I vaguely remember this being how it worked, yes.
Ok, I figured it was something like that, but at the time it almost smelled like the start of some sort of McRib/Disney vault ploy to restore a sense of value to the game after a deep discount. That never played out though, and itâs still unavailable.
Has that happened with anything else?
Nintendoâs trying it now with that 3D Mario collection. Bodes poorly!
I really donât like how most of the games going out of âdigitial printâ seem to be timed licenses expiring. Microsoftâs Forza licenses only last as long as they expect the next game to take them. Music license were temporary, Iâm not sure if theyâre making deals like that these days. And thereâs that phenomenon of IP bouncing between publishers and the older games just get given away.
Nightdive does really good work, I canât believe that an IP ferret is such a unique skill
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this is what i find disspiriting about the kind of portfolio-piece projects mentioned earlier - thereâs no way to call something sophomoric without sounding like a prick but for me itâs like, the term for works which have achieved technical competence or mastery while still feeling internally undercooked. where every part of a work is mature except for the fantasy it contains, which remains that of a âdream projectâ, a work which doesnât really have any reason or ability to contemplate its own reasons for existing but that also doesnât have enough weird technical limitations to make it interesting in spite of itself.
and i feel like this is something the indie career path itself kind of cultivates, the idea of a split between cynical mercenary work and an ideal realm of inner expression, where a tour in the shader mines is sold as a way of gaining the skills to make the passion project dream come true - and the nature of that dream almost doesnât matter, itâs just a frozen and unchanging ideal, like a videogame princess hovering in a crystal, as if thinking about your own desires was less demanding and iterative than figuring out how lightmapping works.
idk i obviously canât hold it against people that they functionally just have the one shot in the paid game lottery, especially when the money people themselves seem more interested in funding that than any kind of long low-stakes career. but it is one reason it feels like the bar hasnât necessarily raised as much as youâd expect since 2009. my enduring memory of that period is of talking myself into getting a copy of Brutal Legend despite not being very interested in it because it was at least a little more distinctive than Army Of Two or similar, this totally petty and meaningless piece of consumer identification which was presented as the best option out there at the time. and it still feels for a lot of these games as if theyâre mostly shooting for the same target - things which exist to be bought in the hope that by doing so they can sorta be inscribed on the symbolic register of the time and hence improve the culture in some vague way.
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This certainly puts nail to head for me re: why I dislike most âindieâ games but enjoy charming weirdo shit
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what a world itâd be if the prestige titles of the day had even 50% the lucid, reflective interest in the act of fantasy production as this klik n play vore game compilation from 2010
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say what you will about games from 2008 but at least they fucking ended. at least no one knew what a LIFESTYLE game was. games are horrible right now with every game vying to be the one game you play! i like things that end damnit!
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I believe it. No one wants to do the boring, time-intensive drudge work of tracking down who actually owns what and invest in a pursuit that might turn out to be futile in the end.
Now there might be space for like patent attorneys or whoever to freelance that kind of work but youâd have to work out the business model first.
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coming from #95. smh
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I was about to ask.
AAA are def worse than they ever have been, but compared to 2008, I feel like the euro-jank has flourished, and indie gamesâas genre-pigeonholed as they can beâare much more exciting than what a couple of rich white guys churned out in 2008.
Like, say what you will, but its nice to be able to play new games that arenât military shooters, indie platformers, or ubisoft gunge.
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I mean, sure, but that describes like 3 or 4 of the games I listed, so this was clearly pretty easy to do in 2008 too?
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yeah, I donât think 2008 is as bad as the real low point a few years later
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2008 was the year I bought a PS2 after a few years of not playing games at all and I got into SMT games, so for me and my house, 2008 ruled 
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similarly for me 2008 is the year i learned about modding consoles and tried to use the college radio station where i workedâs solder equipment to solder a mod chip onto my ps2, which i then bricked. (side note: i worked as the engineer at the station over the summer of 2008 and fall semester, before being fired⌠very justly, because i was a terrible engineer). so then bought another ps2 which i just softmodded and put the hard drive in the back and torrented a bunch of ps2 isos. so that was fun. i also played a lot of We Love Katamari. canât remember what else i played though. it was kinda overshadowed by being the year i started transitioning.
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100%, I played good games then (after all, that was the year I joined SB and the scales fell from my eyes) but I didnât play many good new games.
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oh yeah, that was the year I joined sb dot net, too
when we say âgood games that came out in 2008â the main thing i think of is the original Spelunky, which is a pretty big high point for me! but iâm also terrible at remembering when games came out
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I think that was like, released on the tigsource forums on December 20 in fairness, really snuck in under the wire
qualifies under oscar rules tho
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a March 2009 night when I visited a friend and I played Spelunky and the import Demonâs Souls both for the first time
Videogames are back, baby
, I thought
that fueled me for years
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