Steam or Not

Uh, not really?

You can be locked into it. For example, you used a store 7 years ago, it was awesome, now it turned into piece of garbage, but you can't leave because you have stuff in their library. You'll keep using it, but not because it is good.

For example, if I wanted to leave steam right now, I wouldn't be able to. Because a LOT of my stuff is there, and I'd lose access to all of it. And if I voice any complaints about changes to the platform I'll be ignored. Because alone I don't matter.

Which means I'll be using steam even if I hate it. By your metric that would means the store is good.

Next part is origin, uplay. If you get games from those platform, you become part of the users of the stores. Even if you dislike them.

Again, that would not mean that the store is good.

Focus on marketplace and microtransactions. The whole gem/card/emoticon thing is something that would make Satan proud. Or an EA exec proud. Basically, every game with cards is a part of microtransactions game, there's extremely convoluted mechanic of converted one virtual item into another, and there's also incentive to "catch them all". Every collective card, every emot icon, and when you collect it once, you're not done, because you now have a BADGE you can boast about to your friends, and you can raise its level, by getting more cards. Which you can buy with real money.

That's clearly whale hunting "Brag to your friends about your badge!" "Reach level that's higher than theirs". That's what social stuff is FOR, by the way. Now, items that are not CS:GO are dota (is TF2 still alive? Probably is...) are less addictive, but at some point CS:GO was selling marketplace rifles for double the price of AAA game.

It is worth keeping in mind that you aren't microsoft, and have different priorities.

My position is that "you almost certainly need to use a big platform" and "trying to roll out your own store is definitely a bad idea". But I wouldn't immediately recommend to go to steam and would look at other options first. You'll probably have to roll out on steam in the end, if you want maximum reach.

But. That won't have anything to do with growth in percents.

 

I doubt the store would go down. Even if it doesn't perform well to be honest, I expect it to be here for a long time.
Epic is for sure not going anywhere, they've been here for ages but fortnite is a whole different beast. A lot of people like to say it's dead, since they stopped playing, but the truth is it's very active still. Check youtube, twitch, reddit, etc. I don't play it, but that boy isn't done printing $$.

And to top it off, fortnite's success only pushed unreal engine to a new level. Epic always made improvements to their engine with the personal work they do for their games (Paragon), but fortnite pushed it to a whole new level.

There's a lot of really big AA games being made in unreal engine now. The first big Harry potter game, and a bunch of others.

 

I was referring to PlayStation and Xbox. The latter has been changing things up lately, but broadly both use exclusives to attract customers, and both have regular game giveaways.

The main difference between them and Epic (hence my "almost") is that the giveaway games are made available via a subscription. Epic are trying to break into the market, though, so of course they don't want the barrier of requiring payment.

I can't remember if I said it already, but as long as my audience was aligned my bigger concern as a developer considering a release with Epic would be their erratic behaviour, rather than reliability or reach.

 

The longevity comment was related to the argument of whether or not it's a gamer's or dev's "concern" how well a store does. That wasn't directly about the growth.

I'd say growth is related, but the degree to which it is depends on how aggressive the company is. For someone like Google or Amazon, the lack of immediate growth has resulted in them abandoning some of their attempts to enter the market. I don't have a lot of experience with Epic's behavior in that regard, though your comments suggest the opposite (not sure what funding has to do with it though, since Microsoft dwarfs those and yet closed Mixer last year, and since Google dwarfs those and we all see what's going on with their studios and Stadia).

That's fair. But that doesn't mean you need to keep using it when there are other options. If a game is available on both platforms, you can get it on the Epic Store, and one might argue that a choice to get something on Steam when it's available on the Epic store isn't related to being "forced" to.

It's there but you don't have to engage with it. it's not like Ultimate Team or something where nothing else is getting updated. Steam has introduced a ton of discovery features in the last year that I can use even if I haven't touched the trading cards.

Fair enough.

Right, that's why I said "creating one's own content and providing an equivalent product." Sony moneyhats lots of (Square Enix) exclusives but they also consistently get nominated for GOTY awards for their own games. They aren't just moneyhatting things. I don't think the timed exclusives could work on their own.

Xbox has been getting flogged, but the last couple of years with the "war chest" have seen them focusing on acquiring developers who can produce their own content. It's not the same as just the timed exclsuves, which they tend to get criticized for.

 

Yeah, the ZeniMax (Bethesda) acquisition looks like they plan on lots of Xbox exclusives for big titles going forward. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a bunch of "remastered" old titles made exclusively for the Xbox as well.

 

In their recent interview Phil claimed that "legacy" titles would stay multi-platform but I hadn't considered remasters.

 

Morrowind with modern graphics. Oblivion with a stable engine. Fallout 3 in color.

 

No, Daggerfal with modern graphics.

....We can dream, right?

 

We need yet another Skyrim release

 

Well, enhanced edition didn't do PBR conversion. So....

 

I would love to see morrowind with elements from skyrims combat system and voice acting. I know it wont ever happen, but good god would it be awesome.

And I say elements from skyrims combat rather than skyrim combat, because part of what made morrowind so awesome was the jankiness of some of its aspects and how you could basically break them with the right stats. I would love to see some of skyrims elements but the overall feel or morrowind maintained. I loved getting enough levitation to just fly out of problems and right into cities to restore. Totally game breaking, but totally awesome

 

Well. It's the 10th anniversary of Skyrim and all. And besides,

SSE Whiterun

Modded Whiterun today


If they bring the engine up and throw in additional DLC content, I would buy in. Replacing the majority of my 700+ mods with an official version would be great

 

... not sure if I dig the modded version.

This game made me realize that world generators matter.

Basically, would be nice to play again, especially in VR, BUT.

I know where good chunk of things are. So, no feeling of exploration anymore.

 

Well, I do. And in game it looks and more importantly feels much better. And it helps with the "I know where things are".
I waited several years to replay Skyrim to forget a lot of things. I just started to play again in January (10th anniversary and all). I don't care about VR, so that's not my cup of tea. But this set of mods I have right now give me the sense of new when it comes to Skyrim. Of course I know the location of a lot of things, but still, going there is new and exciting (human brain recognizes things using patterns, there are mods to change up the scenery, like in the screenshot, new trees, new building forms, etc, so it feels kind of new, although the path you take is the same old). And I started a 'no fast travel only by carriage' play, so it has to be not boring to go to places.

ps: the mod-list came from here if anyone interested. After you have done it once, it is easy to pick and choose mods. It's just a bit time consuming on this scale (700+ mods). I'm also not the best with post processing effects, I'm pretty sure one knows more about them can have better results at the end.