With the recent release (and success) of Apex Legends, there’s a firm footing for “games as a service” as a monetary model.  In particular where that model is not based on buying vertical power (e.g. FIFA) but instead meant on selling horizontal flavor (e.g. cosmetics).  I should add that this model only applies if you’re dramatically exceeding expectations. If you still manage to break the previous year’s profits, yet below expectations, expect people to get fired.

I would say this is the flavor of the month, but it’s really hard to argue the sheer market penetration these games are now seeing.  UO was a “huge success”, followed by EQ, then completely dwarfed by WoW.  We went nearly 10 years trying to find a WoW killer (which, as expected, ended up being WoW itself).  Fortnite makes more money in a day than WoW makes in a month (purely on subs – the game services are a whole other bag).

But similar to MMORPGs, today’s games are all competing for the same eyeballs.   And there’s only so much time in a day to be spent, and people follow the shiny.  Fortnite is on season 7 – after 1 year.  WoW in contrast is entering season 2 since the launch of BfA in August.  If there isn’t new content, new material, then sales go away and people get saturated with what’s present, moving to the next thing.

From all that I can see, Apex Legends isn’t bringing new gamers to the table, simply pulling folks from Fortnite/PUBG, and the curious few wondering what all the hubbub is about.  What this means is that it’s pulling money from a limited pool.  This is a problem if a company is directly competing against itself – but these 3 games are from different groups.  Mind you, it will take a month or two for them all to get a similar ping system.

Which brings me to Anthem.  While in terms of direct competition it’s closely linked to Warframe, Destiny 2, and Division 2.  (Quick side bar – the demo for Division 2 is getting nothing but positive press.  It would appear they learned a ton of lessons and are applying them.  Too bad Bungie didn’t do that with Destiny 2.)  If we look at “games as a service” competition then Anthem is competing with the big ones (in relative size):

• Fortnite
• PUBG
• BLOPS4
• Apex Legends
• Rainbow 6 Siege
• Overwatch
• Destiny 2
• Warframe
• For Honor
• Sea of Thieves
• Monster Hunter World

Many of which have little to no barrier of entry.  Warframe and MHW are quite insane in terms of what they give for “free”.  Twitch streams are not the only metrics, but damn.

Again, this isn’t to say that Anthem won’t have success, but tempered with reality here.  It’s not like there are 6m people sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting to play only this game.  And if they do manage to get 6m eyeballs on this in the first quarter, what kind of insane release schedule is needed to keep those eyeballs?  We’re in perfect storm territory here.

And then what happens for the “next big thing”?  You have to believe that all the big companies are licking their lips looking at the insane income from this model.  But this isn’t luck, this is a huge level of effort.  There were dozens of MOBAs, only 3 left.  There are Battle Royale modes everywhere, but only 3 that really count today.  WoW’s only true competition has been FF14 – and it needed a complete rebuild to do so.

It’s really something to watch all this develop, and in such a small timeframe.  Practically impossible to keep up with the news, let alone the developers trying to play guessing game on what will or will not work.  I don’t see how this is sustainable in a glut of online games.

Fingers crossed that BioWare has the magic sauce.

If rumors are true, then today/tomorrow will see some significant cuts at Activision-Blizzard.

The consumer in me is happy that the company is taking a hit.  That is market capitalism at work, where the consumer demand determines the health of a large company.

The human in me is upset that people are going to lose their jobs through no fault of their own.  In larger companies, the cuts are rarely in the correct places (decision makers) and instead point to the lowest level possible.  Well, perhaps a bit less in this case, since both CFOs were fired.  Bobby Kotick is still going to get his $30m+ this year, rather than taking a pay cut.  There are some good people who are going to lose their job, and I hope that they land on their feet quickly.

The gamer in me is mixed.  On one hand, this doesn’t mean that Acti-Blizz is going to actually start making games with gamers in mind – in fact I would argue the opposite.  The whole Destiny 2 roadmap since launch is textbook “how not to make a sequel”.  BfA isn’t doing too hot either – but at least you can buy a literal flying pig.

We’ve lost the battle on MTX.  Outrage for horse armor has been replaced with joy on the Carleton dance.  Most people are ok with cosmetics in the store, it’s simply the price point that is debate point.  I do not believe we’ve lost the battle on lootboxes, rather that this battle is just getting started.  Specifically on the lootboxes that are pure RNG on rewards.  With both Fortnite, PUBG, and now Apex Legends hitting like a meteor in the market, it will be very interesting to see what games currently in the dev pipe end up delivering.

Maybe this will be a wake up call to the industry in general that they need to find a different path.  That the sheer glut of gaming options means people can spend their time/money on quality rather than quantity.  Counting on the horde of locusts to buy a reskin of last year’s game… pretty sure that model is going the way of the dodo.

Best of luck to those impacted by the layoffs.

A few additional thoughts since the the previous post mid-weekend.  The same general thinking applies, but perhaps a few more bits and bops.

Technically I did see the Shaper Storm on Sunday in-game.  Sadly, the game server crashed 3 times before I could do something about it.

Optimization

This is the Frostbite engine, which EA has mandated all games use.   Not quite getting why they haven’t figured how to optimize it though.

My CPU runs in the high 90%, GPU is similar, and temps are crazy.  Only thing that has any effect is enabling vsync.  Detail has no impact.

The load times on PC are just too long.  Considering that there are no environmental effects (aside from water), I’m not quite getting what is actually going on here.  I have my fingers crossed that this is better at launch – in particular when you end a mission and do not have to go back to Tarsis in order to see 2 load screens for the mission map.

The controls are meant for consoles.  The menus are a clear example.  Flight/swim are actually manageable with a controller.  When you pick up items, the screen displays a D-pad icon.  I can live with most of that.  ‘Cept the flight/swim controls.  Feels a bit like Blizz and “do you guys not have controllers?!”  I’m guessing XBOX/PS4 players are going to have the best experience for some time.

Server stability was a serious issue this weekend.  Saturday/Sunday, I was never able to complete a single mission due to server crashes. The forums seem to have a similar issue.  A game cannot find a successful launch with this type of issue (or the infinite load, which seems fixed now).

On the flipside, the game is ridiculously good looking.  I’m looking forward to more enemy types, but the ones there now are impressively detailed.  Near everything is extremely fluid, and combat is predicated on always be moving.  That part works exceptionally well – arguably better than WarFrame due to the open areas and focus on vertical.

Numbers

I do expect some tweaking to a lot of numbers before launch.  This weekend had a bit too much bullet sponge for my tastes.  I realize that is a terribly hard thing to balance.  Even with max level gear (19 power), it was only a marginal improvement in damage.  Maybe this was a bug fix from the VIP weekend, or an actual purposed tweak.

The flipside is that combos dominate the damage department.  To the point where it makes more sense to take self-combo skills (e.g. frost and fire) even if they are not terribly practical or numerically sound on their own.  It will be a challenge for BioWare to manage the meta at top levels if this combo bonus sticks as is.  Let’s put it another way, I find that group clearing goes significantly faster if I stick next to another player and solely place an ice build, as everyone and their mom seems to combo off ice.  Instead of playing like a mage, I end up playing an enchanter.

Betas (and make no mistake this is a beta, not a demo) are a really poor way to judge metas.  I mentioned that exact point in a previous build.  Quite curious as to how that ends up a few weeks after launch.

Time

I really do think there’s a lot of potential here, and I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt at launch.  It is miles beyond recent online dumpster fires (*cough* F076 *cough*), but clearly there are some bits that need work.  If server stability can be sorted out (and I am sure BioWare hasn’t slept since last weekend), then there’s more than enough here to keep people busy until level 30.

What happens after that…I don’t think any game has actually ever figured that out near to launch.  Destiny took multiple expansions, Warframe took a few years, Divison was nearly 2 years.  I’m not holding my breath.  Get me to max level, and then we’ll take another look.

The good news is that the infinite load screen seems gone.

The so-so news is that there are so, so many bug fixes that it sometimes feels like a different difficulty.

The bad news continues to be that all rewards being predicated on getting to the mission complete screen.  In theory, that makes people spend more time playing rather than inventory management.  In practice, I have experienced quite a few server crashes that meant 30-45 minutes were just wasted.  Not crash as in I can jump back into the mission.  Crash as in the mission server (or whatever it is) crashes and I get sent back to Tarsis.

Also, this game makes my laptop hit 99% CPU, and 95+ degrees.  It is much more demanding than I had imagined.

Bug Fixes

Seeing as how I completed all the quest content last weekend, all I have now is exploration and the stronghold/dungeon/strike.  I’ve pretty much memorized all the spawn triggers/points by now, so it’s more about optimizing the execution.  In practical terms, when to use my ultimate.

I will assume this is bug fix territory, since AI behavior has tweaked a bit.  They tend to work in groups now, more than solo.  They are also harder to stun, and take more damage before dropping.  The final spider boss is also more challenging, as it now seems to spawn more spiders than before.  End result, I find myself dying more this weekend than last.

Still some kinks to work out, as I find myself getting hit by bullet fire while behind walls, flying controls are greatly improved, swimming still feels like a drunk tank, and some chargeable skills do not work consistently (e.g. they do while hovering, but not while on the ground).

Storm

I won’t say I have a huge amount of time in the game, but let’s say that I am surprised anytime I see anything other than a Colossus or Storm in my group.  Rangers are there when low level, and I have seen a total of 2 Interceptors since last week.  Storm is my bag of fun.

I’ve been trying more loadouts to see what works for my playstyle.  There’s a large attack and a quick one, and each can come in one of 3 elements – ice, fire, and lightning.  Ice slows/freezes enemies, fire does some AE and DoT, lightning just seems to be pure damage.  I honestly expected lightning to have more effect on shields.  Even in 18 power (blue) skills, it takes every cooldown I have to take down someone with shields.

There are also variants in the attacks.  Like one is a giant fire explosion, and another is a fire element that skips through enemies.  You’re provided a numerical representation of what the skill does in terms of damage, recharge and so one.  But until you actually see it, you really don’t know if it works for you or not.

I am really liking the chargeable fireball attack as a quick attack.  The large attack, I’ve yet to find one I really do like, though it’s hard to argue with something with big numbers (lightning explosion seems the one).

Not being able to add more options to my gear (due to level restrictions) is less fun.  I’ve found quick a few upgrades to elemental damage that would certainly complement the playstyle.  Stacking 5 or so elemental boosts would make a huge difference.

Progress

I have two distinct thoughts on this matter.

First – this weekend’s build should have been there last weekend.  There are a lot of things from the previous build that appeared 90%+ of the time, and that was the build meant to appease the people who have forked a lot of money over.  It’s really great that the wholly open demo works, but there are still some optimizations/fixes that are missing (swimming is absolute garbage).

Second – The content presented here is at most ~4 hours worth.  Since you’re dropped into the middle of things, there are many systems that are simply not clearly explained.  Why would you explore?  How do you get recipes?  How does experience work?  What makes the ultimate skill get stronger/recharge faster?  What do the stats actually mean?  And when the demo content “ends”, it should present some sort of message to the fact since I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out if I could do more than kill a spider.

Clearly the weekend isn’t over, and the “cool event” of Sunday hasn’t come to pass.  I know there are more things to discover here, and I am certainly motivated to see them come.  That’s a good thing.  I will certainly wait until release to put more thoughts to this, but right now it seems fair to say that there’s a market for this game.  Maybe not as big as some hope (this will not steal Fortnite players), but a decent sized one at least.

I won’t be talking about Epic “stealing” Metro.  Or Steam saying it’s unfair.  Or the review bombs that clearly show why Steam reviews are a cesspool.  Or the entire irony of the situation.

I won’t talk about WoW’s recent patch that still doesn’t have Zandalari or Kul Tiran unlocked.  Or that the Horde/Alliance buff bonus caused Limit to faction change in order to take advantage.

I won’t even talk about the dumpster fire of Fallout 76 re-introducing old bugs with a recent patch.

Maybe I’ll talk about Facebook admitting to committing a crime when they harvested data from teenagers who “consented”?  Nah.

Glorious Friday is here.  Time to do things outside of the office, and take advantage of the small break in this polar vortex.  Keep shopping for some gaming laptops (kinda set on a GE73 or a GS73).

Oh, and maybe play some more of that Anthem demo.

Expectations

I have such a ridiculous distaste for EA’s business practices, yet a fondness for BioWare that this is causing a weird internal debate.  Ethically, I cannot pre-order any game, least of all from EA.  In terms of lockboxes and general RMT, EA’s model hit peak insanity with Battlefront 2.  And people still pre-ordered it.

Yet here I am contemplating an EA game.  It’s said that there are no lockboxes.  That there’s no paid DLC (which seems a bit odd… but ok).  It will likely have new javelins at cost (I guess like Rainbow6).  And there are customizations out the wazoo (at some pretty crazy price points).  We’re not talking $3 horse armor anymore.

I do like what I see so far.  When the game actually loads, the moment-to-moment stuff works, and works well.  There’s much more class diversity in terms of skills and weapon choices that’s more in line with Warframe than Destiny – a model I really liked.

The gaps that remain include:

• the integration of story / player choice
• the diversity of activities / creatures (Warframe’s model here is really hard to beat)
• the diversity of sytem-wide events (e.g. Shaper Storms), though apparently that will happen on Sunday afternoon
• the scalability of playing with people of different levels, and at different points in their quest line
• the long-tail portion of the game at max level

All but the first one have significant impacts on the long term viability of the game.  The group interactions, multitude of events, and continual progress of the grind for loot drive engagement.  Quite curious to see how that plays out.

For now, it looks like a fun purchase.  And that’s the point, right?

It’s a solid experience.

As with all games, there are some good bits, and less good bits.  For the most part, the good bits make the rest sort of not matter as much.

It’s a BioWare game, and Tarsis is the “story hub”.  The demo only gives you 3 quests, but as a sign of the rest I think it will be a fun run through.   Of the coop shooters I have played, it’s better than nearly all the others in that regard…sci-fi but not so weird it’s hard to follow (Warframe can be tough on that one).

The art, music, design are all top notch.  I think it caused my GPU to melt, as the PC shut down a few times.  Rarely are you unable to see where to go, or what’s going on, which is honestly a tough bag in any 3D game.  It’s a demo, so customization options are limited, but it’s pretty clear there will be a lot of options.  I do like that there are so many dye options, easy to get creative and lose time there.  It’s also good that each Javelin has their own outline, so that they are easily recognizable regardless of their armor sets.

Mechanics are decent.  There are some overall number issues, spawn rates, that sort of stuff that can be balanced without too much trouble.  Enemies aren’t just meat shields, they each have their own preferred tactics, weak spots, and strategies.  Shielded enemies need to be flanked.  Head shots matter.  The giant spider has weak points on the back.  You need to always be moving, dodging, or evading attacks (even as a tank).   The scar enemies attack in groups, and sometimes it feels cheap to be attacked by half a dozen enemies, who all eat through your shields in 2 seconds.   In particular in open areas.

Where things go a bit off the rails are on the environments.  I am used to cover based mechanics, or maybe that you can use the environment to avoid damage.  Large objects, that generally applies.  Smaller objects, like walls, that doesn’t seem to work.  One battle has you take on 3 fire giants who have massive fire AE.  Walls did nothing to stop that from hitting.  All too often I can’t hit an enemy but they can hit me.  The giant mech battle is a really good example of this too.

Flight mechanics I can’t get used to.  In a straight line, sure that works fine.  Anytime you need to actually move, or gosh forbid you’re underwater, it feels like you’re driving a rear wheel drive in the snow.  The amount of oversteer is insane.  It is a major distraction and I am really hoping there’s just something wrong with my control setup.  I’m still tweaking the sensitivity settings…

Javelin diversity works well enough.  I think there’s something wrong with the colossus though, as it seems entirely built for support.  Maybe it’s just the limitations of the demo, but having pure support in a shooter (with no real healing, or faster rez) doesn’t seem to jive so much.  That and that the defensive toolkit really doesn’t work when you’re getting attacked from multiple directions, and bosses still chew through them.  Will be interesting to see that class grow.  Ranger is fun, if your standard meat soldier.  Storm is the glass canon, but really the canon part could use some tweaking.  Their ultimate is insane, I’ll give it that.  Due to the elemental effects (fire, ice, or electric) it makes for some really interesting builds.  Interceptor, I don’t have much experience with, and I rarely saw any in the groups.

Weapon diversity is pretty much what you’d expect in a demo.  Rifles, snipers, shotguns, grenade launchers.  Some minor diversity within, short burst, full auto, that sort of stuff.  You cant upgrade weapons, and they don’t have a unique appearance… but maybe they do later on.  I will say that comparing weapons isn’t all that practical in the numbers game.  It’s nice that you have playstyle choice.

The game feels like it has a persistent memory leak.  I’ve crashed numerous times, hit an infinite load screen nearly every single mission, creatures suddenly pop in or out.  It’s just weird, and I fully expect that to be addressed at launch.

Honestly, a demo is a crappy way to look at the meta.  I won’t dig on that.  The moment to moment stuff, that really works well.  It’s clear there are some balance changes that will be applied for launch, since this is a 2 month old build.  But the tiny moments are fun.  It’s great to take on a giant mass of enemies, and barely scrap by.  It’s fun to take on a boss in a giant room, full of waves of enemies.  It’s fun to use abilities as a group, see some interesting combos come from it.

Pleasantly surprised by the end.

I am anxious by nature, and one of the mechanisms I use to control that is planning.  I used to overplan, to the n-th degree, but over time I’ve learned to let some things just slide.  I think in reality, I’m just better at managing odds and the low percentage events get a whole lot less attention than they used to.

At work I oversee a team that supports a critical service for a whole bunch of clients.  Outages mean freakouts and long hours, so we go to great lengths to manage the risk.  IT, after all, is a commodity now.  And you only notice a commodity when it isn’t there (like water, electricity).  Planning of large changes takes a fair amount of lead time, and we need to do a lot of testing to make sure it works.  Part of that testing includes load/stress/failure, where we throw everything we can at system and see what happens.  We test at daily load, peak load, and critical load – meaning what do we normally see in a day, what is the highest number we see in a day, and what have we planned for before it melts.

For starting companies, launching a new product, this can be really hard to do.  Maybe the architecture/platform is new.  Maybe there wasn’t enough research to estimate the load.  Maybe you get really popular before you can grow.

For larger, established companies, these items should not occur.   The ol’ error 37 in Diablo 3.  The inability for Sim City to work for nearly a month.  New MMOs that melt for the first week.  Typically, this is borne from a) poor testing and b) poor market analysis for load (you are popular).

How do you know if you’ll be popular?  Today you can check pre-sales and the number of accounts registered.  Social media trends.  Analysis from gaming blogs.  Plenty of data to give you a pulse.  If you’re big enough, then you have extra hardware on stand-by anyhow, since you’re running a cloud-type data center.  May not be able to turn them on in 5 minutes, but a day or two should be reasonable.

Which brings me to the VIP demo for Anthem, and the servers “melting”.

The reason this is confusing is that the VIP demo is only for players who have

• Pre-ordered
• Active on Origin Premier
• Have received an invite and linked it to their account

That is a fraction of the launch day user base.  It’s an even smaller fraction than those that will use the open beta.  Plus… it’s not like EA has no experience running online games – Battlefield V is only a month or so old.

So maybe the server architecture is too complex to spin up.  Maybe they had already planned to add capacity and the equipment came in late.  Maybe their stress testing wasn’t accurate and this is the fall back plan (my $$ on this one).

Regardless, it’s good news that they are able to react this quickly.  Glad the days of waiting weeks for server capacity are behind us.  And really, the entire point of this demo is to test the infrastructure for load and bugs.  Better now than on launch.

Or rather, how Celeste has spoiled me.

I never had the chance to play the first game, but I always heard it was a nice gem of a game.  The metroidvania genre has always been a fun time.  Super Metroid really did a bang up job there, and most of the DS Castlevania games hit it out of the park. The genre does seem somewhat relegated to the indie space, as it doesn’t translate well to 3d games.  Darksiders tried that approach, and there’s a bit of it in the Zelda series, but I can’t really think of other examples.

All the red will kill you.

The game seems to be aiming for satire more than much else.  The skill upgrade nodes are straight out of Metroid.  I get the stereotypical/pun heavy humor.   It generally works, and makes the story move forward. The art and music is top notch too.  Feels like a realized world, which is oddly important.

Your character unlocks various abilities over the course of the game, but those abilities seem at odd with the fundamental concepts of the game.  I mean, you’re a wrestler.  Should you not know how to body slam from the start?  The various directional slams are used in combat, and also used to destroy extremely obvious blocks, for extra areas.  There’s an entire subset of the game dedicated to the chicken form (yes!) and it’s skills.  You’ll go an hour only being able to punch up, then 2 hours of punching sideways, then you finally unlock punching down.  Meh.

The good thing, is that the map is extremely detailed, and shows you exactly which blocks are where, and what treasure chests you’ve seen but haven’t yet acquired.  It diminishes a lot of the secret finding, as the map is likely more obvious than the game screen, but it’s a welcome addition.

Where I am spoiled is in the controls.  Celeste has perfect controls.  It has perfect level design, down to the pixel.  You don’t scrape by a spike, you hit a spike.  You don’t hit imaginary walls, momentum means something, and it’s crystal clear each puzzle was tested to infinity and beyond.

Guacamelee 2 is very loose, and the timing is off.  Many of the more challenging puzzles require multiple sequential button presses, and specific directions to complete. It may go something like, jump, slam, punch, pull, slam, pull, pull, punch, dash.  And at no time can you touch the ground.  Celeste taught me that was achievable and that I simply had to learn the timing.  Guacamelee 2 has nothing to do with timing.  It has pixel correction and the art does not match the pixels.  Some spikes are wider than others, even though they look the same.  Momentum is not applied consistently.  You character will get animation-locked in a specific direction.  What I mean here is that the puzzles are well designed, but poorly implemented.

Thankfully, nearly all of the puzzles are optional.

Take the puzzles out and the rest is really top notch.  Battles are fun, the world is great to explore, the chicken mode is great, there are multiple alternate costumes, plenty of side quests, a neat skill tree, and really fun boss fights.  The important thing, is that it’s fun.  Well worth the buy.

Syp’s nostalgia tour with Quest for Glory had me itching for a replay.

There are a few childhood memories that sit with me still, those of just pure joy.  I can clearly remember opening a Christmas gift and looking at a dragon, trying to figure out what was going on.  Turning the box around, I saw it was a computer game and read every inch of that manual before getting home.

So old school it’s a different name now.

There’s a special place in my brain for Sierra adventure games.  King’s Quest’s pass or die mechanics were not exactly attractive, but QfG’s skill-based checks were amazing!  1989 brought the concept that repeated skill use meant you got better at the skill.  Completely novel at the time.

I still remember getting lost in the game and having to resort to those really cheap “red screen on red text” guides to help me through the tough bits.  Not because the individual quests were hard, but because of the interdependence of those quests.  (Incidentally learning of the benefits of black box testing.)

I played the 2nd one when it came out, and having to draw my own complicated map of the city.  Dying in the desert to pretty much anything that looked at me.  Trying to figure out how to become a paladin.  Back again to the red-screen books.

The 3rd one I bought with my own money, and I can still recall my mouse driver not working for 6 months.  Every play a click adventure without a mouse?  Wow!  This is the game that taught me that you need to go everywhere, at least twice, and at all times of the day.  Without finding the thief at night in Tarna on day 3, you couldn’t beat the final boss on day 20.

The 4th (same as Syp is on now) was a rightful mess of A-B-C quests that all started near the same time, could overlap, and then ended at different times.  It looked and sounded cool but was insanely buggy.  The Mad Monk swamp quest would remain incomplete for 10 years (and the end battle) due to non-stop computer crashes.  It’s ironic that everything but the mechanics of the game were amazing.  But the SCII engine was clearly pushed beyond it’s limits.

The 5th and final entry was bought on nostalgia more than anything else.  First foray in 3d, the mechanics worked decent enough for the time.  The issue was the quests – in particular the Iblis portion.  It was entirely possible to paint yourself into a corner, with no way out unless you completely restarted the game and put in different skill points.  The puzzles themselves were quite fun, and not really needing much of a guide at that point (well, maybe cause I was older).  Then ending did cap the overall story, and was pretty much the end of the adventure-RPG genre in my eyes.

Finding Help

The adventure genre (Sierra in particular) was notorious for obtuse puzzles, and puns that were supposedly clues.  One in the 4th told you about throwing something that’s not a bird, and a yellow one on the ground.  Apparently that means throwing a rock and leaving a rubber chicken on the ground.  That said, one of the novelties was the multiple solution quests, where each class could bring a new approach.  So where the warrior would through stones, the mage could cast force bolt, and then fetch their goal.  That added flexibility/complexity really came into it’s own in the 4th entry.

Still, there were some pretty big brain stumpers.  And those red-screen guides were my go-to well before the interwebs.  Prima Guides didn’t really exist for much more that stat books (great for RPGs), especially if you only wanted partial spoilers.  I would never have killed a single Dark Aeon in FFX without gamefaqs.

Nowdays, I get spoilers for everything before the game has even launched.  It is a rare occasion that the gameplay has some sort of puzzle that cannot be solved with a quick google/discord search.  And it’s not like we’re forced to look these things up, it’s just that they are so damn accessible.  Heck, I’ve written my share of guides.  It’s an interesting shift, where there’s a general lack of mystery and gumption to get through rough spots.  I still very much enjoy the learning aspect, the trial by error.  The Room series on mobile is a great example of puzzle games, without major fail conditions.

Dunno, maybe it’s the competitive nature of gaming.  Maybe it’s the sheer amount of games that release. A combination of other things.  Right now, it feels like a buffet and I’m asking for instructions on how to get through it efficiently, rather than truly taking the time to enjoy the meal.