Sonic Dream Team (New 3D Game from Hardlight, coming to Apple Arcade December 5)

I just extremely do not get where exactly you want to get with this. Yes, the consumption model is very bad, and even worse for a consumer than just about anything that we had before. It accentuates things that were already horrible before. After all, the publisher has always been incentivized to maximize profit over enjoyable experiences. We have always been preyed upon, and we always got the worst version of any model we were ever exposed to. I just fail to understand why (as an example) we aren't having have this kind of discourse around Sonic Prime, which shares all these exact same problems ("Oh you can preserve it by piratimg" bear with me for a minute. I'll get there). Which is in fact worse because to my knowledge the show belongs to Netflix, not SEGA. I scarcely see people saying it shouldn't exist on principle -- people just don't like it that much. Is it because Sonic Dream Team looks like a game that could have been on Switch? I doubt the scope of the project would be the same if that were the case. Is it because you can't pirate it (yet)? Because this doesn't look that difficult. Getting the IPA to sideload it seems easy enough, and then being Apple devices-only is as much a barrier as being a Playstation exclusive. What then?

Because in absolutely any case, you can't credit the industry for piracy (and I won't not advocate for piracy. I'll be the last to defend companies here). It's an unavoidable feature, yes, but not one you can credit the business model for.

On the other hand, there are structures, when it comes to books and movies at least, that are dedicated to preservation and are state-funded. These structures aren't as powerful when it comes to games, and then we have to dwell in politics if we want solutions. The community operates on a remarkably high level of coordination for the level of institutionalization it is in, but the institutionalization level is very low to begin with.

So this is how it looks like to me. The game is simply more inconvenient than normal, but it's not worth the laser focused moral crusade. Not any more than a significant amount of pieces of Sonic media. SEGA Heroes? Sonic Runners? Like the industry has always, always tried to make sure we don't have any control over the distribution of their content. That people had always been able to circumvent it so far doesn't excuse those practices as well. So I of course can see agree with how subscription models are worse because they revoke ownership, and in theory there's nothing about Dream Team that needs this particular consumption model to exist. It doesn't really reflect on its structure (to my knowledge). But we also do have to deal with the reality that this game, in this form, wasn't made anywhere else. It doesn't redeem the system. If anything it highlights the worst in the other ones.

 

Hey, this is an issue that we're just not to agree on. I have no issue with the circumstances this game exists under and you inherently see it as everything wrong with gaming today.

You specifically have been respectful in your arguments and have your own deep rooted reasons why you won't budge. I have my reasons why I think this specific case benefits the consumer more than it doesn't, and provided multiple examples in my favor.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

I'm asking people for vocally demand a port of this game, and repeatedly. To convince investors that an offline version of this game will likely make enough money that locking and abandoning it is a bad idea, and to be vocal enough so that they fear losing the trust of the consumer if they repeatedly engage in practices like this. To refuse to commit to supporting streaming services in the long run specifically if it means we 'don't' get ports at all.

I want people to stand up for their right to own content they pay for, to at least some degree. To not just sit here and passively consume things as they keep losing the ability to preserve and play a good game. I want art and culture to be preserved, as I sincerely believe it's crucial for the success of future art, including within gaming specifically.

If people don't speak up, the game very much risks being lost to time, or in the worst case scenario, they lock this entire type of gameplay behind this business model as a way to lure more consumers 'into' a streaming only pay model. That's the worst case scenario we must try to avoid, where good gameplay becomes locked behind a product you can never own.

Do not think for a second publishers won't try to go there if they can. People are getting way too passive about this risk.

 

People who "love quality art" don't typically provide such a spirited defense of it being intentionally permanently destroyed, quite possibly the most objectively bad thing that could happen to a work.

And your examples were bad, because they're mostly not being intentionallly killed the way Dream Team will be. Even if they were, none of this shit exists because they're going to be destroyed, that's just something that executives have been doing because they think it will manufacture demand in the long run. And as far as I can tell, it's not proven at all.

Oh yeah, "vote with your wallet and the industry will self-regulate!". Famously something that always works because these companies are 100% honest with consumers all the time. Hey, have you noticed that none of these games are ever advertised or mentioned as having a limited lifespan? Or perhaps that the only time we learn a game is dying is usually right before it happens, and nobody can do anything about it? Yeah, I'm sure that means consumers are all very aware that this is what they're paying for.

How very convenient for you.

Well that's a silly thing to think. Bad industry practices force accessibility and other important parts of games onto unpaid labour from fans all the time. Again, "well the modders will fix it" was one of the most popular defenses of Colors Ultimate's problems, and the people using it were properly told off for being stupid. I think I might have been one of them, though I don't remember if I said it much out loud, but I definitely believed it for a while. How is anyone supposed to understand your joke is a joke when it's completely indistinguishable from a thing people are already saying?

I mean, for what it's worth, Bluwolf is doing a lot for Colors Ultimate, and I'm sure someone will try recreating Dream Team eventually, but those aren't excuses.

 

Hey you have an inability to listen to or understand other people's sides and I won't t be engaging with you. This is not the first time I've been stuck in a loop with you but it will be the last.

Have a good day.

 

I actually had to go back and check other times I could've interacted with you (because I tend to recognize people by unique avatars), and my dude, I'm not sure this really looks that great for you. The majority of all the times we've interacted was in stuff like the Frontiers thread where you rode the toxic positivity train hard and went out of your way to just shoot down any possible criticism people were making pre-release, and a lot of them turned out to be very well-founded.

What you're offering here is a full-throated defense of "whatever the market decides is right, is right" here, which is essentially laissez faire capitalism. It's not even the "well it sucks but what can ya do" that Palas is giving. I understand this position (my phone autocorrected this to 'promotion', lol) perfectly well, it's one I held for years and lots of people still internally use to justify how they spend their money. But I consider it a fundamentally indefensible position and it's not one I feel obligated to treat as equally valid to, y'know, forcing publishers to never do that.

I do suspect you may believe I'm calling you a bad person for spending money on, liking and complimenting the game, but I want you to understand that I'm not. If this game were on a subscription that was more accessible to me, I would be paying for and playing it! But I would still be saying "Fuck SEGA" either way, because "Fuck SEGA" is the correct position no matter how good a Sonic game is. SEGA isn't a person, it does not have rights and you cannot hurt its feelings.

 

Yeah refrain from projecting whatever past self on me. I have an answer to "what can you do", but it has absolutely nothing to do with Dream Team and is completely orthogonal to whether it would be better if it didn't exist at all (while the model simply still exists regardless). The solution is political action for cultural heritage to be preserved independently from the industry, but that isn't people voicing demands on a forum. That's institutions that carry political and economical weight (usually state backed in this case) and are comprised of strong voices, and even then at the risk of being co-opted by other interests. You will never personally scream louder than a shareholder's email. You will never protest your way into breaking SEGA and Apple's fiduciary duties with the people who put money in them. This is a systemic issue, and what you may think is a moral high ground isn't really relevant at all.

If you want Dream Team to be ported, you want political pressure to be exerted on this model. But no matter how much you hate it, sentiment isn't pressure -- and has no bearing on the nuances that you repeatedly fail to acknowledge, like "crazy thing it took such a model for a small, polished and focused 3D platforming game to be created". You seem to think it's arbitrary, and could have happened at any other point, for any other platform, under any other model. But the simplest hypothesis (given that every single Sonic game after Sonic Advance 2 could have been like Dream Team, but wasn't) is that this isn't true, and the purpose of a system (in this case, the traditional video game market and SEGA acting from its very specific position within it) is what it does. A disorganized, heterogeneous entity can't demand anything.

 

That's the situation I was talking about. And as I remember it going you quoted me first when I was saying I was excited about frontiers because of the positive press and no matter what I said about how I just want the game to have a fair shot you ignored it and kept only keeping focused on your points. And I ended up liking Frontiers a lot so....

We aren't going to agree here. It is what it is. You have your reasons for not liking this practice, which are valid. I have my reasons for thinking it's going to be fine in the long run, which I feel are valid too with examples of entertainment companies that are suffering financially because they overstepped with their greed while not providing value.

I also want to note that I think the amount of subscription services in the current age is getting to be ridiculous. I also buy physical media and believe in the importance of game preservation. However I don't think Apple Arcade is an example of this because it tries to give you value for your dollar. And I highly doubt Dream Team will be left to die on Apple Arcade.

 

Well, the good news for both of us is that you're remembering wrong. The first time we interacted was when Ritz called open-world games boring and you listed a bunch of things you think would objectively disprove it, but they didn't. The second time you were responding directly to people being critical of how the game looked, and you made it clear that your idea of "fairness" was directly related to dismissing criticism. The people complaining about, for instance, the level design, were ultimately validated when the game had a ton of reused and dumbed-down stages, but you banged the drum of that not being a fair criticism for pages and pages. You accused people of wanting the game to be bad and did a bit of revisionism surrounding Forces in the process. It's sad to see, but your rhetoric here seems kind of identical. You are choosing to take the criticism personally.

Maybe they can manufacture consent to keep screwing people, maybe they can't. That's not actually what being "fine" means. Your scenario does not include them actually stopping the bad practice, only making enough money that they don't go bankrupt while continuing to do it. And even if it causes one company to fail, there will be another to take it's place while these practices are still legal and/or untested in court. Which means it's never actually "fine", you're just treating the games, shows and movies you don't care about as acceptable losses.

What dollar value would you place on keeping a game from being permanently intentionally destroyed forever? This practice is wrong no matter how amazing any individual game is. It could be worse if they're good because that's gaming history being destroyed.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But the official position right now is that it's going to, and that is what the fans should be responding to. If this were a "timed exclusive but we promise it'll come out on real platforms later" situation, then that would still be kinda dumb, but not nearly as big of an issue as "this might be a timed exclusive but fuck you, we're not telling, please succumb to FOMO you worms".

 

Remember how I said that I didn't want to continue with you because we'd just be arguing in loops? I said my final piece. If that's not enough for you then too bad because my opinion isn't changing and yours isn't either.

 

I'm not making you stay here dude. If you want to tell me to shut up, then just use those words. You seem like you're trying to have the last word, but then you just keep arguing anyway.

 

A last word urge is a symptom of a disease known as "not seeing faces"... it's cured by seeing faces

 

Personally, I split the difference by looking at asses.

 

That also works

 

This argument is nothing but this:
Well made statement vs. "Let people enjoy things!"

 

Nightmare thread to read

 

Speaking of that game itself, how do you reset the camera in touch pad or console controller when moving the camera during gameplay?

P.S: I'm not an Apple user.

 

ive only played it on controller where the right stick works as you'd expect, but i'd imagine you swipe the screen closer to the center without hitting any of the dedicated touchscreen buttons to manipulate the camera. That'd be my best guess based on other mobile games i've played

 

https://www.sonicstadium.org/news/games/shadow-the-hedgehog-coming-to-sonic-dream-team-r2593/

They're adding Shadow to Dream Team. Also last month they added The Stomp as an equippable ability which has now solidified this game as one of my favorite 3D sonic games ever.