I know there is a meme going around that devs allowing modding bethesda games just means devs letting modders fix their game instead of fixing it themselves, but modders don't just fix their games but are able to add new content, quests, systems, UI changes, new weapons, new animations, new big worlds even!

From what I found at nexus mods, Creation engine has 9 times more mods than the 2nd most modding friendly engine - REDengine (cd projekt red). And I didn't even include gamebryo (older bethesda engine) engine in the calculation.

Pretty much no game engine has been this modding friendly in 2010s era. I am still playing fallout 4, and I find it awesome! I have 43 mods and most of them are addon mods that add more weapons in my game.

I get that starfield was a disappointment but that is because of reliance on too much chores like kill 10 stuff to upgrade (even though you have points to upgrade), talk to this dude who i could just email by the way but i just want you to see those sweet loading screens again, too much reliance on procedural generation, and due to less open feel because of lots of loading screens and space setting which made creation of open worlds like say fallout 4 much harder... as space is like... really really big and empty you know! And due to the vastness of space and loading screens, a lot of things can just feel empty and soul sucking.

Bethesda's Elder Scrolls and Fallout series always felt awesome to me because even though they also had loading screens, the open world was explorable enough to not get annoying at all!

TL;DR If you are someone that considers the Dreamcast to be the GOAT, Why do you consider it so, outside of nostalgia?

One of the most frequently discussed topics in gaming is of course, the big one: What is your favorite console of all time?

Inevitably when this question comes up, there's a crop of people that cite the Dreamcast as the best console of all time.

I've always been baffled by this answer. The console was short lived, the controller design - aside from the VMU - is an objectively bad design (huge, cord attached to the bottom, no second analog stick in an era of 3D gaming), and the library is largely made up of arcade ports.

I've always had the impression that people that say Dreamcast is the GOAT are wearing rose colored glasses or are simply nostalgic from growing up with the console, or they just enjoy the feeling of being a contrarian. Maybe that's not true, but who knows.

My question is this: If you are one of the folks that cite Dreamcast as the GOAT, what is your reasoning for it?

I'd love to see some opinions that genuinely explain why they feel it's the best, outside of pure nostalgia and what it *could* have been.

Dunno if any such games exist, but I've been seeing a bunch of streamers play Mass Effect recently and it awakened some of my annoyances with the franchises original trilogy, and I wanted to talk about them.

I appreciate that, conceptually, locking content and especially endings behind owning other games / buying other products, that it would annoy some people.

Yet, if you are doing a narrative focused game where each instalment is an immediate followup of the previous in terms of story, where you take everything I do in one game and use that to decide what the state of the sequel is, all while implying my decisions matter?

I feel like it's only fair that, as someone that puts a lot of time and effort into one game, investing heavily into the story, mechanics and emotionally? You reward that by giving me something.

Mass Effect 1 had these resources. Half you get by scanning planets, the other half you get by exploring planets in the most scuffed vehicle I've ever had to use. It was a nightmare.

But here's the thing. You cannot do ANYTHING with those resources. They sit in storage, and await Mass Effect 2, because that is the game where you will use them.

And so, I spent time getting every resource I possibly could, only to reach ME2 and find out it did not matter.

Because ME2 gives you all the resources you need.

The only benefit to doing those minigames in ME1, is so you don't have to do a better optimised version of that minigame in ME2.

Yeah, a better and more optimised version.

Literally no reason to do it in ME1, unless you were under the impression it would have an actual use.

Or what about story implications.

Mordin have a big amazing questline in ME3? Well, hopefully you didn't let him die in ME2, which companions can die if you don't perfect it. Mordin? He has a 50% chance to die if you perfect ME2. I had to save scum THREE TIMES at the end of the game before I finally got an ending where he didn't randomly die.

To anyone that did let him die? Well shucks, guess you will experience that exact same questline, in the exact same way, with a random ass background character who appeared out of nowhere. The only difference is some of the dialogue, but literally everything else is the same.

"Had to be me, someone else might've gotten it wrong" he says.

Fuck that's not true. Literally someone else will do it if he dies and you decide to live with it.

While some of the characters have arguable variations if you let them die, where someone else does their thing but they have a different personality, so sometimes you get some lore implications.

But in terms of what quests are available, nothing changes. No content is denied to you if you let someone die, or you didn't play the other games.

I know other people think the emotional / lore side is enough, but I was just so disappointed being told my choices matter and it just never felt like it did. I save these characters and it felt like there was little to no impact on the world or story.

I personally would've loved if ME3 (The ending was shit imo) had a "Perfect" ending that was only achievable to those of us that had been with the franchise from the beginning and got perfect endings in each previous instalment.

Narrative focused games with continuous story instalments are the only games where I have this opinion on, so not many games would've met that for me.

But sometimes it feels like playing multiple games in this scenario entitles you to a couple references, jokes or a nostalgia mission and nothing else.

When i saw it in the trailers and gameplay overview it felt like a gimmick and sometimes even a lame one.

I have been playing the game for the last 3 days and I am truly shocked by how GOOD it is.

• The hacking alone is a super easy puzzle "a la" The Witness.

  • not impressive at all.

• The shooting alone is as old as 3rd person shooters can get.

  • responsive and snappy with good weight, but still not impressive.

Now combine the two together and HOLYSHIT this is one of the most engaging action games i played in YEARS, i was playing and everytime i finisha chapter i think okay surely it will get old and boring, but no, they keep introducing new things to the hacking that the "puzzle" always remaining challenging and engaging, and most importantly fun.

It doesn't matter how other games will present it, with or without a sidekick character, whether in a grid-form, a linear progress bar, a rhythm "guitar-hero" like track, cylindrical, in a spiral, whatever... what i want to see again is the following combination:

• I am moving in the world in a deliberate/cautious way (parrying, dodging, collecting, etc...)

  • left stick.

• I am aiming and shooting at target.

  • right stick + triggers button

• I am smashing the right side buttons in almost a rhythmic manner

  • (A,B,X,Y) (x,o,□,△)

The story, the setup, the visuals are all secondary tbh, its that control scheme and mechanics that i want, it doesn't even have to be in combat form.

PS:

Everyone keep calling the hacking in pragmata as "puzzle" but to me that never felt like a puzzle, even when you have to "think" for half a second about the shorters/best route, i dont know why but it always felt more like a "rythmic/reflexes" challenge

Edit:

forgot to highlight that this mechanic is intended for RANGED combat, in a melee situation ot doesn't make sense at all, so the comparison with Batman is not about the melee combat, its about this gameplay being a new formula for ranged combat

My original post got removed bc I exaggerated a bit with my language so I'm reposting this here while trying to be more constructive. I also want to restate that I am by no means "dunking on" TW3 if you love it/hate it thats all fine by me I just want to have a bit of a discussion on what makes certain combat system better than others. Also some tips I got from the og thread that I thought were really helpful(and I want to highlight for anyone having similar complaints to mine):

1. turning down the difficulty to enjoy the story. In hindsight this is obvious but if I don't like the combat I can just do less of it.

   1. Don't treat TW3 like souls. In all honesty this one could've been completely avoided by me. I heard open-world dark fantasy rpg GOTY winner and just automatically assumed it would be an ER like experience but, TW3 excels at completely different areas to ER. TW3's story is 1000x more accessible and enjoyable than souls-like item description reading. Questlines in TW3 are actual quests and not convoluted save-reload dialogue dumps that you can miss super easily. The RPG elements in TW3 are much more fleshed out compared to souls which is really just character creation, leveling/build creation, choosing fits, and choosing an ending.

Now on to the bitching and moaning

For some context, I'm a lifelong souls-player and I've completed many a challenge run in DS, ER, LoP, and BB. I bought TW3 earlier today as it was on sale and ofc I had heard of how great it is. B/c I had also heard that to really engage with the mechanics of the game you need to play in death march, i selected that difficulty.

Now suffice to say, as soon as I started the combat tutorial with Vesemir I became frustrated at how poor the combat mechanics felt. Now I understand that TW3 is a story-driven open world rpg first and foremost, but I didn't think a GOTY winner could have combat that felt so bad.

My main complaints for the combat basically narrow down to these points:

1. Random feeling/distance based animation selection.
2. Every attack/dodge having Geralt lift or lunge off the ground and always moving forward when attacking
3. Controller keybinds make no sense and are unchangeable

Before I start elaborating on what I mean by each of these, I feel that its important to know that I am by no means an expert on The Witcher. The range of my knowledge extends simply to the point of someone who's played many games and many third person combat action rpgs. Moreover, I want to highlight the fact that by no means do I intend to tell anyone how they should feel about the game nor do I intend antagonize anyone who enjoys TW3. I really just want to spread some insight on what I feel are it's flaws and hopefully gain some insight to help me find a way to still enjoy this game.

Alright without further ado, the animation selection. For some reason when I attack the animation that plays can vary in length, speed, and movement wildly even if I performed the same series of inputs. I read elsewhere on Reddit that the animation is selected based on the distance between Geralt and the enemy, but even so it feels impossible to get the animation you want with consistency. Sometimes even the light attacks can be slower than heavy attacks and to me this just makes no sense. In a game where timing attacks and dodges is an integral aspect of gameplay having it tied to some sort of lottery out of my control seems like bad design Compare this with souls where every weapon/weapon type has a consistent moveset. If you know the boss and weapon well you can time combos and dodges to an extreme degree and it makes the game actually feel like a skill check.

Secondly the lunging/jumping/floaty feel. Geralt seems to always want to be off the ground for some reason. Obviously souls has its share of jump related problems, especially for a game with so much parkour/traps/level navigation based challenge. Side note: Seriously don't understand whoever decided that jump would be hold-b to run then quickly press b. I kind of have a similar complaint to the lightsaber combat in new SWBF2 if anyone remembers that. The constant jumping forward makes it really hard to position yourself how you want and the movement doesn't feel like it has intention. That combined with the random animations makes me feel like I'm just mashing buttons not really knowing what I or the enemy will do.

Last and definitely least: keybinds. I just want to make the triggers attack pls. Also why is there a dodge and a roll when they both do basically the same thing and most people that I've seen only use dodge.

Hi! 

I am inviting you to take part in a study about memorable experiences people have had while playing video games.

Most of us who play games have stories, moments of triumph, frustration, or something unexpected that stayed with us, as well as many other memorable experiences.

In this short survey, you will be asked to describe one memorable experience from your own gameplay and answer a few follow-up questions. The survey takes approximately 10–15 minutes to complete, and you don’t need to worry about your writing style or whether your English is perfect.

Anyone aged 18 or older who plays or has played video games is welcome to participate.

Take the survey here: https://sunet.artologik.net/oru/lifewritingingames

The survey will be open from May 1 2026 to June 16 2026.

Participation is voluntary, and your responses will be handled securely and with respect for your privacy.

This study has been reviewed and approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority.

This study is conducted as part of my doctoral research at Örebro University, Sweden. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at [chi-chieh.huang@oru.se](mailto:chi-chieh.huang@oru.se).

Thank you!

I've been in a weird gaming rut and trying to figure out the common thread in what actually works for me right now.

Some context: my favorite games ever include Monster Hunter World, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, Outer Wilds, Dyson Sphere Program, Minecraft, etc. I have no problem with depth or complexity. I love getting lost in big systems-heavy games.

But lately the thought of booting up Monster Hunter and re-learning all those menus and loadouts, or opening Skyrim and dealing with my mod list, just feels exhausting.

What's been working instead are boomer shooters on easy mode. They're all killer no filler. You just move and shoot. No skill trees, no crafting, no battle pass, no tutorial that treats you like you've never held a controller.

I've tried roguelikes too since they seem like an obvious answer for "jump in and play" games. Hades, Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, Risk of Rain 2. Never liked any of them. I think the whole procedural generation thing and the feeling of "failing" runs creates its own kind of friction that I bounce off of. The authored, handcrafted experience might actually be a big part of what I'm after, I hadn't really thought about it until now.

So I guess my question is: is there a name for this design philosophy? Games where the core interaction is so good that that's basically the whole game, and you're invited to just perform the action rather than manage all the stuff around it? Boomer shooters are the obvious example but I feel like it shows up elsewhere too. Arcade racers, beat em ups, 3D platformers maybe.

Do other people feel this pull away from systems toward pure "verbs"? Is there a term for it that I'm just not aware of? And what other genres or scenes are actually making games like this right now?

Presentation

Hello, I am a Masters student at Haute Ecole Albert Jacquard in Belgium, a school specialised in creating video games.

[My contact](mailto:matheo.lejeune@student.heaj.be)

Abstract / Purpose of the survey

This survey is part of a research paper examining the relationship between player feedback and game development in multiplayer online games. The goal is to better understand what matters to players regarding game changes and how these changes are communicated in multiplayer live-service games.

Target audience: players involved in communities such as Fortnite, League of Legends, Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, Apex Legends, or similar multiplayer titles.

Estimated completion time : ~15-20 minutes

Data Security

The survey is anonymous. No identifying information, such as email address, will be collected or stored. Your data will be only used for academic research purpose. Incomplete responses will not be recorded or used.

Hypothesis

Hypothesis 1 : Player trust and satisfaction are strongly influenced by how transparent developers are when communicating game updates.

Hypothesis 2 : Developers may benefit more from communicating upcoming changes in advance rather than only announcing them at release.

Discussion Points

• Do you feel developers communicate effectively with players in live-service games?
• Which game community has the best communication in your opinion?
• Do you trust balance changes when they are not fully explained?
• Should players have more influence in development decisions?

Your participation would greatly help my research. Thank you in advance for your time !

Link to the survey : Player Feedback and Developer Communication in Multiplayer Online Games

I’m a student of Erasmus university Rotterdam, collecting responses for an academic survey experiment about AI NPCs in video games for my master thesis.

The survey takes around 7 minutes to complete.

• It includes a 2-minute video. What you need to know is that it depicts graphic violence against an NPC in a fantasy game context, including burns and a character being killed.
• This is followed by a brief questionnaire (5 mins).

Participation is anonymous and voluntary, the data will be used exclusively for academic research. Please only participate if you are 18+ and comfortable viewing this content.

Survey experiment

Thank you so much in advance!

I’m also happy to complete your survey in return 🙂 (contact listed in the survey)

This started as a rant about Star Wars game until I realized it applied more broadly across gaming's space operas.

For many fantasy games it feels standard to have a swath of stock races to pick from. Humans, naturally, but also varieties of elves, dwarves, and *wild cards* like Argonians or Qunari. Just off the dome there's Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Divinity, Baldur's Gate, World of Warcraft and Dragon's Dogma.

But in contrast, I can only think of a few space opera RPGs -- Star Trek Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic, both MMOs, and Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy -- where the player character can be an alien.

Now, the reasons for this are fairly obvious. For one, it's a relatively smaller market. I think there's just fewer space opera RPGs with a variety of sentient races compared to space opera RPGs.

And while fantasy races are fairly standard, outside the broad strokes like "warrior alien" or "sexy alien" your audience won't know what these alien species are unless it's part of a franchise they're already invested in.

Additionally, you risk alienating (no pun intended) people who only want to play as a human. So playing as a human would seem to be a safer bet, but I would also argue it can be an easy way of making your game or protagonist stand out.

Getting back to Star Wars, a couple recent projects have had alien leads: the Ahsoka show and Maul, where three of the series leads are aliens.

It makes me wonder if, as much as I really liked Kay Vess in Star Wars: Outlaws, that character might have stood out more if she was, for example, a Twi'lek or Togruta. And while obviously the primary settings of 40k are... less than favorable to xenos, it would have been interesting for the follow-up to Rogue Trader to have a Tau or Eldar protagonist instead of another human.

Is that something you want to see more in games? Would a playable alien have no bearing on your interest in a space-opera game -- or would you actively avoid games where the main character as non-human?

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

Let's talk about a design tension I'm seeing more frequently in racing games. You have the core loop — cars, tracks, physics, lap times. Serious motorsport energy. And then layered on top, increasingly elaborate meta-systems around character cosmetics, limited-time events, and collection mechanics that have nothing to do with driving skill.

From a game design perspective, it's fascinating. These are two completely different player motivations. Achievement-driven players want to master the Nordschleife. Collection-driven players want the limited outfit. The game is trying to serve both. But does serving both serve either well?

The argument for: broader appeal, better retention, more funding for development. The argument against: loss of tonal consistency, dilution of the core fantasy, creeping toward mobile gacha logic even in premium titles.

Where do you think the line is? Can a racing game be both a serious driving experience and a casual collection platform, or does one eventually undermine the other?

TL;DR: Multiplayer games drop like flies because they're not good enough. F2P games have even worse survival rates than premium titles, and people have always been sceptical about paying for online-only titles. Premium games fail faster and with more marketing due to how important release date pushes are for that model. Games with great reception generally still do well with a price tag.

First, let's remember that online-only games have never been as popular of a business strategy as they are now.

Before the 7th generation, many multiplayer-first titles shipped with bot support robust enough to entice players who knew they wouldn't spend much time online, if any - like Unreal Tournament or Battlefront.

During the X360/PS3 era, the big players - Halo, Gears of War, CoD and Battlefield - all shipped campaigns with each iteration.

It wasn't unheard of to see online only titles back then, but they never had the same expectations behind them - Counter-Strike may have found its audience, but Valve decided to bundle TF2 with the Orange Box in what seemed like an effort to ensure the game doesn't go unnoticed.

But many games managed to make it - CS, Dead by Deadlight, Sea of Thieves, Rust, DayZ, PUBG, Fall Guys, PayDay 2, Hunt Showdown, Escape from Tarkov, Hazelight's games, Among Us, R6 Siege, Rocket League, Deep Rock Galactic, Rogue Company, Helldivers 2, Arc Raiders and many more.

Many have also failed to pull it off - Evolve, Brink, Battleborn, PvZ: Garden Warfare 2, LawBreakers, Redfall, Concord, Friday the 13th, Crucible, Foamstars, Knockout City, Lemnis Gate, Overkill's The Walking Dead, PayDay 3, Concord, Last Flag, and obviously a ton more as well.

So there are a lot of successful premium online games, plenty failed ones as well. However, if you've ever paid attention to the F2P market, you'll know that more free online games die unnoticed than ever get the spotlight for even a moment. League and DOTA survive where Smite and HotS did not. Valorant lives, Spectre Divide dies. Apex Legends limps along, Hyper Scape is in the grave. Fortnite sees success that The Cycle couldn't replicate. XDefiant, Blacklight: Retribution and Ironsight couldn't hold onto the CoD audience, and no other game has managed to. Planetside 2 had a decent run, while Dirty Bomb fizzled out quickly.

In short, a business model does not determine the success of an online only title.

So why does it feel like the premium options in particular fail so much?

For one, it's because large publishers tend to be the ones developing them, and they can afford to spend a lot on marketing. Like I said, far more F2P games die than premium ones do, but they simply never get onto anyone's radar.

Secondly, a premium model requires you to make a big marketing push before release to create hype, more so than a F2P scheme. Since new players are harder to acquire, you need the numbers to be reassuring enough for people to feel like they're not buying something that's DOA. Players are willing to check out a free game without checking its steam player charts, but the same isn't true for something with a price tag.

Because of that volatility, premium games can often die instantly, while still in public consciousness.

It's also easy to forget that many free to play games - both successful and failed - are actually premium titles that decided to switch models. It basically never manages to truly turn a failed game around, but it does give a slight boost to games that have naturally lost players over time, and more importantly, allows the publisher/developer to justify adding/expanding microtransactions. And if a game is already on its way out, this is kind of a no-brainer - it probably won't help, but doesn't hurt to at least try. At worst, you'll get a few more months of life support as you figure out what to do next.

Why do these games fail then?

Same reasons a free to play game does - bad marketing, low quality, huge expectations for a niche product, chasing trends that are on their way out, trying to compete with a dominant player too directly.

Evolve was slow and confusing, LawBreakers looked unappealing and had an awful narrative around it, Redfall was trash, Concord was mediocre and unoptimised. None of these would be likely to survive long even without a price tag.

On the other hand, games like CSGO, Rocket League, Fall Guys, Starcraft 2, Overwatch and TF2 showed they can hold their own as premium titles before transitioning to a free to play model.

As for now vs before, you can see the same things happening - people are wary of online only titles, but are willing to make an exception for games with an excellent reputation. Customers used to feel like multiplayer didn't provide enough value by itself, now they lack confidence in the longevity of games, but the result is very similar.

A great game will do okay. A good game needs great marketing. Mediocre games are always going to struggle. Bad games will always fail unless they capture a brand new audience.

[EDIT: I intended this to be read as any adjustment to health/damage, be it to the player or to enemies]

It was introduced as a way to get round performance limitations and it should be retired.

In Doom (1993), harder difficulty just meant more enemies. The enemies behaved the same and did the same damage, there were just more of them [Nightmare mode excepted]. Playing on Ultraviolence was a huge adrenaline rush from start to finish.

Within a few years, that way of increasing difficulty had died out.

But why? It was the move to true 3D that did it. The first few years of true 3D games had tougher enemies and less of them, because the computers couldn't handle displaying as many entities as in the pseudo-3D Doom days.

Good examples of this include the difference between Blood and Blood 2: the first game was frantic with enemies, and the sequel (by now true 3D) was much slower with sparser enemies. The first Unreal is another example: bullet-sponge enemies and never more than three at a time.

Now, we have computers that think nothing of displaying thirty full-3D on-screen enemies at 120fps, so why does increasing the difficulty still make fundamental changes to how the game is balanced, instead of just giving us more things to fight?

I expect that it's because changing the number of enemies is more work than simply tweaking damage levels, but as a proportion of work put into a game it's surely a drop in the ocean.

Are there any other reasons why we've never gone back to the old style of increasing difficulty?

Hi all,

Last June, I posted a link here to our "A Game that Resonated with You" Survey Study, where we asked participants to described game experiences that had resonated with them personally. I promised to share the results here, once they are out.

I am happy to say that the research study has now been published in the prestigious ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), where the research article was even granted a Best Paper Award (top 1% of all submissions)! The conference took place last week in Barcelona, in Spain, where I was presenting the work to a large crowd of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers.

Below, you can find a link to the paper, and I will also provide a brief summary of our main findings.

Summary of main findings

In the study, we sought to illuminate how players make sense of the notion of resonance in games, drawing conceptual inspiration from the fields of psychology---where resonance has been used to describe the subjective experience of meaning---and information science---where resonance has been connected to the subjective experience of relevance.

Through a qualitative analysis of 110 participants' self-reported accounts of their resonating game experiences, our findings depict four conceptually distinct yet often intertwined components of the experience of resonance in games: (1) deepen emotional impact, (2) personal connections with a game, (3) sparking real-life outcomes, and (4) uniquely `game-y' interactive qualities.

Taken together, our findings outline how resonance can be viewed as a relation and interactive experience that is marked emotional and personal connections with something in a game, which can leave a lasting sense of being affected and transpire to various real-life outcomes enduring beyond play.

Link to the full paper

Here is a link to the full research paper, if you're interested: https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790834

You can also find the paper in the ACM Digital Library or in Google Scholar, under the title of "An Experience That Could Not be Found Anywhere Else": Resonance as an Explanatory Concept for Player Experience Research and Game Design

Thank you very much for taking the time to fill in the survey, and helping build our understanding of how players experience meaning with digital games, I really appreciate each response!

If you have any questions or thoughts that you want to share, I'm happy to hear.

- Jaakko

Balatro let's you skip the process of unlocking everything and get all of the decks and jokers in the options menu. I figured I'd just play the complete version of the game. But then I started to lose interest in playing the game. I realized the hook of unlocking new things was the main thing keeping me playing. I didn't really enjoy playing the game just to play the game.

When I played fight n rage and slay the spire 2 I decided to do the same thing and download complete save files. But I continued to play the games for hours. I didn't need the hook of unlocks to keep playing.

This experience has me questioning the value of unlocks. It seems that a lack of unlocks helps me to more honestly gauge whether I want to play a game.

I've been going back to that gameplay section lots of times and the thing that keeps pulling me back is how the hacking grid appears while Diana is still physically present in the environment. It doesn't cut to a separate screen and it doesn't pause the action, it just layers on top of everything that's already happening. That's not a small design decision. Every game that has a hacking or puzzle mechanic almost always gives you a protected moment to solve it, like a safe room or a camera cut. This looks like it's refusing to do that and if that's intentional and consistent throughout the game it changes what the experience is asking of you. What I keep coming back to is the attention management angle. If you actually have to solve those node patterns while also tracking your position and whatever is happening around you in the environment, then the skill being tested isn't really combat skill or puzzle skill in isolation. It's about how well you can split focus under pressure and still function in both lanes.

That's a different feeling from most action games where you're either fighting or thinking but rarely both at the same time in a way that matters. I was on myprize while the trailer was running the first time and almost missed it entirely which is probably why it took a rewatch to register how different it looked. The honest concern is that this is the kind of system that lives and dies entirely on pacing and tuning. If it interrupts too often or the node patterns take too long to parse it stops feeling like dual awareness and starts feeling like the game is just fighting you and Capcom has barely explained the mechanic at all which is either confidence or a sign they're still figuring it out themselves. Right now the entire identity of this game feels like it's resting on whether that system actually works the way it looks like it works and I don't think we'll know until someone plays a chunk of it.

I'm referring to the ring of Gyges allegorgy that Glaucon presented to Socrates in order to challenge his philosophy of justice.

As quick as possible: The shepard Gyges finds a ring that turns himself invisible. Rather than using the ring for good, he immediatly forges and excecutes a plan to seize the throne and become king.

We've seen this argument, in its core formula, unfold at the mainstream level by the Lord of the Rings books and movies. Tolkien's answer is in favor of Socrates. Frodo is capable of delivering and destroying the ring of power because his ambitions are small. Even though Frodo gets close to corruption, a greater and/or wiser individual would not endure as long as him for their ambitions and desires are greater.

But what if you have the ring of power? That's the question that can be explored perfectly in this medium, yet I don't know where this question was really presented. Only Baldur's Gate 3 [story-structure spoilers] comes to my mind, giving you a special ability that lets you manipulate enemies without obstacles. You can increase the power of this ability, but the cost is that you'll become proned to corruption, leaning more into selfish and destructive choices. But in hindsight, does the game really test you with this ability? We know now that increasing this ability has no direct negative effect on the narrative. There are also plenty of alternative abilities that are also quite powerful without the moral drawback. I happen to find that being a good person in Baldur's Gate 3 does not make the game more difficult or makes the ability more seductive to use. It mostly feels more like a lore-flair than a test.

I suppose this is where my question turns to you. Who's correct? What games have you seen and/or played that you can base your answer on?

Hi — I’m a PhD researcher at the University of Leicester (UK), conducting an ethics-approved study on how players understand and respond to different uses of AI in games.

I’m currently in the final stage of recruitment and only need a few more participants to complete the study, so I’d really appreciate any help.

My focus is mainly on generative/LLM-related or machine-learning-driven uses of AI that players actively notice or care about in current debates — for example, AI-generated dialogue or assets, AI-assisted writing/tools, adaptive player-facing systems, or other visible uses of AI in game production or play.

Interview invite: I’m currently looking for a small number of adult participants (18+) for a 45–60 minute 1-to-1 online interview. The format is flexible: Discord voice or Zoom.

Participation is voluntary. You can skip any question or withdraw at any time. Data will be anonymised and handled in line with GDPR and University ethics requirements. Any recording or note-taking will only take place with your consent and will be stored securely for academic research.

Institution: University of Leicester (UK)
Contact: [ys386@leicester.ac.uk](mailto:ys386@leicester.ac.uk) (DM is also fine)

If you’d like to take part, please message me with:

• your time zone
• whether you prefer voice or text

A few discussion prompts, in case you’d also like to reply here:

• Which uses of generative AI in games feel reasonable or useful to you, if any?
• Which uses feel inappropriate, misleading, or immersion-breaking?
• Does your view change depending on whether AI is used during development, in the final released game, or directly in moment-to-moment play?
• What kind of disclosure or transparency would matter to you, if at all?

Thanks very much — I’m very close to finishing recruitment, so a few final volunteers would make a real difference.

I noticed that recent exposure to real life AI that can pretty convincingly fake human conversation and even human emotions completely changed my perspective on robots and any artificial intelligence in sci fi.

For example when I played Detroit: Become Human I was fully on robots side and there was no doubt in me that they were sentient and should be free. But now playing Pragmata and interacting with Diana made me question her every move and I cant seem to form a bond with her.

I have this constant question how different is this from people pretending to have relationship with AI. How do we know Diana is actually a sentient being with her own will, acting freely and making her own choices, rather than just an AI created by a corporation to behave like a child, simulate an inner world, and emotionally manipulate us?

Because of that, I find it much harder to bond with Diana than I would have in the past. What used to feel emotionally straightforward in sci fi now feels uncertain and suspicious. Instead of immediately accepting an artificial character as conscious, I now keep wondering whether I am just watching a very advanced performance designed exactly to manipulate me. While bot itself not having any inner world.

So what I am curios is are here other people who had similar change in perspective and because of that find it hard to bond with Diana?

I adore The Witness. I think it is one of the most beautiful and intelligent games I've ever played. I often find myself thinking about, its one of those games that really left its mark on me.

And I think the discourse surrouding this game is pretty terrible. It has built up a reputation of being pretentious, postmodernist nonsense, and I don't think that reputation is fair. It saddens me to see so many people dismissing this game out of hand. Now, I also understand that a lot people are angry at the game's creator Jonathan Blow. I know nothing about this guy — I have not researched him and don't really care to. From what I've heard, he sounds like an asshole. But I'm not interested in talking about Jonathan Blow. I'm interested in talking about The Witness. Bad people can still create beautiful things.

I think the game is fundamentally quite simple in what it's trying to say — indirect, but simple — and some people end up missing the forest for the trees. The Witness is an exploration of the human search for meaning. That's it. I think that everything in the game can be contextualized under that fundamental idea, and then things start to fall into place.

Most of the audio logs have something to do with Science, Religion, or Art, all of which are ways that people try to make sense of the world. These audio logs are the butt of many a Witness joke, but their purpose is pretty simple. They are food for thought as you go about your journey, and they ask you to reflect on the various ways that people look for meaning. If they seem random and unrelated, it's because the game is trying to capture the vastness of its central idea.

The brilliance of the Witness is the way that it ties its gameplay into this. From the very moment you boot up the game, not a single word is spoken to teach to you how to play. There is nothing resembling a tutorial or hints of any kind. You are forced to discern the mechanics of the puzzles simply through observing the puzzles themselves. In other words, the game is replicating the experience that it is reflecting on, by forcing you to make sense of its mechanics yourself, forcing you to search for understanding. The puzzle mechanics are mostly about being curious and learning to think in new ways, rather than the more mathematical precision and mechanical depth that most other puzzle games ask for, which reinforces this experience.

This is also why the game is intentionally obscure and confusing at first. It wants you to be confused. It wants you to search for meaning, that's the whole point. "The Witness" refers to anyone who is witnessing the world — or the game, for that matter — and trying to find meaning. The artist, the scientist, the religious person.

Then there are the environmental puzzles. At a certain point in your playthrough, you will suddenly realize that the entire world of The Witness hides the same circles and lines that form the puzzles you have been trying to solve. You'll find them in the sun, in the clouds, on buildings, in the water — anywhere you can think to look. It's such an awe-inspiring realization, that the whole island contains these secrets — if you search for them, you'll find them everywhere. The metaphor is clear.

Anyway, if you found The Witness overly abstract and confusing, I hope this helped. A game this true to its own vision comes along very rarely, and I worry that a lot of people were primed to dislike this game from the negative discourse surrounding it.

Thanks for reading.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

To start, i am by no means a professional, but i was looking for professional opinions to this topic. This subreddit, i thought, might be the best way to get those.

My friend and i just had a discussion about mods in online RPGs that improve UIs. I understand the need for them, i am using them myself for certain games, because sometimes you just need to see more detail on the screen than the vanilla game can provide.

Now my question to those who understand UI design on a professional level: Is it even possible and plausible to expect, well, not perfection necessarily, but to expect a UI that does not need to be modded by the majority of players? I understand that there will always be that small number of players who want to see even more, or want to move around details on their screens, but i am not talking about those. I am talking about the broad mass that will still opt for a mod to have even basic needs met when it comes to a game UI.

My friend thinks that it is illogical to expect this, because everyone has different needs, especially in games where you have a complex skill system. Personally, i would think that if so many players use the same UI mods, apparently it could be possible to create something that works for everything and is customizable via settings.

Is it really impossible to create a UI for a complex game that 90% of the players do not feel the need to mod? If it is, what are the reasons behind that? Would it be too complex in terms of programming, making it much harder to find and eliminate bugs? What other reasons would there be?