I didn't see that coming, and it's a welcome development. If it warps the general PC hardware market enough that devs start optimizing for a standard platform, it'll result in less buggy products at launch. And maybe orienting development towards a relatively underpowered platform will make it easier for those of us dumb enough to that like to spend more on a desktop to hit those 60 FPS targets.
I finished a replay of Xenogears last year myself. Really surprised myself with how much more I liked the trimmed-down disc 2 this time around. That first scene in the chair is so touching. Love the romance in that game. And as much as I dislike early 3D, some of the scene composition is timeless.
I hear that a lot about Xenoblade's combat. I think a lot of my enjoyment (or tolerance, in the second game's case) of it comes from my MMO background.
I can't speak to Helldivers, but pinning Baldur's Gate 3's success on the recent growing popularity of the D&D franchise is beyond reductive. There's no huge publisher for Baldur's Gate 3; Larian's a licensee and an independent studio to boot, and Hasbro's not running massive marketing campaigns for them any more than Disney is for the typical licensed Star Wars game. There's also the game's pay-once sales model, which is something else you get when you're not beholden to publishers or public shareholders.
BG3 was the culmination of decades of iteration by Larian and was the studio's first attempt with a AAA budget. The game has more in common with Divinity: Original Sin 2 than it does Baldur's Gate 2, as the Baldur's Gate die-hards would be happy to tell you.
Calling CRPGs a popular genre is also going to get some laughs. Sure, we might be able to look on this point now in a few years as when CRPGs went mainstream (or maybe not, as the insane amount of choice built into the game set the bar so high that it's possible no one's going to bother with that kind of risky content-making). But by the time Larian started development on BG3, the genre had just risen from the dead after some successful Kickstarter campaigns and was still very niche.
Seems things have shaken out (for now) regarding defederation, including less chatter about Threads than there was. I don't anticipate much change on that until the next big influx of users, whether it's people coming in directly through Lemmy/Kbin/Mbin or a new player joining the Fediverse.
Other than that, I've just seen steady growth in my communities.
If you're in a niche community, don't be afraid to put some content out there. Niche communities are generally so happy to see any conversation. The amount of criticism/downvoting I've seen on topics in slow communities has been very low.
It's all sheer greed, too. Paradox has fully embraced the model of releasing sequels with less content than their DLC-enhanced previous games after 2K showed the market had tolerance for it with Civilization. Considering how that already puts them ahead of the curve, it's amazing that Paradox let this game come out in this state.
I always found the Dreamcast to be notable for being the first console to have polished 3D graphics. I don't consider it part of the fifth generation because I believe those consoles went a generation too early for 3D gaming, at least to the degree their game developers did. The difference between your typical PSX game running at 15 FPS with claustrophobic draw distances and SoulCalibur (or any halfway-decent PC offering of the time) was night and day. You'll hear cynical, lazy narratives about piracy, but that kind of thing was always on the margins in the 90's. It was the rapidly-moving market that would be the problem for Sega in the end, as PS2 and Xbox represented yet another big step forward for nascent 3D technology.
The thing is, despite running up against the best-selling console ever made, the opportunity was still there for the Dreamcast. Sega bungled their Japan release but had a far better than expected showing in North America, led by a strong launch lineup and an untapped market filled by the 2K sports games. The Dreamcast is a great case study in the necessity of agile marketing; immediately pivoting towards a stronger Western footing after the successful 1999 launch would have put Sega in the position to capitalize on future success. The PS2 had supply issues and a thin library in its early years. Sega also had the foresight to put modems on their consoles, and Phantasy Star Online would go on to be one of the best selling games on the system. The US had better Internet infrastructure and adoption than Japan, and the lack of online service was the one weakness the PS2 had. Sega being positioned to compete with Xbox Live would have dramatically altered the market landscape. Instead, Sega only had one major online title in the end, but even that would come too late. When Shenmue flopped (due to major budget overruns), that was that. The Dreamcast library had peaked, and higher-ups at Sega were already moving to pull the plug.
In my experience, having a weekly sticky like that is essential for engagement. There are plenty of people here, they just aren't making threads. If you get people in the habit of dropping by once a week, they are more likely to post.
I'd also make the suggestion to scale the rule back to 6 months from 12. It's a good idea in general for a slow community and there were multiple big games that came out in that month 7 through 12 time period. Can always change it back when the community is active. /r/patientgamers was 6 months until semi-recently.
That said, this doesn't have to be a carbon copy of the subreddit. I liked the Meme Monday suggestion that was posed. Anything to drive engagement.
How has this been? I mostly enjoyed the first Darkest Dungeon but ended up passing on this one because I heard from a bunch of people that it lost a lot of the magic of the original.
My retro favorites are Rikku (especially in FFX-2) and Celes from FF6. Rikku's the type to light up a room, and it turns out I have a thing for quirky, techie girls from persecuted minority groups which would later come up with Tali'zorah in Mass Effect. Of course, Rikku's more daughter goals than girlfriend goals now that I'm older. Awkward.
With Celes, there have been better, deeper portrayals of depression in RPGs since, but back in the 90's I really appreciated seeing a character that isn't boundlessly confident and has trauma to work through. Love her story.
I also really liked Aranea from FF15. Still feeling robbed that we never got her DLC.
Part of the concern is deceptive/astroturfed content developed as advertising showing up in Lemmy communities. While those same actors could theoretically be based on lemm.ee, that's a lot more work than simply scaling up operations when you're doing it on Threads anyway.
I don't know what's going on with this headline; it's not an awards show, just a showcase. Although I understand how events like The Game Awards blur the line between the two.
Makes me feel like Game News Season (or whatever we're calling it post-E3) is coming up quick.
This was the news to me on this whole mess. I knew about Ark but hadn't heard about this one. Shameless.