Sweet Baby Inc. and the Steam Curator Group Conspiracy - The company that is responsible for the diarrheic video game writing.

[TrainWreckWatcher]

The public's current perception on Gamergate proves to me that, even in this age of the Internet and everything being recorded, you can still get away with just lying about what actually happened.

Well yeah COVID was the big point for this.
We had videos of them saying "The shot will stop you from getting it."
Which became "the shot will stop you from spreading it."
Which became "the shot will stop you from getting sent to the hospital with it."
All the way down the ever moving goal post short of it it being "well you won't die as painfully."

let it burn so gaming goes back to it’s roots as a niche hobby enjoyed by nerds

Yes. Games were never meant for mass audiences. Nerds in the communities I'm in (I'm one of them of course) constantly bitch about this.

Slight tangent, but Dragon's Dogma 2 is a true stress test at this point.
View attachment 5811563

Its all cause they refuse to optimize their slop. High end tech was the worst thing to happen to video games because it let them get lazy and start paying programmers less cause they could get away with hiring worse ones now.

good programming died decades ago as MORE RAM became the solution, games or otherwise

Programmer friends tell me the average salary was like 60-80k starting in games vs 100k-130k+ in other industries where you had to know your shit well that were less bullshit and non crunch.
It's a no brainer. If you're good at what you do you're going elsewhere - unless you really really love games. But looking at AAA what fucking programmer wants to hang out with those faggots?
Insufferable silver spooned 20-30 somethings that don't really care about the hobbies as much as they do about some communist bullshit agenda and a boss who just wants a second yacht while squeezing every dime out of the people dumb enough to buy their games.

This is why you get people like the Kenshi dev who spent 10 years just doing it on his own while working as a security guard. They'd rather do it themselves than deal with that shit.
And God bless people like him for it.
E:

I think this is partially due to the election/war situation in the world, but I'm not sure.

When a fast food meal costs as much as a mom and pop restaurant and you get a quarter of the groceries for 50 bucks that you got 4 years ago people don't have time or cares to spare for perceived racists pointing out shitty video games. You finally have real problems to deal with rather than some whiny journo making more money than you for doing far less.

 

[CircuSphere]

It's crazy how bulky modern games are. Usually with minimal returns. Personally I'm getting a 4070 super, 32 gigs of DDR4, and I have a 12th gen i7. That by any other standard is a monster. We landed on the moon with the power of a digital wrist watch, but you're telling me a game, a fucking video game, entertainment, is too tough for a computer leaps and bounds ahead???

Honestly it feels like a symptom of DEI and wokeness. The programmers can't optimize for shit, they're incompetent.

I'm in two minds about it. Yes, there are bloated AAA games and engines.

On the other hand there's baffling assumptions from people who don't make games. I've seen people claim all games should be made in assembly like Roller Coaster Tycoon and Mario were. It's just not feasible. When Starfield came out, I was surprised by the number of people who were trying to play the game 1440p 60fps high settings on PCs with a decade old GPU and no SSD.

Bad code exits for so many reasons... In Bethesda's case everything is downstream from their absolutely ancient engine. It's old enough to drink and completely proprietary so the only knowledge about the thing comes from Bethesda itself. That means the spin up on new employees is horrible, the talent pool is small, failure to retain employees/institutional knowledge is absolutely crippling, all new features need to be created in house.... On top of that the kinds of code organization principals you need to maintain such a large/old code base didn't even exist when Gamebyro was written/architect-ed.

Meanwhile at an unreal studio, a third party is writing general features/security patches and releasing them constantly, they are working directly with nvidia/amd, there is a huge documentation and tutorial base to train a massive pool of new/returning devs, the whole engine is designed to modular/maintainable.... When you need a plugin to write to the steam cloud you download it, you don't pull 2 devs for a month to write it...

 

[WelperHelper99]

Bad code exits for so many reasons... In Bethesda's case everything is downstream from their absolutely ancient engine. It's old enough to drink and completely proprietary so the only knowledge about the thing comes from Bethesda itself. That means the spin up on new employees is horrible, the talent pool is small, failure to retain employees/institutional knowledge is absolutely crippling, all new features need to be created in house.... On top of that the kinds of code organization principals you need to maintain such a large/old code base didn't even exist when Gamebyro was written/architect-ed.

Meanwhile at an unreal studio, a third party is writing general features/security patches and releasing them constantly, they are working directly with nvidia/amd, there is a huge documentation and tutorial base to train a massive pool of new/returning devs, the whole engine is designed to modular/maintainable.... When you need a plugin to write to the steam cloud you download it, you don't pull 2 devs for a month to write it...

With companies like Bethesda, it's a pure lack of creativity. They do not want to do something a bit dangerous, break the mold, and build a new clean sheet engine that honestly would fix their shit. It's why Starfield ran like crap on top of the line hardware and was well past 100 gigs. Innovation has turned into stagnation.

It really says something about the industry as a whole. Barring a exception or two like Unreal, creativity and risk is dead. DEI and Woke are symptoms of that problem. You either stay in your lane, follow the rules, or get fired.

 

[TAB]

Current Year most definitely did start around 2012

you mean it wasn't this smarmy brit who started it with the "come on, it's 2015"?

 

[Schway]

That's not how woke operates. They have to put obnoxious and in my opinion ineffectual preaching in every piece of entertainment they control, even if it causes that entertainment to fail economically. Actually, now that I think of it, God's Not Dead makes more sense here. The people who made it budgeted it and advertised it based on the fact it has a certain audience and won't have super broad appeal. It made decent money even though it only appealed to Christian audiences. Just look at the budget to revenue numbers here. Woke sticks this stuff in extremely expensive blockbusters that are supposed to have broad appeal. Then when those movies or videogames fail? They do it again. It's deranged.

Propaganda from yesteryears was much more delicate and clever, like you said they wrapped it in content that had actual appeal and quality to it and kept the ramp up very smooth and incremental. Nowadays they're much more explosive and obvious but I don't think it's ineffectual. It moves the Overton window and desensitized people, by the time they're done with you you can't wait to get back to propaganda from whatever was 5 years ago, basically with trannies being shoved in your face you can't wait to have gays shoved in your face instead.

I think back sometimes to the first GG and how the general culture was back then, the idea that female characters/female players were something that needed catering and care taken during development was foreign, now even the biggest normie complains about how: "women are treated in gaming" , "female characters are objectified" , "All the female characters look the same(read look attractive)", "This game needs a more diverse cast" and is taken seriously. Where as before if you said any of that shit you would have gotten laughed at and mocked in the gaming circles. Every game is censored and every chat monitored, the emphasis is always on stopping "toxicity". That used to cause scandals when it first started getting rolled out, now it's normal. People famous in the gaming sphere all know they have to bend the knee to the overarching ideology and only the biggest dare to push back , even then only mildly.

Point is normal people in these circles have learned that the woke/progressive worldview is the one that gets them social credit/ is accepted as the correct and "intelligent" opinion. That's a big achievement and it is partially due to how hard they go, making people desensitized to the less extreme end of the same stick.

When a fast food meal costs as much as a mom and pop restaurant and you get a quarter of the groceries for 50 bucks that you got 4 years ago people don't have time or cares to spare for perceived racists pointing out shitty video games. You finally have real problems to deal with rather than some whiny journo making more money than you for doing far less.

Tensions are high that is true, but they also don't have time to care about perceived racists getting shut down from everything and it's a hell of a distraction. General public never lead or contributed to this kind of stuff in any real sense, at most they just reflected what they were told by mouthpieces. Which is why I think the recent timidity of the usual suspects is more a result of lack of funding and social support, they probably don't even know it consciously but stuff just doesn't work for them like it used to, they don't get the huge publicity, the free money to do courses, talks, interviews ect.

 

[Kel1 shi1]

Yes. Games were never meant for mass audiences.

There's very few games that cross over into the cultural zeitgeist (Pac man, Space Invaders, Tetris, Super Mario, GTA) but publishers expect their annual updates to always be one and promote them as such. Publishers can never ever get over Hollywood envy, game X made more money than Titanic rhetoric. Yeah people were not paying $50-$70 for a ticket to see a movie.

Games being woke is just another symptom, they just have not caught up to the fact due to long development times that they are just killing themselves like the MCU did.

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

Meanwhile at an unreal studio, a third party is writing general features/security patches and releasing them constantly, they are working directly with nvidia/amd, there is a huge documentation and tutorial base to train a massive pool of new/returning devs, the whole engine is designed to modular/maintainable.... When you need a plugin to write to the steam cloud you download it, you don't pull 2 devs for a month to write it...

Look at the palworld people.
They were winging the shit out of it and doing well with Unreal.
I've seen people say you don't' even have to code to make games with it, they have some kind of chalkboard system you can make games with. So even the most basic of retards could put out a visual novel using it.

Innovation has turned into stagnation....
You either stay in your lane, follow the rules, or get fired.

We really need some new groups and companies. They seem to be out there, but man there's gotta be some young nerds out there that will be the next blizzard of the 90s and 80s hopefully cooking some good shit up right now. I pray we find them or they find us.

Its the natural cycle in life. Old things die new things replace it.
I worry about AA companies cause while Larian did great with baldur's gate. The DEI stench is there. CDPR became AAA and started to turn to shit too.

Which is why I think the recent timidity of the usual suspects is more a result of lack of funding and social support, they probably don't even know it consciously but stuff just doesn't work for them like it used to, they don't get the huge publicity, the free money to do courses, talks, interviews ect.

The depression has definitely dried up the money companies can afford to spend on adult daycare for their spoiled manchildren.

 

[Übertroon]

I wouldn't really go as far as to praise Unreal engine either. It certainly hasn't helped to keep games smaller, and is just as resource hungry as the rest of em

 

[DumbDude43]

Look at the palworld people.
They were winging the shit out of it and doing well with Unreal.
I've seen people say you don't' even have to code to make games with it, they have some kind of chalkboard system you can make games with. So even the most basic of retards could put out a visual novel using it.

there are dedicated engines to make VN's, and they are extremely easy to use. the biggest barrier of entry here is the fact that a VN requires lots of artwork that you have to make (or source) yourself, the 'coding' involved in stitching it together is trivial.
there's also other specialized game engines like RPGMaker that you can use with minimal coding knowledge.
unreal is fairly powerful and there's a big learning curve to it before you can actually make something playable. but it's still infinitely easier to get started with than coding your own engine from scratch, and it is so general that you can use it to make almost any genre you want (though it is best at doing first person or third person 3D stuff)
unity is easier to get into than unreal, but lower quality and doesn't do things as well as unreal at the high end.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

Valve is a private company, and it's because of the fatso's insistence on keeping it that way Valve is the benevolent dictator of the industry. Why is it that Steam has a "monopoly" and every other platform is failing? Because every other platform is ran by corporations that get their money from investors so they can be shit as long as the investors are happy, Steam is ran by people who need to offer a good product to stay afloat because they don't have the comfort of the infinite money glitch, and that's exactly why Gabe should never ever let his company go public.

Spoiler: A long autistic ramble agreeing with you

A lot of guys like EA want to take the shortcut to easy money. EA even tried to compete with Steam, remember. They had their “Origin” client. They gave away free games for over a year and still nobody would use it. The hope was to give them something comparable to Valve’s firehose of money. An easy profit stream where they could get a cut of every game sold on PC just by the simple fact they existed.

Rather than just do good work, they hoped to pry people off of Steam with the promise of regular freebies… except it was a client nobody wanted to use and in a lot of cases actively hated. It lacked most of the features of Steam, was a little bloated, and came at a time where EA was starting to push increasingly aggressive DRM that limited how many “activations” you were allowed per-game. So, it struggled.

The same thing happened with Uplay. Ubisoft thought they could make their own Steam, but the greed was too evident and annoying. It was a hassle to work with, added nothing of real value, and nobody wanted to use it. So most people didn’t, unless they were forced to use it.

That’s the thing with these corporations, right? Nothing is ever enough. They can’t just sell well on Steam, they have to make their own platform so they can have all the money. And the profit lines must not only always go up, it has to go up faster. More and faster and more and faster and more and faster until the wheels come off and everything breaks.

Then these board of director weirdos, now among the richest 5% of people on earth, pull the ripcord and parachute over to the next corporation and start over. All the money, more and faster and more and faster…

What separates Valve is that Valve never seems to have treated it like much of a race. Like, sure, they do things to boost sales but they seem pretty comfortable being themselves and not cranking all the dials until they break off.

Some of that is arguably down to the fact that Valve never became a publicly traded company. Once you get listed on the stock market, investors enter the picture, and the whole dynamic of how a company exists changes. Publicly traded companies rely on investors for some amount of operating costs, and the highest ranking investors can even legally control some part of your company as if they were employed there.

But there’s never any guarantee that an investor knows what is good for your company. They just gave you a lot of money and expect you to pay it back at some point (by increasing shareholder value). And its created this culture of people who race to maximize everything at the expense of the structural integrity of the company and its employees. It’s like the end of Back to the Future 3, right, where they need to get this old 1800’s locomotive up to 88mph.

Feeding it that much fuel, getting the heat up that high, it builds up extreme pressure in the boiler and the train will eventually explode. Except for a lot of these business types, exploding the boiler is the point. Exploding the boiler is a successful operation. Like I said: more and faster and more and faster, right?

Some companies need investor money to survive. But… not all do. Many of them still go public anyway, because the race to explode the boiler matters more than just being comfortable. We’re still in the era of people starting companies just to sell them.

Valve got lucky. They established an emerging market, gave people exactly what they wanted, and became the defacto home for PC gaming. Steam was such a comfortable, welcoming platform that nobody even thought about competing with them until they had already gained too much momentum to ever be slowed down.

And the only reasons most people can come up with to compete with Valve is “We want more money.” Valve wants 30% of my earnings? A whole 30%??? Unreasonable! I’ll start my own storefront! With blackjack! And etc.!

But really, that’s all this is. Valve did good work and got themselves into a position where they now can’t really be out-spent into obsolescence. I mean, Epic Games is currently trying to do that, and they’re burning something in the realm of $275,000,000 a year (according to this website I am unfamiliar with and have never read before today). By Epic’s own statistics, most people registered to the EGS client spend less than a dollar on the platform (723m users apparently spent $820m). Valve has so much momentum with Steam that they can (and often do) just coast, granting them a reputation for taking a very long time fine-tuning most of their products until they are perfect. Gabe Newell is so rich he owns and operates multiple fully-staffed private yachts. Not by more and faster, but by getting to the race track before anyone even knew it was open and just doing the job so consistently they are now ten laps ahead.

To compare with what happened with Netflix, which also established an emerging market: Netflix also didn’t want to just coast. Movie disc rentals by mail became streaming movies. That turned into streaming TV. That turned into Netflix wanting to make their own original content so they wouldn’t have to pay to license anyone else’s movies. That turned into Netflix wanting to offer games. And lest we forget, the founder of Netflix specifically has a vendetta against theatrical movies and continues to deliberately erode that market. There is no “coasting” for Netflix. There is only more and faster. Netflix put out 17 original films in 2016. Last year, 2023, Netflix put out 153 original films, 49 original documentaries, 11 TV specials, 11 short films, 28 stand-up comedy shows, and at least 26 new original TV shows. The aim is not to maintain a good platform, the aim is to dominate and make all the money there is to make in multiple industries. The line must always goes up until the boiler explodes.

Anyone could just do what Valve did, but nobody wants to because it’s too slow and takes too much actual work (and luck) making genuinely good products. It also theoretically leads to a “dead end” where growth slows or even stops. That means the line doesn’t go up anymore, it just levels out and stays there. Outrageous! You mean the man who owns a fleet of yachts doesn’t want make infinitely more money forever? The nerve of some people. It’s easier to crack the whip on someone else and crank up the heat until the boiler explodes. Especially when that’s what all the competition is doing, too.

 

[Mr Processor]

Propaganda from yesteryears was much more delicate and clever, like you said they wrapped it in content that had actual appeal and quality to it and kept the ramp up very smooth and incremental. Nowadays they're much more explosive and obvious but I don't think it's ineffectual. It moves the Overton window and desensitized people, by the time they're done with you you can't wait to get back to propaganda from whatever was 5 years ago, basically with trannies being shoved in your face you can't wait to have gays shoved in your face instead.

I think nowadays it is not so much intended to persuade as it is to intimidate. In the old days there were a few different things going on. For example, old lefty propaganda in certain movies and games was intended to subtly push you in a direction. Besides that, they still wanted their blockbusters to be financially successful. Now, they've traded that in to crush your spirit with a deluge of inescapable crap. It's ok to sacrifice some financial viability if it can make you depressed and afraid. However, the problem with games like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is that it was an abject failure commercially and people mostly know about the obnoxious contents of the game due to youtubers farming it for channel views. The way they structured the game with all the predatory microtransactions means they were really hoping to get people in and use the dark patterns to hoover up money from their wallets. But the fact that the game has not a single positive thing going for it in story or art design means that no one is getting captured. People aren't hearing the preaching, and they aren't paying for the Luthorcoins.

 

[WelperHelper99]

We really need some new groups and companies. They seem to be out there, but man there's gotta be some young nerds out there that will be the next blizzard of the 90s and 80s hopefully cooking some good shit up right now. I pray we find them or they find us.

Its the natural cycle in life. Old things die new things replace it.
I worry about AA companies cause while Larian did great with baldur's gate. The DEI stench is there. CDPR became AAA and started to turn to shit too

The forest needs to burn for new growth to grow. That's the cycle of life and always has been, not just games. A video game crash probably would be healthy for the market. Developers would now have to look at the situation, because at that point, I expect hardware to slow down too, and regroup. They'd actually have to compete to succeed. People still play games like super Mario bros for a reason, it was born out of that same situation.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

One of the most absurdly shitty things about wokeist game meddling is every fucking character they demand get introduced is so laughably stereotypical they might as well have been designed by a literal open racist.

This, this so many times. Every "diverse" character has to be a west-coast stereotype of that character. Current year Alyx should speak Ebonics for these people to be pleased, you can bet your ass on that.

Insomniac Writer: Hmmmmm, we need to have an extracurricular activity for Miles Morales, what can we have him do?

Other Insomniac Writer: I know! Let's make him a DJ, because he's black, and it's the culturally hip thing for black people to be DJs!

 

[Shieldman]

Another midwit take by the Roach King, where he tries to defend the concept of ESG and slowly turns into a corn cob.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I'm not asking them to use assembly. I'm asking them to optimize their code, compress their shit, and make it run smooth on a well built PC that also isn't 5k. It's not asking much. Fuck they can use Java if it's done right.

Maybe you feel that way, but more often than not I see the other way. Like those YouTube channels that will find a bit of litter you normally drive past at 100mph at one stage of the game. They will stop, zoom in with a sniper rifle, and complain that the texture is low res and compressed. To prevent that, AAA devs make every texture an uncompressed 4k texture, and the result is 100gb installs.

I saw a video recently complaining about some racing game where, if you pause on a specific straight, go into photo mode, fly the camera over the crowd, you can find three hot dog stands next to each other. Cue standard YouTuber overreaction.

I doubt they're going to stick their neck out to shut down a new game or whatever. Usually they couldn't wait for something like that to happen.

They already did for Palworld, and are currently doing it to Steller Blade.

We really need some new groups and companies. They seem to be out there, but man there's gotta be some young nerds out there that will be the next blizzard of the 90s and 80s hopefully cooking some good shit up right now. I pray we find them or they find us.

I wonder that as well. How many Myamotos and Kojimas are out there, but never got a chance.

 

[WelperHelper99]

Maybe you feel that way, but more often than not I see the other way. Like those YouTube channels that will find a bit of litter you normally drive past at 100mph at one stage of the game. They will stop, zoom in with a sniper rifle, and complain that the texture is low res and compressed. To prevent that, AAA devs make every texture an uncompressed 4k texture, and the result is 100gb installs.

I saw a video recently complaining about some racing game where, if you pause on a specific straight, go into photo mode, fly the camera over the crowd, you can find three hot dog stands next to each other. Cue standard YouTuber overreaction

As you said, overreaction. Doom 2016 is 50 gigs on the Xbox One X. It looks fantastic. The blood and gore is vibrant, frame rate solid, couldn't ask for better. Anything else is whining. Clearly there is compression issues, because I'm seeing great shit in a mere 50 gig game.

 

[Carpenter Trout]

DRM-Free gaming as a whole should be praised more

They're no longer exactly DRM Free, but that's a discourse for another day.

Game Gate 2 or no Gamer Gate, I just wish everyone also focused on the non-woke stuff like the sleazy monetization, season/battle passes, and live service shit. It's getting much worse by the day, yet you have cucks like the Atlus fanbase, Call of Duty cucks, and Fighting Game Community supporting disc-locked content and live service monetization that cost more than the fucking games themselves altogether. Why are we paying for stuff that was in older games from day-one, yet we're paying for those things in newer games (and to make it worse: they're not upgraded or made even worse than their previous incarnation)?!

Yep, this whole Wokeness shit is just a distraction from the real issue in my opinion. The Video game industry is the most stockholm-inducing industry as of late
There is a video, that I think I linked earlier by Self Defiecient which encapsulates most of the issues (wokeness aside) in modern gaming.

And still is? as a loyal fan I have my... distrusts.. Did it actually turn out okay?

Runs decently, looks good and plays good. Only issue was the ATB which was fixed with a mod (which is basically a .txt changing a percentage from 0.2 to like 0.5), but that's personal taste at this point and I'm tired of the FF7 Remake spergatory.

 

[Harbinger of Kali Yuga]

This, this so many times. Every "diverse" character has to be a west-coast stereotype of that character. Current year Alyx should speak Ebonics for these people to be pleased, you can bet your ass on that.

Like characters out of Watch_Dogs2, probably other stuff but I barely game. I liked Watch_Dogs2 because you can go on killing sprees in San Francisco.

He thinks video games are a waste of overall time and only children should play them, so.. typical claptrap.

For the most part they are. They're fine sparingly, and I have a weird respect for speedrunning, but most dudes spend way too much time on video games.

I know he was anti commie actually, but certainly a good few ideas he had were socialist. Like the 1 pot meal and the car for the people, Volkswagen. I can definitely confirm that supporters in countries like mine, called themselves the NSB, Nationaal Socialistische Beweging. (National socialist movement, basically showing how they were going around the democratic system by making it a movement) which was basically the Nazi party in the Netherlands. You will still hear our older generation calling any cop that goes against the people "NSB'ers."

Though, sliding it back on topic. I would be very curious how many of these people worship Stepan Bandera.

Sounds like they're preparing themselves for the (color) revolution. Hopefully, the ultimate croak. Though I expect a bloodbath.

I actually agree with Hitler's assessment of himself that he's not really truly right or left. Historians put him on the right since Marxism has swept through the field since WW2.

 

[CircuSphere]

Look at the palworld people.
They were winging the shit out of it and doing well with Unreal.
I've seen people say you don't' even have to code to make games with it, they have some kind of chalkboard system you can make games with. So even the most basic of retards could put out a visual novel using it.

Yeah so Palworld had one dev who really knew Unreal well from the word on the street. You can see one good architect and a bit of support can make a game that runs MUCH, MUCH better than Starfailed with the right tools. The two games are fundamentally different, one is all about animations and custom assets and the other is all about dumping canned shit into a sandbox and coding until it is fun... but there is no excuse for the load screens (lack of texture streaming/dynamic loading), the abysmal frame rates, the 2008 tier rigging or any of that.... So yeah Bethesda needs a much larger team for their pipeline and all that, I expect to see more animation jank because there are more animations but it's beyond that, they have completely ignored the massive elephant in the room for over a decade now, the game ran as poorly as early access Ark and I am sure working in Gamebryo is pure pain.

Also a lone cowboy can do a lot in Unreal but it is really a 3D engine so unless you are making an asset flip you are going to have a bad time. If I ever get around to writing my game I will probably just do something oldschool/sprite based in Godot and save myself the hassle of 3d rendering.

 

[DumbDude43]

Yeah so Palworld had one dev who really knew Unreal well from the world of the street. You can see one good architect and a bit of support can make a game that runs MUCH, MUCH better than Starfailed with the right tools. The two games are fundamentally different, one is all about animations and custom assets and the other is all about dumping canned shit into a sandbox and coding until it is fun... but there is no excuse for the load screens (lack of texture streaming/dynamic loading), the abysmal frame rates, the 2008 tier rigging or any of that.... So yeah Bethesda needs a much larger team for their pipeline and all that, I expect to see more animation jank because there are more animations but it's beyond that... but they have completely ignored the massive elephant in the room for over a decade now, the game ran as poorly as early access Ark and I am sure working in Gamebryo is pure pain.

isnt bethesda still using variations of their same old in-house game engine for everything?
starfield is technically a morrowind mod