The EA is out, but they are only releasing it on Xsolla. No Steam release till it is in full release (they are saying summer of next year), and you will not get a Steam code if you buy early release. It is really too bad. I would have bought it on Steam right now. But I'm not paying full price for early access on a strange gaming distribution app. With the Holidays coming and time on my hands I might break down, but then I really don't want to deal with another app.

Christmas is coming up and we got the boys a PS5 and are looking to obtain a PlayStation Portal as well. Our search has not gone well as they are sold out literally everywhere. In the past I was able to use tracker websites to send me SMS messages on restocks and they were accurate and successful(I used these around the time NVIDIA released the 30 series GPUs and AMD released a new gen of processor around the same time.)

This time my searches have come up empty. Do these services no longer exist or are they just harder for me to find this time around? Anyone know of a website or discord that offers this service for the Portal?

Bunch of remakes/new games in classic series announced by SEGA:

Crazy Taxi, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage...

AND JET SET RAAADDIOOOOOOOOO....


POWER SURGE: SEGA REVEAL TRAILER - TGA 2023 - YouTube

(also, BG3 out on XBox. That's another $50 million or so in Larian's pocket (rememeber when Microsoft suggested offering $5-10 million to put it on Game Pass? :))

A last second Christmas Hail Mary was somehow successful today and I was able to snag a PS Portal from Best Buy.

If anyone needs a last minute gift, I saw some Costcos have a Series S for $150. It's a pretty great game pass machine, especially for the price.

yay

Got Starfield on PC over the holidays. It's just not clicking for me like the Fallout games did. First few hours were interesting but it's now a drag and repetitive. Not sure I even will get around to finishing it.

It seems like this game failed really bad. Lots of people mad :)

Anybody play "Combat Mission"? I just picked up Combat Mission Normandy. It is one of the best war sims I have ever played. The only criticism might be it is too much of a sim. It is squad-level combat much like "Close Combat" but with simple 3d rendering and even deeper. My only complaint maybe there is very little "game" to it. Things like when you are fighting, your units have true line of sight and will only identify the enemy with a clear view. The challenge with that is your troops will leave "artifact" symbols where they think the enemy might be and the map gets pretty cluttered with maybe units. I guess that is realistic, but it gets a bit annoying.
What I do love is the "turn-based" mode. You give orders and then start the turn. Your units carry out the orders as the sane time as the opponents, reacting to the action by their own initiative. It helps me to keep up with everything going on much better than the standard real-time combat. It does make things go slowly, as everything counts out in real time with pauses every minute.
Anybody play this? Any mods I should be looking for?

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I can only assume they are mad at themselves for buying a hyped AAA title that overpromises and underproduces.

I played the OG Combat Mission what must be over-a-decade(?) ago now. It was fun, I liked the wego turn based stuff, but haven't given any of the new games a shot.

Eh, I'm not sure how many of the vocal were going to be pleased if the game was the second coming of {insert your favorite Bethesda title ever here}

I'm not mad, I don't regret the purchase in the least ... I just wish they hadn't gone with the stupid NG+ mechanic that seems to make doing anything in the game except straight up story missions pretty much pointless. One of the worst design choices I can ever recall.

I read an article that suggested Bethesda should license out a Fallout game and an Elder Scrolls game (like they did with New Vegas) while they work internally on creating a new engine. Honestly, that doesn’t seem like a bad idea unless they are will to switch to unreal.

I am not surprised.

I played FO76 when it first came out. Yeah, there were some stuff that was clearly lacking like NPCs for immersion, imbalances etc. Over the next couple years, they dropped DLCs and patches and fixed most of the big problems and added new content.

(IMO the biggest flaw nowadays is the economy. Not enough good stuff to spend caps on. There needs to be some cap sink that players can buy/use).

So good odds that they'll continue to add immersion and stuff. It doesn't need to be 95% out the gate for me (e.g. perfection is the enemy of progress ... or see Star Citizen). I'm okay with it 75-80% there with a commitment to improve.

Camera zooms in on my face staring at you with black eyes, like a dolls eyes, my body stiff and unmoving...my lips eerily move to words that i'm not saying "Stop thief! You are under arrest for stealing a newspaper in the middle of the forest that I did not see you steal!"

So as someone who is slowly trying to make his way into mainstream gaming after a while off, is it just to be expected that a AAA game will be at best half finished when released and that I should just wait a year or 2 before playing?

Like FO76 and Cyberpunk, I won copies when they game out and played them. They were dog shit. But it seems like they turned out pretty good.

I only like turn based war games. I hadn't played any war games in years but was getting the itch when Normandy came up on a holiday sale at a great price. So I picked it up from Fanatical IIRC. Then Steam had the complete DLC on sale a week later at a good price and I bought that too.

I was having enough fun when Matrix had the complete Red Thunder (Russian Front) game on sale a week or two later I picked it up too. Matrix gives you a serial code and a Steam key too. Maybe overkill? :D One can spend a lot of time playing out a battle or campaign.

I agree the icons overhead become overwhelming but are necessary too. One can toggle them off to watch the turn play out, but it's already hard enough to keep up with what is going on with them there. I'd be totally lost with then turned off. Right now I'm playing the third tutorial, a "small" battle, defending a small town and it's a lot to keep up with. I watch a full field view and then follow by watching small sections of the map before moving on. I imagine with more play this will become easier.

The sim side of this seems insane when one considers every bullet fired is tracked :eek: I think of it as the FM or wargames.

Mods back in the CMx1 days were almost as much fun as playing the game, that hasn't changed. Still a pretty lively bunch of users that put out some great mods over the years. The first one I found was an all in one that really dresses up the game. The link is at the bottom of the first post in this thread.
The all in one also includes a lot of battles and a few campaigns. The only drawback is some may require some or all of the DLC.

https://community.battlefront.com/to...al-all-in-one/

Pretty active boards for an "old style" game with lots of good topics.

Here are some other mod/scenario sites I've run across..

https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/

https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/

https://www.combatmission.lesliesoftware.com/#

Some links are old enough they are broke, but most seem to work.

These games can be such a time sink but, in a war game, it's just what I'm looking for. Right now I'm having fun, just not sure I won't burn out (like I tend to do with FM) with the investment of time required.

Most live service games are unfinished at launch so anything like FO76 will fall under that umbrella. Cyberpunk was unfinished because the publishing arm of CDProjekt wanted the game out the door and gave a deadline. Of the 2 I think FO76 improved to a playable state whereas Cyberpunk is really good right now.

Alan Wake 2 is a AAA game that was outstanding out the gate. Diablo 4 is one of the rare live service games that was in good shape at launch and ha sonly improved from there. Hogwarts and Jedi Survivor were great at release as well.

So it's a mixed bag but overall 2023 was probably the strongest year for gaming in 20+ years. There were probably half a dozen games that take game of the year any other year.

Thanks for the info, Sweed.

Glad to help. :)

Ok. Maybe just reddit and Twitter have made it seem like everything sucks balls for ages and then retroactively they're seen as fine.

Just catching up on Ghosts of Tsushima on the PS5. It's nice. Tried Starfield on game pass ultimate streaming the S/X version on an Xbox One, but the lines are so long now I don't want to wait 1/2 hour to play. Still have Elden Ring and Hogwarts purchased but haven't installed either for the PS5 yet.

Ghosts of Tsushima is next on my list of games.

It’s hard to believe that Larian was able to make three games (Divinity, Divinity 2, and Baulder’s Gate 3) for about $150 million and yet Cloud Imperium Games hasn’t been able to complete Star Citizen with nearly $700 million. At some point someone really needs to jump in and investigate this “game” for the scam that it really is.

They also just released a $48,000 DLC pack for Star Citizen.

Kinda chuckled at this. One game right now but I'm sure the library will expand.

I don't game seriously enough but can see the hardcore FPS players buying it.

Games for the Apple Vision Pro. Nothing that interests me but looking forward to the future.

Every Confirmed AR/VR Apple Vision Pro Game So Far


IMO if Apple really want a killer app game, my vote is for Mario Kart. I know there's an AR/VR version already but it's underwhelming. If they created one where someone could be in the "game" and can look left, right, back, up, down etc. then I could spend the $3,500 for the wife and call it an anniversary present.

The rumor is EA Sports College Football is planned release is July 12th.

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I want to believe but odds are it’ll suck for a year or two.

Man, please make this happen

I am currently playing it because it's part of ps+. It's a great game, but honestly it's basically an assassin's creed game with better writing and better combat. If you played recent AC games and enjoyed them, you'll feel right at home.

Don't know enough about the industry but as somewhat of a gamer, it does seem there is an excess of games out there (and probably a lot of them are not that profitable).

Electronic Arts, maker of Madden NFL, to lay off 5% of staff as gaming industry layoffs widen | CNN Business

Yep, the market is oversaturated.

I'm confused why they would cancel a Star Wars game and state they are going to back off licensed games at this time and focus on IPs they own.

The last Star Wars game they released was a "commercial success" that led to "a record Q1" and had "millions of players." EA's words here not mine.

I don't really play these Star Wars games, but I hate to see video game companies make stupid decisions (which they do repeatedly.) If EA releases a ton of Anthem's and such that bomb it will start to affect some of their games that I do play.

Well, it's not entirely a shift away since .. [i]According to IGN, the team working on this now-cancelled Star Wars game will be moved to other projects including Apex Legends, Iron Man, Black Panther, and a third installment in the popular third-person action series, Star Wars: Jedi.

I read that but there is also this:


Which is what I'm alluding to. It all comes across as EA not really knowing what they want to do. They want to double down on their own IPs while basically only having Marvel and Star Wars games in development.

I read it as "we'll double down on our own ... except for ones that we either figure to make a lot on OR can't get out of yet"

With The Show coming to Gamepass, maybe somebody here gives it -- or specifically Diamond Dynasty -- a shot for the first time, or first in a while.

Gonna hype the No Money Spent DD guy (Daddy Dimmu) here cause, honestly, without his videos a few years ago I doubt I would have ever given the DD mode a shot. And that's turned into hundreds of hours of past time for me over the past couple years, just grinding and grinding.

He explains as he goes what he's thinking, he does not play the market for cards, it's all about the grind and what you can get by grinding.
NO MONEY SPENT! MLB The Show 24 Diamond Dynasty #1 - YouTube

I know we had some talk around here about Retro Bowl a few years ago so I thought I’d point out that the devs just released Retro Bowl College if anyone is interested.

I recently bought Retro Bowl on Nintendo Switch and have been really enjoying it. I hadn't ever played it before but was a big fan of Tecmo Super Bowl on the SNES when I was a kid. It kind of reminds me of that.

I've always played RTTS as a pitcher, or played in GM mode in franchise where I'll let the CPU control both teams. I have a really hard time batting, I just can't recognize the pitches in time and strike out about 80% of the time.

So I have a hard time with DD because it's based on the twitch factor.

With you, Mota. I have a blast playing as a pitcher. I made a female junkball pitcher with a submarine delivery this year.

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My twitch factor is pretty lousy but I manage to grind DD well enough just by playing on low difficulties. I'm merely there for the challenge (which I finally completed last year) to collect all the base cards. I figure if I've done that, I've grinded my fair share of it.

There's plenty of programs I can't complete but I'm okay with that. Even more okay with having played 2-3 iterations without playing a single inning online vs humans, with no intention of changing that.

That's one of the things I like about the YTer I posted, he goes out of his way to drive home the idea of "no wrong way, no right way, as long as you're having fun"

Granted, what I described might not be fun for you, I'm jus sayin that if I can manage with my ancient reflexes then it might not be as bad some people might expect. Also, mess around with the different batting options (the different "eye" and button combos), I forget which one I used last year but I was to the point that pitch type didn't even matter much with most hitters, I probably got contact on first pitch 70% of the time, and on low levels the quality of contact is pretty forgiving.

This will be my first PS5 version of The Show, so I'm looking forward to playing. I'll also be playing vs CPU only. One of the things that was a turnoff is that a lot of the challenges require you to play on Veteran difficulty, so there I go striking out again. But if you said there are challenges that can be played on lower difficulties, I'll give it a try.

When I say "challenges" I do mean to include things like Conquest mode and such. That's where I get a lot of both my individual player XP and my Season XP as well.

"Steal Fans" in Conquest can get you games on Rookie difficulty and while it's slow for the progress, it does allow you to level cards/players and such.

I got a new personal first this morning (after the game finally finished d'loading around 430a) ... I was the first person in the world to get to Parallel 1 with a player. I've been in the single digits on a few parallels before, but never literally #1 of 1. So RHP Cade Smith is now my favorite player I'd never heard of before this morning lol

I'm right now in San Francisco for the Games Developers Conference representing one of my companies.

Hope it will be productive after a 15 hours flight from Spain but also for sure it will be fun! Will tell you guys if there is anything interesting or some gossips.

Any of you here as well by chance?

Okay, from never doing it to getting two in less than 24 hours.

I paralleled catcher Arden Pabst, first person to do so this year.

Considering he was only in a lineup because he was literally THE lowest rated card I have gotten so far, and then I realized "okay, nobody has paralleled him yet ... let's see how far I can go" ... I'm stoked frankly.

Is there a bonus for paralleling a player? I don't think I've ever looked closely at that in the past.


My tactic in years past was to just clean up on Conquest maps. I'd throw on an audiobook or something and just grind on rookie for a few hours.

+1 to all skills per parallel



Bingo.

I picked up Dragon's Dogma 2, and without getting into the BS microtransaction stuff for a single player game, it's interesting.

It's very old school RPG in some of it's systems and feels a bit janky (it feels like a AA or 2.5 A game rather than a big budget AAA), but it really reminds me of something like Morrowind in all the best ways. The open world is dangerous, feels alive, and it doesn't really have fast travel. I guess it exists, but costs a resource I still don't have about 10 hours into the game. This makes travel dangerous, although the game isn't on the difficulty of a souls-like and the save system isn't all that punishing. Night time takes that to another level because you can't see shit.

Exploration and the random experiences you have are really what drives this and is what makes me think of Morrowind. Everything isn't just marked on the map, you have to explore. Some quests have a hidden timer once you accept them. Not a difficult timer or anything, but you're not going to accept a quest to go save someone and dick around for an in game week and go find them alive.

The first couple of hours I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get into it, but once I really got out into the open world and started to feel that sense of discovery and see the randomness you experience in a world that feels somewhat alive and lived in it pulled me in.

Overall, not for everyone. It's a 3rd person actiony RPG that has some old school systems and an old school feel to it while looking beautiful at times.

Agree with everything you said. Random isn't the right word but it doesn't feel as scripted as other RPGs. It really pushes you to explore and doesn't drive you down a specific path. Morrowind is a great example but I'd also say a little bit of early Fallout games too (at least how I played).

One thing the game does really well is not let you predict what's coming next. There are parts of the map where you're just waiting for something to happen like a big boss fight and nothing comes. Sometimes you're in an area you think is safe and you're thrown into a situation you're fully unprepared for.

Games a little buggy still so I get if people want to wait for patches to clean it up. But it's really fun and a nice throwback to older RPGs I loved.

Manor Lords comes put in a couple of weeks, and from the few people who have played the full game, it sounds like it is going to live up to ots hype.

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Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 was announced today and apparently releases later this year. I absolutely loved the first one so this great to hear.

I need to try the first game again. I bought it near release and it was slow and buggy from what I remember. Did it get some updates over the years?

Saw it described as Skyrim without all the magic stuff which seems right up my alley.

It got patched into pretty good shape. The sword fighting is far more realistic than most games and takes some time get a grasp of.

Overall the story isn't what I would call dark, but it's far more realistic than most other medieval RPGs. It took me a couple of tries to really get into to it, but it eventually really stuck for me. The characters are interesting and the game is well written.

Alas, I figured out fairly quickly that I was unlikely to ever get the hang of it. It ended up as one of those games I was (for a bit) better suited to just watch LetsPlays of than to actually play.

There's a line between reasonable and too difficult and for me and my own limited skill set it landed on the wrong side of the line. #SoundsLikeAPersonalProblem

I spent a lot of time with the sword trainer learning how to not look like a moron and get killed. What I found interesting and fun is I got to the point that I was decent. I could mow down bandits and others. But every now and then I'd run into a knight or some other opponent that was obviously better than me and it took less than 5 seconds to recognize it. And it wasn't because his stats were better, he just did everything better than me.

That's not everyone's cup of tea. It wasn't mine the first time I tried.

I would say it's not really anything like skyrim. I'd say maybe more like Witcher 1 without the magic and monsters and in a small open world. It's got some clunkiness to it but the things it does right it nails.

I've still been slow-playing Ghost of Tsushima in the scant free time I have (which is averaging about once a week I'm able to sit down and get some playtime in). Really enjoying it thus far even though I'm currently stuck on an obnoxious stealth mission.

Rise of the Ronin is also on my eventual getlist though it'll be a while since I'm determined to finish GoT first.

Same started GoT, im lucky if I get 20 minutes every couple of weeks. I have games I want to play, I just can't find time and don't want to just constantly switch between games.

Total War: Star Wars is in development at Creative Assembly. They could take my money now if they wanted.

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WWE 2k24 is fully embracing the money sink now it appears. They are releasing updated versions of Roman Reigns and The Rock and they are only obtainable through MyFaction which is basically the games version of ultimate team or whatever you want to call it.

Worse though it seems they are only obtainable by acquiring another specific card, in the case of Roman you need to get a Sapphire Sami Zayn to unlock Roman.

Ofcourse you can buy 70k of in-game currency for $20 and then flip that into packs of cards that cost either 12k or 17k depending on the rarity you want to buy. Each pack guarantees "atleast" 1 superstar and up to 4 accessories.

Finally, there are 10 different card rarities in the game as well as basically every current superstar or legend you could think of that isn't signed with AEW. And you are specifically hunting a Sapphire Sami Zayn from one of the damn packs.

It wouldn't be nearly as bad if they didn't have these damn wrestlers show up in the wrestler selection every time greyed out. So I'm having to explain to my kids why despite paying $100 for the premium version of the game at launch they can't have 2024 Roman Reigns or The Rock. Yes, I know you can download something similar in the community creations but these are kids and they don't understand. If you are going to add new wrestler models or wrestlers period, they should be in the damn base game or included with the season pass.

Gaming in 2024 sucks. It really does. Games exist more as a money extraction tool, rather than a source of entertainment.

Part of it is because as the cost to make games has skyrocketed, the cost to buy games has remained fairly steady. An SNES game, in today's dollars would be something like $130.

Corporate greed runs deep and is frustrating when microtransactions are poorly implemented, but game prices were pretty crazy until the PS2 era.

The reason why videogames don’t cost $130 is because videogame companies are in the business of selling videogames which they wouldn’t at $130. It isn’t the consumers fault that they can’t control their own costs. These companies that can’t create games on any kind of budget at all are going to go out of business in the next 10 years.

The chase for cards is really the only thing truly engaging about modern sports console titles.

Madden? Check.
Show? Check.
NHL? Check.

I figure NBA is the same, I don't know that I'd expect anything different from a wrestling game.

Whether NCAA Football turns out to be different, honestly, remains to be seen. And if it does, once the new wears off, I figure it'll be the same.

You also don't have to buy the microfransactions if you don't want them. That essentially the opposite end of the argument and if people weren't buying them they wouldn't be as popular for publishers to add to games as they are.

You either pay an increased up front cost or you live with microtransactions.

OK? I literally said we paid an increased amount up front. Where does charging more up front and then introducing micro transactions fall into this?

I think for AAA console games this is the case. But I'd argue that PC gaming is as good as its ever been. There's so many good games that come out from smaller or medium sized studios. Their graphics are catching up.

Sports games are dead but if your into a strategy or survival game, there are so many to choose from. Even decent RPGs on PC coming out weekly.

I agree. There's more choices than ever; too many, by far. It's hard to find many of the good games which isn't great, but there are many of them to be found.

I believe that's called profitability. And that's why folks go to work.

The era of "oh we make games cause we want to, it's not about getting rich" is pretty well over -- for both developers AND progammers -- every bit as much as it is for "content creators".

I spent exponentially more time with YouTube when everything wasn't produced by people trying to make their living making videos, and oddly enough I spent more time on console games (and PC games for that matter) when everybody wasn't trying to retire in their 30s by making them.

That's unjustifiably cynical IMO. The landscape has certainly changed, but there are still people in the video and development space - a lot of them - who do it because they enjoy it.

Considering all we ever seem to here from that sector is constant and persistent, to the point of incessant, whining {oh the hours, oh not being guaranteed a job forever, oh this and oh that} I struggle to find much justification for your defense.

Whinier than the pampered athletes in the sports games, which feels like I'm being more realistic than cynical tbh.

That's not all we hear from them though, that's the point. I'd suggest you're just listening to the wrong people if that's your perception. There are many contrary examples, the Baldurs Gate 3 devs being well-publicized but far from the only one. A number of video makers and devs I am familiar with have literally never done the kind of whining you are describing to my knowledge. There's others who have of course, but the idea that such things dominate the industry is just plain not true.

The greed has way more to do with CEO's and Boards of major traded companies only caring about how much they can milk out of an IP. They only care about the quality of the game to the point that it impacts their bottom line.

Can anyone elaborate on this? The only console game I currently play is NCAA 13. What is the chase for cards? I guess I'll find out if it's part of the new NCAA Football when it comes out, but since I don't even know what it is, I'm worried it's the kind of thing everyone will just know and not talk about.

Ultimate team garbage. You spend money (in game currency, you usually can either buy in with real world money or earn it SLOWLY in game) on card packs that give you players to play a mode in whatever game you are playing. You use these cards to build a team. It's usually a combination of current players and legends. You can play with your team online or offline, there are leaderboards, etc.

Apparently, it's up Jon's alley but IMO it's the worst thing that has happened to modern sports videogames. You will learn that EA doesn't care about your Franchise mode at all (hell they accidently deleted them all two years ago and didn't bat an eye.) They care about selling virtual currency. This is the mode that gets updated all year with new cards. Franchise is a complete afterthought.

If you play OOTP these modes are more or less the same thing as perfect team.

[quote=dubb93;3433143]Ultimate team garbage. You spend money (in game currency, you usually can either buy in with real world money or earn it SLOWLY in game) on card packs that give you players to play a mode in whatever game you are playing. You use these cards to build a team. It's usually a combination of current players and legends. You can play with your team online or offline, there are leaderboards, etc.

Apparently, it's up Jon's alley but IMO it's the worst thing that has happened to modern sports videogames. You will learn that EA doesn't care about your Franchise mode at all (hell they accidently deleted them all two years ago and didn't bat an eye.) They care about selling virtual currency. This is the mode that gets updated all year with new cards. Franchise is a complete afterthought.


Except that I'm about to complete the core card collection in Show 24 without (once again, same as last year) ever spending a dime. And since I have zero interest in playing online against a human ever, if that's enough of a goal to satisfy me then no worries about collecting every single 99 card (or whatever the 9 to 12 card meta that takes over all online play happens to be)

The franchise modes are fairly weak, but then again, they have been that way on console for many years. I've already gotten a respectable amount of hours out of the game just by grinding for the cards. Once a more complete (and good) roster file is finally completed, I'll probably give a franchise run a go although by that point NCAA 24 will be out most likely and I'm not sure how much time will be left.

Truth is, I'm not sure what the last thing I played on console for any purpose other than "the grind" (for one thing or another) even was.

Starfield, I guess, but that ended quickly once I realized that NG+ killed it for me. I tried FM on console but interacting with the UI kept me from being able to enjoy it or get into it. That would leave, I guess, the Sim Settlements mod for Fallout4 was the last thing I played cause I wanted to play (rather than grind) ... and that died once it grew beyond the console's capability to handle the size of the ever-expanding mod. Before that? Stellaris, though I never once got past last midgame with it (and all the fun is in the early game anyway). Hell, I dunno, I owned some version of Civ on console at some point, I probably mindlessly played that for "fun" at times I guess.

Ultimately all console sports games end up with what I refer to here in the 'cave as "the NHL problem". Ultimately, I find across all of them the same problem, the point where one difficulty is comically easy and the next one is utterly unbeatable and non-competitive. How many titles in a row did I win on the old NCAA? Or consecutive SBs in Madden? But then again, I've done the same thing on console with OOTP, with EHM, with FHM. And I'm not exactly anybody's GM savant, those are all simply that easy to do it with.

Will talks about the dopamine factor in games now & then. That you have to find that somewhere in the game or else you'll move on. That's what the collecting modes provide for me ... the gameplay itself so is rarely fun or enjoyable or engaging on anything on console.

It's the same reason I've played WWE Supercard on my little tablet for 10 straight years now, it's something to do with some vague reward beyond timewasting.

And it doesn't exactly seem like I'm the Lone Ranger when it comes to that approach to gaming. I may have given the reasons behind it more thought, or typed more words about it, than the average player but my motivations seem pretty in-line with a huge chunk of the audience.

The reason those modes have become a cash cow for devs is because they work. I'm an anomaly 'cause I'm a NMS guy (No Money Spent) but the motivation for me is the same as it is for the whales.

The modes work because people pay for them, and somehow people forget that these games aren't created for charity. They are cash cows to very large corporations. I'm sure there are plenty of programmers that work there for the joy of working on a game they loved, but in the end it is the corporate entity that dictates what time and effort can be put into various things, and they are going to be way more concerned about the biggest profit center than the feature that always sucks yet people still buy the games anyway.

Jon basically is the exact opposite gamer than I am. Show me a game that prioritizes grind over fun and I’ll show you a game I don’t play. I also havent bought a sports game for myself in 3 years almost entirely because Franchise modes are actually somehow getting worse.

But my argument, I guess, is that in many ways the fact that people are paying for them (us NMS types notwithstanding) says that they're doing exactly what they should be doing.

I mean, it succeeds because the market responds to it. And it kinda even makes sense.

Look at TEW. How many people bought that game & started a dynasty/campaign/whateverword? But how many of those ever got past 3 years in game? The long-running franchise people, regardless of the game or the medium, are a minority.

There’s a fun question in Jon’s post there which is - when was the last time you went past 5 years or seasons in a sports game?

For me I think I had an FM save 7 or 8 years ago with Wrexham (ironically given the recent hoopla around that club) that must have got to 5 years as they were Conference at the time and I had them in Europe. Before that you are probably talking Championship Manager 97/98 as a kid for a time where I really got somewhere approaching a decent career sim. I’ve probably taken some classes from frosh to titles in TCY back in the day as well.

Console or non-sim game I’m not sure I’ve ever done it. Not sure I’ve ever hit three tbh.

Fairly often. Went 12 in madden 3 years ago with a few friends in an online league. Like I said that’s the last console sports one I’ve bought but I have an OOTP game right now where I’m 24 years in.

I've really enjoyed FM '24 and am currently in the 2036-37 season. Started at Alfreton Town in the Vanarama North before moving to Leyton Orient in League 2 for two seasons. Moved on to Hellas Verona in Serie A where I'm in season 8 at the club. Won the league 3 times, but the expectations are starting to outpace the budget the board are giving me, so it's starting to be a slog. I'm trying to hang in to the end of the year when we move into a new stadium just to see how that affects the financial situation.

FM has probably been the only game where I've been able to put in this kind of time and not be bored.

TEW is a completely different beast for a variety of reasons.

1. It takes forever to get anywhere as a big promotion.

2. The long term sim prospects are bleak because the game does a really poor job of keeping the world full of usable talent.

I probably have a dozen FM saves that have lasted that long at least, but I can't say the same about any other sports game....and not-so-coincidentally most of those stretches were with Wrexham. I assume the draw was the same in FM as in real-life: they have better facilities and resources than the other teams in their league.

Franchise in Madden is so bad that it’s had the same fatigue bug for like 4 or 5 years and they just won’t fix it.

It had the same playoff bug for half a decade where every game against a cold weather team in the playoffs was a blizzard complete with everyone on both teams getting -20 speed, acc, change of direction, increased fumble risk etc and a 50 mph cross wind. I don’t know if that bug has been fixed but I know for a fact that the fatigue bug is still there and starting about week 3 in franchise the game pulls your starters after the first quarter because they are too fatigued. It really is ridiculous. You can put in house rules by just turning progressive fatigue off and making all user teams be teams that play in domes but it just goes to show how little these franchise modes are touched at all on a yearly basis.

And yet Will's 3-4 longest careers ever -- and several of my ten longest -- are in TEW.

So go ahead and pick virtually any sizable game not named FM and you'd get the same sort of result. I'm a "long universe" guy historically myself ... but I also know I'm an outlier.

That's exponentially more true for consoles, where a) there's a new one every year and b) most people stick with a title for 3-6 months until the next sports title comes out.

It's fine to be in the minority, but at least accept that reality of that being the case.

One thing that holds back longer dynasties/franchise sessions is bad AI. Even games I loved like NCAA Football got boring after a few seasons when you could turn Ball State into Alabama

and yet " the “Madden NFL” franchise saw record net bookings for the year, up 6%, and double-digit growth in weekly average users for “Madden NFL 24” and “Madden Mobile.”"

So, umm, how would that suggest that they're doing it wrong somehow? Or at least that they should be diverting resources?

The issue is that most people don't give a rat's ass about franchise mode.

Hard to blame companies for doing what pleases the most customers most. That's a customer issue, not a company issue.

There in lies the issue though. I don’t think the “majority” of people play MUT and not Franchise. First off there are no numbers I googled and they don’t exist. And just because the dev team is spending more time on it doesn’t mean it’s more popular it just means that the mode is monetized unlike franchise modes.

The MUT modes have largely replaced multiplayer IMO rather than replacing Franchise.

Which is why I predict that once the initial wave of hype is over, NCAA will quickly settle into some form of card collecting same as every other sports game on console.

We disagree on that point entirely, wholly, and completely.

Will is pretty much the only member of his age-group cohort that has ever completed a franchise season. They MUT, they MP. And that's literally all any of them do.

edit to add: And I've known more whales in his cohort than I've known in my own. To the point of knowing a couple who've regularly spent thousands on pay-to-win games, and quite a few that don't blink at spending hundreds at a time.

While I don't like the trend in video games, I do understand it from both sides. There is something addictive about collecting players/cards, buying/selling, opening packs, etc. And if I was a bit younger and playing online more, I'd probably be much more into it. The only sports game I've really grinded out is The Show and that's just because I find grinding in that to be somewhat relaxing and it's not tied that deep into the online play.

And from a developer standpoint, I get it too. You don't really need to improve gameplay, AI, or franchise modes that take up a lot of resources. Sports games really haven't evolved much in that regard in over a decade. So you're still capturing most of the people who just want to play any sports game while maximizing the spend of the percent who will buy cards. Whatever that saying is about 10% of your customers will make up 90% of your revenue probably applies to these games.

Sports games are mostly dead from a simulation aspect. That's been something that started with the Madden exclusive license. But I still contend you can find a lot of really good PC games (non-sports) that don't run like that. People just seem too caught up in AAA console games and ignore a ton of really good options made by medium to small studios that are aimed at specific audiences.

One positive is I do think there has been some pushback against "online" for every single game. Fallout 76 caused enough anger that they more or less re-developed it. RDR2 saw their online mode bomb. Everyone tried to copy the success of GTA Online but are finding out that's not an easy task. So I do think we'll see more games shift toward single-player mode.

Every piece of data I've ever seen says things like multiplayer are a very low draw in games with a significant single-player component. Even Starcraft which poured massive effort into multiplayer is at 20%, industry estimates are around 10% typically for most games, sports games typically lower than that in the single digits.

Obviously there are some games specifically designed for multiplayer and they get whatever audience they get and some people do really enjoy them. But given the choice between single and multiplayer the audience has consistently been on the single-player side and hasn't really moved. The multiplayer audience tends to be more vocal, but they are a fairly small minority.

Have they figured out a good way to play PC games on your living room TV yet (without dragging your PC around)? Because for me, that's pretty much the dream. The only thing holding me on consoles is that part and maybe a few games.

Run a long HDMI and run in multi monitor mode is the best I can come up. How far away is the PC?

A bunch of the newer TV's are steam link capable.

Yeah, a friend of mine uses Steam link and seems to like it.

As for the games with micro transactions, they are awful. Luckily, they tend to largely be in games I don't play or, if I would have an interest, I just skip them entirely. I have no shortage of games to play. The number of games I have purchased on Steam and never even installed is vast...

I'm so confused, I feel like I'm from the past. So some players are not in the game, until you collect their card? It's not like the old days where all the players are just there from the start?

No. It’s a seperate optional mode. The game you remember will still be there and likely nearly completely unchanged as EA hasn’t updated their franchise modes in about a decade.