I can easily imagine tiny towns, neighborhoods (and even apartments) using a Mastodon server to create a community based social media. Now, whether people would WANT to use that, and if it would just turn into NextDoor, are separate issues.
Today seems busy as hell for "oh, that's kinda interesting".
He's been talking about it on Mastodon for quite a while now. It's a shame.
/edit: It wasn't the game he talked about on Masto; that game finished/released! My dumb. I thought it was continued development.
Wow, it's really surprising to me that it's not. Huh.
I do wish they'd make a "my party only" mode for the more hardcore PVE players. I know someone who would prefer that, even if I don't mind a little tension.
Or at least consider a free weekend for everyone.
I will say as a solo things are usually pretty chill. But not always.
I don't know if anyone else is stuck on ARC Raiders like I am, but I'm happy they did. I can't imagine time delays on crafting.
Downwell and Holedown are both fantastic games played in portrait. But I won't lie; lately I've fallen back into Marvel Snap and I live it. (Not love, live.) But never spent a dollar on it.
There's plenty of better deep dives on YouTube, but basically it's a system in Shadows of Mordor (and moreso in Shadows of War) that would take a random NPC you were fighting and were joined by (or almost killed,) and elevate them thematically. If one knocked you down there's a chance they would pick up your sword and break it, smack talk you, and walk away. That guy, of his name was Doug, became Doug the Sword Breaker. Never time you saw him, he'd get a short introduction and a quip or two to remove you of who he was.
If you died, since you were a spirit they'd just mock that they already best you before. But if you were killing them, they might get a scene where they manage to get away to amplify the story. Or maybe you'll just kill them. It was random and happened with random NPCs, elevating them in the enemy army.
I believe in the second one you could even mind control someone, and take out the people above them, and have a spy in the upper ranks.
Imagine an action game with some Crusader Kings plot drama happening.
Honestly I think there's probably enough prior art to get away with using whatever you wanted from it. But a) I'm no lawyer and b) I'm not risking millions of dollars making a game.
there's a grappling hook in ARC Raiders (called the snap hook) and I have one but have never bothered using it. I should change that some day.
It's a popular misconception that Halo was intended to be a Mac exclusive when it was revealed. It was going to be released on Mac and PC.
You may know that, but a lot of people think that it was revealed at Macworld because it was exclusive. But it was just a headliner in a statement of "hey, we can play games too!" In fact the literal game they were running on stage was actually running backstage on a PC.
You'd think either party would want the chance to talk about their candidate for an extra few months. But maybe they're worried familiarity breeds contempt.
I'm only a hobbyist, but I had dreams of being a professional game developer like 20 years ago. The idea of making other people's games for as long as he's been in the industry, finally getting that dream project approved, and having it end as just a statistic? That would hurt in a unique way. I'm sure not being able to do it for decades, and seeing so many other projects die, he's got a callous in the topic... And I'm sure it's happened more often than dream projects getting made. But thats still kinda sucks.