Videogames: All Valves on Deck

[Ser Not Appearing]

9 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Is it better than the last 4 Pokémon games ? 

I've never been into Pokemon (a bit of Pokemon Go but that's it). My 10 yr old played one of the most recent and was crazy addicted. It always struck me as a bit too boring.

For me, adding the base building, having battles be dynamic instead of turn based and adding the zelda-ish exploration really changes things and I'm a bit addicted to this one.

[Ser Not Appearing]

8 hours ago, polishgenius said:

As far as I can tell it comes down to 'all the designs are just changed enough that Nintendo have no claim'. 

Which is wild because even I can identify exactly which Pokémon are ripped off for a number of these models. They also basically have shinys that glitter and have an icon like shinys but they're larger "pals" and have unique abilities instead of color palette changes. Heck, they even gave egg incubators like Pokemon Go.

It's the equivalent of that Rothfuss knock-off author that was being discussed elsewhere. Such a clear ripoff.

Edited January 25 by Ser Not Appearing

[polishgenius]

26 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

Which is wild because even I can identify exactly which Pokémon are ripped off for a number of these models.

 

Sure, I imagine behind the scenes Nintendo have some lawyers busily beavering away to see if the blatant similarities between some of the designs - that's where they'll get them, if at all. 

Beyond that, it's just game concepts. I mean, I'm no IP lawyer so maybe there is something they can nail them for but it takes some pretty specific things to tie down copyright or trademark infringement. There have been games far more similar than to Pokemon than Palworld that there wasn't any controversy about - nobody was going after TemTem or Nexomon or whatever, and they're directly aping the gameplay as well as the general concept of monster-catching. 

[Kalbear]

My understanding is that there isn't much to stand on from a 'would someone mistake this for Pokemon' or would they mistake it for a Pokemon game, but there is a lot of problem with their models; their models are almost certainly literally ripped off from Pokemon games - the meshes and assets used to create the actual 3d models. From artists I've heard from it would be virtually impossible and take absurdly long to get the kind of identical assets that they're doing for many of these models without just stealing 'em. If true, that'd be a significantly better case. 

[Ser Not Appearing]

Looks like Nintendo said they're going to investigate it now:

https://www.gamesradar.com/the-pokemon-company-appears-to-break-silence-over-palworld-we-intend-to-investigate-and-take-appropriate-measures-to-address-any-acts-that-infringe-on-intellectual-property-rights/

 

And here's something discussing the models (not a ton of detail):

https://www.gamesradar.com/game-developers-arent-really-buying-the-similarities-between-palworld-and-pokemon-to-accidentally-create-a-complex-model-mesh-with-so-near-exact-proportions-is-practically-impossible/

 

 

 

Edited January 25 by Ser Not Appearing

[Ser Not Appearing]

Beating a dead horse but I figured I should mention - just in case anyone is only informed of the game by my listing if simultaneously - that you throw balls at pals (that often look like the exact character models of Pokemon) to capture them in Palworld and there's a Pokedex listing (by another name). You then use them to fight other people and pals in the wild (some of whom also summon their pals for the fight) as well as tower bosses (gym leaders).

[polishgenius]

37 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

that often look like the exact character models of Pokemon

Like Kalbear says, this might be the only part that's actually open to legal trouble. 

Look, check this review for Nexomon (which I've played and is decent, albeit I never finished it. Might at some stage, but tbh if I want to play a Pokemon ripoff it'll probably be Cassette Beasts, which just looks cool)
 

 

Way more similar to Pokemon in its underlying systems, and even things like the menus, the healing centers, etc are clearly recongisable even if they have their own art style. And that game didn't just get past Nintendo's lawyers, it got approved for a Switch release. 

 

That isn't me defending Palworld, in which I don't have a lot of interest and the studio does seem to have questionable practices. It's just that something can be a fairly clear ripoff without going anywhere near 'copyright infringement' territory. I mean, otherwise the Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon guys would have sued Stardew Valley into the sun. 

 

eta: this is ultimately a good thing in gaming, because while it does sometimes lead to situations like this, it also means (1) twists on ideas are much easier to find, since indie devs don't have to look over their shoulder with everything they do and (2) there's now been multiple occasions where the creator behind an IP left or got shouldered out of a studio that retained the rights to the IP, and were able to continue with spiritual sequels that were basically unofficial continuations of the series without trouble from their old employer. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is Castlevania, Yooka-Laylie is Banjo Kazooie (the 3D YL is supposed to be rubbish but the 2D sequel rocks. Also: is very clearly a Donkey Kong game in gameplay and style, since that team developed the DK games when Rare were doing them and obviously drew on that background. Games rights are complicated). 

 

Edited January 25 by polishgenius

[IlyaP]

Apparently more layoffs are happening at Microsoft. Hopefully your job is safe, @Kalbear? 

Courtesy of Dark Horizons: https://www.darkhorizons.com/xbox-layoffs-hit-physical-retail-staffers/

 

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Apparently more layoffs are happening at Microsoft. Hopefully your job is safe, @Kalbear? 

Courtesy of Dark Horizons: https://www.darkhorizons.com/xbox-layoffs-hit-physical-retail-staffers/

 

I'm not at xbox anymore but yeah. No one I know was impacted, but blizzard got hit pretty hard apparently. 

[Ser Not Appearing]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I'm not at xbox anymore but yeah. No one I know was impacted, but blizzard got hit pretty hard apparently. 

 

"Welcome to the family. Now ... GTFO."

[Werthead]

This analysis of the batshit insanity of the gaming market in 2024 is pretty interesting.

It's been debated before, but video game profits and even revenues do seem to be falling overall despite some games doing gangbuster numbers. The inflation of time and money (and, er, inflation) in making new games seems to have gone completely bonkers: between 2006 and 2011 Bethesda released three massive open-world RPGs, each well-received, each costing well under $100 million to make (the first two, Oblivion and Fallout 3, almost certainly under $50 million) and each spending only around two to three years in full-time development. All three games were released on the X-Box 360 generation and all three had dev teams of under 100 people (Oblivion considerably less).

For the next generation they only released one comparable game, Fallout 4, costing $120 million to make, which spent four years in full-time development with three years of pre-production before that. The game had a team of well under 200 people developing it.

Skyrim has sold over 60 million copies, Fallout 4 around 30-40 million and Fallout 3 maybe 20 million.

Starfield took eight years of full development with four years of pre-production before that, costing over $200 million (possibly around $250 million) with a team of ~400 people. So far around 13 million people seem to have played it, comparable to the success achieved by Fallout 4 and Skyrim in their first six months on sale. But not more. If anything, Starfield maintaining that level despite chainsawing-off their single largest launch market (all of Bethesda's previous multiplat games had the PS version outselling X-Box and PC, sometimes combined, for a long time before the PC eventually caught up and possibly overtook) is impressive.

This can also be seen in other companies. In the PS3 generation, Rockstar had the bandwidth necessary to simultaneously develop GTA5, LA Noire, Red Dead Redemption 1 and then early work on 2 and Max Payne 3. That was awesome for their bank balance. But in the PS4 generation they could only ship one game, Red Dead Redemption 2, which eventually had over a thousand people listed in its credits (RDR2 has sold 50-60 million copies but, crazily, Take Two seem to regard it as almost a disappointment, having been hoping for sales more comparable to GTA5's 200 million). GTA6 is going to arrive firmly in the second half of the PS5's life cycle, which is insane. It if ends up costing much less than $500 million I'd be quite surprised.

The current AAA development system is totally unsustainable. Apparently Spider-Man 3 might end up being two games because even Insomniac can't make the figures work (Spider-Man 2 sold less than SM1 and Miles Morales in the same release window, despite costing significantly more to develop, probably due to the PS5 having less than half the market penetration of the PS4 at the point the earlier games were released).

What impact AI will have on future game development remains to be seen. The benefits of off-shoring may also become more obvious: CD Projekt apparently saves 50% on dev costs versus the US by remaining based in Poland, and giga-success/flavour-of-the-month Palworld was made for $7 million by partially utilising dev teams based in Malaysia.

Edited January 28 by Werthead

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

This analysis of the batshit insanity of the gaming market in 2024 is pretty interesting.

It's been debated before, but video game profits and even revenues do seem to be falling overall despite some games doing gangbuster numbers. The inflation of time and money (and, er, inflation) in making new games seems to have gone completely bonkers: between 2006 and 2011 Bethesda released three massive open-world RPGs, each well-received, each costing well under $100 million to make (the first two, Oblivion and Fallout 3, almost certainly under $50 million) and each spending only around two to three years in full-time development. All three games were released on the X-Box 360 generation and all three had dev teams of under 100 people (Oblivion considerably less).

For the next generation they only released one comparable game, Fallout 4, costing $120 million to make, which spent four years in full-time development with three years of pre-production before that. The game had a team of well under 200 people developing it.

Skyrim has sold over 60 million copies, Fallout 4 around 30-40 million and Fallout 3 maybe 20 million.

Starfield took eight years of full development with four years of pre-production before that, costing over $200 million (possibly around $250 million) with a team of ~400 people. So far around 13 million people seem to have played it, comparable to the success achieved by Fallout 4 and Skyrim in their first six months on sale. But not more. If anything, Starfield maintaining that level despite chainsawing-off their single largest launch market (all of Bethesda's previous multiplat games had the PS version outselling X-Box and PC, sometimes combined, for a long time before the PC eventually caught up and possibly overtook) is impressive.

This can also be seen in other companies. In the PS3 generation, Rockstar had the bandwidth necessary to simultaneously develop GTA5, LA Noire, Red Dead Redemption 1 and then early work on 2 and Max Payne 3. That was awesome for their bank balance. But in the PS4 generation they could only ship one game, Red Dead Redemption 2, which eventually had over a thousand people listed in its credits (RDR2 has sold 50-60 million copies but, crazily, Take Two seem to regard it as almost a disappointment, having been hoping for sales more comparable to GTA5's 200 million). GTA6 is going to arrive firmly in the second half of the PS5's life cycle, which is insane. It if ends up costing much less than $500 million I'd be quite surprised.

The current AAA development system is totally unsustainable. Apparently Spider-Man 3 might end up being two games because even Insomniac can't make the figures work (Spider-Man 2 sold less than SM1 and Miles Morales in the same release window, despite costing significantly more to develop, probably due to the PS5 having less than half the market penetration of the PS4 at the point the earlier games were released).

What impact AI will have on future game development remains to be seen. The benefits of off-shoring may also become more obvious: CD Projekt apparently saves 50% on dev costs versus the US by remaining based in Poland, and giga-success/flavour-of-the-month Palworld was made for $7 million by partially utilising dev teams based in Malaysia.

I think the only solution at this point might be a price increase to the consumer again to like 90 USD. 

[Kalbear]

I think they really need to figure out that games don't need the level of engineering to be fun, and more investment in the story and gameplay over graphics and mechanics will pay off significantly more. Especially if you can't reasonably charge more.

There was a similar issue with MMOs when wow hit bit, and tons of studios bent over backwards to make a mmo that could compete - but that costs oodles of money along with ongoing costs. AAA games at this point have to plan for DLC, loot or something like that to even get close to making money, because if they fail they will fail absurdly hard.

At this point the engineering time and budget is closer to the cost to make a new plane. Why would you do that?

Now the real dirty issue is - if that is true and studios stop going after them so hard, what is going to happen to consoles? The switch shows how the IP and games matter way more than graphical power - will Sony and Xbox start going that way?

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

@KalbearWon’t the PC gaming industry take a huge hit then ? Nvidea, Corsair, MSI, AMD etc all related PC vendors will definitely suffer. Also I’m a kinda a graphics whore and want there to be continued tech improvements there  why would anyone buy a new RTX card if graphics start stagnating ? Already we’re kinda seeing that , where Red Dead 2 still remains the best graphical open world game almost 7 years after its release.  They can reduce costs by outsourcing and also I’m okay with paying up to 90 USD for AAA+ games that last me 100+ hours.

Edited January 29 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Kalbear]

58 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

@KalbearWon’t the PC gaming industry take a huge hit then ? Nvidea, Corsair, MSI, AMD etc all related PC vendors will definitely suffer.

Nvidia won't because of their AI business. Other companies would probably suffer some, but only some - lots of components other than graphics cards, and the PC universe on gaming is largely about breadth of games, not the bestest graphics ones.

58 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Also I’m a kinda a graphics whore and want there to be continued tech improvements there  why would anyone buy a new RTX card if graphics start stagnating ?

They...wouldn't? And that'd probably be a good thing for consumers? 

I'm sure there will be continued improvements because graphics has advantages beyond your whoring ways. AI, math calcs and sims, power use, movies and TV production, phones. And heck, lots of games have high graphic needs but aren't AAA games. Forza doesn't cost that much to make as an example. 

But this lag in time and increased costs and amount of work isnt sustainable. 

58 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Already we’re kinda seeing that , where Red Dead 2 still remains the best graphical open world game almost 7 years after its release.  They can reduce costs by outsourcing and also I’m okay with paying up to 90 USD for AAA+ games that last me 100+ hours.

90 usd isn't enough. Not unless you want only guaranteed games to do that. Cyberpunk almost failed and almost brought cdpr down, as an example. Bethesda is hurting because of starfield. You need games at the $400-500m level to either guarantee they sell like 30m units (which is not easy at all) or cost closer to $150. 

Or you make them cheaper.

[Ser Not Appearing]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think they really need to figure out that games don't need the level of engineering to be fun, and more investment in the story and gameplay over graphics and mechanics will pay off significantly more. 

 

I believe this with absolute certainty.

 

Edit: Though I guess I'm confused over the difference between what you might bean between "gameplay" and "mechanics"

Edited January 29 by Ser Not Appearing

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

 

I believe this with absolute certainty.

 

Edit: Though I guess I'm confused over the difference between what you might bean between "gameplay" and "mechanics"

Mechanics was probably not the right word but what I mean is, say, spending a lot of time doing engineering of rope physics or richochets or having everything deformable or destructible. There is often a lot of work put into things that you will rarely see and barely care about or notice. 

Some games wed these well and the mechanics go with the gameplay nicely. How spider-man interacts with webs and surfaces in Spiderman 1 is a good example. Was it needed to have him slingshot himself in sp2? That sort of thing.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

21 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Mechanics was probably not the right word but what I mean is, say, spending a lot of time doing engineering of rope physics or richochets or having everything deformable or destructible. There is often a lot of work put into things that you will rarely see and barely care about or notice. 

 

But this kind of attention to detail is greatly appreciated by gamers and a lot of companies like Rockstar built their brand on. It’s a small detail of the game but I do feel it adds to the sum of its parts. 

[polishgenius]

4 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

But this kind of attention to detail is greatly appreciated by gamers

 

I mean, people enjoy it when they see it, but is a slightly less realistic breakage or ricochet really going to hurt sales? I doubt it. 

[Kalbear]

57 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

But this kind of attention to detail is greatly appreciated by gamers

Not really. Attention to detail can be, sometimes. Or it can be made fun of. But you don't need mechanics to do that. BG3 is a great example where the plot has absurd changes and directions based on all sorts of things you can do, and people are still finding out weird things that happen based on choices.

By comparison how many people love the brain dance parts of cyberpunk?

57 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

and a lot of companies like Rockstar built their brand on. It’s a small detail of the game but I do feel it adds to the sum of its parts. 

Rockstar does spend a ton of time on small details and its resulting in games that if they happen to not do quite as well they won't do again. RDR2 is a good example here. That isn't quite what I'm talking about, mind you - gta and rdr don't have absurd physics or other crazy cutting edge graphics because they're targeted for consoles - but they also are spending absurd money on production, as well as long times to release.