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State of PC Gaming in 2004 Probed
NetDanzr writes "Netjak.com has published another of its annual articles probing the state of PC gaming last year. The author complains about the demise of strategy and role-playing gaming, at the expense of action titles. Even though he praises Valve's Half-Life 2, he is skeptical about the Steam copy restrictions, and predicts that Valve would face legal challenges because of it in 2005. Slashdot reported on the previous article in the series last year."
No kidding?
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
The XBoX killed PC gaming. It was the dumbest thing Microsoft ever did. Two years ago I was a windows users because I had to play all my games. But now, PC gaming is dead, except for Steam. All the games that used to be on PC are now on XBoX. So now I run Linux. PC gaming has gone down the crapper.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
How is this dumb? Let's see:
Without Xbox, they sell someone one single OS for a computer that plays games and does Office/etc
With Xbox, they still sell the OS installation for Office. However, they are now selling another OS...hell, they are even selling the other BOX too just for the games.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Licensing? Very important. I see that you are not the only one who does not think it is dumb of Microsoft to carefully move to a position of dominance in the videogame world. They aren't there yet, but they are working toward it.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
But I will comment on this forecast:
No offense, but movie-based games have always been crappy, and done poorly: just look back to ET on the 2600. For nearly the last quarter century, companies have been releasing games tied to movies, and they've almost always sucked (okay, I thought the robocop game was kinda cute). But they keep getting churned out. Why? Because people will buy that crap! The quality of gameplay is irrelevant to the people making the decision to buy or not.
That said, there have been some high-budget attempts recently to port the world of a movie into a game. Of course it can't be done. Ultimately, the developers have to meet end-user expectations about the experience that are dictated by the movie, and an incredible static experience, such as a movie, makes a pretty boring dynamic one.
Tie-fighter battles are always cool; just don't give me a light saber.
I somehow don't think this guy has been following (association) football management games, seeing as he kinda missed the bit where Sports Interactive (makers of Champ. 1-4) split with Eidos. No rumours, just facts. Championship Manager 5 is made by a different company, as Eidos own the rights to the name, whilst Sega[1] published SI's football management game. I think SI kept the rights to the game engine as well. It was kinda known about for months before either game came out IIRC.
[1]Or at least Sega Europe, I have no idea about America, if they even like Football management.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
While on the whole I agree with his review I'm surprised there is no mention of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines as a decent RPG. Sure, it suffered from those nasty Source-based texture and sound cache thrashing problems that Half-Life 2 also exhibited, but it was fun, well balanced, decent in terms of length and plot, and has more replay capability than most games thanks to the multiple distinct clans.
IMHO its the best RPG since the original KotoR, and it certainly (a) sold well, and (b) it got quite a few highly favorable reviews (along with some negative ones like Gamespot's one). That should at least have earned it a mention in the article, I think...
"All in all, last year was nothing to boast about. It was marked by an overabundance of first-person shooters, at the expense of other genres. Game design suffered once again, with bland, repetitive and uninspired gameplay"
Reading this, you would think the year sucked. Granted the better games came late in the year, but is was fun all around. Tons of new FPS's, a few RTS games that were pretty damn cool. Very cool new engines setting up for some cool mods in '05 and '06.
It also seems like he wrote more about playing single player versions of these games. The only online mention is for MMORPG's. Many of the games he mentions offer multiplayer online and he doesn't really speak to the fun factor that brings.
In 2004 we 'only' had Rome: Total War, W40K: Dawn of War and LOTR: BFME. Worst year for RTS games ever!
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That it isn't out of beta is a huge downside...
I'm referencing this CNN/Money article:
Rupert Murdoch's new game
Look, the fact that the video games industry makes more money gross per year than Music and Movies is starting to turn a lot of heads. Even better, if you combine everyone's favorite concept of off-shoring and out-sourcing, it may be cheaper to eventually make a game than a movie or a CD. And the price is still almost 5 times that of either a movie ticket or a CD. Don't underestimate the money and influence these guys have at their disposal and don't be surprised when you see an advertisement for a Fox Interactive game on Fox News with a tie into a 20th Century Fox Picture.
whatever dood. So much for your opinions, eh.
From what I've heard they are PROHIBITED (Not just "will not be paid for".) by contract from producing a patch to the game, even those the folks at the dev house know what they have to fix. Is this what the state of PC Publishing has come to?
That would be why the Bloodlines 1.2 patch is available ...
I was expecting some great +5 Funny's in here for the use of the word "Probed" in the title.
Sincerely,
Disappointed
The guy was a bit of a tool. For instance, flight sims - he completely missed the Forgotten Battles game that was released. Based on the IL2 engine, this flight sim according to all the flight sim addicts I know is the best commercial combat flight sim - ever.
When mentioning that this year we've seen Far Cry, DooM3 *and* HL2 all in the same year, he says this year was a disappointment? Hardly! Those were all fantastic games. Far Cry and DooM3 will have the largest outstanding influence, because the Crytek engine and the DooM3 engine are amazing technical masterpieces. With Quake 4 coming out this year based on the DooM3 engine, and the development being done by the legendary Raven software, it can only be a winner.
Dawn of War and BFME are excellent RTS games, although we could have used more than just those. Westwood have been extremely closed up about this genre and it's a big shame. I think next year, a new Red Alert game may be released based on the Generals engine.
RPGs were definately the worst hit, I can't think of any single shining example of how RPGs should be from this year. Having said that, we can look forward to Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion in 2006. The lure of MMORPG subscription cash has sucked all of the development efforts in RPGs away from classic RPGs that anyone can enjoy, marginalising RPGs to the evercrack addicts who are happy to treadmill their lives away.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Any year where I got Halflife 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, and Pirates! and have blown far too much time on all three... and that's a bad year? Gods, I can't WAIT for the good- and we started it out so well, with Hearts of Iron 2. Basically, this is another Sky Is Falling article that gets printed every year when columnists run out of ideas.
...since I was a kid," is a statement many of us thought we would never hear ourselves saying about anything, especially video games. I have to say that state of gaming has taken a considerable turn for the worse since 2000. I blame most of this on the standardization of video game design that infects the industry today. Not too many years ago, the game design itself wasn't the only factor in game creation; a group of programmers actually had to sit down, come up with new, viable source code to get the game to work, design things almost completely from scratch, and spend upwards of a few years getting things ready to go. This doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Now, with pre-defined routines, a plethora of text books and college courses on the subject, and a little help from insanely powerful graphics cards that require little ingenious use of memory allocation or groundbreaking feats of coding, anyone can walk of the streets, spend a couple of months in front of a professor, text book, and dry erase board and be able to transfer his/her ideas directly into reality in just a handful of months. And forget creativity or innovation my friends, the gaming industry has gone Hollywood; they are reusing the same garbage over and over again. If there are any good titles still being released on the PC or console gaming systems, they are smothered by an almost infinite pile of mind numbing crap never to be truly appreciated for what they are. This phenomenon isn't limited to gaming, though, as it has infiltrated animation as well. Has anyone else noticed the steady decline in quality of animated programs/movies in the last 10 years? The bottom line: people are relying too much on progressively more powerful computers to create things FOR them, with as little mental and emotional involvement as possible. Art gives way to commerce I suppose; you've all heard this rant before. One of the entertainment industry's favorite paradigms is to depict the destruction of mankind via technology -- whether it be AI gone awry, atomic bombs, or just some madmen getting together and wreaking havoc with their state-of-the-art techno toys. In reality is we ARE ALLOWING technology to destroy us in a very personal way -- by affording ourselves less and less of a role in the creation of art in any form. I close with a simple thought: Just because one CAN do something does not mean one SHOULD.
What is this? A post to some guy's game-related blog? Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I have no clue who the author of the posted article is, nor any indication why I should care.
/. this strapped for gaming stories? Thumbs down.
Why is his opinion even important, or relevent? Is
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