I just played through Gravity Rush 2 again recently and man, what a delightfully oddball game. Combat and movement like nothing before or after it with this beautiful watercolor, Moebius inspired, French urbanist stylings. This game was never going to sell 10 million copies, but it is so special to the people who made it and the gamers that enjoyed it. Japan studio, despite its storied history, has been shut down, and that feels so unfortunately emblematic of where Sony is at these days.

My introduction to Sony was with the PlayStation 2. Xbox was for crude frat bros salivating at the jiggle physics of Dead or Alive, Nintendo pushed out quality titles that felt a bit juvenile at the time, but PlayStation was *art house cinema*. This was a console bursting with style and creativity. From the AAA blockbusters like Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 2; to the mascot platformers like Sly Cooper and Jak; to the wonderfully bizarre Japanese titles like Katamari Damacy and Mr. Mosquito, it was a wonderfully eclectic catalogue of games to suit all all manner of tastes. Standing proudly in the crowd was Team Ico's Shadow of the Colossus. While discourse around the artistry of games wasn't as developed back then as it is now, but this game was spoken of in hushed tones with how commanding of a presence it had with its oppressive atmosphere and unprecedented sense of scale.

Cut forward to today and that diversity of games is nowhere to be found, at least not within the halls of Sony owned studios. This isn't to slander the great work that studios like Sucker Punch, Santa Monica, and Naughty Dog have done, but when all you are putting your money behind is the triplest of AAA cinematic blockbusters, they all begin to lose their luster when sat next to each other. Sony is no longer the steward of gaming's wildest and most exciting new titles, it is a content mill of 'premium gaming content'.

This is really unfortunate, because this console generation, Sony needed teams like Japan Studio more than ever. Studios that ,while not producing the best-selling games of the year, create a much more colorful catalogue of games for people to enjoy and fill in the gaps during the 3-5 year lulls between major studio outputs. Those prestige titles are what endear customers to these companies, and that goodwill can be cashed in during times of distress. Nintendo only just barely survived the Wii U generation because their history of quality titles had the hardcore fans stick by them, and new fans eager to receive them when the Switch came out.

I am no financial analyst and don't want to make any predictions about Sony's future, but I feel that things are not looking good from a public relations standpoint right now. Team Blue has spent the past 6 years blowing enormous amounts of money and wasting studios' precious time chasing live service trends to no avail. Studios are made to bet the farm on their massive first party outings, so if one underperforms, that could spell death for their employees. With only 4 new IPs under their belt this generation, 2 have been discontinued and nothing has come to fill the gap. Strong assets like Bluepoint and Kojima productions have been let go, all the while they spurn their hardcore fans with the death of game discs. Had Sony done the work to incubate stranger, more adventurous titles from the likes of the now defunct Japan Studios, maybe it would make all these bitter pills we've been swallowing go down just that little bit easier.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

Recently i've been thinking thanks to the various "remakes" and the discourse around them, that the word remake is used way too broadly. What i mean by this is that games are marketed and discussed as remakes when in reality some of them call themselves reimaginings.

Why do i think this? Well firstly i would like to present to you my taxonomy on the various ways you'll see a game preserved. I will also be using music analogies here to make my point better (Not sure how useful these will be but oh well)

Port: This is the most basic. You put the game on PC as is with no changes. Emulation also technically falls under this. Game collections usually fall under this. Basically like putting the song on another album or even reprinting the album

Expanded Port: This is where you take the already existing game and just add more content to it or even some tiny QoLs. This includes stuff like fighting game revisions. Basically an Extended version of the song

Remaster: Now you take the assets of the original game and just... Upscale them to modern standards. Not changing them, no. Just upscaling. In music terms from Wikipedia: Remastering is the process of making a new master for an album, film, or any other creation. Basically you're making a new master for the game but you're not changing much about it

Remake: The game is now faithfully rebuilt from the ground up with brand new graphics, presentation, minor QoLs, and you can also remix the soundtrack now. Games like Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Crash Bandicoot N'Sane Trilogy fall under this category in my opinion regardless of what the Steam page says. In music terms it's like a new band performing the original song faithfully. The instruments and performers are different but they're still playing the same composition and arrangement

Reimagining: THIS is the real category that most "remakes" fall into. You take the core premise of the game like the setting, story, characters HOWEVER now you are changing the core gameplay in big ways, making dialogue changes, forcing QoLs on people, changing progression etc. This includes "remakes" like Yakuza Kiwami 1,2,3, Trails in the Sky the 1st and 2nd, Persona 3 Reload and Persona 4 Revival. Almost like remixing a song. The core is there but you can't call the song a rerecording cause it changes too much compared to the original

This however brings us to another problem... When a reimagining pretending to be a remake comes out a definitive version of a game stops existing cause now you not only have the original game there as the authentic experience. You now have this reimagined version made for modern audiences specifically to get them in the game.

So my question is: Which version of the game do i play? Cause one is the original while the other is a remix of the game rather than a remake.

Which brings me to my point that we're using the term "remake" wrong and it's too broad.

Keep in mind i'm not saying that these reimaginings are bad in fact they are nice to have but we really need to tighten up the definitions at last

Examples of developers describing their "remakes" as reimaginings taken directly from their Steam pages

• Trails in the Sky the 1st: This stunning, award-nominated remake reimagines the beloved classic with new breathtaking visuals, refined gameplay, and the first unforgettable adventure across Liberl Kingdom. ("Remake reimagines" is literally a contradiction)
• Persona 3 Reload: Persona 3 Reload is a captivating reimagining of the genre-defining RPG, reborn for the modern era. Then in the Key Features. Experience the pivotal game of the Persona series faithfully remade with cutting-edge graphics, modernized quality-of-life features, and signature stylish UI.(Like what is this? Pick a lane ATLUS. Is this a faithful remake or a reimagining?)
• Resident Evil 4 Remake: Featuring modernized gameplay, a reimagined storyline, and vividly detailed graphics, Resident Evil 4 marks the rebirth of an industry juggernaut. (Notice how not only does it calls it's story "reimagined" but the game describes itself as a REBIRTH)

When you start looking, you find these suckers everywhere. Not all of the below games fit exactly, but a lot of them are close.

• SOMA
• Nobody Wants to Die
• Firewatch
• Spectrum Retreat
• Bradwell Conspiracy
• Ether One
• Close to the Sun
• Gone Home
• Deliver Us the Moon
• Before Your Eyes
• Hellblade (the remote woman is in your head and there are ten of them)
• Relicta
• Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (recordings rather than companion)
• Callisto Protocol
• The Station
• Still Wakes the Deep
• Suicide of Rachel Foster (role-reversal)
• Draugen
• Blair Witch 2019
• Someday You'll Return
• Mouthwashing???
• Return to Grace
• Beyond Blue
• Subnautica Below Zero (actual gameplay here)
• Superliminal
• Filament
• Portal 2 (a vague cousin of this genre)
• Q.U.B.E. 2
• Observation (role-reversal)
• Paradise Lost
• The Invincible (remote man in this one)
• Edith Finch (there is a woman but she's the protagonist)

I was curious why this is such a common format, and I think it's because it's just really well suited to telling a particular kind of story on a low budget.

It's very difficult to tell a good story with just the protagonist talking to themselves, so you need at least one other character. But NPCs with body/facial animations and their own AI are difficult and costly to animate. So rather than having a companion who goes through the game with you, just have your companion be somewhere remote where you can't see them, and make them speak to you through an ear piece (or through some other means).

This choice only really comes about when the devs are aiming to create a very specific kind of game - one which is narrative driven and feels 'AA', but on a low budget, or with a small team.

If they didn't mind the game looking a bit cheap, they'd just create NPCs and accept that they might be ugly.

If they didn't actively need the narrative to drive the experience, they'd cut the companion or use text-based dialogue.

But these are games that want to punch above their weight in terms of production values and tell a serious story. They don't want to look cheap. Often, they look the opposite - they are bursting with gorgeous scenery (which is doable because beautiful scenery is a lot easier to do on a budget than NPCs).

That's also why these games rarely have combat. They might include puzzles, but most of the time, they fall back on allowing the player to look around their world, interacting with items/notes/books and listening as the protagonist and the 'remote woman' talk about them. Then, at pre-determined points, control will be taken away from the player so that we can watch a cutscene play out. Cutscenes are almost always in these games (because it helps with the production value) but they also tend to be modest or sparing (because of budget limitations). When we do see NPCs, they are often 'ghostly' looking, made of particle effects, or otherwise not made to look like real people (because that's expensive).

I'm not quite sure why it's overwhelmingly a remote woman. Possibly because these games are aimed at male players, and male players are more likely to want to play as a man and form an easy relationship with a female character. Possibly because the devs want a contrast. And often I think it's because they want the remote voice to provide human warmth, and women tend to deliver that better. The 'male loner and mysterious female confidant' relation works well because there's a lot of room for teasing, flirting, and emotional vulnerability.

I think budget is also what tends to push these games to have trippy endings. Big climactic setpieces are expensive to animate, but weird visions or hallucinations in a black nothing are incredibly cheap. And often these later parts are some of the last to be made. Rather than creating a new area, just take bits of a previous area and scatter them around in the void. Use frozen silhouettes with dramatic camera angles. You can get away with a lot of asset reuse at the end because it feels like a narrative callback to something that happened a few hours earlier.

Do you like this subgenre (if you think it counts as one at all)? Or do you think it's overdone?

Fighting enemies and killing them (or being killed by them) it's the core activity in so many games.

The vast majority of videogames feature combat in some form.

The most popular games like Fortine, Cod, Lol are based on combat. Fifa and Rocket League are probably the main exceptions.

Even something apparently innocent like Super Mario has enemies in every level that can kill or be killed.

I would say that something like 80% of videogames feature combat in some form.

Now, I'm not saying that this is bad or wrong or that videogames cause real world violence or any nonsense like that.

But from a design point of view, why is it like that?

Compare it to sports and boardgames.

Combat sports are a niche. Ok maybe that's because people don't like being hurt and activities like fencing and laser tag require expensive equipment. Still in terms of popularity there is massive gap, I doubt that combat sports even reach 10% of the viewership/money flux of the sport world.

In boardgames eurogames are the most popular branch and they generally avoid any combat like interaction. Wargames are a niche, I doubt games that features combat reach even 50% of the total.

I'm not complaining, none of these is bad, it's just how is it and there is stuff for everyone.

But I wonder WHY things are like these?

Do people that like combat gravitate more towards videogames?

Do people like fighting in videogames but not in sports or boardgames?

Ever since 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum introduced the Freeflow combat system, many copycats have emerged, and a lot of them copied only the most surface-level elements. Games such as Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor, some Assassin’s Creed games, and so on.

Because of these games, I think people started assuming that what defines a Freeflow combat system is simply having a counter prompt. But I feel there’s way more to it than that.

What makes Freeflow unique is right there in the name: the idea of freely flowing through a group of enemies.
That’s different from something like a Soulslike, where you’re generally encouraged to slow down, position yourself carefully, and focus on individual enemies. It’s also different from a hack-and-slash, where you can often attack and damage multiple enemies simultaneously.
In Freeflow combat, you’re generally attacking one enemy at a time, but you can rapidly move between enemies across the entire encounter. You’re supposed to flow through the group as you fight rather than remain locked onto one opponent.

- IMO, the first game that did something genuinely unique with this system was 2018’s Spider-Man. It still followed that basic Freeflow philosophy, but focused much more heavily on maneuverability and dodging instead of countering, which was extremely fitting for Spider-Man.

- Then the next big step was Ghost of Tsushima. That game felt like a true evolution of the Freeflow system. You’re constantly moving through groups of enemies. Attacking, dodging, parrying, switching targets, and so on. When it was released, some people didn’t quite get this and wished the game had a traditional lock-on system, which I always thought would go directly against its combat philosophy. Funny enough, they added one about a year after launch, and IMO it just doesn’t feel compatible with how Ghost of Tsushima’s combat was designed.

- Lastly, we have Sifu, which IMO is the crowning achievement of this type of combat. It has the challenge and complexity of Ghost of Tsushima, but combines that with the mechanical depth of a fighting game. When you get good at it, you’re constantly flowing between opponents while managing attacks, avoids, parries, positioning, environmental attacks, and combos.

Unfortunately, I can’t think of many other recent examples. It feels like Ghost of Yōtei was one of the last major games still pushing this style of combat forward, while so many other games have moved toward Soulslike combat instead.
Even Spider-Man 2 felt less focused on the Freeflow elements of the first game in favor of parrying and ability cooldowns.

I really hope this style of combat doesn’t disappear, because I think there’s still a ton of room to evolve it beyond what the Arkham games originally established.

Most people think limited lives, tank controls, inventory limit, boss runbacks, time limits are inherently bad mechanics, even in the games that are designed with those in mind. Even if implemented well, hypothetically let's say there are more people who hate it than like it. Does that mean the more people are right and if so are there opinions coming from an axiomatic source that is so called ,"good game design" or its just preference.

When a new game comes in a franchise and added more mechanics, more moves, more variety in playstyle. I'll use combat here, but does that mean the combat is objectively better making the game have better game design. No one will argue DMC 5 has more depth than DMC 1, but does it have objectively better combat? This is where it's hard for me to say it does because what does better combat system even mean. Does it mean more moves, more engaging, more playstyles and choices in what's happening in the moment to moment, does that make it objectively better. Viewing both of these at the highest level of play, they served to do very different things and imo they do their own thing extremely well. While i prefer dmc 5 but i can't say with honesty it has better combat cause i don't even know what that means. Who decides what combat is better, are the developers the arbiters, or is it the fans? Who decides what good/bad game design even is.

I view games as i view other art forms or religion, every good thing i see are things that line with my preference and every bad thing i see is things that don't line with my preference. As much as i love video games and talking about them with people, after learning this is what makes the most sense with game design for me, It's seems incredibly hard to discuss what even is a good video game when i think everything just boils down to preference. Game sales don't matter, critic scores don't matter, how the piece of art makes you feel is the only thing that does.

I've been thinking a lot about the surge of what we're calling 'cozy games' lately. It feels like every other week there's a new indie hit or even a surprising AAA entry that leans heavily into comfort low stakes and crafting. It's a big shift from the usual focus on high action or competitive multiplayer.

For years the narrative was all about bigger faster more intense. Open worlds with endless combat or esports titles demanding pinpoint accuracy. And those games definitely still have their place. But the sheer volume and success of games like Fae Farm or even a game like Palia has me wondering if there's a deeper trend at play.

Is it just pandemic aftereffects where people craved more chill experiences? Or is it a genuine evolution in what a significant portion of gamers want? It's not just Stardew Valley anymore. This genre has diversified so much. You have life sims farming sims building sims even some exploration games that prioritize atmosphere over threat.

I also wonder how this affects development cycles. A cozy game probably has different pressure points than a blockbuster shooter. Less crunch on hyper-realistic graphics maybe more focus on systemic design and engaging loops. It feels like a breath of fresh air in an industry that can sometimes feel very formulaic.

I'm curious if others have noticed this too. Do you think this is a passing fad or a more permanent fixture in the gaming landscape? What's your favorite cozy game right now?

Hi everyone, I am a newbie on Reddit and I really want to connect with the UK gaming community on Reddit.

Currently, I’m doing my master’s dissertation at Aston University about consumer behaviour in gaming. If you’re Gen Z born between 1996 and 2008, please spare me some time and participate in my survey 🙏🏻🥹✨My research is about analyse how social media gaming content influence impulse in-game items among Gen Z. All of the information is included in the survey link.

Any response is the big contribution to my dissertation and a small encourage for me to pursue my career in gaming marketing. If there’s anything I could do to improve my survey and research, please let me know too, I am truly appreciate that 🩷

Below is the link to the survey, thank you all so much!!!!
https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/aston-business-socialsciences/social-media-gaming-content-in-game-purchase

edit: My link has some problem and I have fixed it! I’m from Aston University and Jisc is the survey platform that we usually use so the link is totally safe 🌸✨

Dawnwalker’s combat isn’t as bad as it first looks. You actually find yourself enjoying it after picking it up. But the problem is that the more you progress after getting used to it, the worse it gets. I think the main issue is how little the combat develops beyond that initial learning process. You get used to the timing, fill out your skill trees, and fight larger groups, but fundamentally, you keep making the same decisions. The game gives you more fighting to do without giving you enough different things to do within those fights.

To begin with, combat feels very automated, as you lack a lot of agency. There isn’t stuff like a strong attack, and inflicting more damage comes down to blocking or dodging in the right direction at the right time. That becomes very routine, as you’re already doing it anyway, pressing the same buttons over and over again. Once you pick it up, you will quite literally be slaughtering your way through the Valley like you’re playing a rhythm game while Coen handles the rest. The problem is what happens after you learn that rhythm. Getting better at the timing doesn’t open up many new decisions. You mostly get better at repeating the same response, and the enemies do very little to make you reconsider it.

Enemy types are extremely limited, and by extremely, I mean it. You will find yourself fighting the same types of dogs, soldiers, and such throughout the entire game. They don’t have special attacks or much else that makes combat more interesting or encourages you to use tactics. Their AI is similarly primitive: they don’t do much apart from attacking you or waiting for their turn to attack you.

But things get really bad when enemy numbers increase and the game wants you to fight entire groups using a system that does not function properly in those situations at all. Mainly because you can’t even properly change the enemy you’re fighting against. The camera automatically locks onto the closest enemy, and in order to lock onto a different one, you have to navigate Coen in a way that makes him stand right in front of another enemy with the camera centered on them, all while you’re trying not to die as he moves in the jankiest way possible. It makes it almost impossible to strategize properly in combat encounters with big groups.

Figured you’re about to lose the fight and decided to run off? You can’t properly do that either. Whenever you try, Coen doesn’t put his sword away and the camera still focuses on the enemies, as there is no proper mechanic for disengaging. You can still try to run, as the enemies will stop chasing you after you put some distance between you and them, but it is extremely annoying and you will eat lots of damage trying to pull it off. Hiding doesn’t help either, mainly because it doesn’t exist. Enemies function through proximity rather than a proper sight system, so you can’t get them off you by hiding while you’re still within that proximity.

Yet despite all that, the combat is actually not hard once you pick it up. Much of the difficulty comes from the unpolished, janky mechanics rather than the enemies actually making you think about how to fight them. Adding more enemies mostly just makes those problems more prominent.

Naturally, the skill trees should be where your options start opening up, but they don’t do enough to change this. You occasionally pick skills that are either very generic, such as those in the swordfighting tree; not helpful against groups at all, such as those in the vampirism tree; or mostly outright irrelevant in combat situations, such as those in the witchery tree.

Those special, unique skills are also quite limited themselves, and half of the tree is made up of skills that simply improve your attack, defence, and things like that. Improving those numbers doesn’t give you much more to think about during a fight.

What’s really bad is that, due to the scaling system, even though you fill all those trees, the enemies simply don’t go down like they should. They still feel very spongy, and you find yourself having to hit them multiple times over and over even after penetrating their defences with the perfect block and dodge, even at higher levels.

This affects the sense of progression in a very bad way, especially when you initially hope the spongy enemy design is only temporary. I even experimented with cheats after finishing the game to see if it would persist in a save with everything maxed out, and it was still there, albeit less intense, which clearly shows that it’s a problem with the level scaling rather than anything else.

That is why the combat fails for me over the course of the game. The limited enemy variety keeps each combat encounter familiar, the targeting and escape mechanics make group fights awkward, and the skill trees do too little to expand your options. Scaling then keeps those familiar encounters drawn out. These problems add onto each other, which is why the initial enjoyment wears off instead of growing as you progress.

Maybe there is someone who made better use of the skills than me? If so, I’d love to hear. Also, I played the game on the medium difficulty setting, although I don’t remember its exact name, while I heard there was an option similar to Ghost of Tsushima’s Lethal difficulty, which might change the combat for the better.

I’ve noticed that accessibility has recently morphed into something new. What was once some extra game options to assist the disabled (e.g. colorblind) has become a much more wholistic approach to game design meant to make a game accessible to as many people as possible. This seems to be motivated by some combination of extreme egalitarianism and a desire to sell as many units of product as possible.

I’ve participated in several healthy debates here on this very forum on this topic in recent months. People throw around examples of fighting games providing “modern controls” or Civ7 eliminating core series mechanics in a desire to reduce complex micromanagement of units. Others make an analogy to soccer and the reducto ad absurdum of allowing players to use their hands in an effort to make the game more accessible - and also making it less like actual soccer. All of these are interesting topics.

But what made me post this is the recent release and review of Wolverine. This whole topic seems to have broken containment and is now being talked about everywhere.

SkillUp himself opens his review with the observation that Wolverine appears to have been designed assuming the player is very dumb. And he points to this new definition of accessibility (not the original concept) as a big problem.

Then this morning I came across a Reddit thread where someone had gone through all of the Insomnic leaks and watched the zoom calls that were going on through development.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1vplboa/marvels_wolverine_almost_had_a_crossbow_adaptive/

It’s fascinating to see the curtain pulled back. Early versions of Wolverine had a very novel combat system where the DuelSense left and right triggers activated Wolverines left and right hands with different attacks based on the trigger pressure. The whole thing was scrapped because accessibility controllers only have trigger buttons, not pressure sensitive controls. What we were left with was the universally panned “press square 3 to 5 times and activate and animation system that is by all accounts extremely boring. This accessibility first design seems to have influenced more than just combat with the scent lines, gps navigators, and white paint everywhere.

I cannot think of a more clear example of how we all lose as a result of this modern approach to game design. For traditional accessibility system to even matter, the game needs to be good first.

It’s interesting that this whole topic has gone mainstream as a result of Wolverine. I suspect the game is being scapegoated to some extent and that this sentiment has been building for a while.

Do you think there will be a course correction from the industry? I don’t think it’s guaranteed. Game developers can be quite intransigent when the issue is important to them.

As an aside - I find the white paint thing funny. People have been making fun of yellow paint for a while now. I am almost certain that Wolverine originally had yellow paint. Someone must have e pointed out that yellow paint has a bad reputation so someone had the bright idea to make it white paint. Take that to the bank.

Often immersion is talked in relation to storytelling, worldbuilding, ambiance or the like and while games that are immersive often rank highly in these, I hear less about the relationship between learning and curiosity and immersion. Figuring something on your own can lead to being very engrossed in a game's environment.

The other connected element is that of trust.

Outer Wilds sets you loose upon a solar system caught in a time loop and expects your curiosity to be your guide. There are no level ups or extrinsic rewards. Progression is basically figuring things out. And it can be quiet and melancholic and rather slow, but you keep pushing forward because after yeeting your space ship in the sun twice in a row due to being an idiot, you're finally having a nice loop and discovered a secret that leads you to investigate something and solve another piece of the puzzle and from there another and another...

Disco Elysium expects you to read a novel series worth of text. Although you will not encounter all the dialogue in a playthrough, its wordcount is larger than that of Harry Potter. And it expects you to candidly submerge in its fiction so that you learn about the world in order to guide the protagonist's choices. It is not afraid of mature themes or going full philosophical because it trusts its players to want to think deeply about things. And to figure out what to think, you start by learning first. If you enjoy such games you will just find that it is easy to loose time in conversations, weighing every word. The writing is dense.

Morrowind is the Elder Scrolls with the most complex and literate lore and with the most arcane mechanics. Unlike the sequels, you are often left at your own devices, sometimes explicitly, such as the breaks in the main quest. It is also one of those older rpgs without quest markers. It feels good to be trusted to read your fucking journal to figure out where to go. Another one of its key elements its its theorycrafting. It assumes you will engage with esoteric lore and break the game through mechanical abuse. And unlike other games it weathers that well because when you are fucking to see if you can jump across the map and land safely (not like that poor dude), you are engaged.

Silksong is another game that gets praised for its immersive qualities that is trusting its players a lot. I think this goes often hand in hand with a lot of games that are hard and lack difficulty settings. But learning the mechanics and patterns isn't where it stops. The story is cryptic and often done through items, enemy design and environmental details. Space needs to be learned through exploration, although you can use a compass and buy maps. You are asked to pay attention to detail and careful play is rewarded. Pretty much everything feel intentional, so it makes sense that you play the game mindfully, at least, the first time.

You will notice in less immersive games that this pattern is skipped. It could be something as simple as putting a quest marker and minimap because they do not trust the player with directions or it can go the other way, making the world, despite being highly detailed and realistic, not have much meaning underneath when going out of the beaten path or in the less important details. For example, in Assassin's Creed trees and fort and enemies often are not differentiated enough to feel there's something to pay attention to.

With the amount of ports coming to the Switch 2 such as Indiana Jones The Great Circle, Modern Warfare 4 with Warzone which is discontinuing support on all last gen systems and the upcoming Crimson Desert are while impressive ports for a mobile device, they come with severe compromises. Great Circle on the handheld configuration only runs a 720p output, Modern Warfare 4's campaign and Warzone only runs at 30 FPS. Elden Ring Tarnished Edition on Switch 2 runs worse than the PS4 being at a lower dynamic resolution range and downgraded visuals in some aspects

But what if these are ports are undertilizing many of the Switch 2 key features and the console is actually more powerful than the PS4 or even PS4 Pro. Let me start. Using the Switch 2 handheld stats since its the lowest denominator, its GPU is clocked at 1.71 TFLOPs at 68 GB/s compared to the PS4 Pro 4.2 TFLOPs 217.6 GB/s. The PS4 Pro seems to win by a landslide at first but the Switch 2 has many memory compression tricks up its sleeve such as White Paper, Framebuffer and Delta Color Compression.

On top of that Switch 2 supports DX12 Ultimate which means it supports Sampler Feedback which can have massive VRAM savings. speaking of Sampler Feedback, It allows for Texture Space Shading to be practical and allows lighting on slowly changing scenes to be reused in every frame rather than recalculated everytime. Switch 2 also supports Mesh Shaders means it can render geometry more efficiently. It also has Shader Model 6.8 which mean it supports work graphs so drawcalls can be done on the GPU which removes a ton of CPU overhead. So the Switch 2 can be better at rendering graphics overall than the PS4 Pro even in the Handheld mode but my guess is to why it runs worse than some PS4 Ports is because DX12U isn't commonly taking advantage of and as well as Work Graphs being a new thing (Only introduced in 2024). The base PS5 doesn't support every DX12U feature, so developers haven't mastered these rendering techniques yet!

It might even undergo a lifecycle similar to the 7th generation consoles (Specifcially Xbox 360 and PS3) where games from the early and later part in the generation have a optimization jump within the same hardware. Its clearly more capable than the PS4 on paper, but it would be more interesting to know how much more powerful it is to it? But if I were to make a educated guess, I would say in its handheld form, its around or somewhat above the PS4 Pro in GPU with the added benefit of a stronger CPU and SSD-Like Storage with Decompression and around Series S with a weaker CPU on docked mode

Any thoughts on this?

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

Hi everyone!

I am conducting a survey as part of my thesis at Bocconi university, focusing on the video game industry and the monetization strategies adopted by companies operating in the sector. It's completely anonymous and the data are stored in the university's private servers. It takes from 4 to 10 minutes.

About the research

The research aims to analyse the evolution of monetization strategies within the video game industry, with particular attention to the competitive dynamics and the broader industry context in which these strategies are developed and adopted.

The study will first examine the main characteristics of the video game market, the competitive forces shaping the industry, and the different approaches companies use to generate revenue from their products. It will then focus on Paradox Interactive as a case study, analysing its business model and monetization strategies, particularly in relation to its portfolio of strategy games and the way additional content and long-term player engagement contribute to its business model.

The survey is intended to contribute to the analysis of how players perceive different monetization approaches, how substitute products and competitive alternatives may affect their preferences and choices, and which distinctive characteristics of Paradox Interactive's games and business model may differentiate the company from its competitors.

Hypotheses / Discussion Points

The research explores the following hypotheses and discussion points:

• H1 – Preferences: Players have different preferences regarding video game monetization strategies, and these preferences may vary depending on the type of strategy adopted.
• H2 – Effectiveness: The effectiveness of a monetization strategy is influenced by how players perceive its fairness, value, and impact on their gaming experience.
• H3 – Value Proposition: Paradox Interactive's value proposition is perceived as distinctive compared to its competitors, particularly due to the depth, longevity, and continuous development of its games.
• H4 – Strategic Synergy: Paradox Interactive's monetization strategies are aligned with and reinforce its overall value proposition, creating synergies between the company's business model, its products, and the way additional content is monetized.

Thanks for the help 🙏

Survey: https://bocconi.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_23TyB1Vp54ZVjxk?sample_source=reddit

contact ouside reddit: [budinociccione699@gmail.com](mailto:budinociccione699@gmail.com)

Tom Budin

Hi everyone,

I am currently working on my Master's thesis and conducting an experimental study on the sociological and ethical impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence in video game design. As a gamer, I want to move past the corporate buzzwords and gather real, unfiltered feedback from the community on how these emerging technologies actually impact our gaming experiences.

Purpose of the Survey & Abstract:

The primary purpose of this research is to evaluate where players draw the line between AI as a "technical support tool" and AI as a "complete substitute for human authorship." While traditional AI has always been an integral component of game design operating seamlessly in the background, the rise of Generative AI (LLMs, dynamic voice generation) is rapidly changing the paradigm.

This study aims to analyze the sociological and technological implications of this shift. Specifically, the research uses hypothetical design scenarios to explore how fully procedural content generation and LLM-driven NPC interactions affect player immersion, narrative trust, and overall agency. By gathering quantitative data (utilizing a 7-point scale and Technology Acceptance metrics) and qualitative insights directly from the gaming community, this thesis seeks to bridge the gap between technical AI development and the actual user experience, providing deeper insights into what players truly value: infinite procedural freedom, or curated human storytelling. 

Research Institute: University of Catania — Master's Degree in International Cooperation.

Researcher Contact Data: Author: Mirko Moschella Email: [Mirko.moschella@gmail.com](mailto:Mirko.moschella@gmail.com)

The survey is completely anonymous, consists of multiple-choice and short-answer questions, and will take about 3 to 5 minutes to complete.

https://forms.gle/KcTGvFHZ2EVZvCzy6

Have you recently played a game where an NPC's behavior completely broke your immersion, or conversely, made the world feel incredibly alive? What specific mechanics caused that reaction? I would love to read your thoughts in the comments!

That title might not make a lot of sense because Blood of Dawnwalker is NOT a Soulslike. The reason I worded it like that is because despite how much I love the directional attack/block/dodge system in the game, it still somehow managed to get stale for me by the end of the game...

And it got me thinking: Why is it that so many of these open world RPGs turn me off after playing them for enough time? Why do I keep going back to Souls games and playing them over and over again? What exactly is it that I prefer about one over the other, and what exactly did Dawnwalker do to make me feel this way?

After thinking about it I think I found the answer: The gameplay of most Action RPGs focuses heavily on the player character. The gameplay of most Soullike RPGs focuses heavily on the enemies.

To clarify, let's start with what Blood of Dawnwalker does well: The combat system. Dawnwalker uses a very interesting direction-and-timing system for your attacks, blocks, and dodges. Any time an enemy attacks, you get an indicator showing which direction they are attacking from. If you just hold block, you do what's called an 'omniblock' which will block in any direction at the cost of some stamina. However, if you move in the direction the indicator is pointing AND block, you'll perform a 'directional block' which will cost no stamina, thus allowing you to attack more frequently. Even better, if you time the directional input at the last possible moment, you'll perform a 'perfect block' (or a parry). This not only doesn't cost you stamina, it refunds you stamina and lets you follow up with a 'riposte'. You'll then get another indicator showing which direction you can attack in to perform a 'perfect riposte'. This will automatically cause a critical hit and sometimes even stagger the enemy for a moment so you can get more attacks in. It's a very rewarding system for skillful play, and many of the perks in the game's talent tree tie into this exact mechanic. By the end of the game you can keep going with nearly infinite health, stamina, and ability charges (for active abilities, which allow you to put out incredible damage or gain some other utility in combat) as long as you keep the perfect blocks and ripostes going.

I love this system. It's engaging, rewarding, powerful, and fun. Everything a good gameplay system needs to be. Now I do have some nitpicks about it, namely the camera and lock-on targeting system, but I have no doubt those will be improved with updates and/or mods. However there is one critical flaw with this system, and it has nothing to do with the player character...

It's the enemies.

Early on in the game there isn't really much of an issue, since you're still learning this system and trying to master it... but by the end of the game, you notice. You notice that every human, every ghost, every wolf, every bear, every vampire, and every other creature under the sun and moon is just the same enemy with a different model and different animations. Every single enemy can be defeated by watching the little indicator in the middle of your screen and timing your block (or dodge, in the case of a 'red skull' indicator) and following it up with a directional attack.

Now in the case of Dawnwalker, this problem is largely solved with 'Duelist' mode, which removes in on-screen directional indicator and forces you to watch the enemy move in real time... but at the end of the day you know that the same thing is still happening, even if the game doesn't explicitly show you anymore.

By the end of this game, which I loved, I felt the same way I feel at the end of every open world RPG. Kinda bored at the idea of fighting enemies. I was still in it for the story, and the characters, and the lore... but the combat was just... routine. And that was a shame.

So what am I talking about when I say I prefer Soulslikes? What do they do better than regular Action RPGs? Well, like I said, they focus on the enemies. The problem is still there to an extent, because at the end of the day all you can really do is move around, dodge, block, parry, and attack, right? The difference is these enemies all interact with those mechanics in different ways, and all have their own strengths and weaknesses which you have to learn, and then adapt to, and then exploit. If you don't adapt, you die.

Some enemies are small and fast, others are big and slow. Some telegraph their attacks, others do not. Some have ranged attacks, while some will chase you around to melee you, and others will do both! Sometimes you'll be ambushed or outright swarmed (which sucks) and you'll have to figure out on the fly how to survive. Some enemies are almost like a puzzle you need to solve just to figure out how to kill them before they can kill you. Most of them will react and adapt to YOU and you need to figure out how to do that right back to them in order to get the upper hand.

These games also tie their enemies to the level design in a way that feels almost symbiotic. Since enemies respawn and they're always in the same place, they're basically a part of the environment. It turns each area into a kind of puzzle that you need to work out the best way to get through on your way to the next bonfire or boss. In most open world games, the placement of enemies seems almost like an afterthought, or just as some means to 'fill up the map' with 'stuff to do'. In souls games, this placement is meaningful and a defined part of the overall experience.

Now Souls games don't tend to have big skill-trees full of unique and flashy abilities. Most of the time you just pick up a weapon and swing it. There are a LOT of weapons and usually magic systems and other things to give you a large amount of build variety, but generally speaking you're not going around doing crazy combos and slamming a 'do 10,000 damage to everything around me' button because that button doesn't exist. This is what I mean when I say the gameplay focus is on the enemies, rather than the player character. The enemies can usually do more, bigger, and better things than the player character. And that's what makes them worth fighting.

So what am I getting at? Do I think a combat system like Dawnwalker's could work with Soulslike enemies? Honestly, probably not. As much fun as that combat is, it is inherently limited. As soon as you decide that all enemies operate on something like a directional input system, that is now by definition all they can do. An enemy is never going to surprise you doing something else. It's never going to do some crazy environmental attack, and it's never going to have any specific weaknesses to a certain type of gameplay, because there is only one type of gameplay. The open-endedness and adaptability of Souls combat is what makes it special.

TL;DR: A game's combat gets boring the moment when you realize you no longer need to adapt to the enemies.

When a 1000 year old vampire and a random wolf in the forest feel like the same kind of enemy, that's a problem.

I don't like level scaling. I feel like that's a very common sentiment. That said, for a lot of games, I understand why level scaling is done. It solves the problem of the game becoming too easy. In open world RPGs this is an even bigger problem because without level scaling, the player can become overpowered through going through the game in an unexpected order. I don't know what a solution could be for this problem.

One very egregious example is Pokemon Scarlet & Violet. The game opens up in it's entirety at the beginning of the game and has no level scaling but, if you decide to tackle the game without looking up the intended order, you'll become very overpowered very fast. Alternatively, if you do look up the order and follow through with it, then the game will have a good difficulty curve but will function like a linear a game. It's a lose-lose situation.

Another example is Elden Ring. With Elden Ring, you have no level scaling but you do have some lock and key mechanics to stop if you from going to areas that are very high level such as the elevators. This gives the illusion of open world but still ends up locking in some linearity.

On the opposite end, there's games like Diablo IV. With this one, there's a strong level scaling so you'll get stronger but feel very little difference unless you're several levels stronger than you're supposed to.

So, the problem is, how can an open world game be designed in a way that allows the player to go anywhere while providing smooth difficulty curve while still making sure the player can feel powerful with every level increase?

There's one thing games seem to struggle with - conveying friction and discomfort. Now, you might argue that there's a lot of games rife with friction, as well as games that feel discomforting, but I think it's always done in sort of roundabout way. Let me explain.

In real life when going somewhere we usually walk. We can run and we can sprint, which gets us to our desired destination faster, but even if it would have no negative consequences (sweat, danger of falling, social awkwardness) people will rather just walk.

In video games we're almost always going as fast as we can. Games can have audio-visual cues and indicators that make the player feel like the character doesn't want to run (anymore), they can have various limitations and mechanics that prevent running all the time, but players are almost always maximizing their speed within these restrictions. It seems like the biggest insult to players is when they have to follow or be followed by a NPC who doesn't match their maximum speed. The only thing that makes me stop holding that sprint button is physical discomfort from holding it down for extended periods of time, which is quite funny.

Of course movement is just one example. Carrying things is another great example. Again, there are often mechanics that limit or reward the player in one way or another, but players will just optimize within those restrictions. If I have inventory space and I'm not hitting some weight threshold then I am going to pick up a random bauble, whereas I definitely wouldn't do that same IRL - picking up junk we don't need is just not what we do.

However this isn't just about negative experiences and discomfort, but about the opposite as well. People deeply enjoy eating good meals, but in games the only difference between hardtack and lavish feast is just some points in a mechanic that people optimize away. Relationships and especially intimate situations are another thing that games fail spectacularly at, but that's for a different discussion.

I think expressing comfort and discomfort is one of the biggest blind spots in games. The problem is that in order to incentivize player to behave in a specific way, you kind of have to add more complex mechanics, perhaps layer interacting mechanics on top of each other. That dramatically increases the game's complexity and the ruleset can quickly become too complex or overwhelming. And you can't just hide mechanics because players come with expectations from other games.

However I don't think it's impossible.

Some games have successfully baked (dis)comfort into their core gameplay loop. A great example is how Factorio leverages player's discomfort, specifically boredom into action and progression. It is possible to spend hundreds of hours mining and crafting everything required to unlock and build the rocket, which is the game's win condition, but it would be incredibly dull and boring. It's natural human instinct to want it to speed up, and players just find a pace that suites them, they instinctively know how fast is fast enough. They don't need to be told, there don't need to be any systems pushing them towards it.

However games such as Factorio focus on a very specific kind of discomfort. I have yet to see a game that does something similar with more broader range of situations and applications, for example an RPG. One thing I'm sure about is that if a game manages it, it will be greatly successful.

I don't know if it's just me, but I've noticed that in quite a few games, your character will just end up punching or swinging at empty space during melee combat, even when an enemy is standing right next to you. Maybe it's an intentional skill-check? One example that I've experienced recently is in the Death Stranding games. Melee combat is an option (and pretty powerful in the 2nd game), but oftentimes, if you don't carefully line up your strikes, Sam will just punch or lunge at the air, missing a valid enemy target who's standing just a couple feet to the left or right. I also noticed this a fair amount in The Witcher 3, where Geralt would sometimes end up swinging wildly at nothing much. Even happened occasionally when controlling Cal in the Jedi games.

It makes sense that FPS games always strike at what's in front of your character, but why don't 3rd person games just auto-target the nearest enemy if there isn't one locked-on or at the center of the screen? Is it an intentional skill barrier?

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

I beat the Souls trilogy 3 years ago, Elden Ring a year ago. And I also very recently started playing my first Metroidvania game, Hollow Knight.

I've played HK for 10 hours so far, and one thing that I always keep comparing in my head to DS is the map system of HK versus the non-existence of one in DS.

Playing Dark Souls (especially the first game) was a fun but often frustrating experience, and it wasn't because of the combat or the enemies. The frustration for me came from how easy it was to get lost and how I had to map everything out in my brain. I'm pretty directionally challenged, and I ran around in circles A LOT. I wasn't really exploring; I was just hitting my head at every wall possible until one of them cracked and opened up a path. Exploration wasn't something that I wanted to do or enjoyed doing in Dark Souls. And for a long time I avoided games that had a focus on exploration because I thought that they would frustrate me.

But I did decide to buy HK after a friend recommended the game to me vehemently and told me to at least try it once. And I'm loving the game so far. The way HK approaches exploration makes it much more purposeful and fun to just run around the map and uncover the map and its secrets. Being able to purchase a rough map of a new area by first exploring to hear the humming voice of Cornifer and then being able to fill out the map as I explore makes the act enjoyable and fulfilling. Seeing roads that lead to a place that I haven't discovered yet and deciding where to go next, and actually being able to go there by consulting the map makes getting lost a non-issue. Exploration rarely turns into running around in circles; it stays as an engaging component of the game's design.

I'm not a huge fan of games that literally death-grip your hand and tell you everything you need to do and give you the whole map as soon as you jump in, but I think having an in-game map that slowly reveals itself as you explore is much more accessible and makes exploration a lot more fun compared to having no in-game map at all. This kind of map system encourages exploration without being overly cryptic but also avoids hand-holdiness. HK is still a hard game that doesn't hold the player's hand at all, yet it is much more accessible compared to Souls because of this simple difference in my opinion.

That is why I think Elden Ring was a monumental success. Being able to uncover the map by finding map fragments, discover and mark POIs by exploring, and look at the map and decide what to do made it a lot more accessible, appealing, fun, and much less frustrating compared to the Dark Souls trilogy. A lot of people who were afraid to try From's games have become fans.

What are your thoughts?

Just to be upfront: I work in player research in the games industry. No product, no links, just an idea I want to discuss.

Here's my claim: what players actually value in living worlds is spectating and not cohabiting. If NPCs genuinely lived their own lives, most players would stop engaging with them within the first session.

Here's why I think that. Twenty years of autonomous NPC attempts produce the same two reactions: noticed behaviour becomes an anecdote we retell for years, and missing behaviour makes us call the world empty. Both are about being in the audience, neither requires actual interaction. Then when researchers recently dropped hundreds of AI agents into sandbox worlds and these agents formed jobs and even a religion, everyone read the articles, but nobody asked to be a part of it. There's a darker version too, where an NPC with real agency competes with you for authorship. A world that changes on its own is atmospheric until it builds something where you were going to build.

The best counterargument I can think of is that nobody has shipped real cohabitation, so players never had the chance to want it. Maybe the watching preference is just learned from decades of NPCs not being worth talking to.

That's the idea. I'd rather be wrong, so if your experience contradicts it, I'm listening.

With DLSS 5 being pretty controversial, it's tough to have a genuine discussion about it, so I thought it may be a good idea to try it here.

I was initially sceptical, but curious about DLSS 5. With the performance hits, I was hoping to at the very least use it on older games, similarly to RTX Remix. Unfortunately, that isn't really gonna happen.

Out of my own testing and things I have seen others do, here are the main points I have of this technology so far:

1) It doesn't like old or abstract graphics

My hopes about using it for older games were destroyed when in most older games it did.....nothing. Or almost nothing. In anything before last PS3 era, it likely won't "detect" anything that it knows what to do it, and thus won't do much. At best it may detect a face......but that is sadly often not a good thing.

2) Faces.....oh no

The faces are very consistently at the bottom of the uncanny valley. It is definitely the main point of DLSS 5, and also the most controversial, divisive, and arguably the worst point. I've seen very few cherry picked examples of a face not looking extremely uncanny. It's especially bad when it does a lot of work on the face, but barely any on the rest of the body, making the face even more detached visually from the rest. This is the main reason why if someone would want to use this, I would highly avoid any game with a lot of faces, and think it would be a lot better if there was an option to disable faces entirely.

3) Gun models, vehicles and cockpit views

This is likely where DLSS 5 is the best at. While the result often look overly similar, especially in terms of the material sheen, the general shading is usually pretty good. Due to them often being in the same position on screen for longer periods of time, it makes them more consistent too. However, I did notice in certain racing games that the lighting and shading can freak out in cases where the outside lighting changes abruptly (driving under trees for example), which leads us onto....

4) Temporal stability....or rather lack there of

Maybe this will be better with "official" implementations of it, but all the showcases of it that I've seen so far seemed to have been purely screen-based. This means it works just like ReShade, working purely off of the things that are currently visible on screen. This means that walking through a corridor, the light off screen may change from looking like sunlight, to flashlight, to room light, in a span of a few seconds, so even if the lighting in shading generally looks nice, you will keep getting distracted by it changing randomly. It also means that if some elements are frequently not visible, then the way they look will keep being very unstable. This is especially bad in some older games where it does detect a player model, but only from the front, so if it's a game where the player model keeps changing direction relatively to the camera, the way the player looks will keep changing all the time as DLSS 5 will either do different things to it, or will not know what to do at all when it doesn't see the front. This all leads to the final point and my main issue with this technology:

5) It's all just guessing

Unlike RTX Remix, which actually takes all the data from the game engine directly, meaning that it's aware of all the geometry, lighting, materials etc, DLSS 5 is literally guessing what it's seeing and what to do with it. This inherently will be problematic in any game that isn't almost completely static, as it very much will be guessing wrong frequently, and even in the good cases it is noticeable if you actually play it for more than 3 minutes. This is essentially on similar level as hallucinated videos, or messed up AI movie upscales. The issue isn't that it's wrong or looks bad, but that it may look wrong or bad the moment you move the camera the wrong way.

But those are just my thoughts on this, based on my own testing and things I've seen. I am curious what your experience with it was so far and what you think of it.

Last year I posted some anecdotes and details from my Gamescom trip as "press", it seemed to interest people. I thought I would make another post this year.

As the title indicates I might be completely off base, this is entirely based on feelings and impressions. I have been going to Gamescom for over 10 years and have been discussing this with peers, though, so I would hope my thoughts aren't completely wrong.

Even more Korean and Chinese games

The biggest trend I noted last year was the strong Korean and Chinese push into games. It is even more noticeable this year. If you watched ONL it was also quite obvious to see how these markets are taking up the space. Last year I said this was more noticeable on the public side, but this year the business side was also taken over.

Interesting to note that for western companies the divide seems to be public/professionnal, the Korean and Chinese companies divide more by business/games. Mostly meaning that games, even for press, are often seen in the public area. Business area is more for "actual" business. We asked the Tencent reception for PR business cards and they said they weren't doing game stuff in their booth.

Very expensive public booths

It's no secret that the games business as a whole isn't exactly flourishing right now, but you never would have guessed it going to Gamescom this year. Every public booth seemed more expensive and extravagant than the last (and comparatively to last year). I did notice less spend on business booths, though. Much less free food and fewer goodies. Microsoft might be the only company that felt less extravagant than the previous year.

Countries are pushing their games

On top of companies renting booths, countries (through foundations) do too. It seems like this year the spend from countries has increased as they had more of a presence. I've also started getting a lot more PR emails from country delegations rather than games directly.

The Czechs seemed to be pushing pretty hard, it reminded me of the Polish push from a few years back. It's rare to have an open bar all day pretty much open to anyone. I also noticed a bigger presence from Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.

Buggier software

I'm the only one of my group to have noted this, so take it with even more of a grain of salt. The builds I played were generally buggier than what I played in other years. Maybe I just got unlucky, but I've had more hard crashes, soft-locking or just general bugginess than any other year.

Don't necessarily take this as "software bad now". It also seemed like I was often not playing a "vertical slice" as we have gotten used to calling them. Many builds I played seemed to just be the work in progress software directly. For Ubisoft in particular, I had quite complete versions of Rayman and Heroes 3 and I was just told to ignore some stuff and not click on them.

The death of Powerpoint (let me hope)

Press presentations have been getting further and further from business presentations for a while (Remember when E3 conferences were Powerpoints?). This seems to have peaked this year. I've had nearly no Powerpoint presentations, it was all video or live gameplay.

The PC and Xbox controller are king

All demos I played were running on PC (except Gears E-Day which was on a development kit), so any controller would have worked. I haven't seen a single PlayStation controller all week. Considering the console popularity it still feels quite surprising to me. It does make sense that the Xbox controller is the most popular controller to stick in a PC, but the extent of it surprised me.