Can someone summarize what the Lunar sale and pig coins are all about?
Very brief.
Today is the Lunar New Year. Which is the Year of the Pig. Thus Pig theme.
My Chinese mother-in-law has made it abundantly clear that this is the Lunar New Year of the Pig. Like, she won't stop talking about it. The wife hardly cares and she's a year of the pig person.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
The Valve indie thing is kinda tough. Clearly they have to court AAA devs because 30% of cawadootie class game sales is a lot of money, and Epic is making a huge to get as many exclusives as they can right now, but at the same time you don't want to exclude indie devs who probably comprise the bulk of your catalog.
Not showcasing indie games in an environment that is crowded to the point where anything that doesn't get attention doesn't get sales is mechanically similar to excluding them from the service in the first place, which really flies against the whole anti-walled garden thing that Valve has been strongly pushing for with Steam.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'd bet there is at least one economics nerd in Bellevue who is currently having a big think about the whole thing.
+1
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
The Valve indie thing is kinda tough. Clearly they have to court AAA devs because 30% of cawadootie class game sales is a lot of money, and Epic is making a huge to get as many exclusives as they can right now, but at the same time you don't want to exclude indie devs who probably comprise the bulk of your catalog.
Not showcasing indie games in an environment that is crowded to the point where anything that doesn't get attention doesn't get sales is mechanically similar to excluding them from the service in the first place, which really flies against the whole anti-walled garden thing that Valve has been strongly pushing for with Steam.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'd bet there is at least one economics nerd in Bellevue who is currently having a big think about the whole thing.
This seems like a thing that'd be fairly easy to solve if anybody at Valve wheeled their desk over to the 'curated storefront' corner. Showcase AAA in the 'Featured & Recommended' section and then showcase indie in a second showcase below it but above the current 'Trending Among Friends'.
The problem is, as it always is with Valve, is that they don't want to put the effort into a manned forced for something when the more "interesting" (and cheaper) solution is to find a way to automate or crowdsource it.
The problem is, as it always is with Valve, is that they don't want to put the effort into a manned forced for something when the more "interesting" (and cheaper) solution is to find a way to automate or crowdsource it.
At some point I read a Rock Paper Shotgun article about Tokyo Ghost Hunters something something etc. (Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Daybreak: Special Gigs, or DSGTTGH as their steam page calls it) And I wishlisted and then picked it up pretty dirt cheap one sale.
And it finally made it's way to my installed games list where upon being bored with an hour or two to kill last night I played some of it. I knew the gist of it was a visual novel about high school ghostbusters essentially.
After I struggled for a very long time to figure out how to actually start the game. I never figured out how to do it with mouse and keyboard actually, but the controller worked using the d-pad and buttons.
It had a fun little opening, but it's got a really weird interaction system that is self explanatory if that explanation made no sense.
Someone might come up to you and say hello how are you doing today and ok the interaction wheel pops up. It's a circle with a range of emotion based icons around it, with the middle of the ring being a kind of passive contemplation. There's a heart, a pair of shaking hands, a eye with a tear on it, and a fist. Ok, so love, friendship, sadness, and anger. Got it. Someone said hello, so I guess I'll go with friendship that seems straightforward. But that's not all now a second circle pops up with an ear, a tongue sticking out of a mouth, an ear, and a hand, and in the center an eye. So you might think the mouth means to talk, but it does not. It represents taste. It's the five senses. So if I am going to interact with you in a friendly manner and pick the mouth, I guess I'm gonna give you a little lick? But not in a lewd way? Anyway, the only reliable outcome I've found really is to friend-touch folks to shake their hands.
I did also manage to lick some ectoplasm off a power outlet.
Anyway, they don't seem to care too much about what sense option you go with, but more the mood you choose to put in front of it.
And you do hunt ghosts, which is interesting in this early phase. The sheer number of skills and inventory items that seem to come into play makes me think it's going to get pretty complicated, but at its core it's kind of like playing battleship.
You have a layout map of the room or rooms you're in and where you and your team members are. You can place damaging traps and sensors around the map as well as blocking paths with salt and stuff. Then you try to make an educated guess as to where the ghost will be once you and it move and try to smack it with your ghost harming weapons. If you miss exactly where it was but stopped adjacent to it, it will counterattack you. You'll also take a hit if you walk into the same space it's in.
I also found out that when you've taken a job in a person's apartment there marks on the map that indicate their "stuff" my first real job was a success in that I exorcised the ghosts from his apartment, but a financial failure in that I destroyed his humidifier and plasma tv in the process by taking shots in the general direction of his electronics.
So it's super weird, barely explains itself. But I will probably reload and maybe try some more from the start with a better understading of this.
There's also a boardgame you can play with your friends that mimics the ghost hunting invisible map stuff but I don't get it in the slightest, which may be a problem because it helps you earn exp points.
Oh you also need to I guess learn magazine publishing skills like copy editing, project management, or layouts to help keep your business afloat with its occult focused zine.
Oh hey found the manual on the store page
Looks like I needed to hit U on the keyboard in order to start the game from the menu.
I'm not sure what the Ignore Senses function entails. Maybe it skips the whole touch, taste, hear step on those interactions.
@Dalantia Spellfront'd me when I was busy mining rocks in Conan.
Perhaps I've mentioned this game before? It's a first-person shooter, where you play a sorceress... in a fantasy setting... that's being invaded by aliens. What's not to love about this?
The problem is, as it always is with Valve, is that they don't want to put the effort into a manned forced for something when the more "interesting" (and cheaper) solution is to find a way to automate or crowdsource it.
All hail the algorithm.
"Deliver us from responsibility"?
For how many times such a task needs to be done, automating it instead of having it be manual makes a lot of sense. But they need to figure out what to automate things to do. Right now it jumps between extremes when things get tweaked and totally changes the direction of things.
at this point though theres some real sunk cost stuff going on. like as a gamer that has a ton of games on steam, i dont want steam to fail because i dont want to lose access to my games. but at the same time, if someone else does it better, over time they will gain a larger market share just because devs would rather work with them. itll take a while for it to happen because there really needs to be a critical mass of users on a given platform for it to be attractive to a publisher. doing stupid things that generate bad press like the metro people probably isn't going to help those platforms either.
It's sad to see things go from the point where Steam saved Introversion 9 years ago to where we are now.
I remember that. I bought that bundle then, too.
For anyone who hasn't got them yet (there's gotta be someone, right?), all Introversion's games are on hefty discounts right now. 75% off Prison Architect, 85% off Defcon, Darwinia, Multiwinia, Uplink and Scanner Sombre, as well as the Defcon and Darwinia soundtracks. Hell, that same old bundle from that story (Defcon & soundtrack, Darwinia & soundtrack, Multiwinia, and Uplink) is just over two quid at the moment.
at this point though theres some real sunk cost stuff going on. like as a gamer that has a ton of games on steam, i dont want steam to fail because i dont want to lose access to my games. but at the same time, if someone else does it better, over time they will gain a larger market share just because devs would rather work with them. itll take a while for it to happen because there really needs to be a critical mass of users on a given platform for it to be attractive to a publisher. doing stupid things that generate bad press like the metro people probably isn't going to help those platforms either.
Epic isn't doing anything better except for paying pubs more.
The problem is, as it always is with Valve, is that they don't want to put the effort into a manned forced for something when the more "interesting" (and cheaper) solution is to find a way to automate or crowdsource it.
All hail the algorithm.
"Deliver us from responsibility"?
For how many times such a task needs to be done, automating it instead of having it be manual makes a lot of sense. But they need to figure out what to automate things to do. Right now it jumps between extremes when things get tweaked and totally changes the direction of things.
That's just big sites algorithms. No YouTube, I am not interested in anything from the "VIDEO GAME... BAD?" content creators crowd just because I like listening to Falcom music. Recommend me other video game music! At least listen when I say I don't want nothing to do with these people insisting Star Wars recently murdered their dog or whatever.
It's a hard concept to get right, if it can be gotten right at all.
So this hit last night or this morning, and I'm finally coherent and awake enough to get to it. Apparently the Benadryl I took to shut this cold up plus the lack of sleep I had kind of comboed into each other...
Thanks to @Malakaius for Protest! Even though you tried to make it seem like Isy was to blame for this, well... it's hard to fool a cat. Unless catnip is involved... and now I'm thinking of more lemonade.
I ended up recently falling down a Cities Skylines hole recently, so after browsing the store and realizing I didn't really feel like I needed any new games, I now have every expansion for Cities other than Natural Disasters and Snowfall which are kind of crap.
Really enjoying what they add to the game! Especially Industries, the new one, I'm playing 3 cities at once now specializing in different things to play with it. I can definitely see how some people would be like "this DLC is only useful if you think of this game as a digital model trainset hobby", though.
This game is, easily without question, the most amazing city builder/manager game ever made. It's not perfect and I don't like how a lot of the essential parts of it are tied into the paradox DLC model, but still.
Then let me break a spear here for Zer0ranger. This is one of my favorite shmups in the recent years. It's fast, it's well designed, it's very replayable, it's stylish, and it's very much weird, with a plot that I sadly can't sell to you here without heavy spoilers. If you like shmups at all, give it a shot.
I ended up recently falling down a Cities Skylines hole recently, so after browsing the store and realizing I didn't really feel like I needed any new games, I now have every expansion for Cities other than Natural Disasters and Snowfall which are kind of crap.
Really enjoying what they add to the game! Especially Industries, the new one, I'm playing 3 cities at once now specializing in different things to play with it. I can definitely see how some people would be like "this DLC is only useful if you think of this game as a digital model trainset hobby", though.
This game is, easily without question, the most amazing city builder/manager game ever made. It's not perfect and I don't like how a lot of the essential parts of it are tied into the paradox DLC model, but still.
I love cities skylines, including the two dlcs you didn’t choose. I just wish they’d fix that traffic AI. About 50k people and the game becomes much lore about traffic management, by which I mean figuring out wtf the AI is trying to do.
I also liked industries a lot once you figure out how to set up an industrial district properly. Much more engaging than just dragging the yellow squares around. I wonder if a commercial type tho g is going to come next in that kind of play. It’s like the commercial vs office zones are almost a prototype of what this dlc became.
For the life of me, I'll never know what combination of uppercase I's, lowercase L's, or that | symbol over the backward slash compose your name.
It's called a 'pipe'.
Alternatively referred to as a vertical bar, the pipe is a computer keyboard key " " that is two vertical lines above one another and commonly looks like a full vertical line. This symbol is found on the same United States QWERTY keyboard key as the backslash key.
It's sad to see things go from the point where Steam saved Introversion 9 years ago to where we are now.
I imagine a lot of this has to do with market saturation. Back in 2010 there wasn't a lot available as far as indie titles available on PC. High quality indie titles at low prices moved like hotcakes. Nowadays, there's a plethora of options, and we're getting more and more every day.
Sure, a part of it is exposure, and that could be solved by curation, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a glut of good indie games in any genre a prospective buyer is interested in. The amount of money gamers have to spend on games isn't expanding as fast as the indie game market is.
It's sad to see things go from the point where Steam saved Introversion 9 years ago to where we are now.
I imagine a lot of this has to do with market saturation. Back in 2010 there wasn't a lot available as far as indie titles available on PC. High quality indie titles at low prices moved like hotcakes. Nowadays, there's a plethora of options, and we're getting more and more every day.
Sure, a part of it is exposure, and that could be solved by curation, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a glut of good indie games in any genre a prospective buyer is interested in. The amount of money gamers have to spend on games isn't expanding as fast as the indie game market is.
It's hit AAA titles too. Some of the franchises that haven't hit critical mass have noticeable sales gaps with those that have.
For now a release on the Switch eshop seemed to be taking over the big breakout for some indies but even that will likely fade in time as more titles release there.
And as always:
But now we're seeing more attempts at or resurgences of lifestyle games. The MMOish loot shooter space alone is contending with Destiny, Warframe, The Division, and Anthem. And even some Ubisoft games are trying to bring in some of the hooks MMOs use so there's more time being taken up by some of our chosen games.
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Finished Shadow Warrior.
It's unexpected to me that (serious end game spoilers ahead)
I would actually cry when Ameonna held the body of Hoji as he vanished into nothing.
That game was more fun than it had any right to be.
Anyways, I'm playing Shadow of War and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep over on the PS4, and Witcher 3 over here on the PC, so I've been having a good time lately. I've also got a save on FFXV over on the PS4 just waiting for me to get back to it, and a game of Fallout 4 that I'm more than halfway through. And technically any one of those games fits my theme for this month, in that they're all part of game series I love.
As far as games, the playing of them and time I have or don't have to play them (or the money that I do or don't have the time to spend on them), one goal I've had from the beginning of starting the backlog group was to try and break my own habit of just going back and playing comfort games, and it's worked to mostly a success. In encouraging myself (if not more than a handful of others) to both create a theme for each month and also to stick with not going back to older games for a second run more than maybe once or twice a year, max (and rarely taking that up even when I allow myself to), I've been playing all sorts of games over the last few years. I've realized things about what games I like, as well. For example, though I'm usually bad at first person shooters, I actually like them more than puzzle platformers, and though I enjoy some old school platforming, I'd rather it be a metroidvania than a mario-a-like. Also, I have a special place in my heart for JRPGs, but I'm less enthused overall with CRPGs. I like 4X, but can't really get behind RTS. And I just don't really do that well with most "big brain" puzzle games (like Hexcells, Space Chem, etc) or shmups. I find that these realizations have helped me refine my game selections, so that I rarely pick up or wishlist a game that I won't enjoy. That really helps me feel like I'm getting the most out of what games are being released.
It is sort of hard when people come in with the love and adulation for so many different games that I know I'll never enjoy, but I've learned enough over these past few years to know that I'd only be wasting my money by getting these games. As an example, it's why I want to have my wife get GRIS; I know from what I've seen of it that it's not my kind of game to play, but it looks perfect for her, and I'd love to watch her play it.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
It's sad to see things go from the point where Steam saved Introversion 9 years ago to where we are now.
I imagine a lot of this has to do with market saturation. Back in 2010 there wasn't a lot available as far as indie titles available on PC. High quality indie titles at low prices moved like hotcakes. Nowadays, there's a plethora of options, and we're getting more and more every day.
Sure, a part of it is exposure, and that could be solved by curation, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a glut of good indie games in any genre a prospective buyer is interested in. The amount of money gamers have to spend on games isn't expanding as fast as the indie game market is.
It's hit AAA titles too. Some of the franchises that haven't hit critical mass have noticeable sales gaps with those that have.
For now a release on the Switch eshop seemed to be taking over the big breakout for some indies but even that will likely fade in time as more titles release there.
And as always:
But now we're seeing more attempts at or resurgences of lifestyle games. The MMOish loot shooter space alone is contending with Destiny, Warframe, The Division, and Anthem. And even some Ubisoft games are trying to bring in some of the hooks MMOs use so there's more time being taken up by some of our chosen games.
I think that the latter point is going to go in a different direction. I think that kind of game is going to suffer a big decline in popularity soon (or even now, really) that will result in big losses for the AAA publishers behind them. Destiny 2 has already proven to be less successful than projected. Anecdotally, I know a number of people who are normally into that kind of game saying they're going to pass on Anthem because they don't have the time. In the same way that there is a finite amount of gamer's money out there, there's a finite amount of gamer's time too.
It's unexpected to me that (serious end game spoilers ahead)
I would actually cry when Ameonna held the body of Hoji as he vanished into nothing.
That game was more fun than it had any right to be.
It was unexpectedly more heartfelt towards the end.
The relatively limited budget actually helped a bit in some respects.
For me it was when Wang sat with Ameonna without saying a word after a game of being a hyperkinetic loudmouth, just patiently waiting to see if she needed anything while she mourned. It was a lot more touching than any voiced cutscene would be.
I'm preloading (41.89 GB!) for the closed beta for Division 2 that starts tomorrow. Says I can invite three friends, so if you want to get in on this but don't have an invite of your own, let me know. Friend me on uPlay too, no matter what, more friends always welcome. davidsdurions is the username, fancy that.
Posts
My Chinese mother-in-law has made it abundantly clear that this is the Lunar New Year of the Pig. Like, she won't stop talking about it. The wife hardly cares and she's a year of the pig person.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Not showcasing indie games in an environment that is crowded to the point where anything that doesn't get attention doesn't get sales is mechanically similar to excluding them from the service in the first place, which really flies against the whole anti-walled garden thing that Valve has been strongly pushing for with Steam.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'd bet there is at least one economics nerd in Bellevue who is currently having a big think about the whole thing.
Also known as the ‘life destroyer’ bundle.
This seems like a thing that'd be fairly easy to solve if anybody at Valve wheeled their desk over to the 'curated storefront' corner. Showcase AAA in the 'Featured & Recommended' section and then showcase indie in a second showcase below it but above the current 'Trending Among Friends'.
All hail the algorithm.
"Deliver us from responsibility"?
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
And it finally made it's way to my installed games list where upon being bored with an hour or two to kill last night I played some of it. I knew the gist of it was a visual novel about high school ghostbusters essentially.
After I struggled for a very long time to figure out how to actually start the game. I never figured out how to do it with mouse and keyboard actually, but the controller worked using the d-pad and buttons.
It had a fun little opening, but it's got a really weird interaction system that is self explanatory if that explanation made no sense.
Someone might come up to you and say hello how are you doing today and ok the interaction wheel pops up. It's a circle with a range of emotion based icons around it, with the middle of the ring being a kind of passive contemplation. There's a heart, a pair of shaking hands, a eye with a tear on it, and a fist. Ok, so love, friendship, sadness, and anger. Got it. Someone said hello, so I guess I'll go with friendship that seems straightforward. But that's not all now a second circle pops up with an ear, a tongue sticking out of a mouth, an ear, and a hand, and in the center an eye. So you might think the mouth means to talk, but it does not. It represents taste. It's the five senses. So if I am going to interact with you in a friendly manner and pick the mouth, I guess I'm gonna give you a little lick? But not in a lewd way? Anyway, the only reliable outcome I've found really is to friend-touch folks to shake their hands.
I did also manage to lick some ectoplasm off a power outlet.
Anyway, they don't seem to care too much about what sense option you go with, but more the mood you choose to put in front of it.
And you do hunt ghosts, which is interesting in this early phase. The sheer number of skills and inventory items that seem to come into play makes me think it's going to get pretty complicated, but at its core it's kind of like playing battleship.
You have a layout map of the room or rooms you're in and where you and your team members are. You can place damaging traps and sensors around the map as well as blocking paths with salt and stuff. Then you try to make an educated guess as to where the ghost will be once you and it move and try to smack it with your ghost harming weapons. If you miss exactly where it was but stopped adjacent to it, it will counterattack you. You'll also take a hit if you walk into the same space it's in.
I also found out that when you've taken a job in a person's apartment there marks on the map that indicate their "stuff" my first real job was a success in that I exorcised the ghosts from his apartment, but a financial failure in that I destroyed his humidifier and plasma tv in the process by taking shots in the general direction of his electronics.
So it's super weird, barely explains itself. But I will probably reload and maybe try some more from the start with a better understading of this.
There's also a boardgame you can play with your friends that mimics the ghost hunting invisible map stuff but I don't get it in the slightest, which may be a problem because it helps you earn exp points.
Oh you also need to I guess learn magazine publishing skills like copy editing, project management, or layouts to help keep your business afloat with its occult focused zine.
Oh hey found the manual on the store page
Looks like I needed to hit U on the keyboard in order to start the game from the menu.
I'm not sure what the Ignore Senses function entails. Maybe it skips the whole touch, taste, hear step on those interactions.
@Dalantia Spellfront'd me when I was busy mining rocks in Conan.
Perhaps I've mentioned this game before? It's a first-person shooter, where you play a sorceress... in a fantasy setting... that's being invaded by aliens. What's not to love about this?
Thanks!
For how many times such a task needs to be done, automating it instead of having it be manual makes a lot of sense. But they need to figure out what to automate things to do. Right now it jumps between extremes when things get tweaked and totally changes the direction of things.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
I remember that. I bought that bundle then, too.
For anyone who hasn't got them yet (there's gotta be someone, right?), all Introversion's games are on hefty discounts right now. 75% off Prison Architect, 85% off Defcon, Darwinia, Multiwinia, Uplink and Scanner Sombre, as well as the Defcon and Darwinia soundtracks. Hell, that same old bundle from that story (Defcon & soundtrack, Darwinia & soundtrack, Multiwinia, and Uplink) is just over two quid at the moment.
Steam | XBL
Epic isn't doing anything better except for paying pubs more.
Guess that means we're doing a level 1 lala coop run go go go!
That's just big sites algorithms. No YouTube, I am not interested in anything from the "VIDEO GAME... BAD?" content creators crowd just because I like listening to Falcom music. Recommend me other video game music! At least listen when I say I don't want nothing to do with these people insisting Star Wars recently murdered their dog or whatever.
It's a hard concept to get right, if it can be gotten right at all.
Something something Pigselated Pixie something.
Pigselated Piggsy was right there.
Steam | XBL
We're not ready to return to that hotness.
Right porked it they did
No need to ham it up.
Buy reccettear
Buy everything indie iolo recommends
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Buy everything Zachtronics
Apologies if it is well known but I've been off the forums for some time.
Get your chill and drill on!
Origin: Broncbuster
Am... am I indie iolo?
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
For the life of me, I'll never know what combination of uppercase I's, lowercase L's, or that | symbol over the backward slash compose your name.
Edit: Basically your forum name reminds me of trying to input old NES passcodes and failing repeatedly.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Thanks to @Malakaius for Protest! Even though you tried to make it seem like Isy was to blame for this, well... it's hard to fool a cat. Unless catnip is involved... and now I'm thinking of more lemonade.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/501320/The_Shrouded_Isle/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/327560/Near_Death/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/475190/Scanner_Sombre/ (only 89 cents!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/491950/Orwell_Keeping_an_Eye_On_You/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/390610/Circa_Infinity/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/381780/80_Days/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/521920/Deaths_Hangover/ (84 cents!)
https://store.steampowered.com/developer/MatthewBrown (only three of us own the Hexcells guy's latest, come on everyone!)
Stuff I have played recently and not so recently that come with an unqualified recommendation.
CrossCode
Unavowed
Return of the Obra Dinn
Slay the Spire
Really enjoying what they add to the game! Especially Industries, the new one, I'm playing 3 cities at once now specializing in different things to play with it. I can definitely see how some people would be like "this DLC is only useful if you think of this game as a digital model trainset hobby", though.
This game is, easily without question, the most amazing city builder/manager game ever made. It's not perfect and I don't like how a lot of the essential parts of it are tied into the paradox DLC model, but still.
Then let me break a spear here for Zer0ranger. This is one of my favorite shmups in the recent years. It's fast, it's well designed, it's very replayable, it's stylish, and it's very much weird, with a plot that I sadly can't sell to you here without heavy spoilers. If you like shmups at all, give it a shot.
I love cities skylines, including the two dlcs you didn’t choose. I just wish they’d fix that traffic AI. About 50k people and the game becomes much lore about traffic management, by which I mean figuring out wtf the AI is trying to do.
I also liked industries a lot once you figure out how to set up an industrial district properly. Much more engaging than just dragging the yellow squares around. I wonder if a commercial type tho g is going to come next in that kind of play. It’s like the commercial vs office zones are almost a prototype of what this dlc became.
It's called a 'pipe'.
I imagine a lot of this has to do with market saturation. Back in 2010 there wasn't a lot available as far as indie titles available on PC. High quality indie titles at low prices moved like hotcakes. Nowadays, there's a plethora of options, and we're getting more and more every day.
Sure, a part of it is exposure, and that could be solved by curation, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a glut of good indie games in any genre a prospective buyer is interested in. The amount of money gamers have to spend on games isn't expanding as fast as the indie game market is.
It's hit AAA titles too. Some of the franchises that haven't hit critical mass have noticeable sales gaps with those that have.
For now a release on the Switch eshop seemed to be taking over the big breakout for some indies but even that will likely fade in time as more titles release there.
And as always:
But now we're seeing more attempts at or resurgences of lifestyle games. The MMOish loot shooter space alone is contending with Destiny, Warframe, The Division, and Anthem. And even some Ubisoft games are trying to bring in some of the hooks MMOs use so there's more time being taken up by some of our chosen games.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
It's unexpected to me that (serious end game spoilers ahead)
Anyways, I'm playing Shadow of War and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep over on the PS4, and Witcher 3 over here on the PC, so I've been having a good time lately. I've also got a save on FFXV over on the PS4 just waiting for me to get back to it, and a game of Fallout 4 that I'm more than halfway through. And technically any one of those games fits my theme for this month, in that they're all part of game series I love.
As far as games, the playing of them and time I have or don't have to play them (or the money that I do or don't have the time to spend on them), one goal I've had from the beginning of starting the backlog group was to try and break my own habit of just going back and playing comfort games, and it's worked to mostly a success. In encouraging myself (if not more than a handful of others) to both create a theme for each month and also to stick with not going back to older games for a second run more than maybe once or twice a year, max (and rarely taking that up even when I allow myself to), I've been playing all sorts of games over the last few years. I've realized things about what games I like, as well. For example, though I'm usually bad at first person shooters, I actually like them more than puzzle platformers, and though I enjoy some old school platforming, I'd rather it be a metroidvania than a mario-a-like. Also, I have a special place in my heart for JRPGs, but I'm less enthused overall with CRPGs. I like 4X, but can't really get behind RTS. And I just don't really do that well with most "big brain" puzzle games (like Hexcells, Space Chem, etc) or shmups. I find that these realizations have helped me refine my game selections, so that I rarely pick up or wishlist a game that I won't enjoy. That really helps me feel like I'm getting the most out of what games are being released.
It is sort of hard when people come in with the love and adulation for so many different games that I know I'll never enjoy, but I've learned enough over these past few years to know that I'd only be wasting my money by getting these games. As an example, it's why I want to have my wife get GRIS; I know from what I've seen of it that it's not my kind of game to play, but it looks perfect for her, and I'd love to watch her play it.
I think that the latter point is going to go in a different direction. I think that kind of game is going to suffer a big decline in popularity soon (or even now, really) that will result in big losses for the AAA publishers behind them. Destiny 2 has already proven to be less successful than projected. Anecdotally, I know a number of people who are normally into that kind of game saying they're going to pass on Anthem because they don't have the time. In the same way that there is a finite amount of gamer's money out there, there's a finite amount of gamer's time too.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
GRIS
Anything made by Supergiant Games that isn't exclusive to Epic (Bastion, Transistor, Pyre)
It was unexpectedly more heartfelt towards the end.
The relatively limited budget actually helped a bit in some respects.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772