ScumCoder

https://youtu.be/UKsH7xklMr4?t=5758 Wow, some corporate insider literally said exactly the same as I did. Feels good.

Oh come on, are you actually trying to pull this card? ? Horrible work conditions are a standard in gamedev. There is nothing special about CDPR (actually they look pretty good compared to American companies in this regard). As for development costs - Witcher 3 was an absolute financial success, meaning that its sale figures were good enough even from the perspective of USA companies. Lower development costs just mean that it was even more profitable for CDPR, but it's in no way the reason why it was successful. Nice argument you have there. I guess I'll just answer in the same way as you did: "No it doesn't". Just off the top of my head, here's a game trailer that I accidentally stumbled upon an hour ago while browsing VK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBBWudCldxM Obviously it's not a masterpiece, but it is being done by one guy in his spare time. O N E. And there are hundreds of projects like this being done. You have freely available engines, assets, terrain generators, character generators, tree generators (!), and dozens upon dozens of other tools that allow you to create a solid game for a budget of a sandwich and a cup of coffee. The only things you really need are talent and passion; and those not only aren't the prerogative of big companies, but lately they are rather an antithesis of big companies. Since I wrote my previous post I found this video that explains what I'm talking about pretty well. I highly recommend to watch it, but keep in mind that it was done seven years ago - there was gargantuan progress in gaming development tools since then. Once again, you operate on the basis of information that's been outdated for almost a decade. There is absolutely no need whatsoever to spend "tens of millions of dollars" to make a game that looks good enough. ATOM RPG (again, just one of dozens of examples off the top of my head) was created for a budget of $33K (that's thirty three thousand dollars). I don't give a flying frak about "the vast majority of people". I care about great games being made. For "the vast majority of people" the Fallout series starts from the third part, freaking Skyrim is "the best RPG ever made", autistic Telltale formula is a good storytelling device, etc.

It used to be, for a long time - exactly to discourage people from smearing their questions over several places.

This is only one half of the truth. The other half is that it's become ridiculously cheap to create a game that looks good enough because numerous engines, tools, assets etc. are now in abundance. It was impossible to even imagine 7 or 10 years ago that a team of 3 guys with a shoestring budget will be able to make a game that looks and plays almost like a AAA title. Now add this fact to the notion that there will always be creative and talented people obsessed with making a great game first and foremost, and considering money as nothing more than means to achieve this goal, not vice versa; and you'll see that we will never see great games stop being made. Gaming world is like a vessel and developers are like gas that always fills all available volume; as soon as some corporate creep starts talking bollocks like "PC is dead" or "nobody plays singleplayer games today" or other bullshit like this, projects like Star Citizen (proudly PCMR) or Witcher 1/2/3 (proudly singleplayer) instantly emerge.

Developers have nothing to do with neither pricing nor DRM/EOL/GaaSing. They are usually victims of the publishers just as much as we are. The choice is between selling your $60 game for $60 and receiving nothing because nobody buys it, or selling your $60 game for $5 and receiving something. Say hello to the Invisible Hand of the Market.

Okay, I wanted to post this back when the video was released, but when I made it to my PC I found out that other people have brought this topic up already so I decided to not repeat what’s already been said, but then I watched Ross’s Lecarde playsession and I changed my mind again, because Ross has said this: https://youtu.be/b_mxZfNClp0?t=3380 so here goes. I can’t believe Ross missed (and misses) such an obvious reason of why publishers are tripping over themselves to migrate to GaaS/streaming. I mean, gaming inflation and “the backlog problem” have long since become proverbial. For God’s sake, Ross himself has even talked about it on multiple occasions. Just listen to this: https://youtu.be/pa29EM-YTwo?t=29 Yeah, it’s such a great time to be a gamer! We’re freaking set, aren’t we? It’s just a pity that in order for someone to be able to get an AAA game for $5, the other side of the barricade should be forced to sale their AAA game for $5, because of the monstrous competition. It’s so glaringly obvious that publishers are desperate for any way to control this inflation. And now they found it! Guess what: now you can’t wait for 5 years to buy a game for a fraction of its price. You either buy it today for its full price, or don’t! It’s such a perfect solution, almost a dream come true! Compared to the otherwise expertly crafted and painstakingly researched video, this enormous oversight on Ross’s part was baffling. To quote Ross himself, it was like watching an Olympic athlete train vigorously, eat a perfect diet, only to watch him forget to tie his shoes before the race. It’s not even like the existence of this argument diminishes Ross’s points in any way. When I started watching the video, I was 100% sure that Ross will talk about this in the rebuttals section, and say that although this practice admittedly helps combating gaming inflation, that does not change the fact that it’s a scam and destroying art, or something along those lines. Instead, the main takeaway of Ross’s video ended up to be “publishers are killing games even though they can easily not do that, they just want to avoid this tiny amount of work because they can, since even though this amount of work is tiny it’s still some work”: https://youtu.be/tUAX0gnZ3Nw?t=2483 which is absolutely not true. Game publishers – like any proper, textbook capitalists – are greedy, ruthless and immoral douchebags, but they are not short-sighted idiots. They did not spend a metric fuckton of research and development to create all those GaaS/streaming platforms for nothing. They did that exactly for killing games. So when Ross repeatedly said that we should just apply some pressure for them to end this practice, because killing games is not the intended purpose of GaaS/streaming, to me it was like a punch in the stomach. The whole point off Ross’s rant, the whole video that he has put so much effort in, just fell apart.

^^^ this. I don't care if tomorrow the whole gaming industry just dies down. I have SO MANY games in my backlog that are GUARANTEED to be great, that they will be more than enough for me to play for my whole remaining life. Also, right now the overwhelming majority of games that are worth my time are made by Slavs (most notably Poles), and they tend to despise restrictive DRM (need I remind you that GOG was created by CDPR?). And on the contrary, games that are prone to be turned into GaaS/streaming are Pachinko machines that I wouldn't even download from Torrents if I could.

Happy birthday, Ross. It's a pity you couldn't do a stream today :-(

And the funniest thing is, almost all Ross's chats have these spooky thumbnails, like he is trying to steal my soul

Speaking of which, Presence, why did you remove your avatar? I thought it was kinda cute

What?.. Where did that even come from?

Wow. I was just refreshing the AF website man page as usual, and saw this post without the comments link at the end, because Ross didn't have time to make a corresponding forum post yet. I don't think I have ever been this early to a new video upload. Given how much of this episode did you have to redo, this is probably the most pained and laboured episode so far. Let's check: Recorded video footage, had to scrap it and record once again; lost about two days of work Recorded voiceover audio, had to scrap it and record once again; lost God knows how much time (at least several days) Had to do all this being cooped up in a cramped room surrounded by wet clothes hanging around Mildew infestation And to top it off, the game is freaking painful. People often compare you to Jesus, and for a good reason. You suffer so that others won't have to. On a side note, I can't help but find this game very reminiscent of The Chosen. Ah, the romantic appeal of Slavclunk...

Man, between this and this is probably the most rage-inducing episode so far. I don't know about you, but re-doing something I have already done is THE worst possible thing for me. If I were you I think I would have become utterly depressed and just ditched everything, went on to work on something else.

I had exactly the same problem with my sound amplifier, and it turned out to be the volume regulator. I ended up disassembling the amplifier, and just f*cking soldering the regulator contacts together to short-circuit them, and then just using the software volume slider to regulate volume.

Thank you so much man.

Oh COME on Ross! A lot of people (including me) were telling you this for YEARS!

Whoa, that seems like a HUGE downgrade. I'm not sure if fixing any and all disadvantages of the current website (which I fail to see, but that's just me) are worth losing such a crucial function.

Wow, that was an awesome analysis. Kudos dude.

Lack of critique is only bad when it leads to star sickness, which is not your case (so far). In programming they say "do not fix what is not broken", and the same applies to criticizing creators. Your worldview happens to coincide with mine on 99%, so *I* want you to continue doing things exactly in the same way as you did during last 11 years. This is just my opinion as a fan, one of many thousands. But here is the thing: there are so many content creators today, that if you don't quite like someone, you should just go watch someone else instead of trying to cram this certain creator into the Procrustean bed of your own tastes.

You are talking to a person who considers himself a "game critic", despite not having played one of the most famous and praised games in gaming history, AND also considers normal to utter his views ex cathedra about a game he never even played. Turning my armchair psychologist mode on, I'd say it's not a case of trolling, but a simple delusion of grandeur. Gotta respect the Hanlon's razor.

That's... kind of bullshit, sorry. Ross explicitly said that neither flamboyant clothing, nor anime undertones are "bad". They just do not belong to a Deus Ex prequel. Hell, he even dedicated one of the show's awards to the fact that this game is actually really good, if it is considered outside the context of the Deus Ex universe. As for the politics, they didn't "align" badly with someone's taste. They were just objectively poorly done.

Also, dat flashback to 28 years ago.

That was THE BEST delivery I've heard of someone saying he just wants to see people rolling up his hood. I really like how sometimes you can see glimpses of darkness behind Ross's normally easy-going and good-hearted demeanor.