Hhhh yes I know some form of anarchism would probably be more egalitarian and just but a society will always have rules and mutual expectations and if we’re being honest no state can afford to let people see anarchism thrive, can they?

Yeah it’s not great the way supers tend to validate vigilantism. Ultimately you can have rule of law or some form of tyranny. There are middle grounds, but those are the options. Also the hero’s journey literary paradigm has regressive aspects. 🤓

Yeah. cash me outside

I’ll fit in great until they realise I don’t smoke and I like cucumbers

You take the rough with the smooth

It’s been fishy from the start.

Hell yes. Now the guy just has to keep them from proving he did it. Honestly feels doable

Maybe he could try to make another TV series.

Variation did begin to pick up once they started making indie games for consoles, but I was referring to games you could find on the shelves for an average home console. And I wasn’t going from memory, I was going off something I read a while back.

https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/cost-of-gaming-since-1970s

Since as long as I’ve been a gamer, the average MSRP of a game has been quite steady despite the fact that the purchasing power of that price tag has completely collapsed.

An average Atari 2600 game cost $39.99 but that’s closer to $170.70 in today’s money. A game for the PS4 had a sticker price 50% higher, but the actual value of that money is nearly ⅓ as much.

If you have better data than the article I’d love to hear of it. I hated how they referred to typical MSRP as the “average” price when it’s clearly the mode and not the mean.

My only point was that the price of these games has been at a certain level without regard for the drastic decline in the value of the dollar. Demand for games should be on the elastic side, so it’s weird that (most) prices have been so steady.

It’s just really hard when we’ve been for decades conditioned to largely see every game as priced at something like $60. It’s created a group of consumers who are incredibly price sensitive, but also likely to look on anything priced under $60 with a jaundiced eye.

They’re very different games in some respects, but Silksong for me so far is very much a direct continuation and elaboration of the creative aims of the original. Same ideas, taken further. It’s early for me, but it feels a little like it was taken in more of a Sekiro direction with the combat precision and more deliberate choice of weapons loadouts.

I can’t spoil shit, haven’t even beat the first major boss yet.

The fun of this game for me is a lot like back before GPS and ride share apps, how you might be lost at night and walking home, broke after a satisfying night out. You don’t know where you are exactly, but you feel a creeping recognition as you make your way through unfamiliar areas. Then you get a moment of pure elation as your mental map puzzles it all out. Your world feels bigger, you feel safe again, and you’re ready to return home with a true sense of satisfaction.

Then there’s the way this game trains you to fight like the main character. You can’t make too many mistakes because HP is limited and healing is often a high stakes moment, so you quickly learn a way to use the moveset - and when it clicks, it looks good.

You learn how to fight like Hornet, and the way she fights speaks to her story. Being the royal progeny of a spider and something eldritch, her style of combat is graceful yet intense, smooth as silk and totally merciless.

The surface elements (the storybook aesthetic, the gobbledygook bug-talk from amusingly forlorn characters) keep it all from becoming too grounded. If Team Cherry ever tried to make their work seem grounded in realism, I never noticed it. They use real things (like the “needle” you use as a weapon) as only small reminders that this is a story about bugs. These bugs are fully capable of metallurgy and heavy engineering, so anything that refers to the human world only exists to keep the sense of scale in focus.

To add to what you’re saying, the game changes on you so much. From the start it’s no Hollow Knight, but as you gain new abilities and ways to arrange those abilities, the game changes almost as fast as you can get good at it. I can’t wait to get into the second act.

I’d have done no better, I’m not broadcast ready at all and I’d have been nervous as hell. Just being a snerky jerky internet person, don’t mind me

It’s well informed while being the mildest take imaginable. Doesn’t condone violence, doesn’t do a victory lap, just ever so gently connects one dot to another.

I would sack someone for using the phrase ‘sort of’ that often though.

It’s not simple. The only real way I have to know if it’s a problem is to react based on whether the jokes are funny or not.

Example: When my life is being literally ruined, I don’t joke about suicide, I joke about how much fun I’m having. When I get a loose eyelash stuck under my eyelid though it’s right to “Jesus fuck just kill me please”.

When you’re a kid with no understanding of game design, no internet, and no subscription to magazines that explain it, all those dirty tricks that we now rightly put to much rubbish did have the power to make you think “I suck at this”. They didn’t have to be clever back then to give us this insane need to be punished by game designers just the right amount so that we can finally just try really hard, get really annoyed, stick with it way too long, and eventually get to say “yes, fuck you, I win!” For a certain kind of kid from that generation, that’s almost a healing fantasy.

I’m only saying I agree with the chap. Have you been to Paris? It’s lovely in April.

Time will tell. These games all have so much talk about how certain builds are “cheese” or how the ashes make the game too easy or whatever - that’s all just dumb. The game itself is the difficulty settings, sometimes.

It seems too early to say how Silksong will be remembered, and Team Cherry still only had two games under its belt so it’s arguably too early to judge them. Will their next game be totally different and a massive risk, or do we have a Vivaldi on our hands, doing masterful variations on a theme?

I hate to answer a rhetorical question directly, so please forgive that; my satisfaction would have been much greater, if I was able to achieve those things. I have a realistic sense of what I was able to do given the challenge that I faced and the skill I was able to muster, and although more success would have been sweeter, I am able to be content because I have a shared context with other people who faced the exact same challenge.

I know many have been unhappy with what they are able to accomplish in games with no difficulty settings, and I see it as a choice by the creator to set people apart. It’s a harsh choice that seems most appropriate in grim and harsh stories.

Those who say it is passé argue so very convincingly, but I can’t hide that it appeals to me. It speaks to something primitive, perhaps anhedonic. I was wondering if it’s a generational preference more prevalent among people who grew up during the era of “Nintendo hard”, and if single-difficulty games will fade away in time completely. Maybe this game should have been called Swansong, if so.

There might also be a generational divide taking shape. People my age grew up with “Nintendo hard” and the industry was all about making games seem longer by making them extremely difficult to beat. Our options were to get better, cheat, or give up.

These days the industry is all about mass appeal, and all the problems that we see with games having massive budgets and having to make sure as many people can like them as possible. Indie games have different incentives, and so when a game comes along that was made with priorities that aren’t in step with what we’re used to, it tends to ruffle feathers.

I know my kid doesn’t have any sense that games should be difficult, or that a challenging game can be satisfying. Even FromSoft games are trending towards less difficulty, despite having the fans who famously chant “git gud”. Bigger studios might know something my generation doesn’t get about younger gamers - maybe games like Silksong are having their swansong, so to speak. I hope not, but it’s hard not to notice once it’s been pointed out.