Techno

Something I'm beginning to notice is the difficulty of building up points. Especially for newcomers, while I understand that points mainly come from posts I would like to see some extra contests that would make gaining points more bearable. Something like a contest for most posts, most referrals, surveys, etc could help make the playing field a little better. Especially because I feel like the forum kind of has a gap in wealth. There's just a large gap between users and I fell like contests could help make the forum more fun for newcomers.

A highway in Texas.

Queen Elizabeth II is dead. She passed away on the 8th of September. May she rest in peace, she was a good queen.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/09/08/world/queen-elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth II is dead. She passed away on the 8th of September. May she rest in peace, she was a good queen.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/09/08/world/queen-elizabeth

One of my favourite Star Wars games is a PS2 game called Star Wars Jedi Starfighter, sequel to Star Wars Starfighter.
 

 
As the names suggests, it's a flight combat game that's heavy on story that can be played as a single player or cooperatively. The game is set at the same time as Star Wars Episode II and tells a parallel story where you switch between (as player one) two different characters. First a Jedi council pilot named Adi Gallia and a Feeorin pirate (and protagonist of the previous game) Nym who form a reluctant alliance to take down a dangerous mercenary group working with the Trade Federation and Separatist movement to unleash a new weapon of mass destruction on the forces of the Republic.
 
The story is more action packed, memorable and relatable than the movie it's part based on with a variety of the mission types and craft to fly (especially in co-op) and with objectives that vary depending on the difficulty setting and between single player and co-op modes giving more replay repay value than you might expect. The game is a joy to control whilst still offering a fair challenge with decent voice acting and follows the Star Wars movies very closely is terms of look and style with good graphics for it's time. There's even a multiplayer that probably won't hold up well to modern standards, but it is fun if a bit basic.
 
It's one of my favourite games under the Star Wars brand and I find it's often overlooked and very underrated.

I love that Amazon, which owns IMDB btw, deleted the 1-5 star reviews on IMDB.
Also love that House of the Dragon got low review scores as well for its "diversity"- oh wait, that didn't happen. HotD did well in spite of its diverse cast. Guess diversity was never really the issue, huh?

When I was a wee lad I actually played the heck out of Battlefront Classic. It was one of my favorite games, nowadays I play much more than just Battlefront but recently I bought it again. I've played the modern but there's just a lack of chaos. Part of the fun is the pure havoc that comes with the AI, which always spams as many grenades as possible. The game actually felt like a war game as you had to strategize in order to get anywhere. There were always multiple fronts in a map that needed to be broken thought which added a lot of choice into the mix. The modern games are less "large scale battles" and more personal duels which ruined the havoc, trench-like warfare that added so much to the depth to the game. I also think the classic maps are better, but keep in mind I'm biased. The classic maps always had a sense of scale, while keeping the points of interest close together to add to a battle-like astrosphere where you will always end up in a front of a battle. All 16 original maps are also really well-designed, as they all feel, look, and play differently from each other. For example, the Cloud City map have multiple hallways that lead into each other creating a city skyline that can effect the yard below viva above-ground support. As with Hoth, there are tunnels that lead into each other, however you also have massive AT-ATs and multiple trenches that make the map less of hallway skirmishes  and more into a full frontal assault or a stealth mission. The final thing I want to say, is that the trooper based gameplay is more fun that playing as Darth Vader because you can't just run down everyone and survive. You actually have to use cation to gun down fifteen guys, instead of just winging it.

Alright so there's this TV show that's coming out and I found out the release date before everyone else. 

Guys I just found this on the British Comedy Channel Guide.

It's nearly here!

I've written 2 full length novels, several short stories, and a hell of a lot of unconventional poetry.
That said, I can offer some advice. I assume you're writing fiction?
The first sentence of every story is always the hardest. After that let the story write itself. Never force it. You have to have that itch to get back to writing it. But before you get too far you need to think about a few things.
1) Is it a narrative?
2) Are the characters relatable?
3) What kind of conflict will they be dealing with?
4) Is it told through eyes of a certain character?
5) Have you written a description of all the characters yet?
6) Do you know where you want to go with the story? Have you thought about the beginning, middle, and end separately so you know what you want to tell the reader?
7) Is it engaging enough to keep a person reading?
8.) Can you describe what your story is about to someone who asks?
9) Are you writing just as a hobby, or are you thinking about publishing?
10) Can YOU relate to your characters? For example in my first book, the main character was based off of me. We share a lot of the same attitude and view of the world. The only difference is that my character in that story is male, and I'm female.
 
If you need more just ask and I'll help as much as I can. As a note to what @Withywarlock said, one of my books is currently on its 8th draft ans the other is on its 7th. More drafts will follow. Until it's perfect in my eyes, it will keep getting edits and rewrites. So don't get discouraged if you go to 7, 8, or 100 drafts. If you don't like it where it is, no one else will either.

So I was typing up a story earlier this year, and after a revise of it I managed to get to two chapters. I'm thinking of going back to it but wanted to hear some advice before I start again. So does anyone have wisdom on this or should I go somewhere else?

You're editing your work, meaning you're conscious of problems with it and show a desire to improve your art. That's good, but I'd recommend you just try and write what you can before you edit it. You're not going to perfect your first draft even with edits; there will be more drafts in future which might take your fancy, and you'll want to chop and change them for the final product (before that sees an editor, should you go down that route.) I know doing drafts is a pain, believe me, I've done countless drafts of the same concept for over 15 years, but don't let that put you off your own work.
Keep at it. Don't force yourself, but psych yourself up for a set time and at that time you will write, and you will stick at it until whatever time you previously said you would. In the meantime, read more. Whoever your inspiration is, whatever kind of work you're looking at, read similar works to get ideas and the noggin joggin'. Listen to interviews, read articles, understand the material which inspires your work. It's a lot easier to write about what you know and understand.
There are other, better forums out there to discuss this, of that I'm sure. I don't engage in them myself, but you'll undoubtedly have better luck there than here. In the meantime, if you can tell us more about the problems you're facing or what improvements you want to make, I and I'm sure other readers here will do our best to help out.
Good luck!

We appreciate you putting up these Gamescom trailers @Kane99, but for convivence sake and to avoid clutter, I'm going to merge these topics into the Pinned Gamescom 2022 Thread under the Gaming Forum.

F
He was a solid developer, maybe not the best, but his games came from the heart, and that is all that matters.

F
He was a solid developer, maybe not the best, but his games came from the heart, and that is all that matters.

Opening night is here! Look forward to 35 announced and unannounced games.
Alright here the link.
 

I don't understand the premise of the lawsuit. My understanding is that Sony's 30% commission is similar to that of Epic, Microsoft, Steam, and all of the other major players. Seems to be an industry standard?

I'm all for consumer rights and very much against anti-consumer anything, but if this guy Alex Neill is serious about taking this to court, he had better be ready to get crushed. Not just in gaming, but whenever a store sells something, digital or otherwise, that they themselves didn't make, there's commission of some kind on it. Keeping this more indigenous to gaming, though, the only way this guy could have a case is if Sony overcharged on PSN compared the same games sold new elsewhere, but as far as I know the prices are pretty much the same unless somewhere happens to have sale on. So I'm with @DC on this, the fact that this is all apparently based of off Sony's commission (pretty much at the same 30% rate as Steam, GOG, Xbox and Nintendo. Epic is actually significantly lower than the others at 12%) means this suit is doomed to fail. His heart in the right place, but he dove head first into this without a clue how deep it was. Even the comments section of the article is showing little support for him and mostly people struggling to make sense out of this.

Don't get me wrong, I want him to succeed here, I truly do, but I'm also a realist and thus I believe he is going to fall on his ass because I don't think he fully understands how this works. Whether Sony are right or wrong in this is irrelevant, what matters is that, as far as I can tell, how Sony charges commission is the basis for his whole argument and it doesn't make sense. Not only is that a weak argument to make on behalf of the consumer anyway, is it also pretty much the exact same thing that happens throughout the industry, so either everybody is guilty of this or nobody is. Even retailers selling physical copies of games charge commission, that's how they get a cut.
 
This would make sense if he could prove that Sony was consistently charging more for thier games on PSN then on anywhere else. I decided to test this by looking at how a random game was priced across the board and after just that on game this this theory is already looking shaky. The game I choose was Stray.
 
Here is how much Stray costs on the British PSN Store right now. This is for the PS4 and PS5 version
 

 
And on Steam...
 

 
OK, it's £1 less. And I'll say, I don't think Sony can justify that. They probably would have some sort of bullshit excuse lined up, but it's starting to look like Alex Neill has a case, until you take a look at GAME, the high street retailer that operates in the UK. That's important because that is where this law suit is being filed. (BTW, I have no idea why GAME is still listing this as a pre-order when the game is already out, but I promise you this fresh is a screen snip I just took for this very post.)
 

 
How on earth is Alex going to prove Sony are ripping people off when the country's most prominant video game retailer is charging a full £10 more for the same game? You see, he has not thought this through.

The thing is this isn't entitled customers making a fuss, were talking about the ex-managing director of one of the largest and most respected independent consumer advice organisations and watchdogs in the United Kingdom, if not the world. This is a guy that should know what he's doing, and yet here I am completely baffled by his process.

Alex Neil has launched a €6 billion dollar lawsuit towards Sony for overcharging for digital purchases. His statement is:
"With this legal action I am standing up for the millions of UK people who have been unwittingly overcharged. We believe Sony has abused its position and ripped off its customers."
Read the rest here:
https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-being-sued-for-5-billion-over-playstation-store-prices

Alex Neil has launched a €6 billion dollar lawsuit towards Sony for overcharging for digital purchases. His statement is:
"With this legal action I am standing up for the millions of UK people who have been unwittingly overcharged. We believe Sony has abused its position and ripped off its customers."
Read the rest here:
https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-being-sued-for-5-billion-over-playstation-store-prices

That is a brilliant point. I don't like labelling the kind of developers you speak of as "indie" for reasons I've spoke of in the past (To summarise, an indie game can come from a one man team of a shed of a huge company employing thousands because "indie" liberally means it's independently published.), but I know what you mean by "indie" developers and digital distribution really has been a godsend for them. Social media has help as well because it's empowered "word of mouth" like never before and gives good games from talented, small indie dev's a real chance to get traction and get noticed.
 
Again, a great point @Techno that I didn't think of.

I can't believe I hadn't thought of this one. It's the primary reason why one of my favourite games of all time Tombi! (AKA Tomba!) didn't sell all that well: it didn't have a distributor. This was a game by Tokuro Fujiwara of Capcom fame, creating his own studio named Whoopee Camp, so this wasn't some two-bit bootleg operation selling PS Value Series games. It wasn't until after traversing the red tape between Sony and other rights holders that it eventually got re-released on Playstation Network, finally receiving the justice it long deserved.
Given how over 80% of games are now purchased digitally, it'd be even harder for an indie title to stand out with physical copies. Back in ye olden dayes of 1997 the Platinum/Essentials/Greatest Hits label was released: a game had to have sold 400,000 copies to have been redistributed with this label. Tombi! didn't get a Platinum label. In the present day however Starbound has sold over 1,000,000 copies. Guilty Gear Strive has sold over 1M copies. Spiritfarer sold over 1M copies. The Forest sold over 5.3M copies. I'm sure I needn't go on.
Brick and mortar stores are getting shut down left, right and centre, and what few are still around are more multimedia merch stores. Like I love HMV as it is now, but the percentage of physical discs and the return of vinyls is still dwarfed by the number of shirts, plushies and posters you can buy.
While this thread does focus on the consumer side of things, it's good to think on how the creators of those games reach us to play them.

I do have a argument as to why digital is better. It has actually been a massive help to the indie industry and I'd argue it's what even allowed for the indie scene to actually exist as digital distribution has been easier, cheaper, and less risky for developers to utilize. Meaning that the indie scene itself really is only possible for digital distribution. Mainly because indie developers rarely have the money to print out copies of a game.