I don’t think it’s singling it out to say that the just-about-required subscription makes it less appealing to purchase, whereas most multiplayer games have the PC version as an option.

Metacritic and OpenCritic scores are the best way to gauge whether or not they’ll win GOTY at “The Game Awards” though, since the same people who awarded those scores are largely responsible for nominating and selecting winners at that show. So it’s possible that as bugs were ironed out in patches and over the subsequent years these outlets all found their “Kingdom Come: Deliverance guy” who came to the game late that perhaps this new one does better, but it would have to do a lot better to be a real contender.

Because I’d say the addiction is the issue. The biggest issue with gambling is the addiction. If you’re not addicted, you’re not spending time or money beyond your means. So I’d rather not broaden it to how much money it sucks out of you when the addiction is the issue. It all relies on the same principles that we know to be worth legal regulation when it’s acknowledged as gambling. I don’t know anyone who got addicted to Netflix, but they’ll “binge” shows because we no longer live in the era where we can only watch shows according to a broadcast schedule; plus sometimes, you just want some background noise while you’re doing something else, including a show you’ve seen a million times.

I don’t think that’s a great excuse.

It does rely on a subscription though.

The second game even repurposed large parts of the not-particularly-impressive campaign of the first game. They weren’t going to fool me again by making me buy the same game a third time.

There are at least two other mobile games in the same genre that did very well, so this one wasn’t a stretch.

Conscript requires a lot of time set aside to play it in order to make any progress, so instead, lately I’ve been playing Divinity: Original Sin. I had put it down toward the end of act 2, and it took a good deal of looking at a walkthrough to figure out how to progress from where I left off, since the quest log only helps so much, but I wrapped up act 2 and got to act 3. As combat-heavy as this game is, I do really enjoy the cut of Larian’s jib, even when it’s not as good as Baldur’s Gate 3.

I also picked up Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, or the MvC Collection for short. I never had a Dreamcast back in the day, and I had probably only played a couple of hours of these games in arcades or via emulators in my entire life, so I never got to dig into these games before. I put together a ratio team using Justin Wong’s 2024 ratio list of Dhalsim/Juggernaut/Thanos and even won some matches online with it, so that felt good. For a high-tier team, I do want to avoid as many of the mainstay characters as possible, not just because I’m not a rushdown player but also because it’s more interesting to see anyone other than Magneto, Storm, and Sentinel on screen, so I might run Dhalsim/Dr. Doom/Cable. I don’t imagine I’ll stick with MvC2 for too long, since Skullgirls is, in my opinion, just a better MvC2, but it’s fun seeing what I might have been playing if I had a Dreamcast in the early 00s instead of a Gamecube, especially with the next fighting collection on the way too. I also tried out X-Men: Children of the Atom in this collection, and boy can I not figure out how to stop the CPU-controlled Colossus. That dude expertly dodges my ice beams, seemingly can’t be stopped once his armor is up, and will air grab me the second I try to super jump out of the corner.

Well, sure, but in a few years’ time, the definition of what a console is might change.

It’s a popularity contest in either case, so the winners will hardly change.

Out themselves with regards to what? For a game to win GOTY at the Keighleys, the best way to stand a chance is to be a game that the most reviewers played, and they’re all going to cover the next Assassin’s Creed.

That last game didn’t break 80 on metacritic. This second one would be quite the unlikely game of the year contender.

EDIT: Also just remembered that game doesn’t come out until 2025.

I think keeping you addicted so as to continue to paying a monthly subscription is bad on its own, and I don’t think it needs to be qualified by how much you spend overall if they’re still knowingly capitalizing on that addiction in an unregulated environment. But also, while I don’t know the answer to your question for a fact, I would imagine that they do have ways to spend unlimited money in that game if you’re so inclined.

You could throw most of this same argument back at gachas. They’re just gambling because the world sucks, or something…

No, my understanding is that the reason people get addicted to this stuff is that we evolved to gather finite resources when they’re available, even if it’s rare, so we’re prey to systems like this that can control that rarity. WoW absolutely did this, just without putting a price on each interaction.

The core of lots of games revolve around random chance, and plenty of those exhibit no addictive behavior whatsoever. I’d certainly like to hear a research psychologist’s take on it though.

Without being a gacha game, World of WarCraft is guilty of a lot of the same stuff. You probably know people who flunked out of college due to the addiction, or have heard of parents who neglected their child over that game. It preys on a lot of the same impulses that Diablo and Diablo II seemed to have found by accident, before they were monetized by subscription fees and then microtransactions. And you can see a lot of the same in games like Destiny.

I don’t think it’s a good argument to say that it’s okay for a game to inevitably die because they’re doing better right now. Brink, Overwatch 1, and HyperScape are fully dead, btw. I’d rather be able to pay $60 and have a game I can play forever than save money on a game that’s designed to self destruct.

I’m way into fighting games. Even the ones with a battle pass and such can still be played offline (except maybe for 2XKO and Brawlhalla) and quite frankly can’t match the content churn that other genres do in the live service space.

If someone 50 years from now wants to see what this game Fortnite was all about, they should be able to get a reasonable approximation of it by booting it up and playing with 100 other people. That’s what it means to preserve it. We’ve had and will continue to have competitive games that are not live service.

The inevitable outcome for every live service game is that it becomes inoperable and unplayable, even the good ones. It doesn’t matter if it’s Suicide Squad or Fortnite. They all should still be preserved. Open source is appreciated but not necessary.