Very cool interview. Some interesting perspectives on the state of the market back then.

A c/pcgaming and c/games UT2004 server would be a lot of fun!

You definitely need a little bit craziness and unpredictability to make a truly landmark game.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think truly good games (the ones that go down in history) need a certain amount of jank. Not jank for jank’s sake, but because something new, that makes you go “wow”, cannot have the same true and tried game design/gameplay approaches that have been done before.

Just look at the classics, they are considered milestones, but they have a lot of issues:

• F01 / F02 - It is very easy to mess up your build, but the flip side of this is you have a living world where you can play as a slaver, play as a character with development disabilities and discover a whole new approach. Even if you’ve played the game many times and are comfortable with older CRPGs, the early game can be a slog. I find I constantly have to kite and use cheese tactics in the first ~20% of the game.
• VTMB - Combat was generally subpar, especially if you went with weapons. Many abilities/skills were unbalanced. Late game was subpar.
• Deus Ex - Early to mid-game combat is a bit of a slog and considered unpolished by modern standards (but the flip side is that you feel the progression). Some of the stealth gameplay can feel a bit cheesy. I would argue weaponry is unbalanced. Arcanum - Picking the industrial direction resulted in much more tedious and difficult gameplay than going with magic. Both real-time and turn-based combat was shit.
• Morrowind - For some of the quests, I literally had to almost try a “point and click adventure” approach to figure out how to complete it. I was never a fan of the combat in Morrowind.

And yet I strongly prefer this approach (and modern versions such Space Wreck, Age of Decadence, Colony Ship, Consortium, New Vegas, UnderRail) to Obsidian’s recent output (let alone Bethesda with Starfield and Fallout 3).

Haven’t bought an EA game since the SimCity 2013 reboot. They straight up lied about the nature of the game.

The funniest thing is that 13 years and $900 M later, they still don’t have a working economy or even a basic balance concept. They have 200+ ships (many in JPEG form for over a decade) in their cash shop they’ve thought about beyond flashes sales videos and 3D assets.

This is a very naive and ignorant take. In the major cities, quality of life is on part with EU for many.

Furthermore, even with demographic splits (e.g. russians aged 18-24, urban russians), all major demographic groups show at least strong majority support for chauvinism, authoritarianism and genocidal imperialism.

There are some variations of course. But it’s more along the lines of overwhelming/near absolute majority support (e.g 50+) or strong majority support (18-34). You also find interesting variantions where “middle age” segments tend to be less supportive (on a relative basis, the segment as whole still shows strong majority support) of genocidal imperialism than young adults/early middle age (18-34); likely because they have more to lose.

Russians have the capability to build a better future for themselves (without invasions), they just don’t want to because they haven’t gotten a taste of their own medicine (where they are treated like they treat others).

EU is massive in enabling this attitude. Consider the fact that Merkel, even from retirement, is promoting russian genocidal imperialism by claiming that Poland and the Baltic nation are responsible for the full scale invasion:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/10/06/angela-merkel-poland-baltics-blame-ukraine-war/

When it’s the russians and putin (a symptom, with the cause being russians) who are to blame for their own invasion.

“Crypto/NFT disclosures make no sense, because all games will become “Play to Earn” and have NFT objects where you can transfer your Mario hat to COD 2028.”

I am being glib, Sweeney probably has a point, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a critical look at his intentions.

To my knowledge, PCIE4 versus PCIE5 is irrelevant at 1440p.

You probably can’t find compatibility info because PCIE is always backward and forward compatible when it comes to a 1:1 slot:card ratio. Unless you are splitting the PCIE lane, using one of those GPU + SSD combo cards, you should be fine.

Is there a version “made by” Soulja Boy?

I was more thinking about Qualcomm being particularly dishonest (which is a massive achievement in their industry).

Why not 99.99%?

I am not into JRPGs (or console games), but this does sound interesting. I have always liked “flying ships” settings.

I wonder if we’ll ever see a proper pc port/remaster.

It’s a great game but definitely flawed in places. I will agree that the world building really carries the game. By modern standards the open world is rather small (and some parts look like they simply didn’t have time to develop - the hotel in downtown), but it works really well.

I will pick a less commonly chosen favourite; you get to meet the creator of the zombie movie genre and help him out.

And I love the Hollywood map music track (and this just excellent track among many).

VTMB2 sounds like an action game that’s lacking in RPG elements, so it’s not for me.

I might get it at as some point if the game + all DLC are available for under $10. If not, no problem, there are more than enough games to keep me occupied.

Office applications (Excel, Powerpoint, PowerBI, Word) is one area where I can’t have any friction at all, since that’s how I get my income. I need the latest version of these applications for desktop, web version does not cut it and Linux emulation seems very spotty unless you are OK with using a much older version of office like 2013/2016.

That just on the Microsoft side, there is also Tableau desktop, some Adobe applications and even open source Windows applications that I rely on that don’t have native Linux versions (Notepad++, Paint.net).

I am planning to buy a new laptop, might be worth trying to switch to Linux on the laptop and experiment with emulated Office solutions (while always having a reliable fallback on desktop).

I wish the EU would require Microsoft to release the latest desktop (no cloud subscription required) version of Office for Linux (and broad, open ended criminal liability if they try any tricks).

I cannot switch without a native, official supported version of Office.

You can continue getting updates for Window 10 for free and they don’t really add new software to Windows.

Microsoft Office and lots of line of business apps (e.g. I prefer Tableau desktop over the web version) require Windows. Many game (not only multiplayer ones) continue to have issues with Linux (although there have been massive improvements in the last ~5 years).

This is a very unique game both in terms of setting (and how it relates to gameplay as highlighted in OP) and overall fusion of genres.

One issue with KoDP is that it can become a bit min/max focused. The gameplay isn’t as organic and open ended as I would like.

From what I remember while HL2 was demanding it was relatively well optimized at release. That being said, I would have been fine with 30-40 FPS back then.

I am assuming he is promoting his new game.

Star Ruler 2. If you choose a map with ~450 systems, it plays more like a space economic strategy game, as opposed to the RTS/4X hybrid of the default map settings.