I completely agree with this. Most of the time I ONLY rent, although I'll occasionally pull the trigger on a Greatest Hit $20 new title. If they try to force you to always have to buy new, the price point HAS to be less. However, if the system does not allow rentals at all I will just simply not buy the system. If all of the systems go that way I guess I'm done playing on new systems and will just keep playing on what I have. If they ever realize that they were idiots and change it up then I'll consider going back. There is always a second hand market out there for items beyond rentals, used game stores, and online reselling. There's always people with garage sales, selling at flea markets, or some other way to sell things second hand. Preventing people to sell their old stuff in order to go buy new stuff is just going to turn into people never buying new stuff.
I've been a member of Netflix since around 2000. I had the 4-dvd's at a time that was later grandfathered into a 3-dvd's at a time pricing yet still was able to keep 4 dvd's. I guess a price change was inevitable. While I now stream more than I rent dvd's, I can't say that I'm happy with the price increase either. My rate is going from $19.99 to $29.98 as they are now going to put me into the 4 dvd's + streaming. So for me it's a 50% increase. I'm losing the "benefit" that I had of the extra dvd and now paying extra for streaming. It's a doubly whammy for long time customers. I also need to decide if I want to pay another $5 for blue-ray discs when I can't see how large their selection is of blue-ray. I think what I might do is drop to 3 dvd's, add blue-ray, and then the pay about $28/month. I don't know if I like that idea or not. I miss the days from way back when I was first a member and they sent all of their members a dvd rack to hold your 4 netflix dvd's that you have rented out. I still use it!
I have to force myself not to go to popcap.com and play the games. They are so incredibly addicting and a ton of fun. It will be nice to see Zuma 2 when that's done.
One game that my wife and I play a lot is Typer Shark. It's really been a good aide in getting our typing speeds up. It's a fun way to do it too! She creams me every time with her 85-90+ wpm lol. I can't top 75 unless I'm having a really good day.
I hope that PopCap is able to continue to make great games. I'd love to see some PopCap stuff become available to the Playstation market, but I don't know if that will happen or not.
I agree. At first it sound like this could be something that is pretty cool. But uhm... yeah... big whoop. My magnifying glass for the Game Gear looked cooler than this thing lol.
Just wanted to say a quick thanks for posting the reply. A lot of the time a lot of accusations will go out without a response.
I did a little bit of research on the different geneologies question, and one possibility is that one is the line of Mary (probably the one in luke), the other being the line of Joseph (probably the one in Matthew). The lineage is the same from David and older, and from there it is both entirely different on through the line. You commonly would not see a female's name in the lineage, and therefore the male's name is substituted (note that on the occasion if it is a significate female name, it is mentioned).
For the original poster: Call me brainwashed, call me whatever you want, but I've seen lives completely changed and addictions and bad habits completly washed away instantly just because of a belief in Jesus and his sacrifice. Sure for some their habits don't disappear immediately, it's different for every person. There are applications today that are absolutely life changing. Yes there are sour grapes from time to time who try to ruin it for everyone, but you can't ignore what you see happening TODAY. I'm sorry that you have chosen to refuse everything in the Bible, but feel free to pick up a couple books by Lee Stroebel called "A Case for Faith" and "A Case for Christ". He also started as someone that did not believe it Jesus at all.
I know that not many will see this since the topic is rather old, but again, thanks for posting a response lpangelrob!
If the school offered to pay for the WoW subscription, I'm all in. But this is college, where everything required to use for a class you always have to pay for, so I'm guessing they won't do that.
What would the textbook be? The strategy guidebook?
The closest I ever came to a class like this was Literature of the Fantastic, where we were able to read books like War of the Worlds, Frankenstein, Witches Abroad, Starship Troopers, and... I can't remember the other 2 anymore. Not exactly playing an MMORPG though!
I don't think it's the students that want an extra excuse to play WoW, it's the professor that wants that excuse and get PAID to play the game:) It's called "research."
Even though I'm not a subscriber (yet), I was actually using Gamefly.com as my website to browse the games when giving my list of priorities. Renting is definitely an excellent way to go because while it may cost you a little bit to rent the game, if you beat it in 2 days and it has no replay value, you just saved yourself from having to spend $50 on the game brand new. The only downfall to renting is that you need to be able to dedicate time to playing the same game in a short amount of time. Gamefly alleviates that (and places like Blockbuster let you have the stuff for longer now), but if you keep it too long on GameFly it starts to get expensive. I don't even want to think about my average rental cost on Netflix right due to lack of time to watch a movie. I'd be in the same situation with renting games from gamefly.
Rental gives you the ability to rate the game yourself, then you can decide on buying. Your own rating is only the true rating that really counts when you go to purchase a game or not for yourself.
The findings from this is very plausible. First of all, the ratings are subjective. One guy might love the game and score it a 9 whereas another place will think it has flaws in a couple areas and give it a 6. If two people look at the reviews, but 1 only looks at the 9 review, and the other only looks at the 6 review, the person with the 9 might buy it, but the one reading the 6 review might not. So that's where ratings can cancel each other out.
There's too many variables to really be able to find a correlation to sales. To me, I'd say that the deciding factors before buying the game go in this priority (and feel free to argue otherwise, I'm not saying this is how it has to be... I might have forgotten something)
Priorities: 1) Platform the game is available for. 2) Genre of the game. 3) Recognition of Title if in a series (eg. Madden, Halo, Final Fantasy, Mario, Crash Bandicoot, etc) 4) Price 5) Recognition of company that made the game (eg. EA, Namco, etc) 6) Rating from reviews
Marketing sort of belongs on that list, but in many cases marketing is what kick starts that process.
Think about it though: say you want to browse for some new video games and you own a PS2. You don't know what you want at all, but you know what games you like to play.
First you go to a website and select your platform, PS2. At that point you could look at what's new and skip step 2, but let's say you want to get an RPG game. That's step 2. Now you're looking over a list of games and some of the pictures of the covers. A series title grabs your attention... say, Final Fantasy X-2. *lightbulb goes off* oh yeah, you remembered seeing a commercial for that. Well, lets check it out, how much is it? $50? Nah, I don't want that right now then. Then say you see a link for other games by Square Enix... you liked the Final Fantasy series, so what else have they made. Hmm, Dragon Quest VIII? Well, if they are on #8, that probably means the first 7 were good, let's check that out. Only $38 used? That's a pretty decent price for a game from Square Enix. And hey, a rating of 9, 5 stars, 9, and 8.7? That's pretty good! I really should check this out. *buy*
This is just an example, but I probably would have bought that game before seeing the ratings anyway. Sure the ratings reinforced it, but there were so many other factors that went into my decision that ratings doesn't directly affect sales. You could have a game rated 10 across the board for the Xbox, but if I only have a PS2 and this game is not on the PS2, I'm passing it up. Even if it was for the PS2, if it's not in the genre that I like (eg. I get motion sickness from FPS, so I don't buy those games) then I don't buy it.
So yes, this is a long post, and the bottom line is that there's too many factors that go into buying a game than just the rating being the deciding factor. I don't go to a store online where the first thing I do is sort by rating and start shopping that way. That's the only way I could see ratings correlate more to sales.
I didn't buy mine new, but instead picked it up from someone that didn't want their PSP anymore. True, the $250 price tag is still a little steep ($200 or less would be a lot easier to manage), but so far I'm very impressed. The game came with Ridge Racer and I purchased Lumines right away. Yes I know that Lumines is now an "old" title, but to a fresh user, it's great. I'm even enjoying Ridge Racer (I didn't play many Ridge Racer games for PS1 or PS2, so this has my interest). Sure there might be a lot of ports, but I don't see anything wrong with taking my favorite games on the road with me. A bunch of new RPG's are coming out or just came out, and so far I absolutely love the display and appearance of it.
I guess perhaps I've always been a rebel because I never owned a Nintendo until I bought one well-used after the PS1 was already out (and it was the newer version of the Nintendo where you put the games in upright). I followed the line of Sega Master System -> Genesis -> Sega CD (and 32x about the same time). I also had a Game Gear instead of a Game Boy. The color screen was always better to me. Now when it comes to DS vs. PSP, I think I'm going to have to vote PSP. I enjoy the larger screen, and I've enjoyed what Sony has produced so far in the gaming market. The whole Sony rootkit thing doesn't affect me at all, so it's a non-factor in what system I'd pick up and play.
I don't think UMD movies will ever take off all that much. Unless Sony or someone else makes a DVD/UMD combo player where I can take my UMD movies and pop it in to watch on a TV, I don't really plan on spending the money on UMD movies. I'd rather play the games on my PSP.
lol, that is pretty silly to not have an actual developer answer the questions in an article with impressions from developers. Product manager is somewhat close (at least in my world), same with designer, but yeah, no actual developers.
Being in QA, I like to see what testers think of it. We can be one of the first to tell you what keeps on breaking time and time again and what actually works well. If QA feels good about what's going out the door, then you know it's going to be something worthwhile. If there's any apprehension (eg. core system) it would give you a little bit more of a warning. That's the QA's worst nightmare: seeing all of your submitted bugs being deferred so that the product can be shipped out the door on time. *cringe*
The one thing I find kind of rediculous is why include marketing? You know that marketing would only say good things about it whether they are the full-truth or only partially true. Of course a developer would want to say a good thing or two as well, but at least they would be honest.
Awesome post... hey, maybe we can ask the janitor if they garbage picked any printouts of emails being shot around from the developers to get some answers. That would make for a better article than this one:)
this part is a little offtopic, but neat:) My wife's name is also Sara, spelled the same way and everything. Wait, my Sara, is that YOU? lol j/k
I didn't respond to your WoW comment though, so back on topic, I agree with you there too. I don't like doing PvP either, only PvE. I don't really play MMORPG's, but for instance, playing Starcraft on the network I'd rather team up with my brothers and fight 2 or 3 computer AI groups than fight each other. That way it helps each other out with defending one another and everyone being happy in a combined victory instead of whumping on each other and ending up with one person hating the other because they lost.
That's a really good point. I've seen some couples try to do that on certain games and have it fail miserably sometimes unfortunately. The guy's competitive spirit starts to really show and gets ticked if she doesn't do exactly the same strategy that he's thinking. So the goal has to be something other than just beating the other guy.
Actually, I just thought of a game that does take a lot of cooperative efforts. Muppets Party Cruise. I think Mario Party (haven't played it) is the game that is similar to the Muppets one. There's a bunch of mini games. It's for up to 4 players, and in a lot of the games 2 people team up against the other 2 people. There's one game where one person has to steer a car while the other person pushes a combination of X and O (back and forth) to help push the car since it ran out of gas. Then after halfway the 2 switch. It does require a good cooperative effort because the person steering can mess up the rhythm of the person pushing, and the person pushing has to be consistent to get anywhere. I think my wife enjoyed doing that, but then wound up apologizing a lot because she was not very good at pushing X and O back and forth. But there's also other games like tug of war where you have to push a direction on the D-pad that also is a cooperative effort, and she enjoyed that more.
I definitely agree with you. It just requires a different line of thinking from the video game mainstream!
yeah, I know... you're right. I forgot. See note that I posted above. But the rest of my post I still think has some validity. They either need more people working on putting this game out, or they need to work on getting the game out faster. My recommendation would have been to make sure that they are far enough along towards releasing (although I know how hard this is to do because I work in software) is to not start marketing until maybe a year before release. It starts to get a little boring after waiting for 3 years (maybe not to some though)
I found it funny when looking the/. original posting of Blizzard's annoucement and the post of Blizzards FAQ about the game. Taken from that FAQ:
"We expect to ship StarCraft: Ghost in late 2003."
lol. Yes blizzard has added a lot and changed a lot, but by the time this game is ready to ship to PS2 and XBox it's going to be playing on a system that's already replaced by the next gen systems. I know this is Blizzard's first attempt at a video game system, but I think they are going to learn a lot of lessons about how you can't take a long to get a video game out as you can for PC game. Either that, or Blizzard needs to 1) not announce the stupid thing so early (marketing can be a developers nightmare), or 2) they need to be making the Starcraft: Ghost version for PS3 and XBox 360 right NOW instead of still trying to release something for the current systems (although I still want them to release this for PS2!)
I think the hardest thing of all is asking a bunch of guys (because typically the developers and game-creators are male) to create a game that women want to play. There's a problem with that right there. The closest thing I've seen to a successful game where women really enjoy the game is The Sims series. My wife loves to play that all the time and build houses and build a family. What she's doing has no point, no goal to reach, but she loves to play it. She also likes to play driving games where you're not racing, but you're just driving around because she wants to drive around.
I know that my wife does not speak for all woman-kind for the type of games that need to be created, but the stuff she enjoys to play is just so incredibly different than what I would ever conceive of creating. There's no desire for competition and winning (although I know there are many women that are indeed very competitve and really want to win), and she's content with just driving around or just having the sims do stuff. It's hard to make a game when you don't really have an objective.
I could see some women enjoying more of a game where you are more defensive than something like a FPS where you go on the offense and attack everything.
I seriously think the hardest part about finding a game that women would enjoy is just finding out what the women want to play. Any of the answers that I see in the articles is so vague (an my suggestion was vague too) because there is no real set answer as to what women would enjoy.
Ok, you have me there. UT2004 is a really good game. Hopefully they can keep up the effort and beat the expectations people have for Unreal 3. They are going to need this game and then some to keep it going, though. Otherwise this could be an example of what happens if a company makes a lot of continuing sequels without as many original games? Only time will tell.
It's sad to see what is going on with Atari (fond memories of playing the Atari 5200...) but seriously, what games have they put out recently that constitutes them to be able to do well? The games they list as their top sellers is not like any of them were anything close to the best thing ever. The classic games, while great to have, where's the new stuff? Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 was the only name that I really recognized as something that I know people enjoy.
Their profits are going to continue dropping as long as they keep putting out mediocre games. I don't see how closing 2 studios will help them make better games. Hopefully whatever projects those two offices were working on are not going to be something that is missed.
They can be the same thing at times. From a video game standpoint, originality is something that hasn't been done before. When you make something original, it is indeed creative. But, you can be creative with how you implement something (say, a creative way to do a dynasty-team in a baseball game) but it's not original because other games have dynasty teams as well.
Case in point: Half-Life 2. It's the next version. Game 2 is not original because it was already done in Game 1. Sure there's new stuff to game 2, but that's what makes it creative, not original.
So you're right in some respect, but there's more to it than that.
It looks like you have your wish because a number of people in that article agreed with you by also mentioning Half-Life 2. I can't say that it would be my first choice, but it is definitely up there.
At first I was questioning a lot of games on that list. A lot of people talked about Half-Life 2, and then I realized that it was creativity we were looking at for 2004, not originality. That one change in word opened the door for all the sequel games that came out last year. No sequel is going to be loaded with originality since it's the second (or third or fourth or bazillionth) rendition of something that has already been done.
They have a good choice of games in the creativity department though. Too bad I don't have time to play them all!
As soon as I heard the word "XBox 360" it made me think "XBox Revolution" and then thoughts of Nintendo's codename ran through my head for their next product. Maybe all of their games will make you start spinning around and around until you're so dizzy you won't know what price you're paying to buy every game they have.
I understand why they don't want to call it XBox 2, and I agree with that. It does sound behind the times. Maybe for "Xbox 3" it will be XBox 1024x768 or who knows what.
You would think that these companies do something like this because they know it's a proven winner title that a lot of people will buy. ie. Final Fantasy. Keep making more as long as people keep buying it and enjoying it. It's the closest thing to a guaranteed sale that the company is going to get.
You take risks when you go for original titles because it could be the next fantastic series or the next absolute bust. It's also harder to keep making games from scratch when you can take your previous version, redo only certain parts of the game engine, and get another money maker game out on the market in a year to keep the customer happy and paychecks flowing for the employees.
As a consumer of video games, as much as I would like to see original titles, I love buying the latest Final Fantasy or Gran Turismo. I want to see, bigger, better versions of those games. I want to play the latest baseball game with the latest team rosters and new ways to play the game. I don't need original titles in order to have fun.
The point where I draw the line is when a company makes a sequel that has barely any change or new innovation (which can be hard in sports games) and just feels like the same game that came out last year. That can get boring quick.
What if we take the concept of reading emotions one step forward? Hook the game up with a connection to your webcam and read your facial expressions for the emotions. How would Abraham really react at the beginning if you played the character of Sampson and you literally bit your thumb? Or perhaps they could add a few other gestures to convey your emotion (raised eyebrow, wink). It's like the eye toy, only not. I mean, what color would you give if you feel confused? camoflauge? I have no clue.
This game has a very intriguing concept. I don't know if by my selecting of colors it would appropriately pick the emotions I'd want to convey. It definitely has originality in the idea, I'll give them that.
What's the color for wanting to throw your controller down in disgust because Juliet killed herself?:)
What do they do when the buyer base starts dropping out because of the lack of support? The sellers then start getting upset and stop selling as much because of the lack of buyers. Would eBay be able to keep the seller's long enough with whatever support they give if the people stop buying?
Sure that might take a while to happen, but with as many disgruntled people with eBay as there already is, it has a very good chance of happening.
Although personally, those eBay commercials that I've seen recently might scare me away faster than anything else from continuing to buy and sell!:)
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I completely agree with this. Most of the time I ONLY rent, although I'll occasionally pull the trigger on a Greatest Hit $20 new title. If they try to force you to always have to buy new, the price point HAS to be less. However, if the system does not allow rentals at all I will just simply not buy the system. If all of the systems go that way I guess I'm done playing on new systems and will just keep playing on what I have. If they ever realize that they were idiots and change it up then I'll consider going back. There is always a second hand market out there for items beyond rentals, used game stores, and online reselling. There's always people with garage sales, selling at flea markets, or some other way to sell things second hand. Preventing people to sell their old stuff in order to go buy new stuff is just going to turn into people never buying new stuff.
I've been a member of Netflix since around 2000. I had the 4-dvd's at a time that was later grandfathered into a 3-dvd's at a time pricing yet still was able to keep 4 dvd's. I guess a price change was inevitable. While I now stream more than I rent dvd's, I can't say that I'm happy with the price increase either. My rate is going from $19.99 to $29.98 as they are now going to put me into the 4 dvd's + streaming. So for me it's a 50% increase. I'm losing the "benefit" that I had of the extra dvd and now paying extra for streaming. It's a doubly whammy for long time customers. I also need to decide if I want to pay another $5 for blue-ray discs when I can't see how large their selection is of blue-ray. I think what I might do is drop to 3 dvd's, add blue-ray, and then the pay about $28/month. I don't know if I like that idea or not. I miss the days from way back when I was first a member and they sent all of their members a dvd rack to hold your 4 netflix dvd's that you have rented out. I still use it!
I have to force myself not to go to popcap.com and play the games. They are so incredibly addicting and a ton of fun. It will be nice to see Zuma 2 when that's done.
One game that my wife and I play a lot is Typer Shark. It's really been a good aide in getting our typing speeds up. It's a fun way to do it too! She creams me every time with her 85-90+ wpm lol. I can't top 75 unless I'm having a really good day.
I hope that PopCap is able to continue to make great games. I'd love to see some PopCap stuff become available to the Playstation market, but I don't know if that will happen or not.
I agree. At first it sound like this could be something that is pretty cool. But uhm... yeah... big whoop. My magnifying glass for the Game Gear looked cooler than this thing lol.
This is definitely not a product worth my money.
Just wanted to say a quick thanks for posting the reply. A lot of the time a lot of accusations will go out without a response.
I did a little bit of research on the different geneologies question, and one possibility is that one is the line of Mary (probably the one in luke), the other being the line of Joseph (probably the one in Matthew). The lineage is the same from David and older, and from there it is both entirely different on through the line. You commonly would not see a female's name in the lineage, and therefore the male's name is substituted (note that on the occasion if it is a significate female name, it is mentioned).
For the original poster: Call me brainwashed, call me whatever you want, but I've seen lives completely changed and addictions and bad habits completly washed away instantly just because of a belief in Jesus and his sacrifice. Sure for some their habits don't disappear immediately, it's different for every person. There are applications today that are absolutely life changing. Yes there are sour grapes from time to time who try to ruin it for everyone, but you can't ignore what you see happening TODAY. I'm sorry that you have chosen to refuse everything in the Bible, but feel free to pick up a couple books by Lee Stroebel called "A Case for Faith" and "A Case for Christ". He also started as someone that did not believe it Jesus at all.
I know that not many will see this since the topic is rather old, but again, thanks for posting a response lpangelrob!
If the school offered to pay for the WoW subscription, I'm all in. But this is college, where everything required to use for a class you always have to pay for, so I'm guessing they won't do that.
... I can't remember the other 2 anymore. Not exactly playing an MMORPG though!
:) It's called "research."
What would the textbook be? The strategy guidebook?
The closest I ever came to a class like this was Literature of the Fantastic, where we were able to read books like War of the Worlds, Frankenstein, Witches Abroad, Starship Troopers, and
I don't think it's the students that want an extra excuse to play WoW, it's the professor that wants that excuse and get PAID to play the game
Even though I'm not a subscriber (yet), I was actually using Gamefly.com as my website to browse the games when giving my list of priorities. Renting is definitely an excellent way to go because while it may cost you a little bit to rent the game, if you beat it in 2 days and it has no replay value, you just saved yourself from having to spend $50 on the game brand new. The only downfall to renting is that you need to be able to dedicate time to playing the same game in a short amount of time. Gamefly alleviates that (and places like Blockbuster let you have the stuff for longer now), but if you keep it too long on GameFly it starts to get expensive. I don't even want to think about my average rental cost on Netflix right due to lack of time to watch a movie. I'd be in the same situation with renting games from gamefly.
Rental gives you the ability to rate the game yourself, then you can decide on buying. Your own rating is only the true rating that really counts when you go to purchase a game or not for yourself.
The findings from this is very plausible. First of all, the ratings are subjective. One guy might love the game and score it a 9 whereas another place will think it has flaws in a couple areas and give it a 6. If two people look at the reviews, but 1 only looks at the 9 review, and the other only looks at the 6 review, the person with the 9 might buy it, but the one reading the 6 review might not. So that's where ratings can cancel each other out.
There's too many variables to really be able to find a correlation to sales. To me, I'd say that the deciding factors before buying the game go in this priority (and feel free to argue otherwise, I'm not saying this is how it has to be... I might have forgotten something)
Priorities:
1) Platform the game is available for.
2) Genre of the game.
3) Recognition of Title if in a series (eg. Madden, Halo, Final Fantasy, Mario, Crash Bandicoot, etc)
4) Price
5) Recognition of company that made the game (eg. EA, Namco, etc)
6) Rating from reviews
Marketing sort of belongs on that list, but in many cases marketing is what kick starts that process.
Think about it though: say you want to browse for some new video games and you own a PS2. You don't know what you want at all, but you know what games you like to play.
First you go to a website and select your platform, PS2. At that point you could look at what's new and skip step 2, but let's say you want to get an RPG game. That's step 2. Now you're looking over a list of games and some of the pictures of the covers. A series title grabs your attention... say, Final Fantasy X-2. *lightbulb goes off* oh yeah, you remembered seeing a commercial for that. Well, lets check it out, how much is it? $50? Nah, I don't want that right now then. Then say you see a link for other games by Square Enix... you liked the Final Fantasy series, so what else have they made. Hmm, Dragon Quest VIII? Well, if they are on #8, that probably means the first 7 were good, let's check that out. Only $38 used? That's a pretty decent price for a game from Square Enix. And hey, a rating of 9, 5 stars, 9, and 8.7? That's pretty good! I really should check this out. *buy*
This is just an example, but I probably would have bought that game before seeing the ratings anyway. Sure the ratings reinforced it, but there were so many other factors that went into my decision that ratings doesn't directly affect sales. You could have a game rated 10 across the board for the Xbox, but if I only have a PS2 and this game is not on the PS2, I'm passing it up. Even if it was for the PS2, if it's not in the genre that I like (eg. I get motion sickness from FPS, so I don't buy those games) then I don't buy it.
So yes, this is a long post, and the bottom line is that there's too many factors that go into buying a game than just the rating being the deciding factor. I don't go to a store online where the first thing I do is sort by rating and start shopping that way. That's the only way I could see ratings correlate more to sales.
I didn't buy mine new, but instead picked it up from someone that didn't want their PSP anymore. True, the $250 price tag is still a little steep ($200 or less would be a lot easier to manage), but so far I'm very impressed. The game came with Ridge Racer and I purchased Lumines right away. Yes I know that Lumines is now an "old" title, but to a fresh user, it's great. I'm even enjoying Ridge Racer (I didn't play many Ridge Racer games for PS1 or PS2, so this has my interest). Sure there might be a lot of ports, but I don't see anything wrong with taking my favorite games on the road with me. A bunch of new RPG's are coming out or just came out, and so far I absolutely love the display and appearance of it.
I guess perhaps I've always been a rebel because I never owned a Nintendo until I bought one well-used after the PS1 was already out (and it was the newer version of the Nintendo where you put the games in upright). I followed the line of Sega Master System -> Genesis -> Sega CD (and 32x about the same time). I also had a Game Gear instead of a Game Boy. The color screen was always better to me. Now when it comes to DS vs. PSP, I think I'm going to have to vote PSP. I enjoy the larger screen, and I've enjoyed what Sony has produced so far in the gaming market. The whole Sony rootkit thing doesn't affect me at all, so it's a non-factor in what system I'd pick up and play.
I don't think UMD movies will ever take off all that much. Unless Sony or someone else makes a DVD/UMD combo player where I can take my UMD movies and pop it in to watch on a TV, I don't really plan on spending the money on UMD movies. I'd rather play the games on my PSP.
lol, that is pretty silly to not have an actual developer answer the questions in an article with impressions from developers. Product manager is somewhat close (at least in my world), same with designer, but yeah, no actual developers.
:)
Being in QA, I like to see what testers think of it. We can be one of the first to tell you what keeps on breaking time and time again and what actually works well. If QA feels good about what's going out the door, then you know it's going to be something worthwhile. If there's any apprehension (eg. core system) it would give you a little bit more of a warning. That's the QA's worst nightmare: seeing all of your submitted bugs being deferred so that the product can be shipped out the door on time. *cringe*
The one thing I find kind of rediculous is why include marketing? You know that marketing would only say good things about it whether they are the full-truth or only partially true. Of course a developer would want to say a good thing or two as well, but at least they would be honest.
Awesome post... hey, maybe we can ask the janitor if they garbage picked any printouts of emails being shot around from the developers to get some answers. That would make for a better article than this one
this part is a little offtopic, but neat :) My wife's name is also Sara, spelled the same way and everything. Wait, my Sara, is that YOU? lol j/k
I didn't respond to your WoW comment though, so back on topic, I agree with you there too. I don't like doing PvP either, only PvE. I don't really play MMORPG's, but for instance, playing Starcraft on the network I'd rather team up with my brothers and fight 2 or 3 computer AI groups than fight each other. That way it helps each other out with defending one another and everyone being happy in a combined victory instead of whumping on each other and ending up with one person hating the other because they lost.
That's a really good point. I've seen some couples try to do that on certain games and have it fail miserably sometimes unfortunately. The guy's competitive spirit starts to really show and gets ticked if she doesn't do exactly the same strategy that he's thinking. So the goal has to be something other than just beating the other guy.
Actually, I just thought of a game that does take a lot of cooperative efforts. Muppets Party Cruise. I think Mario Party (haven't played it) is the game that is similar to the Muppets one. There's a bunch of mini games. It's for up to 4 players, and in a lot of the games 2 people team up against the other 2 people. There's one game where one person has to steer a car while the other person pushes a combination of X and O (back and forth) to help push the car since it ran out of gas. Then after halfway the 2 switch. It does require a good cooperative effort because the person steering can mess up the rhythm of the person pushing, and the person pushing has to be consistent to get anywhere. I think my wife enjoyed doing that, but then wound up apologizing a lot because she was not very good at pushing X and O back and forth. But there's also other games like tug of war where you have to push a direction on the D-pad that also is a cooperative effort, and she enjoyed that more.
I definitely agree with you. It just requires a different line of thinking from the video game mainstream!
yeah, I know... you're right. I forgot. See note that I posted above. But the rest of my post I still think has some validity. They either need more people working on putting this game out, or they need to work on getting the game out faster. My recommendation would have been to make sure that they are far enough along towards releasing (although I know how hard this is to do because I work in software) is to not start marketing until maybe a year before release. It starts to get a little boring after waiting for 3 years (maybe not to some though)
I found it funny when looking the /. original posting of Blizzard's annoucement and the post of Blizzards FAQ about the game. Taken from that FAQ:
"We expect to ship StarCraft: Ghost in late 2003."
lol. Yes blizzard has added a lot and changed a lot, but by the time this game is ready to ship to PS2 and XBox it's going to be playing on a system that's already replaced by the next gen systems. I know this is Blizzard's first attempt at a video game system, but I think they are going to learn a lot of lessons about how you can't take a long to get a video game out as you can for PC game. Either that, or Blizzard needs to 1) not announce the stupid thing so early (marketing can be a developers nightmare), or 2) they need to be making the Starcraft: Ghost version for PS3 and XBox 360 right NOW instead of still trying to release something for the current systems (although I still want them to release this for PS2!)
I think the hardest thing of all is asking a bunch of guys (because typically the developers and game-creators are male) to create a game that women want to play. There's a problem with that right there. The closest thing I've seen to a successful game where women really enjoy the game is The Sims series. My wife loves to play that all the time and build houses and build a family. What she's doing has no point, no goal to reach, but she loves to play it. She also likes to play driving games where you're not racing, but you're just driving around because she wants to drive around.
I know that my wife does not speak for all woman-kind for the type of games that need to be created, but the stuff she enjoys to play is just so incredibly different than what I would ever conceive of creating. There's no desire for competition and winning (although I know there are many women that are indeed very competitve and really want to win), and she's content with just driving around or just having the sims do stuff. It's hard to make a game when you don't really have an objective.
I could see some women enjoying more of a game where you are more defensive than something like a FPS where you go on the offense and attack everything.
I seriously think the hardest part about finding a game that women would enjoy is just finding out what the women want to play. Any of the answers that I see in the articles is so vague (an my suggestion was vague too) because there is no real set answer as to what women would enjoy.
Ok, you have me there. UT2004 is a really good game. Hopefully they can keep up the effort and beat the expectations people have for Unreal 3. They are going to need this game and then some to keep it going, though. Otherwise this could be an example of what happens if a company makes a lot of continuing sequels without as many original games? Only time will tell.
It's sad to see what is going on with Atari (fond memories of playing the Atari 5200...) but seriously, what games have they put out recently that constitutes them to be able to do well? The games they list as their top sellers is not like any of them were anything close to the best thing ever. The classic games, while great to have, where's the new stuff? Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 was the only name that I really recognized as something that I know people enjoy.
Their profits are going to continue dropping as long as they keep putting out mediocre games. I don't see how closing 2 studios will help them make better games. Hopefully whatever projects those two offices were working on are not going to be something that is missed.
They can be the same thing at times. From a video game standpoint, originality is something that hasn't been done before. When you make something original, it is indeed creative. But, you can be creative with how you implement something (say, a creative way to do a dynasty-team in a baseball game) but it's not original because other games have dynasty teams as well.
Case in point: Half-Life 2. It's the next version. Game 2 is not original because it was already done in Game 1. Sure there's new stuff to game 2, but that's what makes it creative, not original.
So you're right in some respect, but there's more to it than that.
It looks like you have your wish because a number of people in that article agreed with you by also mentioning Half-Life 2. I can't say that it would be my first choice, but it is definitely up there.
At first I was questioning a lot of games on that list. A lot of people talked about Half-Life 2, and then I realized that it was creativity we were looking at for 2004, not originality. That one change in word opened the door for all the sequel games that came out last year. No sequel is going to be loaded with originality since it's the second (or third or fourth or bazillionth) rendition of something that has already been done.
They have a good choice of games in the creativity department though. Too bad I don't have time to play them all!
As soon as I heard the word "XBox 360" it made me think "XBox Revolution" and then thoughts of Nintendo's codename ran through my head for their next product. Maybe all of their games will make you start spinning around and around until you're so dizzy you won't know what price you're paying to buy every game they have.
I understand why they don't want to call it XBox 2, and I agree with that. It does sound behind the times. Maybe for "Xbox 3" it will be XBox 1024x768 or who knows what.
You would think that these companies do something like this because they know it's a proven winner title that a lot of people will buy. ie. Final Fantasy. Keep making more as long as people keep buying it and enjoying it. It's the closest thing to a guaranteed sale that the company is going to get.
You take risks when you go for original titles because it could be the next fantastic series or the next absolute bust. It's also harder to keep making games from scratch when you can take your previous version, redo only certain parts of the game engine, and get another money maker game out on the market in a year to keep the customer happy and paychecks flowing for the employees.
As a consumer of video games, as much as I would like to see original titles, I love buying the latest Final Fantasy or Gran Turismo. I want to see, bigger, better versions of those games. I want to play the latest baseball game with the latest team rosters and new ways to play the game. I don't need original titles in order to have fun.
The point where I draw the line is when a company makes a sequel that has barely any change or new innovation (which can be hard in sports games) and just feels like the same game that came out last year. That can get boring quick.
What if we take the concept of reading emotions one step forward? Hook the game up with a connection to your webcam and read your facial expressions for the emotions. How would Abraham really react at the beginning if you played the character of Sampson and you literally bit your thumb? Or perhaps they could add a few other gestures to convey your emotion (raised eyebrow, wink). It's like the eye toy, only not. I mean, what color would you give if you feel confused? camoflauge? I have no clue.
This game has a very intriguing concept. I don't know if by my selecting of colors it would appropriately pick the emotions I'd want to convey. It definitely has originality in the idea, I'll give them that.
:)
What's the color for wanting to throw your controller down in disgust because Juliet killed herself?
What do they do when the buyer base starts dropping out because of the lack of support? The sellers then start getting upset and stop selling as much because of the lack of buyers. Would eBay be able to keep the seller's long enough with whatever support they give if the people stop buying?
:)
Sure that might take a while to happen, but with as many disgruntled people with eBay as there already is, it has a very good chance of happening.
Although personally, those eBay commercials that I've seen recently might scare me away faster than anything else from continuing to buy and sell!