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For everyone else, there's Torchlight

This is a decent explanation. Torchlight is probably the best Diablo style game I've played recently.

I think you'll find that comes down to Torchlight
But it's certainly no Diablo III.

I bought it and played it for a while and haven't gone back with the same level of addiction I did with the old Diablos.

Please, god, will someone release a finished game? When's the last time that happened?

I happened this year actually, when Torchlight was released by Runic: http://www.torchlightgame.com/

This is what a small game should be like. The best $10 I ever spent on a game, hands down. I want more of these type of games. It's just very refined. I don't need the Epic Tale of Games to have fun and Not every game has to be a blockbuster release to make money.

If it's only available via digital distribution, then I guess I'm not the target audience, no matter how much of a gamer I am.

Some digital distribution is entirely DRM Free.

http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/
http://www.wolfire.com/humble

Many indy games certainly are.
http://www.torchlightgame.com/

I've even sworn off of Blizzard with their announcement that they're killing LAN play on the sequels to the games that practically MADE LANs proliferate. I'm not going to say that the original StarCraft and Diablo games singlehandedly made LANs popular, but they sure as hell helped, and they were so supportive of it that they'd let you install spawns on your friends' computers so they could play too. Now that Blizzard is ALREADY filthy rich, they're just getting greedier? Fuck that.

Apparently you connect through the lobby (requires an internet connection), then do LAN play locally. Not the best solution, but meh. I can understand, considering all the pirated copies of their other games that are in use. However, understanding doesn't make it any less annoying.

The most recent example of a very short but good/immersive game was Metro 2033. Steam tells me I played a total of 10 hours to finish it, it was good but I'll probably never touch it again (not even to unlock the pointless achievements). Now, how many people will regularly pay 40-50 Euros for 10 hours of gameplay and how relevant are those people for the market? I suspect that games such as Mount & Blade and Torchlight, which are obviously low budget, will be more profitable for developers in the long run and appeal to a larger audience (due to the lower price) and it's only the (expensive) marketing that helps sell the 40-50 Euro games. Steam has been flooded with low budget games recently, perhaps you should ask them what they think...

Torchlight is a single player action RPG from Runic Games. It's made by the creators of Diablo and Fate. It has random levels. There isn't anything incredibly different about it, but I think it's loads of fun.

You should check out Torchlight, it may be up your alley.

http://www.torchlightgame.com/

I've been thinking about this since the MW2 server decision and it does seem to be a slight change in attitude recently.

Games like http://www.torchlightgame.com/, http://www.captainforever.com/ seem to be actively engaging its players in making the game but also expecting us to pay them.

We can't make good open-source games because someone has to stop playing them and DESIGN/CODE them! :)

So I think we are seeing something different and not so different,ie We should expect to pay for the games we play but we should expect much more input than the big game makers have been giving us lately. I think torchlight points the way: using opensource tools as much as possible but this leaves the ability to modify the game as much as we want but we should expect to pay for it. I think lately we have been expecting everything for free and as programs require more and more effort we should expect to pay for them. ie, the days of paying once and getting mods and upgrades and new content for free Are Over but I know that if I really enjoy playing a game, I think I would continue to support it. again Im not sure this if very much different then the DLC over 360/PS3 but the the difference would be that we wouldn't be limited to just the gamemaker, ie anyone could make mods with these quasi-open-source games and charge for them if they wanted.

anyway I hope Im making sense, the kids are up too early today

Amen to that...

I have bought a lot on Steam in the past few years, just because it is easy, I don't have to find the CD/DVD, I won't lose the product key, etc.

Yea, yea, I can't resell it. Let me check... um, right... The last time I resold a game was... wait for it... never...

I can redownload it as much as I want, to any computer I want, forever... I can make local backups, play offline, etc.

Theft is too much work now... :)

The ease of Steam has been 100% responsible for my last three purchases.

I saw some favorable reviews for Torchlight, and I wanted to try it out. There was a demo available on Steam, so that's where I went to download it.

While I was logged into Steam, an ad popped up indicating that STALKER was on sale for $5 over the weekend. I've always wanted to play that game, but never got around to it. I've checked torrent sites a few times, but never found a working download. And I certainly wasn't going to shell out $50 for it... So, I paid $5 and got it on Steam. Purely an impulse buy. Something I probably would have never purchased if it hadn't been on Steam.

Turns out I liked Torchlight. To be completely honest, I probably would not have purchased it in the past. It's a good game, but there's no multiplayer and I'm not convinced I'll keep playing it all that long. Normally I'd go looking for a torrent. Normally I'd even wait for a torrent to become available. Normally, I would definitely not drive to the store and buy the thing.

But it was on Steam... Just a couple clicks away from the full version... And since I had the demo installed, there wasn't even anything to download... Wouldn't have to search torrent sites, wouldn't have to wait for it to download, wouldn't have to find a crack... So, I paid my $20 and bought the full thing on Steam.

Then my wife saw me playing Torchlight. She got curious, wanted to try it out.

Now, in the past, we've typically shared a single purchase even when we went out to the store and bought a boxed product. One of us would install a no-CD crack... Or we'd only keep the disc in long enough to get past the copy protection... Or whatever.

But Steam ties the game to your login... So, if I wanted to play Torchlight, she couldn't log in as me to play it. So she made her own Steam account and grabbed the demo. She liked it. So she shelled out $20 and purchased the full game as well.

Three sales in about as many days solely because it was easier to buy the games on Steam than it was to pirate them.