Random News II

[Nag]

Would you consider "tipping" a game dev?

 

https://www.thegamer.com/blizzard-president-mike-ybarra-tip-game-studios-on-top-of-70-dollar-price/

[DANGERMAN]

Reading the article, his comments don't seem quite that bad. Some places do let you tip devs already, but it's small studios on itch and the like. 

 

I don't know, if people want to it's their money but I don't see me doing it for a large publisher, and certainly not for someone like Blizzard 

[regemond]

1 hour ago, DANGERMAN said:

I don't see me doing it for a large publisher

 

Exactly this. Imagine being offered to tip say, £15, on the newest Assassin's Creed. Those games have literally thousands of people involved in the game. What's more likely, they get a fraction of a penny each, or Ubisoft just go "cheers, I'll look after that"?

[Maryokutai]

Plus with how much fluctuation there is in the industry there is a good chance that whoever made game X isn't even part of the company anymore whenever you get around to playing it and potentially thinking about a tip.

 

This really only works for indie studios I think. But in that case I'd probably rather just buy the game a second time on another platform or as a gift etc.

[mfnick]

Of course tipping would never get weaponised and taken advantage of by companies? Leading to staff being even more underpaid. Load of fucking bollocks.

 

Would consider it for an indie dev. But any publisher is an absolute no-no. Make no mistake this guy is talking about AAA devs too, “paid $70 and they haven’t nickel and dimed me” - fucking rich from a Blizzard guy too.  

[one-armed dwarf]

There's some kickstarters I wouldn't mind being able to contribute to after the funding window has closed, like a tip jar. I wish I could do that with Pathologic 2 but when the KS started at the time I was broke.

 

Buying gifts for others is an option but I feel weird about doing it, cause I feel I'm putting pressure on someone to play a game they might have no interest in. 

[Maf]

 

 

A PS1 looking survival horror game but more 3D movement and stuff. Could be some super throw away bargain bin thing. But it looks kind of neat. I saw it scrolling Twitter

[mfnick]

I’ve had my eye on that for a bit. Looks old school Resi which I’m well up for. 

[Maf]

Thought this was going to be a cool PS1 motorbike racing game, but it’s a vehicle combat game. Not my game, love the vibe, though 

 

 

[shinymcshine]

Bit of a weird story given the uncertainty around the future of German CRPG developer Piranha Bytes...

 

German government wants games like Baldur's Gate 3 to 'also go on to be developed in Germany'

[Maryokutai]

The thing is that Germany actually does give out some decent funding to studios, like the article mentions. You can make the argument that it's not entirely fair as there's little follow-up and no recourse, so stuff like Gollum can happen while Piranha Bytes' employees fear for their livelihood, but generally speaking it's a very generous and helpful programme in a country that just twenty years ago tried to soft-ban the entire medium after the Erfurt shooting.

 

Definitely bad timing on that article though and it's a shame they don't have the tools to really 'save' a studio, at least temporarily. 

[Craymen Edge]

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/game-devs-rejoice-as-ftc-approves-ban-on-non-compete-clauses-there-are-going-to-be-so-many-new-indie-games-from-aaa-devs/

 

Quote

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now issued a final rule that will ban employers from enforcing fresh non-competes, and render existing ones for everyone apart from senior executives (people in policy-making positions who make over $151,164 per year) unenforceable 120 days after the rule's publication in the Federal Register.

 

[OCH]

A Konami code variant in Castlevania has been discovered after a quarter of a century

 

Quote

The cheat remained hidden in Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness for 25 years.

 

The Konami code is one of those Easter eggs that has long since travelled outside of its origins. It first appeared in the seminal shooter Gradius in 1986, but came to prominence in the west thanks to the NES release of Contra (it is sometimes called "the Contra code"), and basically gives the players bonuses depending on the game: in Gradius you got all the power-ups, in Contra you got 30 lives.

Funnily enough, the code was intended as a debug tool, but someone forgot to remove it and, with Gradius in the latter stages of production, the decision was made to just leave it be. Konami's developers, recognising it was hard to input accidentally but easy if you knew the secret, adopted it as something of a trademark and began including bonuses in many of its games based on the code (usually on the title screen).

The code became so ubiquitous that any new Konami game was immediately Konami-coded to oblivion by players, and it's not the most complex Easter egg, so there's been a widespread assumption that every possible use of the Konami code had been found. Not so. Two dedicated Castlevania 64 players, Moises and LiquidCat, have discovered an example that's remained hidden in Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness for 25 years (their finding was subsequently brought to wider notice by YouTuber JupiterClimb and The Gamer.) 

 

The reason no-one had discovered this (or at least made it known)? Firstly the inputs are not, as usual, made with the d-pad or analogue stick. The Nintendo 64 controller had two main face buttons, A and B, but then four C buttons marked with directional arrows. In this example, the Konami code is not triggered by its usual form: which would be up up, down down, left right, left right, then A+B (sometimes followed by the Start or Select button).

Instead, and for whatever reason, the developers doubled every input. So the Konami code for Legacy of Darkness is: C-up x4, C-down x 4, C-left x 2, C-right x 2, C-left x 2, C-right x2, and then pressing the N64 pad's L+R shoulder buttons alongside pulling the Z-trigger. Put like that, you can see why even people trying out the Konami code everywhere on this game hadn't found it till now.

 

This unlocks the characters, outfits, and hard mode, as previously mentioned, but amazingly there are even more variants. Inputting the first part of the code with the C buttons and then altering the ending combination can be used to max out your character's inventory, though there are differences between the regional versions of the game: the US version of the cart requires that players somehow press L+R and all C buttons and Z at the same time; the European and Japanese versions require you to contort with L+R, D-pad up / right, C buttons up / right, and Z. Two more codes work on all regions: obtain 99 jewels by making the latter half all C buttons plus Z; or get max level power-ups and subweapons by ending it with L+R, D-pad down / left, C button down / left, and Z.

 

The hand contortions that some of these require suggest that, appropriately enough, they were intended more as debug tools than a variant of the Konami code players were expected to discover. It's nevertheless surprising they stayed buried so long, especially in a game that has since had its own afterlife thanks to a modding and speedrunning community (in fact, Moises made the discovery while looking through the game's code).

 

The creator of the Konami code was Kazuhisa Hashimoto, who died in 2020. Hashimoto developed the NES port of Gradius and, finding the game too difficult to play through during testing, added the code so he could blast through the stages more easily—then forgot to remove it. In this case, Hashimoto's oversight created greatness, and the Konami code has subsequently been used as an Easter egg by tech companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch. Such is its ubiquity, there's even one on the Bank of Canada website. So to find an example, albeit a variant, in a Konami game after a quarter of a century… well, it does make you wonder what else might be squirrelled away out there.

 

[Maf]

There isn't even a topic for Grounded 😅 not a popular game round these parts

 

 

I've never played it either, but thought it was interesting just to see the Switch version. Oooh looking rough. It takes over a minute for the game to load.

 

They said they were going to bring Call of Duty to Switch lol 

 

Side note - because I guess I've never really looked at this game before. Graphically it looks really nice.  

[OCH]

13 minutes ago, Maf said:

not a popular game round these parts

Never even heard of it🤷‍♂️

[Nag]

Supposedly it's a great game too...

[Maf]

I'm downloading it now. It looks kinda cool 

[one-armed dwarf]

Square have cancelled a lot of games, apparently

 

 

Don't expect much diversity in their output for the next while I guess

[Maryokutai]

People should have listened to me when I told them Harvestella is a genuinely good game.

 

Pretty horrible news imo, I've really enjoyed their B-league output these last couple of years. On the plus side maybe this marks the end for their annoying exclusivity deals with Sony.

[one-armed dwarf]

Feels like we're entering an era where the more risk averse AAA titles no longer subsidise these smaller projects, but subsidise more of themselves. Sort of like the way franchise blockbusters took over cinema. 

 

That's how Capcom operate currently anyway, afaic

 

edit also apparently there's going to be news tomorrow about how FFVII Rebirth sold, which might complete that picture a bit better. All reports so far is it didn't do well. Maybe some cost cutting will happen with that game's sequel to make the 'trilogy' make a bit more financial sense