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Gamers Are Fans of Games, Not Genres
_xeno_ writes: A recent article on Steam Spy talks about how a "target audience" for game genres doesn't exist — or, more specifically, how there is no such thing as an "FPS gamer" or an "MMO gamer" or a "MOBA gamer." The majority of players tend to be fans of specific games, rather than genres. For example, the wildly popular MMO World of Warcraft managed to reach over 10 million players at its peak. However, these players never became "MMO gamers" — they were simply World of Warcraft gamers. As World of Warcraft's subscriber numbers fall, there's been no corresponding uptick in subscribers of other, competing MMOs. In fact, pretty much ever MMO released since World of Warcraft has been forced to move to a "free-to-play" model simply to survive. The article explains how the majority of gamers concentrate on a very small number of games, rarely trying new games: they're fans of a specific game, not any game that plays like it.
I thought this was just common sense and public knowledge. How does this asinine bull make a slash headline?
Aren't all games displayed in frames per second? /duck
someone speaks the obvious. I prefer RTS and FPS games, but I'll play anything that's good.
Most chess players have no interest in checkers, poker, or go.
Zork!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This makes sense. When I was quite young, I was perplexed by the idea of a genre. I saw surveys with a check box. What games do I like"[] platforming, []racing, []shooters, []puzzle, etc" I looked at the survey and was confused that they could classify such diverse games into such small categories. The thought didn't even occur to me that games were like each other so much they could be classified. I simply thought games were all different. Now as a game designer, game programmer, I can see genre classifications, but I think to operate in them is laziness. I think with something as complex as a computer, we can have new genres of games like Katamari Damacy if someone puts their mind to it. I think experimenting and trying stuff no one tried before is bold and to be praised.
Just like children can't see through the veil when watching a movie and needs to be reminded Godzilla isn't real and the set is a miniature city, I think a lot of people get caught up in games without thinking how the game is made or similar to other games. A lot of people just play and if they like it, they stay. I just wish the veil wasn't so thick that people could see through a Clash of Clans, Farmville meets castle, pay to win, and wouldn't sponsor that type of drivel. I once had a "game designer" honestly think Clash of Clans took as much skill as Wacraft3 to play... The veil is there even for people who are supposed game developers.
God spoke to me
Gamers like their genres, the problem is there might be one great game and then a bunch of crappy clones. So it seems like they stick to one game, when the fact is, there isn't that many good games.
Every time something becomes big, you get a dozen wanna-be games flooding the market, trying to make money off the popularity of the popular game. Crappy stuff usually. What we need is developers to be given the time they need to make games good and have their points, instead of quickly shoving it out the door at a certain set date. 40 years into the gaming industry and they still make the same mistakes they should of learned better from before.
Currently I've been playing Everquest 1 on one of it's time locked progression server. Why? Because it's fun and I'm having a great time playing it with my friends. 20 year old MMORPG is better to me then most of the current ones.
Be seeing you...
I've followed the tournament Fighting Game scene for a few years now, and it seems like there is a lot of crossover of the top tier players. They seem to exclusively play fighting games, but of course the top tier players are certainly only a small subset of the purchasers/players. Considering how visible they are, I wonder if the marketers think that's how all genres work?
It's a medium.com article. Every medium.com article I've ever seen has been something along the lines of "Wow! The mundane is super interesting when you make the background image change as people scroll!" Oddly enough, this article is the first I've seen to just use a header image then stick to mostly (centered) text.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
...I'm really interested in how much money they spent. This article says there's a lot of people who ONLY own a moba and nothing else. Um, those things are generally free to play, you hit download and you get it with no effort. People who only "own" a moba on steam, and no other games, aren't customers. They probably play plenty of other games...just not on steam. But regardless, if you aren't making a f2p, you can pretend that people whose accounts only have f2ps don't exist.
MMO's are a crappy comparison because:
1. It is SOO important to have a good set of people to play with that 'switching to MMO xyz' immediately becomes extremely difficult. Maybe in a series of multiverse guilds supported by some awesome gaming service hub could work like a guilds-out-of-games social service, but it doesn't exist, so the entropy moving from title to title is very hard at this point
2. MMO's in general wear you down in ways that make you never want to go back to MMO's. I like to grind once and a while because I'm sadistic, but I imagine a lot of people who've played MMO's never went back because the genre was so punishing
3. The entire 'point' of an MMO (as well as other genre titles) is to suck you into their playing system in a way that moving off to competitors becomes too high cost. Oh you wanna drop sub and play that -other- game? Well sure, but we'll delete your content after being idle for a certain time, etc.. like that
There are certainly some holy wars of gaming which have polarized gamers against one another, such as DOTA 2 / LOL. That doens't mean people can't enjoy the fruits of both, but people tend to stick to what they're used to for 'regularly played' games regardless of the competition. Realistically, the games are so close that anyone competent on one could be the same with some training for the other.
Bye!
Unless it's Crysis which uses the seconds per frame unit of measure.
I think to explain further, its okay to make a game in a genre, and try and make it better than has been done before. It isn't total laziness to stick with a genre and go, but you're treading ground someone else has done, so the temptation is to clone as much as they've done to get a foundation before improving. In fact, people might be so used to another game doing something, that is almost the defacto standard, and people expect it in other games. It's not really laziness to build on something else someone has made and try to make it better, but your original game design doesn't start until you've taken and done what someone else has done. Using "industry standard" established techniques for a genre makes it feel lazy.
God spoke to me
Having played most released MMOs and not liking other genres I guess I fit into the minority.
Blah blah 'real gamers' rhetoric is the most boring card played on Slashdot these days. You are a data point, and probably an insignifiant one if your world removes the revenues of casual/MMO/consoles from the world of gaming. Lets all stand up and applaud AC for their insightful and self-centered world view! *golfclap*
Bye!
Well, in Zork, the higher your APS the higher your FPS!
Text aside, the graphical ones really were classics too. Not to the level of Zork 1 or Zork Zero, but Return to Zork was iconic, and Zork Grand Inquisitor pulled off some of the old humor in a way that was more Infocom than Lucasarts.
At least half of the people I know who play Final Fantasy XIV came there from another MMO (mostly WoW).
Back when I played WoW, most of the people I knew came there from other MMOs.
For that matter, in pretty much every MMO I've played, one of the stock discussion tropes is "which MMO did you play before this?" - with a very, very low percentage who never played MMOs before.
Yeah, most people also play other genres, but if you made them choose, you'd find that pretty much everyone IS primarily one "type" of gamer first.
What is Medium, and where did they come from?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I like lots of games, but I am not sure they fit into a genre. I like games with a robust offline experience, and I don't like to play online at all, especially against people who have way too many hours and way too many dollars to throw at mods so you can't enjoy your experience at all. I like Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Skyrim, Lego Movie Adaptations and Gran Turismo. Don't care for sports games or World of Warcraft or online FPS.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
According to the sheer number of knock-off games that developers have created, evidently it isn't common sense. Otherwise they wouldn't waste so much time creating something that would do well to make its investment back.
For me, I think the following factors determine which games I decide to try:
- Is it interesting enough to grab my attention?
- Is it fun and challenging enough to keep my attention?
- Does it adequately reward me (somehow) for the progress I make? Even if that "somehow" is knowing I completed a worthy challenge.
- (If multiplayer) How many of my friends currently play?
For that last one, the "currently" is important. I used to play Halo all the time, but after Destiny released and the MCC debacle, my friends don't play Halo any more so I rarely play either.
Really, I think that's all. It doesn't have to be something like the other games I play (on the contrary, I find playing games that are too similar to my favorites to be wasteful). It doesn't have to be super popular, or even polished... I've put tons of time into Kerbal Space Program and several of its beta versions (heck, even its release) were not nearly as polished as some games that I played once and never looked back.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I mean, in media other than video games I wouldn't even expect people to be bound to a specific genre. I just can't see someone saying "Yeah, I'm a big movie fan--oh, but I only see comedies".
Different genres work differently. They use time in different ways. Sometimes, especially with MMOs, they heavily encourage focus on one of them, without giving you very much that can be cross-applied to others. If this is happening with FPS, for example, it's only because of the recent trend of wedging in progression mechanics whether they belong or not. There are still plenty of FPS where the core gameplay, out of the box, is similar enough that being good in one of them will mean you're good in another, which means the sunk cost fallacy doesn't happen.
Another genre that completely trashes this argument is RPGs, whichever letter you put in front of them. People play those to see story, characters, and setting. It wouldn't even make sense to play only one. That'd be like saying there's no such thing as a sci-fi fan; only people who like the Foundation series or Hitchhiker's Guide.
The vast majority of my friends and coworkers play FPS games, but I can't think of anyone that plays MMOs.
Do you understand that WoW was so popular for a while, that Slashdot has a field in the user settings where you can put which server you play on? You're posting on Slashdot, you associate with plenty of people who play MMOs.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I have to admit I am still hoping that the EFF will win their dmca case https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
I would personally like to be able to play tso again even if only on a empty local server.
I paid for a copy of the client and was a 4 year+ subscriber none of it is usable now.
I although I quit buying the sims 2 expansions and stuff packs after sims 2 seasons in 2007 I couldn't keep up with the cost at the time.
Also
Dear EA I am still willing to pay the $100 I offered you a few years back for sims 2 complete collection. How about that physical copy I asked for?
sincerely sims.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
who didn't know this... not because you like one game that you like the entire genre.. I like starcraft, yet I don't like other strategy games like civs.
Yeah ftp is worthless I hate what it has done to the games and the community
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
The summary doesn't really match the article. I think the summary is neither common sense, nor public knowledge, nor correct. I think the article is mostly common sense and public knowledge though.
The article says that you can't make a game that appeals broadly to "core gamers" or broadly to "female gamers" because those aren't coherent genres, those are demographics. Of course you can't make a game that all female gamers enjoy, because different female gamers tend to enjoy different kinds of games -- kinds that we broadly group into genres.
Then it discusses MOBA and MMORPG. Maybe I'm out of touch or something but I didn't even know what MOBA is. There's so few of them listed on wikipedia that it's easy to imagine it's not a genre.
MMORPG is the one that's kind of interesting. It makes sense that you can basically only play 1 time-consuming MMORPG at a time, but the idea that, if WoW goes away tomorrow, its fans will not even seek a similar replacement is kind of interesting.
But the fact that I like single-player RPGs, mostly-single-player RTS, and Adventure games isn't nonexistent from a marketing standpoint, not like "core gamers" or "female gamers" is. Although at the same time, popular RPGs include Elder Scrolls games and Final Fantasy games, both of which I find terribly boring -- I consider that a problem of that genre label being a little overbroad.
I USED to consider myself an MMO gamer. Played UO for almost 6 years. Then moved to EQ. I thought, wow, this isn't nearly as feature-filled as UO, but hey, 3D GRAPHICS! Played that for 4 years. Then I started playing DAOC, and a whole host of others, including WoW and even some more recent ones like LOTRO and SWTOR. Each successive game I played lost my interest more quickly than the last. I tried to play ArcheAge and I lasted a whole week before I gave up on it.
Most MMO's have turned into nothing but F2P grind-fests. They are time and money sinks. Either waste a whole crapload of time grinding a quest for a shiny bauble, or, OR... you could purchase the bobble on our store. Not with game money silly, with real money!
I'm still convinced that UO is the most feature-complete MMO created to date, and aside from it's antiquated graphics and interface (Which they may have updated since then) nothing since then has come close.
Now, I play games other than MMO's, but I wouldn't consider myself a fan of any particular genre or style. I do despise most of the mobile F2P games. I don't view them as games at all, they're formulaic, addictive and only designed to get you to spend small amounts of cash frequently so you don't realize that over the last 3 months, you've dumped more into this "free" app than you spend on WoW over the course of a year. Scams are what I consider them.
Sorry if this sounds like a "Back in MY day" rant, but I am getting a bit long in the tooth.
Really? I've heard people say literally that. I would say most people don't stick to just one genre but they mostly float in just a few.
Lots of people don't like superhero movies, don't like movies with ambiguous villains and morality, don't like movies with clear villans and black & white morality, don't like arthouse films, don't like mainstream films, don't like character studies, don't like crime dramas...
In books people like romance, or detective, or Science Fiction, or fantasy, or horror, or humour, or comics, or historical fiction, or slice-of-life, or coming-of-age, or a combination of a few of those and others I can't think of at the moment. It always amused me that book genre was frequently defined by setting, whereas setting is considered almost irrelevant to video game genre classification.
Music comes in very clear genres and people very rarely like classical music and hip-hop music and folk music to an equal degree.
I like RPG*, RTS, and Adventure.
*Not Elder-Scrolls or similar. Not most JRPGs, although Chrono Trigger was pretty good and hell, early Sega Master system RPGs were good. RPG is a wide genre that also includes Might & Magic, Ultima, Infinity Engine games and similar-style, Fallouts 1 & 2, Wizardly, Shadowrun Returns, "old-school" RPG, Mass Effect 1 and to a lesser extent 3, etc.. -- this is where the article has a point; RPG is too broad and JRPG and Western RPG doesn't really divide the market correctly in my opinion.
MMOs are all grind and pay to win. There is no skill required.
Try EVE online.
I thought this was just common sense and public knowledge. How does this asinine bull make a slash headline?
It's not entirely obvious or necessarily true. I for one am a genre gamer to an extent. Tower Defense & 5x are my preferred games, RTS/Strategy next. The rest I play a bit of everything. I will spend the most time on games I enjoy but I'm always more willing to try those in my preferred genre over those I know I probably won't enjoy.
> Maybe I'm out of touch or something but I didn't even know what MOBA is
Yes, it's fair to say you are out of touch.
Defense of the Ancients, a WCIII map mod birthed the genre, and League of Legends is the king, with 67 million players per month (from wkipedia). There's others in the dota line, a flurry of lesser players, and Blizzard is in on the action now with Heroes of the Storm.
Also- everyone I know who plays *a* moba, plays multiple ones. Everyone I know who plays WoW has tried other MMOs*, but has to come back to WoW, because the other MMOs* really don't touch WoW's set of depth (particularly with raids).
*The real reason this comparison sucks is, WoW is a very SPECIFIC type of MMO, which I'll call a "wowlike". A "wowlike" has you level through fixed content with quests to cap, and the leveling can be done solo. Once at cap, you have a bunch of instanced raids that reset each week, and there's a separate pvp system that rewards you with some kind of pvp currency you can use to boost your power in that realm. On top of this, your character powers up through levels at first, but eventually the progression from levels is a rounding error- only the stats on the gear end up contributing to player power, meaning that gear at max level is the primary mechanism. When an expansion comes out, it raises the level cap, and the higher level characters can't utilize their old gear very much, and the "gear treadmill" is reset. These games have a "global cooldown" that represents how often things can happen, they almost never block player pathing or action, especially regarding other players, acceleration and turning is always infinite, and a maximum speed is reached instantly. The maximum speed is either identical for all players, or very close together. End game gear is always best from a "raid", the weekly reset that requires a large but FIXED number of players to engage in combat versus scripted enemies, each of whom drops gear from a finite loot set, and that gear is desired to complete the upgrades the characters desire to become more powerful.
This "wowlike" description explicitly includes all the games meant to copy wow, such as lotro, warhammer, vanguard, swtor, wildstar, and many many many many others.
It's no surprise that if you play wow, you aren't necessarily going to be interested in the budget knock off of the same game, especially while wow continues to pump out new content. That above set of restrictions- all of them- are almost universally present, meaning that they are explicitly copying wow (and no, not EQ).
Meanwhile, the REST of the MMO genre is much more diverse- a WoW player won't have much in common with an EVE online player necessarily, or even an old school everquest player.
Anyway, mobas are huge, and it is surprising to me that you haven't heard about them. They fill stadiums, big time e-sport games.
"As World of Warcraft's subscriber numbers fall, there's been no corresponding uptick in subscribers of other, competing MMOs."
Define "competing MMO".
Is EVE Online a competing MMO of WoW? is World of Tanks (and WoWP, WoWS, WoT:Generals) a competing MMO? Is War Thunder (and Ground Forces) a competing MMO? How about Path of Exile? ArcheAge? Elder Scrolls Online? Planetside 2? Rust? Ark: Survival? Mech Warrior Online? Neverwinter? Elite:Dangerous?
And "subscribers"? Seriously? MMOs with monthly subscriptions are becoming increasingly rare, I know of exactly two (WoW and EVE Online) which are both playing like crazy on sunk cost fallacy.
Also none of the people I know play just a single MMO. They switch between them like there's no tomorrow, simply because most of them are free-to-play with microtransactions, and thus allow for taking breaks from game X without wasting money or falling behind. I personally play most of the MMOs listed above, with some being visited for a couple hours every few months, others played daily.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Yeah. I can see you have only played shitty MMOs (if any) recently.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Would you say that about Diablo or Final Fantasy?
Boss is too hard? Go farm some mobs and level up then try the boss again. Only in one you're working with a team while the other you're working alone.
I've found my tastes have changed quite a bit as I get older. Obviously, when I started (in the heyday of arcades and the earliest consoles) my choices were limited. We grew up with an Odyssey 2 console, and most friends had an Atari. ALL games were pretty much arcade games, with a few rare exceptions. I bought a Nintendo, but skipped consoles until the Xbox came out, preferring PC gaming. I loved shooters, flight sims, adventure games (especially back in the Sierra/Lucasarts heyday), and I played competitive games like Team Fortress. I would have laughed at the notion of "preferred genre", playing anything that looked fun to me.
These days, I mostly buy console games, with only occasional Steam or GOG purchases. Why? I work on a PC all day, every day. I prefer to relax on the couch while playing, and consoles make that easy. Still enjoy an occasional shooter, but I really love RPGs, both western and eastern, for slightly different reasons. Will mix in an occasional adventure game. I eschew competitive gaming nowadays, and prefer a deep story and interesting setting to mindless arcade action. I got enough of that when I was younger. I can't figure out why MOBAs are so popular - they look incredibly dull to me.
Current favorite genres: RPGs of all types, occasional shooters and adventure games. That doesn't mean I won't pick up any other type of game if it looks interesting to me. Keep in mind that "genre" isn't a straitjacket... it's just shorthand for some common design decisions, and it's useful to week out types of games you aren't quite as interested in. There are a LOT more games available than there used to be, and I have less free time than I used to. As such, I'm much more discriminating than I used to be.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Except in those, you're done with the whole game in 20-60 hours, and a lot of that is story. Unless you're insanely dedicated and bored, you're not going to farm one area for more than a couple hours, and probably nowhere near even that. The scenery changes a lot, and you rarely have to run for five minutes to get where you're going.
Not arguing that it's not a grind, I guess, but there's still a pretty big difference. I spent a couple hours grinding early-game in Final Fantasy 5 a couple months ago for an easier time in the Four Job Fiesta, and I was set for a leisurely cruise through the rest of the game. In most MMOs, a two hour grind is...unambitious.
Those are a VERY specific genre.
The fighting game scene seems to contradict the article. You have entire websites such as Shoryuken that are dedicated to them, and fans of the genre (myself included) will buy a fighting game on a whim, just to see how it stacks up to other fighters. You have people who still actively play in the scene, playing games that are 10+ years old competitively, while still picking up and learning new games. Killer Instinct, Tekken 7, Street Fighter V, Mortal Kombat X, Guilty Gear, Blazblue, Skullgirls, Marvel vs Capcom, and so many more...people are buying these games across multiple consoles and PC, simply because they are a part of the fighting game genre. Then you have comedy types of games of the genre, such as Divekick, that sells well not only due to the fact it's a fighting game, but because the scene comes together to make things like this happen, and be supported.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
But the botters ruined the game, haven't bothered with any more MMORPGs because of it.
I am definitely a genre gamer. It's just that I don't have a lot of time, and am really picky about games I play as a result - so it might be years, but eventually i'll find a game in the genres that I like.
I could easily see the same about MMO gamers - lets say you burn out on Warcraft. Why would that mean you'd immediately go into another large time sink, instead of taking some time off?
I'm a fan of hiking too but I don't hike every day... guess I'm not a "real hiker" and no real hikers (like true Scotsman) exist.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Did actually anyone ever believe otherwise?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Maybe I'm out of touch or something but I didn't even know what MOBA is.
It's just a subsection of RTS games. In terms of categorization it's right up there with people who play kart games on-line.
It was a term invented to make the PC Master Race sound like they have broader horizons than they really do.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
A recent article on Steam Spy talks about how a "target audience" for game genres doesn't exist — or, more specifically, how there is no such thing as an "FPS gamer"
Is it just me, or is this not true for many people? I'm an FPS gamer. I play pretty much exclusively first-person games, to the point where I almost refuse to look at anything else. Maybe it's narrow-minded of me, sure, but it can't be that uncommon. While I like plenty of different types of games within that genre, certainly not just a few choice titles, it remains pretty much the only genre I play. Note that I did not RTFA, so if the actual story addresses this, then oh well.
The article does not at all say that there aren't gamers who are fans of specific genres. What it says is that the giant categories of people who play video games (which should be differentiated from "gamer" in the same way that "people who watch movies" is differentiated from "movie buff") that small developers tend to go after in order to do well in the marketplace, like "MOBA gamers," "core gamers," or "female gamers," aren't cohesive blocs that all buy and play a variety of games within their interests. Indeed, the vast majority of people who play video games tend to stick to a handful of games for various reasons. The point of the article is that while genre gamers and hardcore gamers who will buy your game even if it isn't mainstream exist, there are a lot fewer of them than indie developers tend to assume that there are, and those developers should keep their sales expectations appropriately low.
Rob
most of us gamers ( at least those with disposable income ) like to play a game - not an online we're-better-than-you cluster***k.
We're 35/40+. We did Elite in the old days, where our mind filled in the gaps, always thinking there was *stuff* in that universe to find if you tried hard enough. But didn't expect it to happen *now*. Reality based, and we filled in the blanks with imagination. We *were* a pirate, we *were* a bounty hunter.
We forgave so many mistakes in Frontiers etc. because of the same belief.
We luved MUD, ( look it up youngsters, we had MMO before we had 3D graphics ). I spent many a convo and fun time in game with "Murk the Magnificent", and "The Dreadful unknown" as my compadres in the dungeons.
We RolePlayed, we imagined, it was good.
Now we get hordes of screaming children on typing ???FAGOT???? as fast as they can, or screaming abuse on audio.
I liked the idea of EVE - completely free form - had an audio client if you wanted, build clans, play at your own pace.
What I got was "stay in your nice safe area doing repetive missions, unless you join our clan "if we accept you", forced to use teamspeak or some other voice-comms which break immersion, and be available at specific times for a raid or we'll kick you.
Tight groups of even just a few people, who'd put up with this **8t for years were unassailable. You leave the safe zone.....Dead.. Just some kid laughing at you- or if you were lucky, a courteous "gf".
If I found working hard with groups of people I don't like, and constant noise and aggravation - I'd be in the office most weekends instead.
MMO/Online just doesn't work because it's always uncurated noise. And we don't get single player with actual stories often, because apparently "online" is more important.
Destiny ******d me off. A new idea, new universe, so many untold stories.... result ... a poor death match clone. It was kinda fun, but nothing amazing.
Elite dangerous - I had high hopes - then I played it. It's a nice Elite successor on Solo mode ( though a bit dated, and I'll never forgive making OS X 2nd class ) - but in the "real universe" -- join with powerful song term friends or die. Same ole Same ole.
What I want is a MMO like Neverwinter nights - where everybody you meet uses words like "prithee" and to suspend belief in a mythic world.
If I want to play politics, I'll do it at work and earn a promotion, and if I want to play like a child, I'll teach baseball at the local park.
Small change, Aeon of Strife in Starcraft Broodwars was the precursor to DOTA for WC3.
The theme of the article is why Bethesda needs to do more Skyrim. Not something else. Not the next big thing. There is a big fan base ready and waiting.
- signed totally not a Skyrim addict.
I think with something as complex as a computer, we can have new genres of games like Katamari Damacy if someone puts their mind to it.
Katamari is a 3D platformer. Instead of the jumping mechanic of Super Mario, it has the eating mechanic of Bubbles (1982). Trying new things is a matter of combining existing building blocks in new ways. Have there been any new building blocks introduced since Parappa nearly two decades ago?
My favorite statistic about MOBAs: this year's League of Legends final had more in-person attendees at the stadium than this year's basketball final. I don't see the appeal of either, personally, but there's no arguing that MOBAs are a huge trend in gaming, despite there really only being 2 of them.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
FTP is obsolete. I used a torrent to download the WoW 3.5.5 install binaries. And Jeutie's Blizzlike Pack for a server. It has the MySQL server and the auth and world server bins all rolled up nice and easy to install.
Or were you talking about Free to play? I spent many hundreds paying Blizzard before I discovered the ftp version of WoW. (which is multiplayer, we do it on a LAN here sometimes.)
You can't be a fan of genres when they're so badly defined. Ie, RPG games which somehow links in utter dreck like Japanese RPG games. Saw a youtube of top ten RPGs of past 10 years, and only 2 of them I would even call RPGs and only 4 I ever heard of.
FPS games, that includes so much stuff it's not even reasonable to use that term any more; do they mean twitch gaming shooters, or open world sandbox shooters, player vs player shooters, hunting simulations, the glut of zombie games, MMO shooters, etc. You can't put Borderlands and Doom in the same category, or Doom and Far Cry, etc.
MMOs - I know that there are players that will try every single one of them but seriously, almost no one has time for more than one of these at a time. Trying to market to an MMO player by saying "it's just like the one your'e addicted to but different and without any of your friends" is doomed to fail, the most you can distinguish is "generic MMO set in an existing IP you might like" vs "generic MMO in a custom IP with a vaguely anime feel" vs "MMO designed by seriously disgruntled hardcore devs and intended only for the ten hardcore players that they like" vs "we want to be WoW and are giving it a shot".
Then there are the games which tried to be different and not fit a niche, so there's no category for them. The Thief series, it's about sneaking but people try to call it an FPS because people want categories. And the Thief wannabes which don't measure up but which possibly could be called sneaking games. Then there are hybrid Action/RPG, some of which I like but they can't realy decide if they want to disappoint RPG players or disappoint FPS players, or designed for one crowd but mis-marketed to the other crowd. Or a game that's entirely story and you just follow along and every 10 minutes you have to do a quick-time event. Games that are RTS with RPG elements, or RPGs with RTS elements. And utterly unique things like Katamari Damashi.
They're trying to turn MOBA into a spectator sport. Which is kinda weird. I guess there's money in that, out in tee vee land.
It's sort of gross, trying to turn video gaming into something vulgar like football. With hero 'jocks' and all.
Movie studios make that same mistake over and over, also.
Fantastic Four will be a hit! It's got superheroes!
Free to play.
Most games on ios are free to play.
Im going to complain about "The Sims FreePlay"
Its naggy to the point of being unplayable or atleast it was a few years ago when I got my ipad 2.
You can't buy it and there are no real cheats. (other than paying)
You can buy the sims 3 but then the cheats don't actutally work...(thats why it has a 3 star rating)
Most others are like this.
This video best discribes the state of ftp games on ios:
http://youtu.be/dY9D606ANtc
I didn't know until later that was actually part of one of the spyro games I originally thought it was a parody of how free to play games make people feel.
You get so far and then its not possible to continue without paying but like in the video its a wall that goes straight up as that 99 cents gets you nowhere.
It wouldn't be that bad if it was a trial or demo and then one easy payment of $49.95. But its not its 500 easy payments of $5 $1.99 $2.99 $0.99 and if you were to actually pay enough to actually beat the game you would find that you had paid considerably more than $100.
I still happen to have one of the apps (several still installed actually never bothered to delete them) in question on this ipad I looked in for this post and it said "Welcome back! it has been 1204 days and 0 hours since you left".
Tap Store costs
$49.99 for inspiration
and another $49.99 for coins
If i remember correctly that was enough to get you several more levels up but was not enough to max it out. That would require even more purchases.
And then one of the better ftp ios games of a few years ago:
Zombie Gunship
2 mil coins $99 or free with purchace of $25 shirt
Why can't they sell a standalone version and go on? Is $50 per gamer really not enough? They already admit that 99% of free to play players never pay a cent. (I am part of that 99% if Im going to pay for a game I best be able to use it)
The costs are simply prohibitive to anyone that realises what they are going in.
How did this get to be so long? It was much shorter when I clicked preview an hour ago.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Really the whole basis of the argument is that they couldn't translate WoW gamers into other MMOs. Okay. But that doesn't mean there aren't gamers for given genres.
Take RTS games... there are absolutely RTS gamers.
FPS gamers? Oh yes. There are some gamers that that is what they play pretty much period.
Stealth games? Yuuup.
Adventure games... you know the point and click things... there are some people that that is all they play.
Now are there people that cross a lot of lines? sure. But just as with movies, you have people that prefer given types of movies.
I'm not a big fan of romantic comedies but I do like really stupid science fiction action movies... ideally with lots of explosions and slimy aliens. I make no excuses for this... its just a thing.
And the thing is that gaming is the same way. People have things they like and they're going to focus on games that give them that.
I think part of the problem is mis-identifying what the genres actually are in the first place.
The compelling thing about WoW from what I understand was the community... people would make friends and form guilds and stuff. If you look at games like Eve which is another very long running MMO, it also has that social aspect to it. I think a lot of the MMOs don't really understand that the MMO is basically a complicated facebook game. Its farmville in 3d with RPG elements... no offense... its just more about the community than it is about the game.
And I think THAT is what is elusive about MMOs for many companies. I also don't even know how you'd launch an MMO under that doctrine. Maybe partner with Facebook? I don't know.
I also think the subscription model that everyone assumes is going to be viable likely not something that even Blizzard could maintain indefinitely.
Maybe you could do it if you dropped the sub price down quite a bit. Make it three dollars a month for the sub and that's so cheap that its hard to complain about it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I agree. Some of the best games in recent years don't really fit into the existing genres.
Take Minecraft, for example - it's not an RPG, it's not an FPS, it's not even really a 'puzzle' game. It's an open-world sandbox, which is something that, pre-minecraft, was really not in the mainstream consciousness. Or Portal - it's a puzzle game, but it was one of the first to be real-time, from a first-person perspective, with the freedom of movement that you expect in a FPS.
These days, I play a bit of modded Minecraft, a bit of Diablo 3, and the daily missions in Hearthstone. It's a fair variety - thinking/designing/building, reflexes/tactics, and theorycrafting/sheer-dumb-luck.
I mostly play single player RPGs, some strategy games. These days one of the defining points of RPGs is in a LOT of games. I'm talking about character development, which in video game RPGs has usually been shown as character ability development. The other main defining point of RPGs is plot. This has also been in more and more games. As other games gain those traits my interest in them increases. I prefer RPGs that require thought more than speed on the keyboard.
Genres blend, divide, and blend again. When Diablo came out, I thought stay away from any action RPG. Nowhere near enough plot. I did eventually play it. It didn't even have enough freedom of character creation, to say nothing of plot. I thought it was more similar to what was called adventure in the days of Legend of Zelda(NES).
But, games like Morrowind and Mass Effect pulled me toward Action RPGs. These days most RPGs also part of whatever genre both FPS and sword fighting games like Skyrim make up.
When I was a teenager, I'd pretty much play any game I had available. But, games that had character progression, I was more likely to replay. Zelda, Metroid.
Not sure what that says exactly. But hey, never thought I'd be part of the 1% of anything.
There's a mental exercise behind each game we play. Hidden Object mystery games test only pattern matching, Farmville has gathering and figuring aspects, War3 has those as well as a bit of trajectory (can this get to there in time), guesswork, and with fog of war, your memory of a prior board. Add a timer and you add pressure, and stress, to the exercise. I've found that people adapt to games based on which mental acuities they want to exercise and the challenge level they can stand. When they're tired or stressed, they often go for the easy effort puzzle like most Facebook games; when they really want to think, they hit the hard games. Tiredness and stress are less of a problem for young kids, so they take to some hard games indeed. I'll play an effort puzzle the most often, but I won't pay for it, because they're everywhere and which game it is hardly matters. But I'd pay for a good logic-trainer like Inspector Parker, because that's what I instinctively feel the need to train. In fact, I want something -better- than Inspector Parker, but nothing's come out yet, because everybody thinks I want to shoot or blow up everything.
It would not surprise me if, people that play one particular game for some period of time, quit playing games for a considerable time after leaving their favorite game.
Because.. *drum roll*
Game devs suck.
It is as if it nowadays is all about, pay-and-pay models (free to play), gimmicks and mediocrity.
I like playing Wasteland on top of Arma 3, and I think that Sa-Matra Wasteland is the most fun game I have ever played, but I can also say that Arma 3 and the game devs suck, Arma 2 and 3 being painfully mediocre, and buggy.
I can only hope that DirectX 12 can offer some solid performance improvements, and I understand that Bohemia Interactive had made a point of how important it is for them to get DirectX 12 right.
True. I play Path of Exile a lot although I don't see it as an MMO - it's more like a Diablo clone with great multiplayer. That's the appeal, actually: I don't have to run through shared areas, competing with random strangers over who gets to kill the mobs. I don't have to put up with random strangers forcing me into PVP so they can get off over how superior their optimized PVP build is to someone else's PVE build. I can party with my friends whenever we feel like it, though. The game is effectively a singleplayer game with drop-in multiplayer support. I like that.
And it doesn't do subscriptions. It has a microtransaction model that avoids the whole pay-to-win issue by only selling you cosmetic items and a few non-essential convenience things. That makes it easy to pick up and put down as well as making it completely invisible to TFA's subscription metric.
I don't really play any other MMOs. But then again I'm not into massively multiplayer games and PoE only sticks with me because it doesn't play like an MMO. Some games just fit into more than one genre.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
With MMO's, it is the genre that gets you interested, but it is the variety of things to do that keeps you there. This idea seems to be fading away as multiple events ingame seem to drive players in a certain directions, while the open-world aspect is relegated to grinding ad-nauseum to level up. A great MMO lets every aspect of the world contribute to the advancement of your player to the point where you don't even realize you are leveling up. Every corner of an MMO needs to be interesting to play either as a group or as an individual. You have to create a world where 200,000 or more people are going to log in everyday and find something interesting to do and something new to experience. The name of the game in MMO's is still addiction, how to get the player hooked on playing and keep them hooked on a regular basis? Repetition and "check-boxing" is not real addiction, curiosity is. A sense of curious wonder has to cultivated in the player with each login giving the player a vested interest in what is going on in the world you have created for them. A lot of F2P games seem to have replace this notion with access to loot for a price, playing to the lowest common denominator of MMOs, that being the hoarding of stuff. Ask yourself if the next MMO you play is grabbing your imagination or your greed?
Yeah. I really prefer the term ASSFAGGOTS to MOBA any day of the week.
League of Legends is the king
And as someone who logged in recently - If those games are not ranked, 90% of your teammates are bots grinding out for IP/Levels to have the accounts sold. DotA 2 is the king.
Some day on the horizon, maybe LoL will not be running on Adobe Air and have basic features like Replays built in.
In Tera, I was destroying people in low level PVE gear in unequaled PVP zones and Battlegrounds. Not all the games are like that, but most are.
Superhero movies covers a wide range of film types. Serious, comedy, action packed, psychological, drama... So for me generas are useless, I evaluate films individually.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Small change, Aeon of Strife in Starcraft Broodwars was the precursor to DOTA for WC3.
Back when I played the original Defense of the Ancients (before a different map maker took it over and made it suck), that type of map was always referred to as an "AoS" map.
I suspect you may mean justified text.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=...
i dont even care about genres, i will always play the game i like as long as someone is putting those out, and i will know as soon as i see them play for 5 seconds
in the same breath, you will never find me playing counterstrike, diablo, starcraft, league of legends, cod or dota no matter how many people play them, simply because there are better alternatives to spend your free time, like trying to masturbate using 2 large rocks
Ok, now go try Unreal Tournament or Quake III Arena. Unless you are highly skilled, watch how fast you get owned...over and over.
No kidding. It's nice that young people are finally learning to critically think. Just wait until you discover your penis, OP. We can't wait to see the published findings.
... a useless POS. It doesn't explain why my personal higher preferences are cRPG, strategy, and simulation(ok, and the occasional adventure). Please keep your shit sports games, arcade games, casual crap, mobile ports, MOBA,, FPS, etc. for the most part.
I regularly filter by my first three listed to see if there's anything new(or may have missed) that I'm remotely interested in. I can stand VERY FEW FPS, e.g. half life tfc and fortress forever being the few of them, detest MOBAs and the ilk, find MMOs(mobile ports and casual crap goes here as well) to be shallow and trite.
I'm not at all a fan of minecraft, but I do like some of the other more fleshed voxel games, i.e. the ones that actually have gameplay rather than let's play with virtual legos with some other halfbaked mechanics added on. I'd feel my time better spent playing with real legos irl than minecraft ones, but I haven't done that since I was young, but probably because I never got around to buying a mindstorms kit(either too expensive years back, or hard to find/better kits are the edu kits that you get more shit for the same price as the consumer but impossible to order, and now superceded by well print my own pieces and use my own controllers, sensors, and servos)... but I digress...
I also find most crossover attempts to end up being shallow and trite or over focused on aparticular genre with a few token elements from others. VERY FEW games manage to adequately combine genres to any meaningful degree.
If anyone takes this paper seriously, I predict a further deluge of even more shitastic games on steam than have already been appearing since greenlight. Imagine more shitastic rpgmaker games with even less relevance for example. And if I see one more game with shit graphics labeled pixel art(it can work, but usually when over emphasized in labelling it just means shit graphics) or retro, I'm going to hurl. I lived through shit graphics when they were the best to be had, and have zero nostalgia for such shit graphics. i.e. I'm firmly in the I can't wait for a holodeck camp.
You can think of a MOBA as being a very short term RPG in an incredibly tiny and linear world. Your main opponents are other players, or computers controlling a bot, with some lower level chaff MOBs thrown in for you to level off of. You play as a small team against another team. There are usually three paths that connect your teams base to the enemy base. Each base sends out little PvE critters to wander down the connecting paths and attack enemy critters and structures. It is a stalemate without player intervention. Each player picks a character/class to play, which they then use to try and help their teams critters over power the enemy team. Character progression is accomplished by gaining experience for levels, and currency for upgrading gear, by doing the typical stuff you do in video games like killing, destroying, and capturing. Character progression is not retained between matches and so you start over every game. Matches can last anywhere from a few minutes to hours I believe.
In my experience, game play is almost as exciting as typing up this reply was. But apparently there are a ton of people out there that enjoy playing and watching others play this style of game, and I suppose that's good for video gaming in general.
I used to be an MMO Player, I played several, with my biggest amount of time spent in World of Warcraft.
I stopped playing MMOs when NCSoft killed my favourite MMO out of the blue: City of Heroes.
I liked it because it was not like other MMOs I had played. There were no restrictions on level, class, gear or skill as to which players could team up and have fun together. Your character was totally unique. There was the most and best story telling I've seen in any MMO, including WoW. It wasn't perfect, but I still consider it the best game ever.
I was having a lot of fun in that game, only having discovered it quite late (It was at first not available where I lived).
Then NCSoft killed it two weeks before the new expansion went live. By what information the players could gather, not for financial reasons, but due to corporate politics.
After that I decided I never wanted to invest time again into something where I was at the mercy of a corporate boardroom on the other side of the globe. I don't want to play any game where I don't control the hardware needed to run it.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
No, you can't enter a game segment late with a poor product, lacking in originality, and expect it sales.
Also, I disagree with the article as someone who prefers 3D action and adventure games over say, card games and 2D puzzle games.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Then what? Buy a virtual starship for $10,000 and kill everyone?
– Like low-status Neanderthals, contemporary men who aren't exactly winners—literally, when it comes to playing video games—are more likely to harass women online, new research cited in the Washington Post finds. Scientists who conducted the study published in Plos One played 163 games of Halo as either male-voiced players or female-voiced players (82 female, 81 male) with remote teammates and opponents. The study gauged a remote player's skill by measuring such factors like kills and deaths. Researchers found men were typically cordial to players they believed to be male, and that more skilled men who kicked first-shooter butt were less likely to direct negative comments toward female-voiced players than their less skilled male counterparts. But lamer players tended to take their frustrations out on female players with more frequent, caustic comments. A lead author notes that gaming provides the perfect breeding ground for this kind of behavior: After all, the Post notes, players can remain anonymous, they may never run into an online teammate or opponent again, and it's a significantly male-biased recreation. Females threaten gamers' "pre-existing social hierarchy"; the guys at the bottom of the virtual totem pole feel threatened and therefore become more threatening to those they think they can quash the easiest. "As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status, the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female's performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank," the study notes. Such gamer communities mirror male-dominated industries—such as engineering or the tech field—and may promote sexist actions in real life, scientists warn. http://www.newser.com/story/21...
I absolutely love Disciples 2. Of the few games I ever played 90% of my time was used on Disciples 2, replaying the campaigns.
I tough I was a fan of turn-based-strategy games, until I tried a few others TBS games. Nope, not for me.
The first three (but especially number 2) are hard to determine before you even try a game.
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.