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As somebody who has used Fiverr, there's a lot of good artists on there, but it does not cost five dollars.

Tooting my own horn here, but I just put out a SOMA video essay recently, for when you finish the game: The Lessons of SOMA Are Timeless (or on PeerTube)

That was a long watch, but worth it.

Thanks!

I missed some of the aspects discussed in the video when playing through Soma the first time, because I was expecting Amnesia like scary monsters.

Funny, I didn't even know who the studio was until much later, so I had the opposite reaction. I found out they made Amnesia and thought "huh, okay, that explains the Proxies and other monsters".

There's a Safe Mode, and if you don't like horror games or anxiety-inducing chases, it's a good compromise. I talk about that in the intro.

Simon is the most audience surrogate of all time. Also, I think his continuous lack of understanding is partially due to his "flat" scan, being done when the technology was in its infancy.

Space Quest Historian put out a good video talking about these kinds of games. I think it's too easy for people to get so hung up on these definitions. I know everybody has these kind of expectations of what a "computer game" is supposed to be, but story-focused "walking simulators" still have a place in an interactive medium.

You can't put yourself in Simon's shoes like this in a movie or TV series, because you're controlling him in a first-person view. It just wouldn't be the same perspective, which is critically important in a game where the POV is almost a centerpiece to the story.

It's a different kind of game, sure, and not everybody is going to like the lack of traditional "gameplay" or whatever you want to call it. But, it's a category of game that should be respected as just a valid a "game" as any other computer game. It's just far more story-focused than most.

Also, also, @Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world, since you asked me to let you know when it was out, here it is!

Only 5%. That seems to be a rather optimistic take.

I was on lemmy.film.

Terraria has always been $10. Stardew Valley: $15. Undertale: $10. Braid was $15 when it launched, and even then, people were bitching about the price. So, the price tag has always been in that range since the first indie game launched.

I think you're ignoring the incredible amount of oversaturation in the industry. Games are everywhere. I could throw a thousand sticks into the wilderness and it would smack into a thousand different game studios, all working for years on their big hit that (in their eyes) would make them millions of dollars.

But, people don't have time to even play their own Steam backlog. On average, people buy more games than they even have time to play, and that's not even counting the sheer amount of movies, music, TV shows, YouTube videos, whatever that is competing for people's time. If they are playing video games, then they are not watching or listening to other media.

It's not just the gaming industry. The entire creative industry is propped up on the backing of a 98% failure rate, or sometimes even a 99.99% failure rate. The lucky few get to spout off their survivorship biases, under the bones of former companies and individuals, crunched under the weight of oversaturation.

Will do! One of my favorites as well, which is part of the reason why I'm working on this thing.

OMG, this is like the best/worst time to be working on a two-hour video about the first game. I guess I better get cracking on finishing it up.