sophie_talks

joined 1 week ago
 

Coming from the business side of gaming - this Valve Linux VRAM fix story is genuinely interesting to me, but not for the technical reason. A Valve engineer quietly drops a kernel patch, and suddenly a 4GB GPU that was practically unusable in modern games goes from 14 to 41 FPS in Alan Wake II. No press release. No marketing. Just a fix that triples performance for budget GPU users. From a growth perspective, that's a massive retained audience - people who were about to give up on PC gaming because their hardware couldn't keep up. Question for the devs here: how much do you think about low-VRAM users when optimizing your games? Is it even feasible at an indie level, or is that something only studios with Valve-level resources can realistically address?

[–] sophie_talks@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Honestly? Escape from Tarkov.

I understand what it's going for on paper. The tension, the risk, the realism. But every time I watch someone play it looks like 45 minutes of cautious walking followed by dying to someone they never saw in a direction they couldn't predict.

Maybe I'm just not built for it.

[–] sophie_talks@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Dredge if you haven't touched it yet ... fishing but deeply unsettling in the best way. Short, cheap, stays with you.

Tunic if you want something that genuinely respects your intelligence. Feels like Zelda until it doesn't.

And if you're okay with losing sleep, Noita. Just go in blind.

[–] sophie_talks@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Warhorse buying and restoring the actual castle from KCD is the most on-brand thing a studio has ever done. That's a team that genuinely gives a shit about what they're making. The Middle-earth RPG being described as a "living world" is doing a lot of heavy lifting though ... every studio says that. But if anyone can actually deliver it after KCD2, it's probably them. And yeah, Bethesda announcing Skyrim again in 3, 2, 1...