"I wonder why they are called 'royalties'..... Is it because the rights-holders like to feel as if they are kings over everybody else?"
Yeah, except, you really don't want royalties. Royalties are what you stick the artist with in the same breath you tell them they're responsible for paying for everything.
What you want are points. Writing points or production points. Points give you residuals.
Royalties are a percentage on record sales. Period. Residuals are what you get every time your piece of music/video/art/whatever gets used by someone else. One of my teachers back in college was collecting fat checks monthly because a piece of music he composed was being used in rotation in Proactiv commercials. If I wrote the song, I get writing points, so I collect residuals, but if say, my producer wrote the song and kept the writing credit, and then the production credit gets split between the producer(s), record company, possibly the engineer(s), leaving me the performing artist with zilch except these crappy royalties that won't even recoup a quarter of what the record company says I owe them.
Royalties suck. Residuals are where the money's at.
I'd really, really hate to see Microsoft lose something like this (which they never would in a million years), not because I like MS or anything, but because of what it would mean for the VG industry in general.
I still fail to understand why people make such a big deal out of Firefox. Personally, I find Opera to be a much more elegant, usable, and stable browser.
The mouse gestures are so good, I catch myself trying to use them in Windows Explorer/My Computer.
"Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence. When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."
Thus merits further investigation. It's a foot in the door. Enough people demand it, legal access to said software can be obtained, by a court. But what they hold in no way would be considered admissable.
See, that's all well and good for a PR asshole or a lawyer asshole, but gambling is a shady business, and people have a right to know where they're putting their moneys.
So, sure, they had to twist a few laws. Laws the corporation in question is probably dancing around in order to take money more easily from their consumers.
This is what bugs me about people who argue like this. I saw once on some news thing, San Francisco Hotel Owners vs. some city guy about the homeless problem in San Francisco. The hotel owners were saying that homeless people everywhere discouraged people from coming to conventions in SF and it was bad for business. The opponent was saying that conventions have had great turnouts and business isn't really down.
Good scifi is all about the human condition, which The Matrix touches upon, but never really goes into much depth with.
Man, did we see the same movie?
I mean, sure they don't focus on how people live and react to how things happen, or how even individuals react under the harshest of conditions, or whatever you say, but man, just look at the very core premise. It's about how hard mankind is willing to fight in order to survive and be free. Can't keep a good human race down kinda stuff. And how that doesn't relate to the human condition, well, I guess that completely flew over my head.
A while ago, I learned that when I analyze art and humor and movies and video games, that you can't hold it to any standard but its own, and it's appreciating that standard that makes a lot of movies better.
The Matrix set out to be an action packed thrill ride with a solid storyline and some segments that will make you think. It accomplished that, and then some. People say derived, I say tapping into a story we all already know, and giving their own twist on it (ref: 3000 Miles from Gracelend or even, to a lesser extent, American McGee's Alice). They don't hide that they borrow classic elements of the hero story, the ultimate struggle against a rebellious "good" force against a larger and opressive "evil" force. That's not deritive, that's classic storytelling.
And so I look at it like that. I can say it used too many special effects, but it's the kind of movie that's built to be like a Disneyland ride, much like Jurassic Park.
This guy isn't saying, "Sit back and let the movie wash over your eyes and ignore the bad parts," he's saying it's a thrill ride and to treat it as such.
You're not going to ride a rollercoaster and dock it points because it's not themed well. No, you're there for the rollercoaster.
Bottom line, don't go watch the Matrix when you want to be watching Pi.
Speaking of, have you ever seen that show, Filter, on G4? The one where the viewers vote on top 10 lists?
Yeah, they're always exactly spot on right.
What you're saying, here, is that you think Titanic should have won every award on Oscar night, including Best Foreign Language Film and Best Documentary Short Subject.
People are stupid. People won't go out and see all the movies on the list.
I would also think it safe to say, given Serkis were given the Oscar, that in an acceptance speech, he would say something to the effect of, "None of this would have been possible without the hardworking people at Weta Digital who all contributed directly to Gollum's performance."
I think that it would be considered a breakthrough within the industry, considering a halfway fake character is recgonized as being a force onscreen, by the community and not just the fans.
It's hard to argue that PC games aren't going down the crapper, man.
I'm not saying liscensing is a bad thing, I'm just saying in many cases, it will stand in the way of innovation. MoH, Jedi Knight, CS, those are cool games, whatever, but nothing people will still be talking about five years from now like they will games like Metroid or Splinter Cell.
All the games you listed have one thing in common, they're first person shooters, excuding Jedi Knight's third person lightsaber mode. I'm of the opinion that FPS's are way overdone and I've been tired of them since Duke 3D, making a few exceptions along the way to play them, like Half Life or Halo or something, but what they really need is someone to really push the genre forward, which no one has, unless, again, you count Metroid, which is a FPS hybrid. And don't say Halo. Halo did nothing to push the genre forward that Half Life already hadn't.
A while back, I figured out the big difference between PC and console games. Console games take a more cinematic approach to gaming. There's a story, there's a set path to follow, and when you finish the game, it's over, unless you want to go back and find easter eggs. PC games are mostly time sinks. 99% of PC games on the market today are either FPS's, isometric strategy games/RPGs, MMORPGS, or sims. They're time sinks. FPS's, you play multiplayer until your ears bleed. MMORPGS, you play until your ears bleed, online strategy games, you play until your ears bleed. In the end, you get some sort of ladder standing at best. Single player definately takes a backseat to the multiplayer, where they can string you along for months with patches and upgrades, which cost nothing, then expansion packs, which cost usually $30. And then, there's the mod community, that really pisses me off. People buy Half Life for Counterstrike or Day of Defeat. NOT for Half Life. Same thing with UT mods. The problem here, we've got good, dedicated designers that are selling copies of games that see no benefit other than the stresses of a community demanding more. Quake would not survive without the mod scene, college students everywhere working for free to fill Carmack and Newell's pockets.
The PC market is crap, man, and ain't no one going to convince me otherwise.
I am 19 years old and I've done focus testing for Sony and THQ. I agree with your criticism of focus testing being useless, but have some ideas for how to improve it.
Ok, first off, let's talk about the product. If you hand me shit and ask me how to make it better, I can say give it more weapons and give it more levels, but bottom line, it still stinks because it's shit. I tested WWE Crush Course (they didn't make me sign an NDA on that one) and had absolutely no useful advice to give, other than scrap the project and give the team something better to work on. If a game in flawed from the beginning, nothing will fix it. Making a car combat game with wrestlers is a BAD IDEA.
Secondly, I've also noticed how people focus on the wrong things, but you have to account for that, as well. You say there was a collision response bug they nitpicked. Come out and say before they play the game, "There's this collision response bug we've got going on right now, but just pretend it's not there. It's something that WILL be fixed that we already know about. What we need from you are ways to fix things that aren't so obvious." I tested Summoner 2. I didn't have much nice to say about it at the time. The game seemed completely unimaginative at the roots. There was a lot of pretty stuff going on around that, and it was obvious that was the focus of the game, but fundamentally, I felt it was a brawler with level building. They basics of gameplay were so boring, I really couldn't give them any usable feedback about the special moves they were wanting to evaluate.
Really, the only good game I've tested was Amplitude (at the time, still called Frequency 2). It was obvious that graphically, it hadn't come together yet. They had a solid gameplay model in place with the fundamentals down. I was able to give really useful feedback. So useful, I was asked to do another group in the same week. And I don't mind taking Sony's money. Already, they had a handful of songs playable with good notes, they just wanted to know how to focus the look of the game, avatars, and multiplayer displays. Since we had something to work with, everyone in the room was able to give feedback that was useful to a degree (nevermind the couple of completely braindead morons in the room). Says something for development order. Add the bells and whistles later, get the gameplay down first. Everyone seems to miss that.
I had some friends that focus tested Jak & Daxter and Sly Cooper. They told me about the criticisms they had at the groups and later, when I played the games, they were fixed. Good arguments, too, like one of them pleaded in the Jak & Daxter session to make the chick's boobs smaller. Which they did. Which I applaud them for.
So this wasn't so much for the other readers of the board so much as it was for you. If you want groups to be successful, try recruiting people from outside game stores or something. Make sure they're gamers. I don't know how people get recruited for these things, I work on a friend of a friend basis, but some of those people simply don't belong. It takes some understanding of design in its most rudimentary form in order to give good criticism. When I play a beta, I see unbalanced gameplay and dodgy textures as something that is obvious and can be worked out. Other people won't see it that way.
I had another friend who did a Tomb Raider group where EVERYONE other than him was asking for bigger boobs on Lara and a nude code. Wrong people.
And if you work out of the San Francisco bay area, I'd gladly do some testing for you.
You know, I have a really hard time agreeing with that. What you say is very true, but there's something that's striking a bad chord.
The only really great game I can think of that used another game's engine was Half Life. Even then, the Quake engine was HEAVILY modified. There's all sorts of other "me-too" FPS's out there that use the UT or Quake engines, but for the most part, those bore me to death. Games that really stand out in my mind are games that couldn't have possibly used the engine from another game.
When Epic or id make an engine, they're making the engine for their game, Unreal or Quake, right? (Humor me here, I know UT and Quake are nothing more than tech demos to show off the engines these days, but just follow me) These guys, they sit down and they build an engine to do really cool 3D stuff and acheive basic principles of gameplay that are standard in the industry. It's the same idea already stated here about making sequels. I can easily see some producer saying, "X game did well and IT used the Q3 engine, so why can't you?" It's financially secure, sure, but restricts development, because it's not made for X game. It's made for tons of games. That's why Quake and UT are straight up boring deathmatch/CTF games. That's why there's no depth. They're falling to the lowest common demoninator.
Let's look at the real standout games of the past while in my mind: Rez, Silent Hill 2, Contra: Shattered Soldier, Ikaruga, Zelda: Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Mario Sunshine, Eternal Darkness, Splinter Cell, Steel Batallion, Guilty Gear X2, etc. These games could not have been accomplished on someone else's engine. You can tweak an engine all you want, but in order to make a game that really fits like a glove, you've gotta build your own that's designed specifically for that game.
Now, there are exceptions to this. Sega used the Jet Set Radio graphics engine for a few of their arcade titles, but that's where similarities ended. GTA VC used the GTAIII engine, but it was also THE SAME FRIGGING GAME. The THPS engine's been passed around quite a bit, but then again, all those XTREME sports games are the SAME FRIGGING GAMES, too.
Liscensed engines stand in the way of innovation, for sure, and if you ask me, innovation is by far the most precious and important thing in video games today. Because what the world really needs is another deathmatch game. Or more crappy platformers that try like hell to look like Jak & Daxter. Or more stealth action games with retarded enemy AI.
Next thing we gotta do is convince the magazines to hire reviewers with brains in their heads. That would help, too.
My opinion, and that of my managers, does in fact matter. Why? Because they spend all day around the games and they see what sells and what doesn't.
You say the retailer has a lot of control over what sells, and I'll tell you, we really don't. We plan months ahead of time what games we're going to focus on, yes, but that's based on hype in the media and customer excitement, not dollar signs.
Ok, let me put it this way: we were all hoping Star Wars: Obi-Wan for XBox was going to be good. I mean, the system needed something other than Halo, so we reccomended it a lot, based on that premise (it's looking good, let's just hope it ends that way), and a lot of people reserved and bought it. And returned it a few days later. Maybe 5% of the original reserves kept the game. We had a couple hundred copies sitting in the back room for about a month.
However, it doesn't take a Harvard grad with a stick up his ass to sell a copy of Grand Theft Auto III or Metal Gear Solid II. They sell themselves. This isn't a grocery store, where two brands don't really make a difference.
What I'm saying is that retailers are going to focus inherently on the products they think are in demand or will sell. I don't care how much pumping up MS did for Nightcaster, it was a shitty game. I'm not going to reccomend it. I don't care that Microsoft sends us billions of demo discs and t-shirts and displays and a neon sign and interactive demo units and various free swag and a nametag that lights up. The XBox is shitty, so I personally try to dissuade people from it.
But that's my standpoint. Right now, the average gamer shouldn't buy an XBox, the PS2 is a much safer bet. Why? Well, the PS2 has the massive collection of tried and true games, like MGS2, GTAIII, and FFX. Halo can't compete with those alone. PS2 also has a lot of big titles on the way, such as FFXI, GTA:Vice, Tekken 4, and a slew of big-title adaptations to online games, such as Gran Turismo Online. What does the XBox have? Good question. Every so often, we'll sit around and figure out what games we should promote in the coming months, based on just the numbers we think we can generate with them. What's coming on XBox? Morrowind... but that's getting really mixed reviews. Buffy, which they're saying is going to be cool, but they said the same of State of Emergency and Wreckless. Um, Hunter: The Reckoning, but no one knows a thing about that game yet...
However, none of this compares to the hype that's going for the GameCube, which isn't even mentioned here and is outselling the XBox marginally. GC's got Mario Sunshine, STARFOX: Adventures, a new Zelda, and Metroid Prime on the way. Microsoft can't compete with that lineup. So we don't sell as many XBoxes. For most people $300 is a lot to throw down on a whim, and the GC (at only $200) and the PS2 are much safer buys, so we promote those.
I want to see the XBox succeed. I really do. Right now, I hate it, because the games suck. I'm sorry, but Halo is not that great. The only game I like on the system is Jet Set Radio Future. I can't reccomend the system to the average gamer, unless all they're going to play are sports games. Most sports games are released for all 3 systems, but the XBox has the best graphics. So if that's it, get an XBox.
However, if you want new, innovative, big name titles, the PS2 and GameCube are definately where it's at. The XBox just doesn't have anything big lined up to excite people. (Note that the console audience doesn't get worked up about Quake, so don't throw back the whole MS trying to get Quake IV XBox exclusive thing, most console gamers couldn't care less.)
And our store does try to sell XBox. We actually have to display the XBox more prominatly than GameCube, and they send us a hell of a lot more marketing material, like demo discs and pamphlets and shit.
( )Send lots of personal information that/.'ers shit bricks over
Come on. Don't assume the worst on everything. I wouldn't mind hitting a button ONCE that defaults me to Flash if I like Flash. It's like how IE autosaves passwords. It's convenience. Turn if off if you don't want it.
Of course, we can't assume that a lot of companies would allow this preference, but I'm sure some would pioneer and make a name for themselves.
NOTHING was said of copyright! It said TRADEMARK. TRADEMARKs apply to words in X field.
For example, Microsoft has a TRADEMARK on "Windows." Now, if they had a COPYRIGHT on "Windows," those things that cover the holes in my outside walls wouldn't be called windows anymore, that'd be copyright violation. However, because it's trademarked, those holes can continue to be called Windows, however, other software can't be.
Do a search on the/. article a while back about the Russian beer company marketing their new Windows 95 beer. It was legal because Microsoft doesn't hold a trademark over Windows 95 as it pertains to beer.
I would agree with that, however, a point that a LOT of people miss is that realism doesn't make good games.
The reason people are losing interest in turn based games is because of the pauses and how long they take to play. A couple years ago, you couldn't tear me away from Alpha Centauri. In December, when I got Call to Power II, it only served to entertain me for part of an airplane trip. As times and technology have changed, so have interests. I mean, who the hell wants to pay for and play a Street Fighter clone anymore (not counting downloading free emulators)?
Right now, internet gaming's all the rage. Everyone's trying to "push the envelope" by seeing how many people they can cram into one game while keeping it interesting. Turn based strategy simply doesn't make room for this. I tried playing Alpha Centauri in multiplayer with simultaneous turns, but it only ended in frustration. Turn based games simply do not and cannot by design contribute well to TCP/IP gaming. RTS's can.
Why was StarCraft a success? Battle.net. The single player was kinda boring after a while, but I got a good year off and on of playing on Battle.net. Alpha Centauri lased maybe two months.
Slashdot Mirror
"I wonder why they are called 'royalties'..... Is it because the rights-holders like to feel as if they are kings over everybody else?"
Yeah, except, you really don't want royalties. Royalties are what you stick the artist with in the same breath you tell them they're responsible for paying for everything.
What you want are points. Writing points or production points. Points give you residuals.
Royalties are a percentage on record sales. Period. Residuals are what you get every time your piece of music/video/art/whatever gets used by someone else. One of my teachers back in college was collecting fat checks monthly because a piece of music he composed was being used in rotation in Proactiv commercials. If I wrote the song, I get writing points, so I collect residuals, but if say, my producer wrote the song and kept the writing credit, and then the production credit gets split between the producer(s), record company, possibly the engineer(s), leaving me the performing artist with zilch except these crappy royalties that won't even recoup a quarter of what the record company says I owe them.
Royalties suck. Residuals are where the money's at.
I'd really, really hate to see Microsoft lose something like this (which they never would in a million years), not because I like MS or anything, but because of what it would mean for the VG industry in general.
Zealotry indeed.
I still fail to understand why people make such a big deal out of Firefox. Personally, I find Opera to be a much more elegant, usable, and stable browser.
The mouse gestures are so good, I catch myself trying to use them in Windows Explorer/My Computer.
Final Fantasy VI
Grim Fandango
Silent Hill 2
Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
Super Castlevania IV
Rez
The 11th Hour
Super Mario World
In no particular order.
"Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."
-J Krishnamurti
There's a Canadian group called The User who have conducted one or two symphonies on something like twelve dot matrix printers.
I don't know the mechanics of the operation, but I've heard they do live shows in the British Columbia area.
You know, I remember reading somewhere that ancient man probably only had to work 20 hours a week to stay alive.
Finding water holes, moving with his tribe, hunting, gathering, etc. Only 20 hours.
What the hell happened?
THANK YOU FOR YOUR WONDERFUL INSIGHT.
I'LL REMEMBER THAT NEXT TIME I'M LOOKING AT THE SCREEN AND I CAN STILL SEE IT ANYWAY.
Come on, dude. Does it matter? It's an internal light. Front or back is just semantics.
It WORKS. And probably uses less battery power than a backlight would require.
Thus merits further investigation. It's a foot in the door. Enough people demand it, legal access to said software can be obtained, by a court. But what they hold in no way would be considered admissable.
See, that's all well and good for a PR asshole or a lawyer asshole, but gambling is a shady business, and people have a right to know where they're putting their moneys.
So, sure, they had to twist a few laws. Laws the corporation in question is probably dancing around in order to take money more easily from their consumers.
This is what bugs me about people who argue like this. I saw once on some news thing, San Francisco Hotel Owners vs. some city guy about the homeless problem in San Francisco. The hotel owners were saying that homeless people everywhere discouraged people from coming to conventions in SF and it was bad for business. The opponent was saying that conventions have had great turnouts and business isn't really down.
Yeah, but isn't homelessness still bad?! HELLO?
So, I say, give the guy a chance.
Good scifi is all about the human condition, which The Matrix touches upon, but never really goes into much depth with.
Man, did we see the same movie?
I mean, sure they don't focus on how people live and react to how things happen, or how even individuals react under the harshest of conditions, or whatever you say, but man, just look at the very core premise. It's about how hard mankind is willing to fight in order to survive and be free. Can't keep a good human race down kinda stuff. And how that doesn't relate to the human condition, well, I guess that completely flew over my head.
A while ago, I learned that when I analyze art and humor and movies and video games, that you can't hold it to any standard but its own, and it's appreciating that standard that makes a lot of movies better.
The Matrix set out to be an action packed thrill ride with a solid storyline and some segments that will make you think. It accomplished that, and then some. People say derived, I say tapping into a story we all already know, and giving their own twist on it (ref: 3000 Miles from Gracelend or even, to a lesser extent, American McGee's Alice). They don't hide that they borrow classic elements of the hero story, the ultimate struggle against a rebellious "good" force against a larger and opressive "evil" force. That's not deritive, that's classic storytelling.
And so I look at it like that. I can say it used too many special effects, but it's the kind of movie that's built to be like a Disneyland ride, much like Jurassic Park.
This guy isn't saying, "Sit back and let the movie wash over your eyes and ignore the bad parts," he's saying it's a thrill ride and to treat it as such.
You're not going to ride a rollercoaster and dock it points because it's not themed well. No, you're there for the rollercoaster.
Bottom line, don't go watch the Matrix when you want to be watching Pi.
-Z
Hey! That sounds like a great idea!
Speaking of, have you ever seen that show, Filter, on G4? The one where the viewers vote on top 10 lists?
Yeah, they're always exactly spot on right.
What you're saying, here, is that you think Titanic should have won every award on Oscar night, including Best Foreign Language Film and Best Documentary Short Subject.
People are stupid. People won't go out and see all the movies on the list.
I would also think it safe to say, given Serkis were given the Oscar, that in an acceptance speech, he would say something to the effect of, "None of this would have been possible without the hardworking people at Weta Digital who all contributed directly to Gollum's performance."
I think that it would be considered a breakthrough within the industry, considering a halfway fake character is recgonized as being a force onscreen, by the community and not just the fans.
It's hard to argue that PC games aren't going down the crapper, man.
I'm not saying liscensing is a bad thing, I'm just saying in many cases, it will stand in the way of innovation. MoH, Jedi Knight, CS, those are cool games, whatever, but nothing people will still be talking about five years from now like they will games like Metroid or Splinter Cell.
All the games you listed have one thing in common, they're first person shooters, excuding Jedi Knight's third person lightsaber mode. I'm of the opinion that FPS's are way overdone and I've been tired of them since Duke 3D, making a few exceptions along the way to play them, like Half Life or Halo or something, but what they really need is someone to really push the genre forward, which no one has, unless, again, you count Metroid, which is a FPS hybrid. And don't say Halo. Halo did nothing to push the genre forward that Half Life already hadn't.
A while back, I figured out the big difference between PC and console games. Console games take a more cinematic approach to gaming. There's a story, there's a set path to follow, and when you finish the game, it's over, unless you want to go back and find easter eggs. PC games are mostly time sinks. 99% of PC games on the market today are either FPS's, isometric strategy games/RPGs, MMORPGS, or sims. They're time sinks. FPS's, you play multiplayer until your ears bleed. MMORPGS, you play until your ears bleed, online strategy games, you play until your ears bleed. In the end, you get some sort of ladder standing at best. Single player definately takes a backseat to the multiplayer, where they can string you along for months with patches and upgrades, which cost nothing, then expansion packs, which cost usually $30. And then, there's the mod community, that really pisses me off. People buy Half Life for Counterstrike or Day of Defeat. NOT for Half Life. Same thing with UT mods. The problem here, we've got good, dedicated designers that are selling copies of games that see no benefit other than the stresses of a community demanding more. Quake would not survive without the mod scene, college students everywhere working for free to fill Carmack and Newell's pockets.
The PC market is crap, man, and ain't no one going to convince me otherwise.
I am 19 years old and I've done focus testing for Sony and THQ. I agree with your criticism of focus testing being useless, but have some ideas for how to improve it.
Ok, first off, let's talk about the product. If you hand me shit and ask me how to make it better, I can say give it more weapons and give it more levels, but bottom line, it still stinks because it's shit. I tested WWE Crush Course (they didn't make me sign an NDA on that one) and had absolutely no useful advice to give, other than scrap the project and give the team something better to work on. If a game in flawed from the beginning, nothing will fix it. Making a car combat game with wrestlers is a BAD IDEA.
Secondly, I've also noticed how people focus on the wrong things, but you have to account for that, as well. You say there was a collision response bug they nitpicked. Come out and say before they play the game, "There's this collision response bug we've got going on right now, but just pretend it's not there. It's something that WILL be fixed that we already know about. What we need from you are ways to fix things that aren't so obvious." I tested Summoner 2. I didn't have much nice to say about it at the time. The game seemed completely unimaginative at the roots. There was a lot of pretty stuff going on around that, and it was obvious that was the focus of the game, but fundamentally, I felt it was a brawler with level building. They basics of gameplay were so boring, I really couldn't give them any usable feedback about the special moves they were wanting to evaluate.
Really, the only good game I've tested was Amplitude (at the time, still called Frequency 2). It was obvious that graphically, it hadn't come together yet. They had a solid gameplay model in place with the fundamentals down. I was able to give really useful feedback. So useful, I was asked to do another group in the same week. And I don't mind taking Sony's money. Already, they had a handful of songs playable with good notes, they just wanted to know how to focus the look of the game, avatars, and multiplayer displays. Since we had something to work with, everyone in the room was able to give feedback that was useful to a degree (nevermind the couple of completely braindead morons in the room). Says something for development order. Add the bells and whistles later, get the gameplay down first. Everyone seems to miss that.
I had some friends that focus tested Jak & Daxter and Sly Cooper. They told me about the criticisms they had at the groups and later, when I played the games, they were fixed. Good arguments, too, like one of them pleaded in the Jak & Daxter session to make the chick's boobs smaller. Which they did. Which I applaud them for.
So this wasn't so much for the other readers of the board so much as it was for you. If you want groups to be successful, try recruiting people from outside game stores or something. Make sure they're gamers. I don't know how people get recruited for these things, I work on a friend of a friend basis, but some of those people simply don't belong. It takes some understanding of design in its most rudimentary form in order to give good criticism. When I play a beta, I see unbalanced gameplay and dodgy textures as something that is obvious and can be worked out. Other people won't see it that way.
I had another friend who did a Tomb Raider group where EVERYONE other than him was asking for bigger boobs on Lara and a nude code. Wrong people.
And if you work out of the San Francisco bay area, I'd gladly do some testing for you.
You know, I have a really hard time agreeing with that. What you say is very true, but there's something that's striking a bad chord.
The only really great game I can think of that used another game's engine was Half Life. Even then, the Quake engine was HEAVILY modified. There's all sorts of other "me-too" FPS's out there that use the UT or Quake engines, but for the most part, those bore me to death. Games that really stand out in my mind are games that couldn't have possibly used the engine from another game.
When Epic or id make an engine, they're making the engine for their game, Unreal or Quake, right? (Humor me here, I know UT and Quake are nothing more than tech demos to show off the engines these days, but just follow me) These guys, they sit down and they build an engine to do really cool 3D stuff and acheive basic principles of gameplay that are standard in the industry. It's the same idea already stated here about making sequels. I can easily see some producer saying, "X game did well and IT used the Q3 engine, so why can't you?" It's financially secure, sure, but restricts development, because it's not made for X game. It's made for tons of games. That's why Quake and UT are straight up boring deathmatch/CTF games. That's why there's no depth. They're falling to the lowest common demoninator.
Let's look at the real standout games of the past while in my mind: Rez, Silent Hill 2, Contra: Shattered Soldier, Ikaruga, Zelda: Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Mario Sunshine, Eternal Darkness, Splinter Cell, Steel Batallion, Guilty Gear X2, etc. These games could not have been accomplished on someone else's engine. You can tweak an engine all you want, but in order to make a game that really fits like a glove, you've gotta build your own that's designed specifically for that game.
Now, there are exceptions to this. Sega used the Jet Set Radio graphics engine for a few of their arcade titles, but that's where similarities ended. GTA VC used the GTAIII engine, but it was also THE SAME FRIGGING GAME. The THPS engine's been passed around quite a bit, but then again, all those XTREME sports games are the SAME FRIGGING GAMES, too.
Liscensed engines stand in the way of innovation, for sure, and if you ask me, innovation is by far the most precious and important thing in video games today. Because what the world really needs is another deathmatch game. Or more crappy platformers that try like hell to look like Jak & Daxter. Or more stealth action games with retarded enemy AI.
Next thing we gotta do is convince the magazines to hire reviewers with brains in their heads. That would help, too.
Dude, it's going to be more like $150 for a package of the controller and game.
I played it at E3. That controller does a LOT. Like, the buttons light up as different things are activated and there are actually three foot petals.
And it'll be well worth the money.
Hi. I work in games retail, at a Babbage's.
My opinion, and that of my managers, does in fact matter. Why? Because they spend all day around the games and they see what sells and what doesn't.
You say the retailer has a lot of control over what sells, and I'll tell you, we really don't. We plan months ahead of time what games we're going to focus on, yes, but that's based on hype in the media and customer excitement, not dollar signs.
Ok, let me put it this way: we were all hoping Star Wars: Obi-Wan for XBox was going to be good. I mean, the system needed something other than Halo, so we reccomended it a lot, based on that premise (it's looking good, let's just hope it ends that way), and a lot of people reserved and bought it. And returned it a few days later. Maybe 5% of the original reserves kept the game. We had a couple hundred copies sitting in the back room for about a month.
However, it doesn't take a Harvard grad with a stick up his ass to sell a copy of Grand Theft Auto III or Metal Gear Solid II. They sell themselves. This isn't a grocery store, where two brands don't really make a difference.
What I'm saying is that retailers are going to focus inherently on the products they think are in demand or will sell. I don't care how much pumping up MS did for Nightcaster, it was a shitty game. I'm not going to reccomend it. I don't care that Microsoft sends us billions of demo discs and t-shirts and displays and a neon sign and interactive demo units and various free swag and a nametag that lights up. The XBox is shitty, so I personally try to dissuade people from it.
But that's my standpoint. Right now, the average gamer shouldn't buy an XBox, the PS2 is a much safer bet. Why? Well, the PS2 has the massive collection of tried and true games, like MGS2, GTAIII, and FFX. Halo can't compete with those alone. PS2 also has a lot of big titles on the way, such as FFXI, GTA:Vice, Tekken 4, and a slew of big-title adaptations to online games, such as Gran Turismo Online. What does the XBox have? Good question. Every so often, we'll sit around and figure out what games we should promote in the coming months, based on just the numbers we think we can generate with them. What's coming on XBox? Morrowind... but that's getting really mixed reviews. Buffy, which they're saying is going to be cool, but they said the same of State of Emergency and Wreckless. Um, Hunter: The Reckoning, but no one knows a thing about that game yet...
However, none of this compares to the hype that's going for the GameCube, which isn't even mentioned here and is outselling the XBox marginally. GC's got Mario Sunshine, STARFOX: Adventures, a new Zelda, and Metroid Prime on the way. Microsoft can't compete with that lineup. So we don't sell as many XBoxes. For most people $300 is a lot to throw down on a whim, and the GC (at only $200) and the PS2 are much safer buys, so we promote those.
I want to see the XBox succeed. I really do. Right now, I hate it, because the games suck. I'm sorry, but Halo is not that great. The only game I like on the system is Jet Set Radio Future. I can't reccomend the system to the average gamer, unless all they're going to play are sports games. Most sports games are released for all 3 systems, but the XBox has the best graphics. So if that's it, get an XBox.
However, if you want new, innovative, big name titles, the PS2 and GameCube are definately where it's at. The XBox just doesn't have anything big lined up to excite people. (Note that the console audience doesn't get worked up about Quake, so don't throw back the whole MS trying to get Quake IV XBox exclusive thing, most console gamers couldn't care less.)
And our store does try to sell XBox. We actually have to display the XBox more prominatly than GameCube, and they send us a hell of a lot more marketing material, like demo discs and pamphlets and shit.
And the Cube still sells better.
That doesn't fit your logic, Mr. polar_bear`.
Why leave out a user's option to customise?
/.'ers shit bricks over
Imagine this: a preferences tab
(Autoloading)
(X)Assume Flash
( )Assume HTML
(X)Automatically send resolution information
( )Send lots of personal information that
Come on. Don't assume the worst on everything. I wouldn't mind hitting a button ONCE that defaults me to Flash if I like Flash. It's like how IE autosaves passwords. It's convenience. Turn if off if you don't want it.
Of course, we can't assume that a lot of companies would allow this preference, but I'm sure some would pioneer and make a name for themselves.
-Backward Z
READ THE ARTICLE.
/. header.
/. article a while back about the Russian beer company marketing their new Windows 95 beer. It was legal because Microsoft doesn't hold a trademark over Windows 95 as it pertains to beer.
Hell, read the
NOTHING was said of copyright! It said TRADEMARK. TRADEMARKs apply to words in X field.
For example, Microsoft has a TRADEMARK on "Windows." Now, if they had a COPYRIGHT on "Windows," those things that cover the holes in my outside walls wouldn't be called windows anymore, that'd be copyright violation. However, because it's trademarked, those holes can continue to be called Windows, however, other software can't be.
Do a search on the
Because it's a business.
Chess isn't a business. You can't make millions of dollars making new chessboards.
Unless you make million-dollar chessboards.
Chess doesn't rely on technology. Video games do.
Get off the high horse, old man.
I would agree with that, however, a point that a LOT of people miss is that realism doesn't make good games.
The reason people are losing interest in turn based games is because of the pauses and how long they take to play. A couple years ago, you couldn't tear me away from Alpha Centauri. In December, when I got Call to Power II, it only served to entertain me for part of an airplane trip. As times and technology have changed, so have interests. I mean, who the hell wants to pay for and play a Street Fighter clone anymore (not counting downloading free emulators)?
Right now, internet gaming's all the rage. Everyone's trying to "push the envelope" by seeing how many people they can cram into one game while keeping it interesting. Turn based strategy simply doesn't make room for this. I tried playing Alpha Centauri in multiplayer with simultaneous turns, but it only ended in frustration. Turn based games simply do not and cannot by design contribute well to TCP/IP gaming. RTS's can.
Why was StarCraft a success? Battle.net. The single player was kinda boring after a while, but I got a good year off and on of playing on Battle.net. Alpha Centauri lased maybe two months.
I'll shut up now.
What a lame interview... We don't need the president of Nintendo to tell us what we've all been expecting for months...