Mastodawn

Dame-Armiger Kali Ranya ⚔️🐈

I will never understand this feature of consumer gamer culture
Why does every game have to be a Forever Game with content patches or new DLCs or whatever
What's so awful about a game you buy, play to conclusion, and then maybe replay or mod if you feel like it
Why must every game on the market be potentially The Last Game You'll Ever Need To Play, or it's not worth buying
idgi...

Dame-Armiger Kali Ranya ⚔️🐈5d ago

I eat my words on "I will never understand"!

@packbat brought some insight, pointing out there's a distinct experience being in the conversation about a still-growing game. Similar to participating in the fandom of a TV show or book series as new installments come out -- the energy of anticipating a new release, and joining your friends in playing it right when it comes out, is hard to replicate if the game is complete.

I still think it's unfair to bad-review for that, but! I get it now.

@kaliranya the best games ever made didn't get a single patch or content extension.

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫5d ago

@feyter @kaliranya

It's been a long while since the last patch to chess.

@kaliranya I guess it depends on the context. A lot of stuff dies still in EA before being truly complete. If it dies in EA, this does mean something. If it's completely out and then dies, yeah, that's dumb.

I guess I've seen either way.

But yeah, I also would like to see more games actually enter a finalized state. Take 7 Days to Die for example. I was really happy with the last major version. There were great mods (Undead Legacy, omg.) Then they make yet another update that changes a bunch of mechanics weirdly (why are we making smoothies to deal with weather in a zombie survival game???) I can't tell Steam "don't update!" Hitting run updates it even if I set it not to be automatic. So now I have smoothies instead of a really fun mod. Maybe it's time for it to stabilize...

Dame-Armiger Kali Ranya ⚔️🐈5d ago

@nazokiyoubinbou Ah yea, this is definitely not EA I'm remarking on, here!

...I'd be surprised if a game even got bug fixes if it lapsed into eternal EA mode. That would be a rather interesting case, perhaps a developer who's lost the funds or creative will to see the project through to conclusion, but feels an obligation to at least keep what's done working.

@kaliranya You're right then. Expecting some non-EA game to perpetually update to meet their expectations is just... weird...

I did see that with Starbound. I don't know all the details and I don't know what people are thinking is incomplete (I see a lot of people saying stuff like "the devs released what they called a finished product" as if there was still something to change or add? Wasn't the campaign and everything finished?) There is even a review near the top similar to the one you posted. Sheesh.

Devs can't keep it going forever. At least not normally. (7D2D seems to have no plans ever to finish 😆 )

Dame-Armiger Kali Ranya ⚔️🐈5d ago

@nazokiyoubinbou oddly, in a different thread I mentioned hearing that Starbound had a reputation for *over* updating, taking things that were fun and breaking or undoing them... 😅

@kaliranya It did break mods a lot, yes. Same thing I mentioned with 7D2D really.

But eventually they were like "you know what? It's done now." Eventually...

leberschnitzel 5d ago

@kaliranya word!
I miss 8 hour story games. Well, not really miss. There's plenty of them. Just not AAA ones. But most AAA publishers are on my "no buy list" by now anyway...
Actually I miss nothing!

@kaliranya Because they've spent 15 bucks on the game and want it to be forever game, like, you know, That One Voxel Game That Was Designed To Be Infinite(tm).

Measuring games by their playtime a.k.a. "WELL HOLLOW KNIGHT IS 40 HOURS LONG AND IT'S ONLY 20 BUCKS, WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUR GAME IS 20 BUCKS, BUT ONLY 8 HOURS LONG?????" is a plague of gaming culture.

Dame-Armiger Kali Ranya ⚔️🐈5d ago

@0x0961h That latter has infected me some, I confess 😭 Short games priced above $10 or so tend to sit on my wish list a long time.

But, that's as much a feature of my being constantly broke, as of memetic material absorbed from consumer gamer culture...

Evelyn Estelle 5d ago

@kaliranya Understandable for multiplayer games where you need the player base so people don't just sit in empty lobbies.

But yes, in general I prefer shorter games that respect my time. If a good story is 10 hours (or just 3), I prefer a short game instead of a padded out one.

If a game ends and I still want more of it, that's a game that did not overstay it's welcome.

@kaliranya the way some gamers /derog revolt when they dont get the steady trickle of New Content that theyr apparently entitled to, just, lmao

ms_genderfluid_flag

@zaire @kaliranya I think I blame Minecraft for this

@Ripp_ @kaliranya its so much bigger than that
you can also blame literally every mmorpg game for example
plenty of live service games around in all sorts of genres actually

@Ripp_ @kaliranya and like its very cool if a good game gets updated and notably improved continiously but also if its essentially a complete experience already there is no valid reason to feel entitled to regular content updates like that lol the devs will do it if they feel like it and thats it

@zaire @Ripp_ @kaliranya
Well, it is what it is. A notable amount of today's gamers has been raised on (a.k.a. brainwashed by) games-as-a-service, where players are constantly milked to pay for new content.
I can see where this clashes with the 90ies mindset of buying a game once and then playing the same game as long as you enjoy it. Guess we're just getting old.

Dame-Armiger Kali Ranya ⚔️🐈5d ago

@zaire @Ripp_ The rise of live service gaming has been a horror show to us old people in several ways, aye. The idea that you can never own a game, only rent it. That you can be banned from play for modding. That someday the servers will close shop, and no one can play the game ever again. (Props to e.g. City of Heroes for breaking that mold!) And indeed, the cultural assumption leaking out from live service game communities to spawn bad reviews of buy-once games.

ms_genderfluid_flag

@kaliranya @zaire on the note I have been playing factorio recently, which why it did have early access it was also a out once and done game once done
And then later they released big expansion

Very good

@kaliranya I personally feel with minecraft that I wouldnt really want content updates for it tbh, just small fixes maybe features and a lot of backend stuff like to make modding easier or other optional things idk
is probably me being weird cause with minecraft specifically I never found someone that shares this opinion

Dame-Armiger Kali Ranya ⚔️🐈5d ago

@oriiyon Minecraft is a fascinating case. It's not a centralized live service game, but it sort of acts like one? Updates to the core game bring players back to revitalize their buddies' always-on servers.

That said, I agree that it probably doesn't have to be that way. It's already an infinitely moddable infinite world. You could spend the rest of your life enjoying Minecraft as it is, and I doubt it would be "dead" as an experience.

Dame-Armiger Kali Ranya ⚔️🐈5d ago

@oriiyon The review above was for V Rising, which is indeed also a game where a friend hosts a server and people come and go building stuff. So the vitality of a persistent world matters.

That said, it's also a game with a clear main progression and final boss. If you get a group of people together, you play for some fifty hours or whatever making castles and eating people, and that kinda exhausts what there is to do... that's not a tragedy? A good time was had by all!

The Orange Theme 5d ago

@kaliranya Financialization of everything, I'm guessing. Same reason everything is SaaS: recurring revenue is better than bursty one-time payments. Why charge $60 for a game once, when you can charge $60 for a game, and then $10-$20 for extra stuff that should've just been in the game? Oh and also an expensive online service, which of course has a perpetual monthly payment as well.

Dame-Armiger Kali Ranya ⚔️🐈5d ago

@theorangetheme oh definitely, that's where it's from on the selling side. I was more puzzled about why the *gamers* would line up behind that -- what benefit do they get from being squeezed so, that they'd post reviews saying "don't buy, there won't be more to buy after"? One idea came up downthread!

The Orange Theme 5d ago

@kaliranya Oh, my apologies, I misunderstood and I've been grumpy lately. 😅