General Gaming News.

[CriticalGaming]

it's a failure of management

You say this everytime and it's just not always true. In some cases, yes it absolutely is a failure of management. But more often than not, it's got nothing to do with management. Often times it's the devs not being able to get a feature working correctly, or sometimes it's even the game running low on budget.

Crunch would be nice to get rid of completely but there are limitations to what can happen. If a company comes to EA and says "We need 45million to make the next Battlefield and two years." EA then expects that shit to be done in two years. And shit can go wrong, where bugs are causing unforseen shit to happen in the game while they scramble to fix it.

Or back in the day of Movie tie-in games a publish would go to one of their dev studios and go, "We need a Shrek game in 18 months can you do it?" If the studio say yes, then they better fucking have that game out by the deadline period.

The point is that it's not always Bobby Kotick's fault. Except in the broadest and vaguest of ways which as much as i hate the guy, I dont think is a fair bar.

Bottom line is projects have to be done by deadlines and within budget. If crunch is needed to make that happen, then that's why they do. Think about it like this, school teacher assigns you homework due on Monday, if that shit aint ready on monday sometimes you can get an extension with a good excuse, but otherwise you get a docked points for being late, or an outright zero. The zeros in business are usually you getting fired.

A lot of crunch can be the result of dev team ambition. Like trying to add more features or gameplay elements than they can really handle. Cyberpunk suffered from this, where they just kept trying to add features they didn't need and it kept fucking the game up until the bosses were tired of sinking money into a deadend project and demanded release.

 

[BrawlMan]

You say this everytime and it's just not always true

It is most of the time. We've been through this already, and I'm not doing it again. You seen this video before ,btw.

​

 

[CriticalGaming]

​

I'd love to talk more about this video because there is stuff in here that I absolutely don't agree with. Like to be front, QA is not part of the dev team at all. The reason for that is that QA doesn't do any creation of the product, they just make sure the product works and when it doesn't the developers are told about it. That's it.

I mean QA usually isn't even brought into a projct until the game is almost done anyway. Every company does this a little differently but QA usually is brought in during pre-alpha when the game's systems are in place and most of the game should be functional. One thing QA is not, is reviewers. QA doesn't provide ideas on how to make the game better overall, we just showcase where the game is breaking so that the end-user doesn't see that. Things like crashes, or soft locks are the major things but there are other elements like visuals and mechanical things that need correcting.

But QA itself isn't developing anything, they dont make changes to the overall game nor do they suggest overall changes unless it would directly fix a bug or a submission problem. There are two types of QA, people that test to fix bugs, and others that test to pass submission. These later QA people might suggest things that can be changed for compliance reasons but no actual work with the game code is done by QA.

There is sometimes friction between devs and QA for this reason. They create this crazy game and the QA just sends you lists of all this shit that's wrong with it. For the most part I've never seen devs being toxic towards QA because I think most rational dev teams know that the QA department is important.....except Bethesda who I don't think has QA at all.

Not saying the devs don't talk shit on QA, because I'm sure it does, and that absolutely shouldn't happen.

I don't know these guy's names but from the stories that dude is sharing, I think he worked for a third party QA company that handled projects from all over the place. So his experiences are clearly different than mine because i was in-house at Activision working only on Activision products. So things like devs swapping in and out of projects didn't happen in the same way as he describes where the devs would actually be asking the QA team WTF is going on?

In that case maybe those teams are treated different than in-house QA which is why his experience is so drastically contrasted to mine. The third party nature of his QA experience might have to do with his impressions of QA treatment, because i certainly never got any of that when I worked directly for Activision so I dunno.

There is also possibly and era gap. I don't know how old he is, and it's possible that the people he worked with just developed a bad attitude towards QA. Who really can say.

The experience coul dhave certainly gone to shit.

 

[BrawlMan]

I mean QA usually isn't even brought into a projct until the game is almost done anyway. Every company does this a little differently but QA usually is brought in during pre-alpha when the game's systems are in place and most of the game should be functional. One thing QA is not, is reviewers. QA doesn't provide ideas on how to make the game better overall, we just showcase where the game is breaking so that the end-user doesn't see that. Things like crashes, or soft locks are the major things but there are other elements like visuals and mechanical things that need correcting.

I am sure that is the case, but not everything is 1-to-1.

But QA itself isn't developing anything, they dont make changes to the overall game nor do they suggest overall changes unless it would directly fix a bug or a submission problem. There are two types of QA, people that test to fix bugs, and others that test to pass submission. These later QA people might suggest things that can be changed for compliance reasons but no actual work with the game code is done by QA.

There is sometimes friction between devs and QA for this reason. They create this crazy game and the QA just sends you lists of all this shit that's wrong with it. For the most part I've never seen devs being toxic towards QA because I think most rational dev teams know that the QA department is important.....except Bethesda who I don't think has QA at all.

Not saying the devs don't talk shit on QA, because I'm sure it does, and that absolutely shouldn't happen.

I don't know these guy's names but from the stories that dude is sharing, I think he worked for a third party QA company that handled projects from all over the place. So his experiences are clearly different than mine because i was in-house at Activision working only on Activision products. So things like devs swapping in and out of projects didn't happen in the same way as he describes where the devs would actually be asking the QA team WTF is going on?

I'd love to talk more about this video because there is stuff in here that I absolutely don't agree with. Like to be front, QA is not part of the dev team at all. The reason for that is that QA doesn't do any creation of the product, they just make sure the product works and when it doesn't the developers are told about it. That's it.

Whatever you disagree with or take issue, then I suggest you actually talk to Woolie.

In that case maybe those teams are treated different than in-house QA which is why his experience is so drastically contrasted to mine. The third party nature of his QA experience might have to do with his impressions of QA treatment, because i certainly never got any of that when I worked directly for Activision so I dunno.

There is also possibly and era gap. I don't know how old he is, and it's possible that the people he worked with just developed a bad attitude towards QA. Who really can say.

The experience coul dhave certainly gone to shit.

Everyone's experiences are different from your own. So you kinda answered your own question, but I am sure stuff like this has happened in house before.

 

[BrawlMan]

You dumb sons of bitches; have fun losing all that money.

Sony and the Lego family bet big on the 'metaverse' with $2 billion investment in Epic Games

It comes after Epic and Lego announced plans to co-develop a "family-friendly" metaverse for kids.

www.cnbc.com

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Is On Track To Be The Biggest Video Game Movie Ever

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 blew box office expectations in its opening weekend, especially for a video game movie. Its initial earnings even beat out Detective Pikachu.

kotaku.com

Chinese gaming stocks jump as regulator approves new titles after months-long freeze

Shares of NetEase, Bilibili and other Chinese gaming stocks were higher after regulators approved the first batch of games for monetization since July 2021.

www.cnbc.com

Kingdom Hearts 4 will be upgraded to Unreal 5 by release and ‘take visuals several levels higher’ | VGC

The footage shown on Sunday was reportedly running in Unreal Engine 4…

www.videogameschronicle.com

 

[Specter Von Baren]

You dumb sons of bitches; have fun losing al that money.

Sony and the Lego family bet big on the 'metaverse' with $2 billion investment in Epic Games

It comes after Epic and Lego announced plans to co-develop a "family-friendly" metaverse for kids.

www.cnbc.com

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Is On Track To Be The Biggest Video Game Movie Ever

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 blew box office expectations in its opening weekend, especially for a video game movie. Its initial earnings even beat out Detective Pikachu.

kotaku.com

Chinese gaming stocks jump as regulator approves new titles after months-long freeze

Shares of NetEase, Bilibili and other Chinese gaming stocks were higher after regulators approved the first batch of games for monetization since July 2021.

www.cnbc.com

Kingdom Hearts 4 will be upgraded to Unreal 5 by release and ‘take visuals several levels higher’ | VGC

The footage shown on Sunday was reportedly running in Unreal Engine 4…

www.videogameschronicle.com

Isn't lego already a "metaverse" or whatever the hell you wanna call it?

 

[BrawlMan]

Isn't lego already a "metaverse" or whatever the hell you wanna call it?

Unless real life Legos were already "metaverse" you could actually build without computers.​

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

You say this everytime and it's just not always true. In some cases, yes it absolutely is a failure of management. But more often than not, it's got nothing to do with management. Often times it's the devs not being able to get a feature working correctly, or sometimes it's even the game running low on budget.

Crunch would be nice to get rid of completely but there are limitations to what can happen. If a company comes to EA and says "We need 45million to make the next Battlefield and two years." EA then expects that shit to be done in two years. And shit can go wrong, where bugs are causing unforseen shit to happen in the game while they scramble to fix it.

Or back in the day of Movie tie-in games a publish would go to one of their dev studios and go, "We need a Shrek game in 18 months can you do it?" If the studio say yes, then they better fucking have that game out by the deadline period.

The point is that it's not always Bobby Kotick's fault. Except in the broadest and vaguest of ways which as much as i hate the guy, I dont think is a fair bar.

Bottom line is projects have to be done by deadlines and within budget. If crunch is needed to make that happen, then that's why they do. Think about it like this, school teacher assigns you homework due on Monday, if that shit aint ready on monday sometimes you can get an extension with a good excuse, but otherwise you get a docked points for being late, or an outright zero. The zeros in business are usually you getting fired.

A lot of crunch can be the result of dev team ambition. Like trying to add more features or gameplay elements than they can really handle. Cyberpunk suffered from this, where they just kept trying to add features they didn't need and it kept fucking the game up until the bosses were tired of sinking money into a deadend project and demanded release.

I wonder how much of it is also devs being over eager/ego to please their bosses and saying shit that they know damn well ain’t realistically possible. Any dev team with experience under their belt knows shit goes wrong even on good days. Maybe OTOH they feel obligated like a second nature being under constant pressure to perform, so that’s a separate hurdle in itself. But in general, it’s reminds me of when sales people seem to get that rush about gaining new business and start promising shit when the people responsible for actually producing the goods are like the dog owner desperately holding the leash.

 

[BrawlMan]

wonder how much of it is also devs being over eager/ego to please their bosses and saying shit that they know damn well ain’t realistically possible. Any dev team with experience under their belt knows shit goes wrong even on good days. Maybe OTOH they feel obligated like a second nature being under constant pressure to perform, so that’s a separate hurdle in itself

Are part of why crunching and systematic abuse suck. It causes the totem pole effect and toxicity towards everyone. Even if and when said developers are trying to please their egos or their bosses, that doesn't give them a right to act like jackasses towards their QA people. QA is just as important as a programmers themselves, even more so in a good amount of cases.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I wonder how much of it is also devs being over eager/ego to please their bosses and saying shit that they know damn well ain’t realistically possible. Any dev team with experience under their belt knows shit goes wrong even on good days. Maybe OTOH they feel obligated like a second nature being under constant pressure to perform, so that’s a separate hurdle in itself. But in general, it’s reminds me of when sales people seem to get that rush about gaining new business and start promising shit when the people responsible for actually producing the goods are like the dog owner desperately holding the leash.

I mean I can see how devs would not like QA because they probably know that every bug QA finds, is more development time fixing the bugs. And also when you are creating something, the last thing you want is a bunch of people telling you all the shit that's wrong with it. QA doesn't tell you your game is awesome, they only tell you wants fucked up. I think it depends on the team tbh, and also like I mentioned about Woolie in how he worked for a third party QA company which yields different treatment probably.

I've personally had developers praise my bugs, as some of the stuff i found broke the game in actually cool ways. One dev took one of my bugs and made it a cheat code for Shrek 3 the movie game. Other devs hated my bugs because they were compliance bugs which meant they were REQUIRED fixes and everytime they said they fixed it I would make the bug happen again and i could tell it was pissing them off. But I think it was frustration at the unfixable bug rather than anything against me.

Then there is some issue with people taking things too personally these days. There used to be a saying, "It's not personal, it's business". But with social media making everything into microagressions and being tramatized is celebrated, I can't but wonder if that has made people softer (especially younger people). So maybe devs expressing frustration at a bug or problem you find, is taken personally when it really shouldn't be. Who knows I might just be old and doing a "Back in my day" segment.

 

[BrawlMan]

mean I can see how devs would not like QA because they probably know that every bug QA finds, is more development time fixing the bugs. And also when you are creating something, the last thing you want is a bunch of people telling you all the shit that's wrong with it. QA doesn't tell you your game is awesome, they only tell you wants fucked up. I think it depends on the team tbh, and also like I mentioned about Woolie in how he worked for a third party QA company

The developers have a problem with it can suck it up. They know what the hell they signed up for. So they shouldn't be shocked there are problems that appear, even on a good day.

I've personally had developers praise my bugs, as some of the stuff i found broke the game in actually cool ways. One dev took one of my bugs and made it a cheat code for Shrek 3 the movie game. Other devs hated my bugs because they were compliance bugs which meant they were REQUIRED fixes and everytime they said they fixed it I would make the bug happen again and i could tell it was pissing them off. But I think it was frustration at the unfixable bug rather than anything against me.

Well there you go. The ones that got mad at you still shouldn't have taken it out on you though. I hope most of them apologize or at least make an attempt.

Then there is some issue with people taking things too personally these days. There used to be a saying, "It's not personal, it's business". But with social media making everything into microagressions and being tramatized is celebrated, I can't but wonder if that has made people softer (especially younger people). So maybe devs expressing frustration at a bug or problem you find, is taken personally when it really shouldn't be. Who knows I might just be old and doing a "Back in my day" segment.

It ain't just younger people. Most of them have to get it from somewhere. Honestly, I have seen more older people freak out on Twitter, then the younger ones. Not saying that the young ones don't exist, but the blame don't go all to them. Do not get me started on hypersensitive alt right conservatives, or older gamers who get upset because politics is about playing people at different genders or colors.

Edit: Considering how you act on the current events forum many times, you're one to talk about oversensitivity.

 

[BrawlMan]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/esports/2022/04/11/playvs-high-school-esports/

The video game that is also an art museum

A (virtual) night at the museum.

www.theverge.com

‘Ghost Of Tsushima’: Chad Stahelski Feature Take Of Sony PlayStation Game Sets Writer With Takashi Doscher

'Ghost of Tsushima': Chad Stahelski Feature Take Of Sony PlayStation Game Sets Writer With Takashi Doscher.

deadline.com

 

[Specter Von Baren]

The video game that is also an art museum

A (virtual) night at the museum.

www.theverge.com

Thought this was talking about the release of Ib on Steam. Pah, of course journalists wouldn't have actual class.

 

[BrawlMan]

Thought this was talking about the release of Ib on Steam. Pah, of course journalists wouldn't have actual class.

I have not even read the article. I was just trying to find any news that was sane or nothing too stupid.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I mean I can see how devs would not like QA because they probably know that every bug QA finds, is more development time fixing the bugs. And also when you are creating something, the last thing you want is a bunch of people telling you all the shit that's wrong with it. QA doesn't tell you your game is awesome, they only tell you wants fucked up. I think it depends on the team tbh, and also like I mentioned about Woolie in how he worked for a third party QA company which yields different treatment probably.

I've personally had developers praise my bugs, as some of the stuff i found broke the game in actually cool ways. One dev took one of my bugs and made it a cheat code for Shrek 3 the movie game. Other devs hated my bugs because they were compliance bugs which meant they were REQUIRED fixes and everytime they said they fixed it I would make the bug happen again and i could tell it was pissing them off. But I think it was frustration at the unfixable bug rather than anything against me.

Then there is some issue with people taking things too personally these days. There used to be a saying, "It's not personal, it's business". But with social media making everything into microagressions and being tramatized is celebrated, I can't but wonder if that has made people softer (especially younger people). So maybe devs expressing frustration at a bug or problem you find, is taken personally when it really shouldn't be. Who knows I might just be old and doing a "Back in my day" segment.

There’s definitely truth to that, in the age of participation trophies. Kids need to be taught how to handle disappointment or it’s setting them up for a tougher road than needed in the game of life.

 

[sXeth]

I'm still wondering how much money they did make off NMS originally, cause thats like expansion #30 or something, 5 and a half years later with no microtransactions.. Which I think is only matchable by possibly Minecraft (Though the console versions always had skins and such, and Microsoft added the full on microtransaction model)

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I'm still wondering how much money they did make off NMS originally, cause thats like expansion #30 or something, 5 and a half years later with no microtransactions.. Which I think is only matchable by possibly Minecraft (Though the console versions always had skins and such, and Microsoft added the full on microtransaction model)

So Minecraft was mtx-less until Microsoft bought the IP for 2.5 billion dollars? Hmmm. Well, I guess that kind of investment wasn’t going to pay for itself or anything!

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

A Leak Points To A DualSense Firmware Update Application For Windows & Mac Coming From PlayStation - PlayStation Universe

A leak directly coming out of PlayStation itself points to a DualSense firmware update application coming soon for Windows & Mac devices.

www.psu.com

Hopefully for full haptics/trigger support, which makes sense as Sony puts more games on PC.

 

[BrawlMan]

The game did not perform well before being put on PS Plus. Stop shifting blame, Soulstorm lived and died on its own merits.

PlayStation Plus was ‘devastating’ for Oddworld: Soulstorm sales, claims creator | VGC

Lorne Lanning, the creator of the Oddworld series, has said that including his most recent game, Oddworld: Soulstorm in PlayStation Plus as a free monthly game was “devasting”.

www.videogameschronicle.com

Carbon is a big problem. Thank you for those actually trying to do something about it.

TechScape: Will the video games industry ever confront its carbon footprint?

In this week’s newsletter: from the environmental impact of servers and plastic packaging down to the energy our PCs and consoles consume, the sector can no longer afford to play around

www.theguardian.com

You might wanna get a jump on finishing the game. Or just watch a non-commentary playthrough on YT.

The Last of Us Adaptation Is ‘Similar’ to How Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni Treat The Mandalorian, Pedro Pascal Says - IGN

Pedro Pascal, who is set to play Joel in the upcoming Last of Us series on HBO, says the show "really is made for the people that love" The Last of Us.

www.ign.com

Excellent.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/04/12/usc-scholarship-race-game-development/

The Best Video Game Sale Of The Season Is Actually On 3DS

Persona and other JRPGs get huge discounts on Nintendo's older handheld

kotaku.com

The Giant Gaming Leak That Keeps Getting Vindicated

Kingdom Hearts 4 is the latest example of Nvidia’s leaked GeForce Now list of upcoming games becoming real

kotaku.com

Hollywood's Magic Castle bought by video game maker

Articles and videos about Hollywood's Magic Castle bought by video game maker on FOX 11 Los Angeles.

www.foxla.com

No fucking duh! It took over 15 years for people to figure this out?!

Better coaching needed to prevent burnout among video gaming pros

Early research into the growing electronic sports (esports) industry highlights a need for better coaching to prevent burnout among professional players.

www.sciencedaily.com

It already begins. Nothing new here.

Microsoft is reportedly working on an improved Xbox Series X chip | VGC

Microsoft is reportedly working on an improved chip for the Xbox Series X according to a journalist.

www.videogameschronicle.com

 

[FakeSympathy]

BF2042 player count is now below 1000

Battlefield™ 2042 - Steam Charts

An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers, seeing what's been played the most.

steamcharts.com

And the "early" April update has been delayed:

JFC, I actually feel bad for the franchise now. I actually want EA to put it out of its misery.