I mean, quite frankly it’s the best voice experience I’ve had while playing games so far. The fact that you can set up your own servers with multiple channels so that you can say, have a thread for different games you’re playing with friends is great. I’m not shocked that Discord hasn’t banned the racist servers, I…

Detroit and Sacramento probably aren’t happening, don’t think they’ve been frontrunners for some time now. At this point my bet would be Austin, Cincy, Miami (first three are givens), Nashville and St Louis, maybe Phoenix.

It’s not that crazy if you consider that the US has a larger population than both countries combined.

It’s not siequesting, it’s busy work, that’s the difference.  It’s grinding.  Sidequests are there for extra entertainment that you do because it’s entertaining.  I’ve been playing RPGs a long time, probably longer than you’ve been alive, AC: Odyssey is not an RPG, it’s an open world action game with grind.

Erm, you aren’t reading the article correctly; net income shows them making a profit every year. EA was making a profit before adding microtransactions and lootboxes, they just weren’t making obscene profits. They just weren’t making easy profits. Now they are putting out fewer products and making more money,…

Citation for...all of that?  Because companies like Ubisoft, EA, Activision, etc. are making money hand over fist.  And let’s not forget, this system is one of the “AAA” publishers own making.  They built things up so large that only a handful of big companies could compete in that space, they demanded that every game…

I really wouldn’t be. Some of my favorite “AAA” games were story heavy and fairly short. Mirror’s Edge, Remember Me, Dead Space, Enslaved etc. At most a single play through of those games were maybe 20 hours, but it was worth it and I even revisit them from time to time.  If I want volume of content I can go play an…

It’s the fact that you literally can’t that is the problem, not that anyone is paying to play just part of the game. They’ve literally put a level gate in front of you to prevent you from progressing.

There’s no depth to the game though, they use the grind and level up of RPGs, but none of the depth and interesting dialogue to flesh out characters.  It’s the shallowness of it all, not the system itself.

I mean, that depends on what you consider to be “grind” exactly.  If I just want to play the main storyline of Odyssey, it sounds like I either have to go and do a bunch of side quests or pay for an XP boost.  Given how grindy and boring the last game was, I’m more inclined to believe reviewers who say the game is…

Or just officially decommission the birds that haven’t flown in a while and turn them into parts.

I mean...we kinda already have. We don’t necessarily have troops everywhere, but we have bases around the globe and are able to hit pretty much any ground target from the air in a matter of hours of someone giving the order. It’s not the sort of conquest in which we get to shout “Your country is ours now, mwahahaha!”…

I mean, at least some racists can be reasoned out of racism:

I’m going to disagree here. There are numerous groups in the US that do change the minds of hardcore racists.

Except corporations have an outsized influence on what you have available to you as a consumer. If I don’t want a grindy, microtransactions laden experience and instead want a more focused, fascinating story with high production values...can I find it in the so-called “AAA” space? The answer is no, not anymore; at…

They give you a fair “amount” but do they give you a fair quality? Can you honestly say that every bit of content is really worth spending your time on?  Because based on my experiences with the last game, I’d emphatically say “no”.  Games are more than just “hours spent playing”, they’re about whether or not those…

Exactly. I think a lot of people who don’t see the microtransactions problem are confusing quantity with quality. I tried out the previous Assassin’s Creed game, Origins, after a long time away (last one I played was AC 3) hopeing for a truly interesting reboot. Unfortunately, I found it pretty boring; quite frankly I…

There was a time in this country where corporations didn’t just chase short term profits, but aimed for long-term growth.  Decades of “trickle down” economics has destroyed that, now it’s short term growth, now measured in trades made in a fraction of a second by super computers, that determines a company’s worth.

Erm sorry what?

If you can’t make money in your industry by making a product and selling it, then you shouldn’t be in the industry.  Let’s assume that AC: Odyssey was half the size but with a more focused story and no microtransactions, would that many people really complain about it?  Would it really hurt sales?  I’m skeptical that…