Yep, and massive game budgets lead to needing lots of customers to offset the costs which leads to sanding off everything that stands out for “broad market appeal” which leads to “a game for everyone is a game for no one.”
The lesson? If making a AAA game without creative risk and without an exploitative funding model is too much of a financial risk for your studio, don’t make AAA games.
Yeah, but that’s not abnormal stuff. Every anticipated hardware device has people digging into documents, patents, etc. for clues ahead of release, tracking milestones, etc.
Then again, I was an active participant in similar efforts for both the original Steam Deck and Valve Index releases, and I follow a few other tech spaces that see this continually even right now, so maybe my standards for “normal” are way off.
They were targeting sub-$1000 before things got crazy. If it was going to be exactly $1000 and it sees the 40% jump the Steam Machine did, that would be $1400. I think storage and RAM are a lower percentage of the Frame’s cost which would theoretically push it down further, but then again, that may be countered by the market continuing to get worse. Still, I’ll be very surprised if they price it a ton higher than $1500.
Obviously, my experience is anecdotal, but I got both Valve-developed headsets at launch, the HTC Vive and the Valve Index, the latter of which I think is still very close to the sweet spot for VR tech 7 years on. I’ve purposely avoided all the Meta headsets.
The stock Vive only using straps for support was indeed a little uncomfortable to wear, but the experience was still compelling enough to use it for hours. I did eventually do the welding mask mod for it that greatly improved the comfort and added over-ear speakers like the Index later got.
Fast forward to the Index, and I still use it off and on. It was comfortable enough out of the box to never modify, and I’ve even fallen asleep a few times in the thing. The Frame further shrinking the front and moving weight to the back for balance can only be better.
I think VR overall is only a failure for those who bought into the hype that it’s an evolution that would eventually replace flat gaming (see the Ready Player One vision). That’s never going to happen because the abstraction that allows you to press a button, move a mouse, tilt a stick, etc. to simulate an action taking much more energy to perform in the real world is a huge convenience we’re never going to give up en masse. It’s perfectly fine for VR to remain a niche, adjacent medium.
I peeked. It didn’t seem that bad, just memes and shitposts.
I also don’t mind releases taking the “when it’s ready” approach. It’s kind of refreshing actually.
I use an adjusted version of this format, and yes, one of my adjustments was putting all steps including initial setup together on the right.
Also, for many ingredients introduced together in one step, I simply order those ingredients top-to-bottom in whatever order it’s ideal to add them in. I can’t think of any recipes where that alone wasn’t enough, but if I did need to provide more info, that would either be done in the text or justify splitting that step into multiple steps.
My (probably) autistic brain loves it.
I think it depends on how much of a verbal versus visual thinker you are. I’m very much the latter, and I’ve been using the Cooking for Engineers template for years. One nice thing about it is still having an ingredient list for shopping or mise en place and steps together without repeating a bunch of text.
Also, bigger recipes will usually have parts that are done concurrently, and the boxes with those steps will stack vertically. The example is one sequence all involving the butter, so that’s already really the worst case scenario for this format.
Ah, judging by the upvotes, that’s the more common interpretation too. I guess I’ve just not been subject to enough obscure bugs to have ever made the association.
That’s a very… unique interpretation honestly. I’ve never seen anyone associate this meme (including all the “we trapped lightning in a rock and taught it to do taxes” variants) with the fragility of complex tech, only the idea that microprocessors are such a ridiculous technology that anyone reaching expert level is back in the state of wonderment.
Nice! 9 Pro Fold for GrapheneOS here, new in box.
My 7900 XTX agrees.
Got my current phone via Swappa just this March. Hadn’t heard of them before that. Great site.
If you’ve got the disposable income for it, yes, it’s a great device. The value isn’t as great since the price increases, but the slowing market also means hardware at that level will stay relevant much longer.
More powerful handhelds have come out since, but I agree on not putting too much focus on the numbers. Most comparisons seem to miss how important ergonomics and UX are for actually using devices like this, and nobody else seems to have figured those out quite to the degree Valve has.
That said, the power is still enough for a lot of people to play AAA games with it. I’m a bit too spoiled by easy, frequent access to better hardware to quite enjoy that myself, but I can see myself still using it as a AA/indie/backlog machine for many years.
Genius! Also, did you know “whale” comes from “large sea fish?” Ridiculous. Another one for the list.
I didn’t miss it. It just doesn’t cleanly fit into this framework (imagine it as a square table instead of a list):
Horror + -ble = horrible (bad)
Horror + -ific = horrific (bad)
Terror + -ble = terrible (bad)
Terror + -ific = terrific (good)
I think your nostalgia period being in the NES era might just be too early. Successive attempts at an idea in any medium often fall into the following pattern:
Attempt one is explorative and clunky with no pre-existing material close enough to the target idea to draw reference from. The second now having hindsight fixes the most glaring issues from the first. The third and beyond do the same, but with very diminishing returns as most of the available improvement space was already claimed by the second release, which then becomes the nostalgia sweet spot where the familiarity vs. missing QoL ratio peaks.
My favorite game from my childhood is probably Age of Empires II, and that holds up well enough to still have a massive active community around it. Note that it’s a second release.
The “sweet spot on release two” thing is probably also the reason for the very real “Valve can’t count to three” thing. Valve’s developers have generally been more interested in mechanics and technical innovation than storytelling, so they lose motivation to continue after a second release knocks out most of the available improvement they can do, even if the last release leaves a story unfinished.
Edit: Just to be clear, I know I’m not really replying to the main point you were making. AoE2 being a big studio release even adds to it. I don’t think anyone has mentioned the whole survivor bias angle either.
If we’re putting effort into fixing how society uses words, can we work on flammable versus inflammable first? Then I vote for fixing the odd one out in the terrible, terrific, horrible, horrific quad. Then the split between awful and awe. Then…
Yeah, it would still be a great game in a universe where Pokemon doesn’t exist. The devs are very open about using established game mechanics, and those are established for a reason.
The closest game to Palworld is probably Ark, being another open-world creature collector, survival crafter combination. However, on top of all the significant aesthetic and QOL changes, Palworld still has a much deeper colony management and creature interaction and optimization angle to still make it quite unique mechanically.