I still kind of doubt it’s going anywhere fast. Because a game with this scope has already signed up for some pretty massive post-launch support. Let’s be generous and say it takes them another 2-3 years to develop this single player and another 5-6 to finish star citizen. That’s very generous.

They started pre-production in 2010. So it’s already been 13 years of development with near unlimited money on SC. So again, add 5 years till a mainstream launch and another 3-5 years of active support and you’ll be well over two decades deep in a single games development. That’s half of someone’s career to develop one game. Now we add another game on top of this.

The other game is admittedly much easier to develop but still it will take massive amounts of support. If Bethesda can’t do it well, why does anyone think this dev can and in such good time? I have my doubts.

And for good reason. If they trusted user input and took it at face value even for just the current conversation, the user could run wild and get it saying basically anything.

Also chatGPT not having current info is a problem when trying to feed it current info. It will either try to daydream with you or it will follow its data that has hundreds of sources saying they haven’t invaded yet.

As far as covering the companies ass, I think AI models currently have plenty of problems and I’m amazed that corporations can just let this run wild. Even being able to do what OP just did here is a big liability because more laws around AI aren’t even written yet. Companies are fine being sued and expect to be through this. They just think that will cost less than losing out on AI. And I think they’re right.

Frankly I bought the Batman series just to support them and I’ll be buying the walking dead series bundle for the same reason. They have to release new stuff though and that’s going to be really really hard to do because they have to make a game that follows up on a major IP that they own from the old company and also make it really well. Not super likely.

That said, the original death of the company before was rough and was mostly about them expanding and not getting more funding. But the business model was also flawed imo. They forgot to significantly upgrade their games and the first big series, TWD, was the best written one. After that, flat.

If you want to know why they struggle, look at supermassive. Those guys eat telltales lunch and dominate the space. Is there room for both? Probably. But they’ve really got to deliver something killer with the new games or they’re dead again.

I don’t think that we need to continue to “think” it’s bad for the games industry. It IS bad for the industry. Period. Very famously, obsidian got less money and lost out on a bonus from the initial release of fallout NV because it didn’t hit 80 on metacritic. We need to stop pretending these scores are objective or reflect anything about user enjoyment of a game. Users maybe, but the critic score is worse than useless. It’s downright misinformation to aggregate critic scores.

Like the entire point of critics is to provide different perspectives on a game. Why would I want their average? The average of their opinion is not the average gamer opinion and it also isn’t the average of the individual readers opinion.

I need no further proof than go look up the last 5 games you played on metacritic and try to guess the critic and user score and get within 5 points each time.

Take a read of this summary (by IGN) of their Madden 22 review:

“ Madden NFL 22 is a grab bag of decent – if frequently underwhelming – ideas hurt by poor execution. Face of the Franchise, to put it mildly, is a mess. Homefield advantage is a solid addition, but it doesn’t quite capture the true extent of real on-field momentum swings. The new interface is an eyesore, and the new presentation is cast in a strange and unflattering shade of sickly green. It’s smoother and marginally more refined, but in so many ways it’s the same old Madden. In short, if you’re hoping for a massive leap forward for the series on the new generation of consoles (or on the old ones), you’re apt to be disappointed”

Now, I want you to read that and ask what you’d rate it based on this info (or the whole review).

IGN has a scale approximately this: 10. Masterpiece 9. Excellent 8. Great 7. Good 6. Okay 5. Mediocre

I don’t think I need to tell you that the user reviews for this game don’t even reach mediocre. Not to mention the gambling inclusion that IGN doesn’t take seriously in any sports game it reviews. But IGN still called Madden 22 a 6 or an “okay” game.

I’m not saying they’re lying necessarily but the result is the same. The honest critiques are ignored to keep receiving review codes. That score should be left out entirely but they refuse because it drives clicks. It’s a joke.

Ratings. Are. Stupid.

When it comes to movies and audience scores, sure, look at the rotten tomatoes score or whatever. But everyone should realize that the average score of EVERY CRITIC is just going to be a useless number.

Not only that but reviewers who represent entire companies like the people at IGN and elsewhere aren’t giving an honest opinion. I know this because a few of them have given their honest opinion before. They got fired for low scores.

This is the reason that I enjoy watching reviews from people like ACG or SkillUp. They don’t need to give a score because their opinion isn’t a number. Enjoyability isn’t a number. Both of those reviewers enjoy games slightly different than I do, but when I watch their reviews I get a sense of if I will enjoy them.

Seriously if you go to outlets who give scores on games commonly, stop. Very little time is put into choosing these numbers and they reflect nothing about enjoying a game for you personally. Go watch a review from ACG or SkillUp. Outlets like IGN or PCGamer can’t hold a candle to these guys.

I’m not a game dev, but from my modding experience it depends on the game.

MOST of the games that have these insane file sizes actually do it to cut down on processing and on load time and reduce pop-in. If a texture or level doesn’t need any decompression, it loads faster. So entirely depends on the asset. So a lot of games do still compress textures. That’s why there’s a discrepancy between the data downloaded in steam and the actual runtime storage requirement.

The 3D models themselves are usually lower space. As is dialog and audio. Though all of those will be mildly compressed probably.

Does the patch size even mean anything anymore? It seems like they just ship out anything that can’t be recompiled on the users end