start Fanbyte 2

I love that "It was preventative" is a magic word to them.

To be fair, they never get follow ups on it and wouldn't answer them anyway. But if you're going to ignore it, why not just ignore the original question?