First of all, you have the fact that despite the money the industry makes (income, mind you, not necessarily profit), games have a much higher average price of goods for a consumer than the other entertainment industries. Sure, there are still the bargain bin games, and a quite vibrant used market, but those cannibalize the companies' ability to exist. Essentially you have something like an average CD or DVD costing in the $15 range, while games CONSISTENTLY push the retail price up, with new next gen titles going to the $60+ range. What does that mean? Total market / higher price = smaller audience.
The fact that the game industry is essentially the largest niche market EVER seems to be lost on everyone in the industry. So, considering the price of the goods combined with a much smaller audience than movies or music, you get market volatility. A smaller trend can radically affect things.
Second, games are reaching the end of the technology curve. Games have been existing for years on the "ooo, lookie" factor. However, it's getting to the point where many of the non-professionals have a problem seeing the leap from PS2 to PS3. Sure, there will be detail, but the wow factor that was there from, say, SNES to N64 just isn't there.
Third, the rising development costs are bringing two things to light: first, developers can't cut it and are going under/being absorbed at an alarming rate (in the US at least). What that means is that there are fewer and fewer outlets for creativity and less motivation to "take risks" (as if it's somehow not risky to keep doing the same thing forever, but whatever). Second, those costs are making it more and more necessary to amortize development over multiple platforms. By doing that, companies CAN'T spend the money to fully utilize the systems, and you get generic ports that don't look as good as they could on the new hardware. That tends to exacerbate the loss of the "ooo, lookie" factor as well. How many reviews have we seen of XBox 360 games where people say they're WORSE than the previous games? Too many already. The HD/non-HD issue really threatens to mar the system if developers aren't careful.
Combine all of these things, and we wind up with a stagnant market that is heading towards a cliff. I don't think the simple alarmist reasons of the Costikyan's of the world are the whole story, but they're one part of something that's coming. I think of it as Hollywood around 1965. It's not looking good, and things are going to HAVE to change. Microsoft's recent revision that they won't hit their sales figures are the first tremor.
Ok, so when it first came out that you could a) have sex with a prostitute to get health back, and b) kill her to get your money back, netting you a health gain for nothing. I had to try it in GTA.
So, I drove up to what looked like a prostitute. Nothing. She wouldn't get in the car. I tried this with a bunch of different women in the game to see if maybe a "prostitute" looked different than I thought. No dice.
I talk to a friend of mine. He clarified. Now, here's what you have to do.
A) Beat up your car (prostitutes apparently won't get into cars that look too nice). B) *Find* a prostitute (which isn't as easy as it sounds, as many tartily dressed women in the game aren't, in fact, hookers) C) Drive to a secluded area (not any alley will do...it has to be off the beaten path)
When this happens, the car will rock back and forth. If you move the camera around and look in the car, you do in fact see that the two people are doing NOTHING but sitting there. During this time, your health will go up slightly.
After the prostitute gets out of the car, you can kill her, run her over, whatever. She will drop money.
It is also noted, that MOST pedestrians will drop money when killed, so I never bothered to check that if I just ran her over before anything, would she drop the cash.
Now...why did I walk through this? Because, IT'S A REAL P.I.T.A. TO DO! It takes WAY too long to get your health back this way! There are free health boosts sitting around at any hospital!
So, can you *DO* this in the game? Yes, yes you can. Is it CLEAR that it's REWARDED to do this? No! It's a freakin' WASTE OF TIME, that was clearly put in there as a detail. I don't even THINK the killing of the prostitute is connected, as I said...I believe you can get token amounts of cash from MOST pedestrians you kill, as well as deal with the possible risk from cops for such a petty amount of money ($200 at most...which is PENNIES after you play for about 5 minutes).
And yet, TOO MANY POLITICIANS have parroted the "teaching/rewarding you for sleeping with and killing prostitutes" line. Yet NONE of them clearly understand it for what it is...an aside, a bit of color...a way to immerse you in the world...if you can even figure it out how to do it!
This random demonizing of games has gone so far that the following quote was from the Chicago Tribune about the impending state law to restrict sales to minors:
"They're watching police officers getting their heads blown off. They're defecating on people," she said. "They get extra points for sleeping with prostitutes."
Once again the reference again to getting "extra points for sleeping with prostitutes." The lack of clarity on "points" shows that this person has NO clue about what they are talking.
(I also want this person to SHOW me the game where "They're defecating on people.")
When will games/music/movies stop being the scapegoat for bad parenting? Does this just happen every time something new and scary comes along?
The simple solution I see to all of this is to tax money EVERY time it changes hands between players. Other than the occasional money give to help my friends start, I never give money to any non NPC. I'm not sure what would be lost taxing player to player money exchange. The higher the transaction, the more money is taken.
Sure, it's not realistic, but it would make it much harder to buy money. You could also get around it by trying to find a money substitute of some sort, but you could also tax that as well.
Basically, if the game monitors every transaction and does something to reduce it, I think the problem would be solved.
I think it's hard to counter the argument that "movie games suck" by saying "here's a few that don't" without seeing what percentage of the whole those are.
My point was that with 10 minutes of combing *1* system's library, I could find a boatload of crappy movie licensed games. To me, it's hard to justify destroying that stereotype by saying "here are a few good ones."
Now, the question as to whether or not that percentage is *higher* than the regular percentage of crappy games is an excellent one, and if that was the angle of the article, I think it would have been much more convincing.
See, there's a VERY good reason that games that use movie licenses have a bad rep: THQ. Now, many of you may not remember THQ in their sucky SNES days, but at that point, all THQ did was license stuff and make crappy games from them. Admittedly, some of these games didn't MERIT being made from the movies in the first place, but they were.
- Home Alone - Home Alone 2 - Lawnmower Man - Wayne's World
And let's not forget one of the BIGGEST license hounds: Acclaim.
- Judge Dredd - Demolition Man - Dragon - The Bruce Lee Story - Spawn - Stargate
Other companies got in on the fun, too:
- Bram Stoker's Dracula (Sony) - Cool World (Ocean) - Pagemaster (Fox Interactive - a crappy movie that was MADE to be a crappy game) - Robocop 3 (Ocean) - Rocketeer (IGS) - T2: Judgement Day (LJN - NOT a port of the Midway gun game) - Time Cop (JVC) - True Lies (LJN) - Untouchables (Ocean)
Now, that's just the "clogging the Blockbuster rental aisle" crap that came out on the SNES. There were also many, many crappy movie games on other systems.
My problem with that article is that the guy who wrote it simply didn't do his homework. Were there some good movie licensed games? Sure...he hit it on the head with the Star Wars stuff. But those are VASTLY outnumbered by the "grab a license and do a substandard genre-of-the-day" games that are PUMPED out on a yearly basis. All you have to do is walk the rental aisles and look at the $2.00 used game stack at GameStop to see the glut that's there.
So, counting the titles he talked about, it looks like we have maybe 2 good SNES games with movie licenses, and 23 ones that were tolerable at best. THAT'S where the impression comes from.
Also, people tend to remember big name flops, and movie licenses have had them in spades. ET started the trend, and there's pretty much been a big time flameout for a movie license on every platform since.
Stop this thread....
on
Robocones
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· Score: 2, Funny
Voice Over: And on the road too, vicious gangs of traffic control barrels.
Film: Two vicious traffic control barrels with little legs attack a vicar.
Colonel: (coming up and stopping them) Right, right, stop it! This thread's got silly. Started off with a nice little idea about automated road barrels and fatality statistics, but now it's got silly. The spelling is atrocious for a thread too. And these robot topic icons are pretty badly made as well. And those aren't proper English bollards anyway!
Not just Meijer...happens at all the grocery stores in Chicagoland, to the best of my knowledge. I even asked a store about it once and they just shrugged.
I've had my domain since about 1997. At some point during the 'Net boom, some idiot company harvested a BUNCH of WHOIS info. At the time I had the correct information in there (INCLUDING phone number).
Well...I got on every telemarketing phone call list imaginable...AS A BUSINESS. You think it's hard stopping residential telemarketing? Wait until you start getting phone calls at your house asking you to buy Pitney Bowes postage equipment, insurance for your employees, etc, etc.
It was a NIGHTMARE. All I could do was ask the individuals to a) place me on their do not call list, and b) ask where they bought my information from (information that, not a SINGLE COMPANY was able to provide).
So, since then, I've used a P.O. Box for mail, and I FLAT REFUSE to give a phone number.
I'll start providing valid information when I know that it isn't going to be harvested by any slimy company out there.
Very simple...the higher ups at Taito are trying to rekindle some old magic. The Ms.Pac/Galaga combo is selling VERY well, and now everyone is trying to get into that market.
Once again, product-whore that I am, I worked on these. We did the Ms.Pac/Galaga, Centipede/Millipede/Missile Command/Let's Go Bowling, and Robotron/Joust - Defender/Defender 2(don't call me Stargate). I'll tell you this...Ms.Pac/Galaga is outselling those others 10-1.
You can buy them through Brookstone. Here's the link to the Ms. Pac/Galaga cabaret.
Everyone who's into these things, keep asking locations about them. This is a shameless plug, as I work for the company that did Ms.Pac/Galaga and Centipede/Millipede/Missile Command/Let's Go Bowling.
IMHO, two major things have created the sorry state of arcade games these days: the tech arms race with home games, and Street Fighter 2.
Allow me to elaborate. Ever since way back, the arcade people have been threatened by the home. Why? Because they felt the experience they provided was fundamentally a technological one. When home systems began to rival the arcades in technology, the arcade companies got scared. So, they pushed the arms race, making their games bigger and more advanced, all the while pushing their prices to an outrageous limit. Some posts here already have mentioned games like DDR and Time Crisis. While, as games, those two are damn fine accomplishments, when you're an operator paying $20k for a game, it can't possibly earn its keep. Thus, arcade companies (like Midway, Sega, and Namco soon) have put themselves in the role of the Soviets, spending their way to their own extinction while missing the point completely.
Second, in the early 90's, a little game caught fire you might have heard of: Street Fighter 2. Before that point, you could hop into an arcade and it hadn't been bitten (as much) by the genre bug. Since Street Fighter 2, genres got firmly entrenched, and 95% of games are either fighting, driving, shooting, or sports. And when I say shooting, I mean games with a gun you hold.
Arcades *used* to be about the purity of play. A post here mentioned control, and that's an excellent point. Arcade games spent more time working on control because they could customize it. If you've played Robotron, Defender, Tempest, Spy Hunter, or Ridge Racer, you've seen this. Arcade games provided a better game experience by focusing on the game. Recently, the games have gotten caught in the same trap that home games have. Namely, that technology sells games, and that sequels and genres are the only way to go. The difference between home and arcade though, was that prices haven't skyrocketed (yet) for consumer prices. Arcade games did that, and everything fell away.
I personally think that there's still a viable market for games in social situations, and that there's a large crowd that remembers the days of the arcade and longs for that experience back. I myself still get goosebumps every time I see that sweeping shot of Flynn's arcade in Tron, remembering back to what the buzz in a crowded, loud arcade used to be like. I don't know if we'll ever get that experience back again, but if we do, the games won't be huge, expensive behemoths.
I was accepted for the beta a few weeks ago. I spent a night tinkering around with it. I would have to say that I echo many of the sentiments of the people posting here. There was a lot of "What now?" in my experience. I think my big problems with that had to do with the interface.
1.) Anyone else think that a RTS-style "double-click to go there" is really HARD in 3D?
2.) It also seemed to me that I was always juggling windows. I know Shadowbane uses floaty windows as well, but it feels like they did more work on avoiding clutter than EVE. Did it seem like they designed this game on 21"+ monitors to anyone else?
2b.) Speaking of big monitors...it seems like to go anywhere, you had to double click on the little dot floating out somewhere in space. Since these things seemed to cluster together, all I could see was a cluster of little dots off in the distance, with microscopic text describing what it is.
3.) 3D Radar? Could it be harder to get your orientation by having to move the CAMERA to rotate the radar?
I felt that the interface was determined by programmers and artists, and that few people that had ANY experience with interface design spent much time with it.
After trying to settle on what to do next, I wanted to go mine some asteroids, but as I had NO clue how to find them, I just gave up.
Ok...I went into Best Buy and Borders' this weekend looking for music (in the Chicagoland area). I was looking at the following two albums:
- Snatch Soundtrack - Julee Cruise: Art of Being a Girl
Now, here were the prices:
@ Best Buy Snatch - $12.99 Julee Cruise - $14.99
@ Borders Snatch - $17.99 Julee Cruise - $17.99
Now, even CDNow can't really compete with Best Buy's prices on those. Julee Cruise's album is new, and we all know how old the Snatch Soundtrack is. And those aren't even mall prices. Sure, you *might* be able to find certain albums on sale at Best Buy/Target/WalMart, but they sure as hell won't be anything that isn't the latest Teen Sensation(TM).
As someone that has worked in the game industry since 1988, I'll tell you that times have really changed. I think there are three main reasons why you don't see Construction Set games much, and two of those reasons are why most of the games are really, really not innovative at all.
1.) Edutainment became a bad word. There were many companies that have attempted to make entertaining products that also taught people. Problem is, they weren't perceived as cash cows, so the suits ran screaming. I'm not sure if I know any names, but in the early nineties...edutainment was up there with girl games as the two huge untapped markets for gaming. After that, a few visible failures brought the house down.
2.) Games are more expensive than ever. This problem leads to the bean counters wanting to take fewer and fewer "perceived" risks. When game budgets are getting close to $4 million per title, and PC games don't usually have a PRAYER of selling enough copies to make that back (I think you could count on one hand the amount that do it each year)...how can you "risk" something like that? I don't agree, but that's the logic.
Now, I'm sure if you checked the stats, there are acutally MORE failures of clones and licenses than there are of games that try something new. However, gaming has never been about statistics, engineering, or anything else...logic need not apply. Which leads me to...
3.) Games are technology driven. So...it's hard enough to push the latest technology to its limits. Take undisciplined programmers, add soft science marketers and THEN try and capture lightning in a bottle. Now, try and make the game FUN as well. Takes too long, and you never know when it's done. Used to be that you could sit a guy or two in a room and let them hack away for 6 months. Now, you're dealing with teams of people all trying to impress business types that wouldn't know a fun game if it bit them on the nose.
Now, I'm not just blaiming business types...the whole industry has painted itself into this corner where they're turning into big-budget Hollywood.
But, if you're looking for innovative construction games...do some web searches for some shareware. You'll have much more success with finding something there than finding it on the shelves of Best Buy.
"...if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later." -- Lewis Carroll
And speaking of making themselves look busy...lemme get this straight. We're in the midst of a "War on Terrorism." MOST of the groups that are targeted in this so-called "war" are well known FOREIGN groups.
So, isn't this a bit like telling the Russians or the Chinese, "If you spy on us, we'll put you in jail?" I mean...who is this law aimed at? If there are people hacking in to our nuclear plants from Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, what good will this law do? Or are there worries about more Timothy McVeigh types than we know about?
"...if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later." --Lewis Carroll
3) My largest concern with this, and I didn't notice Miguel addressing it there or in the followups, is the patent issue. My worst fear is everything would go incredibly well with mono: diverse compilers, robust libraries, etc. and we would all start to build code around it, and then about 5 years down the line Microsoft whips out a patent and demands royalties for all the labor that we have done under the illusion that it would be free.
The only problem with this fear, as much as suspicion is always healthy, is that patents don't work that way. If you let people violate them, then a precident is set. When you wait 5 years to defend a patent, the judges tend to ask the question "Why did you wait so long?" It's not like they wouldn't know for 5 years. If you don't defend your patent as soon as you hear about violations, they're REALLY hard to enforce.
MS's options were never superior to begin with...what has always ended up happening was that MS used their business dealings to have their software be the first option. Then, when other companies lose market share, MS can catch up with the added revenue and time. Finally, the original software chokes from lack of support, and MS appears to be superior.
- MS-DOS vs. Dr. Dos
- Win 3.1 vs. Mac OS
- Word vs. Word Perfect (anyone who's used both knows what a piece of crap Word is)
- Access vs. DBase
- Excel vs. 123
- IE vs. Netscape (anyone who remembers more than 3 years knows that Netscape was WAY better when IE was introduced and "bundled")
- Media Player vs. Real
The list goes on...every original product was better...but with clever leveraging they are able to eliminate the competition.
And the only reason they're able to make their products better over time is that other companies have their single revenue removed, whereas MS can lose money for a long time to take a market over.
It has nothing to do with ease of use or some funny utilitarian slant. For YEARS Microsoft has understood that it's easier to get people to use your software when you don't give them a choice.
That was the gist of Gates' thinking when he approached IBM and got installed on every PC sold. It doesn't matter if it's better. If it's easier to use something in front of you, then people will. This has been shown time and time again:
- Word Perfect was better, easier to use, and more flexible, but Word was given away with PC's and handed to businesses...so...if you want to send me a document at work, you have to use Word!
- IE sucked at first compared to other browsers...but, MS tied it in with their OS, (help files...now you can only view them through our browser! What a coincidence!) and bang...what do I wanna do: use the one that's here, or download another one and install it myself?
- Windows Media Player is attempting to do the EXACT same thing...both WinAmp (for audio) and Real are better, but MS is slowly making you have to work for those, while theirs is right in front of you.
It was succinctly stated at the end of Pirates of Silicon Valley:
Jobs: 'We're better than you, Bill.'
Gates: 'Don't you understand Steve: IT DOESN'T MATTER!'
If people have to climb a hill to get a better product, then they'll sit at the bottom and deal with something almost as good. That's what MS understands...not what people really want, but how much they'll put up with if it's convenient.
"...if you drink much from a bottle marked
'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree
with you, sooner or later."
--Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, you have the fact that despite the money the industry makes (income, mind you, not necessarily profit), games have a much higher average price of goods for a consumer than the other entertainment industries. Sure, there are still the bargain bin games, and a quite vibrant used market, but those cannibalize the companies' ability to exist. Essentially you have something like an average CD or DVD costing in the $15 range, while games CONSISTENTLY push the retail price up, with new next gen titles going to the $60+ range. What does that mean? Total market / higher price = smaller audience.
The fact that the game industry is essentially the largest niche market EVER seems to be lost on everyone in the industry. So, considering the price of the goods combined with a much smaller audience than movies or music, you get market volatility. A smaller trend can radically affect things.
Second, games are reaching the end of the technology curve. Games have been existing for years on the "ooo, lookie" factor. However, it's getting to the point where many of the non-professionals have a problem seeing the leap from PS2 to PS3. Sure, there will be detail, but the wow factor that was there from, say, SNES to N64 just isn't there.
Third, the rising development costs are bringing two things to light: first, developers can't cut it and are going under/being absorbed at an alarming rate (in the US at least). What that means is that there are fewer and fewer outlets for creativity and less motivation to "take risks" (as if it's somehow not risky to keep doing the same thing forever, but whatever). Second, those costs are making it more and more necessary to amortize development over multiple platforms. By doing that, companies CAN'T spend the money to fully utilize the systems, and you get generic ports that don't look as good as they could on the new hardware. That tends to exacerbate the loss of the "ooo, lookie" factor as well. How many reviews have we seen of XBox 360 games where people say they're WORSE than the previous games? Too many already. The HD/non-HD issue really threatens to mar the system if developers aren't careful.
Combine all of these things, and we wind up with a stagnant market that is heading towards a cliff. I don't think the simple alarmist reasons of the Costikyan's of the world are the whole story, but they're one part of something that's coming. I think of it as Hollywood around 1965. It's not looking good, and things are going to HAVE to change. Microsoft's recent revision that they won't hit their sales figures are the first tremor.
Amen. When the rank and file people missing family and friends for months and months get royalties on every project, THEN the voice talent can bitch.
Until then, when the hourly wage of the average game worker is about 1/8th of the voice talent, something is seriously wrong.
Ok, so when it first came out that you could a) have sex with a prostitute to get health back, and b) kill her to get your money back, netting you a health gain for nothing. I had to try it in GTA.
So, I drove up to what looked like a prostitute. Nothing. She wouldn't get in the car. I tried this with a bunch of different women in the game to see if maybe a "prostitute" looked different than I thought. No dice.
I talk to a friend of mine. He clarified. Now, here's what you have to do.
A) Beat up your car (prostitutes apparently won't get into cars that look too nice).
B) *Find* a prostitute (which isn't as easy as it sounds, as many tartily dressed women in the game aren't, in fact, hookers)
C) Drive to a secluded area (not any alley will do...it has to be off the beaten path)
When this happens, the car will rock back and forth. If you move the camera around and look in the car, you do in fact see that the two people are doing NOTHING but sitting there. During this time, your health will go up slightly.
After the prostitute gets out of the car, you can kill her, run her over, whatever. She will drop money.
It is also noted, that MOST pedestrians will drop money when killed, so I never bothered to check that if I just ran her over before anything, would she drop the cash.
Now...why did I walk through this? Because, IT'S A REAL P.I.T.A. TO DO! It takes WAY too long to get your health back this way! There are free health boosts sitting around at any hospital!
So, can you *DO* this in the game? Yes, yes you can. Is it CLEAR that it's REWARDED to do this? No! It's a freakin' WASTE OF TIME, that was clearly put in there as a detail. I don't even THINK the killing of the prostitute is connected, as I said...I believe you can get token amounts of cash from MOST pedestrians you kill, as well as deal with the possible risk from cops for such a petty amount of money ($200 at most...which is PENNIES after you play for about 5 minutes).
And yet, TOO MANY POLITICIANS have parroted the "teaching/rewarding you for sleeping with and killing prostitutes" line. Yet NONE of them clearly understand it for what it is...an aside, a bit of color...a way to immerse you in the world...if you can even figure it out how to do it!
This random demonizing of games has gone so far that the following quote was from the Chicago Tribune about the impending state law to restrict sales to minors:
(I found a copy of the article on GameCritics)
"They're watching police officers getting their heads blown off. They're defecating on people," she said. "They get extra points for sleeping with prostitutes."
Once again the reference again to getting "extra points for sleeping with prostitutes." The lack of clarity on "points" shows that this person has NO clue about what they are talking.
(I also want this person to SHOW me the game where "They're defecating on people.")
When will games/music/movies stop being the scapegoat for bad parenting? Does this just happen every time something new and scary comes along?
As much as I hate to have much of anything to do with him, it's "Denny Thorley" not "Donny Thorley."
The simple solution I see to all of this is to tax money EVERY time it changes hands between players. Other than the occasional money give to help my friends start, I never give money to any non NPC. I'm not sure what would be lost taxing player to player money exchange. The higher the transaction, the more money is taken.
Sure, it's not realistic, but it would make it much harder to buy money. You could also get around it by trying to find a money substitute of some sort, but you could also tax that as well.
Basically, if the game monitors every transaction and does something to reduce it, I think the problem would be solved.
Whoops, the horrible racist and asinine comment was deleted already. Never mind.
Wow...can we mod that troll up so more people can get mad at such anonymous sniping?
I think it's hard to counter the argument that "movie games suck" by saying "here's a few that don't" without seeing what percentage of the whole those are.
My point was that with 10 minutes of combing *1* system's library, I could find a boatload of crappy movie licensed games. To me, it's hard to justify destroying that stereotype by saying "here are a few good ones."
Now, the question as to whether or not that percentage is *higher* than the regular percentage of crappy games is an excellent one, and if that was the angle of the article, I think it would have been much more convincing.
See, there's a VERY good reason that games that use movie licenses have a bad rep: THQ. Now, many of you may not remember THQ in their sucky SNES days, but at that point, all THQ did was license stuff and make crappy games from them. Admittedly, some of these games didn't MERIT being made from the movies in the first place, but they were.
- Home Alone
- Home Alone 2
- Lawnmower Man
- Wayne's World
And let's not forget one of the BIGGEST license hounds: Acclaim.
- Judge Dredd
- Demolition Man
- Dragon - The Bruce Lee Story
- Spawn
- Stargate
Other companies got in on the fun, too:
- Bram Stoker's Dracula (Sony)
- Cool World (Ocean)
- Pagemaster (Fox Interactive - a crappy movie that was MADE to be a crappy game)
- Robocop 3 (Ocean)
- Rocketeer (IGS)
- T2: Judgement Day (LJN - NOT a port of the Midway gun game)
- Time Cop (JVC)
- True Lies (LJN)
- Untouchables (Ocean)
Now, that's just the "clogging the Blockbuster rental aisle" crap that came out on the SNES. There were also many, many crappy movie games on other systems.
My problem with that article is that the guy who wrote it simply didn't do his homework. Were there some good movie licensed games? Sure...he hit it on the head with the Star Wars stuff. But those are VASTLY outnumbered by the "grab a license and do a substandard genre-of-the-day" games that are PUMPED out on a yearly basis. All you have to do is walk the rental aisles and look at the $2.00 used game stack at GameStop to see the glut that's there.
So, counting the titles he talked about, it looks like we have maybe 2 good SNES games with movie licenses, and 23 ones that were tolerable at best. THAT'S where the impression comes from.
Also, people tend to remember big name flops, and movie licenses have had them in spades. ET started the trend, and there's pretty much been a big time flameout for a movie license on every platform since.
Voice Over: And on the road too, vicious gangs of traffic control barrels.
Film: Two vicious traffic control barrels with little legs attack a vicar.
Colonel: (coming up and stopping them) Right, right, stop it! This thread's got silly. Started off with a nice little idea about automated road barrels and fatality statistics, but now it's got silly. The spelling is atrocious for a thread too. And these robot topic icons are pretty badly made as well. And those aren't proper English bollards anyway!
Not just Meijer...happens at all the grocery stores in Chicagoland, to the best of my knowledge. I even asked a store about it once and they just shrugged.
I've had my domain since about 1997. At some point during the 'Net boom, some idiot company harvested a BUNCH of WHOIS info. At the time I had the correct information in there (INCLUDING phone number).
Well...I got on every telemarketing phone call list imaginable...AS A BUSINESS. You think it's hard stopping residential telemarketing? Wait until you start getting phone calls at your house asking you to buy Pitney Bowes postage equipment, insurance for your employees, etc, etc.
It was a NIGHTMARE. All I could do was ask the individuals to a) place me on their do not call list, and b) ask where they bought my information from (information that, not a SINGLE COMPANY was able to provide).
So, since then, I've used a P.O. Box for mail, and I FLAT REFUSE to give a phone number.
I'll start providing valid information when I know that it isn't going to be harvested by any slimy company out there.
As far as big-name failures, don't forget Trespasser. Oh, and who was the genius that brought us this one-handed pain?
Jonathan "Seamus" Blackley, architect of the X-Box. 'Nuff said.
Very simple...the higher ups at Taito are trying to rekindle some old magic. The Ms.Pac/Galaga combo is selling VERY well, and now everyone is trying to get into that market.
Once again, product-whore that I am, I worked on these. We did the Ms.Pac/Galaga, Centipede/Millipede/Missile Command/Let's Go Bowling, and Robotron/Joust - Defender/Defender 2(don't call me Stargate). I'll tell you this...Ms.Pac/Galaga is outselling those others 10-1.
Everyone who's into these things, keep asking locations about them. This is a shameless plug, as I work for the company that did Ms.Pac/Galaga and Centipede/Millipede/Missile Command/Let's Go Bowling.
IMHO, two major things have created the sorry state of arcade games these days: the tech arms race with home games, and Street Fighter 2.
Allow me to elaborate. Ever since way back, the arcade people have been threatened by the home. Why? Because they felt the experience they provided was fundamentally a technological one. When home systems began to rival the arcades in technology, the arcade companies got scared. So, they pushed the arms race, making their games bigger and more advanced, all the while pushing their prices to an outrageous limit. Some posts here already have mentioned games like DDR and Time Crisis. While, as games, those two are damn fine accomplishments, when you're an operator paying $20k for a game, it can't possibly earn its keep. Thus, arcade companies (like Midway, Sega, and Namco soon) have put themselves in the role of the Soviets, spending their way to their own extinction while missing the point completely.
Second, in the early 90's, a little game caught fire you might have heard of: Street Fighter 2. Before that point, you could hop into an arcade and it hadn't been bitten (as much) by the genre bug. Since Street Fighter 2, genres got firmly entrenched, and 95% of games are either fighting, driving, shooting, or sports. And when I say shooting, I mean games with a gun you hold.
Arcades *used* to be about the purity of play. A post here mentioned control, and that's an excellent point. Arcade games spent more time working on control because they could customize it. If you've played Robotron, Defender, Tempest, Spy Hunter, or Ridge Racer, you've seen this. Arcade games provided a better game experience by focusing on the game. Recently, the games have gotten caught in the same trap that home games have. Namely, that technology sells games, and that sequels and genres are the only way to go. The difference between home and arcade though, was that prices haven't skyrocketed (yet) for consumer prices. Arcade games did that, and everything fell away.
I personally think that there's still a viable market for games in social situations, and that there's a large crowd that remembers the days of the arcade and longs for that experience back. I myself still get goosebumps every time I see that sweeping shot of Flynn's arcade in Tron, remembering back to what the buzz in a crowded, loud arcade used to be like. I don't know if we'll ever get that experience back again, but if we do, the games won't be huge, expensive behemoths.
I was accepted for the beta a few weeks ago. I spent a night tinkering around with it. I would have to say that I echo many of the sentiments of the people posting here. There was a lot of "What now?" in my experience. I think my big problems with that had to do with the interface.
1.) Anyone else think that a RTS-style "double-click to go there" is really HARD in 3D?
2.) It also seemed to me that I was always juggling windows. I know Shadowbane uses floaty windows as well, but it feels like they did more work on avoiding clutter than EVE. Did it seem like they designed this game on 21"+ monitors to anyone else?
2b.) Speaking of big monitors...it seems like to go anywhere, you had to double click on the little dot floating out somewhere in space. Since these things seemed to cluster together, all I could see was a cluster of little dots off in the distance, with microscopic text describing what it is.
3.) 3D Radar? Could it be harder to get your orientation by having to move the CAMERA to rotate the radar?
I felt that the interface was determined by programmers and artists, and that few people that had ANY experience with interface design spent much time with it.
After trying to settle on what to do next, I wanted to go mine some asteroids, but as I had NO clue how to find them, I just gave up.
Oops...ok, lemme try that again...
Ok...I went into Best Buy and Borders' this weekend looking for music (in the Chicagoland area). I was looking at the following two albums:
- Snatch Soundtrack
- Julee Cruise: Art of Being a Girl
Now, here were the prices:
@ Best Buy
Snatch - $12.99
Julee Cruise - $14.99
@ Borders
Snatch - $17.99
Julee Cruise - $17.99
Now, even CDNow can't really compete with Best Buy's prices on those. Julee Cruise's album is new, and we all know how old the Snatch Soundtrack is. And those aren't even mall prices. Sure, you *might* be able to find certain albums on sale at Best Buy/Target/WalMart, but they sure as hell won't be anything that isn't the latest Teen Sensation(TM).
Ok...I went into Best Buy and Borders' this weekend looking for music (in the Chicagoland area). I was looking at the following two albums:
- Snatch Soundtrack
- Julee Cruise: Art of Being a Girl
Now, here were the prices:
Best Buy Borders'
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As someone that has worked in the game industry since 1988, I'll tell you that times have really changed. I think there are three main reasons why you don't see Construction Set games much, and two of those reasons are why most of the games are really, really not innovative at all.
1.) Edutainment became a bad word.
There were many companies that have attempted to make entertaining products that also taught people. Problem is, they weren't perceived as cash cows, so the suits ran screaming. I'm not sure if I know any names, but in the early nineties...edutainment was up there with girl games as the two huge untapped markets for gaming. After that, a few visible failures brought the house down.
2.) Games are more expensive than ever.
This problem leads to the bean counters wanting to take fewer and fewer "perceived" risks. When game budgets are getting close to $4 million per title, and PC games don't usually have a PRAYER of selling enough copies to make that back (I think you could count on one hand the amount that do it each year)...how can you "risk" something like that? I don't agree, but that's the logic.
Now, I'm sure if you checked the stats, there are acutally MORE failures of clones and licenses than there are of games that try something new. However, gaming has never been about statistics, engineering, or anything else...logic need not apply. Which leads me to...
3.) Games are technology driven.
So...it's hard enough to push the latest technology to its limits. Take undisciplined programmers, add soft science marketers and THEN try and capture lightning in a bottle. Now, try and make the game FUN as well. Takes too long, and you never know when it's done. Used to be that you could sit a guy or two in a room and let them hack away for 6 months. Now, you're dealing with teams of people all trying to impress business types that wouldn't know a fun game if it bit them on the nose.
Now, I'm not just blaiming business types...the whole industry has painted itself into this corner where they're turning into big-budget Hollywood.
But, if you're looking for innovative construction games...do some web searches for some shareware. You'll have much more success with finding something there than finding it on the shelves of Best Buy.
"...if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later." -- Lewis Carroll
And speaking of making themselves look busy...lemme get this straight. We're in the midst of a "War on Terrorism." MOST of the groups that are targeted in this so-called "war" are well known FOREIGN groups.
So, isn't this a bit like telling the Russians or the Chinese, "If you spy on us, we'll put you in jail?" I mean...who is this law aimed at? If there are people hacking in to our nuclear plants from Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, what good will this law do? Or are there worries about more Timothy McVeigh types than we know about?
"...if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later." --Lewis Carroll
3) My largest concern with this, and I didn't notice Miguel addressing it there or in the followups, is the patent issue. My worst fear is everything would go incredibly well with mono: diverse compilers, robust libraries, etc. and we would all start to build code around it, and then about 5 years down the line Microsoft whips out a patent and demands royalties for all the labor that we have done under the illusion that it would be free.
The only problem with this fear, as much as suspicion is always healthy, is that patents don't work that way. If you let people violate them, then a precident is set. When you wait 5 years to defend a patent, the judges tend to ask the question "Why did you wait so long?" It's not like they wouldn't know for 5 years. If you don't defend your patent as soon as you hear about violations, they're REALLY hard to enforce.
Moron...if you're going to go out on a limb and snipe someone for errors, at least check your own accuracy!
m at hematical
It's MATHEMATICAL, and that's not a GRAMMAR issue, it's a SPELLING issue.
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=
MS's options were never superior to begin with...what has always ended up happening was that MS used their business dealings to have their software be the first option. Then, when other companies lose market share, MS can catch up with the added revenue and time. Finally, the original software chokes from lack of support, and MS appears to be superior.
- MS-DOS vs. Dr. Dos
- Win 3.1 vs. Mac OS
- Word vs. Word Perfect (anyone who's used both knows what a piece of crap Word is)
- Access vs. DBase
- Excel vs. 123
- IE vs. Netscape (anyone who remembers more than 3 years knows that Netscape was WAY better when IE was introduced and "bundled")
- Media Player vs. Real
The list goes on...every original product was better...but with clever leveraging they are able to eliminate the competition.
And the only reason they're able to make their products better over time is that other companies have their single revenue removed, whereas MS can lose money for a long time to take a market over.
It has nothing to do with ease of use or some funny utilitarian slant. For YEARS Microsoft has understood that it's easier to get people to use your software when you don't give them a choice.
That was the gist of Gates' thinking when he approached IBM and got installed on every PC sold. It doesn't matter if it's better. If it's easier to use something in front of you, then people will. This has been shown time and time again:
- Word Perfect was better, easier to use, and more flexible, but Word was given away with PC's and handed to businesses...so...if you want to send me a document at work, you have to use Word!
- IE sucked at first compared to other browsers...but, MS tied it in with their OS, (help files...now you can only view them through our browser! What a coincidence!) and bang...what do I wanna do: use the one that's here, or download another one and install it myself?
- Windows Media Player is attempting to do the EXACT same thing...both WinAmp (for audio) and Real are better, but MS is slowly making you have to work for those, while theirs is right in front of you.
It was succinctly stated at the end of Pirates of Silicon Valley:
Jobs: 'We're better than you, Bill.'
Gates: 'Don't you understand Steve: IT DOESN'T MATTER!'
If people have to climb a hill to get a better product, then they'll sit at the bottom and deal with something almost as good. That's what MS understands...not what people really want, but how much they'll put up with if it's convenient.
"...if you drink much from a bottle marked
'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree
with you, sooner or later."
--Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland