I was thinking about how I remember Maxis fondly, and I got to wondering what other people’s experiences were like!
Is your favorite still around? Are they still the same, or did they “change directions under new management?”
Looking Glass Studios.
Psygnosis, later known as Studio Liverpool.
Sony shut them down a few years ago. Man seeing that old owl logo hits me hard in the nostalgia bone.
Harmless games, also bought and shut down by Sony.
They seem to consider only massive franchises like GoW and TLoU and Horizon worth their time… But most gamers need variety outside the mainstream game genres, so I don’t see why they are shutting down anything with a smaller fanbase.
Maybe those smaller teams create tools or assets (or maybe it’s the team itself) that they want.
Capitalists can’t let anyone have fun when there’s profit to be made.
Drakan :D
Novalogic - Loved the earlier Delta Force games, and Tachyon: The Fringe
Maxis, Bullfrog, Westwood, Origin… basically any studio that EA bought and destroyed.
Atari
In which era? For me it all started with Combat on the 2600 and I’ve been a vidiot ever since.
Interplay, Microprobe, Sierra On-Line, Bullfrog, Dynamix, Origin, all long gone.
Activision is still around, but it’s something completely different. Same with Atari (although theres a nostalgia brand now, so maybe back).
Of them all, I think is have to say I’m most nostalgic for Sierra On-Line, although Origin gives them a run for most nostalgic.
Dynamix’ Earthsiege was such a magical thing back then. So were Bullfrog’s Syndicate, Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper. Many, many years ago when Peter Molyneux was not a dumbass but gave us gems like Populous and Black&White.
The list of games that EA has destroyed is long.
I loved Earthsiege! IIRC I got the game with an expansion card (STI Lightning 128?), and it really was fun playing with my first flight stick, a CH Products flight stick.
I worked for Interplay back in the 90s. It was pretty great for me, launching my IT career. Working in QA did temporarily ruin my ability to play games for fun though.
Westwood fits into that list.
Squaresoft, Bioware, and Bethesda are three companies whose logos I once considered a seal of quality. None of the three really exist anymore, although there are new much larger companies using their names.
Bethesda game studios is the same studio as always, just under Microsoft
MicroProse and Sierra Online were my faves
Maxis was the one that came to mind for me, too! I played everything of theirs that I could get my hands on. Still playing The Sims after all these years!
Will Wright is a genius, and deservedly so, but just did some reading on what he’s been up to, and I’m not sure if this new venture will fly.
https://www.axios.com/2022/10/20/will-wright-voxverse-gala-gallium-blockchain
Sounds like SecondLife (another of his creations) with NFTs, or the various failed attempts at a Metaverse, except rich crypto-whales get to be the Lords, and the rest of us are the surfs. Then again, maybe there’s some aspect to it I don’t understand.
Microprose. Silent Service II and Special Forces were so good
C’mon, can’t leave master of Orion out
C’mon can’t leave X-COM out.
And Roller Coaster Tycoon! (although it was technically under Hasbro at that point)
That was the weird Atari/Infrogames time period right?
Electronic Arts :(
(early 8-bit era)Yeah… Gotta wonder what the original founders would say if you could tell them what they’d become.
I remember going to EA games on a field trip for school and even back then the corporate feeling was strong. I remember this panel about developer freedom and not a single student was interested. Granted, nobody from my school was on track to do any kind of game development
I dont remember the name of it, but you flew around in a blue spaceshit type thing. I think the story involved you being in some futuristic scifi navy/army. One word I can remember being said a lot (i think your wingman or something said it sometimes when you got a kill) is “Casbah”.
Its not a lot but I was very very young, and played it on my uncle’s PC over a summer while I was visiting my relatives abroad. If anyone has even remotely any idea what Im blabbering about please tell me 😂. Ive been occasionally thinking about it for years.
Oh shit that was Battle Engine Aquila. I loved that game
Holy crap thats it! Installing now through lutris. You people are awesome
Edit: its asking for an iso so i guess ill need to get it on steam
Spaceshit
Awesome typo, bro.
Almost as good as my college typo and favorite of all time: relationshit
Level 5, I still go back to play dark cloud 1 and 2 every couple years. Now if they’d just make the third one I stead of another professor Layton or yokai watch that’d be great!
Infocom.
Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, Leather Goddesses of Phobos.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here. >Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS. >
Valve.
Not new management, but they definitely changed direction. From Portal 2 to Half-Life Alyx was a dark age of live service titles and hardware. Fortunately, it seems like they’re finally getting back to their old selves?
Alyx was supposedly their re-entry into releasing games (hopeful that HLX is good), the Steam Deck caused them to go back and fix several of their titles (plus do the huge Half-Life update we just got), and while they’re not exactly making their games as open as they used to, they’re letting the community handle things like TF2 events and L4D2 patches.
So, I dunno, cautiously optimistic for their future. At least as long as Gabe is running the company.
Yep, buying a Steam Deck this Christmas. Not played one, myself, but I have been a Steam Controller user for years, and they seem to have nailed their latest offerings.
There was definitely a period in there when they felt very anticompetitive (apathy-competitive?), though.
I just bought the Steam Deck. Its amazing. More and more games keep becoming Deck Compatible and the community has uploaded so many controller configurations.
Linux is a gaming OS now and its wild
I love the Deck and Controller, just a heads up that the Deck “feels” slightly different from the Steam Controller. I’ve had a hard time adjusting to the trackpad on Deck and still haven’t quite gotten it figured out. It may just be a practice thing. Basically the way I’d describe it is it’s like the rotation setting for the Steam Controller is never quite right and the slightly smaller trackpad and different positioning maybe affects whatever muscle memory I’m trying to use or something.
As an example, I made the top community config for Monster Hunter Rise, but on Steam Deck it just isn’t quite the same and I needed to pretty heavily adjust the settings for the mouse input, even still I can’t quite get it right.
However that said, it doesn’t actually matter too much, the Steam Deck overall is awesome and I’d take it any day of the week. Luckily, Bluetooth w/ the Steam Controller feels exactly the same as it did on PC w/ dongle and it’s sooo nice.
Thanks for the heads up! I’m going to be getting a dock, because I will be playing it with family, and my only Bluetooth controller is the SC. 😅
When I eventually pick up MH:R, I’ll be sure to check out your config, too!
Sounds like you’re all set to go then!
And if you do I hope you enjoy it! I’ve spent a long time in the MH series and so to finally have mouse input alongside the control input… Phenomenal…
