circuitfarmer

This is the only corporate game left. Convince clueless investors that they’ll make more money if they give you money. No real innovation or even a real goal. Just buzzword after buzzword to get those investors on board.

Capitalism doesn’t breed innovation. It eventually eats it.

I’d like to think some things will change once not every major investor is clueless after just being rich their whole lives, but given how generational wealth works, I’m not holding my breath.

Thank you thank you thank you. This is exactly what I want on Lemmy.

No no no…Sonic and Knuckles was just Sonic 3, the other half of the cartridge that they sold you a second time, somehow.

It’s not though? Sonic & Knuckles has unique stages and story vs. Sonic 3. Unless you mean they were designed as one game and split at the end before release; that I don’t know.

There was a 2010 2D platformer released as Sonic 4 which was meant to be the spiritual successor.

I’d say the real spiritual successor on Genesis/Megadrive was Sonic & Knuckles, which came out after Sonic 3 and for all intents and purposes may as well have been called Sonic 4. But they had to push the Knuckles aspect because the cartridge had a passthrough that would accept another Genesis cartridge and allow you to play e.g. Sonic 2 with the Knuckles sprite, iirc.

We’ve gone from alternative facts to alternative reality.

Tons of people still play Skyrim.

Something tells me that, in 10 years, few if any will still be playing Starfield.

Did they ever ramp down?

Especially when creators find interesting ways to work them in, which is pretty often, in my experience. They’re the one type of ad that doesn’t annoy me.

Actually I just need to stop buying garbage (which I have done). The power sits with the purchasers in this case.

They could make so many moderate games that would sell amazingly if they just tried to…

100%. That’s the kind of nuanced thinking you won’t get from corporate America at this point.

They aren’t selling because they are designed as money machines first and games second.

Do I get to be the next Tim Sweeney now? As far as I can tell the bar is pretty low.

Especially considering they were explicitly designed NOT for that purpose. Not only is it illegal for government agencies to deny you anything if you refuse to provide an SSN, but until 1972, this verbiage was printed on every Social Security card: “FOR SOCIAL SECURITY PURPOSES – NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION.”

It is absolutely shocking to me how long it is taking for fans to turn on Nintendo. They’ve done this hardcore corpo shit for years. They should have a public image far worse than EA by now.

The nostalgic love runs deep, I guess.

They all just invest enough effort to squeeze out some short term profits, earn their bonuses and then leave for another company to do it all again.

Amazon is not at all alone in this. Much of 2024 capitalism, at least within the tech space, works like this pretty much everywhere.

Ich auch

The existing MSFS is already effectively a live service. Lots of features which make it stand out are not available in offline mode.

I agree with all this, but I think it is all to say: ISPs support Net Neutrality when it behooves them.

At this point I could give up a lot in terms of budget. Give me text without audio all day long if the writing is good. I think we’ve lost our way on RPGs.

Shareholders demand ever increasing return. There is only one way any of this goes, and we are witnessing a total systematic collapse. It is a mathematical certainty.

You cannot squeeze blood from a stone.

What a cop-out.

Bethesda didn’t have trouble making games when they cared about making games. Now, they care about making money. Yes, devs should get paid for their work. But design decisions based on anything other than making a good game poison the well.

This is why small devs are absolutely killing it with indie games on PC at the moment. AAA titles fail over and over again, because they’re designed for C-suite pockets first and gamers second.