So why can't we just download games for about half the street price?
Without those middlemen, many of the projects you'd want to buy won't be funded, and wouldn't exist.
We game developers need money too, you know. Somebody has to take the risk and pay us, and with AAA titles, you're not going to see many self-funded indies.
Sad thing is that even after the self-censoring, developers still sometimes get hit, and have to choose between stopping sales or spending more to fix the fix.
Eh, you gotta be careful with Steam. Sometimes, the prices are equivalent or actually higher than what you'd find in Gamestop/etc.
For example, two of my friends have gotten Team Fortress 2 for $10 at Electronic Boutique (a Gamestop owned store in Canada), but the Steam price was $20 at the time. And that game is made by Valve!
That said, Steam still has lot's of sales and deals they do, but it's still not always the best choice for the frugal customer.
They pretty much bribed writers to write favorable reviews.
Actually, no. That's the glory of what they did; they didn't do this as a method of getting better reviews, they did this purely for exposure. There's no way in hell they could hide their methodology when you're sending checks in ornate boxes to people, because it basically leaves a trail back to who gave it to you.
I know we all like to hate on EA, but come on. Trying to bribe while practically pointing the bribes back to you is damned silly.
Hilariously, if you take away the whole prodigy thing, the guy making his own game (of such detail, at least), and settling important business decisions over the results of playing a game, that movie is disturbingly reflective of large-studio game development.
Just because I said some people could use updates for good reasons, doesn't mean there won't be lazy-ass just-after-release patches from some people. Not everyone is as bad as your example.
If you release a game for a console that needs updating, you fucked up.
Since when were game developers not human?
(And I'm not even counting things like updates for map packs or wanting to do something new and adding new content to a released game without resorting to DLC).
That's pretty much it. My buddy is a test coordinator at EA, and his stories about games failing for the stupidest guideline violations never ends.
And I think that's what it's really about: each company has their own guidelines (from Nintendo's save screen longer than 0.15 seconds has to have a message that you can read, to Sony's all of "PLAYSTATION 3" has to be capitalized). If a version of the game was submitted to one console maker, got passed, but failed at a different one, that means they need to change code for a version and still make sure it's compatible with the older versions that passed under someone else's watch.
And never mind shinanigans related to updating the game (or virtual lack of ability in Nintendo's case).
Problem is, Apple is allegedly in cahoots with Reverb (which is how the PR company in question can push certain Apps into "New and Noteworthy" etc sections). If this is the case, you can probably bet they will stay.
So the real value is to astroturf the free, lite versions, because that is where the most download traffic is at. That can be done without purchasing. So Reverb's argument is moot. They very well could have many hundreds of accounts that their 10 staff members use to astroturf the lite versions.
I'm not sure if that's true. Like paid apps, I believe you still need to download the app in your iTunes in order to write a review. This means that the game would need to be downloaded to the PC multiple times, and downloaded to a iPod multiple times (perhaps different iPods?..).
Mostly guessing based on what I know about paid Apps though. You could be right, and the process to write a metric shit-ton of reviews for free apps may not be too time-intensive.
One of the guesses that me and many of my coworkers believe these 1 star reviews are left is what we call "consumer terrorism". Namely, they're going to bomb your app's average review unless you cater to their demands.
Considering how many apps get free updates based on customer feedback, it's not that surprising to see.
There also is no shame in releasing games with only updated graphics and a few minor changes. How many people would buy remakes of their favorite games if they stayed true to the original?
You could ask Square Enix, but I'm sure they wouldn't be able to hear you over the copious amounts of money piling into their coffers due to rereleasing their games a ridiculous amount of times.
For example, I think Final Fantasy 4 has had three rereleases already, and now has a long-spanning WiiWare gouge of episodic content.
So, yes, unless you spend every waking moment _working_ on something, then yes, you too are just "passing time" a lot.
And by "work", I mean as in you actually expect to sell it or otherwise get a tangible return on investment, and primarily for that return on investment. If it's just one of the intangible and impossible to measure benefits used as excuses for why your hobby is better than his, sad to break it to you, but it's still just a hobby. You're still doing it to pass the time.
While I'd mostly agree with you, I'm a game designer. What do I call playing games? Even when playing to study the facets of a game, I'm entertaining myself, and even when playing for leisure I end up deciphering something interesting about my craft.
I'm not sure if =/= work is a great method of determining what is just passing time and what isn't.
Starcraft was "just" Warcraft in space, with non-identical sides this time (THE major difference, I would say).
Or just Warhammer 40K skinned ontop of Warcraft, depending on who you ask. Starcraft II looks in many ways to copy from 40K even more (space marines with jetpacks?), but hey, that doesn't stop them from making a very polished and well designed game.
I dunno, I would think it's less employers demanding you work longer, and more you not getting hired because the outsourced workers are working longer.
Same end result, slightly different path.
(Of course, both would likely occur, but I think your case is less likely to be as prevalent as the one I outlined).
I'm a game designer, so yes, the latter probably applies pretty well for me right now. I love my job though, and the only reason I'm willing to put up with it right now is because I'm a neophyte in the industry, and I have to get experience so I can bypass the Catch-22 and have a bit more freedom in who will take me. Once I get that experience, I'll be a bit more prudent in what I'm willing to inflict on myself.
I dunno, my commute from my place to work is 1 hour with smooth transfers, or about 1.5 to 2 without (especially late in the evening, or just at the end of the workday). I'm reading an CC game design book or playing games to work, so such a long commute time really isn't an issue to me. And as an added plus, I get 20 minutes walking either way, which is not bad considering I sit in front of a computer for all of my work and most of my leisure time.
If I were spending four hours a day in transit I'd seriously consider either moving house or moving job.
If I didn't love the hell out of my job of designing video games, I probably would change jobs or at least studio, but as neophyte in the industry, it's not a reasonable option to me right now. As it stands, the reason my commute time is so long is that I moved out with a bunch of other graduates from the same post-secondary I went to, so I'm doing it to save a bit for my near future, and also to help them out (they're not all fortunate enough to land as nice a job as me).
There's also a $100 per year fee to be in Apple's store.
Lies. The fee for Apple developers is one-time. Comparing the expenses for the two, and they're even, but every year you want to stay a part of the respective gong show, XBL Marketplace gets you paying more and more.
Anyone who works 13 hours a day, either likes their job or is earning enough money that they are going to retire early.
It regularly consumes 13 hours of my day, factor in an average 8 hours of sleep and that leaves me with 3 hours in which to do things like play games, eat food, etc.
9 hour work day + 2 hours commute either way == 13 hours.
He's not working 13 hour long days, he's just got a fairly long commute time. I have effectively the same thing; except I play either iPhone games or DS games to and from (or occasionally some sort of reading material).
(though a limit of x no of apps per developer would do a lot to help to weed out all the crappy duplicate apps out there).
I'm not sure it would. I recall that Nintendo tried to pull that with the NES (only two games per developer per year), and all that ended up happening was either A) companies would have subcompanies that they stated weren't actually related to the main one, or people made and released "illegal" karts that were the X in 1s.
Of course, the App store won't suffer from the latter case (unless you're releasing to the jailbroken scene), but the first point could make things messy, as then Apple would have to try to verify that a company or individual isn't trying to abuse the system by signing up under different guises.
I can proudly say that if i google my full name it yields 0 results. How many of you can say that??
I can proudly say that if any prospective employer googled my name, they'd see many insightful comments from Gamasutra, my personal website, and other websites that speak well of me. How many of you would like to say that?
Yes, there are risks and other problems with having things you say being able to be drawn back to you online, but like with what many other Slashdotters have posted in other stories in the past, if someone wants to find something to dislike me for with something I said online years ago, I don't want to be associated with them to begin with. I accept the risks to reap the benefits.
(Amusingly, there are a surprising number of people who share my first and last name that clearly aren't me that also show up, but results for me seem more prominent. Also, the career choices/pictures of the other results are also obviously not me, so I don't have to worry about people confusing their comments for me.)
WoW has opened up the MMORPG genre to lots of people who are not computer gamers very much. People whose "other games" aren't Morrowind or Far Cry, but Solitaire and Sims. It's dumbed down the entire genre.
Companies that hire copious amounts of people for big ass games want large amounts of money so they can continue to survive. That shouldn't be surprising with this genre of games.
Nonetheless, games like FFXI or Eve Online both are examples that MMORPGs with a more hardcore bent can still exist, and they will no doubt not be the last.
For some reason I don't get, MMORPG designers apparently want the gameplay extremely predictable. I think it's a control-freak problem.
This relates to the whole "these games are bloody huge and complex" think I had in my last post. Also, introducing randomness into the game makes it much more costly to QA, since they must attempt to test every case to ensure no bugs slip through, which becomes more and more impossible the more variance can exist. Please remember that we're talking about people that have to do this, not machines.
Also, again, maybe it's due to the difference in MMOs that we play, but at least in FFXI, you're hard pressed to run through an area infested with higher level monsters and get away with it unless you're uncannily observant and at least a bit lucky. It has less to do with specific spawn points, and more to do with the fact that monsters wander, sometimes many scores of feet from their spawning point or area. Also, some aggro, some don't, some aggro to different kinds of things... Some of my favourite memories in FFXI were running through holy-shit-I-shouldn't-be-here lands, often dying, but sometimes getting away with it.
But it wasn't intended to be the only thing to change, just one example of things that could be changed without much effort. [...] Yes, it starts becoming non-trivial.
You seem to only think in terms of the time spent coding any changes. The amount of time that would have to be spent to figure out the design implications of these sorts of changes, in addition to countermeasures, would take a nontrivial amount of time. When you literally add how much an employer would have to pay for something that could even be considered a minor feature, you're talking about a ridiculous amount of cash to most individuals.
Then again, quite a few of [the problems related to generic gameplay structure] are part of the problem all by themselves. I never liked the strict class systems anyways. Again, I feel they're part of the control-freak problem.
Actually, there are two extremely valid reasons as to why we use classes: one, it puts tangible limits on what is possible and what isn't. Without limits like this, balancing an MMO would cease to be feasible. Secondly, it makes the whole system far more approachable to new players, hardcore and casual alike. The only time that truly open-ended systems for RPGs that don't involve classes have worked involve have far less total options (the sum of all abilities/etc for every class) compared to any system that just lets you do whatever you want. I've only seen such cases even exist in small gaming groups that use some form of d20 system; in the video gaming world, they're likely limited to a small amount of indie titles at best. They can exist, and great for the ones that do, but expecting even a remotely sizable amount of commercial games to be as open, when there is no proven market for it (appropriate to the costs needed to produce it at least), is ridiculous.
Who says your hard instances have to be just tougher? Why do the elite monsters have to have more hitpoints, but otherwise be the same? If you don't want to offend the Solitaire players, keep the intelligent monsters in the higher-level raids. But I personally would love if so-called elite enemies were actually smarter, and not just the same generic monster wit
You can probably have the best setup for one specific type of situation (normal PvE, certain boss PvE, one type of PvP, etc), but if the MMO you're playing actually has one one perfect setup that fulfills everything above, then you're just playing a poorly balanced game, and should play something else.
For example, in FFXI, there isn't an ultimate set of equipment for any class; what's best varies depending on your race, your subjob, and what specific challenge you want to tackle.
Unfortunately, game studios still seem to shy away from dynamic content because the behavior of dynamic systems is generally hard to predict. Some might fear that the game world suddenly becomes unstable and drops into chaos. But the game studios could hire more people with a strong physics/dynamic systems modeling background to deal with these problems.
Actually, the main reason is probably that it would be a bitch to test. If you have 1000 possible ways of something happening, how can you be sure that all 1000 ways are possible, and each possibility won't break the game? Getting enough testers to make sure they can happen naturally without breaking would take a ridiculous amount of time. If you have so much as 1 texture missing, you'd have a bug that could be as innocuous as that emitter not appearing, or as bad as having the whole application crash (depending on how generous your programmers are in implementing failsafes).
There are a couple of ways it could be done, but I think the whole thing depends on that sort of arms race between the thief and the shopkeepers, where they're constantly expanding their efforts to stymie the other person. That's what would make it a cool game: if the thieves had a huge advantage, then it would be terrible to be a shopkeeper, and vice versa.
If this would be such a robust and fun system, why would you want to tack it into something else instead of just making a game about this? The more intricate systems you put onto of the same game, the less time you can spend on making them work well (unless you have unlimited funding and time).
Crafting in many MMOs is merely a means to an end. Certainly, they could be more robust than they are now, but the product as a whole would likely suffer a bit from having something so complex introduced ontop of the main game.
Slashdot Mirror
So why can't we just download games for about half the street price?
Without those middlemen, many of the projects you'd want to buy won't be funded, and wouldn't exist.
We game developers need money too, you know. Somebody has to take the risk and pay us, and with AAA titles, you're not going to see many self-funded indies.
I wish I had funny mod points for you.
Sad thing is that even after the self-censoring, developers still sometimes get hit, and have to choose between stopping sales or spending more to fix the fix.
Eh, you gotta be careful with Steam. Sometimes, the prices are equivalent or actually higher than what you'd find in Gamestop/etc.
For example, two of my friends have gotten Team Fortress 2 for $10 at Electronic Boutique (a Gamestop owned store in Canada), but the Steam price was $20 at the time. And that game is made by Valve!
That said, Steam still has lot's of sales and deals they do, but it's still not always the best choice for the frugal customer.
They pretty much bribed writers to write favorable reviews.
Actually, no. That's the glory of what they did; they didn't do this as a method of getting better reviews, they did this purely for exposure. There's no way in hell they could hide their methodology when you're sending checks in ornate boxes to people, because it basically leaves a trail back to who gave it to you.
I know we all like to hate on EA, but come on. Trying to bribe while practically pointing the bribes back to you is damned silly.
Hilariously, if you take away the whole prodigy thing, the guy making his own game (of such detail, at least), and settling important business decisions over the results of playing a game, that movie is disturbingly reflective of large-studio game development.
Just because I said some people could use updates for good reasons, doesn't mean there won't be lazy-ass just-after-release patches from some people. Not everyone is as bad as your example.
If you release a game for a console that needs updating, you fucked up.
Since when were game developers not human?
(And I'm not even counting things like updates for map packs or wanting to do something new and adding new content to a released game without resorting to DLC).
That's pretty much it. My buddy is a test coordinator at EA, and his stories about games failing for the stupidest guideline violations never ends.
And I think that's what it's really about: each company has their own guidelines (from Nintendo's save screen longer than 0.15 seconds has to have a message that you can read, to Sony's all of "PLAYSTATION 3" has to be capitalized). If a version of the game was submitted to one console maker, got passed, but failed at a different one, that means they need to change code for a version and still make sure it's compatible with the older versions that passed under someone else's watch.
And never mind shinanigans related to updating the game (or virtual lack of ability in Nintendo's case).
Problem is, Apple is allegedly in cahoots with Reverb (which is how the PR company in question can push certain Apps into "New and Noteworthy" etc sections). If this is the case, you can probably bet they will stay.
So the real value is to astroturf the free, lite versions, because that is where the most download traffic is at. That can be done without purchasing. So Reverb's argument is moot. They very well could have many hundreds of accounts that their 10 staff members use to astroturf the lite versions.
I'm not sure if that's true. Like paid apps, I believe you still need to download the app in your iTunes in order to write a review. This means that the game would need to be downloaded to the PC multiple times, and downloaded to a iPod multiple times (perhaps different iPods?..).
Mostly guessing based on what I know about paid Apps though. You could be right, and the process to write a metric shit-ton of reviews for free apps may not be too time-intensive.
(Gah, and I moderated...)
One of the guesses that me and many of my coworkers believe these 1 star reviews are left is what we call "consumer terrorism". Namely, they're going to bomb your app's average review unless you cater to their demands.
Considering how many apps get free updates based on customer feedback, it's not that surprising to see.
There also is no shame in releasing games with only updated graphics and a few minor changes. How many people would buy remakes of their favorite games if they stayed true to the original?
You could ask Square Enix, but I'm sure they wouldn't be able to hear you over the copious amounts of money piling into their coffers due to rereleasing their games a ridiculous amount of times.
For example, I think Final Fantasy 4 has had three rereleases already, and now has a long-spanning WiiWare gouge of episodic content.
So, yes, unless you spend every waking moment _working_ on something, then yes, you too are just "passing time" a lot.
And by "work", I mean as in you actually expect to sell it or otherwise get a tangible return on investment, and primarily for that return on investment. If it's just one of the intangible and impossible to measure benefits used as excuses for why your hobby is better than his, sad to break it to you, but it's still just a hobby. You're still doing it to pass the time.
While I'd mostly agree with you, I'm a game designer. What do I call playing games? Even when playing to study the facets of a game, I'm entertaining myself, and even when playing for leisure I end up deciphering something interesting about my craft.
I'm not sure if =/= work is a great method of determining what is just passing time and what isn't.
Starcraft was "just" Warcraft in space, with non-identical sides this time (THE major difference, I would say).
Or just Warhammer 40K skinned ontop of Warcraft, depending on who you ask. Starcraft II looks in many ways to copy from 40K even more (space marines with jetpacks?), but hey, that doesn't stop them from making a very polished and well designed game.
I dunno, I would think it's less employers demanding you work longer, and more you not getting hired because the outsourced workers are working longer.
Same end result, slightly different path.
(Of course, both would likely occur, but I think your case is less likely to be as prevalent as the one I outlined).
I'm a game designer, so yes, the latter probably applies pretty well for me right now. I love my job though, and the only reason I'm willing to put up with it right now is because I'm a neophyte in the industry, and I have to get experience so I can bypass the Catch-22 and have a bit more freedom in who will take me. Once I get that experience, I'll be a bit more prudent in what I'm willing to inflict on myself.
I dunno, my commute from my place to work is 1 hour with smooth transfers, or about 1.5 to 2 without (especially late in the evening, or just at the end of the workday). I'm reading an CC game design book or playing games to work, so such a long commute time really isn't an issue to me. And as an added plus, I get 20 minutes walking either way, which is not bad considering I sit in front of a computer for all of my work and most of my leisure time.
If I were spending four hours a day in transit I'd seriously consider either moving house or moving job.
If I didn't love the hell out of my job of designing video games, I probably would change jobs or at least studio, but as neophyte in the industry, it's not a reasonable option to me right now. As it stands, the reason my commute time is so long is that I moved out with a bunch of other graduates from the same post-secondary I went to, so I'm doing it to save a bit for my near future, and also to help them out (they're not all fortunate enough to land as nice a job as me).
There's also a $100 per year fee to be in Apple's store.
Lies. The fee for Apple developers is one-time. Comparing the expenses for the two, and they're even, but every year you want to stay a part of the respective gong show, XBL Marketplace gets you paying more and more.
Anyone who works 13 hours a day, either likes their job or is earning enough money that they are going to retire early.
It regularly consumes 13 hours of my day, factor in an average 8 hours of sleep and that leaves me with 3 hours in which to do things like play games, eat food, etc.
9 hour work day + 2 hours commute either way == 13 hours.
He's not working 13 hour long days, he's just got a fairly long commute time. I have effectively the same thing; except I play either iPhone games or DS games to and from (or occasionally some sort of reading material).
(though a limit of x no of apps per developer would do a lot to help to weed out all the crappy duplicate apps out there).
I'm not sure it would. I recall that Nintendo tried to pull that with the NES (only two games per developer per year), and all that ended up happening was either A) companies would have subcompanies that they stated weren't actually related to the main one, or people made and released "illegal" karts that were the X in 1s.
Of course, the App store won't suffer from the latter case (unless you're releasing to the jailbroken scene), but the first point could make things messy, as then Apple would have to try to verify that a company or individual isn't trying to abuse the system by signing up under different guises.
I can proudly say that if i google my full name it yields 0 results. How many of you can say that??
I can proudly say that if any prospective employer googled my name, they'd see many insightful comments from Gamasutra, my personal website, and other websites that speak well of me. How many of you would like to say that?
Yes, there are risks and other problems with having things you say being able to be drawn back to you online, but like with what many other Slashdotters have posted in other stories in the past, if someone wants to find something to dislike me for with something I said online years ago, I don't want to be associated with them to begin with. I accept the risks to reap the benefits.
(Amusingly, there are a surprising number of people who share my first and last name that clearly aren't me that also show up, but results for me seem more prominent. Also, the career choices/pictures of the other results are also obviously not me, so I don't have to worry about people confusing their comments for me.)
WoW has opened up the MMORPG genre to lots of people who are not computer gamers very much. People whose "other games" aren't Morrowind or Far Cry, but Solitaire and Sims. It's dumbed down the entire genre.
Companies that hire copious amounts of people for big ass games want large amounts of money so they can continue to survive. That shouldn't be surprising with this genre of games.
Nonetheless, games like FFXI or Eve Online both are examples that MMORPGs with a more hardcore bent can still exist, and they will no doubt not be the last.
For some reason I don't get, MMORPG designers apparently want the gameplay extremely predictable. I think it's a control-freak problem.
This relates to the whole "these games are bloody huge and complex" think I had in my last post. Also, introducing randomness into the game makes it much more costly to QA, since they must attempt to test every case to ensure no bugs slip through, which becomes more and more impossible the more variance can exist. Please remember that we're talking about people that have to do this, not machines.
Also, again, maybe it's due to the difference in MMOs that we play, but at least in FFXI, you're hard pressed to run through an area infested with higher level monsters and get away with it unless you're uncannily observant and at least a bit lucky. It has less to do with specific spawn points, and more to do with the fact that monsters wander, sometimes many scores of feet from their spawning point or area. Also, some aggro, some don't, some aggro to different kinds of things... Some of my favourite memories in FFXI were running through holy-shit-I-shouldn't-be-here lands, often dying, but sometimes getting away with it.
But it wasn't intended to be the only thing to change, just one example of things that could be changed without much effort. [...] Yes, it starts becoming non-trivial.
You seem to only think in terms of the time spent coding any changes. The amount of time that would have to be spent to figure out the design implications of these sorts of changes, in addition to countermeasures, would take a nontrivial amount of time. When you literally add how much an employer would have to pay for something that could even be considered a minor feature, you're talking about a ridiculous amount of cash to most individuals.
Then again, quite a few of [the problems related to generic gameplay structure] are part of the problem all by themselves. I never liked the strict class systems anyways. Again, I feel they're part of the control-freak problem.
Actually, there are two extremely valid reasons as to why we use classes: one, it puts tangible limits on what is possible and what isn't. Without limits like this, balancing an MMO would cease to be feasible. Secondly, it makes the whole system far more approachable to new players, hardcore and casual alike. The only time that truly open-ended systems for RPGs that don't involve classes have worked involve have far less total options (the sum of all abilities/etc for every class) compared to any system that just lets you do whatever you want. I've only seen such cases even exist in small gaming groups that use some form of d20 system; in the video gaming world, they're likely limited to a small amount of indie titles at best. They can exist, and great for the ones that do, but expecting even a remotely sizable amount of commercial games to be as open, when there is no proven market for it (appropriate to the costs needed to produce it at least), is ridiculous.
Who says your hard instances have to be just tougher? Why do the elite monsters have to have more hitpoints, but otherwise be the same? If you don't want to offend the Solitaire players, keep the intelligent monsters in the higher-level raids. But I personally would love if so-called elite enemies were actually smarter, and not just the same generic monster wit
You can probably have the best setup for one specific type of situation (normal PvE, certain boss PvE, one type of PvP, etc), but if the MMO you're playing actually has one one perfect setup that fulfills everything above, then you're just playing a poorly balanced game, and should play something else.
For example, in FFXI, there isn't an ultimate set of equipment for any class; what's best varies depending on your race, your subjob, and what specific challenge you want to tackle.
Unfortunately, game studios still seem to shy away from dynamic content because the behavior of dynamic systems is generally hard to predict. Some might fear that the game world suddenly becomes unstable and drops into chaos. But the game studios could hire more people with a strong physics/dynamic systems modeling background to deal with these problems.
Actually, the main reason is probably that it would be a bitch to test. If you have 1000 possible ways of something happening, how can you be sure that all 1000 ways are possible, and each possibility won't break the game? Getting enough testers to make sure they can happen naturally without breaking would take a ridiculous amount of time. If you have so much as 1 texture missing, you'd have a bug that could be as innocuous as that emitter not appearing, or as bad as having the whole application crash (depending on how generous your programmers are in implementing failsafes).
There are a couple of ways it could be done, but I think the whole thing depends on that sort of arms race between the thief and the shopkeepers, where they're constantly expanding their efforts to stymie the other person. That's what would make it a cool game: if the thieves had a huge advantage, then it would be terrible to be a shopkeeper, and vice versa.
If this would be such a robust and fun system, why would you want to tack it into something else instead of just making a game about this? The more intricate systems you put onto of the same game, the less time you can spend on making them work well (unless you have unlimited funding and time).
Crafting in many MMOs is merely a means to an end. Certainly, they could be more robust than they are now, but the product as a whole would likely suffer a bit from having something so complex introduced ontop of the main game.