Bring back versus puzzle games. Puyo Puyo is more or less the only surviving IP today, and even that is only barely on life support now that Sega has banished it to Apple Arcade exclusivity.

The whole damn genre lies in ruins now and I miss it so much. Someone, anyone, make a new game please.

Do they though? The biggest and most profitable games right now are all live services. Consumers are very much voting for live services.

Rivals has found its niche, but I don’t think even that is pulling in the kinds of numbers Warner expects for a AAA they sunk this much money into.

What’s a foot long and slippery? A slipper.

What’s red and smells like blue paint? Red paint.

Why did the blind man fall in the well? He couldn’t see that well.

A man goes to the doctor and says “I think I have hearing problems.” “Can you describe the symptoms?” “Sure! Homer’s fat and Marge has blue hair.”

Did you hear about the huge sale at the Lego store? People were lined up for blocks.

I sat down for dinner at a restaurant, and the waiter asked me, “Do you want to hear today’s special?” I said, “Yes please.” “No problem sir. Today is special.”

I’d tell you a time travel joke, but you didn’t get it.

I used to work at a toy factory making plastic Draculas. There were only two of us, so I had to make every second Count.

You don’t have to tell me the other guy is terrible. I know he is.

But did you actually watch the debate? The fact that he came out of that debate arguably looking even worse than Trump - in the eyes of voters, don’t even try to argue this one - was a clear red flag.

There was never any ‘advantage’ here, and Biden stepped down because even he knew it.

If you want to “do everything you can to win”, step one is not running the guy who was borderline incoherent in the debates. Staying by that would’ve been shooting yourself in the leg.

Did we watch the same debate here? There was never any advantage coming out of that one.

I’m basing my analysis on the observable trend that incumbents lose when the economy is poor. As well as, y’know, Biden’s abysmal poll numbers after the debate, the reason he dropped out in the first place.

You’re the one who started insisting incumbent advantage would’ve been a thing here, where’s your crystal ball?

Encumbant advantage? In this economic climate, it’s exactly the opposite. People who are feeling increasingly fed up with a world in which they cannot make ends meet vote against the status quo.

4 years of Trump got people to vote against Trump. 4 years of Biden got people to vote against his VP.

Biden himself would lost even harder than Kamala did.

I’m much more scared of Trumpism than I am of the man. The next guy is taking notes on how to wield his rhetoric, and will actually be competent at pushing through even greater evil.

Lie down, try not to cry, cry a lot.

Some games I’m excited enough for to want to spend full price on release. Some games I’ll wait for a sale on. Just depends on the game.

Well, I’ve been trying to put some content on !fgc@lemmy.world and !mahjong@lemmy.nerdcore.social, but there’s been almost no engagement. I can’t imagine it’d be worth even trying to start communities for even more niche topics than that.

Clicking the “Create a Community” button doesn’t magically spawn an audience of people who share my hobbies and want to post about them.

Fighting games and Riichi Mahjong.

There’s usually a local event for at least one of the games I play every month or so. I travel out to Combo Breaker every year for the big major as well.

For Riichi Mahjong, the local club here meets every week. Haven’t had the chance to attend a big tournament yet, but I’m hoping I can fit one into my travel budget at some point.

What am I supposed to be looking at here?

Currently a Galaxy S9+. Battery life isn’t the best anymore, and I’m running low on internal storage, but it’s still serving me well. I’m not even sure what I’d upgrade to, I really need the SD slot that almost nothing new has anymore.

Best was my old Motorola Droid 2, I miss slide-out keyboards so damn badly.

Chess.

For most games, it’s not difficult to make AI that can absolutely destroy humans. But it turns out to be very difficult to make AI that feels like a fun and engaging challenge to a human. Hardest of all is making AI that realistically plays like a human does.

The slowdown problems you experienced may be relegated to the Switch version, because…it’s the Switch.

It’s a 2D puzzle game. It’s not doing anything the Switch shouldn’t be able to handle. Champions never had any problems. Even the Wii was perfectly capable of running 20th, and not much has actually changed since then.

Like, I know the Switch is not the beefiest system ever, but this is not a game that should need a PS5 Pro or whatever.

You may not like playing against bots, but you’d also hate playing against absolutely no one.

That’s the current state of every platform but Switch.

I’m well aware that crossplay isn’t trivial, but it’s too important to not be a priority. If you’re making a multiplayer game and you want it to have a playerbase, crossplay is vital to keep your game alive. A publisher the size of Sega has the resources to get it done.

I don’t know that some new game is going to solve the player acquisition problem without a new gimmick.

Does simply being content-complete count as a gimmick? It’s something we still haven’t seen yet in the west. I think 20th and Chronicle had a ton of great things to offer new players. Chronicle’s JRPG story mode might be the most innovative onboarding experience any puzzle game has ever seen.

Too bad the west never saw it.

PSN Plus is $80/year, XBox Live is $60/year. And both of those are for the lowest tier.

$20/year for Nintendo Switch Online. That’s $20 more than it should be, but at least it’s not nearly as expensive as the other consoles.

No. I don’t trust another corporate-owned platform, and I don’t trust the way they pay lip service to federation while still making everything dependent on one central server they control.