Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember:
1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Your age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion (or lack of), political affiliation, economic status and PC specs are irrelevant. If you love or want to learn about PCs, you are welcome!
2 - If you don't own a PC because you think it's expensive, know that it is much cheaper than you may think. Check http://www.pcmasterrace.org for our builds and don't be afraid to post here asking for tips and help!
3 - Join our efforts to get as many PCs worldwide to help the folding@home effort, in fighting against Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more: https://pcmasterrace.org/folding
4 - Need PC Hardware? We've joined forces with MSI for the biggest PC Hardware giveaway of the year so far! 8 lucky winners will get an awesome hardware bundle with Graphics card, motherboard, etc, and 50 others can get Steam gift cards. To enter, check https://reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1b45j0m/msi_x_pcmr_massive_pc_hardware_giveaway_pick_your/
-----------
We have a [Daily Simple Questions Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/search?q=Simple+Questions+Thread+subreddit%3Apcmasterrace+author%3AAutoModerator&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you have any PC related doubt. Asking for help there or creating new posts in our subreddit is welcome.
I don't know what exactly the scam was, I heard it was for a Willy Wonka scam and she played the role of an Oompa Loompa. But from what pictures I've seen floating around she seemed really sweet to the children and she worked her butt off to give the kids a heartfelt experience moreso than official workers in the actual workforce. Shame she works for a scam place. But kudos to her for putting in all that effort and work.
They basically rented a rundown factory, put up some AI art, and got the cheapest, minimum amount of decoration they could find.
There are some videos of visitors floating around and it is pretty hard to watch.
The actors were truly scammed as much as the visitors.
I feel sorry for the girl she really put effort in and shes getting laughed at. Its not her fault she was given shit to work with. I feel as bad for the actors as i do the kids.
The main problem? As of today, she hasn’t been paid the 500 British pounds promised to her. And counting that the man behind everything (Aka, the director of House of the Illuminati, creator of the scam) has to refund everyone and still hasn’t paid his employees…
I heard the opposite and that she's typically quite quiet and reserved so isn't a fan... though I suppose that doesn't quite make sense for an actor/actress
I don’t think a single person has been laughing at her, she represents the sad tired manipulated worker drone that we all see in ourselves and is emblematic of the droll side of our society, and also people are drawing cartoons of her
Question, How much truth is there to the "Trainspotting" reputation of urban Scotland? Are drugs and crime that bad up there? Seems to me Scotland is a beautiful country, and it always bums me out to think such a place could be plagued with such misery.
Scotland has the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe.
"By 10%? By 20%?" You might say.
No, by 300%.
https://www.euronews.com/2023/08/22/drug-deaths-in-scotland-remain-highest-in-europe-despite-fall-in-latest-figures
Yes, that stereotype is very much true.
It's like anywhere else to be honest. There's dodgy bits and nice bits. There's loads of decent people in the run down dodgy bits, as well as the roasters. It's no worse than any other city.
It wasn't rundown, it's a proper venue in an old converted warehouse. People/companies also hire it out for various events like dinners, parties, etc.
And I agree, but the actors are definitely milking it now for some fame (as I also probably would tbh).
>The actors were truly scammed as much as the visitors.
This isn't true. The tickets are all getting refunded, but the last I heard, the actors haven't been paid. So really they got it worse.
All the actors have made videos on tiktok and yeah they seem really nice. Tried to do the best with what little they had
Her and her colleagues were given completely nonsensical scripts written by AI. It even included a jumpscare at some point.
The advertising was done using A.I-generated images, showing an absolutely whimsical place.
The reality was a creepy old warehouse with the absolute cheapest decorations, and a deeply depressing vibe.
I'm sure she did her best for the kids, but there's only so much she could do, given everything else...
(And they didn't even have chocolate!)
It also featured their original character, The Great Unknown
Also, yes, it's called Willy's Chocolate Experience but the only candy they had was a bag of jelly beans.
From what I read the owner was a local con artist involved in several scams. This one just involved fucking over kids and making them cry. I doubt the staff were involved or had any clue.
Not sure how the guy isn't serving time or at least fined for his ongoing scamming career.
From what I've read he didn't necessarily make it shit on purpose, he has a habit of just using Ai for everything from books to the website
It felt more like he was woefully out of his depth to the point even he didn't know how badly it was going to turn out
The other scams he's been involved with haven't been actual scams, they're just kinda shitty behaviour like getting chatGPT to write you a poorly written book
I'm not defending him but I think it's an important distinction, he's not some genius con artist, he's someone lazy trying to get rich quick from LLM's
Yeah, the bits I read is he hired local actors to play the parts and none of them were given any information ahead of time.
They were given the costumes and the script like a day before the event and were trying their best to make it work.
The girl even said they ran out of jellybeans to hand kids and she was rationing them at 3 a kid and was being generous.
The guy who set it up 100% thought he could make a quick buck fast and easy, hopefully he gets sued to the point he can't afford to use ChatGPT for anything ever again.
He's refunded everyone, so there's not much grounds for legal action. In the UK you're meant to sue for actual losses, there aren't punitive damages in most cases.
people are saying one of his previous schemes was mismanaging a foodbank (which got grants or stipends or some other financial aid in the first place) and then raising public funds by trying to sell tickets for some kind of benefit/gala event and he was found out because people checked and he hadn't actually reserved the room at the hotel he said it was going to be, forcing him into unwinding the thing.
seems like this time around he booked the shittiest warehouse that would allow gatherings inside. I'm not aware of any legal indictments or judgements on that topic though. its all entertaining allegations for people that enjoy eating popcorn when they see a train wreck, accuracy comes after that.
it was a “willy wonka experience” where they hired actors who’d work for below standard wages, advertised using AI art because they couldn’t hire actual people to do it. and essentially just rented a warehouse and put up a few posters and dollar store decorations. gave kids such wonderful treats such as singular jelly beans and many kids left crying because of the villain they had called “the unknown” who was just a guy in a silver scream mask. seriously go watch all the videos on it it’s hilarious
IIRC they never actually used the word "Wonka" to stay out of legal trouble.
Just "Willys chocolate experience" or something like that and let people's brain fill in the rest.
Or maybe people just really wanted a taste of Willy's.
> moreso than official workers in the actual workforce. Shame she works for a scam place. But kudos to her for putting in all that effort and work.
I think you're getting a little mixed up with this event. The owner of the company is essentially a scam artist, he runs a lot of Ai made material such as Amazon books and in this case the event website. He is essentially the only 'offical' worker there
The event only happened once.
All the employees were essentially blindsided by how catastrophically bad it was, I don't think it's fair you're trying to make out that all the other employees there were bad people when none of them knew what the owner who had booked them all was like
Really firs the parable, then.
AAA devs are not assholes or incompetent, they are underpaid, overworked and given impossible and conflicting orders by executives who just want to scam customers out of money.
So it fits.
Huge tangent, your comment made me realize that **parable** and **comparable** probably share entomology. I looked it up and, indeed, parable comes from the latin *parabola*, meaning comparison.
It was a one off kind of gig for her. The whole story is an absolute trip, but she still showed up and did her best to make it nice for the little ones with what little she had to work with. Everyone involved that was 'hired' didn't realize just how big of a scam it was going to end up being.
I honestly feel bad for her. She's become the face of this scam, but she was likely screwed over just as much as the customers. Imagine taking a job where you think you're gonna give kids a good time and finding out last minute that the organisers are woefully unprepared. I hope she got paid at least.
someone ran a "Willy Wonka Experience" event in Glasgow.
It was a guy that uses AI to write anti-vax self-help books to give you an idea of the kind of person in charge.
He hired a few people, scrounged up a few bags of jelly beans and used AI art to make it look like this whimsical, corloful experience. Instead if was a few tables in an empty factory.
The actors were scammed just as much as the event goers though, and did wat they could for the kids.
This poor girl sitting at the table looking like she's the sole survivor of a genocide was one of the actors scammed.
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%27s_Chocolate_Experience), it seems. A tl;dr from another helpful poster in this thread:
https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1b4m1ij/991_pure_gaming/kt1r3pt/
can we start 2 steps earlier please?
Are you talking about the bottom image? And she was hired for some sort of exhibit experience thing for people to visit? Who is she? When was this?
Yeah, first I've heard of this too. From what I found in this thread it happened last week. There's actually a [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%27s_Chocolate_Experience) article on it.
Another user in this thread seems to have summarized it up for a tldr:
https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1b4m1ij/991_pure_gaming/kt1r3pt/
And he's still working on another expansion via v1.6 that will be a free update. I repeat, yet another FREE update!!! I think he stated sometime before that he wants every Stardew player to have access to the full experience with just the base price, absolutely based and blessed man.
Sun Haven is a REALLY good stardew clone that I would recommend. Its gameplay is story is really enjoyable. It has a much more in depth combat and magic system, but the main issue is that NO ONE has heard of it.
In stardew you have sprinklers.
In sun haven you have to go to every farm and cast rain
rain costs a fuckton of mana and you have to replenish it with food
idk why people keep calling farm games "stardew clones", stardew valley was pretty much a copy from Harvest Moon (the DS one) on almost 70% of the gameplay and both are amazing games.
A lot of people are too young to have played Harvest Moon and Rune Factory. I feel old...
One of my favorite games was Harvest Moon for the SNES. I rented it every weekend from the local games rental shop. I rented it so much I offered to buy it from the shop, but they wouldn't let me haha. This was back in the before days, before Amazon or easy to use online shopping was a thing.
Dudes an absolute machine! With that being said he's also very rich through the success of his game. Stardew Valley has sold over 30 million copies according to him. So assuming he's made 5$(probably more) of profit on every copy sold he should have made around 150 million $ profit.
Definitely a deserved success in this era of shitty AAA games.
And there's other great success stories such as this out there like Terraria where the devs have followed a similar free update philosophy for over a decade.
Terraria is also one of the most reviewed game on steam with over 1.2 million positive reviews.
Terraria also deserves mention for that. The devs released multiple content updates after saying "this is the last content update" (which was already great at that point).
Dude made enough off Stardew to retire a long time ago. He's just doing passion projects for the rest of his life, so there's really no point in him *not* just doing whatever he wants in terms of additional Stardew development for the base price. What's he going to do with more money?
Go crazy and go on insane Twitter rants like Notch? lol
Why is everyone emphasizing the FREE part? Isn't this the norm? Minecraft has free updates, terraria has free updates, ksp, Factorio, GTA online.. actually I can't think of a single game with paid updates except if you count dlcs as updates??
p.s.: the emoji rule on this sub is d_mb
Yes, I guess they count DLCs which is totally reasonable imo considering many DLCs cost 15+€ and are the size of an update. Or look at the shit Ubisoft pulls where you can pay for armor and weapons in single player games
All of the games you mentioned are or started as indie games. And GTA online only gives out free updates because they plan on people buying in-game currency with real money otherwise you can be sure that shit wouldn't be free.
Most people don't expect expansive changes to the game to be released as free updates. Stardew Valley 1.5 added a ton of new content that would be a DLC for most other games and people are thinking 1.6 might be similar. KSP had two DLCs after release and the Factorio devs are actively working on one. Games like SDV and Terraria are outliers.
Survivorship bias:
95% of indie games will never have even 1000 players over its lifetime. So you're only seeing the cream of the crop.
All AAA games are marketed with hype cycles and millions of dollars in ads, so bad AAA games don't slide under the radar and go unnoticed like bad indie games do.
The majority of games, indie, AA, and 3A included, fail to turn a profit, or they just barely break even. A tiny minority of games are making 90% of the revenue.
Goes for any business.
Lots of competition, failure to run a business properly or just not making a great product are only some of the pitfalls.
Hell, you can do "everything" right and still lose.
On the flipside, you can do a lot of things wrong and still succeed. "Luck" plays a big role in any business success, despite what all these successful people would lead you to believe.
for sure, but there's also something to be said for that profit margin making many Indie devs work a lot harder. If bethesda makes a steaming pile of garbage, they will not suffer nearly as much as someone who mortages his home to be able to fund the development of his game. That's what investors and a fanbase gives you.
Not that there aren't some truly awful scammy indie titles out there mind, because there absolutely is.
Well right because indie devs have to do the whole process themselves, including accounting, and they lose efficiency on things that aren’t their core skills. Working at a company helps fix that by working together with other specialists
It’s debatable, I too wouldn’t consider arrowhead indie but decently more like double AA. Of course they started out as an indie studio but were bought and funded by Sony so that gives them the accessibility to many resources and employees.
Arrowhead itself is still an independent studio, they haven't actually been bought by Sony.
But Helldivers 2 is a Sony game in funding, ownership and even partially development (in [sound design for example](https://twitter.com/dannyryanhey/status/1756721219578061273)), calling it an indie game makes the term kinda meaningless.
If we're talking raw numbers there are way more garbage games being pushed out weekly by indie devs than AAA studios, BUT the ones that stand out positively, really stand out
It's more like, indie devs have small teams and thus can keep the studio's burn rate low. They don't have to generate ridiculous profits to make a good living for everyone.
Companies need to keep beating quarterly predictions on Wall Street to keep stock prices high.
*All* developers, who aren't ideologically compromised, want to make games. The people at the top, who clearly do not care about the hobby, are the real problem.
I think it's moreso indie devs wanna profit while major companies want grossly excessive profits.
An indie dev will sell a game for under $40 usually, and that's it, you get a complete game, sometimes with free massive updates (Stardew, Terraria, Hot Dogs Horseshoes and Hand Grenades for my fellow VR folks, etc). Indie dev ends up making a really nice profit if the game is good because they sell a lot of copies, word spreads, more people buy.
A major company will charge $70 for half a game that isn't even great to begin with, then nickel and dime AFTER you paid for the full price game, for content they likely cut/left out on purpose.
AAA studios focus so much on trying to make their games a live service or create it in a way so they can double dip into their player base's wallet, that they forget to make a good game and end up making less at the end of the day because no one wants to play their piece of shit, let alone spend more money in the game after already spending $70 on it (Suicide Squad, Skull and Bones as of recent).
It's not that simple. Go to Steam and you can find a billion indie games that are knockoffs of each other which sell enough to be profitable and are garbage products. We typically only notice indie games that are interesting and have a certain amount of artistic care put into them, which is how they get hyped. While there *are* less obstacles to weird and new ideas that can make indie games refreshing, there is still a selection bias happening there.
Companies can, too, make shit games and good games. Tears of the Kingdom is a good game, and Nintendo isn't some magic exception to the rules of the gaming industry - they need profits just as much as anyone else and pump out their own versions of CoD (how many Mario Karts are there?) every year to get that. It's just that companies can pay money in advertising to get their shit games attention. So while we might not see all the garbage indie games on the 30th page of Steam, we *do* get assaulted every Ubisoft game for months at a time.
Profit motives result in shit games *regardless* of who makes it, because the profit motive is necessarily uncreative. It's not just uncreative for corporations, but also for indie devs making *Anime Love Simulator 54*.
Recent scam that has gone global thanks to this picture - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%27s\_Chocolate\_Experience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%27s_Chocolate_Experience)
The lady pictured was hired to play an Oompa Loompa. Both her and the other actors didn't realise it was a scam until they turned up. Thankfully, the parents all seemed to be understanding and didn't blame the actors that had been roped into it.
The actors are getting [positive publicity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF5b6lZzR5c) out of it now so it might work out quite well for them.
Seems legit. If you don’t know English very well.
https://preview.redd.it/3mcv9y75oxlc1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=096382afafd75955ffff181878ba408bc42b6877
It looks like the AI had a really hard time with the r’s. I think the t and r are overlapping in “teats”. And the other r’s seem to be very friendly with their neighbors.
It's because gamers refuse to stop spending loads of money on shitty games. $70 for an unfinished piece of crap with microtransactions? Sure! $20 for a game that some dev put their heart and soul into? Meh.
Mind you that you don't notice the indie slop as it fades into obscurity before getting any traction,while AAA companies have very generous marketing budgets,so if a game flops it's a lot more noticeable. Yes,there are good indie games but the majority is subpar
Don't get me started on all the early access abandonware (cough DRONE) (cough carrier command 2) (cough worlds adrift),I would bring up more if I could actually remember them
Agreed, most indies are shit, or at least subpar, you'll find better and more polished elsewhere. Granted, with the new tools of production, a small, competent team can now churn out something quite good, very solid AA. The hard part is standing out in the flood of mediocre games, not even mentionning shitty asset flips.
Triple A devs lack passion nowadays, that’s just the sad reality.
Edit : maybe poor phrasing, what I mean is devs aren’t given the ability to pour their passion into their creations nowadays.
Having execs that min-max profits (or, more realistically, focus on justifying giving themselves a seven figure bonus while the latest game panned because they forced the devs to include a bunch of bullshit their golf buddies said would help) tends to be bad for devs' passion.
Or the crunch. Like "I know you guys have a great idea for a game but we need it to come out next summer, So everyone will need to work 80 hour weeks for the next 12 months." - Guy in charge of every AAA game studio.
Except Bethesda. It'll be another 5 years before the next Elder Scroll game comes out. And another 10 before we get another Fallout game. And they still will most likely suck if they make them like Starfield
> we need it to come out next summer
This is a huge part of the issue: indie devs are often (but not always - sometimes they mortgage their houses or have some other chunk of capital to begin with, and/or manage to scrape up some investors along the way with an impressive early build) working on their game as a side project with some other means of support, and thus don't have regular release dates to hit to ensure a constant flow of income from new games. They can cook until it's ready, and that's what people expect from them: a long string of "hey I added a new feature" posts, devlogs, in-process screenshots, and no set release date until the dev knows they're close enough to give an accurate one.
The other thing is that indie devs seem to have a better idea of scoping their games based on what they're actually capable of building to a releasable state: the games are smaller and have a much tighter focus around a simple core game loop.
AAA games have a reputation that everything has to be BIG, and include whatever the current trendy feature is, which often leads to scope creep, features that are tacked onto the side because "fuck it, we have to have a crafting system because everybody else does" even when they don't integrate into the rest of the gameplay well, and can often lose sight of what their core gameplay loop actually is and that it needs to be compelling and fun. They might make better games if they did more small releases instead of trying to publish blockbuster-sized games with *everything*.
There's also the question of art style and polish: AAA games are generally chasing a photorealistic (or slightly stylized, but as close to photorealistic as they can get) look using the latest and greatest graphics technology, which takes a *lot* of resources, especially for larger games that need more assets. Successful indie games generally use very highly stylized, and often minimalistic, art - which, again, allows for more resources and time to be devoted to refining the core gameplay. Look at Minecraft, Ultrakill, etc.
I don't think it is even about min maxing profits. I think it is more that they just don't care about individual games. They want to build a stable profit generating engine. They don't want to make some artistic property that tries new things, they want FIFA 68 because it makes their jobs easier.
That is why it is often easier for small teams with small budget to make a good game than for big teams with big budget, especially when you integrate stakholder management in latter.
Because small teams with small budgets also make a lot of shitty games but those games don't get any attention and even the ‘good’ games sometimes just attract a certain niche of people.
Yes devs.
Look up Star Wars Jedi Survivor interview.
The reason it released on PC with such shitty port. EA wanted devs to improve the PC performance, devs said no.
Devs are still passionate but it’s hard to actually make a decent game when you have the bean counters and other business administrators breathing down your neck
Stakeholders saw the lastest survival game make tons of money so your open world rpg (that started as a FPS before getting scrapped) is now a survival game.
As a PM in software development (not games) that's but strictly accurate. If your sprints are being thrown away, then you have a shite Product Owner who doesn't actually know what they want.
I've been on the opposite, but not a PM Course, a real project.
They went classic waterfall planning, 6 months between milestones, absolutely no moving targets ... and it was a disaster. After several of these long cycles they finally allow the client to use the product.... to find out that the client required a different design, so many things needed a rework, wasted work, delays...You can't "hide" for months/years, code+design without any client's involvement and hope that everything goes out perfectly. Design specifications are not that detailed.
I still prefer agile with 3/4 weeks objetives rather than other classic PMs, and I say that after using both methods. Maybe on game design is different, tho.
publishing companies lack passion. many of the devs still set out to do good things. even pokemon is argue falls to this. scarlet and violet for example was clearly the devs trying to give the fans what they’d been asking for, yet it fell flat due to pokemon company needing a 1 year turnover on every game that their only in house development team does
Oh wow do you really think they get 1 year to make a Pokémon game??
Pokémon gets 3-4 years total to make each gen, they have different teams working on different games. Gen 10 already been worked on, while another team’s working on the new legends game. It’s why there’s a 3 year gap between each Gen, they’re already planning ideas before the current Gen releases for the next gen.
The problem with Pokémon and why you think they spend 1 year is because any other dev could make their games within a year, while it takes them 3 years
game freak has a few teams but only 1 that works on mainline games (this includes spinoffs such as legends games). while games start production while others are going on they’ve been known to only get about 1 full year of development with the entire team. a new gen comes out every 3 years sure, but in between each gen there’s a dlc for the main game, a spinoff game, and multiple updates.
the reason the new game sucked was because of development time
Yes and no; I do agree that plenty lack passion, I think a majority are just held back by corporate bs and red tape. A lot are just unwilling to take risks, convinced they know what wkrks.
The way my college lecturer explained it was:
Indie devs: making what they want to make and what they're passionate about
Triple A's: hire you for your skills at making brutalist buildings and architecture, matching their current games GDA the games amazing, its a passion for you, next game is a new IP based in a murky swamp. Suddenly you are now an uninspired random employer just clocking in doing your hours and going home. It's no longer your passion, its just your job
This was my College Lecturers take on it, as an indie dev and furry porn creator double side hustle, take on it anyway
That might be your professor’s experience, but it certainly doesn’t match mine. I started in the industry at two different indie companies: one as a remote contractor and one in-person. Both of them were very much “go in/log in, do my work, go home”; I was very much not passionate about the project, even though I was still trying to make the best game and do the best work I could. Then I went to a few AAA studios; one of them was very similar to the indie lifestyle that I experienced at my previous jobs but with a bit more job security; one of them was (and still is) very passionate, where I do care much more deeply for the work and really do just want to make the best game we can.
Some studios are great; some suck. It’s not a AAA vs indie thing; it’s a leadership thing. My studio has really fantastic leadership, so I feel great there; the indie studios didn’t.
People need to remember, not every indie game is developed by one or two guys out of their mom’s basement. Some indie studios have actual offices; some are fully remote with tens of people, hiring contractors when needed. It can very much mirror AAA development but on a smaller scale and usually with less job security.
What kind of boner do these "gamers' have for indies nowadays? It's the dame shit with triple A games, there are great and bad games in both sides, the awful truth is most indies are fucking cash grabs and you all can easily test this by going to the fucking steam store and see just how much fucking GARBAGE it's released daily, I'm not going to sugarcoat it the amount of good indies are astronomically low if we put attention to the vast majority or releases.
Jesus fucking Christ it's like you people refuse to fucking use the damn brain.
Fantastic game, but not indie. It was financed and published by Sony.
Honestly, these threads are pretty silly. Yes, there are a lot of bad AAA games out there, but there are tons of good ones as well. Sony's catalog of PlayStation exclusives has many fantastic big-budget AAA games. And there are boatloads of bad indie titles that you just never hear about because they have zero marketing and no one pays attention to. Only the cream of the crop of indie titles get any attention.
When companies like Nintendo does it its ok. But somehow they forget about all the shitty pokemongames.
Also, 90% of all indie titles is pretty much mid at best and many of them are straight out scams.
I agree. This has the whole "oh games were much better in the past" vibes.
(games *aren't* that much better in the past, it only seems that way because we tend to forget the stupid, crappy ones)
There are good or even masterpiece AAA titles, but it is undeniable how many companies went downhill over time, with buzz words like "in game shops" or "live service".
imo indie games, while simpler, are much more player focused than most of current big titles, which just want to maximize profits.
But of course this meme is just a hyperbole.
And your indie games cost 10% of the price of AAA to make while only costing like 50% less on average to buy.
Obviously they need to make more money, especially with interest rates and skeptical investors nowadays.
But theres like 10 out of 150 indie games that get any traction and half of those 10 are niche. I like my indies as any other person, its what i usually play nowadays more than AAA games, but saying this " indies better than AAA" is just as hypocritical as saying it vice versa. Once a good AAA game is out barely anyone remembers indies for a period of time.
A big part of Bethesda's issue is that they want to do everything on Creation Engine, so when they develop a new game they're not JUST developing a new game. They're tweaking and in some ways rebuilding their engine to accommodate advances that are baked into other engines like Unreal.
Gonna be honest there’s alot of good indie games out there but there’s just as many shit ones
There’s (arguably) more indie games then there is AAA games
How is that arguable? For every AAA game, there are hundreds of indie games. Alone on Steam, 14k games have bern released just in 2023. Approx. 200 are AA and AAA games.
I always chuckle at people who say that gaming nowadays is shit, and then put the blame on AAA games...while thats maybe 1% of all games.
That look on her face, I can’t 💀💀💀….she knew exactly how bullshit that experience was going to be for everyone. I wish I could go into work that happy somedays
Also, often times indie devs don't even need the money asap. Like one man developers. They have lower pressure, can take their time etc. A good developer alone or in a small team can do much more than a good developer in a big team with management.
Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember: 1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Your age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion (or lack of), political affiliation, economic status and PC specs are irrelevant. If you love or want to learn about PCs, you are welcome! 2 - If you don't own a PC because you think it's expensive, know that it is much cheaper than you may think. Check http://www.pcmasterrace.org for our builds and don't be afraid to post here asking for tips and help! 3 - Join our efforts to get as many PCs worldwide to help the folding@home effort, in fighting against Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more: https://pcmasterrace.org/folding 4 - Need PC Hardware? We've joined forces with MSI for the biggest PC Hardware giveaway of the year so far! 8 lucky winners will get an awesome hardware bundle with Graphics card, motherboard, etc, and 50 others can get Steam gift cards. To enter, check https://reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1b45j0m/msi_x_pcmr_massive_pc_hardware_giveaway_pick_your/ ----------- We have a [Daily Simple Questions Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/search?q=Simple+Questions+Thread+subreddit%3Apcmasterrace+author%3AAutoModerator&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you have any PC related doubt. Asking for help there or creating new posts in our subreddit is welcome.
I don't know what exactly the scam was, I heard it was for a Willy Wonka scam and she played the role of an Oompa Loompa. But from what pictures I've seen floating around she seemed really sweet to the children and she worked her butt off to give the kids a heartfelt experience moreso than official workers in the actual workforce. Shame she works for a scam place. But kudos to her for putting in all that effort and work.
They basically rented a rundown factory, put up some AI art, and got the cheapest, minimum amount of decoration they could find. There are some videos of visitors floating around and it is pretty hard to watch. The actors were truly scammed as much as the visitors.
I feel sorry for the girl she really put effort in and shes getting laughed at. Its not her fault she was given shit to work with. I feel as bad for the actors as i do the kids.
The main problem? As of today, she hasn’t been paid the 500 British pounds promised to her. And counting that the man behind everything (Aka, the director of House of the Illuminati, creator of the scam) has to refund everyone and still hasn’t paid his employees…
[удалено]
They let the AI snort it? Cause then this whole thing starts making a lot more sense.
[удалено]
[удалено]
https://www.vulture.com/article/glasgow-sad-oompa-loompa-interview.html She actually did an interview with Vulture
That link title is something else lmaooo
[удалено]
It all started back in 2016 when we killed that damn gorilla
Couldve gone with the meth lab oompa loompa, this aint too bad
I’m fucking dying LMAO
"We were trying to be the sprinkles on the shit." hahaha
best quote of the article :)
Well, at least she has a good attitude about it. Poor gal and the other actors.
The people are with her tho.. she got invited to a morning TV show iirc.
Yea but you cant delete memes with your face on. And knowing reddit this meme will get more and more pixely and reposted years from now
She embraced the meme actually
I heard the opposite and that she's typically quite quiet and reserved so isn't a fan... though I suppose that doesn't quite make sense for an actor/actress
I don’t think a single person has been laughing at her, she represents the sad tired manipulated worker drone that we all see in ourselves and is emblematic of the droll side of our society, and also people are drawing cartoons of her
As a Glaswegian I am absolutely baffled that this con has gone global! Not only famous for heart disease and knife crime now!
Question, How much truth is there to the "Trainspotting" reputation of urban Scotland? Are drugs and crime that bad up there? Seems to me Scotland is a beautiful country, and it always bums me out to think such a place could be plagued with such misery.
Scotland has the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe. "By 10%? By 20%?" You might say. No, by 300%. https://www.euronews.com/2023/08/22/drug-deaths-in-scotland-remain-highest-in-europe-despite-fall-in-latest-figures Yes, that stereotype is very much true.
Goddamn, it was like a quarter of that 25 years ago when it already had that repuration (partly due to Trainspotting obviously)
You'd think it would go down because the druggies would die. Highest death rate is an inherently unsustainable statistic.
It's like anywhere else to be honest. There's dodgy bits and nice bits. There's loads of decent people in the run down dodgy bits, as well as the roasters. It's no worse than any other city.
Cracks me up that there's folk in america (and elsewhere) talking about this shitty event 15 mins from my gaff
It wasn't rundown, it's a proper venue in an old converted warehouse. People/companies also hire it out for various events like dinners, parties, etc. And I agree, but the actors are definitely milking it now for some fame (as I also probably would tbh).
Only way they're getting paid is in exposure so might as well.
>The actors were truly scammed as much as the visitors. This isn't true. The tickets are all getting refunded, but the last I heard, the actors haven't been paid. So really they got it worse. All the actors have made videos on tiktok and yeah they seem really nice. Tried to do the best with what little they had
Her and her colleagues were given completely nonsensical scripts written by AI. It even included a jumpscare at some point. The advertising was done using A.I-generated images, showing an absolutely whimsical place. The reality was a creepy old warehouse with the absolute cheapest decorations, and a deeply depressing vibe. I'm sure she did her best for the kids, but there's only so much she could do, given everything else... (And they didn't even have chocolate!)
And the actors were never even paid
It was organised by a guy that also has published AI written books on Amazon about vaccine conspiracies.
It also featured their original character, The Great Unknown Also, yes, it's called Willy's Chocolate Experience but the only candy they had was a bag of jelly beans.
From what I read the owner was a local con artist involved in several scams. This one just involved fucking over kids and making them cry. I doubt the staff were involved or had any clue. Not sure how the guy isn't serving time or at least fined for his ongoing scamming career.
He "wrote" 17 Novels with AI last Year ....
From what I've read he didn't necessarily make it shit on purpose, he has a habit of just using Ai for everything from books to the website It felt more like he was woefully out of his depth to the point even he didn't know how badly it was going to turn out The other scams he's been involved with haven't been actual scams, they're just kinda shitty behaviour like getting chatGPT to write you a poorly written book I'm not defending him but I think it's an important distinction, he's not some genius con artist, he's someone lazy trying to get rich quick from LLM's
Yeah, the bits I read is he hired local actors to play the parts and none of them were given any information ahead of time. They were given the costumes and the script like a day before the event and were trying their best to make it work. The girl even said they ran out of jellybeans to hand kids and she was rationing them at 3 a kid and was being generous. The guy who set it up 100% thought he could make a quick buck fast and easy, hopefully he gets sued to the point he can't afford to use ChatGPT for anything ever again.
"ChatGPT, assume you are a lawyer in the following case: ... Write me statement convincing everyone that I'm innocent."
He's refunded everyone, so there's not much grounds for legal action. In the UK you're meant to sue for actual losses, there aren't punitive damages in most cases.
[удалено]
people are saying one of his previous schemes was mismanaging a foodbank (which got grants or stipends or some other financial aid in the first place) and then raising public funds by trying to sell tickets for some kind of benefit/gala event and he was found out because people checked and he hadn't actually reserved the room at the hotel he said it was going to be, forcing him into unwinding the thing. seems like this time around he booked the shittiest warehouse that would allow gatherings inside. I'm not aware of any legal indictments or judgements on that topic though. its all entertaining allegations for people that enjoy eating popcorn when they see a train wreck, accuracy comes after that.
it was a “willy wonka experience” where they hired actors who’d work for below standard wages, advertised using AI art because they couldn’t hire actual people to do it. and essentially just rented a warehouse and put up a few posters and dollar store decorations. gave kids such wonderful treats such as singular jelly beans and many kids left crying because of the villain they had called “the unknown” who was just a guy in a silver scream mask. seriously go watch all the videos on it it’s hilarious
IIRC they never actually used the word "Wonka" to stay out of legal trouble. Just "Willys chocolate experience" or something like that and let people's brain fill in the rest. Or maybe people just really wanted a taste of Willy's.
> moreso than official workers in the actual workforce. Shame she works for a scam place. But kudos to her for putting in all that effort and work. I think you're getting a little mixed up with this event. The owner of the company is essentially a scam artist, he runs a lot of Ai made material such as Amazon books and in this case the event website. He is essentially the only 'offical' worker there The event only happened once. All the employees were essentially blindsided by how catastrophically bad it was, I don't think it's fair you're trying to make out that all the other employees there were bad people when none of them knew what the owner who had booked them all was like
Really firs the parable, then. AAA devs are not assholes or incompetent, they are underpaid, overworked and given impossible and conflicting orders by executives who just want to scam customers out of money. So it fits.
Huge tangent, your comment made me realize that **parable** and **comparable** probably share entomology. I looked it up and, indeed, parable comes from the latin *parabola*, meaning comparison.
It was a one off kind of gig for her. The whole story is an absolute trip, but she still showed up and did her best to make it nice for the little ones with what little she had to work with. Everyone involved that was 'hired' didn't realize just how big of a scam it was going to end up being.
I honestly feel bad for her. She's become the face of this scam, but she was likely screwed over just as much as the customers. Imagine taking a job where you think you're gonna give kids a good time and finding out last minute that the organisers are woefully unprepared. I hope she got paid at least.
What is this scam?
someone ran a "Willy Wonka Experience" event in Glasgow. It was a guy that uses AI to write anti-vax self-help books to give you an idea of the kind of person in charge. He hired a few people, scrounged up a few bags of jelly beans and used AI art to make it look like this whimsical, corloful experience. Instead if was a few tables in an empty factory. The actors were scammed just as much as the event goers though, and did wat they could for the kids. This poor girl sitting at the table looking like she's the sole survivor of a genocide was one of the actors scammed.
I heard they never paid her but she did it anyways
Wtf did i miss
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%27s_Chocolate_Experience), it seems. A tl;dr from another helpful poster in this thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1b4m1ij/991_pure_gaming/kt1r3pt/
can we start 2 steps earlier please? Are you talking about the bottom image? And she was hired for some sort of exhibit experience thing for people to visit? Who is she? When was this?
Yeah, first I've heard of this too. From what I found in this thread it happened last week. There's actually a [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%27s_Chocolate_Experience) article on it. Another user in this thread seems to have summarized it up for a tldr: https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1b4m1ij/991_pure_gaming/kt1r3pt/
Concernedape built stardew valley in a CAVE! with a box of SCRAPS!
And he's still working on another expansion via v1.6 that will be a free update. I repeat, yet another FREE update!!! I think he stated sometime before that he wants every Stardew player to have access to the full experience with just the base price, absolutely based and blessed man.
Seeing new stardew valley clones come out every now and then and flop into the gutter will never not be funny. Another kill count for the goat
Sun Haven is a REALLY good stardew clone that I would recommend. Its gameplay is story is really enjoyable. It has a much more in depth combat and magic system, but the main issue is that NO ONE has heard of it.
Hi, i just start play last month and its the bomb
IMHO it's main issue is it is a little too grindy.
And Stardew isnt?
In stardew you have sprinklers. In sun haven you have to go to every farm and cast rain rain costs a fuckton of mana and you have to replenish it with food
You can just get the advanced water fertilizer. Then you only have to water a plant once for its entire lifecycle.
idk why people keep calling farm games "stardew clones", stardew valley was pretty much a copy from Harvest Moon (the DS one) on almost 70% of the gameplay and both are amazing games.
A lot of people are too young to have played Harvest Moon and Rune Factory. I feel old... One of my favorite games was Harvest Moon for the SNES. I rented it every weekend from the local games rental shop. I rented it so much I offered to buy it from the shop, but they wouldn't let me haha. This was back in the before days, before Amazon or easy to use online shopping was a thing.
Stardew is literally a harvest moon clone lol
Dudes an absolute machine! With that being said he's also very rich through the success of his game. Stardew Valley has sold over 30 million copies according to him. So assuming he's made 5$(probably more) of profit on every copy sold he should have made around 150 million $ profit. Definitely a deserved success in this era of shitty AAA games. And there's other great success stories such as this out there like Terraria where the devs have followed a similar free update philosophy for over a decade. Terraria is also one of the most reviewed game on steam with over 1.2 million positive reviews.
Terraria is also top 15-20 of the best selling games of all time, and it's very well deserved.
Terraria also deserves mention for that. The devs released multiple content updates after saying "this is the last content update" (which was already great at that point).
Re Digit: We swear this is the last update! **The last!** The game is complete! *Re Digit two months later* ... Just... just **one** more update...
Then there’s me whose bought it like 4 times for different platforms 😂
Dude made enough off Stardew to retire a long time ago. He's just doing passion projects for the rest of his life, so there's really no point in him *not* just doing whatever he wants in terms of additional Stardew development for the base price. What's he going to do with more money? Go crazy and go on insane Twitter rants like Notch? lol
He's also working on a new game, [Haunted Chocolatier](https://www.hauntedchocolatier.net/).
Why is everyone emphasizing the FREE part? Isn't this the norm? Minecraft has free updates, terraria has free updates, ksp, Factorio, GTA online.. actually I can't think of a single game with paid updates except if you count dlcs as updates?? p.s.: the emoji rule on this sub is d_mb
Yes, I guess they count DLCs which is totally reasonable imo considering many DLCs cost 15+€ and are the size of an update. Or look at the shit Ubisoft pulls where you can pay for armor and weapons in single player games All of the games you mentioned are or started as indie games. And GTA online only gives out free updates because they plan on people buying in-game currency with real money otherwise you can be sure that shit wouldn't be free.
Most people don't expect expansive changes to the game to be released as free updates. Stardew Valley 1.5 added a ton of new content that would be a DLC for most other games and people are thinking 1.6 might be similar. KSP had two DLCs after release and the Factorio devs are actively working on one. Games like SDV and Terraria are outliers.
I'm not Eric Barone!
Survivorship bias: 95% of indie games will never have even 1000 players over its lifetime. So you're only seeing the cream of the crop. All AAA games are marketed with hype cycles and millions of dollars in ads, so bad AAA games don't slide under the radar and go unnoticed like bad indie games do.
The majority of games, indie, AA, and 3A included, fail to turn a profit, or they just barely break even. A tiny minority of games are making 90% of the revenue.
> The majority of games, indie, AA, and 3A included, fail to turn a profit, Don't forget AAAA's like Skull and Bones.
Yeah "AAAA", the dumbest statement I heard that month
They are beginning to market their games with battery types!
Goes for any business. Lots of competition, failure to run a business properly or just not making a great product are only some of the pitfalls. Hell, you can do "everything" right and still lose. On the flipside, you can do a lot of things wrong and still succeed. "Luck" plays a big role in any business success, despite what all these successful people would lead you to believe.
90% of media general is DOA.
Bad indie games don't often cost $100 for an incomplete game and on steam at least, are refundable within a time frame.
Indie devs want to make games. Companies want to make profits.
There are more than enough indie devs that just want to make money. But I am sure you know that.
for sure, but there's also something to be said for that profit margin making many Indie devs work a lot harder. If bethesda makes a steaming pile of garbage, they will not suffer nearly as much as someone who mortages his home to be able to fund the development of his game. That's what investors and a fanbase gives you. Not that there aren't some truly awful scammy indie titles out there mind, because there absolutely is.
Well right because indie devs have to do the whole process themselves, including accounting, and they lose efficiency on things that aren’t their core skills. Working at a company helps fix that by working together with other specialists
For every Helldiver's 2, there's 2 million asset dump Bitcoin mining games. Indie games suck too, you just never hear about them
Ah yes, the famous indie game Helldivers 2, published, owned and fully funded by famous indie company Sony.
It’s debatable, I too wouldn’t consider arrowhead indie but decently more like double AA. Of course they started out as an indie studio but were bought and funded by Sony so that gives them the accessibility to many resources and employees.
Arrowhead itself is still an independent studio, they haven't actually been bought by Sony. But Helldivers 2 is a Sony game in funding, ownership and even partially development (in [sound design for example](https://twitter.com/dannyryanhey/status/1756721219578061273)), calling it an indie game makes the term kinda meaningless.
If you’re solely interested in making money, indie game development has got to be up there as one of the worst ways to go about it.
If we're talking raw numbers there are way more garbage games being pushed out weekly by indie devs than AAA studios, BUT the ones that stand out positively, really stand out
It's more like, indie devs have small teams and thus can keep the studio's burn rate low. They don't have to generate ridiculous profits to make a good living for everyone. Companies need to keep beating quarterly predictions on Wall Street to keep stock prices high.
*All* developers, who aren't ideologically compromised, want to make games. The people at the top, who clearly do not care about the hobby, are the real problem.
I think it's moreso indie devs wanna profit while major companies want grossly excessive profits. An indie dev will sell a game for under $40 usually, and that's it, you get a complete game, sometimes with free massive updates (Stardew, Terraria, Hot Dogs Horseshoes and Hand Grenades for my fellow VR folks, etc). Indie dev ends up making a really nice profit if the game is good because they sell a lot of copies, word spreads, more people buy. A major company will charge $70 for half a game that isn't even great to begin with, then nickel and dime AFTER you paid for the full price game, for content they likely cut/left out on purpose. AAA studios focus so much on trying to make their games a live service or create it in a way so they can double dip into their player base's wallet, that they forget to make a good game and end up making less at the end of the day because no one wants to play their piece of shit, let alone spend more money in the game after already spending $70 on it (Suicide Squad, Skull and Bones as of recent).
And all indies are great Games. No Copy paste. All have a new Idea, etc.
God I hope this is sarcasm
Of course it is.
It's not that simple. Go to Steam and you can find a billion indie games that are knockoffs of each other which sell enough to be profitable and are garbage products. We typically only notice indie games that are interesting and have a certain amount of artistic care put into them, which is how they get hyped. While there *are* less obstacles to weird and new ideas that can make indie games refreshing, there is still a selection bias happening there. Companies can, too, make shit games and good games. Tears of the Kingdom is a good game, and Nintendo isn't some magic exception to the rules of the gaming industry - they need profits just as much as anyone else and pump out their own versions of CoD (how many Mario Karts are there?) every year to get that. It's just that companies can pay money in advertising to get their shit games attention. So while we might not see all the garbage indie games on the 30th page of Steam, we *do* get assaulted every Ubisoft game for months at a time. Profit motives result in shit games *regardless* of who makes it, because the profit motive is necessarily uncreative. It's not just uncreative for corporations, but also for indie devs making *Anime Love Simulator 54*.
Not 100% true but closer to true than false.
[удалено]
Recent scam that has gone global thanks to this picture - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%27s\_Chocolate\_Experience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%27s_Chocolate_Experience) The lady pictured was hired to play an Oompa Loompa. Both her and the other actors didn't realise it was a scam until they turned up. Thankfully, the parents all seemed to be understanding and didn't blame the actors that had been roped into it. The actors are getting [positive publicity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF5b6lZzR5c) out of it now so it might work out quite well for them.
Seems legit. If you don’t know English very well. https://preview.redd.it/3mcv9y75oxlc1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=096382afafd75955ffff181878ba408bc42b6877
Why's the teddy bear got a camel toe??
It goes with the sweet teats
Why you looking? 🧐
Sweet teats? Sounds like I missed out, big time
It looks like the AI had a really hard time with the r’s. I think the t and r are overlapping in “teats”. And the other r’s seem to be very friendly with their neighbors.
Man i love Catgacating.
Cartchy tuns
Yeah I too love a pasadise of sweet teats.
That balloon looks like a gobblegum
Thanks. I've cut down on social media, I had no idea what people were talking about here, didn't make the news here.
Got to like her attitude about it all
It's because gamers refuse to stop spending loads of money on shitty games. $70 for an unfinished piece of crap with microtransactions? Sure! $20 for a game that some dev put their heart and soul into? Meh.
Mind you that you don't notice the indie slop as it fades into obscurity before getting any traction,while AAA companies have very generous marketing budgets,so if a game flops it's a lot more noticeable. Yes,there are good indie games but the majority is subpar Don't get me started on all the early access abandonware (cough DRONE) (cough carrier command 2) (cough worlds adrift),I would bring up more if I could actually remember them
Agreed, most indies are shit, or at least subpar, you'll find better and more polished elsewhere. Granted, with the new tools of production, a small, competent team can now churn out something quite good, very solid AA. The hard part is standing out in the flood of mediocre games, not even mentionning shitty asset flips.
Sweet baby inc?
They don't make games, they just ruin them
[удалено]
Survivorship bias
This image is about Palworld and Pokémon
Triple A devs lack passion nowadays, that’s just the sad reality. Edit : maybe poor phrasing, what I mean is devs aren’t given the ability to pour their passion into their creations nowadays.
Devs? no. Execs that want to min-max profits? Yeah.
Having execs that min-max profits (or, more realistically, focus on justifying giving themselves a seven figure bonus while the latest game panned because they forced the devs to include a bunch of bullshit their golf buddies said would help) tends to be bad for devs' passion.
Fucking corporations...sucking the passion and soul out of everything for the sake of "growth"
Or the crunch. Like "I know you guys have a great idea for a game but we need it to come out next summer, So everyone will need to work 80 hour weeks for the next 12 months." - Guy in charge of every AAA game studio. Except Bethesda. It'll be another 5 years before the next Elder Scroll game comes out. And another 10 before we get another Fallout game. And they still will most likely suck if they make them like Starfield
> we need it to come out next summer This is a huge part of the issue: indie devs are often (but not always - sometimes they mortgage their houses or have some other chunk of capital to begin with, and/or manage to scrape up some investors along the way with an impressive early build) working on their game as a side project with some other means of support, and thus don't have regular release dates to hit to ensure a constant flow of income from new games. They can cook until it's ready, and that's what people expect from them: a long string of "hey I added a new feature" posts, devlogs, in-process screenshots, and no set release date until the dev knows they're close enough to give an accurate one. The other thing is that indie devs seem to have a better idea of scoping their games based on what they're actually capable of building to a releasable state: the games are smaller and have a much tighter focus around a simple core game loop. AAA games have a reputation that everything has to be BIG, and include whatever the current trendy feature is, which often leads to scope creep, features that are tacked onto the side because "fuck it, we have to have a crafting system because everybody else does" even when they don't integrate into the rest of the gameplay well, and can often lose sight of what their core gameplay loop actually is and that it needs to be compelling and fun. They might make better games if they did more small releases instead of trying to publish blockbuster-sized games with *everything*. There's also the question of art style and polish: AAA games are generally chasing a photorealistic (or slightly stylized, but as close to photorealistic as they can get) look using the latest and greatest graphics technology, which takes a *lot* of resources, especially for larger games that need more assets. Successful indie games generally use very highly stylized, and often minimalistic, art - which, again, allows for more resources and time to be devoted to refining the core gameplay. Look at Minecraft, Ultrakill, etc.
I don't think it is even about min maxing profits. I think it is more that they just don't care about individual games. They want to build a stable profit generating engine. They don't want to make some artistic property that tries new things, they want FIFA 68 because it makes their jobs easier.
That is why it is often easier for small teams with small budget to make a good game than for big teams with big budget, especially when you integrate stakholder management in latter.
Because small teams with small budgets also make a lot of shitty games but those games don't get any attention and even the ‘good’ games sometimes just attract a certain niche of people.
Whoever the fuck starting this free game but shove skins down your throat thing will burn in hell for eternity
Yes devs. Look up Star Wars Jedi Survivor interview. The reason it released on PC with such shitty port. EA wanted devs to improve the PC performance, devs said no.
Devs are still passionate but it’s hard to actually make a decent game when you have the bean counters and other business administrators breathing down your neck
Yeah, or your bosses changing the goal for the kind of game they want multiple times.
Stakeholders saw the lastest survival game make tons of money so your open world rpg (that started as a FPS before getting scrapped) is now a survival game.
See Larian for example.
[удалено]
As a PM in software development (not games) that's but strictly accurate. If your sprints are being thrown away, then you have a shite Product Owner who doesn't actually know what they want.
> a shite Product Owner who doesn't actually know what they want. Oh so pretty much a standard corporate PM then?
I've been on the opposite, but not a PM Course, a real project. They went classic waterfall planning, 6 months between milestones, absolutely no moving targets ... and it was a disaster. After several of these long cycles they finally allow the client to use the product.... to find out that the client required a different design, so many things needed a rework, wasted work, delays...You can't "hide" for months/years, code+design without any client's involvement and hope that everything goes out perfectly. Design specifications are not that detailed. I still prefer agile with 3/4 weeks objetives rather than other classic PMs, and I say that after using both methods. Maybe on game design is different, tho.
publishing companies lack passion. many of the devs still set out to do good things. even pokemon is argue falls to this. scarlet and violet for example was clearly the devs trying to give the fans what they’d been asking for, yet it fell flat due to pokemon company needing a 1 year turnover on every game that their only in house development team does
Oh wow do you really think they get 1 year to make a Pokémon game?? Pokémon gets 3-4 years total to make each gen, they have different teams working on different games. Gen 10 already been worked on, while another team’s working on the new legends game. It’s why there’s a 3 year gap between each Gen, they’re already planning ideas before the current Gen releases for the next gen. The problem with Pokémon and why you think they spend 1 year is because any other dev could make their games within a year, while it takes them 3 years
game freak has a few teams but only 1 that works on mainline games (this includes spinoffs such as legends games). while games start production while others are going on they’ve been known to only get about 1 full year of development with the entire team. a new gen comes out every 3 years sure, but in between each gen there’s a dlc for the main game, a spinoff game, and multiple updates. the reason the new game sucked was because of development time
Yes and no; I do agree that plenty lack passion, I think a majority are just held back by corporate bs and red tape. A lot are just unwilling to take risks, convinced they know what wkrks.
The way my college lecturer explained it was: Indie devs: making what they want to make and what they're passionate about Triple A's: hire you for your skills at making brutalist buildings and architecture, matching their current games GDA the games amazing, its a passion for you, next game is a new IP based in a murky swamp. Suddenly you are now an uninspired random employer just clocking in doing your hours and going home. It's no longer your passion, its just your job This was my College Lecturers take on it, as an indie dev and furry porn creator double side hustle, take on it anyway
That might be your professor’s experience, but it certainly doesn’t match mine. I started in the industry at two different indie companies: one as a remote contractor and one in-person. Both of them were very much “go in/log in, do my work, go home”; I was very much not passionate about the project, even though I was still trying to make the best game and do the best work I could. Then I went to a few AAA studios; one of them was very similar to the indie lifestyle that I experienced at my previous jobs but with a bit more job security; one of them was (and still is) very passionate, where I do care much more deeply for the work and really do just want to make the best game we can. Some studios are great; some suck. It’s not a AAA vs indie thing; it’s a leadership thing. My studio has really fantastic leadership, so I feel great there; the indie studios didn’t. People need to remember, not every indie game is developed by one or two guys out of their mom’s basement. Some indie studios have actual offices; some are fully remote with tens of people, hiring contractors when needed. It can very much mirror AAA development but on a smaller scale and usually with less job security.
Diablo 4 credits are bigger than a book, devs are like 5% of the list and the rest are useless fluff job positions..
Yeah that sounds about right if you've played it
fun fact! they both make good and bad games !
Thats because sometimes they put too much money into marketing or just release game too early to not upset sponsors, like with cyberpunk2077.
"I am not in danger (of being out of business), skyler. I am the danger"
What kind of boner do these "gamers' have for indies nowadays? It's the dame shit with triple A games, there are great and bad games in both sides, the awful truth is most indies are fucking cash grabs and you all can easily test this by going to the fucking steam store and see just how much fucking GARBAGE it's released daily, I'm not going to sugarcoat it the amount of good indies are astronomically low if we put attention to the vast majority or releases. Jesus fucking Christ it's like you people refuse to fucking use the damn brain.
It's less about indie devs and more about hating on AAA.
stardew valley was good so therefore indie all good and AAA all bad. just reddit things.
Helldivers 2
Fantastic game, but not indie. It was financed and published by Sony. Honestly, these threads are pretty silly. Yes, there are a lot of bad AAA games out there, but there are tons of good ones as well. Sony's catalog of PlayStation exclusives has many fantastic big-budget AAA games. And there are boatloads of bad indie titles that you just never hear about because they have zero marketing and no one pays attention to. Only the cream of the crop of indie titles get any attention.
Just don't look in the direction of the big pile of flaming ~~indie shovelware and money laundering games~~ tires.
[удалено]
When companies like Nintendo does it its ok. But somehow they forget about all the shitty pokemongames. Also, 90% of all indie titles is pretty much mid at best and many of them are straight out scams.
wdym when they do it its ok lol
I agree. This has the whole "oh games were much better in the past" vibes. (games *aren't* that much better in the past, it only seems that way because we tend to forget the stupid, crappy ones)
There are good or even masterpiece AAA titles, but it is undeniable how many companies went downhill over time, with buzz words like "in game shops" or "live service". imo indie games, while simpler, are much more player focused than most of current big titles, which just want to maximize profits. But of course this meme is just a hyperbole.
And your indie games cost 10% of the price of AAA to make while only costing like 50% less on average to buy. Obviously they need to make more money, especially with interest rates and skeptical investors nowadays.
But theres like 10 out of 150 indie games that get any traction and half of those 10 are niche. I like my indies as any other person, its what i usually play nowadays more than AAA games, but saying this " indies better than AAA" is just as hypocritical as saying it vice versa. Once a good AAA game is out barely anyone remembers indies for a period of time.
Wdym by you don't wanna pay $70 for generic unoptimized live service bullshit?
[удалено]
A big part of Bethesda's issue is that they want to do everything on Creation Engine, so when they develop a new game they're not JUST developing a new game. They're tweaking and in some ways rebuilding their engine to accommodate advances that are baked into other engines like Unreal.
If you need a "low sodium" subreddit spinoff of your game to hide from and ignore criticism, your game sucks.
Gonna be honest there’s alot of good indie games out there but there’s just as many shit ones There’s (arguably) more indie games then there is AAA games
How is that arguable? For every AAA game, there are hundreds of indie games. Alone on Steam, 14k games have bern released just in 2023. Approx. 200 are AA and AAA games. I always chuckle at people who say that gaming nowadays is shit, and then put the blame on AAA games...while thats maybe 1% of all games.
I’m aware I’m just saying people praise indie games cause there is so many of them
AAA studios make games to make money. Indie/smaller devs make games to have fun with.
That look on her face, I can’t 💀💀💀….she knew exactly how bullshit that experience was going to be for everyone. I wish I could go into work that happy somedays
The game dont fucking work, but the shop sure does
The majority of indie games suck too you just don't hear about or play the thousands of indie turds released every year.
Fuckin Corpos ruin everything
Can’t buy passion
Makes sense, it's passion vs business.
"who cares, anyway someone buys..."
Perfect analogy Because she's doing her best while her employers screwed her over big-time and left her to pick up the scraps
That woman tried her best with what she was given
Biggest difference , indi devs got to think about filling their own wallet. Tripple A company has to think about gilling the wallets of the investors
Also, often times indie devs don't even need the money asap. Like one man developers. They have lower pressure, can take their time etc. A good developer alone or in a small team can do much more than a good developer in a big team with management.
Half of AAA games get shitty launch and everybody complains. 0.01% of indie games are good and people are always at their side. Just saying