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New games suck... or is it just me?
By RadialArcana 2025-01-23 13:47:33
This is not how it works today, AAA video games are not products made to simple costs vs profits as they used to be. They are made to push up the stock prices, made to increase investor confidence in the studio going forward. Video games are financial instruments to impress investors and little more.
Stellar Blade was a huge success, because it showed the world the company could make a AAA game and it sell a million copies. It did what it was made to do, massive success.
Dragon Age is a total failure even though it sold the same or more than SB, because it sold vastly under expectations. It did not do what it was made to do.
SE has the same problem, they are continually under-performing and losing investor confidence, and since all the CEO cares about is the share price that's not good. Even their biggest release this year (ff7r) massively under-performed, even compared to Dragon Age V.
By Afania 2025-01-23 13:54:21
This is not how it works today, AAA video games are not products made to simple costs vs profits as they used to be. They are made to push up the stock prices, made to increase investor confidence in the studio going forward. Video games are financial instruments to impress investors and little more.
Stellar Blade was a huge success, because it showed the world the company could make a AAA game and it sell a million copies. It did what it was made to do, massive success.
Dragon Age is a total failure even though it sold the same or more than SB, because it sold vastly under expectations. It did not do what it was made to do.
SE has the same problem, they are continually under-performing and losing investor confidence, and since all the CEO cares about is the share price that's not good. Even their biggest release this year (ff7r) massively under-performed, even compared to Dragon Age V.
Considering developer's salary in Asia is only 1/2 or even 1/3 of American, no matter what title is Asian AAA games will be much easier to make a profit anyways. It's the inherent advantage that will exist whether DEI exist or not.
I can literally see waves of Chinese AAA that all look the same or played the same pop in the market in the next 5 years, kicking competitors from other regions out. And it isn't because China is anti-woke, but because China makes things cheaper than everyone else.
If DAV is made in China, they can probably make profit with 1.5m sales. That's how the cost can make a difference.
Carbuncle.Nynja
Server: Carbuncle
Game: FFXI
Posts: 4422
By Carbuncle.Nynja 2025-01-24 22:56:07
Ninja Gaiden 2 Original from 2008: ~7GB
Ninja Gaiden 2 Black (aka remaster): ~86GB
What the ***. I get higher res textures and what not take up more space, but thats absolutely zero optimization.
By RadialArcana 2025-01-25 00:26:02
It's because Unreal Engine sucks and is incredibly bloated, I've made texture mods in Unreal Engine and they were a gig.
The reason all these companies are using EU instead of their own custom engines is because the job market in the game industry sucks and nobody has any loyalty anymore, so people keep leaving and swapping companies so they want a standard engine to avoid training time if they take on new staff.
It's garbage, but fortnite money.
By Afania 2025-01-25 01:47:13
The reason all these companies are using EU instead of their own custom engines is because the job market in the game industry sucks and nobody has any loyalty anymore
This isn't the reason lol. Making game engine from scratch is a waste of money for mid-size developer or lower. It's only worth it for big companies like EA or Capcom so they don't have to pay huge royalty to epic so the investment on an engine is probably worth it.
A non-programmer can program their own games in UE or Unity without a dedicated programmer on their team, or it can be done with mid-tier self-taught programmers that learned programming language on their own. That's why UE and Unity is popular, it makes smaller dev's life much easier.
Developing a high end game engine like UE from scratch needs a team of highly skilled software engineers with a CS degree from high-tier university. In this era developing a high end engine can cost as much as a full game. That's a huge waste of money that can be spent on art, game design and marketing instead.
If it's bloat, then let it be. Game design and content should be No.1 priority for game dev, not game engines.
By RadialArcana 2025-01-25 03:35:33
Yes it is the reason. CDPR for instance has a high turnover of staff, and training every new employee to use REEngine was turning into a nightmare of paid wasted employee time. It's also a reason stated by potential new employees to not come work there, because they would lean to use an engine and it would hurt future career opportunities.
Unreal Engine is an industry standard now (even though it sucks), that almost everyone knows how to use and so it makes sense when the industry is as flakey as it is for every game to be made with it. This allows them to take on new people mid dev cycle and them to be able to immediately start work on day 1.
Using an engine is like using Photoshop, if you use some other paint package and hire on a bunch of artists you're going to have countless unproductive hours wasted while they learn to use this new paint package. So everyone now uses Photoshop.
Keep in mind this isn't about coding, this is about every aspect of game development.
By Afania 2025-01-25 04:24:29
In this era developing a high end engine can cost as much as a full game
Yes it is the reason. CDPR for instance has a high turnover of staff, and training every new employee to use REEngine was turning into a nightmare of paid wasted employee time. It's also a reason stated by potential new employees to not come work there, because they would lean to use an engine and it would hurt future career opportunities.
Pretty much everything you said above is associated with a cost, which was exactly what I said.
If engine development/maintaince cost is lower than pay a fee to Epic then people will develop their own engines. If engine development cost more than paying epic then people will use UE, it's as simple as that.
The cost of developing an engine has been increasing so it's not worth it for many companies, that's all there is. Training new employee is part of the cost, but not all of the cost. Engine development can cost a company way more than that.
Saying companies use UE because employees are not loyal is missing the big picture.
Shiva.Thorny
Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 2973
By Shiva.Thorny 2025-01-25 06:00:48
Employee loyalty is not just based on culture, either. If employees have good working conditions and salary, much more likely to be loyal. So, it just comes back to cost.
If you want to make your own engine, you need to give enough pay package and perks to keep loyal employees (due to cost of training new ones). That's part of the cost of making your own engine; if UE lets you manage turnover better it's a cost savings.
By RadialArcana 2025-01-25 07:06:46
It's not just about pay and conditions either, the modern "grown up" work culture and forced DEI has ruined many work environments that used to be well oiled machines with incredibly loyal staff.
Men tend to like working together (with a small number of women who actually fit in to these environments) and get along where it's almost like an extension of college life, where they can swear, make dirty jokes and just be dudes doing cool stuff with no HR DEI hire officers breathing down their necks every second.
The companies have ruined all that, and now it's purely a job and everyone knows it's purely a job and so there is no loyalty or fun there anymore, and people don't give 110% cause why bother. When you force all these people into teams that they do not fit in, you ruin the entire industry.
If it wasn't for Asia, the entire game industry would have collapsed by now cause it's wall to wall trash.
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Shiva.Thorny
Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 2973
By Shiva.Thorny 2025-01-25 07:26:03
Think that plays into the recent discussion we had about preferring similar people in the workplace and how DEI has removed those environments.
Limiting game development to men and to women that put up with male culture is not fair. But, single companies operating in that manner have been very successful in the past. So, the abolition of that modus operandi is probably not great for the future of gaming.
If diversity is actually better, why does everyone need to do it? Let the bro culture studios do what they want, and if it's not actually effective, the market will deal with it(spoiler: it is effective).
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By Viciouss 2025-01-25 07:34:24
It's not just about pay and conditions either, the modern "grown up" work culture and forced DEI has ruined many work environments that used to be well oiled machines with incredibly loyal staff.
Men tend to like working together (with a small number of women who actually fit in to these environments) and get along where it's almost like an extension of college life, where they can swear, make dirty jokes and just be dudes doing cool stuff with no HR DEI hire officers breathing down their necks every second.
The companies have ruined all that, and now it's purely a job and everyone knows it's purely a job and so there is no loyalty or fun there anymore, and people don't give 110% cause why bother. When you force all these people into teams that they do not fit in, you ruin the entire industry.
If it wasn't for Asia, the entire game industry would have collapsed by now cause it's wall to wall trash.
Yeah we have seen all this nonsense before. Do you work in the game industry? Which companies have you worked at? Or is this just what you read on twitter? I'm not convinced you have a real job. The real world isn't a big fraternity. Sure guys might joke around in the breakroom or in private, but not being allowed to be unprofessional on the clock isn't a new development. You would know this if you had a job. Women didn't just recently join the workforce. DEI is just the latest scapegoat to justify your twitter conspiracies.
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By Viciouss 2025-01-25 07:38:28
Think that plays into the recent discussion we had about preferring similar people in the workplace and how DEI has removed those environments.
Limiting game development to men and to women that put up with male culture is not fair. But, single companies operating in that manner have been very successful in the past. So, the abolition of that modus operandi is probably not great for the future of gaming.
If diversity is actually better, why does everyone need to do it? Let the bro culture studios do what they want, and if it's not actually effective, the market will deal with it(spoiler: it is effective).
Oh, DEI has "removed those environments?" Where at? Specifically, which gaming company had a "bro culture studio" and no longer does?
Shiva.Thorny
Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 2973
By Shiva.Thorny 2025-01-25 07:43:27
Oh, DEI has "removed those environments?" Where at? Specifically, which gaming company had a "bro culture studio" and no longer does?
Here's the original WoW team behind (arguably) the most successful game ever released. Looks a whole lot like 'bro culture' to me.
They were sued multiple times for gender discrimination, and now you have the current blizzard. I can get a picture of that if you want, but they all border on caricatures and I'm sure I'd be accused of cherry picking.
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By Afania 2025-01-25 08:38:53
But, single companies operating in that manner have been very successful in the past. So, the abolition of that modus operandi is probably not great for the future of gaming.
If diversity is actually better, why does everyone need to do it? Let the bro culture studios do what they want, and if it's not actually effective, the market will deal with it(spoiler: it is effective).
A studio with bro culture, how does that even work in 2025?
Like, if you own a 600 people studio and 400 of them are artists, you WILL have significant amount of women in the team, because in art department male:female ratio often is like 50:50, that's how it goes in the talent pool.
Now add other departments like writers for narrative/localization, or marketing writers etc. now that's another department that 50:50 in terms of male:female ratio. Even in publishing industry writer gender ratio is often 50:50, there is just no way that you can exclude woman in writing department.
What about PMs? We all know that females are generally better than male when it comes to communication. Now that another department that you'll see more female than male, or 50:50 at most.
Only game design, programming and possibly QA/playtest department you'll see more male than female. But design/programming is usually a smaller department.
So the end result is what you see, a significant portion of job will be female even if you hire based on merits.
This is not 1990, when game studio was just 5-10 guys got together and make fun games. Maybe it works for indies, definitely not anything with a bigger size. Game development pipeline these days is highly specialized, with very different roles excels at extremely niche area. there is just no way that you can easily build a "bro culture" if you hire based on specialty.
Edit: I bet even any decent sized indie these days has better/specialized pipeline than most studios in 1990 anyways, so even in indie you'll still often work with different people if you want to excel.
By Afania 2025-01-25 09:02:25
The companies have ruined all that, and now it's purely a job and everyone knows it's purely a job and so there is no loyalty or fun there anymore, and people don't give 110% cause why bother. When you force all these people into teams that they do not fit in, you ruin the entire industry.
If it wasn't for Asia, the entire game industry would have collapsed by now cause it's wall to wall trash.
Are you trying to say that Asian studios has "bro culture" and mostly hire man or something? Give me a break lol. What you are saying here makes absolutely zero sense.
Seriously, at least try to ask a few Asian developer irl how the studio environment is like before making weird assumptions that makes zero sense.
Shiva.Thorny
Server: Shiva
Game: FFXI
Posts: 2973
By Shiva.Thorny 2025-01-25 09:02:39
If it's not possible to run a studio without incorporating diversity, why so many efforts to legally enforce it? It'll happen on it's own if your view is correct.
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By Afania 2025-01-25 09:05:38
If it's not possible to run a studio without incorporating diversity, why so many efforts to legally enforce it? It'll happen on it's own if your view is correct.
I don't live in western country atm, we don't legally enforce diversity hire. Certain department like art just naturally has a lot of women without law enforcement. A good number of my friends(they are not westerner) irl are artists, and they don't even play games. But if they can paint some pretty textures then they can be used in the production pipeline.
RA was just imagining things that they have no experience with.
Edit: one of my female friend irl was in the industry as an artist before 1990 even, she is really senior. I can ask her if "bro culture" existed at that time, that will be 100% more accurate than RA's imagination.
By RadialArcana 2025-01-25 09:35:06
You can't fix the western AAA industry now, the damage has been done and it can't be undone. We are just going to make crap games AA-AAA from here on out, same has happened to the movie industry due to DEI there too.
Everything that has embraced DEI has turned to trash or stagnated, and this is not opinion but you can see it and prove it with results compared to 10-15+ years ago. Diversity of gender etc isn't a strength at all, and you can't show it is anywhere. Quite the opposite.
The only time the west can make good games now is if it's an indie studio or some private company (that can resist forced DEI etc, Valve is a good example of this.), and you can make the team small enough where you can just hire a bunch of dudes and 1 woman who fits in. The AAA industry is now filled with incompetent people and that has required them to massively overhire, and even then the key roles such as writers are also now DEI too (cause if they refuse a woman who applies and they have not met their quota they can be sued) so they still make slop no matter how big the team is.
If so many women are so good at making games, why aren't they making banger Indie games? Investors will throw money at them if they show any talent or even desire to make a game, yet the only large amount of women you see working in the video game industry is in AA-AAA where it's forced upon the companies. Weird that this amazing diversity stuff only works when it's forced isn't it?
Another big problem in the west is that there has been a dedicated push (from activists) for teachers in higher education to be named and shamed if they do not have equal pass rates for women as men (and other groups), in STEM and other fields where men naturally dominate. So the teachers are now forced to pass more women etc, who normally would fail in order to keep their job and not be called sexist.
So even the "qualified" women are often not qualified at all, as they used to be. They still have to be hired though.
Complete S-show.
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By Viciouss 2025-01-25 09:39:49
Here's the original WoW team behind (arguably) the most successful game ever released. Looks a whole lot like 'bro culture' to me.
They were sued multiple times for gender discrimination, and now you have the current blizzard. I can get a picture of that if you want, but they all border on caricatures and I'm sure I'd be accused of cherry picking.
This is what you're going with? They were sued for a lot more than gender discrimination (which has been illegal for decades, btw). I'm sure you are not condoning sexual harassment? Robert Kotick being ousted was good for the gaming industry. And now we have the current Blizzard, who just released a pretty solid expansion for WoW.
Don't try to group the boogeyman that is DEI into anti-discrimination laws. That's not gonna work. The Civil Rights Act isn't being relitigated.
By Viciouss 2025-01-25 09:43:37
You can't fix the western AAA industry now, the damage has been done and it can't be undone. We are just going to make crap games AA-AAA from here on out, same has happened to the movie industry due to DEI there too.
Everything that has embraced DEI has turned to trash or stagnated, and this is not opinion but you can see it and prove it with results compared to 10-15+ years ago. Diversity of gender etc isn't a strength at all, and you can't show it is anywhere. Quite the opposite.
The only time the west can make good games now is if it's an indie studio or some private company (that can resist forced DEI etc, Valve is a good example of this.), and you can make the team small enough where you can just hire a bunch of dudes and 1 woman who fits in. The AAA industry is now filled with incompetent people and that has required them to massively overhire, and even then the key roles such as writers are also now DEI too (cause if they refuse a woman who applies and they have not met their quota they can be sued) so they still make slop no matter how big the team is.
If so many women are so good at making games, why aren't they making banger Indie games? Investors will throw money at them if they show any talent or even desire to make a game, yet the only large amount of women you see working in the video game industry is in AA-AAA where it's forced upon the companies. Weird that this amazing diversity stuff only works when it's forced isn't it?
Another big problem in the west is that there has been a dedicated push (from activists) for teachers in higher education to be named and shamed if they do not have equal pass rates for women as men (and other groups), in STEM and other fields where men naturally dominate. So the teachers are now forced to pass more women etc, who normally would fail in order to keep their job and not be called sexist.
So even the "qualified" women are often not qualified at all, as they used to be. They still have to be hired though.
Complete S-show.
Oh, who is we? Are you making a game? When can we expect it? What studio do you work for?
Western gaming studios aren't broken, and they aren't going anywhere. This is just regurgitated nonsense from twitter that keeps getting repeated over and over.
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Carbuncle.Nynja
Server: Carbuncle
Game: FFXI
Posts: 4422
By Carbuncle.Nynja 2025-01-25 09:52:23
It's not just about pay and conditions either, the modern "grown up" work culture and forced DEI has ruined many work environments that used to be well oiled machines with incredibly loyal staff.
Men tend to like working together (with a small number of women who actually fit in to these environments) and get along where it's almost like an extension of college life, where they can swear, make dirty jokes and just be dudes doing cool stuff with no HR DEI hire officers breathing down their necks every second.
The companies have ruined all that, and now it's purely a job and everyone knows it's purely a job and so there is no loyalty or fun there anymore, and people don't give 110% cause why bother. When you force all these people into teams that they do not fit in, you ruin the entire industry.
If it wasn't for Asia, the entire game industry would have collapsed by now cause it's wall to wall trash.
Yeah we have seen all this nonsense before. Do you work in the game industry? Which companies have you worked at? Or is this just what you read on twitter? I'm not convinced you have a real job. The real world isn't a big fraternity. Sure guys might joke around in the breakroom or in private, but not being allowed to be unprofessional on the clock isn't a new development. You would know this if you had a job. Women didn't just recently join the workforce. DEI is just the latest scapegoat to justify your twitter conspiracies. You cant use the “you dont know ***because you dont work in the game industry” when you yourself dont know ***becuase you yourself dont work in the game industry.
By Afania 2025-01-25 09:56:28
If so many women are so good at making games, why aren't they making banger Indie games?
They do. Except when I referenced a very successful indie game with 23k review and 96% positive reviews in a post, this was your reaction:
That's an indie coomer game made by a woman, these are not mainstream.
You are going to disregard any evidence presented to you with random excuses so why bother?
Edit: I think the author of Omori(69k reviews, 97% positive) is also a woman, at least the voice sounds like one in streams. There are successful indie games made by women everywhere if you bother to search for it.
By Afania 2025-01-25 10:11:24
You cant use the “you dont know ***because you dont work in the game industry” when yoh yourself dont know ***becuase you yourself dont work in the game industry.
Does it even matter? I am pretty sure RA isn't interested in knowing the truth, otherwise they'll go research themselves without needing other people to debunk those claims. There are plenty of opportunities irl that you can chat with industry professionals about why certain things works this way, and many of them will be happy to share something if you asked. If you haven't try that, then you don't care enough.
RA only has one intention here: political rant, doesn't matter if it's true or not.
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By RadialArcana 2025-01-25 10:19:16
Video games:
Men are far more likely to want to work in this industry than women, as such more men will fail and be filtered because there is no pressure to make them pass and succeed to be hired. The ones that succeed are the cream of the crop and good at the work and all earned it.
Women are far less likely to want to work in this industry by a huge margin because they are more inclined to do other kinds of work, so pretty much any woman that wants to do it will be able to succeed and work in the video game industry due to all the pressure and forced quotas being applied.
As such you get mass mediocrity among female developers, and since there are so many more of them now you get mediocrity in the entire industry. If a woman writes a garbage story or does pretty much anything in an incompetent manner, all the men are afraid to say it sucks and they all have to pretend it's is amazing.
This is where we are.
The sad part is, there are some skilled and amazing women who do and have worked in the industry but they get no actual real kudos anymore, because they are all assumed to be DEI because that is the case for the majority of them now.
Blizzard are now utter garbage and widely hated even by their own customers, they will never make another game and if they do it will instaflop. Trash bag company, coasting on the games better developers made years ago.
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By Viciouss 2025-01-25 10:26:33
You cant use the “you dont know ***because you dont work in the game industry” when you yourself dont know ***becuase you yourself dont work in the game industry.
I most certainly can and I will continue to.
Video games:
Men are far more likely to want to work in this industry than women, as such more men will fail and be filtered because there is no pressure to make them pass and succeed to be hired. The ones that succeed are the cream of the crop and good at the work and all earned it.
Women are far less likely to want to work in this industry by a huge margin because they are more inclined to do other kinds of work, so pretty much any woman that wants to do it will be able to succeed and work in the video game industry due to all the pressure and forced quotas being applied.
As such you get mass mediocrity among female developers, and since there are so many more of them now you get mediocrity in the entire industry. If a woman writes a garbage story or does pretty much anything in an incompetent manner, all the men are afraid to say it sucks and they all have to pretend it's is amazing.
This is where we are.
The sad part is, there are some skilled and amazing women who do and have worked in the industry but they get no actual real kudos anymore, because they are all assumed to be DEI because that is the case for the majority of them now.
Blizzard are now utter garbage and widely hated even by their own customers, they will never make another game and if they do it will instaflop. Trash bag company, coasting on the games better developers made years ago.
You have no idea what you are talking about. This entire post is contrived. Did you copy and paste it from twitter? Stop talking about women in the workforce as if you know anything about them.
It is absolutely not "where we are." It might be where you are on the unemployment line, but it is not where the United States is as a society.
Carbuncle.Nynja
Server: Carbuncle
Game: FFXI
Posts: 4422
By Carbuncle.Nynja 2025-01-25 10:27:38
Yes
Especially after last time someone pulled the "you dont work in the industry" card (and Viciouss liked the post, so he supported it, and the post was made by another person not in the industry), someone who actually does work in one of these fields chimed in and said " actually, everything is true"
By Afania 2025-01-25 10:35:52
Yes
Especially after last time someone pulled the "you dont work in the industry" card (and Viciouss liked the post, so he supported it, and the post was made by another person not in the industry), someone who actually does work in one of these fields chimed in and said " actually, everything is true"
I do. Not gaming industry, but male dominated field
This person worked in a "male dominated field" but not gaming industry. So you can probably get the conclusion that DEI hire "may" be a thing somewhere out there.
But you can't get the conclusion that RA's assumption on game studio "bro culture" and female role is correct. And it really only take one opposite case to debunk this claim.
I already debunked RA's claim twice with real examples in this thread, so what makes you think their assumption has a meaning at this point?
By Viciouss 2025-01-25 10:37:04
Yes
Especially after last time someone pulled the "you dont work in the industry" card (and Viciouss liked the post, so he supported it, and the post was made by another person not in the industry), someone who actually does work in one of these fields chimed in and said " actually, everything is true"
Do you think this is going to shield RA from being called out for his made up posts based on what he reads on twitter? An insanely vague post about how DEI hurt some guy? Hint: It's not.
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By RadialArcana 2025-01-25 10:59:44
I already debunked RA's claim twice with real examples in this thread
If you're having a conversation or stating something, you have to generalize or you can't make any point at all about anything.
If I say venomous snakes are dangerous, and you say they are not because you have one on your lap right now and it did not bite you that does not mean they are not dangerous.
If I say smoking is bad for you, but you say your grandfather lived till 90 and smoked 20 a day that does not disprove the argument smoking is dangerous.
You always try to argue this way, it's silly.
If you can state something that is true in the vast majority of cases it is a valid statement to make.
By Kaffy 2025-01-25 11:00:42
Every game expo and award show I've seen in recent memory has had pretty strong female representation. I haven't paid close attention to the positions each and every one holds but it seems plenty of women want to work in the industry.
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So... I have been increasingly frustrated with new games over years. I feel like so much effort it placed on graphics, lighting, art style, ect and maybe 10% of that effort is placed into gameplay, controls, and story.
My latest purchase was Visions of Mana, which I was pretty excited for. Secret of Mana is in my top 5 all time, I've played Seiken Densetsu 3 translated and while I didn't think it was as good as Secret of Mana, it was still extremely enjoyable. I skipped Trials of Mana since I had already played Seiken Densetsu 3. Vision is just bad. The english voice acting was awful, the characters were bland/generic or just stupid, and I was 3hrs into the game and all I was doing to running 30seconds between CS. Felt like a slightly interactive shitty anime.
Hogwarts Legacy, Visions of Mana, Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield... I felt like all of these super hyped games were absolute duds. Final Fantasy 16 is coming to PC in a few weeks and I'm not sure if I even want to try it anymore. I've heard people say not great things about it.
I know I'm just venting a bit here, but it really sucks being excited for a new game and then the crushing disappointment when it's not fun.
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