Jesus.
Funny how you see small things and changes you know are going to lead to much bigger problems but that no one takes any notice.
I have seen many things I do not like pop up in the gaming industry as well as a recent trend regarding politics .. no I cannot call it politics as it is nothing more than sheer madness because lame brained and twisted individuals have now been discovered to be groups, mainly with an identity crisis they want to force upon others, that seems to be affecting everything.
I think that corporations, I can think of two that consist of Disney and now possible Electronic Arts, have gotten scared?
It is like when there are protests and there are 50,000 to 100,000 and all the tabloids and TV news go on about how large it is. Yeah well it could be 200,000 or more but even here in the UK that is a tiny fraction of the entire population.
This does not seem to occur to some organisations and corporations though who seem to get spooked internally on some level that they might lose money. Or maybe they blindly and foolishly think they see a way of making more money. Because they do not see that 200,000 or even 500,000 do not in any way represent the majority. Especially within certain industries.
You have an established audience and you sell to that audience and if there are changes they do not like you do not then persist with these changes and then go and make even greater changes in the same direction.
Unfortunately in some areas the addiction is far too great for people to resist and therefore vote or give out clear messages via their wallets.
Also unfortunate is that in these instances less and less is taken notice of until one day it all goes off with a bang and everyone stands around scratching their heads wondering what happened.
My head has hurt very much so from all the facepalms I have given myself in the different areas I cover, mainly gaming and corruption and failures of the public service sectors.
Jesus Christ I could do a much better job standing on my head while fast asleep!
Still ... I then get forced to watch my predictions unfold in an almost slow-motion type fashion and wonder if I should be so heavily invested any more? Or indeed hold off investing into areas I previously loved. Sometimes said investments can be ... steep.
Now the latest thing I have been hearing about on YouTube that forced me to type out this post is this debacle involving Mass Effect Andromeda and to be honest this has taken me by surprise, even if I am not entirely sure of the facts.
There are also some things I find a little amusing in all this and I will start off with this one on the fact that character modelling in Mass Effect Andromeda is complained to look like it was created, in part, in 2007.
Yeah well I recently did a couple of posts about what you need hardware wise for gaming, calling the majority out to be idiots in their statements about all you need is four cores and looking smug and saying ... well I told you so.
I have lost count of the number of games that have launched and not been anywhere near as good as people thought that they would or that their special previews actually showed. Watchdogs, The Division, The Witcher 3, Dragon Age Inquisition and now Mass Effect Andromeda with no doubt others I am forgetting. Any title that is a subject of this post is another personal favourite that is Deus Ex in the Mankind Divided title.
Everyone has waxed lyrical about the last two generations of nVidia cards while at the same time complaining about how computer games have not advance very much.
The simple fact is that until 8 core CPUs are more widespread and AMD have Vega out to drive down nVidias prices your simply not going to get much.
There is a reason that the 'but can it run Crysis' line has become a thing. Because not much has come out to the able to run it that well and how long ago did Crysis 3 get launched? Bearing in mind this was a game that likely caused the software developers a great deal because nothing was launched that could run it for in inordinate amount of time.
Like those people that call others peasants because they wont go out and spend £700 plus on a GPU or a CPU ... yeah and while they do not do that, which is most of them, you are stuck with overkill until all that you splashed out for has become mainstream. It is just how it works folks.
But Mass Effect has more issues it turns out than just looking up to date graphically? There are some really dodgy animations and some bleak story telling? Sorry I thought this was a Bioware game?
Ugh.
Games seem to be constantly being eroded on several fronts ... and I have to ask myself what bloody idiots are in the gaming industry today? Micro-transactions, watered down graphics, RPG's missing the 'R' component. Well for some that is. Pre-order crap and splitting the games into a 70/30 fashion and having the gall to call it downloadable content.
Yup ... ever since the Internet was widely picked up by the masses the companies have queued up to take advantage of this. You should have heard the things I said when Half-Life 2 and Steam first arrived on the scene ... W ... T ... F!! Lol.
Now they do not even have to provide working games any longer before taking your hard earned cash from your wallets.
Fifteen years ago I stated to many and even to government that the Internet should be looked at to keep in check from a whole raft of abuses. Nahhh ... as per usual everyone wants to wait until the proverbial horse has bolted, a shit-fest has been left behind that is doggedly hard to correct and take way more time and cost way more money .. if it can be done at all.
Of course you get the bloody nutters and idiots, like the Zelda fans attacking Jim Sterling over his Zelda Breath of the Wild review. Now Electronic Arts staff are being attacked over the latest Mass Effect. I do not condone attacks like this ... well any threats at any rate. Especially from queues of idiots so fast to add 2 and 2 together and come up with 5 before even thinking things through.
As for Electronic Arts and any other major games labels making millions or billions for sitting with their thumbs up their backsides ... yeah, sorry but you should have seen this coming ten years ago.
You have pushed and pushed and pushed and taken the piss out of your customers and there was always going to be a point where there would be a big backlash. Take no notice of the small backlashes and you inevitably will end up with a big one.
Then there are the fools that want to defend them and talk about the time taken to create a game when most of them are built upon engines that were created by someone else.
Added to the fact that items in game, like buildings and stuff, are largely re-usable but with different textures applied.
I mean think about it ... you do all these 3D models today ... different textures and suddenly you have what looks like a different building entirely. You cannot always do it and yes you would need to some tweaks and adjustments for things like vehicles.
Except how many buildings have been modelled over the years and how many tweaks would they need?
How many types of guns are there?
How many types of human body are there? Yes OK, faces is different and the variations seemingly endless ... except in games they are not even that varied in many titles.
Still you do not threaten or attack people ... yes I get that you waited a long time for your favourite title to have its next instalment released. Yes when it comes out it is a big fuck fest and its frustrating but do you really think that you griping or threatening is going to make them go away and rebuild it from the ground up?
The other thing that concerns me is with these software developers names and just something else to be abused. Yeah I had high regard for Bethesda and Bioware along with Eidos and others but at the end of the day I ask myself how many of the same teams are still present after 5 to 10 years?
Computer gaming has become a perfect example of brand naming gone to shit because story-line writers, animators, game mechanics coders and others have all buggered off elsewhere. At no other time in the history of computer games has this become more evident than it has recently with the titles Mass Effect, Deus Ex, Fallout, Dragon Age and even Call of Duty. That latter one coming from someone that played the first two Call of Duty titles when they were launched. Battlefield now resembles Call of Duty more than Call of Duty does!
Every company grows to a point where both it and its shareholders believe they have a right to be bringing in vast sums of money for doing fuck all but sit with their overly wide butts in their leather clad boardroom chairs. I know I have been in one! Pivotal Games to be precise who I have now not heard of in bloody years!
So I find myself thinking if I want to do this any longer because God only knows how bad things are going to be in just a couple of years time?!
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