Definitely one of the most somber games I’ve ever played. Agreed on the music; I’m generally not big on Motoi Sakuraba, but I think this is one of his best soundtracks. The overworld is a vibe, and the theme is a big part of why.

The undub is worth looking into unless one’s really opposed to Japanese audio. Fifth-generation localized games were notorious for poor English voice direction and this game is no exception. Even the voice track quality isn’t as good as the original.

More details on the Playstation blog.

Sid Meier and Firaxis in general are probably the only ones that have been consistently great for me over the years. I still think about Alpha Centauri a lot, and I’ve played so much Civ over the years. His studio’s XCOM games and Midnight Suns are all great, too.

Pretty much all the others I could name closed up shop or have declined in recent years.

Hrm, no mention of the super blurry character models that I had in the demo, so maybe they fixed that since and I missed it. Most of the footage looks pretty clean in this regard, too.

I had a pretty good experience with the demo with what DF would probably call low-to-midrange at this point (3060Ti, OC’d 10600k), and I’m the kinda person that’s sensitive to frame drops/stutter. I still think I’ll wait for a performance patch to be sure, though, if not a sale. Too many games for me to buy this season anyway.

It has to do with how the statute is written (I used to do comparative international IP policy research and analysis). Japanese works are given fairly wide latitude in creative sectors based on artistic intent. For example, you’ll see knockoff brands all the time in anime or manga, but the intent is clearly world building (or parody), not appropriation for promotional use. That artistic intent standard is used in the courts. This is why all the side-by-side comparisons people here probably saw on Twitter when Palworld came out was more of an ethnocentric American approach. Plus, copyright infringement is frequently incidental and not the result of large investment (unlike patents), so, in a country that prefers to handle domestic disputes informally, these incidents are less likely to go to court.

As a country that more recently entered the world stage based on manufacturing, patent protection is simply going to be taken more seriously as part of the culture. And yes–while I don’t have numbers–patent litigation does seem to get thrown out often when it comes to video games, at least the high-profile stuff, anyway. Here’s an example between Koei Tecmo and Capcom since I was already on Variety.

Similar visual design happens all the time in Japanese media and there’s rarely litigation over it. Patent lawsuits are much more common in Japan.

No editorializing was done here. That’s the title provided by the metadata, which is the easier option Lemmy provides when posting links.

I don’t know where you’re hearing retailers don’t enforce ratings. Yes, it happens uncommonly, but the FTC previously found ratings compliance was higher among video game retailers than at the box office, and not much has changed in the culture since then. I’ve worked at multiple retailers that sold video games, and the training for video games enforcement was always taken just as seriously as with alcohol sales.

Being the largest entertainment industry in the world now, video game publishers are serious about this stuff. Developers also still take steps to avoid a Hot Coffee situation from occurring again.

It doesn’t have to be jaded. As with the original quote I riffed off of, these particular Skinner boxes don’t have to always be pure evil and can provide net-positive outcomes, as long as we’re clear-eyed about the consequences of participating. The latter part is what I’m trying to drive home here. Consumer behavior psychology is part of every major live-service game.

Even if you do find the cabinet in the lavatory, the probability calculations for a simple use case are ridiculously complicated. It does reek a bit of “minimum compliance required by law.”

On the plus side, Hoyo (at least in Star Rail) doesn’t bombard the player in-game with pop-ups or the like. A zero-spend player that just wants to poke around in the story or the game world isn’t going to be harassed. Instead, it’s earnest marketing, by way of letting the player use characters on trial, featuring them in the story, or high-quality video productions published outside the game. They make as much money as they do because their production values on that stuff are among the best in the business.

As far as running a digital goods casino (where you don’t own the goods), I’ve seen far worse. I still don’t think we’re doing as much as we should to protect those with addictions to gambling or FOMO from these products, however.

Come on. We both know that legitimizing the RMT system increased the number of gold buyers and normalized the process. Not only does it now capture the players who were both a) squeamish about paying unproven third parties and b) had no recourse if they did get scammed, it’s also a far more convenient process. We know the gold-for-gear (and other services) market exploded in size because Blizzard was finally forced to make systemic changes to fight/redirect services spam. Service sellers are everywhere, and there was a point they were constantly in your whispers, your mailbox, your chat, your group finder. It’s nothing like it was 15-20 years ago.

No, gold buyers are not most players (and no, I don’t care that some players are doing it). Most gacha players aren’t whales, either. My point is that yes, your game is also chasing the whales right now and will continue to design systems to do so.

The AO rating is still the kiss-of-death for game content in North America, enforced by retailers. Even still, the ESRB only came about because the political climate at the time was very much “clean up your shit or we’ll do it for you.”

This reads like “the only moral Skinner box is my Skinner box.”

Also sounds like you haven’t played in a while. The addition of real currency to gold trading creates an even more direct pipeline from one’s wallet to in-game gear dice rolls. Guilds selling raid gear is even more common now, and with crafting orders, a whale can spend to reroll secondary stats on crafted gear.

With the way Warcraft is throwing currencies at players now, it’s clear Blizzard has taken more than a few cues from how gacha and other live-service outfits are doing things these days. Plenty of opportunities for ruinous, addictive behavior.

Something like Rune Factory? Or a different approach?

FSR doesn’t use AI hardware. The original comment is overselling it a bit, but something AI-driven like DLSS does offer substantial (if slightly blurry) framerate gains.

Yeah, after that time I really didn’t think consoles would be as much as a midrange PC. And yet, here we are. Feels like Sony’s back to late PS2 era levels of hubris now.

This is 100% an “it’s just not for you” situation. I mean, it’s not really my thing either, but it’s literally the best selling game ever in Japan. That’s not just the pandemic.

Coincidentally, loot drama that wouldn’t have been possible in retail WoW is exactly why I stopped playing Classic a few months after launch.

Hrm, kind of an odd mix of classics and recent releases that aren’t going to be remembered five years from now. That said, I’m just glad Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is on here. It’s a wonderful hidden gem that barely gets talked about. I don’t even like puzzle games much, but the gorgeous pixel art and soundtrack helped me get really into it.

I’m also reminded that I need to get back to Citizen Sleeper. Was very surprised by it when I tried it (before I got sucked into Honkai: Star Rail).

With today’s news that a licensed song is being removed in a future update of Alan Wake, I’m reminded that television shows have also been getting similar “updates” for a little while now. The staggered release schedule of television shows makes it the only medium off the top of my head that does anything similar. Pilot shows were generally unpolished products, often followed up by recasting or other major changes. Abrupt cancellations also could mean unfinished stories (no, I’m not still bitter about Stargate Universe).

Game development is an iterative process, so as soon as I first started seeing open beta testing come about as a part of digital distribution decades ago, I figured it was only a matter of time before profiteering got us to where we are now.