Video Games: 'Does Not Open From This Side' Edition

[briantw]

5 minutes ago, Fez said:

Microsoft could force/buy exclusivity deals that make major publishers put PC games only on their service. Or they could actually make a better alternative than Steam. There's no rule that software platforms stay dominant forever and Steam does have issues that Microsoft could exploit (like having terrible curation services) if they're smart; in 10 years Steam could end up being the MySpace of video game purchasing software. Or hell, Microsoft could probably buy Valve if they wanted to, it'd probably be less than they paid for Minecraft. Or they could create some sort of distribution deal with Valve surrounding Steam.

There's a lot of options, depending on what exactly they want to do.

Why would Valve sell?  It makes no sense for them.  They're basically raking in money to sell other developers' games while their employees largely get to work on whatever they feel like.  It's a dream job, and Gabe Newell essentially does nothing and collects massive checks every year.  And remember, Newell made his fortune working for Microsoft back in the day.  He's already rich beyond imagining.  Selling Valve makes no sense for him.  It's like his own personal toy box.

I would also say the obvious difference between Steam and MySpace is that, well, people have spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on games from Steam and many have vast game libraries.  That basically demands loyalty.  Further, a lot of people are going to stay loyal to Valve because, duh, it's Valve.  Whatever your opinion of them, the vast majority of PC gamers either like or respect them, and it's unlikely they ditch Valve for a company like Microsoft that most aren't terribly fond of.

[KiDisaster]

20 minutes ago, Sullen said:

Extends spell duration, that rings true, my apologies!

I see no reason in trying to take down the crabs in the woods then. Hell, you can pretty much run away from the damned crabs for the rest of the game! Honestly, I thought the stat distribution for Pyros was kind of disappointing this time around, in DS1 they were by far the best class to start with, but now I feel that pyromancy is too demanding to make a viable build. Dexterity weapons and straight swords seems to be the way to roll this time around.

It works well enough as a supplement to melee with just a bit of an Int investment (it scales with both int and faith now instead of just off your pyro flame level). Picking off or pulling enemies. Although I could just as easily use a bow for that, especially since I'm building Dex anyway and bows are apparently really good this time around. Also great for any enemies who are weak to fire of course. But yeah, I don't know if a Pyromancy as a 'primary weapon' would work very well. But apparently none of the magic does this time around. From what I've read offensive miracles are worthless (which is a real shame, my first character I completed DkS1 with was a strength/faith build and I have a special place in my heart for chucking lightning bolts at fools) and Sorcery requires like 50-70 points in Int before it starts doing good damage. 

I always preferred melee in Souls games anyway but it's a shame they gutted magic so much if all that is true. 

[Sullen]

1 minute ago, KiDisaster said:

It works well enough as a supplement to melee. Picking off or pulling enemies. Although I could just as easily use a bow for that, especially since I'm building Dex anyway and bows are apparently really good this time around. Also great for any enemies who are weak to fire of course. But yeah, I don't know if a Pyromancy as a 'primary weapon' would work very well. But apparently none of the magic does this time around. From what I've read offensive miracles are worthless (which is a real shame, my first character I completed DkS1 with was a strength/faith build and I have a special place in my heart for chucking lightning bolts at fools) and Sorcery requires like 50-70 points in Int before it starts doing good damage. 

I always preferred melee in Souls games anyway but it's a shame they gutted magic so much if all that is true. 

Yeah, I've heard damage with magic now scales exponentially instead of plateauing, which requires you to pump your attunement and intelligence stats if you want to be viable, and even then, you'll have to switch your regular estus flasks for ashen ones for larger areas. Essentially, they got the short end of the stick.

If not for the prioritizing of groups in invasions though, I'd say that this game has the best matchmaking system for multiplayer, your level + strongest weapon is considerably more representative of your strength than your level alone, or the total amount of souls gained (not even spent) on a character. The PVP is pretty much all melee now though, while in Dark Souls and early Dark Souls 2 you have considerably more build variety.

In all honesty, I blame Bloodborne for build variety having been butchered so thoroughly.

[Fez]

20 minutes ago, briantw said:

Why would Valve sell?  It makes no sense for them.  They're basically raking in money to sell other developers' games while their employees largely get to work on whatever they feel like.  It's a dream job, and Gabe Newell essentially does nothing and collects massive checks every year.  And remember, Newell made his fortune working for Microsoft back in the day.  He's already rich beyond imagining.  Selling Valve makes no sense for him.  It's like his own personal toy box.

I would also say the obvious difference between Steam and MySpace is that, well, people have spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on games from Steam and many have vast game libraries.  That basically demands loyalty.  Further, a lot of people are going to stay loyal to Valve because, duh, it's Valve.  Whatever your opinion of them, the vast majority of PC gamers either like or respect them, and it's unlikely they ditch Valve for a company like Microsoft that most aren't terribly fond of.

Why wouldn't they? Microsoft could pretty easily offer them an absurd amount of money that they'd very unlikely say no to. No one thought Notch would sell Minecraft either, and he was in the same situation getting massive checks and not personally working anymore, and then Microsoft offered him $2.5 billion.

But that's just one option, and not necessarily the most likely. And look, I like Steam plenty, but I don't feel anything towards Valve itself, and I suspect a lot of gamers feel the same way. If something that was actually better came along, why wouldn't gamers buy their new games from it? There's nothing stopping them from still accessing their Steam libraries; and plenty of gamers are already used to having Steam and Battlenet. For instance, its very unlikely, but what if Microsoft announced that all games on its service would be DRM-free. You don't think that would sway a lot of gamers?

Or, Microsoft could bribe enough publishers to go exclusive with their service on PC to starve Steam of all big games for a long enough time to get people to switch over. And/or actually create another first-party game that everyone wants to buy.

[JonSnow4President]

I wouldn't care either way.  Same price (or immaterially different), I'd probably go Steam just because I have more experience with it, know exactly what I'm getting, and am a little jaded with Microsoft because of Xbox and the issues I've had with Live (I'm buying a PC because of Xbox).  

But if I can only get the game from one source, as long as you don't make it particularly painful, I don't care. I'll just add the friends on that game to that system, and carry on.  Even though I currently have the processing power of a particularly large potato, I have origin downloaded so I'm good to go when I do upgrade my PC.  And steam will carry over anywhere.  

ETA:  And even if Microsoft goes exclusive to its service, the number of developers on steam and the value of steam sales will still make Steam a staple of the industry, even if someone else takes all the AAA titles.  Where else am I going to find a multiplayer dinosaur survival game where you play as the dinosaurs?

[RumHam]

Valve should just sell Half-Life to Microsoft. Or to anyone whose actually going to make the damn game. 

[Jasta11]

The thing is, many PC gamers already own many games on Steam and Steam alone. It's not like the (say) MySpace to Facebook transition where you can just have your friends go to the new service then never visit the old one again. Unless Microsoft offers to give you credit for all your Steam games (which is incredibly unlikely to say the least), I doubt any service is ever going to replace Steam in the foreseeable future. Exist alongside it by virtue of having exclusives, yes, like Origin (only way to have many EA games) or GoG (only legal way to get several older games to work on modern systems) manage to. But supplanting Steam at this point would require tremendous effort.

I guess Microsoft has the sheer $ to buy Valve, but even then Newell and his merry men might not even have an interest in it. They're already swimming in money and can make whatever they want. I doubt they would be fans of accepting Microsoft oversight even if it came with yet more money.

 

[KiDisaster]

I was not prepared for Smouldering Lake to be as tough as it is. I am getting absolutely destroyed down in the Demon Ruins or whatever. Hit a road block at the heavy shield/ultra greatsword guy (who I'm pretty sure I already killed as a phantom in the Catacombs). He just keeps wrecking me and it feels like such a slog to get back to him. Through all those damn basilisks. 

It's take a break time

[Kalbear]

At least for the next 3 years Xbox isn't going away. 

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

At least for the next 3 years Xbox isn't going away. 

What made you feel the need to make that announcement? Has there been a recent rumour of MS pulling the plug on Xbox? All I've seen lately is the announcement of MS ceasing to manufacture Xbox 360, which is quite predictable and probably at roughly the right time.

In other news, I see a few comments around the 'net criticising a guy at Polygon who decided he wouldn't review Starfox Zero because he hated the game too much, and then he writes an article about it. Iif you are assigned a game to review and end up hating it a lot then you can have a discussion with your boss and see if you can agree that it's OK to drop the assignment, and that's fine. Not sure it's necessary (or professional) to write an article about your decision not to review a game, and basically tell the world you think the game is crap, without actually doing a proper review.

[MerenthaClone]

8 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I can't link from my work computer, but if you go to wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War:_WARHAMMER_Future_Content_Blog, they have outlined what DLCs and free LCs they plan. Apparently Bretonnia will not be a faction added in a DLC, which is complete bullshit. 

No, Brettonia will not be added as paid DLC.  And during the same announcement, they made it clear that they will be releasing some/smaller factions as free DLC occasionally.  So they came as close to announcing outright that Brettonia will be the first free DLC without actually saying it as they could, as far as I can tell.

e:  GTX 970 installed and 500gb SSD due to arrive Friday.  Wooo!  

[Kalbear]

22 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

What made you feel the need to make that announcement? Has there been a recent rumour of MS pulling the plug on Xbox? All I've seen lately is the announcement of MS ceasing to manufacture Xbox 360, which is quite predictable and probably at roughly the right time.

 

Read the rest of the thread. Other people were claiming that the Xbox was going to go away. It isn't, at least for 3 years.

[KiDisaster]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

In other news, I see a few comments around the 'net criticising a guy at Polygon who decided he wouldn't review Starfox Zero because he hated the game too much, and then he writes an article about it. Iif you are assigned a game to review and end up hating it a lot then you can have a discussion with your boss and see if you can agree that it's OK to drop the assignment, and that's fine. Not sure it's necessary (or professional) to write an article about your decision not to review a game, and basically tell the world you think the game is crap, without actually doing a proper review.

I think if the game is bad enough that even a guy who's being paid to play it can't bring himself to finish it, that definitely warrants writing the article. 

Besides, the only reason it isn't a "review" is just that Polygon requires reviewers to finish the games they're talking about with very few exceptions (as he says in the article). He laid out everything he didn't like about it, and the things he did like. It is a review, really. He just couldn't call it one because semantics or whatever.

[briantw]

9 hours ago, Fez said:

Why wouldn't they? Microsoft could pretty easily offer them an absurd amount of money that they'd very unlikely say no to. No one thought Notch would sell Minecraft either, and he was in the same situation getting massive checks and not personally working anymore, and then Microsoft offered him $2.5 billion.

But that's just one option, and not necessarily the most likely. And look, I like Steam plenty, but I don't feel anything towards Valve itself, and I suspect a lot of gamers feel the same way. If something that was actually better came along, why wouldn't gamers buy their new games from it? There's nothing stopping them from still accessing their Steam libraries; and plenty of gamers are already used to having Steam and Battlenet. For instance, its very unlikely, but what if Microsoft announced that all games on its service would be DRM-free. You don't think that would sway a lot of gamers?

Or, Microsoft could bribe enough publishers to go exclusive with their service on PC to starve Steam of all big games for a long enough time to get people to switch over. And/or actually create another first-party game that everyone wants to buy.

Why wouldn't they?  Because there is no incentive to sell.  Gabe Newell is already a millionaire.  Why would he sell Valve to the company that already made him a millionaire?  He literally rakes in money for doing nothing.  There is no reason for him to sell Valve, as he's already rich beyond imagining.  It's not as if he's some start up who made it big.  He made millions from Microsoft, and he used it to start Valve.  He's making more millions now for doing literally nothing.  

There is quite simply no reason for him to sell Valve.  He's already rich.  He doesn't need the money, and in fact long term Steam will probably make him more than a one-time pay off from Microsoft would.  He quite literally makes money from selling the games of his competitors.  

And yeah, Microsoft could bribe developers and publishers, but at the end of the day most of these guys would make more money selling things on Steam's more developer-friendly platform which, by the way, has a built in user base of tens of millions of people.  Microsoft might be able to buy out a few developers, but Steam survives largely on the strength of sheer volume these days, and I don't see that changing any time soon.  The only way Microsoft could really kill Steam is by buying every developer, and that isn't happening.

Also, again, millions of people have thousands of dollars invested in their Steam libraries.  They won't just abandon that.

[The Anti-Targ]

Millionaires want to become billionaires. And MS could make that happen for Gabe. That's plenty of incentive to sell anything, including your own soul.

[Werthead]

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The problem they're going to face is that, inevitably, people are not going to ditch Steam for whatever shit service Microsoft ends up offering.  It'll be just like Origin.  People will use it to play the games that they can only play on Origin, but they'll buy everything else on Steam.

It already exists. The Windows 10 Store. The only game exclusive on it is Quantum Break, which I really want to play but I don't want to upgrade to W10 yet. It's also awful, with lots of bugs and technical problems. A Steam-beater it ain't.

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Why wouldn't they? Microsoft could pretty easily offer them an absurd amount of money that they'd very unlikely say no to. No one thought Notch would sell Minecraft either, and he was in the same situation getting massive checks and not personally working anymore, and then Microsoft offered him $2.5 billion.

I'm not sure Microsoft have enough ready cash to buy Steam. The market value of Steam has to be orders of magnitude greater even than Minecraft, as Valve make $1.5 billion a year through Steam (estimated, possibly conservatively). I think you'd be talking about $10 billion minimum to make it worthwhile for Valve (a private company, remember, they're not beholden to anyone) to even consider it.

Notch also sold Minecraft because he personally was still doing games development and getting a huge amount of stress and headaches from it. Selling up was a carthartic thing for him.

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Or, Microsoft could bribe enough publishers to go exclusive with their service on PC to starve Steam of all big games for a long enough time to get people to switch over. And/or actually create another first-party game that everyone wants to buy.

Again, I don't think Microsoft would be willing to put the kind of money in that this would require. Fallout 4 sold 1.5 million copies in its first day on sale on Steam alone. Microsoft would have had to have paid Bethesda what, a quarter or a third of a billion dollars to make going exclusive worthwhile? Actually, probably a lot more than that given the extremely long tail Bethesda games have in terms of sales years further down the road.

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Valve should just sell Half-Life to Microsoft. Or to anyone whose actually going to make the damn game. 

I'd actually like to see what Arkane could do with it. Dishonored had that same offbeat, dystopian atmosphere as HL, and Arkane were going to create a Ravenholm-based Half-Life spin-off before they were bought by Bethesda. Or hell, I'd even take Gearbox having a punt, if some of the same people who worked on Opposing Force were still around.

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Millionaires want to become billionaires. And MS could make that happen for Gabe. That's plenty of incentive to sell anything, including your own soul.

Newell is already a billionaire. His net worth is $2.2 billion, which is about double where it was even seven or eight years ago.

[Gears of the Beast]

Where can I buy some of this Microsoft brand Kool-Aid? 

[Fez]

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

At least for the next 3 years Xbox isn't going away. 

I never thought it would go away immediately. Even at the most aggressive timeline, it would be something like 'make announcement at E3,' 'start selling X around Christmas,' 'begin long transition in 2017.'

7 hours ago, briantw said:

Also, again, millions of people have thousands of dollars invested in their Steam libraries.  They won't just abandon that.

I'm not going to keep going around circles on a hypothetical, so I'm not going to respond to the rest. But this part, who said anything about abandoning their Steam libraries? Once you buy those games you own them forever (well, the licenses at least, but realistically that won't change), you don't need to keep buying games to keep having access to them. And having games across multiple libraries does not diminish them. I already have games through Steam, Origin, Battle.net, UPlay, and just on my desktop that I bought on GOG or wherever.

 

40 minutes ago, Gears of the Beast said:

Where can I buy some of this Microsoft brand Kool-Aid? 

Hey now, I'm not saying its going to work; anything risky by Microsoft would probably fail spectacularly. I just think they will do something because the console business is in such flux and they are so behind Sony, who themselves are feeling the need to try a major risk (the NEO) despite having such a lead in sales.

[Sullen]

16 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

I was not prepared for Smouldering Lake to be as tough as it is. I am getting absolutely destroyed down in the Demon Ruins or whatever. Hit a road block at the heavy shield/ultra greatsword guy (who I'm pretty sure I already killed as a phantom in the Catacombs). He just keeps wrecking me and it feels like such a slog to get back to him. Through all those damn basilisks. 

It's take a break time

Yeah, the Iron Tarkus wannabe is also the one who gave me the most trouble in the area, there's two things to consider while fighting him.

1) Unless you want to try to parry, your shield is useless, blocking one of his hits is a death sentence... two-hand your weapon for more damage

2) He has super armour on many of his attacks, so don't try to interrupt him

[briantw]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

It already exists. The Windows 10 Store. The only game exclusive on it is Quantum Break, which I really want to play but I don't want to upgrade to W10 yet. It's also awful, with lots of bugs and technical problems. A Steam-beater it ain't.

I'm not sure Microsoft have enough ready cash to buy Steam. The market value of Steam has to be orders of magnitude greater even than Minecraft, as Valve make $1.5 billion a year through Steam (estimated, possibly conservatively). I think you'd be talking about $10 billion minimum to make it worthwhile for Valve (a private company, remember, they're not beholden to anyone) to even consider it.

Notch also sold Minecraft because he personally was still doing games development and getting a huge amount of stress and headaches from it. Selling up was a carthartic thing for him.

Again, I don't think Microsoft would be willing to put the kind of money in that this would require. Fallout 4 sold 1.5 million copies in its first day on sale on Steam alone. Microsoft would have had to have paid Bethesda what, a quarter or a third of a billion dollars to make going exclusive worthwhile? Actually, probably a lot more than that given the extremely long tail Bethesda games have in terms of sales years further down the road.

I'd actually like to see what Arkane could do with it. Dishonored had that same offbeat, dystopian atmosphere as HL, and Arkane were going to create a Ravenholm-based Half-Life spin-off before they were bought by Bethesda. Or hell, I'd even take Gearbox having a punt, if some of the same people who worked on Opposing Force were still around.

Newell is already a billionaire. His net worth is $2.2 billion, which is about double where it was even seven or eight years ago.

Yeah.  Again, there is basically no reason for Newell to sell Valve.  It's his own personal toy box where he has essentially unlimited money to play around with whatever tech he wants to, and they make so much money doing nothing (literally by selling competitors' games and selling hats and crates in TF2/CS/DoTA) that he can hire whoever he wants to in order to pursue any of his wild tangents without fear of bankrupting the company.  Valve is basically an IT nerd's wet dream.

And if Newell ever gets sick of working at Valve, all he needs to do is put someone competent in charge, stop going into the office, and collect millions every year for sitting at home or doing whatever it is he likes to do besides not developing Half-Life games.