Way too zoomed in, no UI to be found, it is a stretch to call it a "gameplay trailer" - more like an "in-engine trailer". We barely get to see a tile grid in one scene, and the water reflections in that scene look awfully overdone. I'll go look at their longer "gameplay showcase" later, after it is finished (I don't have the patience to sit down watching the advertising speech in real time, I'll want to skip forward the boring parts).

Still, the larger and more connected cities suggests districts working more like Humankind or Old World, it seems to be some kind of (land) cliff terrain, and storms/weather in some form. Terrain looks quite different but it may be entirely cosmetic.

Generally it looks ok, I like Civ 6's cartoony style better but that one was polemic so no wonder it is gone. The terrain looks a lot more detailed in a nice way, like possibly more variety in mountains and cooler trees, but the trailer is way too zoomed in, with a camera angle that I would never use while actually playing so who knows how it will look for real. Unit models look surprisingly basic, which I don't care (again, zoom level) but I assumed they would go for better models. And the leaders (?) in that scene that I assume is a diplomatic animation look really bad, which matters a lot more and on 6 they were so masterfully done - I assume they will still improve it, but weird choice to show this.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismAlso, I know with the rise of WarCraft 3 and DOTA 1 and DOTA 2 the focus on "Heroes" is now a thing, I just wish it wasn't. RTS was just fine when heroes we're 300% the size of units with obnoxious roles and mega powers. It's fine when done with taste but I haven't really seen it cooked right. SC2 was okayish.

Yeah "heroes" in strategy games really rub me the wrong way. It is an RPG-ization of the genre, moving away from "you control an army" to "you control this main character, plus some minions". It is particularly common in fantasy-themed games, precisely because they get thematic inspiration by the D&D-style fantasy where "party of heroes goes adventuring" is a powerful trope. If I'm to have leaders to the army, I'd rather have a general that isn't a powerful warrior but gives command bonuses.

There are some benefits to hero units in game design, dipping into the strengths of other genres: it is convenient for making narratives more personal, leveling up is a good progression mechanic, it creates a lot more unit distinction (with a built-in diegetic explanation), powerful unique units give a sense of power and accomplishment, it helps keep the scale in check to make the game easier to control, and the mechanics are part of basic game literacy. But the thematic connection makes it clear that a large part is "make it more like an RPG, RPGs are good!". With Warcraft 3, it was very obviously meant to mix the genres, with the Rexxar campaign standing out. Blizzard always felt like they just didn't want to make RTS games, it was more like an obligation, and they constantly tried to turn their RTS franchises into something else (Lord of the Clans, SC Ghost, and finally succeeded with WoW and never looked back).

Anyway, tangential rant finished, but yeah I'm tired of hero units.

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Oh, it's just Valve casually putting in work to fix and improve their competitors' products. Nothing big.

(Yes, I know the reason they do it is because their main business is the game store and not the hardware. Still impressive and unusual for these days of platform lock-in)

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Good selection. I am a fan of Scythe and Dune Imperium in particular, both great implementations of great games.

Terraforming Mars is a boardgame I particularly don't like, but it is really popular, and the digital adaptation probably helps with some issues of the game (like being slow for an in-person boardgame). I really recommend trying it.

Wingspan is a great game, but the adaptation wasn't that great in my opinion - it skims through opponents actions so it is hard to get a sense of the game, and the interface is a bit too focused on mobile (boardgame digital adaptations are generally big on mobile and with reason cough no mtx cough, some are only ported to PC after). Still worth playing, but doesn't do the physical version justice.

The others, except for Munchkin, are all very good boardgames but I haven't played the digital versions. (Munchkin is, well, a silly game for laughing at puns about RPG and the fun of high RNG and throwing curse cards to screw your friends. If that is your thing, you probably know it already.)

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Their definition of "strategy game" really bothers me. Most games in this are RPGs! Sure RPGs with tactical elements, but they are not just "strategy games" - they are at least half something else (I'd argue they are more than half RPG). Strategy is a huge genre, full of very distinct subcategories; lumping it with stuff that is only vaguely connected like this is very frustrating. People that like Civilization and Starcraft won't necessarily enjoy Hard West or Shadowrun (and vice-versa). It is like calling Mass Effect a shooter, or saying Skyrim and Cyberpunk 2077 are "action games".

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Quoting: Trinexx

Quoting: ssj17vegetaAnother sad example about how going public never bodes well for companies and their products.

Paradox went public eight years ago.

That is about the timeline for the shit to hit the fan (visibly to us, at least). Between EA buying BioWare and Anthem, it was 10 years, for example. The Paradox IPO was in 2016, Paradox Tectonic was founded in 2019, 5 years is the development cycle for a game like this - it should be finished, but it was delayed before being killed.

The first years after going public/being bought out, everything is still working as usual, finishing stuff they already were doing or had planned to do. The cash injection is still live and most of the "restructuring" is yet to come: we got Battletech (amazing game), Surviving Mars, Age of Wonders Planetfall. Probably CK3 was developed during this early stage, as it came out in 2020.

Then Imperator underperformed in 2019 (unrelated to the IPO, I'd say), they get some controversies, Bloodlines 2 development started to have problems, and they started restructuring the company, moving people to different studios, re-evaluating their strategies. In 2021 the CEO leaves (over "strategic differences"), which is a really bad sign.

And then, after a couple of investment cycles the investors are expecting the payoff for their investment made 5 to 8 years earlier. And we get failures like Lamplighter's League and Life By You, which get the typical AAA treatment: mass layoffs, aggressive cost-cutting. We also get games like Cities 2, that aren't commercial failures but that have the usual problems associated with AAA development (buggy release, too much attention to graphics). I'd expect in the next couple of years we will see some other drastic changes, then it will probably settle into the role of AAA.

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Quoting: KimyrielleThat's the saddest gaming news I have seen in a while. I was SO looking forward to delete the last EA game from my SSD (Sims 4). I guess I will be stuck with them a bit longer.

Not sure what's going on with Paradox lately.

They had an IPO, bought a bunch of studios (and opened a few from scratch) with the investor money, and now are trapped in the cycle of "need to make more money every quarter to appease the stock market" regardless of whether is best in the long term or results in better games. Already went through one CEO (back to the old, pre-IPO one though).

Basically they tried to become a AAA, and succeeded in the worst way possible. They are going through all the problems of AAA publishers

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Wow, fuck. I personally wasn't super interested in it, but it was a cool ambitious idea that I wanted to succeed. It is the kind of simulation game with a huge scope that benefits a lot from a big studio, and yet we have so few examples (and The Sims suffers a lot from the EA bullshit). It was quite advanced already and I am surprised they decided it was just un-salvageable. Quite sad.

I understand the sunk cost fallacy, keeping working on a project that is not going well just because you put so much work into it is a bad idea. But on the other hand, when companies cancel games like this it isn't just "we won't finish", it usually means the entire thing is trashed. I'm sure there are cool things in it, maybe not enough for hundreds of thousands of people to pay $60 but it probably could bring enjoyment to some people, inspire some people, but nope it gets buried. Everyone that worked on this, and not only no one will ever play their game but they don't get to keep it, use it for their future projects, revisit it... A project of this size, involving this many people, should have something to show even if it isn't finished. I mean, good for not "releasing" a mediocre/bad game, but I wish this kind of cancellation came with something like (but not exactly) open-sourcing the game instead of throwing it in a black hole.

I'd guess they went too big in scope, with the whole "take control over anyone, everything is modable, everything is simulated" thing plus the AAA-grade 3d graphics that make it super expensive to do any new thing (no matter how minor) in a game where you want lots of variety. Trying to match AAA graphics these days is a huge proposition, and while I understand the "need" for it (because for a game of this size you need that kind of audience so you need to compete in that space) it still feels wasteful.

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Well, about point 1 it is what Liam said, people often misunderstand what it means (it is for steam keys, not for the same game in a different store), and while people might choose to price similarly to avoid retaliations it is not something Steam has ever said, and there is no evidence of it.

About point 3, I do think it is too high from a moral perspective, but I don't know how you would make a legal argument against it. It isn't even uniquely bad - competitors in the same industry (like GOG) and in similar industries (like mobile app stores) do the same.

Quoting: Philadelphus#2…how do they expect this to work? I buy a game on Steam, then buy the expansion on EGS? That seems like a major technological hurdle, so I can see why Valve wouldn't be incentivized to design systems to allow it when it would only lose them money. It also sounds like an incredibly good way to generate hard-to-track bugs if I'm getting my base game updates from Platform A, my expansion updates from Platform B, and then my extra bonus DLC from Platform C and they've all got slightly different versions of the game.

Well, it would be really simple with how it used to work (with physical media and with older downloadable stuff), or with how GOG and itch handle expansions: you get an installer for the base game, and an installer for the expansion, and there is no real reason you have to get them both from the same place. You would need to get matching versions of course, and probably platforms would have to keep older versions for compatibility purposes. (I'm not convinced this is a worse method, tbh - store clients in general tend to be way more of a pain in the ass than an asset for players). It would also be a lot easier if software these days didn't expect you to update your shit daily and fuck you if you don't want to.

When stores design an entire application to manage game installation and update, and to integrate features with the game, sure it becomes difficult to work with different stores. But that is very much a problem that they created for themselves... and honestly if these tools weren't made by stores it wouldn't be an intractable problem: package managers can handle different repositories, and there is no reason middleware for multiplayer or mods needs to be store-specific. The issue is that, as you pointed, a dominant store has no incentive to make their stuff interoperable, making it easier for people to buy elsewhere and for competitors to enter the market. Quite the opposite, in many ways the purpose of offering those services is to "increase customer retention" and cause lock in. Which is exactly what makes anti-trust regulation necessary, companies won't just choose to give up their monopoly (or oligopoly) powers.

The problem is that I don't think a simple lawsuit against one company in particular is a reasonable solution - most tech companies do exactly the same shit. Some do much worse! Maybe it could set up precedent, but most likely it will just fail because it is common practice (even if unjust). I'd love to see regulations that required interoperability between software products and stores and vendors, but that would be a much bigger shakeup than an UK lawsuit could do.

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Wait, it is just another remaster/remake? So boring. Make a cool sequel at least.

The extended edition is already fine. It is not even like this looks particularly good from the trailer, not that this is that important for this kind of game.

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