Vanguard has been advertised as a hardcore-only game since it's inception. I actually like hell levels, grinding and slow travel. It gives me the feel that I'm actually in the world and not just playing a game. I want immersion in an MMORPG, not another game.
I totally agree with the first sentence, and disagree with the rest. Which is the whole point-- different games for different niches. It's not too surprising that the Vanguard testers are WoW-phobic, since making it WoWish kills off its unique selling points. Vanguard is aiming for a hardcore, somewhat smaller market (you don't get 5 million subs on this game), and assuming they can peel them away from EQ-- and I think they can-- they should attract a pretty die-hard following.
I've known this, you've known this, Sigil's known this. The question is, why didn't Microsoft know this? They acquire Sigil and scrap Mythica, which makes sense if you think you're competing with yourself. Of course, eventually MS realized that Vanguard was a niche game, Mythica was their casual one, and now they're left with nothing where previously they had an embarassment of coverage in the genre.
I have to think Microsoft is developing an unannounced large market MMO or two, perhaps targeted at "Live Anywhere".
I had John McCarthy (LISP fame) as a prof for a quarter. He'd talk about all sorts of crazy stuff-- planes that land on perches outside your house, or skilled labor being outsourced to India and such via the use of remotely controlled robots. Well, sure, it didn't help that his example case was haircutting instead of surgery, but he was on the right track.:)
They clearly state that they intend to bring the video game system from "gamers" to "everyone else." "Everyone else" doesn't want an "X-Box" or a "Playstation" or a "Revolution" or a "Super Whiz-Bang Toy 2010." They want something simple, sophisticated, intuitive, and a little artsy. "Wii" fits the bill for that type of goal.
"Everyone else" wants something they can pronounce. They don't want something that confuses them on first impression. Your product only has so long to make a positive impression, and convince a potential buyer that it's worth investing more time into thinking about it. This isn't because people are stupid, but because there's a massive amount of stimuli out there, and most of it gets filtered out as unimportant almost instantaneously.
"Hmm, what's this on display? A wi'i? A why-i? Er... how do I use this nunchuk remote? Hey, look, the latest CD from (favorite singer)! I'm going to go buy that."
Successful mass-market products have names the target market can pronounce.
Really, you're not going to the store for an Xbox 360 and spending less that $550.
I went to the store, bought a 360 and a play and charge kit. That's roughly $450 after tax. I went home and bought Geometry Wars and Marble Blast. $465. A couple weeks later, I bought Oblivion. Now we're up to $530 after tax, including two visits to the store, tax, and some XBL purchases.
NPD neither tracks online purchases, nor monthly subscriptions. They need to address this to preserve their credibility, but many developers and publishers are unlikely to want to release their (undoctored) sales information to anyone.
Did you stop reading the paragraph and not get to this part: "We do not expect sales of next generation software offsetting the current generation software sales decline until the PS3 and Revolution are launched."
Well, the thing is that/. readers have already shown that units are readily available on Walmart.com and even eBay (at about 5-10% premium), so the claim of "no availabilty" is false. This is also verifiable by walking to your local Toys R Us.
The Walmart bundles are obscene. The Premium 360s I'm looking at on ebay right now are at over a 25% markup, not including shipping, which is more obscene. The nearest Toys R Us to me is sold out.
"We think that the decline in overall sales of current generation software in January indicates the continuation of a trend that will persist well into 2006, and we anticipate double-digit declines in overall console software sales for the first half of 2006. We expect current generation software sales to decline at a 30% rate, or higher, for the full year. We do not expect sales of next generation software offsetting the current generation software sales decline until the PS3 and Revolution are launched."
That's referring to software sales overall, not just 360, and specifically refers to software.
Wow. There are four posts at 3 or greater, all of them speculating about reasons for slowing XBox 360 sales. The article says: "Needless to say, the main constricting factor for Xbox 360 sales continues to be the poor supply of the console, rather than a lack of consumers to purchase it."
Interestingly, none of the speculators have given any reason to trust them over Gamasutra, Wedbush Morgan, and Simon Carless. Hey, don't let that get in the way of a pointless flame-fest.
I'd venture to say that a good deal of this would have been avoided with a longer beta test cycle involving much more stress testing.
As you point out yourself, they knew problems were there from the beta. The issue wasn't so much lack of testing-- they knew it would asplode-- but a lack of fixing.:)
Depends what you're doing. For most casual games, you need a web-playable version, so you don't lose 50% or more of your potential audience because they don't want to download a demo. If you're targeting a different platform or niche, these requirements may be different (preinstalled on a mobile phone, downloadable on XBox Live, downloadable on Steam, whatever).
Java's a bitch because everyone's got whatever old version of the VM came with Windows, each version of which has its own bugs. The bugs aren't horrible, for the most part, but you'll end up with a bunch of VM installers on your box to handle bug reports. Java also doesn't give you much for free for game development, and any decent libraries for it will just increase the size of your download, but it's a possibility.
I want to check out the Popcap framework as soon as I get time, because my experience with their plugin from a gamer standpoint has been great. It was a quick, smooth install, and the games look nice, so if it's easier to use than Flash and more reliable than Java it may be a winner.
Flash is primarily useful for its installed base. Their language overhaul a while back has left it as an in-between mess, fit neither for content creators nor programmers. It's buggy, limited, and has nothing strong enough to recommend it in spite of these flaws.
I would investigate other platforms if I were you. Developing games for a casual audience requires some sacrifices, but at some point a bad tool will prevent you from ever completing a usable product.
Re:My own review.
on
PAX05 Writeup
·
· Score: 3, Funny
3) Music. The closest thing to a hippie music festival for gamers. Well, maybe not. They had a couple of people play way too much Final Fantasy on the piano, and a few very very horrible rappers. But NESkimos and the Minibosses simply kicked ass.
I don't think there was any way to tell if the rappers were any good, since the sound sucked. Sucked, sucked, sucked. I don't know if it was the room, the equipment, the techs (or lack thereof), or a horrible combination of all that. Any time anyone attempted to sing or speak over music with any bass, it was totally distorted and buried.
I hope they fix that next year. The rest of the conference was friggin' sweet, but any artists with vocals got the shaft..
But believe me when I tell you that PictoChat was DESIGNED for events like that.
Like you, I also wish there were a way to save some of those drawings. Eyes5 was nuts. OTOH, I wish I could erase all the horrible, horrible cock pictures from my mind. Every image was turned into a dick. Samus shooting a beam? Now it's Samus shooting a dick. Link wearing a cap? Now it's Link wearing a dick. Just a picture of a dick? Now it's a dick with two dicks on it. If Pictochat were truly designed for events like this, it would have a penis filter.
The only game I can recall with a decent sanity system was Eternal Darkness for the gamecube.
Right, that's the point. Silicon Knights made that game as a Nintendo Game Cube exclusive, but is now no longer exclusive. Apparently, they gave substantial rights for Eternal Darkness to Nintendo in the publishing contract.
Nintendo now wants to ensure that Silicon Knights don't make a similar game. Maybe Silicon Knights doesn't have the rights to Eternal Darkness, but they could make a "spiritual successor", like Wasteland and Fallout. So, Nintendo patented the core mechanic of the game, so Silicon Knights can't do anything like that.
That's what it looks like from the outside, anyway. I have no info about this that isn't in the article.
Blue frog receive one spam, and they trigger *every* blue frog client to DDOS the spammers' site simultaneously, whether or not they got the original site.
I can't find anything that explicitly says that, but there are some unclear sections. However, it says explicitly on the site: "The number of complaints posted by the community equals the number of spam messages received."
I'm confused. GTA has been a Mature rated game, meaning 18 and older for a long time. How about we educate the parents,
Here's the problem. Parents who are plenty educated about the ESRB rating system might want their 16 year old to play an M rated game, but not an AO rated game. They've read the labels, they know what the different ratings mean.
Unfortunately, since Rockstar apparently failed to properly disclose examples representative of the most extreme content on the game disc-- which is required when you submit a game to the ESRB-- the ESRB was unable to assign the correct rating to the game.
If people were actually serious when they talked about parenting, consumer education, and the video game rating system, they'd be outraged when a company subverted that system. If they were just being apologists for the industry, they'd be, well, exactly like they are right now.
P.S. Before anyone claims they weren't subverting the ratings system because the content was never intended to be seen: AFAIK, that's irrelevant. It's what's on the disc, not what's in the game, so intentional or not, failure to disclose would be a violation of the agreement you sign when submitting a game. If there are people working at publishers here with corrections/more information, I'd be interested in hearing more.
If you're not already used to programming in 3D, it can take way too much time to ramp up, find an engine that works how you want, understand it, and so on and so forth. Writing a 3D engine is also a massive task, and will probably kill your interest before you get around to actually writing a game.
2D is a nice way to go: it's a lot more fun getting so much more bang for your buck, without nearly as many content hassles either.
One cheaply available 2D engine that comes with source is from the good people at garage games, called Torque 2D. It's got a decent scripting language, and nice enough C++ code. If you don't want to re-learn C++ right away, you can accomplish quite a bit with only the scripting language.
There are probably some other nice 2D engines out there as well, so you can look before you buy. However, I'd recommend picking one and starting from there: it'll save you a ton of work, and you're much more likely to actually get something done.
One other possibility: I made a funnish GBA game in my spare time a while back. It just took a few weekends (and a flash linker from Lik-Sang), and the help of a couple friends. I never finished it, but it was a reasonable demo. GBA dev is slightly tougher than 2D dev with an existing engine, but the libraries out there make it really not too much worse.
Not just lunch-- how about playing games during all the sorts of little breaks you end up with? 5 minutes between meetings. A few minutes while your kid takes a nap. 10 minutes just to clear your head.
Play by e-mail seems ideal. I tried Laser Squad Nemesis, though, and it crashed during the tutorial.:P The great thing about PBEM is that you can play with your friends, even if you all have breaks at different times.
A PSP also seems a good way to go (though for solo play): it resumes your game exactly where you left it as soon as you turn on, instead of cumbersome save systems.
A chess board left next to the desk is good if you play with people you work with.
Any other suggestions? Good PBEM games? Other ways to play with friends?
I believe it is important to have most classes well balanced, but having one or two classes that are "weaker" isn't such a bad thing.
Agreed. I'm fine with a "hard" mode.
It's the players fault for not doing a little research on a class before putting tons of time into it.
See, there's the problem. This is Blizzard. They sell big, mass market titles. You don't buy a Blizzard title with the expectation that you have to read 15 hours of forums and web sites before you play. That requirement should go the way the "read the manual requirement" has already gone in Blizzard games: extinction.
Furthermore, Blizzard has never stated they want some of their classes to be weaker than others. Quite the opposite, in fact. So if what they're going for is a lack of balance, they're certainly sending mixed messages. The fault appears to be not with the players, but either Blizzard's design or communication.
If, during character creation, it said "this class is weaker than other classes and harder to play" right in the description, you'd hear no argument from me.
Congratulations on being the only >= 3 post that isn't bitching about not being able to use a mouse and keyboard! Your brain must have been accidentally left in the "on" position while posting to/..
Slashdot Mirror
Vanguard has been advertised as a hardcore-only game since it's inception. I actually like hell levels, grinding and slow travel. It gives me the feel that I'm actually in the world and not just playing a game. I want immersion in an MMORPG, not another game.
I totally agree with the first sentence, and disagree with the rest. Which is the whole point-- different games for different niches. It's not too surprising that the Vanguard testers are WoW-phobic, since making it WoWish kills off its unique selling points. Vanguard is aiming for a hardcore, somewhat smaller market (you don't get 5 million subs on this game), and assuming they can peel them away from EQ-- and I think they can-- they should attract a pretty die-hard following.
I've known this, you've known this, Sigil's known this. The question is, why didn't Microsoft know this? They acquire Sigil and scrap Mythica, which makes sense if you think you're competing with yourself. Of course, eventually MS realized that Vanguard was a niche game, Mythica was their casual one, and now they're left with nothing where previously they had an embarassment of coverage in the genre.
I have to think Microsoft is developing an unannounced large market MMO or two, perhaps targeted at "Live Anywhere".
I had John McCarthy (LISP fame) as a prof for a quarter. He'd talk about all sorts of crazy stuff-- planes that land on perches outside your house, or skilled labor being outsourced to India and such via the use of remotely controlled robots. Well, sure, it didn't help that his example case was haircutting instead of surgery, but he was on the right track. :)
you wanna show some balls? speak out against saddam in pre-war iraq
Would the courage be in the speaking, or in testing out your brand new time machine?
They clearly state that they intend to bring the video game system from "gamers" to "everyone else." "Everyone else" doesn't want an "X-Box" or a "Playstation" or a "Revolution" or a "Super Whiz-Bang Toy 2010." They want something simple, sophisticated, intuitive, and a little artsy. "Wii" fits the bill for that type of goal.
"Everyone else" wants something they can pronounce. They don't want something that confuses them on first impression. Your product only has so long to make a positive impression, and convince a potential buyer that it's worth investing more time into thinking about it. This isn't because people are stupid, but because there's a massive amount of stimuli out there, and most of it gets filtered out as unimportant almost instantaneously.
"Hmm, what's this on display? A wi'i? A why-i? Er... how do I use this nunchuk remote? Hey, look, the latest CD from (favorite singer)! I'm going to go buy that."
Successful mass-market products have names the target market can pronounce.
As long as it's not multiplayer, I'll give it a look when it comes out. I've sunk ~60 hours into Oblivion over the past month or so,
I'd kill for a co-op option for Oblivion.
Really, you're not going to the store for an Xbox 360 and spending less that $550.
I went to the store, bought a 360 and a play and charge kit. That's roughly $450 after tax. I went home and bought Geometry Wars and Marble Blast. $465. A couple weeks later, I bought Oblivion. Now we're up to $530 after tax, including two visits to the store, tax, and some XBL purchases.
NPD neither tracks online purchases, nor monthly subscriptions. They need to address this to preserve their credibility, but many developers and publishers are unlikely to want to release their (undoctored) sales information to anyone.
Did you stop reading the paragraph and not get to this part: "We do not expect sales of next generation software offsetting the current generation software sales decline until the PS3 and Revolution are launched."
In answer to your query: no.
Well, the thing is that /. readers have already shown that units are readily available on Walmart.com and even eBay (at about 5-10% premium), so the claim of "no availabilty" is false. This is also verifiable by walking to your local Toys R Us.
The Walmart bundles are obscene. The Premium 360s I'm looking at on ebay right now are at over a 25% markup, not including shipping, which is more obscene. The nearest Toys R Us to me is sold out.
"We think that the decline in overall sales of current generation software in January indicates the continuation of a trend that will persist well into 2006, and we anticipate double-digit declines in overall console software sales for the first half of 2006. We expect current generation software sales to decline at a 30% rate, or higher, for the full year. We do not expect sales of next generation software offsetting the current generation software sales decline until the PS3 and Revolution are launched."
That's referring to software sales overall, not just 360, and specifically refers to software.
Wow. There are four posts at 3 or greater, all of them speculating about reasons for slowing XBox 360 sales. The article says: "Needless to say, the main constricting factor for Xbox 360 sales continues to be the poor supply of the console, rather than a lack of consumers to purchase it."
Interestingly, none of the speculators have given any reason to trust them over Gamasutra, Wedbush Morgan, and Simon Carless. Hey, don't let that get in the way of a pointless flame-fest.
I'd venture to say that a good deal of this would have been avoided with a longer beta test cycle involving much more stress testing.
:)
As you point out yourself, they knew problems were there from the beta. The issue wasn't so much lack of testing-- they knew it would asplode-- but a lack of fixing.
As analyzed here:
. html#113760404896764843
http://www.costik.com/weblog/2006_01_01_blogchive
If you factor in online sales and MMO subscription fees, it's possible PC revenues have actually gone up.
Nothing says "accuracy in reporting" quite like claiming the PS3 will have a hard drive.
I disagree with the premise.
:P
There are tons of people making non-gamer games. The Sims. The Movies. Everything at Popcap. Zillions more here:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/8/15
Your article's proposals are so good, hundreds of entrepreneurs are already doing them, and have been for years.
Depends what you're doing. For most casual games, you need a web-playable version, so you don't lose 50% or more of your potential audience because they don't want to download a demo. If you're targeting a different platform or niche, these requirements may be different (preinstalled on a mobile phone, downloadable on XBox Live, downloadable on Steam, whatever).
c id=13009806
Java's a bitch because everyone's got whatever old version of the VM came with Windows, each version of which has its own bugs. The bugs aren't horrible, for the most part, but you'll end up with a bunch of VM installers on your box to handle bug reports. Java also doesn't give you much for free for game development, and any decent libraries for it will just increase the size of your download, but it's a possibility.
I want to check out the Popcap framework as soon as I get time, because my experience with their plugin from a gamer standpoint has been great. It was a quick, smooth install, and the games look nice, so if it's easier to use than Flash and more reliable than Java it may be a winner.
If you go downloadable, you can get stuff like Torque 2D; my post and a response are here:
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=155159&
Flash is primarily useful for its installed base. Their language overhaul a while back has left it as an in-between mess, fit neither for content creators nor programmers. It's buggy, limited, and has nothing strong enough to recommend it in spite of these flaws.
I would investigate other platforms if I were you. Developing games for a casual audience requires some sacrifices, but at some point a bad tool will prevent you from ever completing a usable product.
3) Music. The closest thing to a hippie music festival for gamers. Well, maybe not. They had a couple of people play way too much Final Fantasy on the piano, and a few very very horrible rappers. But NESkimos and the Minibosses simply kicked ass.
I don't think there was any way to tell if the rappers were any good, since the sound sucked. Sucked, sucked, sucked. I don't know if it was the room, the equipment, the techs (or lack thereof), or a horrible combination of all that. Any time anyone attempted to sing or speak over music with any bass, it was totally distorted and buried.
I hope they fix that next year. The rest of the conference was friggin' sweet, but any artists with vocals got the shaft..
But believe me when I tell you that PictoChat was DESIGNED for events like that.
Like you, I also wish there were a way to save some of those drawings. Eyes5 was nuts. OTOH, I wish I could erase all the horrible, horrible cock pictures from my mind. Every image was turned into a dick. Samus shooting a beam? Now it's Samus shooting a dick. Link wearing a cap? Now it's Link wearing a dick. Just a picture of a dick? Now it's a dick with two dicks on it. If Pictochat were truly designed for events like this, it would have a penis filter.
The only game I can recall with a decent sanity system was Eternal Darkness for the gamecube.
Right, that's the point. Silicon Knights made that game as a Nintendo Game Cube exclusive, but is now no longer exclusive. Apparently, they gave substantial rights for Eternal Darkness to Nintendo in the publishing contract.
Nintendo now wants to ensure that Silicon Knights don't make a similar game. Maybe Silicon Knights doesn't have the rights to Eternal Darkness, but they could make a "spiritual successor", like Wasteland and Fallout. So, Nintendo patented the core mechanic of the game, so Silicon Knights can't do anything like that.
That's what it looks like from the outside, anyway. I have no info about this that isn't in the article.
Blue frog receive one spam, and they trigger *every* blue frog client to DDOS the spammers' site simultaneously, whether or not they got the original site.
I can't find anything that explicitly says that, but there are some unclear sections. However, it says explicitly on the site:
"The number of complaints posted by the community equals the number of spam messages received."
I'm confused. GTA has been a Mature rated game, meaning 18 and older for a long time. How about we educate the parents,
Here's the problem. Parents who are plenty educated about the ESRB rating system might want their 16 year old to play an M rated game, but not an AO rated game. They've read the labels, they know what the different ratings mean.
Unfortunately, since Rockstar apparently failed to properly disclose examples representative of the most extreme content on the game disc-- which is required when you submit a game to the ESRB-- the ESRB was unable to assign the correct rating to the game.
If people were actually serious when they talked about parenting, consumer education, and the video game rating system, they'd be outraged when a company subverted that system. If they were just being apologists for the industry, they'd be, well, exactly like they are right now.
P.S. Before anyone claims they weren't subverting the ratings system because the content was never intended to be seen: AFAIK, that's irrelevant. It's what's on the disc, not what's in the game, so intentional or not, failure to disclose would be a violation of the agreement you sign when submitting a game. If there are people working at publishers here with corrections/more information, I'd be interested in hearing more.
If you're not already used to programming in 3D, it can take way too much time to ramp up, find an engine that works how you want, understand it, and so on and so forth. Writing a 3D engine is also a massive task, and will probably kill your interest before you get around to actually writing a game.
2D is a nice way to go: it's a lot more fun getting so much more bang for your buck, without nearly as many content hassles either.
One cheaply available 2D engine that comes with source is from the good people at garage games, called Torque 2D. It's got a decent scripting language, and nice enough C++ code. If you don't want to re-learn C++ right away, you can accomplish quite a bit with only the scripting language.
There are probably some other nice 2D engines out there as well, so you can look before you buy. However, I'd recommend picking one and starting from there: it'll save you a ton of work, and you're much more likely to actually get something done.
One other possibility: I made a funnish GBA game in my spare time a while back. It just took a few weekends (and a flash linker from Lik-Sang), and the help of a couple friends. I never finished it, but it was a reasonable demo. GBA dev is slightly tougher than 2D dev with an existing engine, but the libraries out there make it really not too much worse.
Not just lunch-- how about playing games during all the sorts of little breaks you end up with? 5 minutes between meetings. A few minutes while your kid takes a nap. 10 minutes just to clear your head.
:P The great thing about PBEM is that you can play with your friends, even if you all have breaks at different times.
Play by e-mail seems ideal. I tried Laser Squad Nemesis, though, and it crashed during the tutorial.
A PSP also seems a good way to go (though for solo play): it resumes your game exactly where you left it as soon as you turn on, instead of cumbersome save systems.
A chess board left next to the desk is good if you play with people you work with.
Any other suggestions? Good PBEM games? Other ways to play with friends?
I believe it is important to have most classes well balanced, but having one or two classes that are "weaker" isn't such a bad thing.
Agreed. I'm fine with a "hard" mode.
It's the players fault for not doing a little research on a class before putting tons of time into it.
See, there's the problem. This is Blizzard. They sell big, mass market titles. You don't buy a Blizzard title with the expectation that you have to read 15 hours of forums and web sites before you play. That requirement should go the way the "read the manual requirement" has already gone in Blizzard games: extinction.
Furthermore, Blizzard has never stated they want some of their classes to be weaker than others. Quite the opposite, in fact. So if what they're going for is a lack of balance, they're certainly sending mixed messages. The fault appears to be not with the players, but either Blizzard's design or communication.
If, during character creation, it said "this class is weaker than other classes and harder to play" right in the description, you'd hear no argument from me.
Congratulations on being the only >= 3 post that isn't bitching about not being able to use a mouse and keyboard! Your brain must have been accidentally left in the "on" position while posting to /..