Do you believe that every game that uses a central server should be required to compensate players when eventually those online services are shut down? Because I would say that games shutting down is a completely reasonable part of how these things work, and a reasonable expectation by the players when they buy into that system. You’re paying for access to content for the lifespan of the game, not an eternal entitlement to active servers until the heat death of the universe.

but Druckmann’s take on “fun” was a valid one. A work of art can be engaging and emotionally impactful even if it isn’t “fun”,

Nah. The opposite of a fun game is a boring, frustrating, and uninteresting one. I’m glad you brought it up, because Papers please is a perfect example of a game that isn’t just neon colors and Mario kart style light hearted action, but is absolutely still a fun game. The gameplay is satisfying, flows well, and does a good job at integrating into what the game is trying to convey.

And to that end, naughty dog absolutely nailed making sure their games aren’t fun. I’m solidly with Reggie on this one. “If it’s not fun, why bother”

It played like utter shit, and the story was just some c tier Netflix special garbage. Funny though how all the people who defend naughty dog just jump back to a single game released over a decade ago on ps3, and literally never anything else. Niel druckmann was right about one thing, and it’s that he doesn’t make fun games.

what they do best.

Heaping out borderline shovel ware trash?

They consistently put out well written, story driven, compelling narrative games

Lmao good way of saying you have shit taste

For one, things like cloud storage are obviously not particularly viable to have the customer host themselves, on premise.

Secondly, some things can be extremely intensive to process, and thus performed on specialized, high end hardware rather than over hours on whatever shit phone the customer is using

For one, lots of software just flat out isn’t open source. And plenty of it is far from short lived

You’re… Confused why software can require server side features?

You clearly haven’t dealt with the “average user”. Get ready for a boatload of idiots who followed some crappy tutorial for “how to get it for free” making a problem for support or review bombing the app when they lose all their data through incompetence.

Are you just talking to hear yourself speak?

I disagree that major version updates equates to keeping them honest. Not everything needs major overhauls every few years. You can have a perfectly closed feedback loop, and still fail to sell people on buying 5.0.0 when 4.7.12 is still good enough, and recieved the little things that matter.

I generally have little need for paid software since I don’t (or more accurately, can’t) do any work at home, so it figures I wasn’t aware of what’s out there lol. The closest thing I use is cracked office. Because yeah, that payment type sounds pretty good, so long as releases are priced reasonably.

I figure a big difficulty is deciding on “major releases” vs rolling incremental development. If they’re going to sell major releases, they actually need to be able to consistently make pretty sizable upgrades, and not just “streamlined a couple menus, big fixes” type updates.

It’s hard to find the right balance. I know I only want to pay once, or heck never, but I want these upgrades and updates too.

Personally, I’d love a “buy this version” option, where you can just pay once, and get a version that doesn’t recieve updates, and I could then choose to subscribe to the “live” version from there.

Of course, this would just blow back in company’s faces when it comes to the “average” user, who would be a total fucking idiot and harass support about not getting updates they didn’t pay for