Looking at you Bethesda

Also:
- And after all that, the fans will shit on you and call you a shit dev because you failed your impossible task.
  
  Honestly, it's partly on the fans. Not enough people understand to be angry at the investors instead of the developers, who are essentially just scapegoats. Everyone gets fucked in the end except for the CEO and their Board of Directors. The frustration lies in how we remediate this as consumers who don't want to boycott our favorite AAA-title games that get churned out yearly.
  And don't even get me started on...
  shivers
  Early Access
- boggles my mind that game devs don't unionize, like.. what do they expect? of course they're gonna be exploited without a union
  
  I imagine that if they try to unionize, the large game companies will just cut off their income until they either become bankrupt or until they crack.
  
  Too many people want to work in the field
  public sides with publishers

Hot take but I blame gamers stuffing the pockets of these sort of publishers by lapping up early access and pre orders. It gives publishers no incentive whatsoever to change their ways because they still have the only thing they truly care about: money.
- It's absolutely the gamers. They're in a competition with Apple fans to see who will purchase literally anything a company makes. Patient gamers is where it's at. Buy the good games a few years after release with all the bugs fixed, extra content, and on sale.
  
  with the enormous amount of old games available for trivial cost, and games like terraria, stardew valley, and deep rock galactic which cost less than a AAA title and the devs just sort of refuse to stop updating their game for free, we're at a point where dropping 70 dollars on a game is just self harm.
- why place the blame on the millions of people buying the games instead of the few dozen companies making the games? do you think it’s easier to get a million people to change?
  
  Doesn't matter what is easier or the numbers involved. Fact is power lies in the money spent by millions funneled to a dozen, making them so potent. Millions don't even need to change their ways, even a significant minority can start making bottom lines bleed like a mf.

Comedian Frank Caliendo used to do an impression of John Madden:
"You know what I'm thankful for? Kids who pay sixty bucks each year for what is basically the same video game. A-heh-heh-heh, cha-ching!"

It's even worse when Bethesda does it because they split the modding community. LE, SE and AE are not compatible with each other's mods.

I've never been a fan of Final Fantasy 7, I wish they'd move on from it. I know it's not all the same game, but between remakes and spin-offs etc, I feel like there's been a dozen ff7 related games out there
- I think 7 has a much more relevant story that resonates with this cluster of generations though. I've never been a fan of it but I appreciated the remake and crisis core was a fun psp game and it was my only psp game.
  The story though somehow takes government in bed with corporate greed, the climate change, and how greed and people in power continue to exploit and cause damage. Then they wrap it up in the perfect fantasy allegory that can translate through decades. It's basically been post-Regan consequences in an escalating nutshell.
  Along with that being touted as the best game simply because in 97 it was ground breaking. Like I don't think if Mikcey mouse would be such a cultural icon if it came out 5 years ago instead of uh... wow damn nearly 100? Woah.
  Oh shit yeah eta all that said yeah I really didn't enjoy the original but found the remake fun and appreciated the plot line of that uh... episode? Season?
- And its not even the best FF game!!
  
  I have soft spot for FF8 myself
- I haven't played even a quarter of the trash Square Enix put out after final fantasy 7. They've ruined my favorite childhood game with a remake that is a reimagining of the game (but they marketed part one as a remake, basically lying about what it was). And yeah, now I kinda wish they would too.
  
  They kept darts and squats and just as bad as I remember them being too. The impression I got from playing the main game was that Ff7r isn't really a remake so much as an intro to a sequel in a sort of steins gate alternate world line kind of way. With some flashbacks to things that never happened as far as I could remember at least, and presumably not that the characters experiencing them could either.