Half-Life 3 is rumored to be revealed at The Games Awards

Will stream it at usual tomorrow
https://videofrens.club/r/e3

@coolboymew AHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

@eric didn't happen

@coolboymew @eric did they reveal deadlock instead?

@Inginsub @eric Valve wasn't even there

It's all so tiresome. Do any of the key talent from the glory days of Valve even work there? They were fucking rockstars in 201X and then they just went into maintenance mode it feels like. There's videos of how even the good games from back then are getting enshittified gradually with reduced weapon animations and such

@mitchconner @Inginsub @coolboymew also i don't think a lot of the talents in the 7th generation console era are working in the industry anymore, whether it's valve or others

@eric @Inginsub @mitchconner From what I've heard, DEI and so is basically fucking up what was left of big development house, the actual talent either fucked off the industry forever, are languishing forever in AAA where they might as well be nameless, which also in turn does not foster new talent or indies

The industry is fuuuuuucked

One of the main problem being the big houses refuses to do anything but AAA pretty much, which makes sure that everything they make gonna be clean clean clean and mega focus tested so no talent needed

@coolboymew @Inginsub @mitchconner @eric That last part is IMO the biggest one.

Everyone forgets how the EAs and Activisions of the world were shuttering their middle-A studios or devs of less blockbuster games. The EA stuff is well documented with the famous "Killed by EA" charts that get updated yearly. With Activision they were making their mid-A devs that made some cool games in the 00s/early 10s be support devs for CoD. Rockstar did the same shit, you can see how the devs that made unique games in the PS2 and 360 era become GTA support devs.

There are many minor/less common examples too. Cave pulled out of making arcade shmups and just makes gachashit when they're not rereleasing their old games/having devs do ports of them for extra cashflow. Sega doesn't make as many games as they used to outside of their cash cows (SMT, Yakuza, Sonic), and I'm sure there are many more examples if you just go over every single dev.

And even before it was DEI cancer, they were doing the same thing where the game dev was filled with "cogs" who replaced creative vision with trying to make what the boss wants for money. And you had to do it; just look at what has happened with CoD BO3's rushed and confusing single player, and BO4 having single player completely cut out because they had the deadline to meet.

Look who 343 was hiring as a high profile example of cogs. In 2012 it wasn't DEI hires, it was "let's hire people who hate Halo to make the game". They didn't hire turbo fans who would have shit themselves to work on a Halo game but interchangeable cogs. Halo 4 would come out, get eclipsed by BO2, and much of it would feel weird (different sound effects, gameplay that wasn't like the classics, trying to continue an ended story, etc.)

@PurpCat @Inginsub @mitchconner @eric You could already see it during the beginning of the 360 (it came first, IIRC?), the AAA goldrush happened and a shitload of decent studios died attempting to make a "mature shooter" they weren't ready for

What's ironic is that a lot of the big franchises were once AA budget games that did something right that grew into what they are now. They're basically not actually letting these games happen now

It also pisses me off in other ways. Apparently some marketing guy from Microsoft scoffed at the mention of Banjo-Kazooie. Basically, the dumbasses at microsoft bought the scrimblo company, probably bought them mainly for Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, and bought them exactly when the talent that did these fucked off at Free Radical (hence why Nintendo didn't quite want them, also Microsoft vastly outbid them)

They gave them a chance, didn't let them grow into it and now they franchises are... On Nintendo's consoles, because Xbox literally never bothered to make the platformer fans jealous with envy with their offering. No, they had to constantly chance the next thing (too late at that) with Kinect (They shoved Rare on it IIRC) and yadda yadda

They chased the next big thing, failure after failure, but they never tried to be innovative and BE the thing

@coolboymew @Inginsub @mitchconner @eric >the AAA goldrush happened and a shitload of decent studios died attempting to make a "mature shooter" they weren't ready for

It wasn't even just that. Remember Dead Space 3? The game that really put aside the horror elements to basically make a pure action game with the same creatures as 1/2? Part of the problem was they wanted to sell 5 million copies for a game that would have sold 1-2 million normally.

"In general we're thinking about how we make this a more broadly appealing franchise, because ultimately you need to get to audience sizes of around five million to really continue to invest in an IP like Dead Space."
https://web.archive.org/web/20120702065744/http://www.computerandvideogames.com/353788/ea-we-dont-want-to-pss-off-our-fans-with-dead-space-3/

It wasn't the only one either; just look at the Tomb Raider reboot that had to sell 5 million to break even, and took a while to:
https://www.eurogamer.net/tomb-raider-finally-achieved-profitability-by-the-end-of-last-year

There were other games like Singularity, which was poorly marketed because it was delayed and they didn't want to take out ads again for it.

Rare sounds like a classic Microsoft buyout of the era; buy something people like and ram it into the ground somehow. Skype, Danger, Nokia, etc.

@PurpCat @Inginsub @mitchconner @eric As usual, the writing was on the wall years ago and it's no wonder shit is failing left and right and consoles don't have exclusive anymore outside of Nintendo. The retards put all the eggs in the AAA basket

Nintendo's strategy with the Wii, they were completely right, but it was just too damn soon

@coolboymew @Inginsub @mitchconner @eric the other problem at that era was the barrier to entry was way higher from what I've found and firsthand stories I've heard.

The closest some nobody could do to be a console dev with little money was to be in the XNA ghetto on the XBL store, or to develop for a failed console designed to be open but that nobody had because only others in the circle had it (Ouya). Maybe you could target an obsolete console. To be a console dev; you had to do all these requirements the console makers demanded (including installing security systems at home), sign numerous NDAs, and most importantly have "something to show". But also, you had to have a publisher and this is what burnt a lot of devs during the 360 era: as you couldn't self publish a game you had to either find a publisher or hope that Microsoft Game Studios would sell the game for you.

Also before Steam Greenlight and then paying to put your game there; you had to have Valve do all this stuff to approve your game. Postal 2 (back when RWS was sort of in "hibernation" after the Postal 3 fiasco) was a game that was constantly turned down by Valve but not by GOG or no-name stores like Desura. Then when Postal 2 was on Greenlight, it met the needed votes instantly and Valve reached out and they finally were able to get on the biggest PC platform. That was just on digital btw; because if stores didn't stock your retail games back in the day when they still had huge PC game sections, it was a death sentence.

Nowadays anyone with a computer can make a game and submit it to Steam, where normies can find it as opposed to seeking out a site to download a game. Even if like 10 people post reviews and it languishes in obscurity, that is further along than you would have gotten in 2005-10.

@PurpCat @Inginsub @mitchconner @eric @coolboymew
>The closest some nobody could do to be a console dev with little money was to be in the XNA ghetto on the XBL store, or to develop for a failed console designed to be open but that nobody had because only others in the circle had it (Ouya). Maybe you could target an obsolete console. To be a console dev; you had to do all these requirements the console makers demanded (including installing security systems at home), sign numerous NDAs, and most importantly have "something to show". But also, you had to have a publisher and this is what burnt a lot of devs during the 360 era: as you couldn't self publish a game you had to either find a publisher or hope that Microsoft Game Studios would sell the game for you.

That reminds me of when Robert Pelloni was denied the Nintendo DS SDK because Nintendo only allowed already established publishers on their platforms. Despite every indie developer porting their games to Switch now, Nintendo was probably the most hostile to indies back in the 7th gen. Even WiiWare had some really strict guidelines that pretty much made only well established Flash game developers to be permitted on the platform.

@xianc78 @PurpCat @Inginsub @mitchconner @eric the WiiWare guidelines were that you had to be a company that had an actual office somewhere that's not a house IIRC. Maybe for the better in some cases because the 40MB~ was fucking brutal and I recall a small Dev making a furry puzzle game pissed and moaned about it. I installed the game at some point and oh boy, it was rough, but the fucking idiots tried to go 3D on 40MB limit. It wasn't impossible, it was done mote than several times, but it was rough on the devs without the years on their belt

This was pre-big indie, the Xbox indie thing wasn't completely unheard of, PlayStation had something similar, but the online did indeed make it bigger than it would be

Nintendo relaxed their stance on 3DS and Wii U, big indie had long since taken off at that point

@coolboymew @Inginsub @PurpCat @mitchconner @eric
>but the fucking idiots tried to go 3D on 40MB limit

40MB is more than most N64 games. It IS possible, but any 3D game on there was going to look slightly better than an N64 game at best.

>This was pre-big indie, the Xbox indie thing wasn't completely unheard of, PlayStation had something similar, but the online did indeed make it bigger than it would be

Xbox 360 and PS3 had actual hard-drives which allowed bigger games to be downloaded. The Wii's NAND was only 512MB. They kind of had to severely limit the file size requirement.

@xianc78 @Inginsub @PurpCat @mitchconner @eric Yeah, 40mb was possible, but notice how there was not a lot of "big" 3D games on that and they were usually like smaller games. Indies that were probably already used to engines at that point, like game maker, absolutely struggled with that

Especially since it was 2 gens separated from the N64

>This was pre-big indie, the Xbox indie thing wasn't completely unheard of, PlayStation had something similar, but the online did indeed make it bigger than it would be

I was referring to Nintendo's stance on "only developers with an actual office can develop" thing here. It was really, pre-big indie and xbox 360 somehow was ahead of everyone here with their own version of Net Yaroze, but built in, and they could sell their games on the store

@coolboymew @Inginsub @PurpCat @mitchconner @eric I think Nintendo was more concerned about untrusted developers leaking SDKs and finding exploits that could be used for piracy or something like that.

The only time Nintendo allowed consumer programmability before WiiWare was the Family BASIC for the Famicom, but unlike the Net Yaroze or the WonderWitch for the WonderSwan, you couldn't get your game published. It was more of a learning tool.

@xianc78 @coolboymew @Inginsub @mitchconner @eric if you do a deep dive they really, really, didn't want porn games either

@PurpCat @Inginsub @mitchconner @eric @coolboymew Oh yeah, I remember some Guru Larry video on WiiWare games that accidentally included porn (most of them as unused files, but still).

btw is Guru Larry dying?

@mitchconner @Inginsub @xianc78 @eric @coolboymew he took a YT break

He posted this a year ago, and then didn't post anything til Christmas when he did a video, on Patreon, maybe he's feeling better?