The serious business of making games

I’m offended for poor Winnie.

Unsurprising, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing a reversal from GOG any time soon. I hope the game appears on another digital platform like Itch.io or something because I would love to support the developer.

Too bad. It’s a really cool and creepy little horror game.

Winnie the Pooh and random indie games pose threats to China’s national integrity apparently.

This might be so inconsequential to even be worth mentioning, but taken in context with the GOG decision it raises an eyebrow slightly.

I was skimming through comments on the RPS review for 2077 and came across this comment:

@Halk Also worth noting that in the game, the Taiwanese super-corp Kang Tao from the pen-and-paper game has transformed into a Chinese company for no readily explicable reason. The lore indicates that it was always a Chinese corporation with no mention of Taiwan anywhere in the game at all.

The wiki has tried to reconcile this by suggesting it’s a Taiwanese corporation that fell on bad times after Cyberpunk 2020 and was bought out by the Chinese, but it’s clearly a retcon.

Kang Tao Wiki entry

Kang Tao originally was located in Taiwan. Taiwan became a manufacturing haven in the late 2000s, after the country declared independence with the help of Japan and Arasaka. Kang Tao became an industry giant among the Taiwanese companies. However unlike the rest it kept its independence by not selling out to the Japanese business. Kang Tao manufactured weapons that were distributed through Asia and made it’s way to the US.[1]

In 2050, Kang Tao was restructured into a Chinese-based company, quickly making its way to the top tier of weapons manufacturing at a tremendous pace thanks to bold choices, courageous strategy, and government backing.[2] In 2077, the corporation is mainly known for their firearms, especially their newest generation of so-called “smart-gun” weapons that employ gyrojet technology to fire caseless guided ammunition, but they’re also becoming players in the mercenary and security markets.[3] The restructuring began in 2046, when the former Kang Tao, then considered obsolete and collapsing, was appointed with a former army colonel. The colonel, Shiming Xu, gave the company new direction, managing to put the company on the market, debuting with the A-22B smartpistol. Throughout the next 20 years, through new research facilities funded by the government, Kang Tao overcame its old rivals, coming out as a top-tier weapon manufacturer on par with Tsunami Arms and Arasaka. Since 2072, Kang Tao has tripled its stock value, becoming a leading weapon exporter in Asia.[4]

As of 2077, an explosion at a company refinery in Hangzhou left over 50,000 dead. Although the company was cleared of negligence by official accounts, many still blame them for the explosion.[

I don’t know enough about the source lore or books from Pondsmith to add much, but it seems like for the CDPR game a Taiwanese company was restructured into a Chinese-based company for no particular reason.

Again, this might be nothing or it might be another case of placating the vast Chinese market.

There’s a new Riot game in the works unrelated to all these other newish Riot games:
Valorant - Riot Games’ Counterstrike Overwatch
Legends of Runeterra - Riot Games’ Hearthstone
Project L - Riot Games’ King of Fighters
Team Fight Tactics - Riot’s Auto Chess, TFT
Riot Games (League of Legends) may be teaming up with the MLB

The world needs a new MMO right now. You know this, and Riot knows this.

Ouchy:

Oh dear.

Whoa.

Wow sounds like issues on both PS4 and PS5. I’ve been looking over my boys’ shoulders as they play CP2077 on a Series X and a Series S and they seem to be doing fine with no complaints.

I think it might have been CDPR’s insistence that players go to Sony for refunds that made Sony say “We don’t have time for this shit.”

Is there something wrong with rewarding someone for working harder? This is a serious question, because that seems… like what should happen if you work harder.

There are a lot of issues with gamifying the workplace, yes, including fomenting toxic attitudes towards work-life balance and peer to peer relationships.

The normal way to reward somebody working harder is either a permanent raise (bonuses like this keep the reward going only as long as the extra effort is ongoing, normally with diminishing returns for the employee) or a promotion.

Or you could actually not reward working like crazy and instead reward higher productivity within normal working times. Have you never told a peer to go home and rest?

Juan had good answers. I would add:

  1. Yes, it’s wrong to incentivize someone to work harder when it is to the worker’s detriment.

  2. No, if the worker wants to do the additional work that doesn’t mean it’s not detrimental (consent does not dispel harm).

  3. Working longer is not the same as working harder. It’s just working longer.

Is it even possible for devs to give unilateral refunds on the Playstation Store? I’d have thought Sony would have that under its control.

Longer ain’t necessarily harder, though. And really, I don’t give a shit if you work harder. I care about results. I tell my students this–I don’t care if you slaved away for sixteen hours on that paper. If it sucks, it sucks, and yes, there will be someone who got up, dashed it off in twenty minutes, and got an A, while you got a C+ after all your effort. Energy expended is not equivalent to work performed.

EDIT: @Nightgaunt beat me to it.

What about 3 years ago?
It’s a pattern. A pattern that continues to this day and hasn’t changed at all.

First of all, the studio was created by EA, not bought out. It ran for 22 years, which is pretty good for any developer so you’re quite off the mark in regards to the previous points of the discussion. Secondly, they mostly made games based on EA established franchises (Sims, sports etc), except the one hit wonder, the Dead Space series. I suppose you can fault EA for pushing for a broader audience but it takes a lot of… faith to go from one game not turning out not great to “EA bad and everything it touches goes bad” (similar to RickH’s prophetic sounding “inevitable” comment).

“Sure they’ve been doing it for 3 decades, but that doesn’t mean it’s a pattern.”

I mean… okay. It’s not like some magical conspiracy theory.

Turning it round might be more productive. Has any studio got better/prospered after being acquired by EA? Assuming Respawn doesn’t count (I’ll grant that’s a big if), Maxis is the only one I can immediately think of that might fall into that category, in that it put out several fairly well regarded Sims games post acquisition, but it’s still pretty dubious. I don’t blame EA for Spore (and for that matter I actually kinda like Spore), but it’s hard to make a case that they made better games than they otherwise would have.