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Domain: gamehouse.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to gamehouse.com.
Comments · 10
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Re:Nethack
+1 for Nethack
I also like Super Collapse II and Frozen Bubble -- they are both good for "zoning out"... -
You know, at first I was disgusted...
But frankly this is pretty much in line with what you'd pay for incredibly comperable 'indie' games, the likes of which are available for $20 a pop at places like http://reflexive.com/ and http://gamehouse.com/
$24 for lumines is quite in line with the market. -
Rip-offs in the Casual Game space
Rip-offs are really common nowadays in the casual game space. I swear, at some point, it seems like all of Popcap and Gamehouse's games were rip-offs of each other. Popcap's Big Money and Gamehouse's Collapse are two obvious examples. (And I wouldn't be surprised if they're rip-offs of some other game as well).
In general, the whole "match 3 or more colors" gameplay has been done many times over. Just take a look at Bejeweled, Zuma, and Hexic. -
Not just retro games
I agree that paying $20 for a bunch of retro games doesn't seem right, but most folks are forgetting that the bulk of the games on Live Arcade are going to be all the newer downloadable games that can be found on MSN, Yahoo, Pogo, etc. Those games are all priced around $20 bucks.
See the following sites:
http://zone.msn.com/en/root/downloads.htm
http://www.gamehouse.com/
http://www.pogo.com/togo/tg-topgames.jsp?sls=2&sit e=pogo
Most of these games have free versions you can play on the web, but they have fewer features and are loaded with ads.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of these downloadable games, but undoubtedly they must make a lot money, for them to be around at so many sites. If $20 turns out to be too high for the XBox Live Arcade audience, then I'm sure MS will tweak the price a bit. -
Re:Why they failed ...
Well, you probably only play free Flash games (as I do) and they're charging money.
Additionally, they appear to only have one Flash-based game, Fruit Frolic, that is their most expensive game, and they addmit in the linked article that it was their worst-selling game:
Our last game, Fruit Frolic, was the one we had the most confidence in. We felt we had nailed variable game play, music, animations, flash, you name it -- and it ended up our worst selling title.
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Games my girlfriend and I play...My girlfriend and I play together very often, almost nightly in fact. We tend to get something new to play about once every three months. As we add games to our collection we can rotate around the ones we like. I tried the whole FPS thing, it was a no go; System Shock 2, Half-Life, and Halo fell flat on their faces. Interestingly though, she enjoyed watching hours of Star Wars: KOTOR. She was able to help with the interactive story-line and character alignment direction; while I took care of all the fighting. In fact, one of my good friends, also female and definitely not the video game type, came over and "played" too. It seems, to them, it was like watching an interactive soap opera. (If you've played the game, you might think so too.) This past weekend, she enjoyed watching me demolish XIII, a FPS with a damn good plot (starring David Duchovny).
However, the games that we truely play together or even competitively, are of a different vein.
We recommend:
Jardinians - "Like Breakout, But With More Gnome Bouncing", Fun to play competitively, and you can make your own levels to challenge each other. (Just make sure you can beat your own level)
Text Twist - Kind of a word jumble game. There's a free trial, give it a chance, it's a addictive. Fun to play cooperatively.
Super Collapse 2 This is an interesting puzzle game which is best played solo.
Spider Solitare - This one was free courtesy of Microsoft. Sure it's solitare, but you can play cooperatively too.
Monopoly Party - This old stand-by never dies. We stick to classic, not the weird "party mode". The CPU's are kind of stupid, but it's still a good time, especially with more people. The best part is, nobody has to be the bank, so games go sooo much faster.
Old NES ROMS - We have a hacked xbox that has a ROM emulator loaded on it and we love to play Super Mario 2 and some of the classics. And now we're talking about building a MAME/XNES Cabinet.
...now if only I could break her into Linux.
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Games my girlfriend and I play...My girlfriend and I play together very often, almost nightly in fact. We tend to get something new to play about once every three months. As we add games to our collection we can rotate around the ones we like. I tried the whole FPS thing, it was a no go; System Shock 2, Half-Life, and Halo fell flat on their faces. Interestingly though, she enjoyed watching hours of Star Wars: KOTOR. She was able to help with the interactive story-line and character alignment direction; while I took care of all the fighting. In fact, one of my good friends, also female and definitely not the video game type, came over and "played" too. It seems, to them, it was like watching an interactive soap opera. (If you've played the game, you might think so too.) This past weekend, she enjoyed watching me demolish XIII, a FPS with a damn good plot (starring David Duchovny).
However, the games that we truely play together or even competitively, are of a different vein.
We recommend:
Jardinians - "Like Breakout, But With More Gnome Bouncing", Fun to play competitively, and you can make your own levels to challenge each other. (Just make sure you can beat your own level)
Text Twist - Kind of a word jumble game. There's a free trial, give it a chance, it's a addictive. Fun to play cooperatively.
Super Collapse 2 This is an interesting puzzle game which is best played solo.
Spider Solitare - This one was free courtesy of Microsoft. Sure it's solitare, but you can play cooperatively too.
Monopoly Party - This old stand-by never dies. We stick to classic, not the weird "party mode". The CPU's are kind of stupid, but it's still a good time, especially with more people. The best part is, nobody has to be the bank, so games go sooo much faster.
Old NES ROMS - We have a hacked xbox that has a ROM emulator loaded on it and we love to play Super Mario 2 and some of the classics. And now we're talking about building a MAME/XNES Cabinet.
...now if only I could break her into Linux.
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They don't know what they are talking about...Just because there is no major software company developing these games or the fact that no one makes these games for M$'s X-box, PS/2, or Game Cube does not mean they are dead and dying. As long as people enjoy playing them they will live.
Maybe they will predict that NetHack will die as well.
These games are just being published by smaller developers. The ones that can't afford the extraordinate fees to buy a chip so that there programs work on the consoles. These games are usually more affordable as well.
Check out some of these sites:
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Article Text -ACYou should always post article text AC, otherwise baby Satan cries! Karma whores! - AC
It's time for another interview here on Curmudgeon and this time we have with us Brian Hook, president of Pyrogon Games and former developer at id Software and Verant/Sony Online Entertainment. Before working on the seminal shooters Quake 2 and Quake 3: Arena, Brian was the original architect of the Glide API used by the 3dfx Voodoo line of video cards. After departing id, Brian worked as a Senior Technology Architect at Verant, concentrating on development of technology for next-generation massively-multiplayer online games (MMOGs). After founding Pyrogon in 2000, he created the puzzle game Candy Cruncher, which we reviewed earlier this year. Two additional Pyrogon games have appeared since then, NingPo MahJong and Letter Linker, both available for Windows and MacOS X. (A Linux version of NingPo MahJong will be shipping in the near future.)
This interview covers a wide range of topics: game design criticism, OpenGL/D3D, making money as a smaller game developer, and the importance of porting software to different platforms. Indeed, something for just about everyone. It's quite long, so you might want to bookmark it and consume it in more than one reading.
The interview questions were prepared with the assistance of regular CG authors ruffin and michael.
jvm: What kinds of games do you enjoy playing the most?
Hook: That's a tough question. I guess in some ways I just have very high expectations about software these days, so most games pretty much turn me off within the first 5 minutes when I spot egregious design flaws.
That said, the games I've played and enjoyed the most recently have been No One Lives Forever 2, which I felt had some of the best production value I've ever seen in a game, and Ghost Recon, which is a hoot in multiplayer.
jvm: So you play mostly on a PC, as opposed to a console?
Hook: I should really get some consoles and play console games, but it's hard to justify the time.
jvm: Could we get an example of a game with these egregious design flaws, complete with a breakdown of those flaws? The more popular the game, the better.
Hook: That's dangerous ground =)
But a typical example I have is what I call "simulations that think they're games". To me, a game should be fun and exciting, which means that I should be making interesting decisions that lead to success based on the data I have at that time. Too many games today STILL punish you by just killing you because that's "realistic".
Hitman 2 is a good example of this. Starting with the very first mission, you can pretty much expect to go through and play that mission 20 times before you complete it, because there are timed events that you don't know about a priori. Which is a shame, because the actual mechanics in Hitman 2 were extremely fun. It was probably the one game in recent memory that I really wanted to like but which ended up being so frustrating and tedious that I couldn't enjoy it. Obviously it's a popular game, so I'm in the minority on this.
I think the games that really got a lot of this down were the 1980s LucasArts adventure games like Lo
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Indies don't have to compete with the Big BoysThe fact is that most (and I mean 99.9999%) of indie game studios will never have the money or muscle to compete with the big published games. So why try? Why not take a different approach? Why not simply try to produce a few smaller titles and incrementally build up enough of a revenue stream that you can pay your bills? Sell them ESD, but always be on the lookout for partners that will (a) allow you to keep your IP and (b) can get you in front of an increasingly-larger audience (like OEM deals, bargain box retail opportunities, and magazine cover disks).
This is what our studio is attempting to do, and though it's too early to tell how successful we'll be, we believe it's the best route to a self-sufficient indie studio. Successes like Popcap and GameHouse are inspiring, and give one roadmap to being self-sufficient. Another good example is Small Rockets.
In our case we are working very closely with GarageGames as our primary publisher/distributor. Between their help teaching us how to handle PR and marketing, their willingness to give advice on how to be successful, and our own attempts at networking, we think we will be a successful indie in the not-too-distant future. A good example of such cooperation was last week's MacWorld in San Francisco, where we helped run an arcade station for GG showing their title Marble Blast and our title Orbz (small, shameless plug). By joining them in SF for a few days, we were rewarded by making several contacts for future game development work and possible OEM deals.
This is how indies can "compete" with the big publishers.
Dave Myers