#o warframe designs ...

[mundanemiseries]

  Joel has lost, time and time again. Friends from his living years, his bio family, his hometown, his life. He became a reaper has had to sacrifice part of his morality for the past thirteen years. He saw his best friend/boyfriend get erased...then he lost the past three years of his existence.

   He has lost, and he can only expect that he will again.

  It wasn't something he's actively noticed but...it's changed how he views himself.

    In his mind, he was an amalgamation of broken parts, missing gaps in his soul. As being just as broken and mangled as his wings were.

  Like a childhood blanket, worn and ripped and hanging together by a thread in places, but you still kept it close regardless. He'd push himself back up and keep going...even if he didn't know why.

  He figured there'd be a day where there just...wouldn't be anything left of him to pick back up. Where the last of his soul will fall away with all he's lost and...there'll be nothing. He'll be nothing.

  He doesn't tend to tell people any of this, though. He doesn't know what he's gonna do when that day comes, when the last broken piece falls into the abyss.

[deusvervewrites]

I am bored and in the mood to bother you about it. What's the problem with how Overpowered is used? (Not by anon specifically, and keeping in mind I say Warframe lets you be overpowered as an excellent gameplay mechanic.)

There are a few problems with an Overpowered character, but what bothers me more is the people who use the term incorrectly.

Warframe does not let you be Overpowered. Warframe is a Power Fantasy. Both Warframe and Dynasty Warriors and the like feature individual super-badasses mowing down thousands of nameless mooks, but progress isn't made that way. It's made by fighting people on approximately the same level. In DW, that's named enemy units who can fight as well as you can. In Warframe, that's mostly done in big story moments. And no gun you have in Warframe is big enough to stop Praghasa or The Man in the Wall.

Generally, the term Overpowered in fiction is applied to works with some form of power system, for reasons I feel should be obvious, but technically the idea exists in other genres. A phone trivializes being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a slasher villain, which is why the phone signal always goes out. A single Xenomorph can slaughter a small crew of civilians, but Aliens had way more of them because the protagonists were now trained soldiers. (Also there was some social commentary but that's less important to the topic at hand)

But in gameplay terms, Overpowered refers to a strategy or game piece--something that the player can use to interact with gameplay systems, ranging from cards to characters to powers to weapons--that is objectively better than alternatives. It doesn't even have to be by much. Let's say your game has two weapons in it, a sword that deals 2 damage, and a sword that deals 3. Assuming that enemies have more than four health, there is literally no reason to ever use the sword that deals 2 damage because it is objectively worse. Thus, the 3-damage sword is Overpowered because it has forced everyone to use it.

But why would a game developer introduce an objectively better weapon? Power Creep. This is another gameplay and game design term that got thrown at fictional power systems for some reason. Power Creep is when developers make new game pieces that are better than old ones. Any game that goes on long enough will have Power Creep simply because of the number of new game pieces introduced, because human brain like it when number go up, but a good designer knows to limit Power Creep as much as possible. Why? Because Power Creep invalidates previous content, and people don't like it when the devs take their stuff away. Instead, most designers try to progress sideways. New gear and strategies are introduced, but are roughly on-par with what came before.

What does this have to do with fictional power systems? Well, authors often feel as though escalation is the best way to raise narrative tension. Introducing a new bad guy who's like the old bad guy, But Stronger, is an easy way for an author to raise the stakes. The problem with this method is that it's unsustainable. It turns everything into a numbers game. Whoever has the biggest number wins. In essence, every arc is, "Bad Guy arrives and trounces Hero. Hero then gets stronger and has a rematch and wins." You can write a story that way, it's how Dragon Ball works, but after a while, the numbers become meaningless. People have been leveling this complaint at the Dragon Ball franchise for years now, even before Super started and those criticisms really got going.

Authors have gotten around this in a few ways, such as giving the Stronger Bad Guy an exploitable weakness, or giving their major antagonists unique gimmicks instead of higher stats, but that's getting off-topic.

Can you see the difference here? A character's power level is oftentimes very different from how overpowered items and strategies work in games. Goku isn't Overpowered because he's the strongest protagonist, he's Overpowered because he's so strong that none of the other characters ever get to do anything. Both Super and GT tried to fix this, Super by making Vegeta also do things and GT by making Goku a kid. Unfortunately, neither of these are great solutions since Super put a bandaid on the problem and GT did it in a really stupid way that should've been easily fixed if the plot didn't mandate that it wasn't. A better solution was used by Super later on in their Tournament of Power arc because, and I need you to follow me on this one, characters who were not Goku or Vegeta got to participate. Shocking I know.

The flaw in an overpowered character is in poor story structure, poor planning, and underutilizing the cast. Not how strong they actually are. Koro-Sensei from Assassination Classroom is the Unkillable Teacher, but the show is about how E Class rallies and grow as people, plus a lot of social commentary, so the fact that their assassination attempts fail doesn't matter as much.

And that's why I'm so furious that when you look up advice for writing power systems, the only argument they have for putting a limitation on your power system is that "an overpowered character isn't realistic."

I want to write a story about people who can magically make someone's head explode, Janet! I don't give a fuck about realism!

You know who gets it? Of course you do. I'm talking about the author when it comes to power systems. Brandon Sanderson. More specifically, his Second Law of Magic Systems: Limitations Are More Interesting Than Powers.

If anyone can blow up a mountain, who cares? But if your characters can only use their special moves when certain conditions are met, then suddenly the fight becomes a race to meet your conditions first. And that has tension! Drama! You know, that thing stories are supposed to have!

[plutoids-thoughts]

Some Optimus sketches! I tried a new shading method and I don’t hate it but I don’t know if I like it LMAO

Here’s another doodle

I am a strong believer in not infantilzing him but for ironic purposes ONLY: POUTY BABY!! I wanna eat his face🥹🥹

Disclaimer: the color scheme is not mine, I was really in love with this oppy war frame design and wanted to give the color scheme a try lol:

[brandwhorestarscream]

Amnesiac starscream au: o bird of love

When he awoken, something felt off.

Not in the usual 'something bad will happen to you cause primus hates you' type of bad.

Kind of……secretive? Mischievous?

He doesn't know how to put it, everyone was scuffling around whenever he enters a room, attempting to badly hide something, whatever it is, he finds lots and lots of cans of paint of various colours, and…..gems??

(Where did they get the gems, why do they have gems???)

Then everyone disappeared.

He looked everywhere, up and down, every nook and cranny of the warehouse, until he found a small datapad with a set of coordinates.

He was hesitant, he shouldn't leave the base, he's known as a danger to the humans….

But what if they're hurt?

What if they're kidnapped? Or brainwashed? Or in danger from the decepticons and-

No, no , it was not the time for his cowardice, if they're are in danger, he will help them!.

And so, starscream soared over, scanning the planet for any signs of battle.

As more time gone by, his own panicked thoughs came through with a vengeance.

(See what happens when bots are nice to you? You are a warframe, a horrible being by design, you stray too far from your purpose and this is waht you get, you should've stayed an obedient little robot and listened to your masters and died like a pathetic killer you are-)

Starscream arrived at the coordinates place, it was a clearing , surrounded by rows and rows of colorful flowers, at the edge was tall, blooming trees, it was serene, calm, it felt…familiar, like home, where skyfire and him would go on the vosian crystal forests, watching the wildlife with child-like wonder, from the small petrorabbits to turbofoxes to copper-deer, all cycles of life beautiful in their own rights.

"Starscream!"

Oh, there's his beloved flame's voice.

He turns, and gasp in awe.

All of them, all of them were covered in vosian style decorations, handmade from earth materials, paint adorning their frames in long, curved lines of various shapes and colours, ranging from pinks to blues to red and purples.

Yet skyfire was the most handsome he has ever been.

His frame was adorned with gems and jewellery, bold curved lines of navy and magenta and crimson decorated his body, gems ranging in size and color made his frame glow in the light, beside him are his beloved little twins, beaming smiles as they excitedly looked at their own decorations, lines of colour reminiscent of both his and skyfire's own color.

He couldn't stop staring, it was a little tense, the silence stretched on for a few extra minutes before he broke down with joyous tears.

He couldn't stop hugging them, repeating a mantra of thank yous over and over, they did this, for him.

And starscream could be happier.

They partied, and danced, and had their fun, starscream telling of vosian legends and myths while the rest listen like eager children, and skyfire taking the others for a flight on his back, relish in their joy (and angry curses from ratchet), feeding them the best he can make with earth materials, wonderful Delicacies of vos, ranging from their sweetness candies to their spiciest Foods.

In the end, the seeker decided to gift their friends with a final show of appreciation, and soared into the skyies.

Their bodies twirled and twisted in the air, elegant and graceful, soaring around eachother before dipping downwards, their dance and glee echoing in the small clearing, maneuvering in the air with great skill and prowess, wowing their ground bound freinds and the young seekerlings.

In the final act, they soared high, so high that they feel the clouds, embracing eachother as hovered.

"Darling star of mine, can you be mine, as i am yours?"

Starscream lips met the shuttle's own soft lip, engines rumbling with content.

"Daring flame of mine, i am yours as you are mine, forever and always, my love…"

All their joy, all their excitement, the group failed to see a set of red eyes from afar.

"There's you are, traitor…"

SUNNY COME BACK HEREEEEEEEE

TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!!!!!!!!!!

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Linchpin Treasures

There's a practice in game design - specifically in crafting systems - where you have what I'd call linchpin treasures that gate the actual value of other stuff you've collected. Let's look a second at one of the most egregious examples of this: Warframe's Relic system.

Relics are one of the ways they maintain their "true free to play" status with the community. There are Prime warframes (think of them like slightly-boosted versions of character classes) and they sell these. Naturally if more powerful versions of the regular stuff were only available to people who shelled out real cash, free players would cry foul. You've got to give a way for them to invest time instead of cash money.

So certain kinds of missions give Relics as rewards. A relic is a gacha that carries crafting materials. You do a special relic mission to pop open the relic, and if other people join the same mission everyone functionally gets a pull on everyone's relic (so if all 4 players had the same relic you'd have 4x the odds to get what you wanted out of it)

But here's where it gets messy: Relics are stratified. Some relics are low-level, both in terms of the missions where they drop and the missions you use to open them, and others are high-level. Generally it's Lith, Meso, Neo, and finally Axi in terms of order of difficulty.

But the rewards in the relics are not stratified in the same way.

And again, relics drop parts of treasures.

If I want Garuda Prime, I can get a Garuda Prime blueprint from several sources. Multiple Lith relics have it as a common drop. So far so good. The blueprint itself then tells you that it needs Garuda Prime Chassis, Garuda Prime Neuroptics, and Garuda Prime Systems. You can get the Chassis as an uncommon drop from a Lith relic, so it might take a little extra time and grinding to get. The Neuroptics can also be found on Lith, but it's rare.

And then Garuda Prime Systems can only be found as a rare drop (2% drop rate) on Axi relics.

This kind of bottleneck is all over the place. It makes a situation where players are getting a whole lotta nothing when they're doing Relic hunts. You have to grind to obtain the right kind of relic in the first place, but until you have the super-rare drop from the high-level relic in the high-level relic mission, you've got nothing. Those other three parts are not usable until you can get Axi relics. They are, in essence, not treasure until then.

You can see why I consider the Garuda Prime Systems a linchpin treasure. It's not as if there's no work involved in getting the others, but this last one requires you be substantially more skilled (or carried) and generally much farther along in the game. (like, even if you've got friends doing all the work for you they can't bring you into zones that get you Axi relics until you do a bunch of solo-only content to gain access to certain planets) You can't just be determined and willing to grind.

Just realized why this irks me so much. It's because of the other place I saw it: Collectathon sweepstakes!

You'd have an ice cream company tell you that a letter was written on the popsicle sticks, underneath the ice cream in boxes with their Halloween promotion, and if you kept them and spelled out the word "Spooky" they'd give you a car or something. Odds of O: hypercommon. Multiple Os in every box. Odds of K: under 1 in a million. The objective is to convince your brain you're almost done. When you have 3/4 items for Garuda Prime you are not almost done, unless one of them is in fact Garuda Prime Systems.

I'm not mad that they require you to engage with late-game content in order to gain the superior warframes for free. Stated like that, it sounds damn reasonable. What annoys me about this design is that it lies. It tells you, with its shape, that you can get these superior warframes early on, by messing around with the early-game content and doing a bunch of relic stuff. There are good odds you'll get a Garuda Prime blueprint by accident. But if there's something in-game that lets you bounce from that to "what do I have to do to get these parts it says I need?" I haven't seen it. I went to a Warframe Wiki to get my info about how to get the rest.

[cephalonserotonin]

Devstream 172

fortunately for y'all I am unemployed this summer and was able to actually watch this one live!

prioritizing recency for this one; will fill in some graphics later. after I take a nap

TL;DR: Echoes of Duviri update coming, some summer events, and we won't know what will happen at TennoCon in August but the reveal will probably be big

Last devstream before tennocon

Rebb opening her own devstream on her phone live to get the umbra forma drop... iconic

Pride campaign ends tomorrow! Grab the 1-credit pride stuff while you can!

7 Crimes of Kullervo - it's been out for a week

The prison island literally cannot be expanded any further due to storage constraints on the size of Duviri

The time-limited node (Kullervo's Hold) is to guarantee a Kullervo experience on the short term

Kullervo: 53rd warframe

Overguard for Kullervo: why? - mostly diegetic reasons, it feels non-immersive for stab man to summon shields from nowhere.

But his survivability on SP is lacking, so the team is experimenting with giving him some invuln and higher health

Some mixed thoughts on overguard vs adaptation

People want a dagger for Kullervo. it's been… tentatively teased

Captain (corrupted) Vor in the undercroft with a new monologue is popular (I haven't personally encountered him yet, and am excited to do so)

Upcoming Duviri content (next update: Echoes of Duviri)

New undercroft arenas in progress! Level design in progress shown is a lil grassland

The Jackal as an assassination game mode within the undercroft; He's a well regarded boss fight that scales well

Goal is expanding variety within duviri play

New incarnon models, which are gorgeous.

These 5 will be available for plat. There's a lot of awkward waffling here about pricing and free-to-play which has to be seen to really be understood

"We're not twisting your arm! We're not strong enough for that!"

DUVIRI ROOM FOR THE DOJO! Unique skybox for each mood Idk about y'all but I know exactly where in my dojo it's going

6th drifter weapon: the Argo and Vel, a mace and shield, similar to what the heavy Dax use Available for both Warframe and drifter (new weapon type for the drifter) The shield is gorgeous

Wisp prime coming July 27th

Teaser for her Prime trailer (I love the fluidity of it)

Fulmin + gunsen prime. The fulmin prime looks nothing like the fulmin lol

Megan's fashion frame has been called the 8th crime (oof)

More 10th Anniversary Content: the "recall 10-0 event"

will bring some old boss battles with cosmetics to earn

Starting July 19th

Dog Days returns with a hot rod domestik drone

TennoCon in person in August

Live tickets are sold out (as of before I found out I would be free that time after all, I cry)

Baro will bring all his Waros for 1 week

Broadcast schedule released

TennoLive will be 90 minutes

Helen introduces the cosplay contest ($10k prize for first place). Her hair looks amazing

The Warframe artbook content is done!

Dex operator + drifter suit by Liger! It looks like Hanzo Shimada if flowers were growing out of his back. Will be given to everyone for free :3

For the first time, reveals at this tennocon (for the "next installment" of Warframe) will be a true surprise. "It'll be our life's work" - Rebb. :o

Rebb still wants warframes starting with each letter of the alphabet. Q and D supposedly coming at tennocon

New soundtrack record picking up from the Sacrifice

Companion rework coming sometime this year

Warframe reworks won't be until post-TennoCon

Some poor lady was accosted on her wedding to ask Rebb about cross-save (bruh). More concrete news at TennoCon

[cappurrccino]

!! !! !!

many ttrpg characters for you, my friend!!

first off, my good good pulp cthulhu boy Roland! (I did introduce him when the game started, but that was a Whole Year Ago and he's been on my mind because I've been binging Malevolent, so!)

he's the (currently in game) 26 y/o fantasy son of Howard Carter, the Egyptologist who isn't much good at fighting, but IS quite good at languages (he started the game with 5 and picked up a bit of a 6th just sitting in a cafe for a day) and sticking his nose into trouble (a dust monster partially blinded him last sesh, but it's ok! he got better AND was smart enough to not try to shoot a rifle while trying to blink away the supernatural pocket sand)

he's the MOST fascinated with the occult and weird eldritch stuff people keep whispering about (even though he can't believe what eshe saw) and i'm sure Nothing Bad Will Come Of That At All :)

he's perfect and i love him and i WILL cry if something kills him

next up: Lynne Cadogan!

this is an old monster of the week character of mine, but she was SO much fun. she's a demon, works in a flower shop, has an angel best friend & partner in crime/pretending to be cops/playing detective, drives a mint green prius and has a sawed-off shotgun in a pastel backpack

if her game ever crossed over with tma, she'd find a way to get on ghost hunt uk SPECIFICALLY so she could harass the ghosts and/or melanie and/or the entire archives staff

in answering this ask, i pulled out my binder of all my old character sheets and man there are SO many good ones, but i'm gonna go with Juran for #3 because i think his design is cool as FUCK and heroforge got advanced enough a while back for me to actually get close to what i had envisioned! (and yes he was named for the umbra questline song from warframe that makes me cry every time i hear it)

he was my character for an angelic homebrew @warlordfelwinter made and ran years and years ago and i don't remember most of what happened (my literal only note says "vaguely remembered fighting in a battle and then woke up in a lake of fire" lmao) but i DO remember that he was a messenger and would use his big-ass wings to catch thermals and jetstreams and the like to be Quick with his deliveries, and that he ended the game with a bag of beans (unused) and an iguana (heroforge only had a turtle)

[send me a !! and i'll introduce you to an oc!]

[neverendingrelease]

BOSS RUSH: Releasing Today, Feb 19, 2024!

There's a lot of games coming out today to spotlight:

Firefrost is a neat looking puzzle game where you use a line based flamethrower attack to kill enemies and make more movement space. I like the simple pixel styling and the clear visibility.

Craftomation is a neat looking survival game where it's kinda like Factorio, Don't Starve, and Dwarf Fortress, where you program your allies to do the stuff you need to survive.

Nidus (not the warframe) is a really psychedelic SHMUP involving a lot of cool flower and bug designs. It looks like it belongs at home on a vector screened arcade machine. I'm sure it's really hard but it's also really pretty.

Empires Shall Fall looks like a really solid dieselpunk tactics game like Advance Wars.

Gambit Shifter is a neat chess-piece movement based puzzle game. I think it'd be fun to chill with. Maybe check if it has a mobile port.

Dark Gravity is a SHMUP that actually caught my eye for adding extra mechanics. There's a branching story path, the bosses I think have cutscenes, and the ships are customizable? The backgrounds have moving 3d objects instead of being pictures or blank. There's a lot of care here.

[theclubhero-blog]

Baldur's Gate 3 vence melhor jogo do ano no Golden Joystick Awards

Por Vinicius Torres Oliveira

Resident Evil 4 e Starfield venceram nas categorias de consoles

Nesta sexta-feira (10), Baldur's Gate 3 foi coroado como o melhor jogo do ano no Golden Joystick Awards, premiação que completa 41 anos em 2023. O título do Larian Studios superou outros grandes games lançados neste ano, como The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2 e Starfield. Conforme publicado pelo GamesRadar, 2023 foi o ano em que a premiação contou com mais votos desde a primeira edição, décadas atrás. Abaixo, você confere os vencedores de cada categoria, destacados em negrito, seguidos pelos demais indicados.

Melhor narrativa

Vencedor: Baldur's Gate 3

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon

Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals

Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Melhor jogo contínuo

Vencedor: No Man's Sky

Genshin Impact

The Sims 4

Fortnite

Naraka Bladepoint

GTA Online

Warframe

Valorant

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive / Counter-Strike 2

Apex Legends

Dota 2

Call of Duty

Melhor design visual

Vencedor: Baldur's Gate 3

Starfield

Hi-Fi Rush

Viewfinder

Lies of P

Street Fighter 6

Estúdio do ano

Vencedor: Larian Studios

Digital Eclipse

Nintendo EPD

Mimimi Games

Remedy Entertainment

CD Projekt Red

Melhor expansão

Vencedor: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

Power Wash Simulator DLC

The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom

The Case of the Golden Idol Mysteries: The Lemurian Vampire and Spider of Lanka

Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania

A Little to the Left: Cupboards & Drawers

Melhor jogo independente

Vencedor: Sea of Stars

Dave the Diver

Pizza Tower

Dredge

Cocoon

Viewfinder

Melhor jogo multiplayer

Vencedor: Mortal Kombat 1

Exoprimal

Diablo 4

Street Fighter 6

Remnant 2

We Were Here Expeditions: The FriendShip

Melhor áudio

Vencedor: Final Fantasy 16

Stray Gods

Hi-Fi Rush

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

Starfield

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Melhor trailer

Vencedor: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - Official Cinematic Trailer

Alan Wake 2 - The Dark Place Gameplay Trailer

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Official Trailer #3

Baby Steps Reveal Trailer

Mortal Kombat 1 - Official It's In Our Blood Trailer

Dave the Diver - Official Release Month And Accolades Trailer

Melhor comunidade

Vencedor: Baldur's Gate 3

Final Fantasy 14

Warframe

Deep Rock Galactic

Dreams

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Melhor jogo VR

Vencedor: Horizon Call of the Mountain

C-Smash VRS

Synapse

Vertigo 2 VR

F1 23 VR

The Light Brigade

Melhor hardware

Vencedor: PlayStation VR2

Turtle Beach Stealth Pro Headset

Alienware 34 AW3423DWF

Nitro Deck

ASUS ROG Strix Scope II 96

Samsung 990 PRO

Prêmio Breakthrough

Vencedor: Cocoon / Geometric Interactive

Escolha dos críticos

Vencedor: Alan Wake 2

Melhor jogo de streaming

Vencedor: Valorant

Melhor atuação principal

Vencedor: Ben Starr - Clive Rosfield in Final Fantasy 16

Yuri Lowenthal - Peter Parker in Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Cameron Monaghan - Cal Kestis in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Ilkka Villi and Matthew Porretta - Alan Wake in Alan Wake 2

Nadji Jeter - Miles Morales in Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Ellise Chappell - Kathy Johanson in Deliver Us Mars

Melanie Liburd - Saga Anderson in Alan Wake 2

Melhor atuação coadjuvante

Vencedor: Neil Newbon - Astarion in Baldur's Gate 3

Laura Bailey - Mary Jane in Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Cissy Jones - Andreja in Starfield

Amelia Tyler - Narrator in Baldur's Gate 3

Ralph Ineson - Cidolfus Telamon in Final Fantasy 16

Patricia Summersett - Princess Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Idris Elba - Solomon Reed in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

Jogo do ano da Nintendo

Vencedor: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Pikmin 4

Fire Emblem Engage

Metroid Prime Remastered

Octopath Traveller 2

Fae Farm

Jogo do ano de PC

Vencedor: Baldur's Gate 3

Diablo 4

Dave the Diver

Tchia

System Shock

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew

Jogo do ano de PlayStation

Vencedor: Resident Evil 4

Final Fantasy 16

Street Fighter 6

Humanity

Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Melhor jogo do ano de Xbox

Vencedor: Starfield

Chants of Sennaar

Hi-Fi Rush

Planet of Lana

Dead Space

Pentiment

Jogo mais desejado

Vencedor: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Death Stranding 2

Star Wars Outlaws

Tekken 8

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

Hades 2

Fable

Hollow Knight: Silksong

Everywhere

Frostpunk 2

Ark 2

Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater

Persona 3 Reload

Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

Pacific Drive

Black Myth: Wukong

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin

Melhor jogo do ano definitivo

Vencedor: Baldur's Gate 3

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Alan Wake 2

Resident Evil 4

Cocoon

Starfield

Final Fantasy 16

Diablo 4

Forza Motorsport

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon

Assassin's Creed Mirage

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Street Fighter 6

Metroid Prime Remastered

Hi-Fi Rush

Lords of the Fallen

Dead Space

Sea of Stars

[sharky857]

Warframe - Proteus Anime - Teaser Trailer

Did anyone know about this fan-project yet?

[ashlynniis-bracketeers]

O-NEI-RO {Guilty Gear/Warframe} 

Mixing my main games lmao. My brain kept on comparing Bedman from Guilty Gear to the Tenno in Warframe (technically Warframe spoilers lmao), so I decided to draw everyone's favorite dead motor-mouth as an Operator. I technically half-assed because I can never keep track of what colors are taken by where on Operator fashion + Warframe designs being so damn ornate and greeble-ey that I simplified as to not go insane lmao. I could have gone with the Ki'Teer Cornu Diadem for his head arrow, but I decided to keep the normal arrow for visual clarity. The symbol under his feet is the symbol normally seen on his legs, under his feet like the Operator's Focus Tree symbols on Transference in Focus 3.0.

He strikes me as someone who'd use Equinox (because spikey stab murder + make his enemies fall asleep) + Mirage with the Oneiro skin because of the "Oneiro" text on his bed.

Virtual cookie if you can guess what pieces he's wearing here.

I hope you like it!

[theterribletenno]

Thank you to @bandit-o-s for this much better Lich concept, detailing some of the lore and possible acquisition of Naberus. Naberus' concept, kit, and visual design are based on conversations from the Warframe Fuckers discord.

Visual references for Naberus:

[lostepoch12]

Will-O’-The-Wisp. I love the design for the new Wisp Warframe so I thought I’d give this a try. Enjoy!

[tauforged]

i’m actually about to shift into full autism mode hang on i gotta ramble about some wf mechanics that bug me while i’m on the topic... the recent shift towards making the big bosses as difficult and time consuming as possible, like how they were hotfixing the shit out of the orb mothers specifically to cut out methods speedrunners were using, sucks a lot of fun out of the game and alienates the target audience, being people who play video games because they enjoy video games

i understand that it makes sense for there to be some challenge for the game to actually feel rewarding, and that it’s necessary to patch out glaring bugs or exploits people are using to cheat at the detriment of other players (such as people killing demolysts in the then-brand new disruption missions by using loki to teleport them off cliffs, giving an unfair advantage during the hostile mergers event by allowing players to totally bypass the actual objectives of the gamemode in favor of racking up a high score with little to no effort). but there is a difference between getting rid of ways for people to cheat due to oversights in designing the level, and making enemies absurdly hard to kill just to throw more obstacles at the players (the MOA demolyst that goes fully invincible for a decent chunk of time before self destructing, for example, was a huge pain in the ass for my clanmates and i back during HM because its nullification field made it near impossible to stop once it got to the same room as the conduit, because it shook off every attempt to hold it still via abilities) and essentially punishing resourceful players for using the materials given to them to solve an encounter in an unexpected way. at this point i’m surprised DE hasn’t changed chroma so that self damage doesn’t effect his abilities because of how powerful that can make him with the right build :/

i KNOW at the end of the day it all comes back down to making bossfights hard and taxing with ridiculous drop rates for the rewards everyone actually wants, making obtaining new warframes or weapons tedious enough without spending money that the players will just buck up and buy platinum so they can get it over with, and while some extent of monetization makes sense given warframe is a free game and a high quality one at that, given that it IS technically possible to get almost everything in the game w/o spending a dime, and on top of that is just a really good game with a lot of appeal and years of work poured into it. BUT it also bugs me cuz it’s not a level theyvetaken it to in the past (remember when you could oneshot planet bosses and farm an entire warframe in less than 20 minutes?) and i worry that it’ll only get worse the bigger the game gets until it reaches a point where it’s unavoidable and compromises the gameplay itself :/

[moss-sauce]

supposed t be just a little intro for the lich bit? but it got out of hand lmao. ended up being way longer than anticipated. gonna be multi-chapter.

[AO3 link]

The dropship is as rickety as always.

Not an issue for Max. She can adjust to the rumble of turbulence fairly easily, tuning out the whining of the engines and the whistling of air around the ship’s belly. Trouvaille curls up in the seat next to her, sound asleep. Occasionally, a paw twitches, or an ear flicks, as he chases imaginary prey. Caliber, Max’s Mesa Prime, sits on the other side of her. She idly takes apart a pistol, then reassembles it, getting quicker and quicker each time.

“D’you know where we’re going yet?” Max whispers to Caliber.

The Warframe shakes her head.

“Oof. I hope it’s nothin’ bad,” she frets.

Caliber rolls her head in an exaggerated display, then waves her off. You worry too much.

“Don’t be damn rude,” Max scolds. “I’ll worry if I want.”

Caliber shrugs and goes back to her task.

Max hunkers down in the seat as she thinks. The call to deployment had been quick, and she hadn’t gathered much information before the Hounds had set out. She could always ask, but that was too easy. She wanted to figure out for herself. 

So, she eavesdrops. She’s not above that, if it’s harmless.

Buffy, Dodge and some of the other soldiers are talking mindlessly.

“What type of specialist do you think they’ll be?” One of them queries.

“I heard they’re a real heavy unit,” Buffy comments. “Like, rivaling myself heavy.”

“That’s not much of a feat,” Dodge mutters. “You’re a lightweight.”

“What’s that, doc?”

“Nothing concerning you.”

The soldiers snicker at the banter.

A specialist? For what? A new recruit?

“Whatever they are, we have to go to the Queens’ Fortress to meet them, I guess,” Dodge derails. “That says something.”

The Kuva Fortress? Max’s gut sinks. She still feels horribly out of place there. The atmosphere is stifling, choking with strict authority and dust.

“Been a good while since I’ve been there,” Buffy grunts. “Not since…” he trails off and narrows his eyes as he thinks, “before Max, at least, and she’s been here a while.”

Trouvaille’s ear flicks at the sound of his master’s name. He groans in his sleep, stretching and then relaxing once more.

“It’s not a place for everyday soldiers,” Dodge points out. “We’re lucky to even be invited there, let alone get a recruit from such a high ranking unit.”

They’re getting a Kuva specialist? Max’s mind runs rampant with possibilities.

Caliber flicks a shard of salvage off her shoulder, sending it to the floor with a ‘tink’. 

“You’re distracting, you know that?” Max huffs to her.

Caliber shrugs idly, perusing her non-existent fingernails daintily.

“The kid, though,” one of the soldiers interrupts their bickering. “Has she been there since--?”

“No, but it’s not an issue to worry about.” Dodge cuts them off tersely. 

Oh. That was a real stickler to think about.

Max hadn’t been to the Kuva Fortress since the events of the War Within, the turmoil of being able to choose her own actions and face her own consequences, free from the Lotus’ prying, motherly mind. Yes, Max had caused quite the commotion in her time there. Her and Hush, still naive, had infiltrated the Fortress with Teshin’s assistance, finding out about his past and the Queens’ bloodlines. Orokin Blood they were, Teshin was trapped under their control. Back when Max spoke to Teshin more often, she valued his well-being, and wanted to free him from the chains of the Queens. 

So, she had.

She had slain the Elder Queen, retrieved her Warframe and the Broken Scepter.

She had freed Teshin, proven she could pilot her own will, take care of her own self, without the Lotus.

Ironic, is it not? A precursor for what was to come.

Oh, Max still seethes about the betrayal. But she didn’t want to get into it.

She would likely not be welcomed warmly. She isn’t expecting it. She had slain one of the two idols the Grineer as a whole looked up to, in her blind stumblings under the Lotus. She wouldn’t be welcomed at all. Hell, she’s surprised they even considered bringing her along for this. But if Zus wants it, it will be.

“But--”

“It’s not an issue to worry about,” Dodge snaps. “Max will be with us at all times. There’ll be no mistaking that she’s benevolent this time around. The past is the past, whether people want to accept it or not.”

“You think it’s safe for her? The security systems are engrained to track for things like Tenno blood. Won’t they be constantly going off at her?”

“No. Max has been added to a list of exceptions. At worse, a scanner will stumble and refuse to grant her access. None of the sentries or turrets are going to spontaneously deploy against her, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“It wasn’t, but it was on my mind. I happen to like having her in one piece.”

Caliber makes a fawning motion, holding her hands to her cheeks and tilting her head airily.

“God, stop it,” Max shoves a hand in her face. “You’re so...over-the-top.”

Caliber nods proudly, patting her chest.

Trouvaille stirs at the fumbling, stretching each leg and then his toes lasciviously. He groans as he does, arching his back like a kavat would as he sits up and looks around blearily.

“‘Sup, sleepy boy.” The Operator leans over to ruffle his ears fondly. He groans again at the feeling, leaning into the touch eagerly.

“You three,” someone snaps to them. Trouvaille sits stock-still, Max straightens up in her seat, though Caliber continues lounging amusedly. Zus strides over to sit across from them in the galleon’s belly. “We need to talk.”

“About?”

“Things you’ve done.”

Max’s breath hitches.

“Relax. It’s nothing that serious. Just about your past...shenanigans.”

She huffs a breath of relief.

“If sources tell true, you...may or may not have confronted one of the Queens, if not both, the last time you were here. We need to make you as unintimidating as possible. We need to prove that you’ve changed your course and are loyal to their cause now.”

Oh, gods. Zus didn’t know.

Why would he? Something like that would be kept under lock and key. Hint that one of the Queens had been slaughtered would cause an uprising and upheaval of the way things are. Anger, despair, betrayal, loss...all emotions would come into play. Far too much for the Worm Queen to keep under control on her own.

“Don’t equip your amp when you enter. Stay calm. Don’t move quickly or suddenly. Keep Trouvaille,” he nods to the kubrow, “under watch. The vest is to stay on him.” He points to a vest in a heap on the floor. “That’s crucial. Your patch is stamped onto your armor. His isn’t. To them, he could be some rabid stowaway that made his way here, and you know they won’t hesitate to take care of him in typical fashion.”

Max nods, and gulps.

“Get to putting that on him. I’ll keep explaining.”

She kneels over to pick up the vest, turning to Trouvaille. The canine whines excitedly at the sight of the garment: the vest meant business for him. She begins weaving his legs through holes and strapping buckles as Zus continues.

“I’ve done my fair part in making sure the higher ups here know you’re loyal to us, now. I’ve sent reports, documents, data you’ve collected, accounts from other soldiers themselves. But, while they may grant you access, they’re not going to be polite about things.”

“What else is new?” Max scoffs.

“Listen to me.” Zus stares at her. “These are not like your average Lancers. You cannot blow them off with the typical ‘I outrank you’ bluff.” He leans forward. “They are the same rank as us, if not above us.”

“All o’ them?” Max utters.

“Most of them,” Zus corrects. “Still, hold your tongue if you’re unsure what to do. I trust you’re able to do that, as you’re not that much of a confrontational person to start with.” He shrugs.

“I mean, yeah, but,” Max stumbles over words. “What if I’m caught alone?”

“You won’t be.” He answers firmly. “You will have Caliber and Trouvaille with you, guaranteed. I’m assigning Buffy to be your… ‘walking buddy’ for the day.” Zus huffs tiredly. “For the love of god, don’t get up to what you usually do with him here. I won’t be able to handle it today.”

“No, I getcha,” she assures. “Can I...ask what’s going on? Why are we here?”

“We’re receiving a new recruit,” Zus starts. “A specialized recruit, one with the Old Blood within them. They’ll prove to be a valuable asset, but they’re not replacing you.”

Inwardly, Max heaves another sigh of relief. “So, what will they be for?”

“Unsure. We still haven’t seen them.”

“Do they got a designation?”

“They’re called Kuva Lichs.”

“‘Lich’.” Max repeats to herself. “Sounds...scary.”

“They are scary.”

“That’s comforting,” she snorts.

“I don’t see why you’re worrying,” he snorts back to her. “You’ve a man-slaying canine wrapped around your finger.”

Trouvaille’s tongue lolls out of his mouth as he pants happily. One of his ears it folded inside-out. He’s drooling, slightly. He looks proud of himself in his vest.

“Yeah. Killer, slaying, hell-raising dog.”

The galleon shutters around them.

“That’s my cue to leave.” Zus pats her shoulder comfortingly. “Stay safe. I can’t guarantee I’ll be with you the entire time, but Caliber and Trouvaille and Buffy should be.” He stands and leaves.

Caliber peers at her curiously. 

“That was interesting,” Max comments as the ship rumbles, pulling into the docking bay. “Bet this’ll be even more interesting,” she tries showing off a front to cover up the way her stomach fluttered nervously. “Think they’ll be taller than you?”

Caliber would scoff, if she could. She instead waves a hand and shakes her head confidently, making the tattered ends of the bandanna tied around her head wave.

The ship jolts as it docks. The other soldiers unclasp the buckles holding them secure and rise to their feet.

Max stands as well as Trouvaille jumps down from the seat to sit pristinely next to her.

“Here goes nothin’, I guess.”

[blessuswithblogs]

Video Games are a God Damned Mess: Bad Business Practices, Unsustainability, and the Fidelity Plateau

(shoutouts to the anon rando in my inbox for telling me about the read more button you were kind of rude about it but i don’t use this website so i legit didn’t know)

The video game industry has always been a bit wild and wooly compared to its older contemporaries. The emergence of a new medium is always rife with upheaval as paradigms shift and people discover that the old rules don't necessarily apply all of the time. That said, the past three months have been filled with what I can really only describe as catastrophes for many disparate publishers and development studios.

 You may recall I talked a bit about this during my game of the year list and Fallout 76 analysis, but to recap: with Telltale shutting its doors and shafting its workers, the writing was on the wall for the same thing to happen again as the intrinsically unsustainable boom and bust cycle began the less glamorous stage. It turns out I was correct in my predictions but congratulating myself for seeing this coming is not unlike congratulating myself for accurately predicting that tomorrow will be Tuesday. Or. Whatever day it will be when I post this. fuck i dated the lp thread ruined LOOK the point is that this was really obviously going to happen and that nobody felt the need to prepare for it or try to stop it before 10% of Activision-Blizzard's workforce got canned is a major failure of the industry at large.

So let's talk a bit about what's happened since then. There's been a lot, so forgive me if I miss your favorite corporate implosion. First, at Blizzcon, Diablo Immortal was revealed to what actually might have been the most actively hostile reception of a game in history. This has less to do with the more financial aspects of the ongoing Videocon Crisis and more just kind of served as an ill omen and an example of Blizzard's worrying descent into... wherever it is they're going. If gross incompetence was a place, they would be descending into it. On paper, a Diablo mobile game is a money-printing proposition. When all is said and done Immortal will still probably make them gobs of cash. In practice, however, they fucked the landing so hard they probably lost potential sales. The kind of folks who go to Blizzcon and get omegahype for a new diablo game are not the kind of folks who play mobile games. Mobile games have a Stigma among the hardcore crowd, and also the Ethical Business Practices in Video Games crowd (which as of this writing appears to be me, Jim Sterling, and the Warframe devteam). For a lot of braindead gamerbros, mobile games are synonymous with things like Candy Crush and Peggle, which are perfectly fine games honestly but they're For Girls or some shit so mobile games are bad and for casuals. More pertinently, mobile games are also a ferocious jungle of microtransactions, pay2win mechanics, and generally shoddy design. Command and Conquer and Dungeon Keeper, beloved franchises that have been ripe for revisiting for years now, both found mobile games and they were both utterly terrible. These games make a great deal of their money by exploiting "whales", or in actual human being language, vulnerable people with disposable income and difficulties with impulse control or addictive personalities. Or kids who know their mom's creditcard number. Kids play video games. Now that we are no longer kids (theoretically, anyway) it can be easy to forget that. I'm not the pearl-clutching type, but I think that stigmatizing a genre of games that proudly touts an exploitative-of-children business model is probably okay.

So there are lots of reasons to be skeptical of Diablo Immortal right out of the gate, and quite frankly whoever thought that just pushing that out there with literally no other Diablo related news items (like any whispers of the long coveted hd remaster of diablo the second) was either transferred in from another company the day before or had some kind of unspeakable grudge against the scheduled presenters, to whom my heart goes out to. There is also some undeniable precedent that Blizzard-Activision will, in all likelihood, monetize the everloving daylights out of it. Both Hearthstone and Overwatch have more or less become nicely polished vehicles with which to deliver lootboxes to players for a nominal fee. If this hadn't been followed by a seemingly unceasing calvacade of disasters, the whole debacle would have been really funny to point and laugh at. It's still pretty funny to point and laugh at, but it also has some less amusing implications. Blizzard in particular has been up to a lot of no good lately. Let's talk a little bit about their recent one-two punch.

First up, we have the complete and sudden abandonment of competitive support for Heroes of the Storm. Heroes of the Storm was essentially Blizzard's seething regret and resentment for letting Valve snatch up the whole Defense of the Ancients thing put into code and unleashed upon an unwitting populace. It had actually been gaining some renewed interest over the past year or so due to the developers putting in some elbow grease and making the game both more accessible and just. More better. HotS has also had a modest but respectable eSports scene since the game's launch, with a variety of professional players, shoutcasters, tournament organizers and emergency bugfixers employed. Many of them were anxious about their jobs for months in advance with no word from the higher ups about who would still be employed by 2019. Sometimes, companies have to make difficult decisions and let people go to keep operating. Even my communist ass reluctantly accepts this as a reality of the system we live in. However, there is a protocol about this kind of thing. Giving notice. Giving, you know, severance pay. Stuff like that. And of course this presupposes that this sort of cut to the workforce is actually necessary in the first place. Given that AB subsequently reported record profits for the year of 2018, I have some doubts. Completely dropping support for a game out of the blue is a scummy thing to do to your playerbase. When it is also directly impacting the livelihood of hundreds of people in your employ, it goes beyond scummy and turns right into Unacceptable.

But "unacceptable" is Bobby Kotick's favorite word in the English language so while shoving hundred dollar bills from his latest corporate bonus up his butt he and his friends in the boardroom decided that the HotS esports people might get lonely, so they had better go and fire another 10% of the workforce too. Just because. Like literally just because. His company is doing fine - better than fine! They are at record levels of better than fine. But the shareholders demand more and more exponential growth, so to cut costs that really didn't need cutting, away goes 10%. Will game quality suffer because of this? Undoubtedly. More work being piled on fewer people who are also living in mortal fear of losing their jobs Just Because is not a recipe for success. People are mad about this, much like people were/are mad about Fallout 76 - players of games, industry wonks, and iconic voice actresses alike are no longer tolerating this kind of thing in Two Thousand and Nineteen, Common Era. Nor should they!

Elsewhere in the Game-o-sphere, similar developments are brewing. ArenaNet, the folks wot do Guildwars, went through another round of mass layoffs. EA's stocks have plummeted and Battlefield V "failed to meet expectations" because it only sold A Ton and not A Fuckin Shit Ton, and Anthem is not really lighting the world on fire. After Mass Effect Andromeda's... curious debut, Bioware has probably been feeling the heat and a lot of people are concerned that it too will suffer the ultimate fate of all studios acquired by Electronic Arts: joining Visceral Games in a broken heap at the bottom of the garbage chute. Bring back Dead Space you motherfuckers. Bethesda continues to, improbably, suffer through PR disaster after PR disaster with Fallout 76, a game that seemingly cannot stop fucking up. Ubisoft has received some positive attention for vowing to NOT lay off hundreds of employees for no discernible reason, which leads me to believe that our standards for praiseworthy behavior have dropped alarmingly low. Even 2K Games in all of its monolithic glory seems to be feeling a bit of a Stock Price Squeeze. Honestly by the time I get this done and posted it's entirely possible that somebody else will fuck something up. I'm still kind of waiting on the fallout from Randy Pitchford's porn thumbdrive, but I'm also a little bit pleased that Actual Money Crimes are getting more traction in the news cycle.

So, returning to the main point: the industry is in a bad situation of its own making. It's a scene that's almost always been defined by trend-chasing. For a while, that meant that we would just have to suffer through an endless glut of EXTREME SPORTS GAMES SPONSORED BY A DUDE or a barrage of samey console shooters desperately trying to be Halo every once in a while. Unfortunately, the trend-chasing now extends not only to the games themselves, but to the methods by which they are monetized. Ever since DLC became a mainstream thing, the brightest minds of the boardrooms have been working tirelessly to deduce which method of fleecing players will scientifically speaking get them the most money. Inevitably, when some enterprising little weasel develops a new and improved monetization scheme, the rest of the little weasels will immediately latch on to that scheme and that's how you end up with Battlefront 2's ridiculous lootbox grind and Shadow of War's ludicrous inclusion of randomized lootboxes in a singleplayer action-adventure game. While I'm certain that the platonic ideal of the lootbox has existed in some form or another for decades now, I think that we can squarely lay the blame for the Great Lootbox Plague of the Twenty-Tens at the feet of Valve.

Valve has been known for questionable business practices for a while now (albeit in a more lowkey way than We Fired 800 People So Bobby Kotick Could Buy a New Yacht), largely getting away with it because Steam has been more or less unchallenged as the premier digital distribution service for video games. This might be changing soon, as Epic Games is going straight for the jugular with a number of aggressive moves with its own fledgling platform, but historically, Valve has faced very few consequences for just kind of being petulantly antagonistic towards its userbase because said userbase is easily mollified by steam sales and Gaben memes. When people think lootboxes in 2019, they probably think of games like Overwatch or Battlefront 2 or basically any contemporary multiplayer game. I certainly do, but a bit of fact finding allowed me to remember that Valve has been doing this shit since Counterstrike and Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2's byzantine cosmetics market can't be overlooked either. All three of these games are or were at one point genre leaders and made Valve so much money they basically decided that they didn't really need to make games anymore. A reasonable conclusion to draw, given the fact all three of these games are inextricably linked to their history as very popular mods. Valve just outsources a great deal of its labor to dedicated, naive fans and gives them a pittance of the huge mounds of dollars they make from their hard work. It's a good racket, but it has set an alarmingly poor example to the rest of the gaming world.

Games as a service, in concept, is fine for games that lend themselves well to the idea. MMOs have been using a variation of the model for decades now and that genre is actually like, Perplexingly Healthy. Free to play games like League of Legends and Warframe have also had success with a service model. The problem comes from the AAA Game industry's pathological insistence on shoving square pegs into things that don't even have holes to begin with. Shadow of War, or Assassin's Creed, or any other major singleplayer offering, has no business whatsoever being a Live Service. They are finite experiences by design and that's completely fucking fine and normal. Appending microtransactions and lootboxes to them is a transparent attempt to just suck up a little bit more money from players in the most unsustainable way possible. Here is a small hint if some WB Games bigwig stumbles upon this: first of all, I'm building a guillotine, so you better watch your ass. Second, how dare you fucking make Shelob a sexy lady. Third, (this is the one that is probably most relevant): People are willing to pay as they go for cosmetics and timesavers for games that they like and want to support. I've dumped a lot of money into League over the years because there was a period of time where I was playing it nonstop and having a wonderful time for quite literally no cost to myself, so I felt like buying the cute Panda Annie Skin was a good compromise. Regrettably I would later learn that there are aspects of Riot Games I'm not super okay with giving money to but at the time they seemed agreeable and my friends who work there gotta get payed somehow. This whole dynamic of wanting to support a video game goes out the damn window when you are already charging a $60 entry fee, plus whatever highway robbery pricing you put on the inevitable DLC. In this case, the onus is squarely upon the publisher to provide an experience and content one would reasonably expect of the pricetag. Putting in microtransactions for cosmetics is galling. Putting in microtransactions for actual game progression, like in Battlefront 2 or Shadow of War, is outright insulting.

Many will leap to the defense of these publishers and developers, saying that these measures are necessary to make these ludicrously expensive and lavish AAA games that all look suspiciously like one another. For the time being, let's accept this as a true statement. If this is, in fact, the state of affairs in the industry, then the industry needs to change to a more sustainable business model. When playing Destiny 2, during a big space cutscene, the cute pilot lady ferrying me to The Large Molerat Man's Murderboat had beautifully rendered skin where you could see the pores and the little wispy cheek hairs that swayed to the momentum of the space plane's movements. It was very nice but then the next year or so I heard nothing but people pointing out "hey this game has no content you dipshits" or "the devteam is actually scamming people with the experience system to wring more playtime out of them". The cheek hairs affair succeeded in making me want the pilot to buy me dinner and regail me with stories of her space adventures as I batted my lashes at her in romantic admiration, but also: stop it. You do not need to do this. This is strictly unnecessary. The graphics arms race of yesteryear is over. Nobody cares anymore. Fidelity is plateauing harder and harder, to the point where games running properly on console without having to settle for 30FPS is becoming very difficult. There is an Earth B somewhere out there where Bloodborne was not a sony exclusive and got a PC release with 60FPS support and loading times for humans and on Earth B I am still playing that game for the forseeable future because it is the best game ever. We are far past the paradigm where we are making Tremendous Graphical Leaps with each successive generation. Right now, as of this writing, games look jawdroppingly good. Just ludicrously pretty and grandiose. Continuing to push the graphical envelope for Every Damn Annual Release is a waste of resources: monetary resources, labor resources, system resources. As of March, 2019, what people really want is stability and functionality. Something that runs nice and smooth at 60FPS and doesn't turn its characters randomly into nightmare inverse-Rayman beasts. I think the huge success of the Nintendo Switch, a console with relatively modest hardware but superb functionality, portability, and a surprisingly full featured library of both massive first party titles, like Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey (which honestly look better than a lot of games on more robust hardware because of wonderful art direction) and smaller indie games, is testament to this line of thinking.

Maybe that's too bold of a statement. Maybe there's this huge swath of the gaming public that is just clamoring for more cheek hairs. If there are I think they're fucking out of their minds but who am I to judge. As long as games like that werewolf game The Order exist, where the universal reaction is "this is so pretty!!! ...wait there's nothing in here." I think that there is a serious responsibility to push back against that because evidently it's bankrupting the game industry and forcing them to violate international gambling laws to stay afloat. Except it's fucking not, actually. Many publishers are claiming record profits, upward trends, and are in a spot to have the raw nerve to say "well this game that sold 7 million copies didn't sell 8 million copies so it failed to meet expectations". They are doing ludicrously well for themselves in terms of generating revenue from sales. Where these highly successful corporations are running into problems is satisfying the almighty Shareholders. Shareholders are sort of like. Imagine if you got a job where you had to keep a large committee of actual babies happy, except the babies don't know shit about fuck about anything and demand that you routinely break all reasonable laws of sustainability and keep bringing in exponentially higher profits or they will take their ball and go home. There is still, evidently, money enough to give newly hired executives million dollar signing bonuses, but when it comes to just making a game that doesn't fall back on exploiting people with gambling addictions, we're suddenly dealing with an outfit of noble, longsuffering churchmice just trying to make ends meet. People are rapidly getting fed up with this blatant hypocrisy and dishonesty. Sales from Hearthstone card packs alone could fund a robust HotS esports scene for eternity if properly apportioned. This money is not properly apportioned. It is thrown into a gigantic incinerator so Kotick can get high on the fumes.

You might be wondering what this girls' deal is with Blizzard. Surely there are more egregious offenders? Firstly, Blizzard is very relevant at the moment because they are one of the highest profile publishers to recently Do A Business Oopsie. Secondly, I live in Irvine, California. Blizzard HQ is a ten minute drive from where I live. It's a local company to me, and it's legitimately kind of hard to see it continue to go down this path because I've had friends and neighbors who have worked there and enthusiastically described the experience right up until the very moment they get canned for no reason. My alma mater, UC Irvine, is one of the leading schools in the nation on adopting eSports into their collegiate athlete program. I understand, to a lot of people, Electronic Sports (please support them) are a big joke silly thing, but to me and my family who work in the UC system, they're actually like a huge and pertinent part of professional life. I'm literally being consulted by my mom's co-workers for advice and insight on how to minimize the abusive and toxic behavior that has become synonymous with streaming and professional gaming because campus now has a huge eSports center with rows on rows of gaming computers for students to use. Games Are Big. They are a powerful cultural and economic force in the lives of millions of people and denying that because of "haha nerds" is the same shortsighted, utterly-lacking-in-self-awareness wanking that resulted in the stupendously destructive "its just the internet, it doesnt matter lol" attitude that has caused the world so much grief. That said Bart Simpson becoming an esports legend sponsored by Riot Games is still pretty lame don't @ me.

What it comes down to is this: the games industry has grown into a hugely influential and powerful institution that affects the lives of more and more people every day. However, the appropriate growth in regulation, oversight, and worker protection has not occurred and has honestly shrunk. People love to talk up Satoru Iwata because when the Wii U was floundering he took a massive pay cut and refused to lay off any staff, reasoning that "it will be very difficult for our teams to create software that will impress the world when they are constantly worrying about losing their jobs." It's a little incredible that The Baseline Reasonable Thing To Do has elicited such effusive praise, but that's the world we live in and Iwata-san was pretty alright so I'm okay with it. Both his conduct and reasoning are both solidly above reproach in this case: it is really hard to be creative when the Sword of Damocles is hanging over your head! That’s 500% true! This goes for game developers, community managers, eSports staff, support staff, literally every part of the process that matters, even the totally unrelated clerks and communications people who are still completely necessary for creating games. The only people who don't suffer are the dipshits on top who don't actually contribute to the creation of games in any way. They're still fine. Better than fine, really. That's why people are mad. That's why people SHOULD be mad. Don't stand for this anymore.