FMPONE

watch Epic Games steal this and make it exclusive LOL

EA is just competing with themselves when Apex is doing so well. Strange stuff.

If graphics get crazy enough such that hardware manufacturers can't keep prices low enough for the average consumer, or developers can no longer afford to optimize what they're making, or consumers get sold on the idea of "hyper-realistic" rendering that only Google data-centers could provide I can see this taking off. Not sure America's shitty infrastructure could handle the streaming aspect. Ultimately this being successful wouldn't be great for anyone except Google.

This video, I think very convincingly, ties the success of Apex Legends to the worsening and widespread income inequality we see throughout our society. The central thesis touches on a lot of topics that seem especially relevant these days, such as the ongoing "race to the bottom" of game development, conversion to parasitic F2P/spotify models, handing over industry-wide promotion to monopolies like Amazon via Twitch "influencers". It seems like quite a fun game and I obviously think it's great that Respawn has a bonafide hit on their hands. But on the other hand, it's hard to imagine the business model it pushes and normalizes being sustainable in the long term once the concept of "microtransactions" has less novelty to consumers, nor healthy for the industry at large when BR games cannibalize eachother's success so rapidly, and games that aren't chasing the BR trend hardly stand to be profitable.

Heard this in a few places. Sounds like it’s on the list!

Playing Dead Cells currently. I like the gameplay (sometimes) and the visuals are mostly OK and not bad. Not a big fan of the gameplay gimmick or the repetition. However, I just keep coming back to it during downtime. It’s very addicting... Think I’m ready to move onto RE2

That was a very good trailer. Andre 3000!

We enjoyed the gameplay on this one quite a bit and saw a very easy, linear path to having it look great too. Excited to run around the new version with all the updates. I remember the path where the bridge was felt great, and where the trees used to be feeling odd and disconnected, curious to see if that has been improved.

I think there is a connection there. You still see some interesting single player games and legacy multiplayer games coming out, but the battle royale trend of racing to the bottom of pricing making everything free, and all going for the same BR audience, everyone chasing that same fad... there is definitely an air of unsustainability IMO. Seems harder than ever to successfully attract an audience to a lower or mid-size game, and even huge studios are doing the same thing and immediately undercutting each other. I guess that was always the case but it’s really obvious now how the evolution played out in BR and how short each games window of access to the shifting attention span of the community really was. You better hope you can monetize them while they’re around, because otherwise I don’t see how the effort is worth it for these big studios let alone the smaller ones trying to create content outside of the big trend-seeking games. Seems like a weird time for the market from a pure developer standpoint.

Is anyone else experiencing these bugs?

I’m really really dying to play this. Should be able to dedicate time to it in March. Can’t come soon enough...

Really solid work from the community last year with a better year-end article as well. Nice.

Sounds great, it might be really fun to make a mod for Black Mesa then hook it up to Steam like that.

More of a technical question, I suppose. If the BMS team would be supportive of Total Conversion type mods that use the Black Mesa tech to package a new experience, that would be ideal IMO. I guess my question was more geared to how you can release a mod of Black Mesa (as long as you have purchased the game and have it installed on Steam). Would be nice if there was a way to create a Steam page for the mod, I've seen a bunch of HL1 and 2 mods doing that. Like this: https://store.steampowered.com/about/communitymods/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/587650/HalfLife_2_DownFall/

That was definitely not the best trailer I’ve ever seen. I’ve always felt that it would be very difficult to follow up a directorial debut as good as Get Out. There was a lot of pressure on Jordan Peele to follow the movie up immediately, right away, perhaps before he even had a good idea ready to go... Thankfully Jordan Peele seems like a student of film so I’m sure he’s approaching this in a smart way. The plot just seems a bit stupid. Hoping for the best here!!