The interesting question is where they keep getting their money to create such PoS that have been driveling into the gaming industry for the last six years. They can cop out and just copy/paste the latest shinies into their game that keep the mob at bay, but never make anything truly amazing. Even the better game developers have realized how easy it is to just stop putting so much effort in and start producing steaming piles of crap. Even more so when you realize a lot of game developers aren't even pushing forward graphically or computationally anymore. The no brainer, the eye candy, the brute force mechanic that can make your game shinier then others they don't even care to do anymore....yet where do they get their money to produce the latest clones that suck balls? I, I'm sure like many others of the newer generation that were raised and bred on the PC (not the console), have many amazing ideas for the next greatest blockbuster yet have no where to actually go with this. From what I've seen the industry is a chicken and an egg problem. They only want accomplished people who have already put out tripple A titles before they even look at you, let alone sneeze on you. I really would like to know how exactly games that have no more then the premise of 'just like that other clone' and 'check these boxes' can get multi-million dollar funding and tank time and again.
Like the opening post states, current social games aren't fun (applies to current MMOs too). Hell, people are starting to realize how terrible WoW crack really is and they're getting sick of it (impart why I believe Guild Wars 2 will do so well). It's just a grind and a regrind, you can't really even have a lot of fun with friends... you can quest (which works for maybe 2-3 people), but if you do content with any sort of breadth you spend half the time frustrated or pissed off at the friends you're supposed to be having fun with.
The kicker is, if someone does get let in with one of those sparklie ideas the industry was founded on it will utterly rape all the competition... WoW, CoD, all the games that are preying on nostalgia now will not hold a snowballs chance in hell to match them. The torrent of clones that will follow it will pail in comparison as they will only grasp an insignificant portion of what makes up that game and the metrics they can pull from it. I personally am waiting for that day with glee when I can jump up and down, clap my hands, and grin like a fricking idiot without being left to feel like one as the hype fades and I realize what a PoS I spent $60 on. I will feel good as I can have fun doing one of the things in life I originally loved doing without lowering my standards or pretending the game is fun when it is clearly not.
I personally want to get into the game industry just so I can have something fun to play in my leisure time once again...
I don't believe this is entirely true. While I agree with a lot of what you wrote, in terms of gameplay over graphics, eye candy, and other revolutionary technical changes to games, it is now becoming an EXCUSE to NOT make something better. I recently read a article that stated that developers don't believe graphics even need to be improved and they're happy if they don't(!).
This is leading to laziness in the industry as the big wigs sit on top and get old and fat without really wanting to innovate and simply copy the latest CoD clone that sold well.
Take physics for instance. IMO it was one of the biggest, if not they very biggest change to video games in this decade. You know what happened? It fell flat right around the time consolization took hold and you have to struggle to find ANY games with any sort of meaningful physics in it besides some harmless debris that people can't even interact with. The best use of it so far I've seen is BF: BC2. That, however, was not even real physics. It's just pre-rendered destruction sequences for buildings once a certain number of walls are blown out. Men of War / Faces of War (which is a relatively unknown game) has very nice physic interactions between projectiles and whatever decides to make a nasty hole in a building (like driving through it with a tank).
Physics IS NOT just eye candy, it can completely change and reshape gameplay and you know what? It was thrown on the side like it never even existed.
It's not just devs concentrating on eye candy, it's the shitty industry in itself and monetization of it's workforce into a small easily disposable source of income. They simply milk all their talent dry till they don't even want to do anything anymore and then discard them when they're past their usefulness. Almost no developers or publishers encourage innovation and most of them just want to spit out the latest iteration to get their monies worth. Only a handful of developers/publishers are doing things right such as Valve and Arena-net. However, they have their own problems, but those are quite outweighed by what they're accomplishing.
As a gamer for many years I can amount it to that. People eat when they're stressed out and video games that you get frustrated with or are very competitive cause stress. They make you want to eat... a lot.
That really depends on what else that 'child' is being fed while he's growing up. If someone grows up in an environment with absolutely no empathy they will have little tolerance or understanding for it. If a child is already in a bubble devoid of any normal interactions, they will obviously skew towards what they know best. A healthy look at feral children who grow up in an enviornment completely devoid of social interaction is all the proof you really need. There are plenty of famous psychological studies done around this as well. A violent video game could easily be countered (for the children that don't know better) by telling the child that they love him and they shouldn't do those things in real life.
Society isn't responsible for raising children. Violent video games are no different then growing up around the typical violent movies. People in midevil, roman, and greek days grew up around violence as well (especially REAL war). They built empires and eventually reached the Renaissance era even after midevil days. This is just another jump on the violent video game bandwagon.
For those of you that have been noticing trends in WoW for instance (I play for more then just the game), there is a large amount of players that are simply tired of the 'epic grind' and Blizzards lack of love for the game overall. Blizzard is seemingly trying to remedy it by abandoning the game and working on Titan, leaving behind a crappy development team that seems to be half assing everything. There is a power struggle between people who just want to have fun and people who want to always and forever remain above other people in a certain way, shape, or form and believe it is their god given right to maintain that (almost like the aristocrats). The whole thing needs to be flushed and a lot of players jumped ship for Rift, which is very refreshing.
Rift, while very different and has quite a few of traits GW2 has, is just WoW 2.0. It's basically WoW if it was made six years later. They have bits and pieces from every game, but they did nothing exceptionally well. Even the soul combinations, which is the most attractive part of the game, just appears to be a knock off of GW2.
I honestly and whole heartedly look forward to GW2. Rift was interesting and I'm sure OR will be decent as well, but I've only seen a lot of hype from OR and not a lot of content and delivery on that hype. GW2 from the looks of the videos and the general feel from the development team is going to be something truly epic. I can only imagine that GW was the half-life of their overall goal they were aiming for. A lot of times in game development they don't have the time or the finances to achieve what they want to, so they have to take baby steps... that appears to be one of them.
GW2, DNF, and Firefall are what I'm looking forward to. Blizzard has fallen and the industry has stagnated for far too long.
Perhaps this has more to do with people realizing tech companies are trying to suck every last dollar out of them now (especially with DRM schemes and products that expire and have to be renewed) matched with the plateau we reached in the gaming sector as far as what is required by computers to play them. Overall there isn't a lot of incentive TO upgrade and that incentive is usually matched with more obligations and things you have to pay for. It's becoming a chore not only to buy a computer that is more then likely lower quality then ones made in the past due to companies cutting corners and filling it with bloatware, but also everything associated with it.
I think the industry (software and not specifically hardware makers like Intel, but computer manufacturers) are slowly setting up their own noose to hang themselves with it and they don't even realize it is in part due to their greed to suck every last penny out of the market. People can blame the economy all they want, but this has been a ongoing trend that has far outlasted the current recession. A quick look at the gaming industry can tell you a lot about this.
Feelings can't always be rationalized with numbers, that's why metrics don't always work out.
Has anyone wondered if this was done so Crytek can point a finger at piracy? This is a ridiculously huge blunder for such a huge company and they've pointed fingers at piracy before. That's allegedly why Crysis 2 is for both the PC and the consoles.
This could be a stunt for publicity as well. Something like beta builds of games aren't regularly leaked.
Rip off of the more generally known term of 'consolization'. Just someone trying to coin a term that a lot of people are already aware of. It's good it's actually getting a article now though.:o
Not sure if this counts as a military advantage, but using the moon as a testbed for getting to Mars and offering haven in case the world explodes (which it eventually will given humans) will lead to advances in many types of technology. I'm sure a lot of which will be applicable to military, such as improvements to automation, protecting against meteorites (I'm sure some that could equate to a 120mm cannon energy on a pin), and the logistics necessary to keep it operational.
Not everything is about the direct goal. Space and exploration in general has a lot to do with what you gain along the way. I shouldn't need to name off all the inventions and advancements that have been part of it. It's too bad many politicians and people in places of any power (army and ceos) are incredibly ignorant and short sighted.
Seriously it's not hard for the smart people that still have a say to make a nice little powerpoint showing what happens in certain scenarios with big nice pictures. Like showing the earth exploding and people on the moon raising their hands in excitement because they survived.
This is the first move I've read about that Google has done to use their power to strong arm the industry into doing what it thinks best. Considering it normally just tries to heavily sway people in a direction without forcing a choice on them (Chrome or no Chrome) I'm finding this really disheartening. Microsoft also likes doing this by simply building whatever they want into their OS and people just eat it up cause they have little to no choice. Google should know better then to start treading down the same path as Microsoft. I can understand that they're trying to help the open source community, but they really aren't putting what they're doing into perspective as many posts on here have indicated for numerous reasons, putting aside taking away choice from their users.
"This really echoes a lot of what we've seen throughout the entertainment industry in general. It's really about letting players make their choices about how they play." PAY or PLAY?
I may be being a pessimist, but I believe systems like this will eventually bust. All of the failure MMOs are switching to free-to-play with heavy game based influences being based on how much money you spend in game. I'm not completely familiar with LotRs model, but eventually you'll reach a point where people get tired of having to put in a quarter for continued play. The influx and increased revenue right now, at least in my opinion, is based on the fact that everyone is all googly about so many free things and most MMOs do have a decent amount of content you explore before you get tired of them. I'm sure given another year or two this will climax and people will start to realize they're getting milked for something that they don't really find worth the money (or at least feel it).
Putting that aside, while I'm not familiar with LotRs model, I am with other crappy MMO models where you need to buy items in order to stay on top. A lot of 3rd rate Korean MMOs are like this and I recently played Global Agenda in which you almost immediately run into the pay wall. I almost justified buying this with friends, but after looking at the benefits for the 'purchased version' vs the 'free version', I started to realize that there is almost nothing to the game and they just try to hide it with smoke and mirrors. In other words 'if you buy this, the game will be so much better!' when really you already played the best parts of the game, sorta like a movie trailer.
Maybe I'm just putting too much faith in consumers to eventually figure things out or get a little inkling in their head that says 'danger will robinson'.
To a certain extent I agree fully. Hearing criticism can be quite helpful, but often times that has ulterior motives behind it, The criticism itself isn't often times objective, but extraordinarily subjective at least online. I've played WoW for years and it's easy to see what a community can do to a game, both good and bad, and how sometimes it leads the developers to take on a position they wouldn't normally (like acting like god). The developers on WoW forums have aquired a very nasty tone through all the ass kissing some people do and whenever they're confronted with issues they can't directly address it, instead they need to go around the problem and apply a band aid fix in order to look like they were never wrong or they don't even address a glaring problem and instead go in a completely opposite direction as to avoid or obsolete the problem. If you never visit the forums you can never be proven wrong because people don't know if you actually read their post or not. It's almost like politics and it's quite laughable. Just look through the blue tracker on mmo-champion.
Someone could really write a case study on the effects of forums on game developers. This doesn't even take into account all the trolls, people with malicious intent, people just messing around with other people, and people trying to carefully shape things in their favor. Forums can be very powerful, but only as long as a strict hand is used in care for them.
I talked about Tabula Rasa on another article, but I'm going to talk about it again. They had very good relations with their player base in how they addressed problems and openly talked about it with them. They didn't cater to underhanded tactics and simply ignored some comments. The friday community updates were extremely enlightening and they showed the direction of the game, what they developers were doing to address current problems, and what their current thoughts are on matters. It was refreshing and I enjoyed reading it a lot as well as playing the game, it made me feel like the developers actually cared about what they were making and what I as a gamer though. Tribes 2 also had such relations with their playerbase and featured continual updates to address problems. Another example of this is Living Legends (which is a mod) feel free to visit their website and look at how they handle their playerbase. As a mod the community is the lifeblood that keeps them going as they don't have money to use and they rely on the communities help.
Something I don't know if the article mention, but you have to look out for is people in the community that start assuming the role and talking like they speak for the developers. These types of people are very bad and can affect whatever is being developed in a very bad way as they also usually operate on personal interest only. They kill off any sort of different ideology or ideas that differ from their own (and their perceived views that represent the developers with their own ideas mixed in to skew things) so all you end up seeing in the end is what they want you to. There is at least one or two of these in every community I visit, mod or game. There is usually only one because they scare off anyone else that tries to act like them. WoW has a few since it is so big that you can hide in different parts of the forums and no one will ever see you.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the game wasn't meant to turn into what it did based on who made it, but rather that it's the product they ended up with after they put everything together. The trouble is they never knew what they had and they managed to kill it off right when they saw it mildly successful. It was one of the most brilliant blunders to ever happen IMO, just not to the right people
Putting that aside, I never knew Richard Gariott before I saw his name on a box for Tabula Rasa. I honestly think no one knows him, like most game designers, and the only notable name in the gaming industry that my friends can actually recognize IS Sid Meier. If you start talking studios that's a bit different (Blizzard, Treyarch, Bioware, Infinityward).
Sticking to things had little to nothing to do with the final product. They ended up with something good, they didn't take it and run with it, instead they started catering to the crowd they thought they could get the most money from (which is what most MMOs do). The last update was focused mainly on end game and PvP which was something the people they would attract with their game dont care about. Like I said, they didn't know what they had.
Yeah, TR died too early, it was the sad result of big wig politics and a development team that didn't know what to do with what they had. Putting that aside, I quite enjoyed the gameplay and quests wasn't why you played TR. There was nothing quite like playing with friends and holding a CP against odds. The last stand genere is something game designers don't fully understand and are barely starting to grasp (Firefall is something to look forward to IMO though).
I'm not entirely sure when or where you played, but snipers could pretty much one shot anything and spies raped everything in close combat, especially with motor assist armor (think literal ninja). Good games don't need to have mirror balance. A lot of people seem to think X class should be perfectly equal to Y class in almost all regards, that doesn't necessarily be a case. I was reading the comments on a TF2 article the other day and people were talking about how the game has absolutely no balance; I would argue it has very good balance, just most people don't understand it.
Points aside, Minecraft was released in alpha and it's doing pretty darn good. I think a lot of people (once again) have preconceived notions that a product will always remain the same. People pay $15 a month for continued development of a product and if they don't like that, then they can cancel. Though, I believe the expectations were to hit the ground running and catch up with WoW (at least perceived by their investors).
I honestly never played beta and my experiences are from the retail game. I found it quite a bit of fun. I'm not sure what experiences you had in the beta and how it drove you away, but the pull factor that made me play it a lot was still intact when I started playing it. IMO companies should be able to redesign classes completely if they want to (without changing the name of the class), you're paying for them to keep the game fresh. It just seems like another preconceived notion of what a game SHOULD and SHOULDN'T do.
I do believe TR could've been amazing in a completely revolutionary fashion, the development team wasn't in the right mindset and the investors got cold feet. Keep in mind TR was and still is the only survival MMO...
I'm not sure how it was grindy at all. People complained about it not having enough grind and that they got to max level right away. They got rid of the grind by making it more like a FPS then a MMO, but they marketed towards the MMO crowd who wants a grind.
It was anything, but a grind. You could've seen that by reaching the first control point. The style of gameplay and the rewards for participating in the world took a back seat to the actual gameplay, which it is as it should be.
The ideology that the end has to be where all the content is was something that Blizzard fostered and something TR didn't have.
Play a few different MMOs besides WoW (WAR, EQ2, TR (was), CoH, and Aion are good places to start) then you'll have a different look on things. Each one of those titles has very unique things WoW doesn't have and it is extremely apparent after playing with them for a bit.
Stop thinking that WoW is the ultimate game that will ever be produced and look at things outside of their formula, which is coincidentally as addicting as heroine and makes you very subjective. Things can be fun without being really grindy. WoW keeps you addicted with stuff, good games keep you addicted with fun.
This is why Tabula Rasa was so amazing when it came out, but suffered from poor advertisement and development direction. Even the team for it didn't know where they were going to go with it and openly admitted it.
Everyone wants to be the next big hit to take down WoW so if they go that path they're going to be compared and scrutinized against something that is entrenched and has an army of people backing it. It's quite sad that one of the best games as far as MMOs go was killed off early and left for dead (by politics between NCsoft and Richard Gariott no less). Whoever thinks sending themselves into space is a good advertisement for a game should at the very least have their motives questioned.
CEOs point at a metric and say 'make it earn money like that game', developers just 'baaah' and follow suit because they just want their paycheck and their name on a product no matter what it is. Unfortunately the gaming industry is a chicken and the egg. You can't get money without a name, you can't get a name without a good title, and you can't make really hit titles without money. Either the old generation needs to die off and the internet savy need to take over or someone with really good business sense needs to step into the video game industry or things will die more so then they already are (I wonder if Google wants to start a gaming business...).
Not that I completely support the article, but I believe the points were taken out of context. In your example you're using them as Laws instead of Guidelines.
1. Simply means that you shouldn't keep people waiting for too long, especially if you hype it up.
2. Don't let your game grow stagnate by reusing old content all the time.
3. The original team probably had quite a bit to do with the success so it's not a bad idea to keep the same people around.
4. If there was a really notable quality in the first one, you should keep it as it defines your game.
5. Some people change for the sake of change, without reason. That's not necessarily good when you lose what made the first game great.
6. Don't settle in on producing mediocre content because you think your game will sell no matter what.
Once again, I don't think these are curealls, just simply guidelines that should be thought of.
Most basic reason, don't aim to just make a sequel.
There is a such thing as setting your goals too low. Setting them too low purposefully just so real life can come chip away at them isn't a ideal strategy. Sequels should be original in their own way and add to the overall experience, not be designed to milk more money out of users (like almost all sequels are now days).
So the question shouldn't be how to make a good sequel, but how to make an original game that takes after the first one.
Maybe I'm being lazy, but call me when finger flicks and other small gestures can be used and detected properly. Keyboards and mice work so well because you don't need to exert tons of effort into doing a simple task. Our hands are one of our best features for mimicking any sort of device till you can wire it into your brain. Doing a 25ms reaction with your fingers is a lot easier then with your back. Kinect just seems more like a gimmick and a Wiii too (me too) thing, then something extremely usable.
I could, however, see the Kinect making it's way into the industry sector, specifically for mimicking motorized arms or construction equipment... and also porn industry.
I'm not sure how many of the posters on here actually play a console, but a surprising number of games simply DO NOT support four players (at least popular xbox titles). Most of them only support two players and despite saying four players it does not mean locally from one console(!!!!). I have went over to my friends and found that there are very few titles that you can actually play locally coop wise. Even the new halo requires you to have your OWN account to play the coop game modes for it and when playing online you either need your own account or you appear as the other persons name (1).
I don't think coop is dieing at all, I believe big corporations that back the consoles are killing it! It's much more profitable to have each person own a copy of the game and the console rather then having four people have fun on one. About the only corporation that isn't pushing this is Nintendo (for obvious reasons).
Hell, if they wanted to they could even run duel displays from one console, allowing you to power more then one TV and the capability to split it into even more screen or more bigger screens. However, they don't - they just want you to be another console and another copy of their game. Don't listen to all the BS about coop not being fun or people growing up, anyone who has done it and not turned into a old turnip knows how fun playing with friends can be when in the same room (or even family).
There are a few that could use a remake, but obviously that's privledged information. I agree with a lot of people that the Tribes series needs something that ISN'T a bastard creation. I could write pages on how Tribes was a revolutionary game and how it was well ahead of it's time in many, many, many ways, but I'll digress. I don't think it's something any single company could get it right in this day and age without turning it into an abomination like Tribes: Vengeance was.I don't know if people missed it, but the Tribes franchise rights were purchased by the company that makes Global Agenda. So, we will probably see a new incarnation within the next few years; a terrible incarnation at that.
Speaking of Tribes, one of the lead creators from the original developer of Tribes (Dynamix before they all got canned) is making a game called Firefall. It looks very promising. Keep a eye out folks, it has a low profile right now. Go watch the youtube vids in the meantime.
This comment wont apply to almost all of the games out there, but in the particular case of Mass Effect 2. I stopped right before the last mission because I enjoyed the level of immersion and how the characters interacted with me; in essence I didn't want it to end. Of course I eventually finished it, but not before waiting a few days and wanting to see if maybe there was a bit more dialogue or character development left. All of the characters in that game were wonderful to interact with and very well thought out. They all had very good voice acting and the authors genuinely took the time to look at things from the perspective of their characters shoes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely critical of games, especially since they've been so shitty for so many years, but that was the particular reason why I didn't finish ME2 right away. I'm not sure if it works the same way for other people, but it might. Others games on the other hand... I could write pages upon pages of pages of what is wrong with them all the way down to how game developers are being raised and the mindset the industry is setting forth for the gamers and the developers both.
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The interesting question is where they keep getting their money to create such PoS that have been driveling into the gaming industry for the last six years. They can cop out and just copy/paste the latest shinies into their game that keep the mob at bay, but never make anything truly amazing. Even the better game developers have realized how easy it is to just stop putting so much effort in and start producing steaming piles of crap. Even more so when you realize a lot of game developers aren't even pushing forward graphically or computationally anymore. The no brainer, the eye candy, the brute force mechanic that can make your game shinier then others they don't even care to do anymore. ...yet where do they get their money to produce the latest clones that suck balls? I, I'm sure like many others of the newer generation that were raised and bred on the PC (not the console), have many amazing ideas for the next greatest blockbuster yet have no where to actually go with this. From what I've seen the industry is a chicken and an egg problem. They only want accomplished people who have already put out tripple A titles before they even look at you, let alone sneeze on you. I really would like to know how exactly games that have no more then the premise of 'just like that other clone' and 'check these boxes' can get multi-million dollar funding and tank time and again.
Like the opening post states, current social games aren't fun (applies to current MMOs too). Hell, people are starting to realize how terrible WoW crack really is and they're getting sick of it (impart why I believe Guild Wars 2 will do so well). It's just a grind and a regrind, you can't really even have a lot of fun with friends... you can quest (which works for maybe 2-3 people), but if you do content with any sort of breadth you spend half the time frustrated or pissed off at the friends you're supposed to be having fun with.
The kicker is, if someone does get let in with one of those sparklie ideas the industry was founded on it will utterly rape all the competition... WoW, CoD, all the games that are preying on nostalgia now will not hold a snowballs chance in hell to match them. The torrent of clones that will follow it will pail in comparison as they will only grasp an insignificant portion of what makes up that game and the metrics they can pull from it. I personally am waiting for that day with glee when I can jump up and down, clap my hands, and grin like a fricking idiot without being left to feel like one as the hype fades and I realize what a PoS I spent $60 on. I will feel good as I can have fun doing one of the things in life I originally loved doing without lowering my standards or pretending the game is fun when it is clearly not.
I personally want to get into the game industry just so I can have something fun to play in my leisure time once again...
I don't believe this is entirely true. While I agree with a lot of what you wrote, in terms of gameplay over graphics, eye candy, and other revolutionary technical changes to games, it is now becoming an EXCUSE to NOT make something better. I recently read a article that stated that developers don't believe graphics even need to be improved and they're happy if they don't(!).
This is leading to laziness in the industry as the big wigs sit on top and get old and fat without really wanting to innovate and simply copy the latest CoD clone that sold well.
Take physics for instance. IMO it was one of the biggest, if not they very biggest change to video games in this decade. You know what happened? It fell flat right around the time consolization took hold and you have to struggle to find ANY games with any sort of meaningful physics in it besides some harmless debris that people can't even interact with. The best use of it so far I've seen is BF: BC2. That, however, was not even real physics. It's just pre-rendered destruction sequences for buildings once a certain number of walls are blown out. Men of War / Faces of War (which is a relatively unknown game) has very nice physic interactions between projectiles and whatever decides to make a nasty hole in a building (like driving through it with a tank).
Physics IS NOT just eye candy, it can completely change and reshape gameplay and you know what? It was thrown on the side like it never even existed.
It's not just devs concentrating on eye candy, it's the shitty industry in itself and monetization of it's workforce into a small easily disposable source of income. They simply milk all their talent dry till they don't even want to do anything anymore and then discard them when they're past their usefulness. Almost no developers or publishers encourage innovation and most of them just want to spit out the latest iteration to get their monies worth. Only a handful of developers/publishers are doing things right such as Valve and Arena-net. However, they have their own problems, but those are quite outweighed by what they're accomplishing.
As a gamer for many years I can amount it to that. People eat when they're stressed out and video games that you get frustrated with or are very competitive cause stress. They make you want to eat... a lot.
That really depends on what else that 'child' is being fed while he's growing up. If someone grows up in an environment with absolutely no empathy they will have little tolerance or understanding for it. If a child is already in a bubble devoid of any normal interactions, they will obviously skew towards what they know best. A healthy look at feral children who grow up in an enviornment completely devoid of social interaction is all the proof you really need. There are plenty of famous psychological studies done around this as well. A violent video game could easily be countered (for the children that don't know better) by telling the child that they love him and they shouldn't do those things in real life.
Society isn't responsible for raising children. Violent video games are no different then growing up around the typical violent movies. People in midevil, roman, and greek days grew up around violence as well (especially REAL war). They built empires and eventually reached the Renaissance era even after midevil days. This is just another jump on the violent video game bandwagon.
For those of you that have been noticing trends in WoW for instance (I play for more then just the game), there is a large amount of players that are simply tired of the 'epic grind' and Blizzards lack of love for the game overall. Blizzard is seemingly trying to remedy it by abandoning the game and working on Titan, leaving behind a crappy development team that seems to be half assing everything. There is a power struggle between people who just want to have fun and people who want to always and forever remain above other people in a certain way, shape, or form and believe it is their god given right to maintain that (almost like the aristocrats). The whole thing needs to be flushed and a lot of players jumped ship for Rift, which is very refreshing.
Rift, while very different and has quite a few of traits GW2 has, is just WoW 2.0. It's basically WoW if it was made six years later. They have bits and pieces from every game, but they did nothing exceptionally well. Even the soul combinations, which is the most attractive part of the game, just appears to be a knock off of GW2.
I honestly and whole heartedly look forward to GW2. Rift was interesting and I'm sure OR will be decent as well, but I've only seen a lot of hype from OR and not a lot of content and delivery on that hype. GW2 from the looks of the videos and the general feel from the development team is going to be something truly epic. I can only imagine that GW was the half-life of their overall goal they were aiming for. A lot of times in game development they don't have the time or the finances to achieve what they want to, so they have to take baby steps... that appears to be one of them.
GW2, DNF, and Firefall are what I'm looking forward to. Blizzard has fallen and the industry has stagnated for far too long.
Perhaps this has more to do with people realizing tech companies are trying to suck every last dollar out of them now (especially with DRM schemes and products that expire and have to be renewed) matched with the plateau we reached in the gaming sector as far as what is required by computers to play them. Overall there isn't a lot of incentive TO upgrade and that incentive is usually matched with more obligations and things you have to pay for. It's becoming a chore not only to buy a computer that is more then likely lower quality then ones made in the past due to companies cutting corners and filling it with bloatware, but also everything associated with it.
I think the industry (software and not specifically hardware makers like Intel, but computer manufacturers) are slowly setting up their own noose to hang themselves with it and they don't even realize it is in part due to their greed to suck every last penny out of the market. People can blame the economy all they want, but this has been a ongoing trend that has far outlasted the current recession. A quick look at the gaming industry can tell you a lot about this.
Feelings can't always be rationalized with numbers, that's why metrics don't always work out.
Has anyone wondered if this was done so Crytek can point a finger at piracy? This is a ridiculously huge blunder for such a huge company and they've pointed fingers at piracy before. That's allegedly why Crysis 2 is for both the PC and the consoles.
This could be a stunt for publicity as well. Something like beta builds of games aren't regularly leaked.
We could, you know, raise taxes...
/., are staying away from that as a possible solution.
I'm surprised so many people, even around
Rip off of the more generally known term of 'consolization'. Just someone trying to coin a term that a lot of people are already aware of. It's good it's actually getting a article now though. :o
Not sure if this counts as a military advantage, but using the moon as a testbed for getting to Mars and offering haven in case the world explodes (which it eventually will given humans) will lead to advances in many types of technology. I'm sure a lot of which will be applicable to military, such as improvements to automation, protecting against meteorites (I'm sure some that could equate to a 120mm cannon energy on a pin), and the logistics necessary to keep it operational.
Not everything is about the direct goal. Space and exploration in general has a lot to do with what you gain along the way. I shouldn't need to name off all the inventions and advancements that have been part of it. It's too bad many politicians and people in places of any power (army and ceos) are incredibly ignorant and short sighted.
Seriously it's not hard for the smart people that still have a say to make a nice little powerpoint showing what happens in certain scenarios with big nice pictures. Like showing the earth exploding and people on the moon raising their hands in excitement because they survived.
...on how much longer developers and publishers will keep putting out crap - soon or sooner.
Have these been tested for it?
If my lights are doing the mambo constantly, especially bright lights, thats almost a guaranteed nasty headache after awhile.
This is the first move I've read about that Google has done to use their power to strong arm the industry into doing what it thinks best. Considering it normally just tries to heavily sway people in a direction without forcing a choice on them (Chrome or no Chrome) I'm finding this really disheartening. Microsoft also likes doing this by simply building whatever they want into their OS and people just eat it up cause they have little to no choice. Google should know better then to start treading down the same path as Microsoft. I can understand that they're trying to help the open source community, but they really aren't putting what they're doing into perspective as many posts on here have indicated for numerous reasons, putting aside taking away choice from their users.
"This really echoes a lot of what we've seen throughout the entertainment industry in general. It's really about letting players make their choices about how they play." PAY or PLAY?
I may be being a pessimist, but I believe systems like this will eventually bust. All of the failure MMOs are switching to free-to-play with heavy game based influences being based on how much money you spend in game. I'm not completely familiar with LotRs model, but eventually you'll reach a point where people get tired of having to put in a quarter for continued play. The influx and increased revenue right now, at least in my opinion, is based on the fact that everyone is all googly about so many free things and most MMOs do have a decent amount of content you explore before you get tired of them. I'm sure given another year or two this will climax and people will start to realize they're getting milked for something that they don't really find worth the money (or at least feel it).
Putting that aside, while I'm not familiar with LotRs model, I am with other crappy MMO models where you need to buy items in order to stay on top. A lot of 3rd rate Korean MMOs are like this and I recently played Global Agenda in which you almost immediately run into the pay wall. I almost justified buying this with friends, but after looking at the benefits for the 'purchased version' vs the 'free version', I started to realize that there is almost nothing to the game and they just try to hide it with smoke and mirrors. In other words 'if you buy this, the game will be so much better!' when really you already played the best parts of the game, sorta like a movie trailer.
Maybe I'm just putting too much faith in consumers to eventually figure things out or get a little inkling in their head that says 'danger will robinson'.
To a certain extent I agree fully. Hearing criticism can be quite helpful, but often times that has ulterior motives behind it, The criticism itself isn't often times objective, but extraordinarily subjective at least online. I've played WoW for years and it's easy to see what a community can do to a game, both good and bad, and how sometimes it leads the developers to take on a position they wouldn't normally (like acting like god). The developers on WoW forums have aquired a very nasty tone through all the ass kissing some people do and whenever they're confronted with issues they can't directly address it, instead they need to go around the problem and apply a band aid fix in order to look like they were never wrong or they don't even address a glaring problem and instead go in a completely opposite direction as to avoid or obsolete the problem. If you never visit the forums you can never be proven wrong because people don't know if you actually read their post or not. It's almost like politics and it's quite laughable. Just look through the blue tracker on mmo-champion.
Someone could really write a case study on the effects of forums on game developers. This doesn't even take into account all the trolls, people with malicious intent, people just messing around with other people, and people trying to carefully shape things in their favor. Forums can be very powerful, but only as long as a strict hand is used in care for them.
I talked about Tabula Rasa on another article, but I'm going to talk about it again. They had very good relations with their player base in how they addressed problems and openly talked about it with them. They didn't cater to underhanded tactics and simply ignored some comments. The friday community updates were extremely enlightening and they showed the direction of the game, what they developers were doing to address current problems, and what their current thoughts are on matters. It was refreshing and I enjoyed reading it a lot as well as playing the game, it made me feel like the developers actually cared about what they were making and what I as a gamer though. Tribes 2 also had such relations with their playerbase and featured continual updates to address problems. Another example of this is Living Legends (which is a mod) feel free to visit their website and look at how they handle their playerbase. As a mod the community is the lifeblood that keeps them going as they don't have money to use and they rely on the communities help.
Something I don't know if the article mention, but you have to look out for is people in the community that start assuming the role and talking like they speak for the developers. These types of people are very bad and can affect whatever is being developed in a very bad way as they also usually operate on personal interest only. They kill off any sort of different ideology or ideas that differ from their own (and their perceived views that represent the developers with their own ideas mixed in to skew things) so all you end up seeing in the end is what they want you to. There is at least one or two of these in every community I visit, mod or game. There is usually only one because they scare off anyone else that tries to act like them. WoW has a few since it is so big that you can hide in different parts of the forums and no one will ever see you.
Yup... I spent quite a few nights doing that with friends.
That's what good gameplay can do over the carrot-on-a-stick strategy.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the game wasn't meant to turn into what it did based on who made it, but rather that it's the product they ended up with after they put everything together. The trouble is they never knew what they had and they managed to kill it off right when they saw it mildly successful. It was one of the most brilliant blunders to ever happen IMO, just not to the right people
Putting that aside, I never knew Richard Gariott before I saw his name on a box for Tabula Rasa. I honestly think no one knows him, like most game designers, and the only notable name in the gaming industry that my friends can actually recognize IS Sid Meier. If you start talking studios that's a bit different (Blizzard, Treyarch, Bioware, Infinityward).
Sticking to things had little to nothing to do with the final product. They ended up with something good, they didn't take it and run with it, instead they started catering to the crowd they thought they could get the most money from (which is what most MMOs do). The last update was focused mainly on end game and PvP which was something the people they would attract with their game dont care about. Like I said, they didn't know what they had.
Yeah, TR died too early, it was the sad result of big wig politics and a development team that didn't know what to do with what they had. Putting that aside, I quite enjoyed the gameplay and quests wasn't why you played TR. There was nothing quite like playing with friends and holding a CP against odds. The last stand genere is something game designers don't fully understand and are barely starting to grasp (Firefall is something to look forward to IMO though).
I'm not entirely sure when or where you played, but snipers could pretty much one shot anything and spies raped everything in close combat, especially with motor assist armor (think literal ninja). Good games don't need to have mirror balance. A lot of people seem to think X class should be perfectly equal to Y class in almost all regards, that doesn't necessarily be a case. I was reading the comments on a TF2 article the other day and people were talking about how the game has absolutely no balance; I would argue it has very good balance, just most people don't understand it.
Points aside, Minecraft was released in alpha and it's doing pretty darn good. I think a lot of people (once again) have preconceived notions that a product will always remain the same. People pay $15 a month for continued development of a product and if they don't like that, then they can cancel. Though, I believe the expectations were to hit the ground running and catch up with WoW (at least perceived by their investors).
I honestly never played beta and my experiences are from the retail game. I found it quite a bit of fun. I'm not sure what experiences you had in the beta and how it drove you away, but the pull factor that made me play it a lot was still intact when I started playing it. IMO companies should be able to redesign classes completely if they want to (without changing the name of the class), you're paying for them to keep the game fresh. It just seems like another preconceived notion of what a game SHOULD and SHOULDN'T do.
I do believe TR could've been amazing in a completely revolutionary fashion, the development team wasn't in the right mindset and the investors got cold feet. Keep in mind TR was and still is the only survival MMO...
I'm not sure how it was grindy at all. People complained about it not having enough grind and that they got to max level right away. They got rid of the grind by making it more like a FPS then a MMO, but they marketed towards the MMO crowd who wants a grind.
It was anything, but a grind. You could've seen that by reaching the first control point. The style of gameplay and the rewards for participating in the world took a back seat to the actual gameplay, which it is as it should be.
The ideology that the end has to be where all the content is was something that Blizzard fostered and something TR didn't have.
Play a few different MMOs besides WoW (WAR, EQ2, TR (was), CoH, and Aion are good places to start) then you'll have a different look on things. Each one of those titles has very unique things WoW doesn't have and it is extremely apparent after playing with them for a bit.
Stop thinking that WoW is the ultimate game that will ever be produced and look at things outside of their formula, which is coincidentally as addicting as heroine and makes you very subjective. Things can be fun without being really grindy. WoW keeps you addicted with stuff, good games keep you addicted with fun.
This is why Tabula Rasa was so amazing when it came out, but suffered from poor advertisement and development direction. Even the team for it didn't know where they were going to go with it and openly admitted it.
Everyone wants to be the next big hit to take down WoW so if they go that path they're going to be compared and scrutinized against something that is entrenched and has an army of people backing it. It's quite sad that one of the best games as far as MMOs go was killed off early and left for dead (by politics between NCsoft and Richard Gariott no less). Whoever thinks sending themselves into space is a good advertisement for a game should at the very least have their motives questioned.
CEOs point at a metric and say 'make it earn money like that game', developers just 'baaah' and follow suit because they just want their paycheck and their name on a product no matter what it is. Unfortunately the gaming industry is a chicken and the egg. You can't get money without a name, you can't get a name without a good title, and you can't make really hit titles without money. Either the old generation needs to die off and the internet savy need to take over or someone with really good business sense needs to step into the video game industry or things will die more so then they already are (I wonder if Google wants to start a gaming business...).
Not that I completely support the article, but I believe the points were taken out of context. In your example you're using them as Laws instead of Guidelines.
1. Simply means that you shouldn't keep people waiting for too long, especially if you hype it up.
2. Don't let your game grow stagnate by reusing old content all the time.
3. The original team probably had quite a bit to do with the success so it's not a bad idea to keep the same people around.
4. If there was a really notable quality in the first one, you should keep it as it defines your game.
5. Some people change for the sake of change, without reason. That's not necessarily good when you lose what made the first game great.
6. Don't settle in on producing mediocre content because you think your game will sell no matter what.
Once again, I don't think these are curealls, just simply guidelines that should be thought of.
Most basic reason, don't aim to just make a sequel.
There is a such thing as setting your goals too low. Setting them too low purposefully just so real life can come chip away at them isn't a ideal strategy. Sequels should be original in their own way and add to the overall experience, not be designed to milk more money out of users (like almost all sequels are now days).
So the question shouldn't be how to make a good sequel, but how to make an original game that takes after the first one.
Maybe I'm being lazy, but call me when finger flicks and other small gestures can be used and detected properly. Keyboards and mice work so well because you don't need to exert tons of effort into doing a simple task. Our hands are one of our best features for mimicking any sort of device till you can wire it into your brain. Doing a 25ms reaction with your fingers is a lot easier then with your back. Kinect just seems more like a gimmick and a Wiii too (me too) thing, then something extremely usable.
I could, however, see the Kinect making it's way into the industry sector, specifically for mimicking motorized arms or construction equipment... and also porn industry.
I'm not sure how many of the posters on here actually play a console, but a surprising number of games simply DO NOT support four players (at least popular xbox titles). Most of them only support two players and despite saying four players it does not mean locally from one console(!!!!). I have went over to my friends and found that there are very few titles that you can actually play locally coop wise. Even the new halo requires you to have your OWN account to play the coop game modes for it and when playing online you either need your own account or you appear as the other persons name (1).
I don't think coop is dieing at all, I believe big corporations that back the consoles are killing it! It's much more profitable to have each person own a copy of the game and the console rather then having four people have fun on one. About the only corporation that isn't pushing this is Nintendo (for obvious reasons).
Hell, if they wanted to they could even run duel displays from one console, allowing you to power more then one TV and the capability to split it into even more screen or more bigger screens. However, they don't - they just want you to be another console and another copy of their game. Don't listen to all the BS about coop not being fun or people growing up, anyone who has done it and not turned into a old turnip knows how fun playing with friends can be when in the same room (or even family).
There are a few that could use a remake, but obviously that's privledged information. I agree with a lot of people that the Tribes series needs something that ISN'T a bastard creation. I could write pages on how Tribes was a revolutionary game and how it was well ahead of it's time in many, many, many ways, but I'll digress. I don't think it's something any single company could get it right in this day and age without turning it into an abomination like Tribes: Vengeance was.I don't know if people missed it, but the Tribes franchise rights were purchased by the company that makes Global Agenda. So, we will probably see a new incarnation within the next few years; a terrible incarnation at that.
Speaking of Tribes, one of the lead creators from the original developer of Tribes (Dynamix before they all got canned) is making a game called Firefall. It looks very promising. Keep a eye out folks, it has a low profile right now. Go watch the youtube vids in the meantime.
This comment wont apply to almost all of the games out there, but in the particular case of Mass Effect 2. I stopped right before the last mission because I enjoyed the level of immersion and how the characters interacted with me; in essence I didn't want it to end. Of course I eventually finished it, but not before waiting a few days and wanting to see if maybe there was a bit more dialogue or character development left. All of the characters in that game were wonderful to interact with and very well thought out. They all had very good voice acting and the authors genuinely took the time to look at things from the perspective of their characters shoes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely critical of games, especially since they've been so shitty for so many years, but that was the particular reason why I didn't finish ME2 right away. I'm not sure if it works the same way for other people, but it might. Others games on the other hand... I could write pages upon pages of pages of what is wrong with them all the way down to how game developers are being raised and the mindset the industry is setting forth for the gamers and the developers both.