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[Akura]

New microwave means easier food cooking. I myself don't use it very often, though.

In his mind at least, not getting it now may mean not getting for a while before everyone gets locked down by quarantine or illness. Out of everyone in my family, he's the one panicking most about it.

[Frumple]

That might be the most sensible reaction I've ever heard you describe that person having.

[Teneb]

CK2 mod team I'm part of finally decided to make a public discord.

The WTF is that I expected it to immediately devolve into a huge mess... and it didn't. So that's a good WTF.

[LordBaal]

Command and Conquer is getting a HD remake by EA. WTF? How did I miss that?

[Frumple]

Well, that sounds mildly terrifying. I wonder how they're going to manage to screw it up. Loot boxes? What's the spread on the loot box bet?

[LordBaal]

You remember that the game had the option of literal random loot boxes over the battlefield? Well, now every time you get one you have to use a special key to unlock it. EA sells 10 keys for 5$.

[Akura]

If I remember correctly, random crates was a game option in Red Alert at least. (most of them exploded)


But yeah, I'd put money on most units being locked behind lootboxes. Rather, I would, except that's the point of lootboxes, isn't it? Oh, and there's only two maps at launch with the other 5 being $30(each) DLC.

[hector13]

Ah EA. One of these days they’re just going to release the menu for a game for $60 and have all the menu items except “quit” be greyed out DLC.

[Naturegirl1999]

Ah EA. One of these days they’re just going to release the menu for a game for $60 and have all the menu items except “quit” be greyed out DLC.

dont give them ideas, mate!  Joking, they wouldn’t be that stupid, right?

[LordBaal]

What about "pay on play basis". Games are free to download and install. You only pay as much as you play, 10 cents the minute of play.

[pisskop]

What about "pay on play basis". Games are free to download and install. You only pay as much as you play, 10 cents the minute of play.

That might not be as terrible as it sounds?

I often play games for several hours and then quit them, only to pick them up for a few more when the itch arises.  But it would also require a lot of setup wrt internet access, credit cards, etc.

[Reelya]

That probably wouldn't work out economically viable for an AAA game.

The main constraint on players these days isn't cost, it's time. And if you have a ticking clock in the game with a price meter, they're going to feel the time constraint and be likelier to quit playing sooner rather than later. Notice that most games have a more time = more rewards model. This pricing scheme would run opposite to that.

Also, if you played for 40 hours to complete the game's main story and at that point, you'd spent $60, then what percentage of players would actually make it that far? I imagine the curve for play-hours would be very steep, with most playing only a very short time and only a handful of the starting group of players making it that far, and thus those people having to foot the bill for almost the entire development costs. Plus, it penalizes slow-and-steady type players, or those who look in every nook and cranny, so you've just alienated a whole class of player types.

Breaking the game up into purchasable chapters would be a better option. Pretty much anything that makes games less-monolithic is the way they're moving forward with that issue. For example Call of Duty's game-every-year model means that development times are shorter, each game has less scope to develop, and it's not all eggs in one basket. So you have the engine team working on the next engine version while the designer teams crank out stories and games using ever-tweaked versions of the last engine. It also means they're not as buggy: they're not shipping their latest game on the bleeding-edge engine, they're shipping games on a rock-solid tested engine, while doing research on engine++, and they can back-port improvements into the working engine after they're fully tested, if desired.

[Kagus]

So, y'mean, like...


...World of Warcraft?

[Reelya]

Yeah sorry I did mention something about subscription models, but removed it because I didn't think it was actually a good idea. The problem is that there's only room in the market for "a couple" of subscription-based games in any market segment. So, copying WoW and having a subscription just won't work. It's not horizontally-scalable to other games. People won't want to have multiple game subscriptions that they pay every month for similar games.

I don't think players would really like pay-per-minute either. It would feel rushed, even if the price works out the same. Also, if you had a WoW subscription and also could pay-per-minute for a second MMO, I think people would still feel like they're double-paying: you could just play WoW and not have to pay the additional per-minute cost on something else.

[Yoink]

Cat threw an absolute fit earlier, for no apparent reason. I've never seen anything like it.