Stately Citizen Journalism

#1990

2 of my favourite game franchises (Homeworld, Risk of Rain) are owned by Gearbox now, and i’m in the exact same boat.

I extra hate Gearbox for Aliens Colonial Marines as I was a tester at Sega of America, and on that game. They royally screwed us by basically taking the money we invested in them for A:CM, and they made Borderlands 1 and 2 with that while outsourcing A:CM to several third party studios.

Randy Pitchford is a greedy moneybag in human form.

I think it’s extra sketchy they’re crowdfunding HW3 via Fig, which Randy is also a board member of.

(i’m now realising I say this every time I hear Gearbox mentioned. /end broken record)

1 Like
#1991

Love Civ 6? Love battle royals games? Time to play Civ VI: Red Death, available now for free (I’m assuming PC-only).

#1992

I decided to swing by the Steam discussion for Star Traders: Frontiers, where I see that the Trese Brothers this past weekend announced their next project. I’m a Trese Brothers fan, I backed Star Traders: Frontiers on Kickstarter, I’m always interested in what they turn their hands to.

Our Next Game: Cyber Knights!

While we still have a lot of work to finish out the Star Traders: Frontiers development roadmap, we’re excited to be into our pre-production phase on our next game project and ready to share first glimpses of concept art (outside of Patreon[www.patreon.com]).

Cyber Knights[www.tresebrothers.com] invites you to lead a shadowy band of mercs through the New Boston Zone in 2231, testing not only your skill and what you’ll compromise to make it big but also your loyalty to each other and how much you’re willing to sacrifice. Built on a core of turn-based gameplay featuring stealth, hacking, ambushes, firefights as well as base building and criminal networking, Cyber Knights weaves a human story in a dehumanizing cyberpunk world.

Sign up to get the call![www.tresebrothers.com]

It’s early, so this is a modest little announcement, a lot more to come.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/335620/discussions/0/1634166237657723464/

#1993

Gwent, the Witcher card game, is coming to iOS on October 29.

Has anyone played this? I’ve heard it it pretty well-regarded and is often spoken about in the same sentences as Elder Scrolls: Legends, Hearthstone, Eternal, etc.

1 Like
#1994

My experience with Gwent stems entirely from Witcher 3 where the one (or was it two?) forced instance of playing it was the worst part of the game for me. People who aren’t me seem to love it though, enough so they made it its own game!

#1995

it’s quite nice, but essentially “only” a kind of minigame inside of The Witcher.
no way to compete with full fledged games like Elder Scrolls: Legends, Hearthstone or Eternal.

#1996

Gwent is more than a minigame now.

It was developed as a standalone “fully fledged” game after The Witcher 3 and was also an essential part of Thronebreaker (set in the Witcher universe).

But that still doesn’t tell anybody whether it can compete with Eternal et al!

2 Likes
#1997

Yeah, it’s way more than a mini-game now. It’ll have no problem competing with Eternal (expensive, no players) and Elder Scrolls: Legends (incompetent developer, essentially dead). Hearthstone and Magic are different beasts altogether, of course.

That said, I’m actually a bit surprised it’s so popular. A lot of it comes down to simple arithmetic — over and over and over — and I didn’t think most gamers would be down for that. But it’s seemingly got a very loyal audience.

My own experience was limited to trying to play on my Mac with Parallels; it wasn’t the best way to go, especially on an old computer. But I liked it a lot, and I actually won a few games.

2 Likes
#1998

So, Apple Arcade … I’m not a fan of exclusivity, not just because I feel for my Android brethren, but also because my understanding is that non-subscribers won’t be able to purchase the games on iOS, either, until the exclusivity contracts expire. (Yet another victory for the Nintendo Switch, it’s not “mobile” in that developers can take Apple’s money, still release on Switch, just not on Android and into the Apple store itself, as I understand it.)

My limited Google skills did not provide me with an answer on what sort of time frame these Apple Arcade exclusivity deals are taking, do folks here have some information?

This query is prompted by Cat Quest II. Going to their presskit, it shows “Platforms: iOS, Android, Steam, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One”, but the Android gaming subreddit thread has attributed a tweet to the devs that "Unfortunately, we won’t be able to release Android at this time. We are deeply sorry about this! But we feel with Apple Arcade, we can bring the game to many more people than if we were by ourselves! "

#1999

Dang, not just sorry but “deeply” sorry.

1 Like
#2000

Trust me, as an iOS user it is maddening as well. If there is a great game that I want, I may potentially not be able to buy it now on its supported device because I don’t want to subscribe to an Apple service? Lame.

2 Likes
#2001

We seem to have quite a few Final Fantasy fans here, so I thought I’d share:

According to recent reports, the FFVII remake will include a “classic” battle mode. It doesn’t function exactly like the old turn-based Final Fantasy games, but it sounds like it is close. Apparently, the game will handle the basic attacking for you, which fills up gauges; you then will use menu-based actions for skills, magic, summons, limit breaks, etc. This makes the game a bit more like a traditional turn-based Final Fantasy. This news has be pretty excited.

1 Like
#2002

I feel like this Apple Arcade thing has almost created a third architecture. It used to be that a game was coming to Android and/or iOS. I’ve been seeing headlines all over game sites that so-and-songame is coming to Apple Arcade and I think to myself “I don’t have that.” Now games need to specify coming to Android and/or iOS and/or Apple Arcade. If there is a game that seems worth playing I may get Apple Arcade but as of now it is really annoying how it is seemingly going to bifurcate the App Store.

5 Likes
#2003

My personal sense of Apple Arcade is that it’s another example of how Apple is disinterested in iOS gaming, as such, but rather that Apple has so much money to spend, as a corporation, that once they decided to monetize all of their customers with monthly service fees one of their bureaucrats came up with the idea on how to get a monthly fee out of those who also play games on iOS. IMHO.

Thankfully, so far it appears I’m not part of their primary target audience for the games that they are spending money to buy exclusivity with. However, there will be some that I might enjoy which is why I’m curious as to the length of these exclusivity contracts.

I’m trying to be optimistic that there will be some unintended benefits to me, from this Apple Arcade initiative. If they are able to influence gamers, and game developers, away from heavy IAP and into games that are actually fun to play and not designed with a primary focus on how to get folks to spend money, that will be a win. If it gets Apple to work with providing developers increased support and development tools, such as greater support (to include app store identification) for iCloud saves and device sync’ing, that’s to my benefit, as well.

#2004

And so it begins. Do you like subscribing to CBA All Access, Hulu, Netflix, Prime, ESPN, HBO Go, Disney +, NBC Peacock, etc. all at once just to watch what you want to watch?

Get ready to subscribe to multiple app store services just to play what you want.

https://www.148apps.com/news/playond/

#2005

Oof. And that price point… sheesh.

#2006

If I worked for Nintendo, I’m not sure that I could not come up with a better idea to promote the Nintendo Switch as a mobile platform, than what we’re seeing. :confused:

3 Likes
#2007

Well this is a thread to mute now.

1 Like
#2008

The Mythgard beta released today. I’m only a couple games in, but I have noticed a few things:

  1. Presentation seems good.
  2. I’ve had to make more decisions in my first few games than I did in my first few months of Hearthstone. Having to actually chose which cards to burn for resources and which lane to play cards in is a nice touch.

I’m intrigued, and not immediately turned off, like with my most recent blind tests (Teppen). I’ll give this one some time.

#2009

iOS 13 is out. I’m sure there will be some interesting things to discover but one thing I have already noticed is that GameCenter allows you to add friends in Settings. This is a feature that has long been absent.

1 Like