is this referring to a specific creepy pasta or just in general, what does she mean by thisssssss

this is giving me war flashbacks to sweet bro and hella jeff

Haven't tried it since release with that group yet, the no-loss, no-positive effect, "adding one negative effect after each win until they're all in play" runs would DEFINITELY be tough with 8 players

We've played a good few games at 8 players even before the game had been released, with 3-cards hands (we didn't know about like the modifier deck or things like that), and it felt fine!

(4-cards hands with 2-cards flop we had an abysmal winrate with though but still fun)

We were playing the gang non-stop like two months *before* release because a friend of mine met the designer on holiday. With The Crew cards to replace the chips (since they come in four colors, perfect), played a few 8-player games with 3- and 4-cards hands! A good time was had by all

gay gay gay homosexual gay homosexual gay gay

Sure, it's thoughts of football that fill your mind. Like his glistening thigh muscles in the sun and the strong embrace of his arms while you celebrate a goal. Nothing being repressed here

Yeah i mean... yes. That is also a problem, but not specifically for Next Fest but like... In general

Exactly, very well articulated point about network effects, thank you!

Sure Steam doesn't stop the *players* from playing games on itch, but it does make it less viable for devs to use other means of distribution if they're smaller + need the money&exposure, which means paying steam for the service

Very much a worrisome perspective, yes.

Yes, although ever since they realized they could just throw festivals whenever I think they've entered a diminishing returns stage and the profusion of them makes these other festivals much less effective. I believe Next Fest retains its power because it's The One and Only though

This is not to glaze steam by the way. But I feel like that's missing the forest for the tree a bit when tackling why devs *feel* like Steam has a monopoly to just say "there are other digital storefronts and anyone can launch one"

So, yeah, I'd say that this is a self-sustaining problem: because they are market leaders (and because of their platform's architecture, they have so many tools for discoverability honestly, you can't get this from anywhere else), their services are unique, and so they have a monopoly on that

I'd argue that these are not the same services that other platforms provide, and that they can only provide these services BECAUSE of their market leader position, and seeing them only as a digital storefront is forgetting why devs use steam and HAVE to use steam

3. centralized review platform (the critical user mass makes it self-sustaining; it's like metacritics but bypassing the press entirely and you can know how long any one person has played the game. Steam reviews have a noticeable and sizeable impact on sales & sales potential)

2. unparalleled discoverability (there are no substitutes to the reach and potential reach that steam offers. If you want eyeballs on your game, steam is not a guarantee, but steam is your best chance.)

The services sold by steam are

1. universality (everyone is using it; no other platform can match this. They have attained a critical mass of users which becomes self-sustaining because of wanting to keep your game library centralized) so you can reach everyone with your game