• 3 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2023

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  • Unless I’m not seeing something, game production is expensive. Most studios are 1-2 bad games away from closing their doors. Games are expensive as hell to produce and as much as it sucks the “going public” option is sometimes the only way to go.

    It’s easy to forget but most small (1-3 people) team indie devs probably aren’t even working a salary. They split the earnings from the game and either live off of that or reinvest it into their company but the moment salaries need to get paid, or office space needs to be used (not really necessary for small teams) that’s when expenses get insanely high. I’m not a business person but I can understand why you’d want to “trim the fat” (I don’t support it at all but to play devil’s advocate, I can see the logic despite the flaws). Growth means structure, and structure means expense.




  • To be fair the price includes 10 or so original indie titles which if you go by the store front’s average game pricetag ($5.36) that accounts for $53.6 worth. (And that’s really not fair to some of the games I’ve played)

    Correction: The first season of games that come with the device total out at 24 so going off of that original 5.36 average you’d actually have about $129 give or take worth of game value, leaving the actual Playdate device at a $71 purchase for the device itself.


  • I have a playdate and have seen this sentiment a lot.

    Imo the charging mechanic would ruin the usability of the crank in many of the games. Some games require rapid cranking and having a charging mechanic would not only be another point of future mechanical failure, but also slow it down too much.

    It’s also worth noting that the device also has a gyroscope so it can detect tilting, shaking etc as well. It’s very versatile for it’s size. It’s NOT an emulator (though it can run an emulator), it’s a fully original handheld console.

    $200 is a fair price because that includes something like 15-20 games. Every game for the playdate is original and hasn’t existed before it came out.












  • I agree, huge open worlds are often exhausting for me, and the developer need to fill it often ends up with cheap copy and past Ubisoft methods (collectibles, etc)

    If Skyrim was the size of say, Assassins Creed Odyssey, it would’ve honestly suffered horribly, largely because one of Skyrims best features was the fact that their map was handcrafted and full of detail and secrets.

    Sure you can add secrets to a procgen map, but that developer process that lead to the best ones are largely gone.






  • It’s hard to really pinpoint just one game…but I would argue Skyrim is my nearest and dearest. 10k hours of playtime since release, haven’t played for nearly 2 years but I still keep tabs on mods in the event I go back (I will).

    I was maybe 12 when I first played Skyrim, roughly a year after it was released and I was enthralled by it. By that age the most “expansive” game I’d played was maybe Minecraft (Beta 1.7.3). I think it might’ve been my first open world game?

    Either way, the music, the questing, the exploration and detail in the worlds always held my ADHD brain’s attention well. I saw the flaws, sure. However I thoroughly enjoyed that janky buggy game more than any other thing out there for a long long while.

    Right behind Skyrim would have to be Dishonored. It’s actually one of the only two games I’ve gotten a physical PC copy for. But the lore, story, and vibes of the game were genuinely so cool to me. I replayed that and the games sequels several times now.

    Minecraft holds a close place in my heart too, I generally come back to it once a year for a nice, lightly modded hardcore playthrough. It especially helps me with creativity, since I get to build something without it feeling like work.

    But yeah, Skyrim will always hold a place in my heart, and to a level it even influenced parts of my younger personality.