80’s’n’t

TSMC hates this one easy trick!

I realized this idea long, long ago, when Rare made Banjo-Tooie.

Banjo-Kazooie was a fun game. You unlock worlds, go to the world, collect 100% of all there is to collect, then continue.

Banjo-Tooie, its sequel, wanted to be bigger and better in every way. Sprawling open world hub, much larger worlds with more sub-zones, interconnectivity between worlds, more things to unlock, more things to do, etc. etc.

And I think, despite having so much more, it was a worse game for it. You go to a new world but find there’s a lot you can’t do yet because you didn’t unlock an ability that comes later on. You push a button in one world and then something happens in another, but now you have to backtrack through the sprawling overworld and large world maps to get there.

And this was just a pair of games made for the Nintendo 64, before the concept of “open world” had really even taken off.

But it demonstrated to me that bigger was not always better, and having more to do did not make it a better game if it wasn’t as enjoyable.

Early open world games were fairly small, and the natural desire for people who have seen everything becomes “I wish there was more,” but in practice it ends up typically being that they take the same amount of stuff and divide it up over a larger area, or they fill the world with tedium just for the sake of having something to do.

When looking at the collectibles and activities on a world map like Genshin Impact, it’s basically sensory overload with how much there is to do.

But almost all of that is garbage. And this is just a fraction of one region among several. Go here, do this time trial, shoot these balloons, follow this spirit, solve this logic puzzle, and then loot your pittance of gatcha currency so you can try to win your next waifu or husbando before time runs out.

And don’t forget to do your dailies!

If a game has a large world, it needs to act in service to its design. It needs to be fun to exist in and travel through, not tedious. It needs to have enough stuff to do that keep it from feeling empty, but not so much stuff that it makes it hard to find anything worthwhile. And it needs to give enough ability for the player to make their own fun, to act as the balance on that tightrope walk between not-enough and too-much.

Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are the most recent games that seemed to properly scratch an open world itch for me. While they weren’t perfect, the way they managed to really incorporate the open world as its own sort of puzzle to solve, in ways that Genshin Impact failed to properly emulate, made them more enjoyable as an open world than most other games in that genre I’ve played in recent memory.

But then those sorts of countries usually have law enforcement that likes taking large amounts of “financial incentives” to do whatever a company like Nintendo wants them to do.

Well…you’re not wrong.

It’s the specialized tools you’ll also need to do all of that that’ll get you, though.

Just build one, cheaper to boot.

Coming into a thread that has nothing to do with politics and using it to soapbox your political superiority is still kinda cringe, ngl.

In a world that is controlled almost entirely by heteronormativity, policing straight representation in a queer-friendly game made by a queer developer does not seem like an equivalent situation at all.

Caught me before I was able to edit! I thought about it for a second and decided that estimate was too high.

10 people is what I would usually say is a normal amount, maybe variable depending on how hungry people arrive and if there are any other dishes to snack on at whatever hypothetical party this is.

I can only eat 3-4 slices at most before I get full, but my appetite isn’t the biggest.

Usually what ends up happening is that I still order a party pizza for a group of 5 or so people and then end up with leftovers for a few days. Just can’t beat the surface-to-crust ratio.

A party pizza is basically what it sounds like, a pizza meant to feed a party of 10 or more people.

They usually look like this, a large rectangle cut into squares. Each square is about the width of your palm between your wrist and your fingers.

I mean it’s just the cake equivalent of a party pizza. It’s not made any differently than any other sponge cake, it just uses a larger square sheet to bake in than smaller round cake pans.

Fat, sugar, and salt are also “nutritious,” insomuch as they are components needed for survival. Too nutritious is probably a better way of looking at it. It’s a meaningless buzzword.

Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever, and maybe others (they used the term “including”)

Nestle was the only company to comment, saying how they planned to increase their sales of more nutritious food. Always gonna spin it to fit whatever narrative they want to sell to their consumers and shareholders.

Filed before, updated and approved after.

It definitely will. Too many games are no longer 100% offline or small enough to load it all to RAM. Even for games that can be taken offline to play, it would mean the feature would only be able to work in “offline mode” or the developers would need to find some way to align it with the design of their other systems.

Or more likely, as with other features Sony uses as selling points like their recently discontinued “Resume Activity” cards, it remains optional and no developers opt to implement it because it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

I mean, sure, they have the right, insomuch as someone can buy a game on disc and use it as a coaster I guess. But it ruins the point of it, in my opinion.

I’m not saying people are wrong to enjoy media and spend money however they want, but it’s like a concert venue installing fancy couches to put in the lobby for people who buy tickets to a show but don’t want to actually watch it. It just doesn’t seem worth it.

Would be better to watch a Let’s Play, in my opinion. I don’t know why someone would want to play a game only to engage with none of its core gameplay features.

Doesn’t seem like a good sell if they do it that way, though. Let’s invest money and time into this feature that we will disincentivise people from doing by reducing their rewards if they use it.

Works for people doing these things as a hobby project and accounting for functionality that currently exists, but not great for a corporation that would need to convince devs to implement the feature into their games and design around it.

Imagine just rewinding in Elden Ring? No more consequence for death, just un-lose your souls and dodge better without actually learning the tells.

What would be the point?

Sacred Indian living grounds with a few burial grounds here and there.