This is a disgusting money and attention grab loosely framed as journalism. Truly terrible stuff here.

This is perhaps the most upsetting thing I've read about AI so far, and that's saying a lot. Thanks for digging in to it for us.

also i can't wait to play Ragebound!

Yeah, that I get! There are so many games from that era that I never finished but played over and over again anyway. Got to the final boss in Mega Man X so many times but couldn't put it away. In fact I can barely remember many games from that era I finished as a kid. Didn't stop me from loving them

I get this entirely. I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to beat Sigrún in God of War, I've done both Last of Us on Grounded difficulty... occasionally I go nuts and decide to tackle what feels like an impossible challenge. And yet I still can't get anywhere on the original Donkey Kong!

I think what I'm ultimately saying is that I feel like NES / '80s games were often difficult because of the desire to keep people playing in an arcade, and that concept made its way home. Some people relish that, and that's great! But sometimes it feels not in service of a better game.

Makes me think about how Astro Bot and DK Bananza almost entirely do away with the concept of "lives." There's no reason to limit lives in those games, it's not part of the design concept and wouldn't make them better.

Yeah, there's just more types. That's interesting though because I feel like a lot of '80s game design is an extension of arcade game design from the time (so many of those games are ports to some degree) and thus they're designed to suck you dry of quarters....

But game design is so wildly different now that the comparison is almost meaningless? From your posts I know that you're not saying one should *only* play the way you're describing, but old games used difficulty so that people wouldn't mind playing them over and over again...

The vibe from today's announcement

It's so damn good.

ugh, i missed this one. not a huge shock but a shame nonetheless