Nelots

Uh… no. That is just factually wrong and it’s not even close. I don’t know what world you live in, but I could go through my steam library of 300+ games and probably count on my hands the number of them that have a demo.

Edit: Ah. By “demo” I’m guessing you mean pirating? Unfortunately that’s not going to help most people.

At that point a cheat code to enable godmode achieves the same purpose and still gives you player agency, unlike an AI taking over. Or just an accessibility option to skip boss fights. We really don’t need to reinvent the wheel here with AI.

To be clear, the original comment I responded to said:

looks at Hytale doing quite well without even touching Steam

In response to a comment that said:

There are laws that say that abusing a monopoly is illegal. Steam is objectively a monopoly in pc games. Sure, you don’t have to use it, but it is basically impossible for indie developers to make a living without it.

I never moved the goalposts; modern indie devs were always the goalpost.

Notably, almost none of those are indie games, and almost any indie game that you did list came out in the 2000s like Roblox, before Steam was the behemoth it is today. Half of them are games by the same sets of AAA studios like Epic Games, Blizzard, and MiHoYo, and most Blizzard games have an entire franchise of games older than Steam itself to piggyback off of. Speaking of, anything by Blizzard isn’t even true… their most recent games like Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 are both on Steam. Tarkov is also on Steam now, but I’ll admit I’m splitting hairs here since it spent nearly a decade off of it. Though the fact that it released on Steam with its 1.0 update does say something.

So I really don’t think any of those games aside from debatably Tarkov shows that the average modern indie dev can be successful outside of Steam.

Got any other modern examples than just the one game that had a massive following for the last 7 years of development?

You’re telling me chocolate isn’t some natural pre-existing resource? Smh. Next you’re going to tell me chocolate milk doesn’t come from chocolate milk cows.

I’m not into photography so I could be mistaken. But from what I’ve gathered, power points are the four points where the lines intersect in the rule of thirds (or the four corners of the middle box). Supposedly the eye is drawn to these four points of an image.

I will say that, while the other comment comparing it to Minecraft isn’t wrong to do so, you shouldn’t go in expecting some 1:1, 2D Minecraft experience. Because while they have plenty of similar features, the core of each game is quite different. Minecraft for example is primarily a sandbox game, with lite survival elements sprinkled in. You’re mostly just there to build and farm and do whatever the hell you want, and the game doesn’t differ greatly between peaceful and hard. Terraria on the other hand is primarily an action game with some survival elements. Sure, you can build huge, beautiful cathedrals if you’d like, but unlike Minecraft that’s not really where the game shines at all. Terraria instead shines in it’s exploration (especially when you’re new to the game) and combat.

Edit: Oh also, unlike Minecraft, world difficulties change things drastically. Difficulty isn’t just a damage and health slider for enemies, instead it also modifies general enemy AI (in honestly annoying ways sometimes - looking at you lava slimes), and bosses all get major changes including new attack patterns. I’d stick with classic or journey mode at first, even if you normally tend to try harder difficulties when playing new games.

A welcome change imo. The morality system in the Fable games were always heavily lopsided, with one side being strictly superior than the other. Though I will say that I did like the cosmetic changes it made.

They do want to be more focused on the gamer. That is, more focused on how to extract as much money from gamers as possible with as little work on their end as they can get away with.

I picked up Lawnchair when I de-googled my phone a bit more than a year ago. There were a couple launchers I considered, but honestly the name is what sold me. And I haven’t missed Nova since.

What challenge? HL2 is not a particularly difficult game. And there isn’t going to be any joy in overcoming whatever challenge you’re talking about if they’re hating every second of the game. Its not like we’re talking about a souls-like where they cheated because they couldn’t defeat a boss. No, they cheated because they got bored, not because of some imaginary skill issue.

And they’re not better off quitting if they still want to know how the game ends.

The professor oak challenge is rough lol. I tried it out on Pokemon Silver and must have spent well over 10 hours grinding to get my Feraligatr.

What does that have to do with anything? If someone’s mentally checked out of the game so much that continuing to play through it becomes a slog, I can’t blame them for cheating just to get it over with.

As someone who has in fact completed both the original Gen 1 and the full Gen 2 Pokedex (including Mew and MissingNo.), I genuinely can’t imagine playing through a Pokemon game without at least completing the regional pokedex. Collecting the creatures is what I play those types of games for.

And the reward isn’t the little completion diploma Oak gives you to print out. It’s the self satisfaction that comes with finishing your goal. Like getting all the achievements in a game; I don’t get anything whatsoever for that, but I still like to do it. Because I’m a completionist.

How brave, using Google Chrome to protest Microsoft… with an extension that only changes things locally. I promise that Microsoft doesn’t care one iota about you renaming things to Microslop with an extension. This is like proudly calling yourself a protester because you hung a sign up in your room where nobody else can see it. I guess it could annoy them a tiny bit if they see it become really popular I guess?

In other news, it’s really funny seeing an AI summary at the top of this article.

I’ll have to replay Halo 4 at some point. I remember liking it more than most people seem to, and I probably would have rated it like a solid 7/10. Not amazing, but not quite mediocre either.

Then again, I haven’t played it since it first came out, and I was far less critical of games back then.

They’re fleshing it out in a whole bunch of different places. It’s been like 2 years of spoilers, so I’m probably forgetting some big ones, but it basically seems like anywhere they can say “these unrelated features could still be improved” is likely getting something new.

(E: saw another comment put new features in spoilers and thought it was a good idea so I reworded my comment a little)

A pretty big update, but from what they’ve shown so far, its focus is mostly on QoL and fleshing out the game. No new bosses or anything like that.

Was expecting to see “install Linux” in one of the spoilers. Nice to see actual help.