Want to see more of this character? Be sure to join us on Patreon to see more updates. We like to share new information and images as we make progress. We're now developing two games at present, and production is going well. However, resources are limited and completing those titles is becoming more challenging. We really want to bring these adventures to you, so please help us by liking, commenting, and sharing.
No identity politics, no partisanship, no ugly sprites, no gimmicks, and no bad writing. This level of quality and detail is guaranteed in all of our games. We aren't reducing the quality of any asset for any title at all.
Hit the link above to directly to our Patreon page and keep the projects alive. Every little bit helps! If you want to watch a while, follow for free, like, comment, and share. If now isn't a good time to drop dough on it, follow for free, like, comment, and share. Exposure is the most important part of this campaign. We have loads of posts available to everybody, so you won't run into constant pay walls when you're trying to see what's going on. We need to meet our goal of 800 Patrons from the Donations, Donations, Donations tier, or 400 Patrons from the Tree Tiers or higher. That will accelerate development. We can do it together! Uncomfortable with hot links? Here it is typed out: https://www.patreon.com/gamerspointe Thanks for reading. Peace! 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! Coming as a surprise to most of the TechTube community yet again, Stadia is set to expand instead of sound it's death rattle this year. Seriously, we don't understand the doubling down on Stadia hatred. Not only is the player base gradually growing, bad press is shrinking as the platform rolls out more features and games.
We already received news of Google opting to upgrade to more powerful Nvidia GPU's. There wasn't a lot said as to what the goal for this is. Stadia renders games perfectly well, so some are assuming that it's for easier development support. But the real kicker is that Stadia will be added to Samsung's new Gaming Hub interface, along with Amazon Luna, GeForce Now, and Xbox Cloud Gaming. This is huge, as it's being included with platforms that are more popular in the gaming community. For a tech giant like Samsung to officially recognize Stadia means that the platform is getting something right. It's also growing into Mexico. Ignore all of that recycled old garbage being pumped out of gaming "journalists" today. Their takes are identical, and just as hot, as they were when it first launched. These are bad opinions based on nothing still relevant today. Stadia has matured, the games library has greatly expanded, there are many more features, and the gameplay experience is great. And don't fall into the false dichotomy. Consoles and gaming PC's aren't dying just because cloud gaming is here to stay. We're all just going to have more ways to connect, and have more fun along the way. Coming as a surprise to most, but not to us, the GeForce GTX 1630 causes an uproar in the PC gaming community. We saw this coming and couldn't understand the intense hatred for the Radeon RX 6400. It seems that gamers are struggling to match their expectations with economic realities. Let's get into it.
According to reports, the 1630 is as powerful as the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. This isn't actually true. It's a step behind the 1050 Ti, losing half of the gaming tests by a few FPS, winning only four, and tying only in one of those gaming tests. Meanwhile, the RX 6400 beat the favored GTX 1650 in 4/6 gaming tests. It's hilarious, to be honest, as the 6400 remains probably the most hated GPU released this year. Why? It's because TechTubers despise it because it doesn't match their completely unrealistic predictions, demands, and expectations. The RX 6400 lacks hardware encoding vital for capturing gameplay clips. The overwhelming majority of PC gamers don't, and will never, use Xbox Game Bar for this. Though we would use it, we have options. We can use third party software solutions, and we actually fault Microsoft for this because it's really not a necessary restriction. AMD deserves some fault as well, seeing as how there are installation issues with the software. The parts are compatible with the software, but the installer is riddled with bugs. For those who are lucky enough to get Xbox Game Bar to work with their supported APU, there's no actual problem. But for those of us who are unlucky, Xbox Game Bar won't recognize our supported 5600G's. See the real problem? An added insult to injury is that the GTX 1630 launched at a higher price point than the RX 6400. Priced at $199 on launch, the budget card costs $40 more than the RX 6400. What are gamers paying more for? It requires more power than the faster 6400, and it may support mGPU but no one's talking about it - however, Nvidia doesn't exactly have a good reputation with budget options in this area (they blocked the feature on the GT 1030 and other non-RTX / non-GTX cards). It looks like the grass wasn't greener on the other side this time around. If you're a smart budget shopper in the market for a good budget card, swallow your pride and buy the RX 6400. It beats the GTX 1650 and costs $40 less. You can capture clips with third party software, it's an easy set up process, it's a single-slot design by default, and it has easy-enable mGPU support. We're having a blast with our twin 6400's, and we disabled mGPU because we don't even need it yet. All hail the true budget king! Down with the GTX 1630! We're gathering collaborators for our live stream! We'll use Bigo to get some popularity, so we won't be joining any agency to collect on gifts there. We don't want our company to serve someone else in that way. Instead we'll get the ball rolling there and build up our community for Twitch. Will we stop the Bigo stream at that point? No. Take this as advice: always have a backup plan. We will maintain a presence there as a backup. We also want to remain accessible to those who can use Bigo but can't use Twitch.
Though we've pretty much quit mobile gaming, we'll be making a small return. We'll explain why we quit in one of our bigger posts. Anyway, we'll be picking up Diablo Immortal, which is currently only good as a mobile game. We got the recommendation from our future collaborators, and did the research on the PC version. It's bad - REALLY bad. The team didn't even try to port it over in a satisfactory way. If that ever changes, we'll make the switch and enjoy cross-platform play with the team. Once we have things set up on Bigo, we'll release our ID so that anyone can follow and join our stream. Please be on your best behavior. Bigo is really strict, and we can't afford to be banned because having no agent means that a permanent ban will never be reversed there. But we have a couple of interested gamers who may be joining us. They're also quite talented, so our first mobile / PC title may be entering production later this year! Beyond that, we're swapping parts on the custom build. Not only will it be significantly more powerful, it will also be noticeably more attractive. We managed to keep the overall cost of v.2 the same as what we originally paid when we first introduced our challenge. Be on the lookout for the full reveal! We'll do video this time. That's it for this one! |
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