It’s hilarious that you think game development is a ‘cushy corpo job’.
Ah yes, all those game devs famously enjoying competitive salaries and rock solid job security.
Game development is hitting your head against a brick wall because you believe in the art form. Anyone who tells you they’re in it for the money is lying to you.
Game Changer is their flagship show, and has been consistently great at reinventing itself and surprising season after season. It’s a game show where the game is different every time and the contestants have to try and figure out what’s going on. It goes places.
If you enjoy long form TTRPG, they have dozens of Dimension 20 campaigns with all kinds of settings and genres.
Smartypants is a show where comedians get to give PowerPoint presentations on anything they want.
Play It By Ear is a personal fave - each episode is an entirely improvised musical, which feels like an incredible magic trick when they pull it off.
Um, Actually is a nerdy quiz show where contestants have to interrupt the host with factual corrections about video games, anime, sci-fi, etc.
Gastronauts is a cooking challenge show with professional chefs trying to fulfil unhinged requests from comedians.
There’s way more on there besides all that, but thought I’d share some highlights.
They will either give you the information you need (and potentially learn their lesson for next time), or they’ll get tired of waiting and ask someone else.
Seems like they’ve been around for longer than I thought, but I rarely hear them get mentioned and the barebones site doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
I’m sorry that you have such a viscerally negative reaction to the concept of adventure.
Personally, I’m glad that people try to do incredible and difficult things just because they can, but you’re welcome to continue shouting insults from the sidelines I guess.
“People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.' There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron.
“If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.”
Do you say the same for Epic Games Store exclusives?
Yes, actually. If they funded a game, like with Alan Wake 2, then whether or not they make it an EGS exclusive is their prerogative.
there is no pro-consumer reason that the GOG fixes could not have been given to everyone that already owned the game on Steam as a free update
I disagree. GOG invested time and resources into patching the game. Tacking the word ‘pro-consumer’ in there means nothing. They’re a business. They shouldn’t be expected to give away their work for free to customers of a competing platform.
I don't care if 2% or whatever goes to GOG for their fixes
That much is clear. You seem to want something for nothing. Pirate the GOG version if you’re so desperate to play without paying for the work that went into fixing it, but don’t frame it as some kind of pro-consumer protest.
Before they even start on any technical work, the GOG legal team contacts the owners of the game they want to sell (e.g. SEGA, in the case of Alpha Protocol) and they negotiate a deal to update and distribute the game.
Things get complicated when a game has joint owners, or when it’s not clear who owns a game, but otherwise it’s as simple as that.
If you’re interested in a specific example, here’s an interview with their technical producer on how they updated and rereleased Alpha Protocol in 2024.
“As a precaution, we have voluntarily removed the product from sale while we carry out independent testing … We will update customers as soon as we are in a position to do so.”
Sounds like they’re just waiting to confirm if there’s actually a problem, rather than issuing a full-scale product recall based on a single test result reported by a random member of the public.
Written in 2020 but still an interesting read. I wonder what the author thinks of games that have released in the intervening years, like Manor Lords, Going Medieval, and Farthest Frontier?
It’s hilarious that you think game development is a ‘cushy corpo job’.
Ah yes, all those game devs famously enjoying competitive salaries and rock solid job security.
Game development is hitting your head against a brick wall because you believe in the art form. Anyone who tells you they’re in it for the money is lying to you.