Honestly, I think you should use them for anti-piracy DRM. Steam’s DRM is easy to crack, and so when we were thinking about how to make our game unpiratable, we just decided to use the Steam Achievements system like a save file. The game just loads the game state based on what achievements the player unlocked. You know, I never talk about this, but I used to work for Blizzard. I was the first second-generation Blizzard employee. But like, I never talk about it, so having worked there really taught me to think outside the box. So yeah, use achievements as DRM. Makes your game unpiratable.

Everyone downvoted me when I said Sony would keep increasing prices when they had no real competition. Nintendo dropped out, and Microsoft seems to be having no interest in competing, so now we are seeing exactly what I said would happen, happen.

I have edited my comment with my list for your data gathering pleasure.

I am compelled to disagree that Banjo Kazooie holds up better than The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time for 1998. That’s crazy talk.

I am interested in doing this but do not have the time currently. Ill come back to this later.

EDIT: Here is my own list, limited to games I have actually played. I guess this would be my “Game of the Year” list for the following years, again, from games I have played. Although I tried hard to limit it down to just one game.for each year, sime year were more stacked than others (and this really hurt sometimes). If multiple games are listed, they are considered close to equal in the order they are listed, with first being the highest and each subsequent being like half a point below its previous.If its not on this list, either I didn’t play it, or I don’t consider it to be equal to or better than what I put here:

• 1981 - Defender
• 1982 - Q*bert
• 1983 - Fortress of Narzod
• 1984 - Knight Lore
• 1985 - Super Mario Brothers
• 1986 - The Legend of Zelda
• 1987 - Dungeon Master
• 1988 - Snatcher (the later SEGA CD version is objectively better in nearly every way)
• 1989 - Tetris
• 1990 - Super Mario World
• 1991 - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• 1992 - Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf
• 1993 - Brandish 2: The Planet Buster
• 1994 - Super Metroid, Policenauts
• 1995 - Panzer Dragoon
• 1996 - Yu-No: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World
• 1997 - GoldenEye 007, Quake II, Mega Man Legends
• 1998 - The Ledeng of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life, Panzer Dragoon Saga
• 1999 - Silent Hill, Shenmue, System Shock 2, Age of Empires II, Dino Crisis
• 2000 - The Operative: No One Lives Forever, Vagrant Story
• 2001 - Halo Combat Evolved, Silent Hill 2, Shenmue II, Super Smash Brothers Melee
• 2002 - Metroid Prime, Resident Evil (Gamecube remake), The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Steel Battalion, Panzer Dragoon Orta, MechAssault, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
• 2003 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy, F-Zero GX, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 (yeah, it released in 2003)
• 2004 - Halo 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II, Need for Speed Underground 2
• 2005 - TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (unironically a peak game in 2005), Star Wars Republic Commando,
• 2006 - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Battlefield 2142, Metroid Prime Hunters
• 2007 - Halo 3, Metroid Prime 3 Corruption, Project Gotham Racing 4
• 2008 - Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Rock Band 2, Mirror’s Edge
• 2009 - Demon’s Souls
• 2010 - Halo Reach, NieR (Gestalt), Battlefield Bad Company 2, Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, Infinity Blade (yes, the mobile game)
• 2011 - Dark Souls, Minecraft, Portal 2, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon
• 2012 - Forza Horizon
• 2013 - Battlefield 4
• 2014 - Dark Souls II, Halo 2 Anniversary (Campaign, as part of Master Chief Collection), Destiny, Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc, Danganronpa 2 Goodbye Despair,
• 2015 - Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain, Yakuza 0, Life is Strange
• 2016 - Dark Souls III, Factorio, Divinity Original Sin II, Stellaris (its very different now, in a better way IMO)
• 2017 - NieR Automata, Doki Doki Literature Club!, The Coma: Recut,
• 2018 - Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, Forza Horizon 4, Deep Rock Galactic, Kingdom Come Deliverance
• 2019 - Risk of Rain 2, Code Vein, Death Stranding
• 2020 - Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur’s Gate III, Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, Genshin Impact (it was fun for a while)
• 2021 - Valheim
• 2022 - Elden Ring, Goddess of Victory NIKKE (I am completely serious with this pick)
• 2023 - Metroid Prime Remastered, System Shock Remake (I actually backed this game on Kickstarter at one of their higher tiers)
• 2024 - Helldivers 2
• 2025 - Elden Ring Nightreign
• 2026 - (I haven’t played any games that released this year that were good enough to be in this list)

You know, writing this all out, gaming really does suck these days. The 90s-10s were absolutely STACKED with bangers.

Because nobody has the time to play another online only game when they are already loyal or addicted to the bigger games with a higher budget for predatory marketing research?

Curious what your thoughts are on Vintage Story, Hytale, Castleminer Z, etc…

Being a backer for the original GPD WIN, it is pretty disappointing to see they have ditched the clamshell design. I thought it was a decent design that could be refined down to a pocketable size, but I guess that will never happen now that its just copying the Steam Deck’s PSP form factor.

I am curious how much of their growth is attributed to cheaters creating infinite accounts to claim free games so if they get banned on one account they just switch to another one.

Dead By Daylight has this problem where the game was free for like a week on Epic games, and if you play with a cheater in the game (pretty common because the anticheat is nonexistent), its almost always from an Epic account with some random character username.

Interested to know how they are sourcing their DRAM chips, and if they know that pricing something high in a bad global economy and a shortage of supply is an easy way to kill early adoption of something.

I’d rather get whatever the newest/best I can afford when I need to upgrade. The 1080 Ti is tired but it still works well, so I don’t feel enough pressure to spend the money yet. Ive been looking at the 5070 Ti, but the price is still too high having only just dropped to MSRP in my area.

Also, I never trust second-hand GPUs like I never trust second-hand hard drives. Too much money in it for someone to lie about the condition, or whether they smoke or not, etc. Less hassle when I buy new, especially if I need to RMA, even if it is a higher initial cost.

I’d love to have an RTX card if they weren’t so overpriced. My 1080 Ti is getting tired of skipping upgrade year due to absurd overpricing.

Wait… I thought FIFA was in bed with the Saudis… Do the Saudis that control FIFA hate the Saudis that just bought EA??

How very convenient to keep prices up. Very convenient.

Well, putting together a trailer with Aerosmith or Beatles music playing over it isn’t helping the ballooning “development costs” either.

Neither is studios overhiring and then figuring out you can’t just hire 500 people and then not let them go. Game studios have become bloated. Overstaffed. And so have their games.

They just can’t understand not every game needs to be a 150GB+ open world game, or have the latest realistic graphics. Small games are okay, good even.

Imagine how much more detailed a game could be from a AAA studios if it launched with highly stylized retro inspired graphics. They will never do this of course, but just imagine it. Imagine how much more there could be, with way less time and money being required to do it. A single barrel that might take an artist a whole day to make could easily mean multiple variants of barrel in the same time. They could drop a 20GB game that feels like a 200GB game, and do it in like 6-12 months.

It would be so easy to split their already massive studios into like 20 smaller teams of 50 or less people to work on these kinds of smaller games and they could pump them out quickly. Just flood the market with these highly concentrated titles. But they won’t, because its easier to convince a shareholder to make billions from a single game that looks really good visually but plays like trash with MTX for short term profit than it is to convince them to play the long game and make trillions with the volume of smaller games sales and the massively reduced development costs.

Its all about short term profit these days, and its why all the businesses in the world seem to be racing each other to the bottom. Because why play the long game.when you might be dead before you hit the jackpot? Nevermind that you can’t take any of it with you to the grave.

Yep. And it didn’t have the mature audience warning that the standalone video has currently on YouTube.

I still can’t believe that they were actually allowed to show that live on YouTube still. YouTube bans people for showing way less.

I’m not saying E33 didn’t deserve to win anything, but I don’t believe it deserved to dominate like that. No single game should be allowed to do this, ever.

I mean, of the 6 nominees for Best Performance, 3 of them (50%) were from E33. That shouldn’t be allowed, IMO. Pick the single best performance from one game, then you can have more variety to pick from. Also, the winner of Best Indie Game should automatically be disqualified from also winning Best Indie Debut game.

In my opinion: KCD2 snubbed for Best RPG, Silksong snubbed for best Action Adventure, and Half-Life 3 snubbed for Most Anticipated Game (is it disqualified – no professionals allowed?).

I won’t say E33 didn’t deserve to win an award, it definitely did. But I will absolutely say with certainty it did not deserve to be nominated in so many categories and proceed to win basically every category.

Having an award show give awards to only one nominee feels bad for everyone except the show runners, that one nominee, and their fans. Lots of games deserved to be there that simply weren’t, and lots of nominees deserved to win but didn’t simply because E33 won this year’s popularity contest.

For example, Best Performance should not have been allowed to have 50% of the nominees be from the same game (E33, in this case).

It was good, but Episode 1 Racer was better, IMO. It still holds the world record for best selling sci-fi racing game, beating out even F-Zero and Wipeout.

Also, Episode 1 Racer appeals to people that may not really care too much about Star Wars by being a good racing game regardless. Jedi Power Battles though, relies more on the Star Wars IP, IMO. Especially the PS1 and GBA ports, which honestly weren’t that great in comparison to the Dreamcast version.

I don’t see why people are calling this Concord 2. The art and character designs were actually good, and the gameplay looked even better. Despite my disdain for Apex Legends, I have to admit that the game feels good to play when you are doing well, and Titanfall obviously felt even better. I don’t see this game doing horribly as long as they don’t try to monetize character abilities or weapons or anything Pay2Win.

I am disappointed seeing that the Need for Speed developers are from Criterion, and not former Black Box. Criterion’s NFS games have been trash compared to Black Box, particularly the handling. They fall feel like mobile games thanks to their B2D mechanic, rather than the more predictable handling model from older titles.

I am still interested, of course. Episode 1 Racer was the best thing to come out of Episode 1. Hopefully this one is good and has active multiplayer.