Your friendly neighborhood analysists and gaming culture reviewers are back. Wow! It's been a long 15 months, hasn't it?! We were pleasantly surprised to see hundreds of readers still returning and giving us thousands of impressions. We love and appreciate every one of you who kept our site alive during our hiatus. First thing's first: We sincerely apologize for our absence. We admittedly haven't been motivated to cover much over the course of the last year and three months. For starters, there hasn't been a whole lot to discuss. We bet on Stadia surviving the whimsy of Google due to its growth, stability, rapidly growing list of titles, and convenience for traveling gamers. Google killed it anyway and it caused quite an uproar for a few months. Those who wanted Google out of gaming got their way, and the millions who actually enjoyed the platform, including us, had to eat crow. As expected of corporations, there were sleights against Nvidia and Microsoft hidden between the lines. The cost for performance with Azure was untenable, and Nvidia's inflated GPU prices didn't help matters. Google apparently wanted to see wider margins during a time when games needed more powerful components, so cloud gaming was handed over to Amazon, Sony, Nvidia, and Microsoft. We briefly addressed this on X [formerly Twitter] in a series of tweets that we've since deleted. You'll understand why we deleted them by the end of this entry. Because Microsoft owns Azure, it doesn't cost them extra to run a cloud gaming platform. It's all in-house. However, Google has to pay their asking price, which is awfully high. Since Microsoft has a cloud gaming service, this is actually a conflict of interest, anticompetitive, and a result of a culture embracing monopolistic practices regardless of the law. It's all about a favorite winning, not about what's actually best for the people and the industry. Listen, folks. We can't let a small group of people buy and control everything just because they have a lot of money. Why? Because that will leave nothing for anyone else, and since the owners get full control of whatever they own, it results in a loss of freedom and options. Take a look at your power bill. It climbs pretty high right? But do you know why? It's because of a lack of competition in your area. These are called local monopolies. Now, 30 - 40 years ago, the companies competed for service area. That means different companies could run power lines in the same territories. Because of that, customers had options and the companies were forced to compete. Nowadays, your provider owns everything in that area and you have no other options. It means they can charge you whatever they want, and you have to pay because you won't have any power otherwise. If you let that happen in gaming, you surrender all mobility in the space. That's true of every industry. These developments are heartbreaking, and we kind of lost our voices. It's not an excuse or even a backhanded apology; it's just an explanation of where our minds have been. What's there to talk about, you know? We can actually answer that question this time...with a segue to our sponsor.
Here's the straight dope: We're creating a multi-entry adult visual novel epic. Yes, an epic. There will be three sagas, each containing four major arcs. So, that character has no missed details.
Every object in the games will be rendered; no snapshots or illustrations. This is key because we will have the freedom to repose the characters, move objects around scenes, and get the angles right. Now, you're probably wondering if they'll be more typical visual novels that are loaded with stills. No. As the series progresses, we will use more animations and voice acting to give life to the titles. We would like to get into motion capture at some point, which isn't exactly cheap. More on that later. Over time, we plan to recruit models to cameo as characters in our games. This will allow you all to be more involved with the development process. How so? You'll get to vote for who we extend offers to! We want everyone to be a part of it. Depending on the responses we get, we may even do some spinoffs of your favorites. This is all just the tip of the iceberg. We have fighting games, FPS titles, and a MMORPG planned as well. Every release will be a step towards something even bigger. Back to visual novels. We want these games too be dynamic and immersive. We also want to offer convenience. So, we won't be exchanging text for voice acting. We'll instead do both. This way, you can listen to the story and focus on the scenes in front of you, or continue reading if you prefer. We even found some ways to give players more control of the environments. Naturally, this endeavor will be a bit pricey. That's why we need you. We've finally launched our Patreon, and we'd love for you to join us there. We have multiple tiers, and we post updates for those who want to follow along for free before diving in. We understand; no one wants to invest in something before they're sure it's going to happen. It's going to happen, and we'll be sharing every milestone. If you're not comfortable with hyperlinks, you can copy and paste this one: https://www.patreon.com/gamerspointe That's all for now. Please be sure to share. The more people our project is exposed to, the faster we can get the games to market. Thanks in advance, and happy holidays! |
Categories
All
Archives
February 2024
|