#but they're going to bank on that nostalgia now if it gets them money

[northern-passage]

“dread wolf is the second act of inquisition” pssst ur correct. silas was originally meant to be the mid reveal twist after killing corypheus (and then the dlc takes place as the first act of the second half of the game) and then you kill/defeat solas (with the main story only play being around 40-80 hrs rather then the current 20-40) but due to crunching, serious budget cuts, me:a issues in other departments, technical difficulties, MULTIPLE rewrites and generally just. poor handling from ea, the game got majorly sliced (hence the amount of side quests vs the size of the worlds in the game and it being so empty) and then even dreadwolf having a million behind the scenes issues. i think it’s on its third rewrite now.

yeah, i knew it was bad but i've never really fully looked into the extent of what happened. it's really unfortunate :/ i worry about da4 not even for the game itself but for bioware. it's obvious EA is doing what they always do which is 1. be soullessly fucking greedy and 2. absorb and destroy their competitors, whether it's intentional or not. it's a miracle imo after andromeda and anthem that bioware is even still going forward with da4 (but it seems like it will be the final nail in the coffin and EA is the one holding the hammer). i hope they can finish and put out something they're proud of, at the very least :(

[goldenpinof]

As much as I love the new dnpg era we're in (and Im not complaining in the slightest) in the back of my brain I am finding it a bit strange that dan and phil are currently creating the exact content that for the last 5 years they (especially dan) have been saying they are tired of making. The whole "heres our sponsor, please hit the bell, like and subscribe!" Content. It feels very nostalgic right now, which I love, but also isnt necessarily sustainable. And the idea that they're only doing it to pay the bills on their house doesnt sit right with me either.

Im wondering if maybe theres a bigger picture. I feel like the gaming videos they are churning out are to sort of ease us in to a new era of dan and phil. If maybe they are playing a bit into the nostalgia of dan and phil, to gain back the audience that they lost after 5 years hiatus, so that then, they can slowly start to transform the content and the brand of dan and phil into something that better fits them as they are now. Because an abrupt change after 5 years of being gone, would honestly kind of mean they would have to almost start from scratch (bar the few thousand people that have been following them throughout), and honestly idk if an abrupt change would work for them either, bc even with dystopia daily, it was a cool idea, and not badly executed (apart from just kind of stopping halfway through) but it was also so different to anything else, that I think people found it really jarring, because it didnt really feel like the dan people were used to. I also dont know how well it really represented dan creatively anyway. I feel like bringing the gaming channel back, and also making it clear that its going to be different, its not specifically limited to games, is allowing them to take us with them on the journey of figuring out their new creative direction, rather than starting a few projects that get announced suddenly and then not going anywhere. It also means that when they are working on things behind the scenes that take months or even years to come into realisation, that can also just be cancelled at anytime, they are not banking on their audience just happily waiting with nothing to show for it, and can atleast still produce content that they enjoy and we enjoy, so that when dan inevitably does more standup or phil announces a project or they announce a new dan and phil project, it didnt come entirely from nothing.

Idk, basically i feel like the gaming channel is only the start of something bigger, and I dont think that bigger thing is them reverting back to 2016 dnp. Im interested to see.

oi, big asks bring so much pain ehfeliwdskd only because my answers usually are also big as fuck.

what i find interesting about this relaunch of dnpgames is that it's treated like the main place for joint content. what Dan said in the baking video can only mean that what was posted on AP channel or Dan's channel before, will now be on dnpgames. this gives them (Dan specifically) a way out of the dan and phil brand. it's like the joint branding exists outside and in parallel to their solo brands but doesn't intervene (it still does with AP but maybe it won't in the future). there's a better, more strict division between dnpgames + what's allowed on it and AP and their social media. it's so interesting to see how far they will go with it. they might bring back small portions of what they did before the hiatus (livestreams, dan vs phil, spooky week, gamingmas, game series and etc) but there will be new stuff as well. i wonder if the promo for all dnp brand related things will go on dnpgames now. before that, it was on Dan's channel (tours, books). i'm manifesting ladydoor tour 2.0 if the gaming channel thrives and there will be an audience to fill out the venues.

don't forget that Dan's decision to resurrect dnpgames allegedly came only in 2023 and because of his semi-flopped tour and difficulties with the dvd. no one wants to throw money into it, unfortunately. something happened in Edinburgh with BBC (wad related or not, hell knows). this dnpgames return is like a filler between solo projects (re: they are not banking on their audience just happily waiting with nothing to show for it). and it will be dropped the moment they are offered something serious. unless that something is gonna be precisely dnp brand related.

i don't think there's gonna be a huge change in the direction of dnpgames. we missed it how it was, Phil missed it because it allowed him to work with Dan and have fun. it can co-exist. i have an unpopular opinion maybe, but today's vibes are so unhinged. it's different from what it was before the hiatus, and i'm not talking about gay stuff. it feels like we're constantly running somewhere with them, and i don't like it. too much, too suddenly. and for someone who likes rewatching videos to find something new or just relax and laugh, it's a very uncomfortable schedule. and even dnp in the videos seem a bit frantic. plus different editing styles are visible, so it's like constantly jumping on a trampoline never knowing how high. i like consistency, so i need time to adjust? it's not a criticism, just an observation.

i think i have a bit different opinion to yours :) if it's the start of something bigger than only in the variety of content, but i don't think dnpgames will live for more than 3 years. 5 max. and this insane schedule will be dropped eventually. because it's unhealthy and EXACTLY why Dan backed out in 2018.

thank you for sharing your thoughts! let's see how it goes.

[kass-the-mercenary]

Some thoughts on the burnout from big studio made movies and games

Basically they've brought it on themselves. Audiences are starved for new things, and studios are in a better position than ever to put them in the audience's hands, they've got prospective artists banging down their door for jobs, and they've got boatloads of money now. The problem is they don't want to. They want to sit on their asses and be greedy. They want to keep grinding out reboots and remakes and whatnot. Now don't get me wrong, these can be great -I myself am a huge fan of the Carmen Sandiego and She-Ra reboots- but then you have stuff like voltron that shows how badly that can go. But that's all anyone wants to do, is make the next Sherlock of Voltron that will get people to watch it based off of nostalgia and then move on to the next. They're cutting old original content too, so all you can watch now is that paste. You're seeing it in video games now too, with your hogwarts legacy and your Mario. Once in a while they'll make something new and bold that people really want and go crazy for like Mario Odyssey, or will update their old fan classics like metroid prime and metroid dread, but why bother when they can just churn out a half-finished Pokémon or another 2D Mario and people will eat it up and slap dozens of games of the year and 10/10 scores for just being repetitive sanded down drivel, while you have your star fox, your captain falcon, your wario fans left starving because they don't want to make new original ideas anymore when realistically they're in a better place to do so than ever. They have so much money, why not throw it at something new? And it's showing. People are getting tired of it and going to the indie scene, to the people who HAVE to be original, otherwise they might get buried in court. The studios have gotten too comfortable in their wealth and only see churning out more of the same as free dollars signs and originality as an uncomfortable -an often unnecessary- risk. And I think we're approaching a singularity. The studios are gonna keep making the next marvel movie, the next soulless 2D Mario, and people will be like, "yeah, that's nice, more of the same, I'll watch or play it later I guess." Because they've become oversaturated, and they only have so long before they run out of stuff to reboot, and the content runs dry. Nostalgia can only carry them so far and people now either have a very clear idea of what they want, or they're bored and want something new and exciting. Either way, the steams, the A24s, have them covered. The studios want to bank off how big their IPs are without putting in any of the innovation that made them so big in the first place. The Mario IP is so good and has so many fans because of the 3D Mario games, the series about the side characters like yoshi luigi peach wario, the series that Nintendo is now sleeping on. And the fans, they're moving on to greener pastures. They're finding their new warios in the Peppino Spaghettis, the Dynamite Antons and Susan Taxpayers, they're finding their new Samuses in the Hollow Knights, the Dead Cells, and they're enjoying it and it's raising their standards. The corporate needs to step up their game, or the gamers, the show bingers, are going to be moving on and not looking back.

But yeah. Mark my words, backwards compatibility is going to make or break consoles soon people are gonna get fed up with the artificial nostalgia of having the same thing over and over fed to them while the companies lock away access to the actual older games behind lack of backwards compatibility and refusal to remaster or make new entries. And perhaps one of the biggest sins is that the corporations are raising the prices. They're trying to raise the price to $70 and saying that video games are more expensive than ever to make and that's not necessarily the case, and indie devs prove it with their premium experiences at 5, 15, maybe 40 dollars. Some of them hit the $60 mark but I'd rather spend 60 or 70 dollars knowing it'll go right to someone who actually cares about queer people and has worked hard to bring that experience to us.