apsham

Then it becomes an anthology show, season 2 is in California, season 3 in Boston, etc.

Oh yeah, straight up no arguments there. The stuff that happens in sports games right now is probably the worst examples of it. It's odd but the best example I can think of here is NBA Live 19 versus the 2K games - because in a weird round of turnabout, when EA came back with Live they made their games VERY enjoyable and easy to play without microtransactions. I spent a fraction of the time I did with Live than I did with 2K and got more accomplished with my character and had a hell of a lot more fun doing it... but of course, they only did that because that was the one thing that they could go into their design with and have something over what 2K does. I'm interested in seeing what happens with the WWE games going forward - as before they crashed and burned and took a year off, taking a massive amount of fan feedback - they were clearly inching towards having an egregious amount of VC needed to do anything in those games.

The issue here is that you don't get to pick and choose what you lose. A lot of studios are supported by larger ones, and while they are the ones that get to innovate - a dramatic shift in the industry isn't going to mean that there are less iterative or online games - it probably means that those smaller studios making interesting games are going to go kaput. Making one of those iterative games is a (nearly) guaranteed way to make money. If EA were to say no more to loot boxes - we wouldn't lose Madden or FIFA - we'd lose the Jedi Fallen Orders and the like.

THIS IS THE DAY I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL MY LIFE. This is the best thing ever. I really, really miss that show and this calls for a celebration! Here's an article I found a year or so back that states Lord and Miller's plans for where things would have gone for season 2. https://filmschoolrejects.com/what-would-have-happened-in-season-2-of-clone-high-a-rope-of-sand-e52222c51a50/

I'd be in for it as well.

I don't know who is steering people towards things like this but... it just seems like a terrible idea in general? Especially because any game that can grab your time that effectively - microtransactions or not - has just about the same chance to grab you and ruin your life in other ways as well. Is this regarding loot boxes and stuff? I'd never argue for loot boxes in any direct way if it came off like that. I think there's a fine line between providing something to players just because it's there or having a system to earn (another reason why I like MK11 so much, as there's a huge swath of content with each release they do and it's there to earn) - because if I'm enjoying a game, I like player engagement just as much as the studio who made the game should. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch was kind of a bummer for me because everything comes pre-unlocked. But none of that really falls into stuff that is covered by microtransactions in a gambly way so eh. On another note, this has all reminded me - remember a decade back when it seemed that every game had a one-time code in it, some of the time legitimately locking you out from certain things if you bought it secondhand?

Worms WMD is on the PC and Xbox game passes!

I was thinking more along the lines of "oh, I mostly play as 'X' character but I never get skins for them" which is pretty much the situation that I was in at the time. I don't know what Overwatch is like now, but at launch I was absolutely never getting skins for the characters that I was playing (luck of the draw) and money for duplicates is nice and all but never really balanced out to helping that much in the long run. A system where if I play as Roadhog, I am more likely to received Roadhog skins is something that would motivate me to play more than "oh, another DVA skin - cool I guess?" in the long run.

I actually think that Mortal Kombat 11 does it pretty well re; skins and stuff as well. I remember back when Overwatch came out and people would makes articles stating "if you want particular cosmetics you can spend X amount of time or X amount of dollars to do so" and they're always be some astronomical values that just didn't make it worth it. When you're playing MK11 - every cosmetic you might want has a note of how you can earn it, and if you want something for a particular character - you just play that character more throughout the towers and you'll keep getting things for specifically them.

I generally tend to agree with this. Sometimes games have microtransactions for speeding up certain things that only have an impact on single player, and that I am entirely fine with - the time saver kind of stuff is fine, and even some cosmetic stuff is fine. It starts to kind of walk a line if you make the entire economy of the game based around what cosmetic you have, and then start stacking the odds of getting anything useful heavily in favour of... not happening without you spending money. It's not perfect, but I think it can be done right.

Holy shit. And there's a site with very dedicated up to date rosters.

Oh. Good?

I always think of the bit with the sniper at the end of the cul-de-sac (I think) - but every time I played just to get to that, it never held my interest long enough.

If you have Game Pass Ultimate or the PC Game Pass, it's up to download and play now.

Helen Whitewood is a “Karen parody account” as if that needed to be a thing.

Eh, 100 levels of Crash and if I can't play as him in shorts I think I'll be fine. There isn't even a clear idea of what the microtransactions WOULD be - just a note in the Microsoft game store about it having them. Everyone was massively up in arms about Crash Team Racing having microtransactions, but they were inconsequential and only there if you only really wanted one of the seasonal goals - everything was easily earnable through playing the game itself and it's my favorite kart racer ever. Agreed on microtransactions in general but not really all the fussed in this instance... if they're even there and it wasn't just a store listing error.

Looks like it's just cosmetics, so less of a microtransaction (which I think of as more pay-to-win or pay for features in a free game) as a term and more DLC the way you might have originally thought of it, I guess?

The Lord of the Rings Mordor games are very much in the Assassin's Creed vein of "here's a lot of things to do and find, and lots of side missions" but more older style than the way the newer Assassin's Creed games are. The Far Cry series, and especially Far Cry 5 has a lot of the same kind of "lots of places to unlock and different activities to do in them" kind of things - but once again, the new Assassin's Creed games are in a whole league of their own. I can't think of a ton of things that make themselves like that this day and age. There are a ton of games that you can get into and sink hundreds upon hundreds of hours into (me and Animal Crossing, me and Surviving Mars, me and Farm Together for instance) but then again, those are situations where you really decide yourself if you want to pop in that amount of hours and kind of make your own goals. And games like Surviving Mars are more strategy than broad, adventerous game styled. It's going to be first person for one, but I don't doubt that it's going to have HOURS of well written content with actual choices to make, etc. It's going to play entirely different but it's going to bring to life that world the same way the Witcher did its own.

I've never been a fan of Jim Sterling owing to his earlier shit-heel days - but hearing him talk here, and owning up to a lot of stuff is pretty interesting, so good on him. I also had no clue that he worked for CHIKARA as well.

I'm not entirely sure if they did so because people made actual complaints, or if they were just shielding themselves from any potential future controversy.

Always Sunny has already had multiple episodes removed, I believed - including, yeah - the episode that is an entire statement on why blackface is wrong.

Oh man, I was never a huge fan of Springsteen but I'm happy that he was around because - as it alludes in the "influence on" - I don't think The Hold Steady would've existed without him coming first. Boston was one of my dad's favorite bands, and I remember buying him a vinyl of that album for father's day once - but holy shit, I never realized until just now when I looked at the top comment on the Peace of Mind video that the spaceship on that album cover is a guitar.

Seeing it in the sales now... I wonder what's going to happen with Chikara AAW now - especially since they're aiming for a console release.

I don't want these people to have MORE of a chance to get better at doing this.

Speaking of Bioware RPGs - I started playing Dragon Age Origins on the PC here recently and my god I forgot how much different it is from the console version.