Diecast – Twenty Sided

We’ve waited a long time for Cyberpunk 2077 to come out. On one hand, there’s a LOT to talk about for us fans. On the other hand, non-fans are already sick to death of hearing about it.

I did what I could. My Cyberpunk first impressions are less than half the show. That’s as much restraint as I could muster. I could have filled the whole hour with thoughts on the game.

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Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
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Link (YouTube)

Show notes:

00:00 Cyberpunk 2077

Last week I was so wrapped up in other things that I forgot to post the next entry in the Fallen Order retrospective. It was already written! All I needed to do was add some screenshots and do one last round of proofing! Instead I sat there watching YouTube. I was having one of those annoying off-by-one weeks where you spend all Tuesday thinking it’s Monday, and all of Wednesday thinking it’s Tuesday.

How embarrassing. Sorry about that.

Anyway. The game is out now. Like I said on the show: This game reached too high. It wants to be a huge open world AND a huge simulation AND have an enormous long-running story AND feature many complex branching choices with player agency AND feature a huge cast of vibrant characters AND offer the highest graphical fidelity AND use the latest rendering technologies AND be a systems-driven RPG AND straddle two different console generations.

None of these things are bad on their own. But this game would have been better off with a lot more focus and restraint during development.

17:48 Cyberpunk 2077-Review restrictions.

CD Projekt RED wouldn’t allow reviewers to use their own footage in reviews that came out before launch. Instead you had to use their footage. Essentially, you could only show off their promotional trailers. That’s outrageous, and it’s every bit as anti-consumer as the shit EA and Activision do.

This is incredibly dangerous. People cut this company a lot of slack based on the perception that this operation is run by “fellow gamers” who just want to make the best games they can. It won’t take much to destroy that perception, and once it’s gone they will never get it back. They’ll be just another corporate monolith.

Having the audience feel like you’re one of them is precious. You can’t buy that with television commercials. You can’t sustain it with branding deals and sponsorships. You can’t attain it by pandering to the crowd at E3. The only way to have your audience embrace you as a member of the tribe is by setting yourself apart from the corporations you’re competing with. You need to understand / anticipate the audience needs and expectations, and meet those expectations.

That’s nice if you can pull it off, but if customers catch you lying and engaging in deceptive practices then they’ll see all of your previous virtue as a mask. And I can’t imagine anything more nakedly deceptive than forbidding reviewers from showing off footage from an infamously buggy game.

27:24 Mindustry is still awesome

29:23 Molly’s Game

I realized that one of the reasons I liked this movie so much is because Molly Bloom reminds me a lot of Max, the protagonist in my novel Other Kind of Life. (For the purposes of this discussion, I’m thinking of Molly Bloom as a fictional character. She’s based on a real person, but I’m sure screenwriter Aaron Sorkin took creative liberties with the story.)

Both protagonists are circumspect and cautious people, existing in a world where most people are reckless and selfish. In both cases, you’ve got this subculture that tends to attract people who are dishonest, likely to suffer from substance abuse, greedy, short-sighted, and prone to violence. In that world, having foresight, honesty, patience, and planning skills is like having a superpower. In both stories you’ve got a character that immerses themselves in a subculture without really becoming like the people of that subculture.

Anyway. It’s been over a week since I watched this movie and I’m still thinking about it. Amazing story.

38:29 Mailbag: Double Mail: Inverted Controls

Dear Diecast,

Shamus, I read an article in The Guardian that reminded me of you. It turns out that you’re not a lone weirdo for inverting your mouse. There’s a “large minority” who do so, and scientists are starting to study the differences between inverters and non-inverters.

To test my completely unfounded hypothesis: On a mouse or joystick, do you parse “down” as “back”, like tilting your head back to look up?

I hope that this research will raise awareness and finally get the
Satisfactory devs to make Y-axis inversion work in vehicles!

Link:
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/02/scientists-studying-why-gamers-invert-their-controls

Best regards,
RFS-81

P.S.: They did not say anything about using the numpad instead of WASD.

Dear Casters of the Die,

An IFLS article just came up in my social media feed about scientists studying why some people prefer inverted controls and some people are wrong. Given Shamus’s vocal opinions on the matter, I was wondering if you’ve seen this yet, and what you think of their hypothesis.

Link to article: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/scientists-are-finally-studying-why-some-of-you-nerds-dont-invert-your-controllers/

‘Houiostesmoras
(If you can’t pronounce it, just call me Randy)

54:38 Cyberpunk Reception

Hi,

As you probably heard, the release of Cyberpunk 2077 was less than ideal – the game was (and still is) very buggy and nearly unplayable on older consoles. Given how much hype surrounded that title, do you think that it may lead to some kind of change in the industry, one that’ll force publishers to release more polished games? Especially since titles like Fallout 76 or Anthem were struck with similiar problems? There’s probably a lot of reasons why it won’t happen and I’m curious about your opinion.

Cheers,

Darek