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The twitter comments made by those people at CDPR were awful and I believe at least one of them has been fired and an apology has been issued on behalf of the others. Does this show that there may be people with that frame of mind working there? Absolutely. And CDPR should be on top of it as much as they can. Does this prove that the company is transphobic, as the resetera post states? No, not really. The post is eloquent and well researched by it fails to be objective enough. The argument that there is no depth to the character in the ad poster makes little sense. Ads do not have meaning and do not have depth. That is why they are ads. Their goal is for us to project ourselves in them and tell us the lies we need to hear or show us the images we crave to see. For a world like Cyberpunk an ad like that makes absolute sense, no matter how dark and twisted it is. Humanity as a product in the most shallow depiction possible is what generally drives the concept of the world. The argument about CDPR being transphobic because Poland in total is having a crisis around this important issue is also a tremendous reach. The same with the "manticore". It is also amazing for me to see the company being accused of sexism because of certain moments in their games without taking into account the fact that they have some of the most complex and powerful female characters in their games. It is this one sided approach which drags down posts like the one in resetera. I really hope CDPR gets their act together on the things they are doing wrong, but that post goes to the extremes with its assumptions and therefore loses much of its potency.

The only thing Microsoft needs to complete their victory is Atlus on gamepass, all Personas included.

Yeah. I really think we are witnessing something unprecedented in the industry. This is now beyond fanboyism and it feels like a mass delusion of lost and psychologically confused people. So, yes, a cult is a suitable moniker for them.

Ι actually think that may be his only way out. Any amount of unfinished game with the "released" moniker on it will satisfy the, frankly, almost deranged crowds. Then all he has to say is "nothing released is perfect, huge patches coming soon" and probably have another kickstarter.

How is it possible for a company of this magnitude, at such an important time and launch, not to be able to properly word some very simple things regarding their flagship product? Such incompetence.

This is technically beautiful and runs much better than I expected. I was worried from the videos because I did not like the tone or the writing much. It felt very "Divinity", which means being light hearted and silly for most of the time. I am still worried. Not that the Divinity writing didn't fit its style but I was expecting a darker and more mature writing based on the history of the series and how writing has generally evolved. This probably means that it is going to be Divinity essentially but in a different costume and rules, which is ok, I guess, just not what I was expecting. I am not a fan of "oh, you have something special in you which makes you amazing and you can use that power to do whatever you want" storytelling mechanic. It felt revolutionary back then but now it just seems like an excuse. I never considered Larian particularly good in storytelling or story and it will be a harder pill to swallow in a game which has the BG name on it.

Graphics are amazing but what actually matters, like animations, AI and simulation I doubt they we’ll have serious gameplay improvements. It’s 2K we are talking about so, for me, it’s kinda disappointing people consider paying so much.

30m copies sold.

But what makes your argument different than Poland then? In Poland it is expected to work Saturdays, overtime and with less benefits if you want to keep your job. It is a twisted expectation much like Japan. They both have it in their culture as it is now. This is why you are using double standards.

Sure, but it’s not usually simple overtime where you work some more hours during a week. Usually you reach the crunch period after you have already worked overtime for months and months. Crunch entails days where people work much more than 8 hours every day, sleeping in offices, etc for months. Companies bend the laws by having private agreements with employees who in turn are worried about losing their job. It’s a seriously unhealthy period which leaves many people disillusioned or depressed. A big percentage actually of young devs who go through this actually quit the industry. So, yeah, you may be a tough “they’ll get over it guy” but crunch in gaming industry is quite different than retail.

Something tells me you may not be fully aware of what crunch is?

That is an excellent post and exactly the reason why I feel there is double standards between players and how they perceive crunch. We tend to get upset about famous cases while we disregard the fact that the industry has been built on crunch and twenty years ago it was considered a badge of honor to have worked yourself to death to release your masterpiece... The press is equally bad. Other than reporting cases we very rarely see investigative journalism which exposes said practices around the industry as a whole, so we generally just seem to react to a couple of high profile cases. Without unions companies can easily take advantage of lower working cultural standards like, for example, in Poland, where working Saturdays is “gently” enforced under threat of easy replacement. CDPR is actually not a bad place to work in Poland considering the general practices and benefits available, but whatever they are doing is not enough. Unionizing is directly opposed by ESA and IGDA on various levels and Game Workers Unite have said that many developers are hesitant of unionizing of fear they will get branded as trouble makers and never land a job. I can personally understand the need to devote yourself to something and sacrifice to make it work, but cases like Naughty Dog, Ubisoft and so many others have promote this to a standard practice. CDPR seems to be moving to that direction as well but, all in all, this is also a symptom of our industry as a whole and not simply a case of some bad apples.

That is what I am saying. Where do you draw the line? Are you investigating the games you play before you buy them? I am genuinely asking.

I wasn't using the phone as an argument. I was trying to show that your sentence of "I am accepting things when I am not aware of their shitty conditions" was pretty rubbish. 99% of games are made with crunch, either forced in some way or voluntarily. Saying that you need to be aware of every specific case in order to be convinced that its being used is a very convenient way to show that you have an issue with all of this but at the same time still play and enjoy what you like.

That is a weird sentence. Are you aware of how your phones are made for example?

Yeah, if you are just upgrading some pieces for a PC then the price is not that much higher. But if you add a big SSD or switching to a new monitor to play those games on 1440p or 4K the price goes up. Sony bringing their games on PC is a non factor for me because a) we don't know how many of those will actually appear and b) it will probably take some time before they do after their PS5 launch. And I really doubt they will be without some issues to iron out. For me, buying a PS5 is something that will happen at least until it has an incredible exclusive that I need, so it's not an expense I need to worry about for some time, especially with the rising of prices. My only problem is still if I cave in and spend a fortune to play Cyberpunk on extreme graphic settings. No other games tempt me to do that, they will look amazing enough for me on the new consoles. But Cyberpunk... Wish me luck.

There is because the new consoles are way more powerful than a 1070 and way more cheaper than a new PC of equivalent power. I am still a gamer and I'm really looking forward for the new generation and all the shiny bells and whistles. Just not at PC prices.

Ι went back to PC gaming this last gen for quite a bit, even though I had all the consoles. I don't think I will bother any more. It's getting harder and harder to justify such an expense, especially when consoles this gen are so powerful at this price. If current gen consoles are able to produce marvels like Gears, RDR2, U4 or TLoUII, the new output will certainly blow my mind. Besides, I do not fuss about frame rates or the best possible resolutions, etc. 4K@30 is perfectly fine for me or even 1440p with even better graphics. Also, the implementation of HDR and now Dolby Vision won't give me any kind of headaches when turning on my Oled and even RTX will be available. The console ecosystems just feel more intuitive and simple to me when it comes to connecting, sharing and playing with my friends and I don't have to deal with little annoyances like crashes or other windows surprises. I enjoy the console stores much better than Steam, Epic or any other on the PC and, games, generally, just work; which means I don't have to tinker with weird technical issues from time to time which prompt me to either do an internet search or change a setting in the Nvidia panel, do a restart, etc. I know these are mostly little things of course but, hey, I'm 45 now and things have started to annoy me much more than before. I will still use my PC (i76700, 1070) for some games which can only be found or easily played there (like Crusader Kings 3 or other strategy games) but that is about it. The only reason I'm thinking of upgrading is the idea of playing Cyberpunk 2077 in stupendous graphics mode and full of mods. I do not doubt I will do that at some point but, for the time being, the next gen update will do just fine.

Failure? It has sold almost as much U4.

I generally don't think Sony should buy anyone to create more AAAs which take 5-7 years and cost tens or hundreds of millions. They are already pushing out the sequel to God of War in a three year cycle because their output is starting to look stretched. They are charging ridiculous money for remakes and they have essentially given the "ok" to general publishers to up their game prices too by raising their own. They even force people to buy a completely new game to play the upgrade of a game they may have already bought in all the Spider Man fiasco. What they need to do is create more options for the customer and better deals first and foremost. For all their immense AAA output I wouldn't say the sales have been all that impressive in a fanbase of 100+m consoles in the market. This kind of AAA system has been proven successful as a flagship strategy but Sony now seems to be basing their entire strategy around it. I have a weird feeling that this feels more and more archaic and I really wouldn't want them to go deeper in that.

That’s what I said actually.

I don’t specifically know but it seems to be true on some level based on some reports, even if I find it totally off.

Who knows? People thought the One X and the Series X are the same, why not the opposite one?

So your point basically is that a corporation needs to make money and that is an anti consumer practice because they should be giving more stuff for free and not make so much money?

Of course it makes sense that most of the titles are exclusives. But this is also an archaic view of thinking about the industry, much closer to the successful but quite top heavy strategy of Sony. Microsoft’s plan may not involve consoles at all in the years to come and the best way to make the service have value is not just keeping exclusives but also create the market impression that they offer such a cheaper deal in analogy to software than their competitors, that they essentially force them to do something equivalent to compete. Microsoft’s way of thinking here is so disruptive, especially long term, that I’m not sure Sony has any idea how to deal with it. While they release their AAA games under the risk of bad sales -where one mistake can be their last- and the certainty of raising the prices, Microsoft can finance a whole bunch of AAAs of that level in the space of a typical 7-9 year generation just by having 20m or something subscribers during that timeframe. And this without calculating more subscribers, store sales or other investments. By making GP successful they can essentially have a bad sales AAA and absorb the cost in a couple of years if need be just by the subscribtions. Having these games sell for 80 euros for a couple of years on their opponent’s platform would create such a good buzz for them that it may be exactly what they need to attract more and more numbers.