Yeah but it’s dead now

YES!

Yes milord!

Yes

This is it, guys. Console gaming’s over now 🙄

Just a big json file? I’m down

In fact, that’s core to the concept of an “image” at the most abstract level

You mean like in Toys

Because it requires computing power from the GPU to translate the terrain into an image of the terrain. They’re using your local GPU for that since GPUs are expensive, and also it minimizes latency between control input and view update. If you turn the camera you want that new view immediately, not 200ms later.

30

In the US, ISPs are government-enforced monopolies.

Left4Dead 2

Great flow game

No, I’m not asking for Planetside. You said what I’m asking for is Planetside, not me.

What I don’t like about Planetside is the shit graphics, the fact that the entire game is circle-strafing polygon spiders around on a GTA motorcycle, the fact that enemies simply teleport into existence and in perfect proportion to the number of people nearby, the monotonous world design, etc.

Quantum computers can solve some differential equation problems in essentially zero time. You seem to assume that most heavy lifting cannot be expressed in terms of this data type; that seems premature to me.

Quantum computers are insanely powerful computers. Their performance on the class of problems which they can solve is essentially infinite.

It’s investors for sure. Customer-focused companies don’t have this level of delusion in their management.

The time off should be well over the amount of extra weekend time, to account for the nonlinear negative effects of going 14 days on.

Like each weekend worked should yield a week of PTO.

And it should be an optional trade.

What does it mean? They get vacation days equal to the weekends they put in?

Planetside blows

“What makes money” is always relative to how much it costs to make though.

I would argue the market for every kind of game is expanding. There’s a bigger market for Tetris now than there was in 1987, in terms of actual economic resources that could go into making Tetris profitably.

The Tetris market is a smaller percentage share of the overall gaming market, but in absolute terms it’s more money than it was in 1987.

That’s my suspicion at least.

Then the challenge is connecting that market slice with the dev shop that wants to serve that market slice. Which isn’t trivial. But I think it’s worth keeping in mind.

Every market is getting bigger, based on at least these four factors:

• More cultural acceptance of gaming
• Higher percentage of humanity achieving economic status where leisure becomes relevant
• Proliferation of technology to greater portion of humanity
• Expansion of human population

All markets are growing.

Heck, the market for COBOL programmers is larger today than ever before. That’s really interesting if you think about it.

Good story and fun replayability (to me that means branching story paths and discoverability) is tough to combine. I’m hopeful for generative AI’s ability to make good stories that are also unique. Real, in depth dialogue that stays in character, AI directors for new story paths, that kind of thing.

Halo as an open world is fucking awesome. I love Infinite.

The next step, in terms of budget and computing power required, which I eagerly await, is a massively multiplayer co-op Halo:

• open universe
• Humanity versus Covenant
• massively co-op
• 10,000+ humans in perpetual battle against endless Covenant invasion

That’s probably gonna require billion dollar budgets and quantum computers to pull off, but it’s coming. And I can’t fucking wait.

Another way to look at it is that the multiplayer market is the only pool of money big enough to support games at that level.

Maybe if single player gamers would be accepting of feature scopes from 10-15 years ago, there’d be a stable niche for single player games.

I’m in my 40s and only get enjoyment from multiplayer games. Single player just dries up for me in terms of dopamine release.

When I was in my 20s I was unsocial, heavily autistic, couldn’t stand multiplayer because I didn’t control the variables.

Basically, my wallet and my brain followed a coupled pair of paths. The version of me with more money has more need for other people in my games.

I have more tolerance for other people. But also I’m more lonely in life. Used to be, games were a refuge from the other people I was constantly surrounded by in school, college, roommate situations. I could just go be alone and have fun, and I needed to be alone.

And that was when I was broke.

Now, I have more money, and I crave social contact. I live alone, don’t have constant social overwhelm any longer. Games aren’t my refuge of solitude any more. Now they’re a way to feel other people without having to go out my front door.

I’m not made of money, but I can afford games now.

Probably a connection there.

My main thesis though is just that maybe the world of multiplayer gaming just has more money in it period. Maybe it’s only the world of multiplayer gaming that can actually support AAA games’ budgets.

15 years ago, no game had a budget with the same orders of magnitude we see these days. Also, 15 years ago the oldest gamer demographics were 15 years younger.

Which brings me back to my original point: maybe it’s not that the multiplayer games are somehow nullifying the market for AAA single player games; maybe it’s just that no such market ever existed. That the multiplayer market is a new market that didn’t exist 15 years ago, not a transformation of an existing market.

For me at least the correlation is that me having this kind of gaming budget is correlated with me having overall social isolation more than overall social overwhelm like I did in my twenties.

Hell is a crucible that produces gods and ash.