Yeah, on second thought, maybe I should’ve said platform capitalism, not monopoly capitalism. The logical extreme of platform capitalism is monopoly, but perhaps it is separable. Not all monopolies have these characteristics, and some who do are arguably not monopolies (e.g. Apple app store)
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Re: telecoms, I strongly recommend the book The Innovation Factory, about the glory days of Bell Labs when they were funded by an unlimited spigot of monopoly money. It deepened my perspective on monopoly and it’s a fascinating technological and cultural history in general
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Is it, though? (Genuinely inquiring)
we can only hope!! im glad theres more storefronts, fuck valve. im glad the kinds of games i care about (not AAA!) have more choices and a better cut of the profits
I’d estimate Epic has thrown $30m at small devs for their giveaways up through the end of the year, and $150m for big exclusives. It’s a better use than most of money (and canny, by doing them weekly instead of monthly they’re really training people to be comfortable with their client) although almost all of their targets are already successful.
As always the problem is not, we need a new place where games are, but, we need a new place where people buy games. I’m skeptical a second store improves the core indie issue of visibility by more than a tiny amount, but the work in resetting the 30% digital store cut will be immeasurably valuable if it impacts Valve and the consoles.
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shadowrun 360 was the only other console shooter respected by TRUE DOOM HALO CE MURDER HEADS aka the competitive halo 1 doubles players on team beyond dot net
p.s. halo 1 2v2 is actually very fun
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I love constrained multiplayer like Shadowrun 360 with bonkers powers
There was that canceled Legacy of Kain hero shooter a few years back
When I think of Shadowrun, though, I really think back to Chromehounds multiplayer. Gosh I loved that thing
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- Me in 2008: Shiren the Wanderer, Spelunky and Ninja Five-O are fantastic! I have a brilliant idea to make a grappling hook game with randomly generated levels which I will prototype and then abandon!
- 2012: Sweet, there are several action roguelikes to play now!
- 2017: My original idea now exists and it turns out to only be moderately fun
- 2019: I beg of you, stop randomizing my levels
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chromehounds was the first game i played of that generation it was a good intro to ‘what games became while you’ve been gone’
why do people like fear so much. I have never had anything but a bad time with it, it’s a lousy horror game, and you just play as some generic special forces agent slogging through a completely forgettable plot with repetitive bland level design.
I don’t remember the shooting being particularly good either? the whole slow time mechanic was just kind of annoying to me too.
I’m completely willing to admit that I’m just a doofus who doesn’t get it. but can someone explain what is good about it??
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The AI put everything else to shame and every encounter felt incredibly dynamic and nuanced.
Also the guns felt great and the level design accomplished what it needed to: interesting encounter arenas with a huge diversity of routes and potential tactics (aka the polar opposite of Halo 1’s level design)
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is there a version of fear that replaces the scary girl with big the cat or 50 cent telling you that youre doing a good job
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before twitch was a thing i saw a stream of someone playing f.e.a.r. to crystal castles iii and death grips the money store. it looked so cool
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i thought there was a lot movement options in all the parts of halo 1 where i died a lot
like the flood sucked but at least i never felt like i was doing the exact same thing twice
also going outside in all halos feels wonderful, its very good at THIS IS BIG GREEN WORLD TOO BIG FOR YOUR BRAIN TO UNDERSTAND
halo 2 though… everything was crunched on those tiny gondolas or fucking tunnels and then you had to do it twice so it felt triple samey
i do wanna try f.e.a.r. though
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yeah the real problem with FEAR is all the AI tricks really only work indoors and in those kinds of arenas - the expansions try more open areas and its a disaster - but blowing huge chunks out of the wall with a shotgun and filling an entire office with smoke from gunfire is still pretty fucking cool, so i dont care, im totally okay with endless office world. also the particle cannon that turns people into a smoking skeleton fucking rules
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yeah idk maybe this is my problem with it
it just always felt kind of boring and samey. I don’t even remember what the combat was like. I don’t doubt that mechanically it’s very good. I just felt no motivation to play after the first area
just not for me I guess. maybe I’m a scrub
the infinite cs_office thing is like my favorite part about it but they had to fuck it all up with the scary girl
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honestly if the premise was actually that you were trapped in a non-euclidean office complex maze hell populated by thousands of super-soldiers it would be so fucking crazy good
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