brian_

Great article. I just want to push a little bit on this part.

It should never feel like that it is the consumers responsibility to protect the jobs of workers at a large company. That's the employer's job. I think people tend to conflate this with the want to support independent creators, who do not have the protections of a management team, making millions of dollars from their work, in place. They're responsible for bringing in the money by delivering successful products that people want to buy and running a successful business that people feel good about supporting. I realize that if we lived in a world where management did take proper responsibility, this stuff would happen far less frequently, and we wouldn't need to have this conversation in the first place, but continuing to feel like the onus is on the consumer to keep people employed isn't going to push them to do so either.

Huh... I must have missed the Access-Ability show last year. This is first I've heard of it. Whitethorn, Playtonic and Fiction Factory put out a lot of cool stuff, so count me excited for that.

I've been thinking about Microsoft's lineup from their 2014 E3 press conference a lot lately. Where they showcased:

Fable Legends, which was cancelled

Scalebound, which was cancelled

Phantom Dust, which was cancelled

Project Spark, which they gave up on about a year in

Crackdown 3, which was delayed for years and was not very good

The Master Chef Collection, which was a disaster at launch

and Sunset Overdrive, which was maybe their most successful game they showed that year but didn't exactly set the world on fire.

Sure, this was all about six or seven months after the Xbox One launched, where they had to do a shit ton of course correction, but it didn't seem like Microsoft had their shit together then, and now a decade later, it seems like once again, they don't have their shit together. And maybe they never did? I don't know.

Oh no. The Wholesome mascot is a sentient Gacha machine. They're finally monetizing the indies! Sound the alarms!

@bigsocrates: I wasn't referring to the use of the term "blockbuster". I meant the more general notion of tossing people away to boost your portfolio.

"Those whose roles will be impacted will be notified today, and we ask that you please treat your departing colleagues with respect and compassion."

"These changes are grounded in prioritizing high-impact titles and further investing in Bethesda’s portfolio of blockbuster games"

Two directly conflicting statements.

I scrolled through the whole bundle today. I haven't checked any of these out yet, but with about a day left for sale, here's a list of games that I thought looked interesting enough to give a download.

interwine

Repurpose

Loco Motive

What Remains

Lucah: Born of a Dream

Our Cinderella

Underhero

Spare Parts

Lonely People Potion Shop

BOSSGAME: The Final Boss is My Heart

Nadine in: Diamond in the Grave

after a while

Rituals in the Dark

Kandria

Arctico

Cycle Chaser H-5

Pixross

Hill Agency: Puritydecay

The only words that appear when you open up your video game history text book to the section on the 2020s.

Forget trying to make another Baldur's Gate 3, Hasbro. It's a fool's errand. I'll tell you where the real money is. Go find whatever warehouse/landfill you dumped all those old Tiger Electronic handhelds in, rip the guts out, put a halfway decent emulator in there. Boom! You've got your one billion dollars back on just that alone.

I never finished it, but I remember thinking Fortune 499 was a neat little thing that I've been meaning to go back to.