Category Archives: Commentary
Blarghest
The last time I officially joined Blaugust was back in 2015. Back then, the conclusion I came to was that it wasn’t really worth the effort: posting every single day for a month did not meaningfully increase page views. I’m not trying to chase page views per se, but you can’t become a fan of something if you don’t know about it. Discoverability is a real issue, especially if you don’t want to juice SEO metrics in suspect ways. So, on a lark, I decided to rejoin Blaugust nine years later (e.g. this year) to at least throw my hat back in the ring and try to expand my (and others’) horizons.
What I’m finding is not particularly encouraging.
More specifically, I was looking at the list of participants. I’m not going to name names, but more than a few of the dozen I’ve browsed thus far appear to be almost nakedly commercial blogs (e.g. affiliate-linked), AI-based news aggregate sites, and similar nonsense. I’m not trying to be the blogging gatekeeper here, but is there no vetting process to keep out the spam? I suppose that may be a bit much when 100+ people/bots sign up, but it also seems deeply counter-productive to the mission statement of:
Posting regularly builds a community and in this era of AI-slop content, our voices are needed even more than we ever have been at any point in the past.
Ahem. The calls are coming from inside the house, my friends.
[Fake Edit] In fairness, after getting through all 76 of the original list, the number of spam blogs did not increase much. Perhaps a non-standard ordering mechanism would have left a better first impression.
Anyway, we’ll have to see how this Blaugust plays out. I have added 10-20 new blogs to my Feedly roll, and am interested to see where they go from here. Their initial stuff was good enough for my curiosity. The real trick though, is who is still posting in September.
Bad Romance
Avowed is an upcoming Obsidian game that is, perhaps unfortunately, being more defined for what it’s not. As in, not Skyrim, not Baldur’s Gate 3, and so on. Instead, it’s… basically The Outer Worlds set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. Which is a thing they can do, I guess.
But one of the things the developers intentionally left out is causing some discussion: romance options.
Yeah, we decided to forego full romance paths in Avowed. It’s something that we thought very hard about, and we talked about it as a narrative team. I think if you’re going to invest in romance, everyone who’s writing them needs to be absolutely, fully bought in. And the other thing you need to do is make sure that if you’re going to provide that path, that you’re balancing that with an equally meaningful and well-developed, non-romantic path because you never want players to feel that, “Well, the only way I really get to know this character or really get to form a meaningful bond with them, is if I commit to romancing them, which maybe isn’t something I want to do.” So, for all of those reasons, we decided to forego romances, specifically in Avowed.
For the record, this is generally how Obsidian rolls anyway. Fallout: New Vegas didn’t have romanceable companions, the original Pillars of Eternity didn’t have any, and The Outer Worlds teased a bit but didn’t have any either. At some point though, you have to wonder if it’s more a philosophical viewpoint, personal preference, or… a lack of experience.
On Reddit however, the thread turned into a deeper commentary on romance options in games more generally. The topic did give me some pause, as the two “camps” were not necessarily in direct opposition. On the one hand, you had people who said:
That’s the best you can really expect, I think. In order to craft a mature, believable romance in a video game you’d need to spend a game’s worth of writing on top of whatever the actual game is.
And then you have people who respond elsewhere:
And I say it’s a cop out. Speaking as somebody who has devoted at least 10,000 hours to FNV.
Fallout 4 would have been a worse game without its paper-thin, gender-transparent romance. Because it nonetheless added a layer that those companions really benefitted from.
I would say both things can be true at the same time. Crafting a believable game romance is difficult, and yet a paper-thin attempt is often better than nothing. Now, obviously, no one really wants it to be paper-thin, and a lot of this is predicated on the devs being able to craft companions that you care about to begin with. We’re also kind of hand-waving away what counts as a “believable romance.”
Anyway, there are some baseline improvements all devs can make who do include romance in their games. For one: how about not having the relationship start at the last Save Point before the final boss? It’s a fairly common trope in basically all media, and I understand the function, e.g. it allows players to head-cannon their own happily ever after. And, sure, sometimes whether two characters get together is the entire plot; basic relationship maintenance is much less exciting. But I would really like to see more attempts like Cyberpunk 2077 wherein you have more interaction with your bae over time. With some RPGs that might end up too complex – imagine having to script hundreds of branching combat dialog depending on when and with whom you are smooching – but even the little gestures would make things feel more grounded in-game. Again, like with Cyberpunk’s little chat messages and such.
The one argument against romance options I do not respect though is the whole “it’s usually just a checklist of dialogue choices, a quest then fucking,” therefore why even bother including it. There might be a broader conversation to be had about how media depictions of romance may lead some to incorrectly believe real-life relationships are a matter of putting in enough gift tokens until sex pops out or whatever. But also… no. As someone else more elegantly countered:
That’s fucking cute but… isn’t literally EVERYTHING in ALL Obsidian games can be boiled down to a checklist of dialogue choices, quests, then the result. Like everything because, it’s a fucking video game? Does Obsidian even portray anything ‘truly’? Does the Outer Worlds even portray space faring economics true to life? Does New Vegas portray humans living in a nuclear shithole true to life? Does Pillars of Eternity portray island piracy, gunnery combat true to life? Is Avowed combat true to life?
Games are gamified with game mechanics, news at 11. Love bombing an NPC with gifts until they marry you is indeed not realistic (although…). But it’s not as though the player often has any choice in the language of action available in the game. You cannot wink, joke with, twirl your hair, casually touch the shoulder of, or any of the myriad of ways we clumsily indicate and/or reciprocate romantic interest IRL. If the only way you can interact with the game world is pressing E and picking a dialog, then yeah, those are the parameters on how romance happens.
Can devs do romance better within the confines of the medium? Absolutely. I really appreciated in My Time at Sandrock how there was a clear dialog option which indicated your romantic interest with an NPC, which opened up more flirty dialog later; that would prevent the sort of (now infamous) misunderstandings with Gale in Baldur’s Gate 3. Going further, my idealized “solution” would be for the player to be able to select in a menu somewhere that you are romantically interested in character X, and then subtly enhance all your interactions (body language, etc) towards that character. That may alleviate some of gift-spamming and perfect dialog choice concerns and help the relationship progress feel more natural. Or as natural as you can do via a controller and game menus.
And, yeah, writing deeper characters with more interesting personalities works too. Obviously.
Obsidian is, of course, free to sit things out if their writers aren’t feeling it. I haven’t played Pillars of Eternity 2, but I’ve heard the romances there were especially bad, and thus the devs may be feeling it’s not worth trying again. It’s also true that not every narrative needs or is appropriate for having romance options. But I do think it’s okay to be asked about romance in any game focused on developing “meaningful bonds” between characters with dialog choices because that is a thing that happens. And many players, myself included, enjoy it even if it’s at or below trashy romance novel levels. Sometimes especially if it’s at that level.
As to whether Avowed works without it, we shall see.
Forever Winter
Going to be adding Forever Winter onto my list of games that look cool that I’m probably never going to actually play:
I say that because it’s being described as a “co-op tactical squad-based survival horror shooter.” I have zero interest in playing with randoms anymore, let alone in a scenario that allows for an entirely novel way of griefing, e.g. making too much noise and getting caught by AI horrors.
Conceptually though? Game is Badass with a capital B.
While the above trailer looks amazing, it was actually this video that hit hardest:
In short, it seems like most of the people that are working on the game are concept artists that finally get to implement their concept art. A battle tank draped in bound, naked corpses? Flamethrower troops in spacesuits with American flags draped over their face? Yes, please. Granted, I did not quite see any of those in the gameplay reveal trailer, so who knows if they actually follow-through.
It will be interesting to see how the game ultimately shakes out. I’m a big fan of grimdark, post-apocalypse looting. Having to be weary of getting into fights that are impossible to win is also compelling. But there will need to be a real trick on how that translates into long-term fun. Will there be a story mode or overall plot? The trailers seem to indicate you may end up fighting “bosses” eventually, which provides something of a “why” to grind out whatever resources. But if the whole of the game lends itself to not attacking things, and possibly punishes you for doing so, it will be tricky to land the transition without feeling like the game itself turned into something else. Sort of like when you have a stealth game that suddenly has a stealth-less boss fight (Deus Ex: Human Revolution), or a traditional FPS with an annoying stealth level (too many to mention).
Regardless, I will be following Forever Winter with interest.
Guarded About Veilguard
There was an Xbox Game Showcase 2024 recently that revealed a lot of trailers for upcoming games. One of those trailers was for Dragon Age: Veilguard, formally known as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. You can go ahead and watch it yourself first:
Now, the trailer is getting mercilessly shit on by Reddit. There are a lot of Dragon Age: Origin uberfans still kicking apparently (of which I am one, technically) that are appalled at “what the series has become.” Which is funny, considering Origins came out in 2009 and the series has spent more time being something else than it ever has as Origins. All the complaints about EA destroying Bioware is similarly asinine considering A) by all accounts Bioware does this to itself, routinely, and B) who is still even at Bioware 15 years later? That is a topic for another day, though.
Most of the criticisms seem to be leveled at the trailer’s Marvel and/or Fortnite crossover energy. It reminded me more of the D&D: Honor Among Thieves trailer, honestly, but I get it. Dragon Age started out as a sort of gritty, grimdark fantasy RPG and that has… mellowed over time. But it did get me curious about trailers for the prior games.
- Dragon Age: Origins – “Warden’s Calling” and “Sacred Ashes.”
- Dragon Age 2 – “Destiny Extended“
- Dragon Age: Inquisition – “The Breach“
I don’t actually expect you to watch all those, but the summary is: most are pretty damn similar, minus the Borderlands-style name introduction. Yes, there is less blood and more… rizz. The thing about trailers though is that they don’t really matter. It sucks when they suck, for sure, and can definitely dampen the enthusiasm and hype. And, yeah, they can also be indicative of a truly terrible game. But it also goes the other way, right? There are plenty of trailers better than the game they represent, or misleading at best. Just think about the best parts of any of the Dragon Age games to you, and then point me towards where that is represented in its trailer.
I’ll start:
That’s right, Scout Harding. The worst part about Dragon Age: Inquisition was that you couldn’t romance Harding, and now? A decade later you (presumably) can. Game on.
Unsustainability
Senua Saga: Hellblade 2 recently came out to glowing reviews and… well, not so glowing concurrent player counts on Steam. Specifically, it peaked at about 4000 players, compared to 5600 for the original game back in 2017, and compared to ~6000 for Hi-Fi Rush and Redfall. The Reddit post where I found this information has the typical excuses, e.g. it’s all Game Pass’s fault (it was a Day 1 release):
They really don’t get that gamepass is unsustainable. It works for Netflix because movies and tv shows can be made in a year or less so they can keep pumping out content each year. Games take years to make and they can’t keep the same stream of new content releasing the same way streaming services do.
Gamepass subs are already stagnating, they would make more money if they held off putting new exclusives on gamepass like movies do with putting them in theatres first before putting them on streaming. (source)
Now, it’s worth pointing out that concurrent player counts is not precisely the best way to measure the relative success of a single-player game. Unless, I suppose, you are Baldur’s Gate 3. Also, Hellblade 2 is a story-based sequel to an artistic game that, as established, only hit a peak of 5600 concurrent players. According to Wikipedia, the original game sold about 1,000,000 copies by June 2018. Thus, one would likely presume that the sequel would sell roughly the same amount or less.
The thing that piqued my interest though, was the reply that came next:
Yeah, even “small” games like Hellblade and Hi-Fi Rush, which are both under 10h to complete, took 5/6 years to develop. It’s impossible to justify developing games like these with gigantic budgets if you’re going to have them on your subscription service.
I mean… sure. But there’s an unspoken assumption here that these small games with gigantic, 5-6 year budgets would be justified even without being on a subscription service. See hot take:
Hellblade 2 really is the ultimate example of the flaw of Xbox’s “hands off” approach to game dev.
How has a studio been able to take 5 years making a tiny game that is basically identical to the first?
How did Rare get away with farting out trailers for Everwild despite the game literlaly not existing?
Reddit may constantly slag off strict management and studio control, but sometimes it’s needed to reign studios in and actually create games…
Gaming’s “sustainability problem” has long been forecast, but it does feel like things have more recently come to a head. It is easy to villainize Microsoft for closing down, say, the Hi-Fi Rush devs a year after soaking up their accolades… but good reviews don’t always equate to profit. Did the game even make back its production costs? Would it be fiduciarily responsible to make the bet in 2024, that Hi-Fi Rush 2 would outperform the original in 2030?
To be clear, I’m not in favor of Microsoft shutting down the studio. Nor do I want fewer of these kind of games. Games are commercial products, but that is not all they can be. Things like Journey can be transformative experiences, and we would all be worse off for them not existing.
Last post, I mentioned that Square Enix is shifting priorities of their entire company based on poor numbers for their mainline Final Fantasy PS5 timed-exclusive releases. But the fundamental problem is a bit deeper. At Square Enix, we’ve heard for years about how one of their games will sell millions of copies but still be considered “underperforming.” For example, the original Tomb Raider reboot sold 3.4 million copies in the first month, but the execs thought that made it a failure. Well, there was a recent Reddit thread about an ex-Square Enix executive explaining the thought process. In short:
There’s a misunderstanding that has been repeated for nearly a decade and a half that Square Enix sets arbitrarily high sales requirements then gets upset when its arbitrarily high sales requirements fail to be met. […]
If a game costs $100m to make, and takes 5 years, then you have to beat, as an example, what the business could have returned investing $100m into the stock market over that period.
For the 5 years prior to Feb 2024, the stock market averaged a rate of return of 14.5%. Investing that $100m in the stock market would net you a return of $201m, so this is our ROI baseline. Can the game net a return higher than this after marketing, platform fees, and discounts are factored in?
That… makes sense. One might even say it’s basic economics.
However, that heuristic also seems outrageously unsustainable in of itself. Almost by definition, very few companies beat “the market.” Especially when the market is, by weight, Microsoft (7.16%), Apple (6.12%), Nvidia (5.79%), Amazon (3.74%), and Meta (2.31%). And 495 other companies, of course. As an investor, sure, why pick a videogame stock over SPY if the latter has the better return? But how exactly does one run a company this way?
Out of curiosity, I found a site to compare some game stocks vs SPY over the last 10 years:
I’ll be goddamned. They do usually beat the market. In case something happens to the picture:
- Square Enix – 75.89%
- EA – 276.53%
- Ubisoft – 30.56%
- Take Two – 595.14%
- S&P 500 – 170.51%
And it’s worth pointing out that Square Enix was beating the market in August 2023 before a big decline, followed by the even worse decline that we talked about recently. Indeed, every game company in this comparison was beating SPY, before Ubisoft started declining in 2022. Probably why they finally got around to “breaking the glass” when it comes to Assassin’s Creed: Japan.
Huh. This was not the direction I thought this post was going as I was writing it.
Fundamentally, I suppose the question remains as to how sustainable the videogame market is. The ex-Square Enix executive Reddit post I linked earlier has a lot more things to say on the topic, actually, and I absolutely recommend reading through it. One of the biggest takeaways is that major studios are struggling to adjust to the new reality that F2P juggernauts like Fortnite and Genshin Impact (etc) exist. Before, they could throw some more production value and/or marketing into their games and be relatively certain to achieve a certain amount of sales as long as a competitor wasn’t also releasing a major game the same month. Now, they have to worry about that and the fact that Fortnite and Genshin are still siphoning up both money and gamer time.
Which… feels kind of obvious when you write it out loud. There was never a time when I played fewer other games than when I was the in the throes of WoW (or MMOs in general). And while MMOs are niche, things like Fortnite no longer are. So not only do they have to beat out similar titles, they have to beat out a F2P title that gets huge updates every 6 weeks and has been refined to a razor edge over almost a decade. Sorta like how Rift or Warhammer or other MMOs had to debut into WoW’s shadow.
So, is gaming – or even AAA specifically – really unsustainable? Possibly.
What I think is unsustainable are production times. I have thought about this for a while, but it’s wild hearing about some of the sausage-making reporting on game development. My go-to example is always Mass Effect: Andromeda. The game spent five years in development, but it was pretty much stitched together in 18 months, and not just because of crunch. Perhaps it is unreasonable to assume the “spaghetti against the wall” phase of development can be shortened or removed, or I am not appreciating the iteration necessary to get gameplay just right. But the Production Time lever is the only one these companies can realistically pull – raising prices just makes the F2P juggernaut comparisons worse, gamer ire notwithstanding. And are any of these games even worth $80, $90, $100 in the first place?
Perversely, even if Square Enix and others were able to achieve shorter production times, that means they will be pumping out more games (assuming they don’t fire thousands of devs). Which means more competition, more overlap, and still facing down the Fortnite gun. Pivoting to live service games to more directly counter Fortnite doesn’t seem to be working either; none of us seem to want that.
I suppose we will have to see how this plays out over time. The game industry at large is clearly profitable and growing besides. We will also probably have the AAA spectacles of Call of Duty and the like that can easily justify the production values. Similarly, the indie scene will likely always be popping, as small team/solo devs shoot their shot in a crowded market, while keeping their day jobs to get by.
But the artistic AA games? Those may be in trouble. The only path for viability I see there is, ironically, something like Game Pass. Microsoft is closing (now internal) studios, yes, but it’s clearly supporting a lot of smaller titles from independent teams and giving them visibility they may not otherwise have achieved. And Game Pass needs these sort of games to pad out the catalog in-between major releases. There are conflicting stories about whether the Faustian Game Pass Bargain is worth it, but I imagine most of that is based on a post-hoc analysis of popularity. Curation and signal-boosting is only going to become increasingly required to succeed for medium-sized studios.
Gaming News Roundup
Square Enix stocks tumble on news that FF16 and especially FF7 Rebirth have not met sales targets. Which would normally be concerning… if not for the fact that these games are still Sony exclusives. Which, as a strategy, appears to be changing going forward.
In response to the tumbling profits, Square Enix announced what it calls “Square Enix Reboots, and Awakens”, a three-year plan for rebooting for long-term growth. This involves a rethink across all parts of the business, but the highlight is a “shift to a multiplatform strategy.” Square Enix said it will “aggressively pursue a multiplatform strategy that includes Nintendo platforms, PlayStation, Xbox, and PCs.” […]
As part of this multiplatform push, Square Enix said it will “build an environment where more customers can enjoy our titles in regards to major franchises and AAA titles including catalog titles.” The suggestion in all this is mainline Final Fantasy games will ditch PlayStation exclusivity going forward, although Square Enix has yet to announce specifics beyond Final Fantasy 16’s upcoming launch on PC.
It really boggles the mind sometimes, how stuck in the past these game executives can be. Helldivers 2 has been a breakout smash hit, with a large portion (possibly majority?) of the playerbase being on PC; it was significant enough for the Steam review-bomb campaign to work in any case. PC receiving ports in general has improved over the years for sure, but the fact that it takes ages is moronic. It’s been over fours years and PC still doesn’t have The Last of Us 2. Horizon: Forbidden West just came out on PC like two months ago. FF7 Remake took almost two years. Ghost of Tsushima took four years. God of War: Ragnarok probably won’t be out till 2025.
Speaking of ports, Ghost of Tsushima has beaten out God of War for the top spot on the Steam concurrent user spot for Playstation single-player games, at 77k and some change. Helldivers 2 sits at 457k, by the way. I’ve heard some chatter on Reddit about how this demonstrates that Sony’s “strategy” works, e.g. only releasing games on PC after a long-ass time. I mean… I guess? Unless there is some presumption that people bought PS5s just for this game, or that PS5 owners will buy it again on PC, I think this simply demonstrates Sony delayed a solid boost of revenue for 4 years for no reason.
Fallout: London is a fan-made Fallout 4 mod that is essentially an entirely new Fallout game. You may have heard some stories about how its original April release was delayed due to the “surprise” next-gen updates to Fallout 4 that Bethesda released a few weeks back. Well, it appears that the mod is back on track to be released… sometime. Soon™! The real news though, is how the modders somehow convinced GOG to host the 30-40GB files. This was needed, as Nexus Mods has an upper size limit. These fan projects usually get killed by the suits right before release, so the fact that not only will this thing (presumably) come out, but the fact that GOG is hosting the files is extraordinary.
Valve is working on what appears to be 6v6 MOBA-like Overwatch game called Deadlock. Now, I understand that Valve has a unique sort of “structure” over there, wherein developers basically just stew in a petri dish until games extrude through the biofilm… but, really? This is whatever actual game developers still left over there have chosen to spend their time on? Christ. I guess it’s at least something, as opposed to whatever George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss are doing. Finish your fucking stories!
Microsoft Fallout
About a week or so ago, the rumor mill was a-churnin’ about how the surprising popularity of the Fallout TV show – 65 million viewers in 16 days! – was causing Xbox execs heads to extend (pardon my Seuss). Even Todd Howard was saying Bethesda wants to “find ways to increase our output, because we don’t want to wait that long either.” Which is funny, considering that it is Bethesda’s own metered cadence which will ensure that Fallout 5 is not released until the 2030s; Elder Scrolls 6 is next in line after the tepid Starfield, with Fallout 5 not coming out until, presumably, the ending of the TV series.
Welp, cue that monkey paw finger-curl:
Microsoft has closed a number of Bethesda studios, including Redfall maker Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks, and more in devastating cuts at Bethesda, IGN can confirm.
[…] Arkane Lyon, which is working on Marvel’s Blade, survives the cull, as does Bethesda Game Studios (Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Starfield), and Machine Games (Indiana Jones and The Great Circle). Doom developer id Software is also unaffected.
A further quote from Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, says:
Today I’m sharing changes we are making to our Bethesda and ZeniMax teams. These changes are grounded in prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games and beloved worlds which you have nurtured over many decades.
To double down on these franchises and invest to build new ones requires us to look across the business to identify the opportunities that are best positioned for success. This reprioritization of titles and resources means a few teams will be realigned to others and that some of our colleagues will be leaving us.
Cruel irony abounds, considering a year ago Matt Booty said Microsoft has no plans to shut down Arkane Austin “right now,” after the disastrous Redfall launch. And I guess he was technically accurate. There are fewer charitable interpretations for axing Tango Gameworkers though, considering the effusive praise Hi-Fi Rush received from Microsoft brass – “Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release.” Certainly seems like they could have been happier after all.
I don’t want to undersell the sad reality of thousands of game devs losing their jobs. That shit sucks.
…however. In the specific case of Arkane Austin, I have to wonder if there is the barest glimmer of a silver lining. For one thing, it is worth pointing out that no one at Arkane actually wanted to develop Redfall. It was a studio known for immersive sims, and Redfall wasn’t that. In fact, that same report stated that 70% of the team members who worked on Prey left the company during Redfall development. So, really, Microsoft is kinda putting the zombie studio out of its misery.
Oh, but know what might be an interesting franchise for an immersive sim? Fallout. That is wild-ass speculation on my part, and contradictory besides considering most of the immersive sim devs already left. But. BUT! Can you imagine? Of course, it would probably be best (and poetic besides) for Obsidian to take up the mantle of Fallout again, especially considering both studios are under the same (reaving) Microsoft umbrella. Unfortunately, Obsidian is releasing Avowed this year and they are also working on The Outer Worlds 2 for some reason. Seriously though, was anyone asking for that?
Alas, we will have to see how things shake out. Just… goddamn, could someone give me more Fallout?
7 Days to More Money
In a completely unexpected turn of events, 7 Days to Die is actually coming out of Early Access. Soon!
The Fun Pimps are happy to announce 7 Days is leaving Early Access! With the launch of the next update, we’re moving officially to 1.0 for 7 Days to Die.
TFP Co-Founder Richard Huenink details the move in this Video. He’ll talk about our decision to leave early access, the tentative launch dates for PC and Console Alpha 22 (Now 1.0), the roadmap of planned future updates and features ahead for all platforms, and the games new pricing.
I say “completely unexpected” because, well, it is. The game has indeed been in Early Access for 12 years already, with Alpha 22 (now “1.0”) slated to come out in a few months. However, the Early Access period has been so long due to the dev team having no project manager – each major release has radically redesigned the scope of the game, changing progression mechanics, and otherwise putzed around art assets without actually making forward progress on systems or endgame.
But now they are, so… why aren’t I happy? Take a gander at the roadmap:
I don’t think you really even need to know anything about the base game to intuit that the stuff in the 2025 columns would, in fact, be a more appropriate 1.0 experience. In particular, Bandits have been promised for literal ages, and are still nowhere to be found. Do I believe we will get a UI/Main Menu Overhaul? Yes I do. Will there also be Bandits? Not falling for it this time, Lucy.
What is really going on with this 1.0 release is the increase in base pricing.
Q: Why increase the cost?
A: We feel as though the quality standard of the game has gone up significantly from when the initial price was set over 8 years ago along with over a decade of content and improvements. We’ve looked at how others have handled leaving early access, and this is a common practice. We in particular want the price of the PC version to have parity with the Console version. We do not wish to force any current users to spend more money to play the game they’ve always supported. However, new users should see the value the game offers reflected in the cost, and we hope that continued support might fund future endeavors in expanding the 7 Days to Die game even further – DLCs, Expansions, and continued free updates (including everything listed in the Road Map)!
Look, my intent is not necessarily to paint The Fun Pimps as capitalistic assholes. I bought the game 7 (!) years ago for $10, and even now you can still purchase it this week for $5.99 ahead of the $44.99 (!!) price increase. In those years, I have played for over 327 hours. And regardless of any price increases, my copy will be upgraded for free, I’ll get all the updates for free, and so on.
It’s just that this “release” is clearly a business decision first.
This is especially true in terms of the console re-release. The history is that the game was released on consoles back in 2017 but had been stuck in Alpha 15 ever since then because porting company went bankrupt. We’re in Alpha 21 on PC, for reference. The Fun Pimps reacquired the rights a few years ago, but financially it never made sense for them to hire out another porting team. Until now.
Q: What about the old Console version?
A: Due to the significant technical differences between old and current console hardware, we will not be upgrading the legacy version. Legacy owners will have to buy the new title. However, we are working closely with Sony and Microsoft to provide a discount to digital legacy owners on their purchase of the new console edition.We made the decision early on to focus on a ‘new’ version of the game that is unified with our PC version, and our efforts to update the game post-launch will be entirely focused on that version.
Again, good on them for trying to get console fans a discount, assuming such a thing materializes. It also makes sense that you may have to cut your losses and start fresh with a new version given all the difficulties up to this point.
I just… I dunno. It’s complicated. As I mentioned last year, each Alpha has included a seemingly pointless overhaul of the progression system, although each iteration has taken it further and further away from zombie MineCraft and more towards something generic. Once upon a time, you would come across a small town and break into houses to scavenge for supplies and hope a big wandering mob of zombies didn’t stroll in after you. Now, 100% of the Points of Interest are mini-dungeons with traps, blocked corridors, zombies popping into existence when you cross thresholds, and a loot chest at the end. Which is cute the first time you come across the PoI, but later you just stack wooden frames and hack your way through the roof to get the loot chest and skip the mini-dungeon part.
Assuming you aren’t just spam-completing quests from the Traders, since that is actually the best way to get gear; crafting shit with resources you gather is sooooo 2017. Oh, and base-building? Yawn. Despite the fact the entire game is premised on a wave of zombies attacking you every 7 days, the devs have decided that the zombies are omniscient structural engineers who know both the shortest distance to your brains and which specific wall cubes in the way have the least amount of HP. Which, of course, means “traditional” structures like bunkers or buildings with a bunch of traps surrounding it are pointless. Instead, you need to construct Ninja Warrior obstacle courses for zombies to tight-rope walk towards you single-file for anything you build to have meaning.
Or just sit on top of a roof for a couple of weeks before moving to a different building. Whichever.
In fairness, all of this nonsense was introduced in patches, and it’s entirely possible to remove it in the same way. Given the consistency in which the devs have moved backwards though, I don’t have much faith in them spontaneously understanding why their game was popular to begin with and to stop undermining it. So while the business decisions they are making with 1.0 are rational and the last-chance deals magnanimous, I still don’t like it.
About the only bright side to all this is that, perhaps, having a firmer foundational codebase will encourage more modders to fix all the bullshit. Darkness Falls is already a transformational mod that improves the game in about every way, and I know of others (Undead Legacy). That last Q4 2025 slide does says “Steam Workshop Support” so that may be the golden ticket. We’ll just have to see.
Hurry Up and Wait: April Edition
Once again, I was already looking stuff up, so why not just share it?
April 23rd – Bellwright [Early Access]
This one is seems to be billed as an open-world Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but it also has some Medieval Dynasty vibes. Hard to say whether it will be worth anyone’s time yet. I originally thought it was going to be a survival-crafting game, but the store page makes it very clear that there is a sort of linear plot going on heading towards a rebellion against the Crown. If they can channel the general feel of Kingdom Come: Deliverance without some of the design jank, this could be good. We shall see.
April 26th – Manor Lords [Early Access]
Banished meets Total War in this medieval city-building tactical battler. Supposedly. All I know is that the game looks gorgeous, like an insane level of detail, and the city-building aspects are the most organic-looking I have ever seen in this space. Also, important detail: Game Pass Day 1.
May 8th – V Rising [1.0]
I snagged a copy of V Rising on sale before its recent pre-1.0 price increase, so I’m looking forward to… I guess playing it a month from now? That’s kind of fucked up, now that I think about it. Why increase the price like a full month before release? Anyway, it seems a combination of survival-crafting + Action RPG and I’ve heard some good things, so I hope it’s worth the wait.
May 14th – Diablo 4 [Season 4]
Diablo 4 landed on Game Pass a few weeks ago, but I didn’t dive in due to other priorities (read: farming virtual crops). Then, when I was actually starting to get ready to play, I hear about a “transformational” update coming in May. This is the summary from the IGN interview with the devs:
When Diablo 3 got its pre-Reaper of Souls expansion patch dubbed ‘loot 2.0’ in 2014, it was credited with turning Blizzard’s action role-playing game around. Critics and players called loot 2.0 a big improvement on Diablo 3, with changes that sparked renewed interest from a community that had dropped off following the base game’s 2012 release. Now, 10 years later, Blizzard is aiming to repeat the trick with Diablo 4 Season 4.
I mean, I guess that’s a good thing. Eventually. Although it’s a bit odd how they keep leading with “loot 1.0” when they know loot 2.0 is better. Rod Fergusson mentions it’s more due to “overshooting the mark” in a quest for depth and complexity in the looting system. Which I am unqualified to talk much about, considering I haven’t played the game. But it all kinda sorta maybe sounds like Quality of Life shit that was sorted out a decade ago already, and probably should have been in the game from the start. I could be wrong.
May 16th – Ghost of Tsushima [PC]
The once PlayStation exclusive is finally making its way to PC. And while I am liable to wait for ages more before it drops to a “reasonable” price, I am excited that it is coming to PC at all. If I did ever buy a PlayStation 5, this would have been one of the games I would have bought it for.
In An Age 
The Forever Sigh
Sep 2
Posted by Azuriel
A few months ago, I was very interested in The Forever Winter, the post-apocalyptic extraction shooter.
After reading this PC Gamer article though, my interest has dropped precipitously:
Good fucking luck, chief.
The great irony here is that I praised them before for basically being concept artists following through on their vision way outside the norm. Not many other devs would put spacesuit-wearing flame-thrower units using American flags as hoods into their games, nevermind the battle-tanks covered in corpses as camouflage. That’s cool! If you go grimdark, go all the way.
Having an expiration timer count down even when not playing though? That’s not “hardcore,” that’s just fucking stupid. I don’t even care how easy water is to get in-game, because that is irrelevant. What is the design attempting to accomplish? Because by default, what this tells players is that any break from the game may as well be permanent. Meanwhile, the people who are playing the game aren’t even affected by this “hardcore” feature. Ask the Icarus devs how that shit worked out for them.
I guess we’ll see how it plays out. The Forever War will be in Early Access at the end of September.
Posted in Commentary
3 Comments
Tags: Extraction, Forever Winter, Hardcore, Icarus, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?