It’s in the video provided in the article. It’s pretty complex and lengthy. You have to put in like 3 cheat code menu entries, then go to a level select option and hold down l1 and x, then the disk will stop, oh you had to keep your disc eject propped down so the console won’t detect the tray has been opened, switch out the disc, hold like triangle and x, let go of l1, triangle and x all at the same time, then it will boot into whatever pirated disc you switched out without the checks.

I can see why it’s not in the article, it’s hard to accurately write down and it would be almost as long as the article itself. That said, I don’t know how much of a godsend this is, it requires a copy of a pretty undersold and otherwise mediocre game. That said, I am not that into retro gaming so maybe this is truly a major change for the community.

“There’s never been a better time to be playing video games”

I’ve bought this game because of you. This looks amazing, thank you for bringing it up!

I didn’t even notice this comment until now. Looking at the comment I wrote late one night, there are tons more issues than that. Hell, I spelled ‘canceled’ with 2 Ls. I appreciate it though, reminded me to run my grammar checker.

Larian isn’t sharing it’s engine and I feel like even if it did, a lot of studios want the creativity of building their own thing. Not just another D&D crpg top-down isometric game. A lot of the D&D games in the works were unique and took interesting risks that might have paid off.

Ideally they didn’t have any crunch time.

They are the reason WotC canceled all those in-development d&d games a year and a half ago. All WOTC published games were canceled because their CEO passed away and they scrambled to find a new one. This new CEO saw all these in-development games and canceled them in an attempt to save money, and with the Dark Alliance game released the year before, they felt there was no recouping development costs.

Overall a huge bummer. I would have liked to play an immersive sim d&d game.

The SWAT series was amazing but now I just look back at it as copaganda.

Lunark. It’s kind of fun. I don’t know, I expected a different challenge than timing based delayed inputs. I thought it’d be more like a platformer with a story rather than feeling like an input queue fighter like dark souls.

I decided I was done watching the game awards since it doesn’t seem to really align with what I want an awards show to be. I am curious if Dave the diver won though. With the backlash I would be a bit surprised if it did. The game awards always seems a bit reactionary. But then again that’s mostly to keep advertising happy, not the game developers.

I was super into Sierra as a publisher. They seemed to back some of the highest quality games no one knew about. Ground Control, Gunman Chronicles, Homeworld, Aliens vs Predators 2, Empire Earth, Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza, and of course Half-Life. They published some quality games.

Good analysis, just a few nitpicks: AR is the future… when it matches human visual abilities, which may take several decades more, be it through glasses, or through a neural link. There is a deep uncanny walley in either case to overcome.

I mean we’ll see. It’s why I put it in the opinion section but I don’t see AR taking off. Pokemon Go was fun for some but overall I don’t see another AR game doing that level of success for a long time. Especially since Console, PC, and traditional mobile games do far better sales/profits than it.

LLM AI has already revolutionized AI, it’s the holy grail “glue” to keep different AIs working together, including itself.

Sorry, I meant game AI rather than general-use AI. I agree, for general use, it’s done some interesting things but people try to use it everywhere and for everything. Like games and text generation in games and they create things like “convince this AI to give you a secret code” LLM AI and toss it in a game and it sucks. The biggest issue is players getting stuck in unintended ways which seems to happen constantly with it. Additionally, for AI response and choices, there are already better systems out there like Utility AI or GOAP.

Overall, I don’t see LLM revolutionizing game AI in any area for it. Lastly, it doesn’t seem to be that useful for math or pattern extrapolation/interpolation. An example I used with ChatGPT 3.5 was simply: O’s value is 0, N is -1, and P is 1. What value is A and What value is Z? After some explaining that numbers can only be assigned once, it got a value for A of -14 (correct) and a value for Z as 25 because “Z is 25 letters after O” It took several prompts to get it to admit Z was 11. Lastly, making J = 0 and telling to pivot all values around J being 0, it messed up again.

Facts Section:

The real question is how does that compare to the rest of the games industry and what counts as a “fail”.

So according to the article: a “failure” is when a game becomes “inactive.” That seems like a poor standard for failing since every game will eventually be marked as a failure no matter how successful it once was. It could bring in millions of dollars but only 56 people played Deus Ex 1 today. Is that enough to count it as “inactive”? They don’t define inactive so it’s hard to really say if it’s absolute zero or near zero and for how long?

This also is only counting the GameFi platform and only.

So 75% of web3 mobile games fail to stay active for over 5 years. Let’s see how this checks with the rest of the industry.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/report-83-of-mobile-games-fail-in-the-three-years-after-launch

83% of mobile games fail in 3 years and 43% of them fail to make it to release.

Okay but what about profitability. That’s what really matters!

https://www.shacknews.com/article/56053/analyst-only-4-of-games

4% of games are deemed profitable.

Opinion:

I wouldn’t play Web3 games, I don’t really see a future for web3. I also don’t really see a future for VR/AR. I could be wrong about these things but they right now all seem like gimmicks that haven’t caught on. I also think that LLM AI isn’t as mind blowingly useful as everyone might think. I think it’s a neat tool and nothing more. It’s not going to revolutionize AI. That will come from other advancements, potentially on top of LLM but more likely in parallel.

That all said, these stats don’t seem to mark the death of web3. These stats actually seem slightly better than the rest of the industry. It’s likely because they are on a rise with VC and other funding.

Hmm, that’s a good point, and looking back I didn’t realize it was 300 million for both Crystal and Eidos… that’s pretty cheap considering the IP attachment but I think Square Enix was also looking to shed a lot of their studios.

Marvel’s Avengers was mainly Crystal Dynamics, not Eidos-Montreal. I don’t think another Tomb Raider would sell exactly as well as Shadow Of The Tomb Raider. Also, come to think of it, I don’t think Eidos-Montreal has the Tomb Raider IP.

That’s certainly a factor but only if they are working on other IPs that might compete.

I feel like your are over estimating the tomb raider profits there.

Really? I didn’t hear that people were shocked at thinking 300 million USD was that little of money for Eidos. It seems about right to me. Especially through Square Enix’s eyes where they had just put out GOTG which didn’t sell well enough to them.

Square Enix was going to close down or sell IO Interactive as they had pulled funding and were talking to other companies to sell them off. IOI employees triggered the MBO clause and made SE sell to them. This was only 2017.

Isn’t it fun when the every IP that exists is owned by 6 companies?

I honestly don’t think anyone was taken back by Eidos being sold off. The biggest mess Square Enix did was let IOI go while putting out The Quiet Man. Hitman 2? No! The Quiet Man, one of the worst games of the decade, YES! MORE PLEASE! Eidos hadn’t made a great game in a while but IOI had just put out a rather successful Hitman 1 season with large seasonal plans to keep it going. Now they are working on a James Bond game that everyone is excited about and Square is looking like an idiot. While Eidos will probably flop and flounder until they can get back their roots and build something substantial.