Got to get this when I have some more free time, it's one of my favourite adventure games.

That's one issue, but the inability to rely on the server is a whole different set of problems; even if you have semi-regular contributors.

My understanding is before he got the job he was extremely committed to promoting PR messaging from CIG.

You reap what you sow and all that...

That's why I oppose decentralisation without committment to making it work (I actually donate to piefed if you want to discuss that).

Let's me help you, the play through I watched was very good, and I say this as someone who is not a souls-like fan.

The visuals in particular were beautiful, perfect mix of old school vibes and modern production values.

))

It will arrive in 18 months or so, this isn't like Star Citizen, they have financial incentives to release.

Especially with Microsoft hollowing out their gaming devisions.

It's interesting how these things work, I actually dislike the lack of KB+M style granular movement controls in games with first person views (FPS or otherwise). Games that weren't made for computers often just have strange feeling first person controls.

I might just be showing my age here. :)

I would argue that HL2 and EP1 are not retro, the core FPS experience in HL2 still seems to reflect modern standards.

A acquaintance in their early 20s mentioned playing HL2 for the first time recently and they said it didn't feel like a game that was almost a quarter of a century old.

20+ years seems like a solid cutoff point.

I would say anything before circa ~2000 is definitely retro.

It does get more complicated with the release platform.

PC games can be updated and can even take a life of their own, while console games tend to be tied to a specific console/generation and the associated gameplay experience.

One good example is Simcity 4, even before decomp/recomp's got big, the community modded it to such an extent that it wasn't really the same game as the one released in 2003. Simcity 2000 is definitely a retro game though with Simcity 3000 being somewhere in between. Recent decomp/recomp have added much needed modding capabilities to Simcity 3000, but a lot less people play 3000 versus 4 (and the modding scene is a lot smaller).

Totally! The market has spoken!

It just so happens that all major service providers have the same 30% figure irrespective of their specific vertical focus, the geographic component of their industry or even the developments in their vertical over the past 20-25 years?

That's how a market works! Right?

P.S. You can also set it to 100% (you physical can if you want), that's not what we are discussing though.

If Garriott is involved in any way in a gaming project (with any game, not just Ultima), it's guaranteed to be trash.

Since at least 2010 or so he's been involved exclusively in trying to ride the hype; Desktop ~2010 era "Facebook games" (ala Farmville), sketchy crowdfunded MMO games, first crypto-coin scams aimed at gamers, then an NFT scam game.

Garriott is clearly not interested in making video games any more beyond promoting his "personal brand" and cashing in (without any concern on gameplay or clear legality, let alone ethics).

Somewhere in the Shroud of the Avatar subreddit (MMO with which Garriott wanted to focus on selling virtual land) you can find a post about someone working with Garriott on Tabula Rasa; the commentator claimed that Garriott was already done with gaming at that point; just going wild with the budget; spending it on strip clubs and getting a position for one of the dancers (not inherently a bad thing, but such things should be done with care).

One shouldn't believe everything they read online, but some of the references felt almost too specific for a random shitpost.

I meant market in the real sense not the American polemical form.

A real market-driven price/cut is determined by supply and demand, the 30% figure was chosen by some American oligarchs that Valve decided to copy.

Have you ever wondered why it's not 29.1% or 34.5% and the 30% figure never changes (other than than for well connected insiders?). How can market driven price never change, especially in a highly dynamic globalized market like gaming?