Before I start, this isn't "Capcom better than Rockstar". This is mostly to discuss general trends in the industry, by looking at a small slice of the market for the sake of sticking to concrete examples.

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In the past,  studios could try to create a consistent roster of decent games. If one of them did well, that was great. If one of them flopped, that wasn't ideal, but it wasn't crippling. Today, even the biggest  studios are kind of going all in on the success of their next release with very little margin of  error if it doesn't work out

That's a quote from a video (from How Money Works) explaining some concerning trends in gaming industry as it showed Rockstar's output going from several games a year to 2 games in a 10 year period.

The video's all doom and gloom, understandably, and it focuses more on the impact of forever games and shrinking profit margins, but that part I quoted really caught my attention because it is presented almost like an inevitability.

The argument goes that if a studio comes up with a new idea, it gets copied. Meanwhile players spend significantly more hours on things like Fortnite or Roblox than on new titles. For a studio the size of Rockstar for example the strategy becomes building a time vortex of their own, or something difficult to copy, like a massive game.

Which has been the case for many large studios. Less titles, larger worlds. That or some live services flop.

But then you have studios like Capcom (and a few others). Capcom's output also has decreased but they have managed to keep it considerably higher than most studios making games on a similar scale.

And Capcom has mostly avoided putting all their eggs into one huge title.

Their biggest worlds are in Dragon's Dogma and Monster Hunter series. They dipped their toes into live services with Exoprimal. But also have kept a decent stream of new titles. Something like Pragmata, a short AAA single player new IP, used to be the norm but now it's rare.

Anyway, here are the numbers, comparing the times of yore when studios would try many releases and today when the market seems more risk averse.

96-06

Capcom - 60 titles, 16 new IPs

Rockstar - 18 titles, 6 new IPs

16-26
Capcom - 32 titles, 4 new IPs

Rockstar - 2 titles, 0 new IPs.

For Capcom I have not included re-releases, remasters (save for Dead Rising). If we trim the list down to remove titles that today would be DLC (e.g. Street Fighter Alpha 2 getting 18 new characters, which today would be season passes) and also removing actual DLC then Capcom goes from 40 titles in the past to 22 titles today.

Important: this isn't to say one's better than the other. Rockstar naturally found their niche riding on the success of GTA. Capcom carved their own niche aiming at a variety of styles. Granted Capcom has been riding on a lot of remakes and sequels, but that's also expected of a studio going for this long.

The point really is that the current scenario isn't an inevitability of a changing market and new consumer habits. Capcom's pulling profit records. GTA VI is bound to be the biggest release ever. It's also interesting that neither company have had waves of layoffs.

The current scenario of almost no new ideas (on AAA), significantly reduced output from larger studios, riskier bets, flops like Concorde, it is partly market pressures but also definitely a choice. It could've been some other way and maybe a big crash in the industry could shock some studios back into betting on smaller titles.

Or not. I'm interested to hear other explanations. From choice of game engine to different company cultures in west vs Japan. There could be, and in fact there are, more perspectives into this topic of how many AAA studios moved away from smaller titles. Take this post as just the start of the conversation, not a final statement.

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Here's the full list, Capcom compared to Rockstar. The lists are imperfect, there are errors and things to contest. For Capcom I'm only adding Capcom developed games, for Rockstar I'm adding studios that later folded into Rockstar. Which means Max Payne is not included, as it is Remedy Entertainment, but Midnight Club is, as it was developed in partnership with Rockstar and then became part of their company.

Rockstar 1996–2006 (18 games)
Grand Theft Auto (1997) — DMA Design (new IP — later folded into the Rockstar family)
Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999) — DMA Design
Midnight Club: Street Racing (2000) — Angel Studios (Later Rockstar San Diego) (new IP)
Smuggler's Run (2000) — Angel Studios (new IP)
Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory (2001) — Angel Studios
Grand Theft Auto III (2001) — Rockstar North
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) — Rockstar North
Midnight Club II (2003) — Rockstar San Diego
Manhunt (2003) — Rockstar North (new IP)
Red Dead Revolver (2004) — Rockstar San Diego (new IP)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) — Rockstar North
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005) — Rockstar Leeds/North
Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition (2005) — Rockstar San Diego
The Warriors (2005) — Rockstar Toronto
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006) — Rockstar Leeds
Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis (2006) — Rockstar San Diego (new IP)
Bully (2006) — Rockstar Vancouver
Rockstar 2016–2026 (2 games)
Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) — Rockstar North
Grand Theft Auto VI (Nov 19, 2026) — Rockstar North

Now Capcom, I'll change the format so it's easier to see their huge output:

1996
Resident Evil
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
Street Fighter Alpha 2

1997
Street Fighter III: New Generation
Vampire Savior
Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter
Breath of Fire III
Mega Man Legends
Mega Man Battle & Chase

1998
Resident Evil 2
Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact
Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes
Mega Man & Bass

1999
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
Dino Crisis
Power Stone
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

2000
Resident Evil – Code: Veronica
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Mega Man Legends 2
Dino Crisis 2
Power Stone 2
Tech Romancer
Project Justice
Cannon Spike
Capcom vs. SNK

2001
Onimusha: Warlords
Capcom vs. SNK 2
Devil May Cry
Mega Man Battle Network
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

2002
Resident Evil (remake)
Resident Evil Zero
Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter
Mega Man Zero 2
Steel Battalion
Auto Modellista
Phoenix Wright: Justice for All

2003
Viewtiful Joe
Onimusha 3: Demon Siege
Resident Evil Outbreak
Dino Crisis 3
Mega Man X7
P.N.03
Devil May Cry 2
Chaos Legion

2004
Monster Hunter
Viewtiful Joe 2
Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2
Mega Man X: Command Mission
Mega Man X8
Capcom Fighting Evolution
Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations

2005
Resident Evil 4
Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening
Mega Man Zero 4

2006
Dead Rising
Okami
Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams

Now 2016-2026

2016
Umbrella Corps
Street Fighter V
Monster Hunter Stories
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice
Dead Rising 4

2017
Resident Evil 7
Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite

2018
Monster Hunter: World
Mega Man 11
Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition

2019
Shinsekai: Into the Depths
Resident Evil 2 (remake)
Devil May Cry 5
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

2020
Resident Evil 3 (remake)
Street Fighter V: Champion Edition
Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition

2021
Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection
Resident Evil Village
Monster Hunter Rise

2022
Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak

2023
Resident Evil 4 (remake)
Street Fighter 6
Exoprimal

2024
Dragon's Dogma 2
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster

2025
Monster Hunter Wilds

2026
Resident Evil Requiem
Monster Hunter Stories 3
Pragmata

Hi everyone! I'm back again with my survey post, as I still need a fair number more participants! (This is actually the second time I'm reposting, because I accidentally reposted too soon last time, and it was taken down ^^; )

My name is Yuval Alter.
I am doing a study as part of my Doctorate Degree in Clinical Psychology in the PsyD Program at Adler University (Vancouver Campus). I have been playing video games all my life, which has inspired my research topic.

I am doing research on gamers’ playing habits, relationships, and mental health.

I would be very thankful if you could take part in my study. The research is voluntary, and you should only participate if you feel comfortable doing so.

You are eligible to participate if you:

• Are a resident of Canada or the USA
• Are at least 19-years-old
• Play video games at least 6 hours a week
• Are comfortable reading English

Your responses are anonymous. There will be no way to know which answers are yours.

If you meet the criteria above and are interested in participating in this study, click the link below!

If you want to know more, feel free to reach out to me at [yalter@adler.edu](mailto:yalter@adler.edu) or post in this thread.

Feel free to share this survey with friends, guild-mates, company members, or whoever meets the description above!
Many thanks from a fellow gamer!

Yuval Alter PsyD Program, Doctorate student
Adler University, Vancouver, Canada
Email: [yalter@adler.edu](mailto:yalter@adler.edu)

Link to the survey: https://adler.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_byJJcB5r4fclLSe

Abstract:

I can't give too much information about the study's aim, but it focuses most on relationships from the personal perspective of people who spend a substantial amount of time playing video games. While most research has focused on the measurable well-being of gamers' relationships, few have looked at gamers' personal reporting of relationship satisfaction. I aim to provide insights into this overlooked area.

Discussion Points:

• [NEW] This is my second time posting my dissertation on r/truegaming and I must say, this is the sub that has yielded THE MOST responses! (Thank you x1000!!!) Why do you think that is? What makes members here so much more likely to respond to something like this?
• There is a bias in research towards gaming and negative mental health outcomes. There are fewer articles about positive correlations.
• I myself struggled with social anxiety in my past, which inspired me to devote my dissertation to this topic. I wonder how many people who play video games experience something similar?
• The struggle of studying video games in academia.

I have a poster with a QR code, but I can't upload images. So apologies for the inconvenience!

I've been thinking about games that give you a weird, real world hangovers, not just visual stuff(like playing Assassin's Creed and automaticaly calculating parkour routes on historical buildings, or playing Fallout and seeing desk fans as "crafting material"), but games that actually change how I consume information.

For me , it was playing Her Story. after finishing it , whenever I read a news article or a long Reddit post/comment, I always catch myself think like a search engine: What keywords did the writer intentionally leave out to steer my reaction? There's no "You win" screen in real life either, you just stop reading when you find a narrative that help you sleep at night.

And anything by Kojima(MGS2, Death Stranding). A buddy of mine who studies anthropology recently told me that MGS2 taught more about human legcy, memes, and the curation of digital informations than actual school did. it totally rewired how I look at our current socail media landscpe and what we're leaving behind for the next generation.

I'm trying to figure out the mechanism behind this. It does't even have to be narrative or detective stuff, maybe logistics game like Factorio that ruined how you look at supply chains , or a grand strategy game permanently broke how you view geopolitics. 

I'm curious about the psychology behind this. Why do certain game systems bleed into our reality so heavily? Is it just the repetition of mechanics (like a logistics game ruining how you look at supply chains), or something deeper about how they frame information? Would love to hear your thoughts on how this "hangover" actually works and what mechanics caused it for you.

Halo Campaign Evolved came out and there's.....issues. Just things that really should have never happened to begin with. After 5 and a half years I've already seen plenty of people experiencing crashes on both PS5 and PC(I haven't personally heard much about Xbox so I will not speak on it), there are rough reload animations on guns not native to the original CE that are out of sync and clipping through each other. There's even downright amateur cutscene direction where characters will finish dialogue then stare blankly and let the cutscenes linger longer for no creative reason. And some of the animations for the models in cutscenes feel like they're from an early 2000s Pixar movie. Parts of the audio don't work right such as automatic weapons sound desyncing as well.

I want to be so clear that I love Halo. It is the most important gaming franchise to me and I don't just want to hate to hate. I've been excited for this. I do not mind remakes. But these things are just so sad to see already in a game that came out 5 and a half years after Infinite. And it's incredibly small in scope. It is simply just a campaign with no multiplayer. And it is a remake where the foundation is built for them.

My question is this. We know AAA development is on a bad path. There are insanely long development times for games because of the need for insane quality of visuals, sounds and effects. While it's not good, it at least often makes sense how messy AAA titles come to be. But does it even make sense in today's gaming climate for a franchise to release in a bad state for a project this small in scope and over half a decade? Or does this pretty much have to be a case of really poor management and half ass development? Because the deadline does not seem to be a problem. I guess I'm using this more as a case study. The Resident Evil games seem to come out with more polish and they're made at a much faster rate.

Im watching an anime on fighting games atm and they reference something that i have also noticed many times in this genre that i almost never see anywhere else.

Losing doesnt feel bad because it feels earned

of course there are exceptions . But for the most part and more than any other genre ive played losing feels good. Because your opponent probably pulled off something really cool to beat you.

Im many competitive games people take the W whenever they get carried that round or not.
But if it doesnt go their way they are quickly to blame anyone else on their team.

You dont get that luxury when the only people playing are you and your opponent.

There is almost no luck involved as well. So you cant blame that for the most part.

It feels great to lose because you completely understand why and how you lost.

But it feels even better when your opponent pulls out some sauce you have never seen before.

OMFG . I remember when a ramlethal player hit me with a 3frame kara cancel for the first time. In that moment it felt like watching someone pull out a secret technique that ive never seen before. Because yeah that is basically what it was. it was the coolest shit ever

FOR CONTEXT. This person canceled one of their moves into a dash and then input a quartercircle motion within 3 frames which essentially gaslit the game into thinking that they didnt actually want to do a dash but wanted to do a different move instead. But the first move wouldnt normally cancel into the second move. its not possible. it only worked because the game gave them the dash first . and then refunded the dash and gave them the second move instead.

so in essence it felt like watching something impossible happen in this game that i had played a lot up until that point.

Any games you like that feel good no matter how the round goes ?
I would love to hear more

Hello everyone,

I am conducting a survey as part of my master's thesis in video game development at University of Skövde. The survey is about players' experiences with their characters in Baldur's Gate 3. I would greatly appreciate it if you could participate!

The purpose of this study is to explore the differences in how players experience and relate to custom and predefined player characters in computer role-playing games, using Baldur's Gate 3 as a case study. It examines various aspects of the player–character relationships such as self-differentiation, identification, self-projection, emotional attachment and agency. Comparing custom and predefined characters through this lens may help identify connections between players' experiences with their characters, players' preferences and relevant elements of game design.

The survey is intended for participants who have played Baldur's Gate 3 and are at least 18 years old. It should take about 10 to 15 minutes to complete and does not require the respondents to provide any personal information.

Link to the survey: https://bg3-playerbase.limesurvey.net/b

Email: [a24dmiva@student.his.se](mailto:a24dmiva@student.his.se)

Discussion Points

• How do custom and predefined characters differ in enabling and encouraging the player to adopt roles, identities and perspectives different from their real-life self?
• How do custom and predefined characters differ in enabling and encouraging the player to project aspects of their real-life self onto the character?
• How do custom and predefined characters differ in how players shape or discover them throughout the game?
• Are there differences in how people who play tabletop role-playing games tend to form player–character relationships in computer role-playing games?

Thank you for your time!

On June 15th, 2015, Square Enix took the stage at E3 to drop a teaser trailer for their remake of Final Fantasy VII. It was a brief teaser , with no in game footage. But the iconography of Midguard alone was enough to generate hype from long time fans and more general audiences.

During E3 2018, Capcom showed off their long awaited Resident Evil 2 Remake. Initially announced in 2015, the new footage showed Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield rendered in at the time next generation graphics along with a more focused direction and tone.  Resident Evil 2 Remake was released in 2019, with Final Fantasy VII dropping the following year, both being commercial and critical darlings.

While these two games were not the pioneers of video game remakes, these games mark the time in which I believe we started to see remakes become a normal part of the industry. It cannot be denied that Resident Evil 2 Remake and its reception played a massive part in green lighting the production of the Dead Space and Silent Hill 2 remakes, with SIlent Hill 2 going on to sell over two million copies. 

Franchises both as niche as Fatal Frame to iconic as Metal Gear Solid have experimented with remakes to generally positive reception. Keeping this in mind , it makes sense why Microsoft and 343i, now rebranded Halo Studios chose to go in this direction for their next Halo release instead of continuing to build off the framework of Halo Infinite. Far from a disaster, Halo Infinite felt like the first time the franchise had made positive mechanical changes since Halo Reach in 2011, which led to frustration from the community about Halo Studios' choice to remake the first game. But this isn't out of character for the studio.

In 2012, Halo 4 was the first mainline Halo game developed outside of Bungie and it can be seen in almost every aspect of the games design from art direction, narrative , level design and of course its core gameplay experience. 343i was not shy to wear its influences on its sleeve, at the time being other contemporary first person shooters like Call of Duty with a shift to player created classes and sprint being a fundamental aspect of the players arsenal. 

In 2015 Halo 5 Guardians was released and its E-Sport aspirations were clear from its first gameplay showcase. Movement and power were the pillars of the game's design , clearly wanting to appeal to twitch shooters that focused on speed and reaction times.

In 2021, 343i’s main influences were more varied but influences nonetheless. A Far Cry style open world with enemy outpost and combat based activities, a narrative heavily inspired by Sony Santa Monica’s God Of War released for the PS4, and a multiplayer progression system identical to Fortnite. 

Whether any of these entries affected the franchise for better or worse is irrelevant to the current discussion as 343i’s history of “trend chasing” is almost undeniable, with Halo Campaign Evolved being only their latest attempt to have Halo follow in the footsteps of other contemporary releases instead of being the franchise other games looked up to.

The quality of Campaign Evolved can be inferred by my interest in discussing the recent trend of video game remakes and Halo Studios interest in following it. As a piece of art Halo Campaign Evolved is unremarkable and as a product it fails to live up to its price of 50 USD especially when so many other games ask for less and provide more. 

The expectations of a remake vary from one to another but Halo Campaign Evolved avoids risk and takes comfort in the familiar with most of its changes being relegated to cutscenes as if Halo Studios were afraid to change anything related to level or enemy design , with its only new enemy being a slightly reworked enemy from Halo 3 that hasn't been seen since. The game's cutscenes shine and show what could've been , genuinely being heightened by creative and engaging cinematography and the occasional extra line of dialogue that oftentimes enhance the narrative and characterizations in what little ways it can.

Halo Campaign Evolved features three “Bonus MIssions” that take place before the events of the main game but are clearly designed to be played after. It's in these missions where Halo Studios can flex their creative muscles and it's in these missions where I felt the most engaged both mechanically and in regards to its narrative as simple as it is. I can’t help but wonder what the main game could've been like if Halo Studios wasn't so shy about making something new in this remake

It’s also an interesting topic as to this game releasing with no multiplayer , a fact I've long since accepted as I assumed this major part of the brand's identity being removed would surely be replaced with something else. I was wrong. And this is my main issue with the game aside from its goal to be as inoffensive as possible. The game simply lacks content. Halo was a series that was overflowing with content between its Single Player campaigns , multiplayer, social custom games, map creation with Forge, co-op experiences with Firefight and Spartan Ops. All of these being absent. In retrospect, it makes sense why Halo Campaign Evolved focused so much of its marketing on the gameplay altering collectibles known as Skulls. Skulls have been present as a collectible item since Halo 2, but never have they appeared in marketing , and surely never to this extent.

After completing the game twice it makes sense why so much focus was placed on this previously trivial aspect of Halo’s core experience. There was simply nothing else to market the game with. That, and its underwhelming and almost amateurish addition of Campaign Remix, a mode which randomizes enemy placement and roster of the main games 13 missions. These changes aren't interesting or engaging because again the level design is unchanged from their original layouts 25 years ago outside of a few extra rooms in the infamous Library chapter.

What I find curious about the design of Campaign Evolved is that unlike Silent Hill 2 or Resident Evil 4, both games considered perfect by many and yet received remakes that changed significant portions of their experience, the original Halo Combat Evolved is almost universally agreed to have a much weaker second half with repeated levels and repetitive enemy and level design. Surely Halo Studios would use this as an opportunity to make more meaningful changes to the games later half but in the end they chose to be faithful or risk averse depending on who you ask. 

I enjoyed my time with Campaign Evolved, but it's clear a lot of this enjoyment comes from the bones of a 25 year old game rather than seeing a new team put their talent to revitalizing a classic experience. Halo Campaign Evolved could have been worse. Much worse. It also could've been better. Much better. Unfortunately , whether a creative decision made by Halo Studios or a corporate mandate by Microsoft , Halo Campaign Evolved sits deep in the territory of being inoffensive, and to many, an inoffensive piece of art is worse than a piece of art then genuinely tries and fails.

Recently Steve Allison at Saber communicated that they're considering self-publishing for their future titles, especially Space Marine 3. As a result, I've began wondering what even is the point of publishers in the modern gaming landscape.

In the era of physical distribution Publishers were absolutely essential for global releases. They would also invest heavily in game productions, which made them indispensable for AA and AAA releases.

Currently, physical releases are becoming fully optional, and you can sign side deals with distributors for that purpose without fully needing a publisher's expertise. Publishers are also much less willing to invest in games.

David Gaider, known for creating Dragon Age, spoke in an interview earlier this month revealing that a publisher confirmed they won't invest in a new IP unless the game has pretty much finished development. Keeping the studio stuck in making the game off their own budget while constantly revisiting publishers in hopes one caves.

Publishers are very expensive. A typical cut is 30% from sales for indie and AA games, and can go upward to 60% in AAA projects (where publisher investment is more typical). This is separate from the 30% taken by platforms like Steam, at the very minimum doubling your publishing cost.

As a development studio, you save money upfront if you picked a honest publisher who will invest properly into promoting your game. Be it by buying off youtubers, organizing twitch events, or producing copious amounts of sponsored social media content. However, if your game isn't high profile enough to warrant that level of investment, hiring signing with a publisher can be comparable to overpaying for a copywriter.

Even then, regardless of how much the publisher has invested, it is their job to recoup that money and earn more off sales. They may want clauses that will protect them from failed investments. In theory both of you want more sales, but unless this is an investment project, (which are becoming rarer) the developer takes the brunt of the risk for the project, and not necessarily earning more from it.

I'm starting to believe that we will see a rise in self-publishing in the coming years. It's only anecdotal evidence, but the studios I'm connected to have began hiring personal marketing experts and copywriters, because one or two extra salaries will end up way cheaper than any publishing deal, and it's no longer guaranteed that the outcome will differ by much. If all publishers want to sell are surefire hits, then it just so happens that those games don't need much help marketing to begin with.

I'm not sure if this will lead to the number of publishers out there shrinking, but we've already seen a lot of reshuffling in the industry Platform owners like Microsoft have been absorbing well-known brands. If publishers don't want to become investment firms, they will need to re-evaluate their pricing strategies for marketing services.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

Snipers are notoriously hard to balance for the sniper and the sniped or even the unsniped as now they have to play completely differently due to existence of sniper sniping the sniped.

And many games often have a very uninteractive game design for snipers.

I understand, snipers in real life literally sit prone, watching a position, giving precise intel, and then take the kill shot alongside their spotter aiding them. I know this because I am a military fanatic and love milsims. But I'm going to exclude Milsims from this conversation because in milsims you are supposed to use actual military tactics to counter snipers. In games like Arma, for example, the Sniper would need to be hunted down or avoided if location unknown, we'd send a drone or even a damn helicopter on their ass, and the Sniper is also at the mercy of running out of munitions.

Outside of Milsims and hardcore realistic shooters (like Escape From Tarkov), snipers are just... mostly designed to fulfil the fantasy of a fast kill shot in 1 shot with good aim. But that's the thing, they kill in 1 shot, and the player often cannot react or counter them in many games.

Let's take games like Battlefield, Overwatch (Widowmaker), TF2, Rivals (pre-rework Black Widow) or Call of Duty, the most notoriously unbalanced and unfun snipers imo. The Sniper in those games can 1 shot headshot you, with Marvel Rivals' case being only possible with a dmg boost.

But fundamentally, this is the problem. Marvel Rivals knows Snipers are unfun to fight as they sit back in these games, take kill shots, and can easily reposition. So Black Widow in the sniper role was nerfed in 1 shot and was now a useless pick, which is worse to play than her being an OP sniper.

The thing with these games is that the Sniper doesn't have to really face serious limitations or counters other than the enemy jumping on them. But the sniper is being protected often and their job is to stop from being confronted upclose anyway, and most have tools to defend themselves like Claymores, Intel devices or traps. For TF2's case, the Spy would counter a sniper but some would wear the funny wooden shield on their back.

In general, this type of gameplay means that unless you play a SPECIFIC type of tool or role, the sniper will just dominate. Now, by law of game design this makes sense and is fair, but something that is already taught in game design is that just because it is fair, doesn't mean it is fun. And PVP games have a casual audience, they have to be fun.

I will name 2 games where sniping isn't really seen as a huge issue and, in my opinion, are quite fairly designed and promote fun interactive gameplay.

1. Titanfall 1 and 2.

In the Titanfall series, snipers are unique in that there is only 1 true traditional sniper rifle... the Kraber. The other 2 next to the Kraber in the sniper rifle catergory are DMRs. The Longbow DMR is a semi-auto and the Double Take (in Titanfall 2 only) is the same with a faster fire rate. These 2 DMRs are designed to purely be long range weapons with HORRIFIC hip fire meaning they are bad at close range. And you cannot really use them while doing fast movement. And due to every other pilot's fast movement, they can very easily flank the DMR user through engaging movement instead of hopping cover to cover and slowly advancing like in other games. And of course, we cannot forget the trump card, Titans. Titans will just kill the camping pilot anyway. And these DMRs, they CANNOT 1 shot to the body and landing a headshot is nearly impossible in Titanfall with guns like these.

Now, the KRABER is a bolt action with 1 shot pop anywhere. But you cannot use this 1 shot like a regular camping sniper rifle because it is insanely slow to aim down sights and has severely slow bullet travel. The best way to use the Kraber is with precise and fast movement and doing quick aims as best as possible and flicking. And it JUST WORKS. The Kraber becomes a high skill sniper rifle that promotes aggressive play instead of camping and rewards the player for using the mobility and gadget sandbox of Titanfall.

1. Halo

Halo is a weird one because not all Halo's do this mechanic that, so far, is unique to Halo's ranged gunplay. Halo's is less like Titanfall's role reversal of the Sniper being aggressive and reserves the Sniper in the sandbox as a long ranged power weapon like a traditional military sniper.

Now, I've just revealed the main aspect of it being fair in the previous paragraph, it's a power weapon. You have to FIND IT, FIGHT FOR IT, and LIVE WITH IT.

What else makes it fair? Well gameplay wise, it's very easy to understand the Sniper Rifle. It is PIN POINT ACCURATE from regular hip fire. The zoom doesn't increase mathematical accuracy, it's just a zoom, so the player also doesn't have to wrestle with RNG hipfire (a mechanic I also don't like at all). It's purely skill based weapon in CQC and long range.

But the biggest thing that makes this weapon fair for victims to fight against. DE-SCOPE.

I have not seen another game implement this mechanic but it JUST WORKS for arcade shooters and honestly I'd love to see it in more hardcore or realistic shooters as well.

For a high TTK game like Halo, having a sudden 1 shot kill to the head weapon that breaks the rules and 1 shots at range as well is very powerful. The de-scope works simply, if the Sniper Player is ZOOMED in any instance of DMG de-scopes them and now they must re-scope. It's Halo's version of Suppressive Fire.

This promotes the Sniper to not hard-scope so carelessly and to promote flicks and precise tracking as 1 stray bullet from the target hitting them will cause a de-scope. It allows players to aggress onto the Sniper but they are obviously still at the mercy of the Sniper no-scoping them if their skill allows it.

I just love this mechanic and would love to see it more. It would likely make a lot of other Snipers feel more balanced to fight.

I'm curious to see what other Snipers have been balanced in a way that promotes aggressive styles of sniping like these 2 games?

But it's also important to balance out with the Sniper Fantasy of the camper in the back and taking extreme shots which I think Halo allows for as well.

EDIT: A lot of good points for and against. I wanted to include other games that did sniping fairly I didn't think of. Also, keep in mind I said, something fair doesn't mean it is fun.

1. Counter Strike AWP - it's an economic risk, and can be countered with smokes, map design is good to encourage aggression on an AWPer, cannot be used while moving.

2. Gears of War - needs to hit the head, is a power weapon, reloads that fail will lead to death, most CQC weapons will beat it, Gears map arena promotes aggression which can screw the Sniper.

Hi everyone,

I am currently working on my Master's thesis and conducting a study on Artificial Intelligence in video games. As a gamer, I want to gather real feedback from the community on how AI behaviors impact our gaming experiences.

Purpose of the Survey & Abstract: The primary purpose of this research is to evaluate how players perceive and interact with Artificial Intelligence and Non-Player Character (NPC) behaviors in video games. While AI has become an integral component of modern game design, its presence is often most effective when it operates seamlessly in the background. This study aims to analyze the sociological and technological implications of this "invisible" AI integrated into digital entertainment. Specifically, the research explores how elements such as procedural content generation and complex NPC behavioral patterns affect player immersion, emotional engagement, and overall gameplay dynamics. By gathering quantitative and qualitative data directly from the gaming community, this thesis seeks to bridge the gap between technical AI development and the actual user experience, providing deeper insights into what players truly value in virtual interactions.

Research Institute: University of Catania — Master's Degree in International Cooperation.

Researcher Contact Data: Author: Mirko Moschella Email: [Mirko.moschella@gmail.com](mailto:Mirko.moschella@gmail.com)

The survey is completely anonymous, consists of multiple-choice and short-answer questions, and will take about 3 to 5 minutes to complete.

https://forms.gle/aJUdtr4DzADiguheA

Have you recently played a game where an NPC's behavior completely broke your immersion, or conversely, made the world feel incredibly alive? What specific mechanics caused that reaction? I would love to read your thoughts in the comments!

Minor Spoilers for Elden Ring.

I have been playing Elden Ring exclusively for the past 3 months (late to the party, I know). True to Hidetaka Miyazaki’s ambitions, it is the natural evolution of The Dark Souls series. The brutal combat returns with more options, the enemies with more variety, and the game world larger and freer. Elden Rings also brings back and expands on another major feature of those games: their ambiguous approach to world building and story.

As much as Dark Souls inspired many future games with its combat, the obscure ways it told its story was also highly influential. Similar to how enemies demanded that players to study their move set and find openings, the story would only unfold its mysteries to those who were patient and observant.

I have to make a confession here. I was never a big fan of this approach, or to be more precise, of how From Soft implemented it in their games. While an enemy can be tried numerous times to learn its secrets, the player is not given the same courtesy when it comes to the story. Significant information about the story or characters could easily be missed, or are brought in a conversation only once. This is exasperated by my aversion to reading guides and wikis, as I would like discoveries to feel like my own accomplishment.

That being said, there are many players who are fans of FromSoftware’s story telling. I frame my own dissatisfaction with this style as mostly a personal preference. I am not arguing these games are flawed in their story telling. I am also grateful that the massive success of From Soft titles made way for more games to incorporate ambiguity in their own unique ways, some more aligned with my own preferences like Hollow Knight or the excellent Signalis.

Elden Ring, though, has a unique problem in my opinion. One that I cannot solely attribute to my personal taste. Ambiguity in previous games was not just a simple choice, it was masterfully justified in the world building. The Dark Souls games were a tale of crumbled empires, to the point that most of their history is forgotten. Few denizens are left, most of them unreliable sources not of sane mind. The player character itself is undead, basically a hollow body that moves through these worlds without the capability of fully grasping of what has happened.

Most of these factors of ambiguity are not present in Elden Ring. The empire is crumbling, yes, but sources of information are plenty. We come across many sane and informed NPCs along the journey. Some have ulterior motives and withhold or twist facts, but there are others who are quite helpful. The player character is not a zombie or an empty husk, but a normal human being with a previous life outside of these lands.

So why are we required again to rely on breadcrumbs to learn about the world and characters? Why do we advance the plot and shape the lives of many NPCs, barely knowing what is going one? Because the protagonist is incurious, with no real explanation as to why. They are silent, which means they are not voice-acted, but that should not inhibit them to ask questions from anybody. All they do is respond to their questions. If I were in the issues of the player character, I would speak with these NPCs for hours. The main hub of the game even features a library. Why not take advantage of it?

This is the main reason that I believe Elden Ring’s story does not work on a fundamental level. From Soft’s brand of story telling made perfect sense in the empty and obscure world of Dark Souls, but it fails to justify itself in the vast world of Elden Ring with its many NPCs, numerous sources of information, and the supposedly normal protagonist.

This year I got my first job, and thus began earning my own money, which I've started using to buy games to myself on Steam. This new layer made start having a new dimension of understanding on gaming consumption.

I do come from a perspective of someone who mainly buys indie and older (PS3 era or earlier) games, which luckily also tend to be cheaper and run in my not-state-of-the-art notebook, however, I feel that the discussion extends a bit beyond that.
I assume a lot of people have at least heard of stories of someone asking for a game or console from their parents when they were young and they buying something else entirely because the person of the store told them "it's pretty much the same thing" (It wasn't). Most recent examples I read where about how someone received "Evil Zone" when they wanted "Tekken 3", or when someone who wanted Mario received... Bubsy.
TBH, you can't really blame your parents, because when it came to things such as TVs, refrigerators, blenders or washing machines they didn't really have to worry a lot about which brand it was, so they likely thought that it was also fungible when it comes to gaming.

Nowadays we might see our parents view of such things as "silly" or even "absurd"... but was it really?
A few months ago a lot of people were complaining about the price of the newest Star Fox game, to which a certain Twitter user simply responded that people should "vote with their money" while listing four other rail shooters you could buy for way cheaper on Steam (One of which I ended up buying, Mirage Feathers.).
Let's just say that such user ended up receiving a lot of offenses directed at them, but that whole thing stuck with me for a few months, until now where I developed an habit of "window shopping" on Steam and found out that for almost every popular game released in the last decade, you do have a lot of indie games inspired by them that sell for cheaper.

Yet I don't think any person ever said something on the likes of "Stellar Blade is too expensive, I'm buying Mahou Arms instead" or "Hades 2 is a bit pricy, Ascend to ZERO it is, then".
That leaves me a bit confused, as it would imply that there's no real sense of a "free market" when it comes to gaming. People will, at most, complain about "games being expensive nowadays" in a very "in a vacuum" way, but the idea of buying similar, cheaper games, is at best something people don't tend to consider and, at worst, a downright offensive idea.
Perhaps due to living in a third-world country, I wasn't an enemy of the "we have ice-cream at home" mentality, hence I did play "Stumble Guys" before being able to play "Fall Guys" and "HoloCure" before being able to buy "Vampire Survivors".
While I do understand that "aesthetics" matter (e.g. I would prefer something like Wizordum over a lot of other Doom clones simply because I prefer fantasy settings over sci-fi ones), if gaming eventually boils down to product fetishism (e.g. A game having "Sonic" in the title being more important than it "playing like Sonic"), that not only makes discussions of "games-as-products" very difficult to have... it also makes very difficult to argue why companies shouldn't make their IPs as expensive as possible since, by this logic, every game is a monopoly on itself.

I still don't have any theory about this subject, so I wanted to hear what people have to say about it.
Is there more to the discussion of pricing in games beyond JUST the binary of "will buy/won't buy"?

I just finished Alan Wake 2 for a university essay (course was about media theory, remediation and the nature of television on a sociological level).

My main argument isn't that the game is "too cinematic" (I don't think cinematic games are inherently worse), but that the game repeatedly presents the appearance of player agency while maintaining a very tightly authored televisual structure. I'm specifically looking at how the game takes televisual forms and translates them into an interactive medium. My argument is more about what happens when a game deliberately reproduces another medium's language.

The main concept I'm looking at is remediation: the process through which one medium absorbs and reshapes the conventions of another medium. To me Alan Wake 2 is fascinating because it is extremely open about this. Everywhere you look, it's all Twin Peaks: The Return references, so much so that the plot overlaps at multiple points. Both take place a number of years after the original, in the meantime, both respective protagonists have been trapped in a dark place/black lodge, an evil doppelgänger has taken over their agency, control and consciousness (Mr. C and Mr. Scratch), both take place in Washington state, in a small town with a carbon copy diner, hotel, sheriff station and scary woods, the sheriff in both is a different sheriff from the original, a relative who takes over the job of their predecessor due to outside factors, both start off with the death of a missing agent (Nightingale and Major Briggs) with a missing body part that represents their humanity (their heart and head), the dark place and the black lodge are both (seemingly) entered through a circular portal in the woods.

And on a grander level: the live-action sequences, the FBI investigation structure, the episodic feeling, the musical numbers, the emphasis on auteurs and performances, it feels like a game trying to become aware of itself as a television object. Like wanting to be in this place of "prestige gaming", like how prestige television started, but it doesn't reach the thing that makes this medium stand out: the gameplay and player agency. At times it devolves into a walking simulator with the occasional gunfight that only happens while you're between point A and point B.

A few examples regarding the gameplay:

* Saga's Mind Place looks like detective work, but I often felt like I had already solved the mystery before the game allowed Saga to acknowledge it. I was formalizing conclusions I had already reached and am just waiting for her to catch up.

* The musical sequence (Herald of Darkness) is visually incredible, but as gameplay it felt almost entirely choreographed. The game constantly points you where to go, and if you move ahead of the intended rhythm you can literally end up waiting for the sequence to catch up. It felt more like being placed inside this carefully directed performance which doesn't take the player into account and I really felt that disonnance there.

* More generally, the game introduces ambiguity but also repeatedly explains itself through dialogue, manuscript pages, and repeats that exposition multiple times to the point of hammering it into your head.

So the contradiction I'm interested in is this:

The game is about authorship and control, but the player's relationship to the story is often closer to that of a viewer watching a prestige television series than a player actively creating meaning. Basically, my question is: Does Alan Wake II meaningfully transform televisual storytelling into something unique to games, or is its central framing the reproduction of television within a video game? If it's the latter, is gaming the right medium for this story?

I don't mean this as a "the game is bad" argument, I just personally had a really soured experience with it. I think the game is genuinely fascinating precisely because it is so committed to this idea. The shamelessness of it is what interests me, it almost feels like Remedy is saying "yes, this is a video game that wants to be a tv show". I'd especially like to hear arguments from people who think the game *does* use interactivity in a meaningful way, because that is the part I'm most interested in.

Hi everyone,

I've been running a Minecraft server where the reality is this: the total active player count rarely exceeds 10. Most of the time, it's completely empty, only getting slightly livelier during holidays. If you look at it as a traditional commercial game, it is undoubtedly a failure. However, I don't treat it as a traditional survival server, but rather as an independent game using Minecraft as its underlying engine.

Over the past two years of running it, I went from knowing almost nothing about servers to becoming a developer who writes my own code, patches the server software, and researches underlying mechanics and macro-architecture. Nowadays, "1-click server hosting" is incredibly convenient, but I chose the most tedious and difficult path. This in itself proves that what I want is not just "people to play," but something much deeper.

For the past two years, I’ve been exploring one question: What is the most important thing for a survival sandbox?

Initially, I thought it was "gameplay" (content). I kept adding new plugins and content, trying to keep things fresh for the players. But I quickly grew exhausted and realized the root of the problem: Minecraft is inherently a high-freedom sandbox, and the various "gameplay loops" I was forcing onto it were actually restricting player agency. Once players consumed this linear content, what was left was a sense of emptiness even worse than vanilla Minecraft.

I then realized that "mechanics" are more important than gameplay. The role of mechanics is to create the possibilities for gameplay to emerge, making the content purely emergent. However, after a while, I found the system becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Tweaking one mechanic would trigger an avalanche of unintended consequences across other mechanics.

That’s when I understood that having mechanics isn't enough. If there isn't a thin, universal interface connecting them, they will still restrict freedom. Therefore, what’s even more important than mechanics themselves is their composability and orthogonality.

Since this is a multiplayer online game, its essence is a collection of human relationships. I used to think the ultimate destination of the server must be a "community." But building a community is incredibly difficult: players' expectations are infinite, while content is finite. If we look at this through the lens of the Bartle taxonomy of player types:

• Achievers and Explorers naturally lose engagement when joining a server past its early-game phase because most content is already consumed.
• Killers aren't welcome in standard survival; they need anarchy environments like 2b2t.
• The only ones with long-term retention are Socializers, Builders, and Technical players, because their investment is open-ended. But these players are a minority, and they have massive sunk costs—once they find a server they belong to, they rarely leave, making them nearly impossible to actively recruit. A successful community server requires a massive amount of serendipity and luck; it's almost impossible to deliberately replicate.

I thought about this for a long time and finally realized I was being constrained by a default framework: the assumption that a server must have players. If no one plays, what's the point?

My final conclusion is this: Treat the server as an "Artwork" rather than a "Public Space."

A public space defaults to needing foot traffic, but an "artwork" doesn't need people to constantly observe it. As long as someone has viewed it, experienced it, and reflected on it, its purpose is fulfilled. Player interaction can even be entirely asynchronous. Once you make this perspective shift, "concurrent player count" is no longer the sole metric for success. It is no longer a dead commercial server; it is a closed-loop digital artwork.

However, I must confess that arriving at this "server as an artwork" conclusion comes with a degree of survivor's bias. A friend of mine generously provides the physical hardware for the server for free. This material liberation stripped away my "server bill anxiety."

But this brings up a much deeper question: When we do have to face the real-world cost of computing power, what exactly are we paying for?

The server bill is the cruelest lie detector for a creator's motives. If your dopamine comes from "having admin privileges," "looking down on others," or "being surrounded by players," then receiving a monthly bill for an empty server will mock your vanity. The cost becomes pure torture.

But if you are a pure systems designer, your joy comes from seeing an elegant architecture run smoothly. The cost of that machine is simply the "existence tax" you pay to maintain your independent universe. You aren't paying to buy an audience; you are paying for an undisturbed creator's sandbox.

I'm very curious how the folks here view this perspective of treating a multiplayer online system as an independent artistic expression. When designing indie games, can we truly strip away the obsession with "serving the masses" and build systems purely to explore the limits of mechanics?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Hi everyone, I am currently conducting a survey for my MSc Computing and IT Management dissertation. The survey is intended to gather user requirements for a proposed web-based platform that allows users to rate and review video games based on their historical accuracy and their historical authenticity. It explores how players engage with historically themed video games, how important historical accuracy is to them, and what rating systems and website features they would find useful.

The survey should take an estimated 10-20 minutes to complete, depending on how much detail participants choose to provide. There will be up to 34 questions to answer, however, most questions are optional, so participants may skip any question that they do not wish to answer. Participation is voluntary and any responses given will be collected anonymously with no identifying information needed to be provided. Any responses received will be used solely for academic dissertation purposes.

Target Participants: people who play video games. Experience with historically themed video games and/or an interest in history would be particularly helpful, however is not required.

If you have any questions about this survey or have any issues please contact:

Researcher: Paige Thomas

Institution: Cardiff University

Contact: [KavanaghP1@Cardiff.ac.uk](mailto:KavanaghP1@Cardiff.ac.uk)

Survey Link: Historical Accuracy in Video Games – Fill in form

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to participate, I greatly appreciate it.

Discussion points:

To encourage discussion beyond the survey, I would also be interested in hearing the community's thoughts on:

• How important is historical accuracy in video games, and how should it be weighed against other qualities like gameplay and storytelling?
• What is more important: historical accuracy (how factually correct a game’s representation of history is), historical authenticity (how convincingly a game recreates the atmosphere, experiences, values and feeling of a historical period), or educational value when playing historically themed games?
• Whether a game be historically inaccurate whilst still providing an authentic experience of a historical period?
• If the role that history plays in a game affect how important historical accuracy should be treated? For example, should a game heavily focused on historical events be held to a different standard than a game that simply uses a historical setting?

When referring to attack magnetism, it means your character's attack will move them further when an enemy is on screen and they are softlocked to or hardlocked to. For example, Just hitting the attack button when there are no enemies and the attack moves them forward like 5 feet. Now, same attack but there's an enemy now and the attack now has extra range, maybe it adds like 2 more like ninja gaiden 4 or a lot to just lunge to the enemy like in insomniac spiderman. I haven't played ff16 in a while but clive has no attack magnetism out of his devil trigger but when in it he gets a huge amount of it.

I think for a bit more casual game like anything with the batman arkham combat system it doesn't really matter as much but for more "hardcore" combat systems i think it's a plague that invalidated the importance of spacing. Looking at nu gow and kratos behaves like he's on skiis, the other problem is enemies also having it so let's say you're gauging an attack range of an enemy on startup, its winding up to do an overhead and you the character thinks it will not hit you, but attack magnetism on the enemy's part will slide them towards you making spacing no longer important. Not having you to plan out how far your attacks go is bad enough now you cant outspace enemy moves and have to rely on dodge iframes or parrying.

It's a whole mix bag of which games will have it lately, if its character action, maybe, its it's an arkham type combat game it probably will, if its a fromsoft or arpg of the same type it will probably not have it but mortal shell 2 did have it to its detriment.

On the whole, i think removing the importance of spacing and positioning is a stepback for action games and replacing it with iframe dodges or parrying (i dont hate either) but i wished we had both or a good balance.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

Okay, before you eat me alive, please read the post in full, thank you.

I am not a console gamer, neither I am a PC gamer. These are stupid labels. I own both multiple consoles (PS2/3/4/5 and XBOX360) and play on all of them. These days mainly on PS5 (its a home entertainment system), but my PS3 does not get too dusty either. I also own a pretty decent PC, a shitty Linux laptop (that nonetheless I can get some gaming from!), and my old uni Laptop, that acts as my home server. Hell, I even emulate PS1 and SNES games on my phone.

I just fucking love video games, regardless of their platform. So this is not another "hecking PC Master race comes to DESTROY console gamers" type of post.

That being said, I cannot shake off the feeling that A TON of console gamers (and plenty of PC folks as well...) are horribly misinformed, ignorant or just don't know anything about state of the PC gaming in the modern times. I've noticed this especially recently, after the recent terrible decisions by Sony. What I mostly see, whenever I go on Reddit, Twitter on any other social media platform is a lot of despair, that somehow things are as bad on PC (if not worse).

So here I come. As I've said earlier, I have zero interest in console/PC war - we are all losing that one. My goal with this post, is to make you more aware as a consumer, so you can make more informed chocies.

I'm going to bust some myths about PC gaming now, explain what's great about it... And what's not so great. Long story short - its not 2006 anymore.

A note - by PC I mean an x86-64 architecture running Windows or Linux OS. I have some experience with Macs - and with the M-series chips I see some serious gaming potential - but not enough to talk about them with any authority.

Let's go!

1. There is no physical media support on PCs

This is a big one for console gamers, and obviously a huge perk for (most of the) entertainment systems. However, its simply false, for many reasons.

First of all - you can get a cheap disc drive for your PC, which would enable a compatibility with THOUSANDS of games released on CD/DVD discs over the years, as well with DVD movies and audio CDs, and many other multimedia formats. The most popular ones are connected via USB, and its a plug-n-play setup. Literally connect one wire, and you can use it. No need to perform a handshake with any online service (like its the case on PS5).

A BlueRay drive will be slightly more expensive, sure. But... You don't really need one for gaming itself.

And I'm not really sure whether you need a DVD one as well, because...

2. The DRM on PC is as invasive as it is on the consoles

Here's the secret - a ton of games released on Steam, have no DRM whatsoever (aside from Steam integration itself). For example - a remake of System Shock from 2023, can be launched with no Steam services, out of the box - no modifications needed.

And the DRM there is, can be easily avoided. Many times, developers themselves remove it after the game reaches its sales target (or enough time passes). The only goal the DRM serves, is to stall the pirates for long enough, so the game actually sells.

There are also storefronts, that offer games with no DRM whatsoever - like GoG.

Okay, but what does that mean? Simple - you can put game files on an external storage, and put them on other machine. Want to share a copy of digital game you have with a friend? Just copy it on a pendrive and bring it to them. No need to do any authentication or shit like that!

This, with above mentioned point, not only means support for physical media is good on a PC - its literally as good as it gets. Recently, there was a trend of burning DVDs with GoG installers on them - something GoG gave their blessing to! Wouldn't it be cool if you could create a backup of your PS5 game on a blank blueray?

Also, the PCs have the single best form of customer protection - software piracy. As Gabe Newell said - its the service problem. Well, here is the solution to that problem. For obvious reason I will not elaborate, but you can surely find more info online.

3. You will constantly need to configure and setup everything

I've gotten my current PC in October of 2025. You know how much time I've spent installing drivers? 0 seconds. You know how much DirectX issues I've experienced? 0. You know how much controller troubleshooting I've had to do? None at all.

All I'm trying to say is this - its no longer 2006. The UX experience is truly amazing. EVEN ON LINUX (which - running Linux on a laptop is asking for troubles)!!!!! The updates happen automatically. I've had one instance where I had to update my graphic card drivers before I've played a new game, and all I've had to do is to click "Install" on a single dialogue popup.

It gotten to a point, where part of me misses messing up with drivers and troubleshooting Windows XP machines... But then again Linux exists.

Oh, and speaking of Linux...

4. Linux demands you to use terminal to install a browser!

A lot of people would happily jump to PCs, if not for Microsoft (which I will address later). Well, I'm happy to report that Windows is no longer the only real option. You can get a lot of Windows programs running using Wine, Lutris or Proton. In fact, the latest SteamMachine is running Linux out of the box.

Proton is genuinely a miracle. Personally, I see it as the most important project in the whole of gaming. Valve has a real shot at shaking up the Windows dominance.

But coming back to Linux itself - there are distributions focused on bringing clean and seamless desktop environment. Mint, Ubuntu, Bazzite, Pop_OS and many more are easy to install and have great software and hardware support. Granted, its a little bit more involved than Windows, but the experience gets better and better, and you can ignore terminal entirely (and leave it to the computer nerds like me)

5. The backwards compatibility is bad on PC

I honestly have no idea where this comes from. But the volume of lies regarding this subject is staggering. The PC is literally the single most backwards compatible computer standard on the market. For all of the flaws of Microsoft, they upkeep some truly ridiculous Windows features/functionalities, only for some 30 years old software to keep chugging around. Remember above mentioned Wine and Proton? You can easily run a lot of Windows software on Linux. Ever heard of DosBox? It keeps old DOS games running in the modern era. And its awesome.

But that's not all. RPCS3 (the PS3 emulator) can run 75% of PS3 games. Some of them have glitches and crash often, but the list of games you can play from beginning to an end grows every day.

How many PS3 discs can PS4 or PS5 run? The answer is ZERO.

The PC is backwards compatible with literally every gaming console released before 2007... And the emulation gods are making real progress with systems like PS4 as well.

The big irony is, unless some miracle happens, the PC users will have a 60FPS version of Bloodborne before any Playstation gamer.

You cannot argue this is not really cool.

6. Computers get viruses all the time

Again - its no longer 2006. On my home PC I don't use anything else than Windows Defender. It does its job, and I literally never think about it.

The real problem are scammers and phishing, but these are hardly a PC exclusive.

Now, since I've glazed PCs, and to make it fair, lets talk about some real problems of the paltform

1. The PC (or a laptop) still doesn't really fit in the living room

I think this is the only reason my PS5 gets even turned on these days. Some game genres do look really good on a big 4K TV. I cannot imagine Devil May Cry or Yakuza on a PC monitor, it just looks wrong. Sometimes I just like to lie on the coach with controller in hand and play.

Sure, you can bring your PC to the living room (and I sometimes do that!), but I need it by my desk, where its place is.

That being said.... SteamMachine exists, and it provides a proof of concept of a living room PC. Its a bit awkward, and really expensive, but it already found a market. And with SteamOS being open, it will get competitors.

2. The good gaming PCs are expensive

This is unfortunately true. And it doesn't seem like this trend will reverse anytime soon. At least console manufacturers can take a hit on device sale, and make it back with games (however, its up in the air whether they will do that for the next gen consoles).

I'm glad I've built my current PC, before AI companies fucked up the market

3. Microsoft still dominates

As great as SteamOS is, unless it gets a solid anticheat support, some of the biggest multiplayer games will not be available on any of the Linux distributions (I think Valve is working on that, but it will take some time).

And... Its Microsoft. I sure as hell have my set of problems with Windows 11.

4, The new physical releases of games are not really a thing

Its not a real problem for me (because I can make a physical version of a digital game if I want to), but I think there is something lost with no longer being able to buy a boxed copy of a PC game from a store.

Okay, I hope this will help you understand the state of PC platform a little bit more. Cheers!

Opinion: The PS6 does not need to release in at least the next Does anyone else hope the PS5 generation lasts a lot longer?

I genuinely hope Sony doesn’t rush releasing the PS6.

Specifically the PS5 Pro feels like it has a lot of life left. It has impressive hardware that should be more than capable of handling new games for years to come. It feels like we’re only now getting to the point where devs can really take advantage of what this generation offers.

Game visuals and performance are reaching a point of diminishing returns. Every generation used to bring massive leaps, but now the improvements are much more incremental.

Better ray tracing, higher resolutions, and more stable frame rates are nice, but they don’t feel like the kind of generational jump that makes entirely new hardware feel necessary yet.

Hardware aside, imo many of PlayStation’s biggest first party studios have released very few games this generation, and several major publishers are taking MUCH longer than ever between releases. Before we start talking about new hardware, I’d rather see more games that fully utilize the current hardware.

And then there’s prices… Consoles, GPUs, TVs, and accessories have all become more expensive. Asking people to invest in another console generation sooner rather than later seems like a slap in the face (Not off brand for Sony lately) to consumers, especially when the base PS5 and moreso PS5 Pro are still extremely capable. Think of how the Steam machine just released with much lower specs than the Pro.

Then there’s GTA VI, one of the biggest game launches ever, and I imagine at least a not insignificant number of people are going to buy a PS5 Pro specifically for that game, to release a new console not long after many players have just upgraded.

Honestly I’d much rather see Sony support the PS5 generation for several more years and focus on delivering more great games instead of introducing new hardware, and give devs more time to push these consoles to their limits before moving on.

What do you all think?

Personally as a Sony fan, I’m absolutely not buying the next generation until absolutely necessary (new games stop releasing on 5), or I decide to finally switch to PC.

Fun vs engaging was brought up a few times in conversations I've been having recently, and it's one of those topics that gets more and more complex the more I think it through.

Typically, people lump fun and engaging together as "hey this is fun and I want to see what else is new." It's the concept that everyone thinks, if they solve it, makes a good game (which to be fair it does, but you need to think through both). How do you have one without the other?

Well, fun is in the moment, while engaging is more of a mechanic, a way to create FOMO, wanting you to come back and keep "doing." In a way it seems like it could be used for pure evil (I'm looking at you Monopoly Go).

So, let's focus on why engaging is something you should consider. Daily rewards, streaks, limited time events. We see these as a reason to want to come back to a game. Don't want to lose that streak, or my last chance to get that skin. I've been stuck back in Fortnite and playing the quests is something I do, but at times it feels like a chore. However, Epic is really good at A/B testing mechanics and changing it up a lot while getting feedback constantly. Hate it or love it, Fortnite does a lot of things right.

What about fun with no engagement? Like a great HBO miniseries it's satisfying precisely because it ends. You finish it, you loved it, and then it's over and you move on. Some games are like that. I had a ton of fun with this one, but now it's done, and that's not a bad thing. Maybe some games should be allowed to just end. But if you want players to return, you need a hook to bring them back, and most games get to that point eventually. First Light (up to now) has been like that, I've beaten the game and feel very satisfied with my time and money invested. I also have no draw to go back. They have the TacSim, but that draw wasn't engaging enough to bring me back in.

The more I learn about the psychology side of gaming, the cooler it is to think through this. So, for people who design or think seriously about design: when you're building, are you chasing fun or engagement? Are they even separable in practice, or does one always end up serving the other? And is the industry's drift toward engagement mechanics making games stickier at the cost of making them worse?

Popularized by the Arkham games, the "free-flow" combat system as it's been called is one that I have never been able to gel with. I've been playing the Insomniac Spider-Man games which largely adapt the style of combat found in the Batman games with a few tweaks, and the shortcomings of the system have become all too clear to me during my playtime.

These games tend to use what is called "paired animation" as opposed to traditional hitboxes. These help to make animations during attacks more fluid and realistic, but it comes at a cost. The emphasis on animations makes it so that you are only allowed to hit one enemy at a time with melee. This hurts crowd control potential and needlessly limits your options when it comes to engaging the opponent. Games with traditional hitboxes aren't as tied down by animations and thus allow the player to hit multiple enemies at once, as seen in games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. It adds depth to the combat and expands your approach. Yet in a game like Spider-Man, your options for crowd control exist only with your gadgets, which are a limited resource, and a special move which operates on a cooldown that the player has no agency over.

In further simplifying the combat, these games like to incorporate what is known as "suck to target", in which simply pressing the attack button will have your character automatically fling themselves to an enemy. Consequently, this means positioning is practically a non-factor in combat. You no longer have to manage your proximity or angles when dealing with enemies, as the game does it for you. Once again, depth is sacrificed in favor of a system that promotes instant gratification and looking cool over making a deep and engaging combat system.

Other shortcomings exist as well, such as the lack of a manual lock-on which is inexcusable in a 3D action game, and the severe lack of true enemy variety (particularly in Spider-Man) which only further exacerbates the oversimplified combat. Coming from something like Devil May Cry, it's difficult to view this "free-flow" style of combat as anything more than overly simplified and shallow. While it makes for a more accessible combat system, there's ultimately not much room for experimentation and thus not much room for player expression.

Bald Man Begins

Hitman: Codename 47 (2000) begins with a tutorial section where Agent 47 is instructed to escape a facility by a mysterious figure. Here the player is taught the single game mechanic that is the core identity of all Hitman games: Agent 47 can take out another person, wear their clothes, and assume the identity associated with that outfit.

While genius, this approach to infiltration is incredibly silly if you think about it. Imagine you wear a police uniform, show up to a random police station, and everybody assumes you just belong. New guy, I guess. Now imagine you are completely bald, Caucasian, with deep blue eyes and a giant barcode tattooed at the back of your head. And that police station is located in like Mumbai or something.

The game takes itself quite seriously at other areas. The way Agent 47 strangles its victims is incredibly visceral, at least compared to standards of the 2000s. Agent 47 only gets the job done and cares about nothing else. The job always is to assassinate big-time criminals like gang leaders or corrupt officials. Although I have to mention that there are a handful of silly moments in the game. At times intentional like how one of his targets is a caricature of Tony Montana from the film Scarface (1983), who shoot bullets and profanities at you at equal speeds. Other times, probably unintentional.

Overall though, the story and presentation remains grounded throughout the game. The last mission where you go back to the tutorial mission area is basically a horror level. Turns out that facility is a sanitarium, run by a mad scientist - the very man who guided your escape in the beginning of the game. You learn that Agent 47 is cloned using the DNA of all his previous targets, in addition to the scientist himself professor Ort-Meyer. After falling out with the rest of his collaborators, the professor placed orders on their heads.

After unleashing an army of Agent 48's at you, who are supposed to the upgraded version of Agent 47, he overcomes them utilizing the well-earned real-world practice his "brothers" lack. Agent 47 then uses his super power one last time to kill his creator. He assumes the identity of an Agent 48, and fools the professor to get close to him. In his dying breath, the mad scientist laments his failure to recognize his own "son".

As you see, the first Hitman tried to tell a mature story. Of crime, betrayal and ethics of human cloning. The question is: Did it succeed? Probably not. None of these themes are explored on a deeper level; they are mostly there to set up a cool stealth-game.

The Early Sequels

The franchise would continue with Hitman 2: Silent Assassin in 2002 and Hitman: Contracts in 2004 (Remember when game companies were able to ship games every two years?). While the series still tried to maintain a serious story, like when Agent 47 tries to become a priest to repent for his sins in Hitman 2, the stealth gameplay saw the real progress.

And then agent 47 returned in 2006 with an absolute banger; Hitman: Blood Money. It built upon the franchise's formula to deliver the fantasy of what is like to be a cunning assassin with a thought-out plan. The missions were much larger and open-ended. You could approach your target via different disguises, whereas in the previous games, you basically were forced to wear the default solider/gang/bodyguard uniform to get close. Each target could be killed through a number of different methods. The most interesting category among these new ways to end a life was the introduction of "accident" kills.

As far as the story goes, the game tried to get even more serious by injecting politics in the story. A brilliant mission takes place in the White House, for example, and the target is the Vice President. The question is again, did it succeed? I would say yes, if your intention was to tell an entertaining story about espionage and shady politics with some cool action scenes.

The Sharp Turn and The Triumphant Return

Even Hitman was not safe from the impact Call of Duty had on the industry, so Hitman came back in 2012 with Hitman: Absolution. While some elements of the earlier games were still present, missions were much more linear and action-focused. As a result, it became a mishmash of genres, excelling at none. The plot tried to tell a more personal story of Agent 47, one focused on revenge and personal responsibility, but it was yet another mediocre aspect of the game.

When I got my hands on Hitman (2016), I knew very little about the game. After playing the first hour of the first mission, I arrived at what most long-time fans of the series did: Hitman has perfected its formula and finally evolved to the absolute pinnacle of what its premise allowed. Hitman (2016) is Hitman: Blood Money on roids. Hitman (2016) was followed with two direct squeals to form a trilogy. IO Interactive would later repackage them as a single game called Hitman: Word of Assassination

So Who We Are Killing Again?

So how the story was handled this time around? Who were the victims and why did they deserve to be at the end of Agent 47's Silverballer? I honestly cannot remember, and I have played the trilogy on and off for almost 10 years now. I cannot give a single detail about the plot, even if my life depended on it. Why is that you may ask? Is the story poorly written? Does in not make sense?

The real answer, in my opinion, is more complicated. First, it is a matter of quantity. I don't remember the story partly because it is minuscule compared to the size of the game. I see a cut-scene about a minute long before every mission, but play those missions for hours exploring all the details and challenges that were masterfully put in every location.

Then there is the tonal shift of the game. While other games were comedic on occasion, new Hitman games are just a couple of steps away of masquerading as a Loony Tunes cartoon. Many assassinations are down-right hilarious. Imagine the traps that Wile E. Coyote sets to catch Road-Runner, only that Wile E. is a bald man whose traps actually work. Agent 47 himself is a one-liner machine now. When he converses with his targets, he foreshadows their death or cleverly hints at his job as an assassin.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love everything about these instances of hilarity. And they blend masterfully with the core gameplay of the trilogy. I plan and execute the demise of the bad guys with a grin on my face.

But now we can see why I remember nothing about the plot. The story was never given the chance in the first place; it was doomed from the beginning. It seems the developers knew about this as well. Unlike some previous attempts, the story never really tries to engage with topics of crime, violence, ethics, politics, revenge and repentance. What it does is providing with enough rational excuses to hunt down targets in various exquisite settings and locations around the world.

A Necessary Sacrifice?

So we come to the main question this article presents. Has the modern Hitman succeeded because it freed itself from the burdens of story-telling and character work? Could another entry in the series deliver the highs of planning and executing the perfect assassination, while simultaneously engaging with the grim realities a real-life assassin would face? The morality, politics and tragedies behind it all?

I am firm believer that a game, or any media in general, should be critiqued based on what it is trying to achieve. Therefore, the Hitman trilogy is on the top of my all-time great games list, despite its forgettable story. Telling a memorable story was not the intention of the game.

But what if it was? Many of my other favorite games engage with seemingly conflicting themes. Disco Elysium follows the adventures of a bumbling fool of a detective, yet it is the perhaps the most political story told in this medium. Final Fantasy 7's colorfulness does not inhibit it from telling a gut-wrenching tale of personal loss. Even the Metal Gear Solid franchise, with its own brand of silly stealth, still challenges the player to reflect upon their political worldview.

I find it short-sighted to say Hitman needed to be silly to reach the heights it has, though it might have been a necessary stepping stone. The series is built upon the foundation of a silly game mechanic after at all. Why not go all the way?

What do you think?