992
If those devs didn't have the extra time to be creative, we might not have gotten this classic.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
992 points (99.1% liked)
RetroGaming
19947 readers
484 users here now
Vintage gaming community.
Rules:
- Be kind.
- No spam or soliciting for money.
- No racism or other bigotry allowed.
- Obviously nothing illegal.
If you see these please report them.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So devs used to have extra time just to add multiplayer. My how times change.
Now every game has to be a multiplayer live service and the campaign/storymode is an afterthought for AAA
Not to mention time crunch for every AAA project
I bought STALKER 2, a masterpiece of post apocalyptic fiction and storytelling.
I was running the game on launch, an old friend calls me up on Discord, and says:
"So how is it?"
I say: "I don't know yet, I just got to the first town past the tutorial."
He says: "No, I mean the multiplayer."
I lost the ability to think for a good 30-60 seconds trying to formulate the right string of words to respond with, from the psychic damage he'd inflicted with the presumption that it was a live service multiplayer game.
I think capitalism has weaponized brain rot into profits. As long as people open their wallets and not their brains, things will continue as planned. We're literally paying for it.
What is a live service multiplayer shooter game and how is it different from like old school duke nukem 3D multiplayer?
I've been seeing the term "live service" and I can't get a clear answer from Google. My computer gaming days are mostly behind me and I don't always keep up.
Live service means the content comes from the company’s servers, and likely changes rapidly. The quintessential example is Fortnite. Updates are expected, not merely necessary fixes. Duke Nukem 3D had all the content installed on your computer from day one, without expectation that it would change (unless you made your own maps, or downloaded maps other USERS made).
That shit sounds addictive as fuck for the right kind of brain. Thanks for the explanation! .
The right kind of brain being most human being.
Companies have made everything in their power to find what is addictive and how to implement it in a game to squeeze more money from players.
Different hooks for different folks.
I escaped into Fallout 3 for a while in my late twenties, for instance. Multiplayer shooters are not very enjoyable to me. I don't care to build the muscle memory to get good at it.
In general, gaming is no longer important to me. I do still play some Tetris, and my girl likes watching me play Zelda so it's a good way for us to have some couch time before bed.
My life is pretty good, I have an easy wonderful marriage, I don't need that sort of escape anymore. Have had trouble with alcohol since 2020.
My wife has had problems in the past with mobile puzzle games like Candy Crush. From what I understand, those sorts of games are particularly effective at catching women 20 and up.
Multiplayer shooters are particularly effective at catching boys and young men. I don't have a source but I'm pretty sure most of the people playing shooters are pretty stereotypically male.
Anyhow, yeah, the right kind of 'brain' is shorthand for cis-het males ages 12-25, at a guess. And yada yada, other gendered folks will get caught as well but probably aren't the primary target for fortnite or whatever shooter.
Live service games and mobile games use the same psychological tricks to keep people coming back and entice people to buy microtransactions.
After that, the theme of the game appeal to different folks.
I've learned to recognize my triggers, but it took a lot of conscious efforts to achieve that. I still buy some microtransactions from time to time for free games I play a lot, but this is a conscious decision I make and not a trigger making me buy things.
And even then, I feel the temptations every time a cool skin is put straight in my face. The psychology behind all that has been distilled to a science and used against us.
Live service also means with every update are new forms of monetization (cough cough skin microtransactions), because according to the c suite, live service means continuous profit, or whatever the fuck that means
Live service means there are constant "content" updates being released by the developer/publisher.
This can be character skins, weapon skins or other cosmetics, new maps or modes, new classes, skills or really anything. A lot of times these are wrapped up in to "battle passes" time limited, purchaseable collections of stuff designed to keep players engaging with the game daily for carrots being dangled in front of them. Most of these are also time limited so if you don't jump through all of the Hoops before the timer expires you no longer have access to the content that you were playing for and paying for.
To relate to old school gaming think of them like mini-expansion packs. The part that most people take issue with is the strategy behind the majority of them.
Almost all live service games are designed to keep players running on the hedonistic treadmill looking for the dopamine hit of that next unlock. In the more egregious free-to-play games you see that crafted through dark patterns in a way that incentivizes users to buy shortcut items through the marketplace to either automatically collect the ranks needed for the unlock or provide double accrual rate for whatever the experience marker is.
The reason they are coined lives service is due the nature of them receiving this constant update drip in a manner that would be live as opposed to static in traditional, Old School multiplayer games where you may see a large expansion every once in awhile but certainly not a weekly or monthly drip feed of new shit for the players to grind away at trying to unlock.
So, how far are you into it?
Oh, I finished it already and got the true ending.
Just like Stalker 1, it pays to not blindly run at quest markers and make up your own mind.
The game is a treat, but struggles to run on many systems, so my recommendation is the following:
FSR 3.1: Quality (66% resolution scale)
Frame Generation: On
AMD Fluid Motion Frames 2: On
1440p Epic on a 7900XTX averages 60 FPS in busy towns like Rostok.
60 FPS Native -> 120 FPS FSR 3.1 -> 240 FPS AFMF
I've got a 240 Hz OLED (for the dark scenes), and the total video draw latency with all of that is 3.11 ms.
2"