Baseline research on support for the fullscale invasion:

https://www.levada.ru/en/2024/05/17/conflict-with-ukraine-assesments-for-march-2024/

The level of support for the Russian armed forces has not changed significantly since the beginning of the conflict – the majority of respondents (76%) support the actions of Russian troops in Ukraine, including 48% “definitely support” and another 28% “rather support” the action of Russian army. 16% are against.

Research with preference falsification adjustments with respect to support for the full scale invasion:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20531680221108328

when asked directly, 71% of respondents support [full scale invasion of Ukraine], while this share drops to 61% when using the list experiment

Support for annexation of Crimea:

https://www.levada.ru/en/2021/05/19/crimea-3/

The vast majority of Russians (86%) consistently support the accession of Crimea to Russia – this indicator has fluctuated slightly since 2014. 9% do not support the accession.

Research with preference falsification adjustments with respect to support for annexation of Crimea:

https://www.jiia.or.jp/en/column/2022/09/russia-fy2022-01.html

Using the list-experiment technique, Timothy Frye and others showed that Putin’s approval rating after the annexation of Crimea was actually high, at around 80%. In their study, they made a list of famous Russian politicians and had respondents answer how many of these politicians they supported. They then estimated Putin’s approval rating by adding the name “Putin” to the list for only one group[*]3 and thus concluded that the high approval ratings after the annexation of Crimea were not very different from the findings of opinion pollsters.

A high level overview of russian support for the invasion of Ukraine (a summary, but with links to relevant research, albeit some sources will be in russian):

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/russia-tomorrow/reluctant-consensus-war-and-russias-public-opinion/

Younger people still support the war in high numbers, though their support is lower than that of the older generation: 75–80 percent of people fifty-five and older support the Russian army’s actions in Ukraine, while 61 percent of young respondents in Levada polls share this sentiment.

Let’s agree to disagree in that case.

I hope I was able to at least share my own reasoning (even if you don’t agree). And I think we can both agree that TCR does not have any experience in RPG games.

It’s not like that at all.

I enjoy walking sims (Soma is one of my favourite games of all time) in general and TCR’s releases as well.

That doesn’t mean one can’t recognize that TCR tends to struggle even with relatively simple gameplay and that a game like Bloodlines requires strong gameplay design/implementation skills.

While I loved the atmosphere of Still Wakes the Deep, there were many situations where weak gameplay undermined the ambiance and immersion.

An earlier statement from one of the Paradox PR reps (before release):

“I actually played Bloodlines 1 quite recently, and it is a good game, but it is also an old game, and there are many things that would not fly today,” Lilja said. "But I understand why people were super psyched by it in 2004, because it had a lot of cool [elements], and the feeling of being a vampire is really strong, regardless of other features. But I think people, they remember their feelings about it. And if they replayed it, I think they would see that it’s a competently good game by 2004 standards, now that it’s patched.

Seems like their approach to Bloodlines 2 isn’t much of “high flyer” in the year 2025.

In defence of the PR rep, they were open about Bloodlines 2 not having much to do with the original and that it was more of vampire themed linear action game.

But in that case, why would you have internal targets of 2M+ initial sales if your plan is to have a radical departure from a well known cult classic RPG known for its roleplaying and strong writing?

Chinese Room is clearly a bad fit for Bloodlines. They have zero experience with RPG games.

They make good walking-sim style gaming experiences with strong atmosphere and world-building, but they’ve never made any RPGs. Bloodlines was a living world full of dynamism (remember the Voerman twins missions?).

Their gameplay also tends to be subpar. The original Bloodlines had some flaws with gameplay (combat), but you still had a lot of different gameplay options and approaches.

Why shouldn’t people have expectations for a strong roleplaying experience and player freedom for a Bloodlines game?

That’s so true. Murray’s publicity game become so much more cautious and focused after the initial disasterous release of NMS.

Respect to them for supporting the game for so long for free while having a simple and fair monetisation approach.

Cheers!

What’s the Euro population like? With the timezone and all.

Honestly, that’s very surprising.

They are not running out of oil money.

They have the best cost per barrel economics out of all countries (at scale) and they still hold a stupid high % of the market (10%+).

Their game investment strategy is of course a massive failure. They will exist in 24-36 months. You don’t need to be a financial analyst to understand this.

I work in market research. Data at this level of granularity (price band view) is extremely expensive.

Around 300K per year and that would also likely only include a few retailers GameStop, BestBuy, Walmart. I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe Steam data wouldn’t be included.

It’s very likely Valve doesn’t share the full dataset with anyone. Maybe partial data with some of their biggest partners.

Not to mention that not all gaming hours are equally fungible.

There can be shorter narrative games where a given hour is worth more (to me), so the higher per hour cost is justified.

Huge player of Cities in Motion 1/2. I still play both of them to this day.

Cities in Motion 2’s city building elements were basically a prototype for Cities Skylines. The look and feel are very similar (of course CiM2 didn’t really have city-building management layer, just public transit).

I am so glad I gave up on Paradox.

Hopefully, CO can make some cool economic strategy games without Paradox’s involvement.

Maybe this means we’ll see a Cities in Motion 3 or does Paradox still retain the Cities in Motion brand?

I was really excited for the original Cities in Motion back in 2011, crazy to think almost 15 years have passed.

They are lying. A work account that’s not labelled as such is a fake account.

Hahaha!

That would be quite the development!

To be fair, lots of American media has rebellious motifs, but its mostly merely product packaging and doesn’t really reflect American society.

I lived in the US at one point and while repetition of various freedom themed polemics was extremely common (it initially got annoying, until I learned to simply filter it out), I didn’t really find the whole thing convincing. It felt more like posturing.

That being said, there is a lot of American literature, cinema and art more generally that is truly non-comfortmist.

You should post this separately!

Those are high level examples.

Last Firaxis game I bought was Civ6 and while I played it for 50 hours or so, I mostly play Civ5 and Civ4 (and a whole variety of mods/conversations).