Must be NW in that case as I spent every summer from 1994 to 2005 near Hexham!

It’s not a UK thing I’ve ever heard of and I’ve lived in Wales, England, and Scotland.

“lawfully held” - when your go-to argument is “it’s not technically illegal” then you might want to consider your stance.

Lauren Schultz told the BBC what had happened in recent years was “unacceptable” but said “we have drawn a line under it”.

Wait, that’s a thing we can do? I wonder if the missus can write off her student loan like that.

That’s, uh, not what PIA means in this thread.

Excellent question! Commenting to follow.

The “open world craze”? I get disagreeing with design decisions but that seems a bit of an odd angle, given how long open world games had been popular at the time of release.

I’ve not played an open world game that was anything like Exodus. It was an interesting blend of sandbox and tight narrative.

I couldn’t really get into the early games, despite liking the concept, but loved Exodus. I could see how it wouldn’t suite someone who preferred the style of the previous games, but I think I would argue that “a third helping of the same” rarely takes a game series anywhere interesting.

A great many of the games I grew up with were descended from coin-op design principles and so were designed to delay progress as much as possible.

Whilst it’s an oversimplification, if the old price only got Y sales then a higher new price was always only going to get a subset of Y.

Console sales go up over time in part because the price goes down, broadening the customer base. Sure, the library gets bigger over time too, but that’s barely happening either.

I wouldn’t say “the worst” but the phrase “squandered potential” looms large.