Plenty of ideas are theoretically worthwhile if executed properly. I don't know if it's extreme naivety or blinding idealism that's making you think there is a possibility that anything good will come out of NFTs in games. Because it won't. Because the big publishers will just use them to squeeze more money out of useful idiots and no other goal has any presence in the minds of the people in charge of implementing this bs.

You really think EA/Bethesda/Microsoft/Actiblizz/TakeTwo/Sony/Nintendo/Ubisoft and all the others will actually let you own, like really own something instead of, as you put it, licensing it from them in the age of DRM and always-online for singleplayer games? Come the fuck on.

 

Yes. Thus the phrase in theory and my assertions that it'll be a scam otherwise?

 

Even with all that I am not exactly sure what exactly the benefit of all this is supposed to be? I mean what exactly is the benefit for me as a player in getting access to a badly managed and badly overseen marketplace for one of the riskiest and most turbulent trading objects that currently exist even if the publisher is not actively trying to fuck me over?

 

The benefits of digital property rights are being able to resell DLC and the like. In essence, treating digital goods as if they were physical goods, with everything that entails. There's legitimate, extreme benefits for consumers to a system that enforces/creates the opportunity for digital property rights. NFT advocates claim it provides exactly that, and it's exactly what Gengar describes there.

It's just that NFTs don't actually do that, so they're kinda pointless.

 

As they are now they're absolutely worthless (to me).

Especially if you're buying them with the expectation of some kind of true ownership.

 

In all fairness, games are never taken away from anyone... I think that they include that in the EULAs so that you don't sue them if the company goes bust and their servers go down.

 

Until you get banned (with or without good reason), and your account goes with all the games you purchased. Or if you chargeback because a company pulled legitimate bullshit and they take away everything.

 

I don't know exactly what you mean by the latter, but the former definitely.

On the topic of actually owning a game though, I do often wish that my games didn't have to boot Steam before they launched, and I've never seen anything more retarded than the whole 'buy the game on Epic, launch through Epic and Origin' thing, especially because it doesn't work half of the time.

 

Any chargeback used on an EA game results in a ban and no more games. Because "Chargebacks are normally performed by people who want to fraud money away from EA."

 

Ah yes, we do need to crack down on the most sick, perverted criminals of all, dissatisfied EA customers. (They definitely brought that in after the whole BF2 fiasco.)

 

Saw this earlier today, couldn't stop laughing.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulta...nt-police-chases-in-the-game/?sh=34971a4f313a

Imagine being so fucking retarded to say that it's fine to not have police chases in your game just because Sonic or Elden Ring don't either.

 

Sadge. Guessing it comes out Q4 2022

 

2022 is incredibly optimistic. They're still doing asset development.

 

Is he not specifically talking about covid-working-from-home-delays to outsourced assets?

He makes it sound like the issues are with communication between Tokyo and support studios, while home office is in the process of basically optimisation.

I'm reading it as they had to bring the donkey work (not major assets) in-house, which pushed optimisation and finishing touches back half a year but you're right, I could just be overly optimistic.

I wouldn't be surprised if the biggest reason for an actual delay was FF14's sudden superstar status, and it possibly having to have resources devoted to it - (with Yoshida being 14's head too for those who don't know).

 

The last major update was summer 2021 I believe, where they said that assets for and development of the main story was almost fully implemented but pretty much everything else was still early stages. Textbook Yoshi-P game design basically. He always gets main content done first, then adds all the bells and whistles to make a functional game afterwords.

Then add on 6 months for testing and debugging (3 months for alpha, 3 months for beta), and 2-3 months for master plus final post-master bug fixes to go into a day 1 patch. Q4 2022 may have been the original target, but that would have been with no problems whatsoever.

 

So, on Friday I found art of rally in the PlayStation store sale by accident and, given that I had a 20€ gift card sitting around, I decided to buy it. (Normal price is 21€, I paid somewhere around 14€).

Since then, I’ve had a ridiculous amount of fun with it – certainly the most I can ever recall having with any racing game I played with a controller. Its art design and style is very unique and combines a bird’s eye view of artfully designed lo-fi environments with (fairly) detailed car models, a challenging driving model and gorgeous engine sounds. The pops, the cracks, the flames from the exhaust, the noise as the car pitches its weight around… it’s all there and it’s great. Perhaps most importantly, though, the driving in this game is on point as well. Every car handles markedly different from the next one, and the Group B, S and A monsters in particular are just incredibly fun. It’s super satisfying when you can throw the car into a hairpin, countersteer to keep it pointed in the right direction and power your way through with just the right amount of throttle input. You probably need to fiddle with the settings a little bit to get comfortable, but once you have it figured out it’s a blast.

No matter whether you want to have a drive around between logs in the Finnish countryside or brave the treacherous depths of Kenyan lakes/mud puddles, art of rally has the right environment for you. Off the top of my head, I can count Finland, Italy (Sardinia), Japan, Norway, Germany and Kenya. Locations can be visited on the dedicated special stages or in free roam mode, where you can hunt collectibles on a larger map unrelated to the stages. The career mode takes you from the 1960s all the way into the 1990s, with progressively longer rallies and faster cars, some of which you unlock through career mode progress.

Bonus points for the creative naming of the cars to avoid licensing issues (still laughing at “das uberwhip” for the BMW M1) and the small paragraph of backstory provided to each and every one of them.

All in all, I can wholeheartedly recommend this game, both as a love letter to the glory days of rallying and as a fun, challenging driving game. I’ve played it on PS5, but it’s also a available for PS4, XBOX and PC. Easy 10/10 for me.

 

https://twitter.com/Blizzard_Ent/status/1486038723468795906?s=20

Blizz starting development on a new IP Survival game.

 

I figured they'd be launching a new IP soon. The Blizzard modus operandi is basically "create franchise IP, let it slowly flounder and die, then create new IP."

 

I'm going to assume it's a bigger budget Valheim but we'll see