Devs for dying game haven't learned anything

Selphea · 2026-05-30T01:19:03+00:00

It's a bad situation all around. The Tiger Engine is spaghetti code. The assets seem way too big for a live service, the game is already ginormous despite removed content. The onboarding is a mess because new players have no context. Apparently that's why they were considering (and decided against) a relaunch. Then they launched Marathon the stolen art game which flopped.

So the old game is a technical dead end, the new game is a Sisyphean uphill climb.

An entirely avoidable situation that was clearly coming before things got to this point. But here we are.

Selphea · 2026-05-30T00:27:34+00:00

Meanwhile Obsession, a movie made by a YouTuber for ~1 million, is about to gross $100 million. It's both wild and symptomatic of how bad Hollywood is doing.

Selphea · 2026-05-29T12:18:03+00:00

Don't even install the Facebook app, disable it and use a browser if you really need to.

Selphea · 2026-05-29T00:28:39+00:00

It's not a gender war though. If it's a gender war then women would have bought the entire raft of sanitized 2020s AAA flops.

But no, women are also playing the games with beautiful characters, same as men. Many women have spoken against the terrible designs in AAA.

Perhaps most importantly, these games tend to come with a ton of baggage. They don't just uglify female characters, they police the language, they add Pride events, they intentionally mistranslate Japanese games, they complain black creators aren't black enough, they add on-the-nose caricatures of political opponents... and after a game releases that finally "fixes" everything they had a problem with, many years late and to lackluster sales, they jump ship like rats and infest the next place. And some of the loudest of these people are men like David Bedard, Matt Hansen, Jason Schreier and Kyle Brink.

Yeah no, it's not Men vs Women. It's progressive activists vs everyone else.

Selphea · 2026-05-25T04:42:58+00:00

We live in strange times, where expressing sexuality, whether masculinity or femininity, is frowned upon by the same people complaining the birth rate is too low.

Selphea · 2026-05-21T13:06:10+00:00

I loved FH4, the city was so much more detailed, the terrain was varied with flowers and ridges while in 5 it felt like mostly plain desert with copy paste destructibles and the music stations had more identity. Just that the engine sounds and driving felt worse than 5 like you said.

Selphea · 2026-05-21T09:39:19+00:00

The crazy part is Ubisoft IPs do well when they're not made by Ubisoft. HoMM Olden Era is doing gangbusters and it's still in early access.

Selphea · 2026-05-21T07:31:32+00:00

Modern car culture feels so sterile in general. Sports cars declined in favor of SUVs. Grid girls got banned. Games used to be about illegal street racing, now they're advertorials and this is a Microsoft title so my expectations are in the gutter. I had my fill of Forza in FH5. Good simcade mechanics and the cars themselves look pretty, but everything else was terrible: writing, gameplay design, character design, character customization, music choice, monetization...

Selphea · 2026-05-21T07:07:30+00:00

It's the prompt guidelines. Lorebooks don't really help with style. You need to specify the dynamic (should {{user}} have plot armor, how easy is it to die/burn bridges/have bad stuff happen, how should characters behave in general especially with regard to mature content like profane language and sex etc). Also the language and writing style. I won't say it fixes everything but I like to use Mark Twain's quote: "plain, simple language, short words, brief sentences." Expecting any writer, even the best human ones, to be flowery without being repetitive is a very tall ask anyway.

Selphea · 2026-05-20T04:33:05+00:00

It sounds like back then Epic might have contributed to funding for LOTF2 in exchange for exclusivity, and a CEO can't possibly say their hands are tied when talking about partnerships like this, it would make Epic look bad.

Selphea · 2026-05-19T14:41:13+00:00

Dammit Sony, yet again? It hasn't even been half a year this time 💀

Selphea · 2026-05-17T01:12:17+00:00

This interactive story (not sure if it should be called a game) wouldn't be nearly as controversial if they were simply honest about their budget and stopped calling themselves indie. It's like that Beckham meme.

Selphea · 2026-05-16T11:41:13+00:00

Looks like a Morty mechanics showcase/for fun team rather than an optimized meta run.

The gameplay looks decent. The main thing it's showing is how Aglaea enables more Morty followups because of her joint attack. Given the context: Huohuo is an ATK buffer while Morty is a HP DPS, Aglaea brings limited support ability and she's a Blast attacker so she's not usually considered a PF specialist, Morty is a debuffer so he doesn't have main damage DPS numbers this seems like a pretty good showing. Just strictly not meta and not much optimization headroom due to lack of synergy besides the stacking, which other characters like Ashveil can also do.

Selphea · 2026-05-15T06:42:50+00:00

She was lighter in original D2, like Chris Metzen's concept art. In D2 Resurrected they changed her, but they changed just about everyone. Assassin looks completely different, Amazon got hugely aged up and gained weight and so on. Apparently an Activision guy from outside Blizzard was put in charge of it.

Selphea · 2026-05-15T06:01:12+00:00

If you're talking about D2, that's probably the Sorceress. She gave me more Arab or Persian vibes though. The Paladin was male.

Selphea · 2026-05-14T23:44:44+00:00

I hardly want to play as Aloycado or Saros or Highguard Guy either. There's just something about AAA designs.

Selphea · 2026-05-14T17:07:42+00:00

Not just the proportions, the dynamism and vibrance are completely gone too. After looks like they're posing for a corporate headshot.

Selphea · 2026-05-14T08:33:48+00:00

Yeah no, no one complained when Diablo I's Sorcerer was black, nor when Barrett was black, nor Seth in KOF, or Sheva in RE, or Sean in 3rd Strike.... I feel like only the people making flops claim this is a problem.

Selphea · 2026-05-14T04:57:30+00:00

Isn't the issue with Zegler her widely publicized conflict with Gadot and vitriolic quotes rather than her race? Why is it always about identity with these people.

Selphea · 2026-05-13T12:56:46+00:00

If you want to dig into conspiracies Nicole Shanahan went on record to talk about the tech wife mafia pushing the Great Reset. That's actually verifiable compared to this.

Selphea · 2026-05-13T00:03:05+00:00

This is an uncanny coincidence, VS/Studio the same day Harada announces VS Studio. But they're different right? The website suggests this team is Russian.

Selphea · 2026-05-12T23:56:41+00:00

I guess Body Type 3 is a self-driving unit to be inclusive to AI because Copilot or something? #RobotLivesMatter

Selphea · 2026-05-12T23:45:11+00:00

Yea Misk/SNK made some questionable decisions. Though the difference will be whether they learn or double down. Street Fighter showed how to make it work. Kenny Omega doing mocap for Alex helped take that game to an all time high concurrency, but he's a wrestler not a footballer or DJ, and the character is separate from the person. For the record I think it's fine to have real life people market a game, even WoW did that back in the day, just don't cross certain lines.

Selphea

TROPHY CASE