Rex
2d ago
Are all the kids playing GTA online? Maybe. I don’t have info either way. I hear about kids playing fortnight all the time. I can’t say I hear kids talking GTA.
My impression of GTA online is that it’s a bunch of old millennials playing RP, the urban community, and third worlders.
People are talking like GTA is going to do historic numbers. Fortnight numbers. I just don’t see it. From what I hear a million concurrent would be way below expectations. I think it could do a million and be on par with other big games this year. I don’t think it’s doing 50 million sales week 1. Certainly not with the urban community and third world as your workhorse to get some alpha over a normal big launch.
Rex
3d ago
I read this earlier and said, “hmm. Maybe I’m wrong”.
Then I got curious because I had not seen this news that pre order revenue was released. I looked into it. It looks like a bunch of people repeating information they heard in a big game of telephone. The original source is some dude posting info he found in an investment bank (piper sandler) research note that said something to the effect of “46 million pre sale units sold or $3bn rev would not be surprising.”
I’m not familiar with piper sander, but in not a banker (though I do work somewhat related to m&a). But I think it’s uncontroversial to say that these sort of research notes are mere an analysts informed speculation. And they’re usually motivated by something other than “reporting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”.
I remain skeptical.
Rex
3d ago
It’s probably a me thing, but I just can’t get engaged with a video game at this point without tear your hair out difficulty.
Rex
3d ago
I’m 100 hours in to Trails of Cold Steel III with SoftBrilliants Difficulty Mod. Probably another 400 hours to go to finish Cold Steel IV.
One of my all time fav genres is turn based command battle in jrpg. People usually dunk on this gameplay as being retardedly simple and boring. The issue is that almost all developers fail to tune their difficulty high enough - often or requires a mod or romhack to fully shine.
On max hacked difficulty. Every single battle is a puzzle. An inexperienced player will probably wipe on the first 2 turns of any given fight. There is always a certain combination of builds and commands that can clear the fight, sometimes in an extremely elegant manner. Finding that sequence is the fun.
Another great series/run like this is Xenoblade 2 on Max Custom Difficulty. That game has DLC that gives you difficulty sliders. Put them all to max. I reckon most people will find the first boss 5 min into the game unwinnable. But it’s not.
When there are actual stakes in these fights, it’s quite fun. And makes the narrative shine.
Rex
3d ago
Do you play Vox Populi? I find it really is necessary and is the only civ game that is sufficiently difficult after 30 years of playing civ. I tried to get back into IV but struggled to find a good balanced difficulty. And relearning the systems wasn’t easy after being away so long.
All this is to say, i think modded civ is the only real alternative to civ.
Rex
3d ago
I can’t help but watch the conventional wisdom on GTA6 and shake my head.
- GTA6 will sell more than any other game in history
- Rockstar can charge whatever they want and people will pay it
- There is the huge crowd of casuals who only play GTA and they’re all going to buy it
- We won’t have enough PS5s to meet the demand
- There are millions of people ready to spend $700 to play gta
- The most hyped game off all time.
This reminds me of the 2016 “Hilary will win” crowd. People just repeating conventional wisdom and confusing that for analysis
In your case, it’s probably not a bad move given your points on COD and FC.
But as far as GTA goes, I fully expect it to not meet expectations for impact on gaming or sales. 13 years since its last release is more than enough for it to be out of the general zeitgeist. All of the original creators are long gone. Rockstar announced they’ve excised the juvenile and frat house humor. And it was in peak development during the years where developer trends were at their worst - and we are now fully seeing the ramifications of those trends.
I just don’t think it’s culturally relevant to anyone under 20 years old. I played my first Grand Theft Auto as a PC CD-ROM demo from PC Gamer (I think). I played the hell out of that game with WinAmp in the background and Sublime MP3s playing music. GTA3 was every bit of the revelation people say. And there was continuity for nearly 20 years between Grand Theft Auto and GTAV. 6 will just not hit that same way. For a lot of reasons.
Just my opinion though. I can’t wait to see what happens.
Rex
12d ago
No kidding. It’s my opinion. How would you suggest we quantitatively prove a relative threat?
Rex
12d ago
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The have a very effective political lobby in congress that directly affects the candidates running and laws enacted in the country. Whether that’s Americans lobbying on behalf of Israel or Israel directly lobbying them is irrelevant. I think this should be uncontroversially true but examples abound. This influence appears to supersede regular Americans policy and candidate preferences and directly affects me in myriad ways.
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They clearly have the ability to influence our foreign affairs and relationships. Trump carries plently of blame for this war - but again, it seems plainly obvious to me that Israel is the reason we’ve attacked Iran twice now. There were no shortage of people telling Trump it was a bad idea. The Israeli agenda carried the day.
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Israeli concerns, preferences, and agenda repeatedly is shown to be more important than America and Americans. I don’t know what to make of USS Liberty other than that US military seems more concerned with Israeli outcomes than American lives or money.
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The USA and its citizens are reputationally impaired by #1-3.
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Israeli preferences and concerns are privileged in US media. CBS and Ellison seem to have an explicit agenda on this point. And then you have things like the Free Press and Bari Weiss coming from the other angle with “independent media” and podcasts. I put independent in quotes since I’ve seen reporting that she was bankrolled by the Israeli lobby.
I guess those are the big ones but I imagine I could come up with a few more. Additionally:
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People may say that all this is driven by Americans and American preferences for Israel and therefore israel is not to blame. That’s really irrelevant to me. Maybe that gets around the law. But the outcome is the same. And I don’t put it past Israel to be exploiting every tactic available, legal or otherwise, to have their hand directly on the wheel here.
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Chinese and Beijing do not have this level of direct effect on my day to day life - other than our easily manipulated politicians disrupting things trying to counter the Chinese superpower threat - a threat narrative that I find less than persuasive.
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The threat of global jihad and terrorism seems to have been overblown or contained. Again, the only way this influences me is the additional security theater and tax dollar spent on that over the years. Maybe this issue was comparable back in the bush days since our whole society was oriented around terrorism. But I’m also pretty critical of the whole GWOT these days, but that mania seems to have died down thankfully.
It’s a pretty simple equation really. The US is well equipped to counter other foreign threats and none of these other “enemies” have the keys to our house.
Rex
12d ago
I don’t know what to add to this thread other than to say that when I was much younger, and as recently as 5 years ago, I was always perplexed by anti semitism. I live on east coast so I know some Jews IRL. I was a big fan of Seinfeld, Larry David, Albert Brooks and dozens of other Jewish comedians and entertainers. I thought israel was a pretty badass country.
At some point thought, i guess i just started noticing too many things to ignore. Humans are excellent pattern matchers. Prior to Oct 6, I was already fed up with their behaivor. And I wasn’t singling them out. There’s lots of groups of people that are just so stereotypically antisocial that I’m crucial of.
After October 6 the volume was turned up significantly on their subversive antics. I’ve got zero love or respect for Hamas, but the Jewish and Israeli response to this was outrageous.
Then we get to this Iran Nuclear strikes and this war. Where I am at right now is israel is the single biggest external threat to the USA and my day to day life - bar none. More than china. More than islamists. More than europe. More than Russia.
I can only imagine how many others followed this same evolution. I’m sure there are some good Jewish people that would push back on all of this. And they may have some valid points. But the overwhelming amount of evidence on the other side of the ledger carries the day in my personal opinion. OPs story is just but one example. They are just so darn disproportionate in any response to a real or perceived slight.
Other option: the geo-physical event is coming in the near to medium term and he’s moving to safer territory. At least that’s where my mind went. South America is speculated to ride things out better than North America.
Edit: on a more serious note (not implying the GE is not serious, just less serious), maybe he just realized NZ is a terrible hedge. It seems to me that the commonwealth countries are far more pozzed than the US. It seems hard for me to imagine the government there will be friendly, despite what money can can throw around. As someone else mentioned, if shit hits the fan, they will not let him live the good life while their fake country collapses.
You clearly appreciate Doom at much deeper level than me. Playing old doom with obscure new mods. What is it about doom that is so evergreen? I only played the old dooms briefly as a kid. Never really played them to death or mastery. What’s the pitch?
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