In a quick break from the insanity in the real world, I thought I'd see what everyone was playing, or looking to play.
Being a huge X-Wing/Tie Fighter fan, I'd really like to play Star Wars: Squadrons, but I refuse to give EA money, and the developer pushing bullshit pronoun nonsense sealed the deal.
Instead, I'm about to start Yakuza Kiwami for the first time.
What are you guys enjoying right now?
Even if you put aside SW Squadron's woke pandering for a second, have you seen the player count?
It's been out for less than a month, and they're already down to 1000~2500 players online. Which, for a pubbie matchmaking game, sounds like the death spiral of long queue times, newbies getting stomped by die-hard fans, and orders from marketing to implement desperate moves to gain new players at the risk of the existing player base.
And when CP77 comes out, you can just imagine how those numbers will look in a month from now.
It makes me sad, because I love the spaceship dog-fighting genre. I fear that when smaller studios see that even EA's budget and SW's brand combined cannot guarantee you a financial success, they'll choose less risky genres to work on instead.
Wow, already? I thought it might do well, apparently not. I didn't pick it up because I'm not much of an early adopter. I've gotten away from multiplayer anyway, they just offer me little fun anymore. I like to play too many different things and the multiplayer world has grown into requiring you to eat, sleep, and breathe their game anymore. I guess I'm just old.
It's a shame Squadrons seems to have bombed the campaign (if there's one at all). I'd have bought it later this year if the multiplayer seemed fun/fair or there was a great campaign mode. Oh well.
I'm checking the numbers from Steam Charts, they could very well be higher in-game: https://steamcharts.com/app/1222730
Maybe if we're lucky they'll eventually add modding support and/or a campaign/level editor. The fan base would jump at the opportunity to recreate all the X-Wing vs TIE Fighter era single-player campaigns for them.
I'm in a TIE Squadron community that has THOUSANDS of modded missions for the old sims. If EA opens it up, I expect very good things from the modding community.
Next overhyped bomb of a title. How many shitty, gimmicky GTA clones exist now? There used to be lots, most ended up defunct. Only Watch Dogs, Saints Row and GTA itself remain.
You do get that games where set in cities before gta right?
Time to start my own religion.
Jokes aside, everyone was in denial about how bad it would be.
CDPR's first Witcher game was absolutely shit. The second one wasn't much better either.
They got something right the third time and now they are considered industry greats. It's so weird to me.
As for politics, the red flags were absolutely abundant. It wouldn't have gotten so much mainstream hype if it wasn't propaganda.