General Discussion

One of my favorite youtubers ever is all over this nonsense and other game industry behavior, James Stephanie Sterling. They're a queer creator and wildly funny to me, but they're also pretty vulgar so I would say she's not ideal for young viewers.

They have broken some pretty big stories before, she was the one to invent the old Copyright Deadlock (using copyrighted material from competing companies in her videos so none of them could force ads to claim illegitimate revenue off of an ad-free transformative work) and coined the term 'Asset Flip'.

They recently did a Jimquisition on the needless price-hiking of AAA games to pad executives' pockets (as if giant golden parachutes and multi-million dollar bonuses weren't enough for them), and have done more than a few videos about some of those very same executives being absolute jerks to employees, the same ones that are kept on and overworked at starvation wages. Homophobia, transphobia, sexism, physical harassment, I've heard them all.

The actual DEVELOPERS rarely see any additional residuals if the game they slaved away to build sells well, and with executive meddling creating fewer worthwhile/not always-online games, I've never bought a 60 (or Glademother forbid 70) game at release. A few months ago I got Gotham Knights for like 5.99? As part of a charity bundle, so the money went somewhere GOOD instead of into shareholder or CEO pockets. The game wasn't received very well, but I think for the price I paid by waiting I'll be able to just have dumb fun with it. Jason's in there, so that's a definite win.

I'm not into big AAA games at all or that sorta popular stuff, but it's really sad to watch it happen from the sidelines. Admittedly any games like that I avoid because of the fact I know what they are/where they're going to head.
When Pokemon moved to the switch I'm honestly glad I never got one because the new games are very disappointing looking. The company mostly seems to be relying on their loyal fans to buy their stuff with minimal effort/touch-ups to the actual game itself. The environments and framerate have me in awe at how they could ever stand to let that happen when they have the means to actually put effort in.
It hurts a lot more because I used to be such an avid Pokemon fan. From Soulsilver (my first game) I'd always get the new ones all the way up until US/UM.

Though it makes me happy to be a fan of franchises like Monster Hunter and games like Elden Ring. They're expensive, but the people behind these games pack them full of love and detail with so many different things to discover and interesting mechanics to figure out. They're very worth their prices, but I always buy my games on sale regardless.
Bless the MHW team, a couple months ago the game went on a huge sale at $15 for an event of theirs, after the trailer for the game coming out in 2025.
Hard to find devs like these nowadays it seems... Which is a big shame.

[img]https://media1.tenor.com/m/7OROQokaJg0AAAAd/one-piece-piracy.gif[/img]

im going to leave an actual comment here because the previous one was kind of dumb to say, its true that i've completely fallen off of the boat with current releases and even being in the know but i do see people speak about this sort of thing. i buy games very rarely, im pretty bad for a gamer despite two of my largest special interests being video game franchises and the last game i bought was super mario 3d world + bowser's fury which was a bad purchase because i was mainly buying for bowser's fury (but i never played 3d world before). this is the sort of thing that makes me confused in this sort of landscape because for people like me who never played or never had the access to even play older games its great to have rereleases or ports to new consoles, this isn't even a new phenomenon especially within nintendo. but i guess when its like 3d all stars which i also own because i never played those 3 games either (im a really bad mario fan i like to watch games more than play them >.<) but that's just a port of all 3 games and i think gamecube games are on nintendo switch online so 2 of those 3 games are rendered null. that's great for people who didn't buy the game but for people like me who want the game independent of an online server and are ok with paying a full price because they buy games so rarely was it still a scam? i support piracy but my computers i've owned struggle to run anything stronger than jigsaw on this site so i don't play games this way, emulation can be buggy and im very tech illiterate so im afraid i won't be able to play well anyways. plus i said i can just watch a game if i want for free any time i want.

this is rambley but it hurts to know things like this will keep happening to those of us who are more casual gamers or aren't in the know about industry stuff, its probably good i haven't checked out the last 2 pokemon generations. i know people were being overly critical about things that don't matter but then there's almost been a shift of excusing everything that is genuinely bad about modern pokemon so its frustrating to not know what i should be feeling. im more drawn to retro games just by nature but maybe its a better thing to not delve too far into this world of release a buggy game at full price and then add day one patches. how long did it take no man's sky to be a game people can recommend? its a mess out there.

i totally forgot to subscribe to this thread and thought ppl just didnt reply i am so happy to see theres quite a few ppl out there just on this site who share my frustrations.

special thanks to GODHEX for explaining why this is happening economically and PancakePrince for reminding me abt Empress lol such a fun character [didnt tag them in case they wouldnt want to be, but both their comments are on the first page of the thread]

and also Zenzic for reminding me piracy is technically a crime but my humble opinion is that it definitely shouldn't be in this day and age where SO SO SO many games are only available trough piracy or else they'd be considered lost media. Of course it's still illegal, it's internet thievery, im not saying Zenzic is wrong at all, they were just reminding me this is in fact a children's site to an extent, but I simply cannot just say that without also mentioning the role piracy has in archiving games and other media and also the fact that it literally gives people like me from countries with weak economies the ability to play and enjoy these games. emulators are not very dependable and having a beefy enough computer to run them properly is even more expensive, my one word of wisdom for any gamer here who does enjoy older titles is this:

GET SECOND HAND OLD CONSOLES AND MOD THEM!! also a little bit illegal but who's gonne come banging at your door that you took your 3ds, your psvita, god forbid a used, beat up, grimy ps2 and just totalled the insides so you can play all the games you want for free? it's not like the developers are getting any money from those titles anymore, especially on 3ds where the only way to buy games aka the eshop literally closed down. of course its very hard for people who dont have a lot of know how, trust me, it took me multiple days to mod my psvita and to this day its the one and only console ive done from scratch but it is so totally worth it if you have the patience and some good youtube tutorials at hand.

this was all just a mini side note lol i find the whole topic of morals in piracy and other such activities quite fascinating, and also just another sign that the gaming industry is definitely gonna have a big collapse soon enough. sure, its always been a thing, but with these prices dont they think more and more people will resort to it? theres a lot of easily accessible sites in all sorts of languages who make it so all you need to do is click three times and suddenly you have a new game that costed you free.99 and you dont even get a trojan!

but also dont pirate stuff from indie developers. or if you do and like the game then go and buy it when you can afford it. that is the only way to clearly show your support and make sure great, talented, passionate people actually get the resources they need to pursue what they most likely want to make their career and also get yourself more cool games that dont cost an arm and a leg. luckily the shift to indie has been major as of late and its about the only thing keeping me sane and also why im hardly ever interested in mainstream sort of games. my standards are simply too high after growing up on the internet during the indie uprise of undertale and fnaf.

Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth costs like 70 DOLLARS. For them to then have the audacity to lock NG+ behind a 20 DOLLAR DLC.

I love the franchise so much but this move is awful

[quote name="Sumish" date="2024-02-20 14:20:00" ] and also Zenzic for reminding me piracy is technically a crime but my humble opinion is that it definitely shouldn't be in this day and age where SO SO SO many games are only available trough piracy or else they'd be considered lost media. Of course it's still illegal, it's internet thievery, im not saying Zenzic is wrong at all, they were just reminding me this is in fact a children's site to an extent, [snip] [/quote] I won't confirm or deny my stance on piracy, but my previous post was more of a heads up that such posts might result in moderator action! (Flight Rising is a business, and they probably don't want promotion of illegal activities on their forums!)

[quote name="Delibird" date="2024-02-20 08:22:55" ] [img]https://media1.tenor.com/m/7OROQokaJg0AAAAd/one-piece-piracy.gif[/img] [/quote] [img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FafGTeFVsAEKL4q.jpg[/img]

not sure what game this is about but man do i relate... i live in a country that has a very big conversion rate with america and with just mot other countries in general, so buying things internatiol is such a drain. and it's why i tend to stay away from gaming bc so many of them cost too much for me, and all the games where ur TECHNICALLY able to play for free, so much stuff gets locked behind paywalls or there's a million microtransactions. sucks man T-T

it kinda disappointing how expensive gaming can be, like you have to spend so much money just for this hobby. it really turns me off from getting too deep into it bc im pretty much poor