I didn’t say that – the quote from the article did. You will need to query that author. I’ve never played Animal Crossing nor have I ever attended a birthday party in any game.
I get that. What I’m a bit unsure of is what is meant by a social space in a game? An MMO can be leisurely to the point of being in places in-game where there is no fighting at all so chatting is easy to do. I don’t think of shooters that way but I’m not that familar with them these days. Something like Fortnite seems mostly go go go.
Or to put this another way, if COD and Fortnite are already games with a strong social component, is Anacrusis doing something new with that? I feel like the article didn’t really tell us much, but I’m sure more information is coming.
Didn’t mean to imply it was you saying that. It’s just I can think of one adult person I know in real life who plays (not local multiplayer) video games as a social activity.
I play games as a social activity with friends far away but I have to say it’s hard to do any “socializing” with action games. Too much going on to talk about non-game stuff.
I think it’s just easier to show than to explain. Check out the videos on my YouTube channel of me winning Warzone matches among other things with some folks I met via Apex Legends like three years ago. We talk about all sorts of things while we play, but also talk about the game and play it to win. In Battle Royale especially, you often have distance to cover with no gunfire. It’s normal to be chatting about just about anything during that time.
This is how lots of folks spend their evenings. I’m not special this way. We run across small groups of players like us all the time. When I play Search & Destroy in CoD, usually a lot of the people in a lobby know each other. These games are massively popular. We connect with other players because they know the game, and other socializing comes out of that. Stray Bombay can easily have this with Anacrusis.
Maybe there will be more moments where you can take a breather as opposed to constant action?
Snack breaks!
Yeah, exactly what @DaveLong said. While it can be difficult to chat when the action heats up, all the downtime between is spent catching up, laughing, putting the world to rights or whatever. Online gaming has been a huge part of my social life for many years now and 2020 really crystalised that. Video calls with friends never felt that natural or relaxed to me and I tired of them really quickly, but with gaming all the socialising happens around them. Nothing felt forced or overbearing. Basically, multiplayer gamers had it sussed out going into lockdown.
I will say, Sea of Thieves in particular was a great space to hang out in, especially with crossplay. I’ve not done birthday parties online or anything like that, but murder parties on The Ship back in the day were an absolute riot. I miss those :-)
Anyway, uh, The Anacrusis looks interesting and more than a bit goofy and loose from the trailer! Looking forward to seeing and hearing more about it.
Sea of Thieves is the perfect hangout game. Lotta long cruises to chat through.
Chet’s a great guy, and I’m very interested in what Stray Bombay does. I even like the title just fine, and the NOLF meets L4D vibe totally works for me. But that trailer wasn’t super impressive. The animations looked really weird and stiff. Same with the feel of the banter: just not natural feeling at all. I just don’t get what these enemies are supposed to be–Xenomorphs in leotards?–but they look like they come at the player like a gliding army of clones, which wasn’t particularly satisfying. I’m assuming this is very beta gameplay, but for me, it didn’t make for the best first impression. It feels too Valve-like to escape the obvious comparison, but it’s missing that Valve-level of polish, which is perhaps unattainable anyway by a new, small studio. I hope Chet and his team have time to let this bake as long as it needs to: I want great things for his studio. But this isn’t a trailer that blew me away.
Releases on January 13, 2022. …Early Access.
Well, good to hear it’s EA release, it still needs work.
So the story I read some time ago about when Chet and Kimberly Voll decided to team up intrigued me because she seemed to be swayed by a one sentence pitch. From an Ars Technica story:
Our conversation sees the duo mostly dance around anything more specific, but when pressed, Faliszek confirms that there is “a concrete [game idea] to hang a conversation on.” And Voll loves it: “There was a game pitch! I said, yeaaah”—in a childish, over-excited way—“at the first sentence. It all clicked. All of those conversations over all those years, then Chet said this one sentence. I said, ‘oh my god, there it is. That’s the game.’”
That must have been a great sentence. What might have been in that pitch that you see in the gameplay so far? Is there anything startingly different? I don’t play shooters or co-op shooters so I really have no idea. I have no idea what Fortnite is other than players shooting at each other? What seems really different about Anacrusis? Does it look like a new genre of game?
Dev blogs are being posted to Steam, there are 12 of them so far.
More on the AI Director 2.0 :
Honestly I think good directors are the way forward for giving these kinds of games plenty of life and variety so it’s good to hear they’re really leaning into that, supposedly.
I’m thinking the 4coop shooter subgenre is starting to be saturated.
We have this, which will release in a month.
GTFO launched some days ago.
I’m playing Aliens Fireteam right now on Game Pass, released this Summer.
I have pending to return to Back 4 Blood, released two months ago.
Then we have games like Deep Rock Galactic which is since a hefty update is stronger than ever.
Gunfire Reborn sold 2 millions, too.
Going straight to Xbox/PC Game Pass on launch.
Chet was running a test with folks via Twitter last night. People should follow him there if they’re interested as I imagine there may be more.
I continue to dislike the enemy visual style.
Agreed. I’d consider even calling it a visual style charitable. To me they look like placeholders awaiting a finished product that has yet to arrive.