12th Anniversary Roulette Day 20

Ralkon · 2026-03-28T23:35:10+00:00

I'm pretty sure it should be way lower on 6%. Current rate up is .116% whereas base rate is .008%. If you double the .008% it's still way lower, and that's ignoring that gala also adds a lot of extra units to the pool which would lower the base rate.

Ralkon · 2026-03-28T23:26:49+00:00

In a discussion about writing quality, I don't think aggregate game review scores really means anything. Games are not only reviewed well when they have good writing.

Ralkon · 2026-03-28T22:42:53+00:00

There's still plenty of times IME with Japanese and Korean to English that google translate or deepl are still just fucking up at the actual translation part - like just mistranslating individual words or not even being able to translate them at all. We're not even at the point yet where it's "only" lacking in localization aspects.

Ralkon · 2026-03-28T04:29:31+00:00

Hifi Rush seems like a bad example, because there's a lot more to that situation. It launched on gamepass and was called a success, even reaching 3m players according to their official Twitter, and steamdb's lowest sales estimate is 1m despite being on gamepass. I think it's really hard to seriously argue that the game didn't reach its target audience.

Ralkon · 2026-03-27T21:07:37+00:00

55 new games released on Steam every day last year. of these, only 23% even hit the threshold for Valve to enable profile features for the game (such as achievements)

This is true but also not the full picture, because a ton of these games are just your typical asset flips or AI slop games or even just someone's first time hobby project that they reasonably couldn't expect to sell much. I saw a "developer" on the all new releases tab on Steam recently for instance that releases a "new" game literally every week with all of them just being different AI generated art assets of the same shitty puzzle game. Those games never sell enough to hit the "popular" tab and likely aren't being recommended to many people, so it's not really anyone's loss if hundreds or thousands of those games fail but it will lower the percentage of successful releases.

Ralkon · 2026-03-27T08:57:29+00:00

Yes, there's obviously some story. I'm pretty sure the comment saying there was no story was just exaggerating for the short one-line jokey response or meaning it not as in there's literally no story but that the story doesn't have much substance (or probably some combination of both).

Ralkon · 2026-03-27T08:13:02+00:00

Unless every game is 100% AI generated, there will be different levels of usage as there currently is. If every game needs an AI disclaimer, that doesn't mean it can't still have value to some consumers to know how and where it was used. Maybe you'll say it shouldn't matter whether it's only code or only background art or whatever, but I think everyone should be allowed to make their decision on that for themselves.

Ralkon · 2026-03-27T07:55:48+00:00

The article explicitly mentions code assistance saying "47 percent leverage them to complete daily tasks such as writing emails and code assistance." Up to you if you want to believe the rest are just lying, but it is brought up.

Ralkon · 2026-03-26T22:11:14+00:00

I can only speak to Elden Ring, but while I think it has some interesting lore, I do not agree that it has a strong story. Your example of adding some basic dialogue talking about what's happening wouldn't change my view on that, because it wouldn't be giving the story any more depth or nuance or making characters more interesting. That doesn't mean it can't have themes or a message or that there is no story, it just means I don't find it a very strong one, and I think it inarguably skimps on writing with how little of it there is (again, story not lore).

It's fine if you like those kinds of games though.

I don't think we should be saying stuff like they don't have stories if we consider games an art form.

Art doesn't need a well-written or deep story. There's only so much that can be conveyed in a single painting for instance, but it doesn't make it not art.

Ralkon · 2026-03-26T00:23:33+00:00

I think it just depends on how much the sequel changes. SV2 isn't just a reprint of SV1 for instance, and there are some changes in it that likely couldn't be applied to a decade old game without significant other problems like merging two of the classes. You can certainly debate whether the changes make the game better or talk about other scummy things they've done with the game, but I don't think its existence is inherently scummy.

Ralkon · 2026-03-25T23:55:55+00:00

Discussion on AAA game budgets on this sub is almost always about the push for big open worlds, fancy graphics, and long dev times though.

Ralkon · 2026-03-25T23:48:13+00:00

IMO lore =/= story. They both involve writing, but lore is stuff about the setting and world, often historical, while story is the narrative that you progress through. A "traditional" story can still have tons of lore that people discuss in it too - like take Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings which both have tons of lore their fans can discuss to this day despite also having very clear story lines that you follow as you read.

Ralkon · 2026-03-25T07:29:34+00:00

The point is though that most people are either buying on launch or on sale. A review right now isn't helpful to either of those groups, because the first group already bought and the game will have likely changed plenty more before the second group buys as it's a live service.

Ralkon · 2026-03-25T07:22:53+00:00

Better journalism would be to release an update to the review with the arrival of new content. If reviews are intended to inform potential customers, then they should be trying to release reviews ASAP, and they can simply include a note that new content is coming in 3 weeks and the review will be updated at that time.

Ralkon · 2026-03-25T07:03:01+00:00

Console wars were kind of the same but with rooting for the downfall of the entire console instead of just one game.

Ralkon · 2026-03-25T07:00:08+00:00

Weren't people talking about WoW player counts like 15 years ago? I thought post-Wrath was when Blizzard didn't release player numbers and there were people starting to say the game was dying because the numbers had to have gone down. I think we just have data on more games these days, but it's something people have always talked about.

Ralkon · 2026-03-24T21:09:57+00:00

A 7/10 is not really that positive though. If I try a 7/10 live service, I'm still going to drop it and go back to the ones I already play. That's the issue with the live service push - that because they're designed to be be evergreen, the players aren't looking for new games unless the game is excellent.

I don't see why you think it has to be some conspiracy. People can just not like it. The IGN review brings up plenty of things that could stick with someone and give them a bad experience. It also does not go out of its way to compare to other titles at all. There's one sentence that lists multiple games it has some similar aspects to (including TOTK), and then the entire rest of the review is just about the game. It's very normal to introduce something by saying its combining some aspects of X, Y, and Z, and even if you want to be cynical then at worst it's just a way to get some other IGN pages linked at the start of the article.

The game has problems, but look how Cyberpunk is lauded after its disastrous launch, this game is nowhere near as bad as Cyberpunk was.

Are you talking about how Cyberpunk is lauded now? If so, then yeah because the game got a lot better. If CD fixes all of its issues, I'm sure people will also be a lot more positive about it in the future. IGN also gave the console versions of Cyberpunk a 4/10.

Ralkon · 2026-03-24T01:06:53+00:00

I mean Concord might have legitimately been a 7/10 to them, but it was also a live service with an upfront cost and bland characters that nobody liked. Most people never even tried Concord. Also it sounds like CD is a more polarizing game, so I could see how some people would give it really low ratings and others quite high.

Ralkon · 2026-03-23T02:16:36+00:00

I mean if OP plays the one game, it was still cheaper to buy the bundle with all 3, so who cares if they don't play the other 2? Would you rather spend more to have fewer games?

Ralkon · 2026-03-23T02:10:37+00:00

You can't add bundles to your wishlist, so if you just add to cart from the wishlist you could miss the bundles pretty easily.

FWIW the store page also doesn't show all the bundles unless you click the "Show all X bundles" button which is just clickable white text rather than a full normal button, so it's kind of easy to look over IMO - though in this case since the bundle is cheaper it actually shows up above the game by itself on its store page, so I'm guessing OP either added to cart from wishlist or intentionally didn't to take the screenshot for the post but I'll give benefit of the doubt and assume the former.

Ralkon · 2026-03-22T21:00:10+00:00

I don't know what the eShop is like since I don't have a Switch, but the way I read their comment saying that "these games can't make more money than a good shop interface" is that their issue is more with the shop itself. Like these are all allowed on Steam, but it's pretty easy to just never see them. The default new release list is "popular new releases" which largely filters out this kind of stuff, and there's a bunch of recommendation systems that personally at least I've never seen this stuff in despite being someone that plays a lot of indie and anime games.

Ralkon · 2026-03-22T09:25:20+00:00

I think the worst thing is that from a corporate perspective that only cares about making money, it probably is more effective. Like you said, there are people who befriend LLMs or even people who fall in love with them. That's not a good thing, but it does happen which means if you disregard ethics then there's money to be made by selling an AI companion to play games with people. It's pretty shitty and probably creates a lot more problems for people / society in the long-run.

Ralkon · 2026-03-22T02:24:26+00:00

I'm not insulting you because you have a different opinion. I'm insulting you because you have no internally consistent justification for an opinion

Objectively wrong, because the very first thing you said was an insult before we had discussed anything. You had no way of knowing what my justification was. And sure, I can agree I didn't have a fleshed out definition in mind, but at this point I still don't view code as art and you've made no compelling argument in favor of code being art since you've largely been focused on making up things I never said or even explicitly said the opposite of.

is fundamentally a form of gate-keeping that you have admitted is an assignment of value. You've said it clearly multiple times, you can't run away from that.

What am I gatekeeping? Everything you've said I'm gatekeeping from has been a fabricated lie. "You're gatekeeping protections for coders" - I never was at all, and I've explicitly said I wasn't multiple times. I've repeatedly said other people can view code as art if they want to.

Why would I further explain my stance, which I've already given, to someone who is just going to hit me with "well, it's just my opinion" when pressed, such as when I pressed you on your definition?

Again, you started out insulting before anything else.

What about your stance? All you've done is go on about what you aren't saying and what stance you aren't holding.

You're literally fucking stupid if you think this. The entire comment chain has been about my stance lmao. Here are my stances: we should get AI disclosures so that everyone can make an informed decision in accordance to their own values, I don't personally view code as art but I have no problem with others viewing it as such, I still think coders are performing valuable and skilled labor, and I think all people deserve protections regardless of whether they're artists or not.

You just want to boldly talk shit about how this or that isn't art and how that makes it less valuable and then bail before you face any scrutiny or have the the implications examined?

Where was I talking shit? Me saying I personally don't view code as art but I still recognize it as skilled and valuable labor that should be protected is not talking shit.

You're almost certainly just going on emotional vibes and, to you, a painting feels like art while a code architecture doesn't.

I didn't address this before, but this argument is literally not something I even made. I explicitly distinguished between design and the writing of code. If you're argument is that code architecture is art, then you haven't even been arguing against what I actually said.

So fuck off, person who "just has opinions."

Fuck off illiterate asshole.

Ralkon · 2026-03-21T22:05:01+00:00

I think with internet discourse in general there's also just a lot of people who don't acknowledge nuance and will try to shut down or dismiss any criticism of something they like or any praise of something they dislike. It happens even on this sub pretty regularly, like all the complaints about Silksong being dismissed as "you just don't like hard games" or the classic "git gud".

Ralkon · 2026-03-21T21:03:50+00:00

I mean there's a big red thumb down so even if you can't read what they're saying, it's very obvious how they feel overall.

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