Actually there is already a game which melds FPS gaming with RTS gaming and its mainstream (doesn't seem to be TOO successful though). Its called Savage : Battle for Newerth. There are two sides each with different weapons and abilities and both sides gets a human player as the commander. Quite better than Natural Selection since its run by a full fledged company rather than a small group of unpaid modders.
I wonder if the guy will eventually catch up with all the systems (or at least the ones hes interested in making) and branch off into different areas. Plushie game characters, plushie game controllers, or maybe plushie ass cushions for gaming.
'Do you even have the slightest clue what you're talking about? '
Actually, yes I do.
If the number of people interested in PC games is so much smaller than people playing console games, then why the hell are there companies being built solely for the purpose of building gaming machines? Maybe they're just catering a niche market, fine. I can accept that as an economist. But Dell? Dell is arguably one of the biggest computer manufacturers on the market for now, and if gaming machines are a niche market then Dell must be making a huge mistake. Now either Dell is deciding to burn some money or Dell thinks PC gaming is a market that can be tapped into. I don't have all the info, but unless you'd like to convince me otherwise I'm gonna have to believe that Dell is making its way to milking a new cashcow.
I've actually asked people and a friend of mine who works at EBGames about consoles. No one wants to fucking deal with the network adaptor. I've asked little 14 year olds, I've asked a 70+ year old man once, I've even asked a couple parents on the topic. They spend twenty minutes getting a lecture on how the adaptor works, do they need to subscribe to something, do they have to download something, is it effecient, is it stable, do they need to buy anything else, is it fun, etc. Every Joe Average knows Nintendo games tend to cater to the younger group of gamers. To say they don't associate the Gamecube as "kiddie" is like saying people don't associate anime with "Japanese." As for the Xbox; MechAssault (boring storyline), Rainbow Six : 3 (played the single player on the PC), Madden 2004 (hard to get people together to play a full game), Unreal Championship (I'd rather play Halo online).
Unless you'd like to show me the financial reports based on the sales of console games, I'd take any reports on the console market being profitable with a grain of salt. The console market is already being smashed left and right by parent groups and the government as it is. The NEED to make their sales sound good or they could lose all support from their investors. If I told you Slashdot was at risk of being shut down for some kind of government law breaking, followed by CowboyNeil's resignation, would you invest money in Slashdot's future? Course not. Its not safe, and unstable; you'd just be wasting money.
Deus Ex 1 was arguably one of the most acclaimed games of that year. When a game as big as that gets a sequel, theres GOING to be SOME kind of mass bitching either before, during, or after the game release.
Before : Any big MMORPG game; complaints about it being too big, too high system requirements, bad customer service, not being able to install it correctly, etc.
During : Too many recent games; huge bugs in the game that "some how" managed to get past beta testing and results in a new patch being released less than week after the game hits shelves.
After : Virtually any game that doesn't have kickass multiplayer action that keeps people coming back for more; GTA3/VC which people complained about getting boring just crashing and messing around with cars, Morrowind being too big and not interactive enough, and Halo because its system requirements made it difficult to get into a good non-laggy server.
'Do we really need 16-year old cashiers getting fined for making a mistake or failing to subtract correctly to determine an age from a birthdate?'
Failing to subtract currectly? Forget that, just think of the hell some kid will raise in the store if the cashier won't sell him the game. Video game stores aren't exactly protected too well for anyone who wants to do some damage. Those hundreds of video game box displays? Takes about 2 hours for one person to set up a 4 column high, 10 feet long shelf. Security? A few cameras, at best a security guard patrolling the area. Cashiers who are old/strong enough to handle an unruly customer? The average age of a video game store cashier is around 25.
How about we give some power to those who are at the bottomline actually selling the games rather than giving it to the already powerful people, the parents? When all is said and done, cashiers will end up having to kneel before the all mighty dollars given to them by the consumers.
I think its agreed upon that games need to get more publicity and/or more advertisement. Theres been a grand total of what? 30 different games out of a couple hundred advertised on television over the past year in the U.S. (course Japan dwarfs this number). Besides from those 30 games, how many of them were even PC games? Other than Counter-Strike and Rainbow Six-3 for the Xbox/PC (which ends up not counting) about 29 out of 30 of those games are for the Xbox and thats because Microsoft is on a marketing blitz.
So what is the Joe Average gamer left with? Either:
The Gamecube which every PS2 and Xbox owner bitches about calling it a "kiddie console" even though the original Nintendo is probably older than some of those commenters. The PS2 which every 13 year old and his dog owns while claiming its the most difficult thing to figure out next to figuring out where the bread goes after toast comes out of the toaster. And the Xbox which every bitches about just because its by Microsoft. That and its current lack of selection unless you have Xbox Live (face it, a good number of Xbox games have little replay value without Xbox Live).
I think it'd be amusing to have a hidden game blantently hidden behind a crowd of teenage kids which you have to get through by playing another mini-game.
The new Wolfenstein is made using the Quake III engine...
Saying that id software usually doesn't innovate the gameplay area is like saying the Ford Motor company doesn't usually innovate the assembly line everytime they build a new factory. Theres a reason why innovation sometimes comes far and between.
Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat were both started by independent modders. Valve bought them recently to milk them.
Natural Selection is also in the independent stages right now, but considering how much acclaim/complaints its getting, it could be the next mod Valve buys.
Now you went and raised the bar even higher. The next "unkillable" monster will probably have 100 trillion hit points and have a one-hit kill attack...
Course this will probably mean 'we need 2000 people for this one guys' for some MMO gamers..
I'm finding it hard to imagine what modders would try to make out of the game as it is.
Best case scenario : A modder creates some kind of paratrooping features/maps/missions thats so badass that the U.S. government reinstates the draft just to hire him.
Worst case scenario : Some jackass retard fanatic makes a mod using the U.S. Army models and skins along side maps/missions where the objective is to kill the President/blow up a school/kill unarmed children, with the opposing side appearing to be civilians who are simply defending themselves.
As much as I hate to say it, the fact that there are mods and skins/models where you can kill President Bush is pretty morbid without the fact that those same players go around spewing crap outta their mouth online.
I think this game helps show that games should let players play on the losing side more often. We've all played as the super hero space marine that takes on the forces of hell single-handedly (Doom), we've played the anti-social kid turned hero (FF8), and we've all played some faceless, mysterous, nameless, gender undefined, jack-of-all-trades, appeared out of nowhere person who ends up saying the world (text based games, Ultima, and countless others).
What I'd like to see is a game where you're a U.S. soldier during the early stages of the WWII Battle of the Bulge and you're actually running away from tank divisions rather than cutting through hundreds of mindless, deaf guards. I wanna play as a German soldier during WWII trying to get to the western front to avoid being captured by the Russians. I think games like this would be a nice change of pace from the standard "one-man army" type of games we've been seeing for a while (yes Call of Duty featured a large number of allies to help you but you ended up doing most of the work anyway.)
I don't think computer security is the first problem when it comes to this type of computer issue. I think the first problem is getting people to trust computers themselves. Lets look at -some- of the computer stereotypes...
From The Matrix we got : in the future, one way or another humans will all be connected to computers with no free will of their own. They will exist, at least outside of the Matrix, to simply fuel the computers. End result : Computer > Human The movie Terminator. SkyNet. Nuff said. From the early stages of computers and certainly of the internet : The government has always been in the lead when it comes to computer hardware and software. If they're the ones who developed it, its like the Windows->Microsoft->Hate system people have.
'Try entering a high-profile competition in QuakeWorld, StarCraft or Quake 3 without having YEARS of experience in first-person shooters. You'll be running back to your mamma within minutes.'
Considering gaming has only really hit the mass market in the past 10 years and most high ranking clans/squads/players are in their 20's and 30's, age doesn't seem to be much of a matter. I know people who've been playing gaming longer than I've lived and I can still beat them in Starcraft, Quake 3, and the occasional game of Chess. If experience isTHAT much of an importance in gaming as a sport, then why the hell do players seem to average the age of 25 and then quit in their late 30's?
Americans tend to prefer FPS/action based games. (See : Half-Life/CounterStrike, Doom, and Max Payne 1/2) Japanese players tend to like heavy storyline based games. (See : Entire FF series 4 and up, Dragon Quest/Warrior series, and Zenosaga)
Americans generally "go it alone" when it comes to games with or without teamplay. (See : A random public server of CounterStrike and Metroid Prime) Japanese/Asian players tend to like heavy teamplay when applicable. (See : Lineage 1/2 and FFXI)
Until both sides are able to create a game that can successfully balance the differences in gaming preferance, both Japanese and American games/systems will always find a lack of preferance in the other's country. I think Square (not Square-Enix) tried to do this with Final Fantasy The Spirits Within but screwed up in the process. Why? Love based main characters (American favorite) , an "evil" leader (that military guy, both Japanese and American) , and the overly wrapped storyline and explanation (Japanese style). Either way you look at it, there has been almost no game that satisfies both cultures' style of gameplay. I think Square got lucky with FF7 and thats why people have been bitching about the series doing badly since then.
'A direct comparison between the two isn't fair...'
Well in that case, comparing the number of subscribers Everquest has to FFXI isn't fair either. FFXI has a consumer market of both Japan and the USA, while Everquest is largely in the USA only. Not only that, FFXI has the PS2 Japanese consumer base as well. To top it all off, Everquest is/was not a big hit name that would get 10,000 subscribers instantly even if it was a text-only game.
'So that means the $179 paperweight near your TV is good for what, exactly?'
Yeah really! What were people thinking when they bought a PS2 when it first came out?! They went and frikin bought PS1 games to play on their PS2 for like 6 months!! What absolute n00bs!!! They shoulda bought Dreamcasts!!!!!
Try the game out in another country before releasing it in the U.S.
I mean, comon the game was out for over a year and got an expansion pack for crying out loud. By testing the game out in an area where they would almost be guaranteed consumer feedback (Final Fantasy name + Japan = fanboyism) they can fix and tweak the game around with relatively few losses. Its a simple marketing technique :
Try a product out on the largest possible group of people and gather feedback on the product over along people of time before releasing it to the public. The only reason this doesn't happen too often (ever) is that businesses don't have the money to fund this sort of work and because Square-Enix has legions of fanboys who would PAY to participate in this. (Its like paying to be a beta test. If you could be in the beta test of Half-Life 2/Doom 3 by paying $5 a month, would you do it?)
'"has axed a few trusted control mechanics like the hop."'
Lemme get this straight.. out of ALL the things in the game that could be complained about, IGN goes and complains about the removal of the HOP?! Wtf? What are they going to give Half-Life 2 a bad rating if the crowbar is not in the game? Will they shun the Metal Gear series if they don't use boxes anymore? Jeez, talk about nitpicking.
The report blaims a lot on companies for not willing to take risks and governments for forcing open source work on people. This leads to only one answer. These people don't know economics.
1. There is no safety net when it comes to open source. With closed source products, you can sue someone for cold hard cash if they try to steal your work in any way shape or form. 2. Comparies are in the business to make money, not to be "different" and program only for Linux since its not an open source OS. 3. (Some) Governments are in place to help stimulate economic growth. If open source products become more widespread, it'll be cheaper for the consumer and it will help lower the costs for the courts since they're already fighting a neverending war from spam to P2P to Microsoft's monopolistic empire.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually there is already a game which melds FPS gaming with RTS gaming and its mainstream (doesn't seem to be TOO successful though). Its called Savage : Battle for Newerth. There are two sides each with different weapons and abilities and both sides gets a human player as the commander. Quite better than Natural Selection since its run by a full fledged company rather than a small group of unpaid modders.
Space Balls Arcade? Bend River Mall? What next? Planet-of-the-Apes Hollywood?
I wonder if the guy will eventually catch up with all the systems (or at least the ones hes interested in making) and branch off into different areas. Plushie game characters, plushie game controllers, or maybe plushie ass cushions for gaming.
Actually, yes I do.
If the number of people interested in PC games is so much smaller than people playing console games, then why the hell are there companies being built solely for the purpose of building gaming machines? Maybe they're just catering a niche market, fine. I can accept that as an economist. But Dell? Dell is arguably one of the biggest computer manufacturers on the market for now, and if gaming machines are a niche market then Dell must be making a huge mistake. Now either Dell is deciding to burn some money or Dell thinks PC gaming is a market that can be tapped into. I don't have all the info, but unless you'd like to convince me otherwise I'm gonna have to believe that Dell is making its way to milking a new cashcow.
I've actually asked people and a friend of mine who works at EBGames about consoles. No one wants to fucking deal with the network adaptor. I've asked little 14 year olds, I've asked a 70+ year old man once, I've even asked a couple parents on the topic. They spend twenty minutes getting a lecture on how the adaptor works, do they need to subscribe to something, do they have to download something, is it effecient, is it stable, do they need to buy anything else, is it fun, etc. Every Joe Average knows Nintendo games tend to cater to the younger group of gamers. To say they don't associate the Gamecube as "kiddie" is like saying people don't associate anime with "Japanese." As for the Xbox; MechAssault (boring storyline), Rainbow Six : 3 (played the single player on the PC), Madden 2004 (hard to get people together to play a full game), Unreal Championship (I'd rather play Halo online).
Unless you'd like to show me the financial reports based on the sales of console games, I'd take any reports on the console market being profitable with a grain of salt. The console market is already being smashed left and right by parent groups and the government as it is. The NEED to make their sales sound good or they could lose all support from their investors. If I told you Slashdot was at risk of being shut down for some kind of government law breaking, followed by CowboyNeil's resignation, would you invest money in Slashdot's future? Course not. Its not safe, and unstable; you'd just be wasting money.
Before : Any big MMORPG game; complaints about it being too big, too high system requirements, bad customer service, not being able to install it correctly, etc.
During : Too many recent games; huge bugs in the game that "some how" managed to get past beta testing and results in a new patch being released less than week after the game hits shelves.
After : Virtually any game that doesn't have kickass multiplayer action that keeps people coming back for more; GTA3/VC which people complained about getting boring just crashing and messing around with cars, Morrowind being too big and not interactive enough, and Halo because its system requirements made it difficult to get into a good non-laggy server.
Failing to subtract currectly? Forget that, just think of the hell some kid will raise in the store if the cashier won't sell him the game. Video game stores aren't exactly protected too well for anyone who wants to do some damage. Those hundreds of video game box displays? Takes about 2 hours for one person to set up a 4 column high, 10 feet long shelf. Security? A few cameras, at best a security guard patrolling the area. Cashiers who are old/strong enough to handle an unruly customer? The average age of a video game store cashier is around 25.
How about we give some power to those who are at the bottomline actually selling the games rather than giving it to the already powerful people, the parents? When all is said and done, cashiers will end up having to kneel before the all mighty dollars given to them by the consumers.
So what is the Joe Average gamer left with? Either :
The Gamecube which every PS2 and Xbox owner bitches about calling it a "kiddie console" even though the original Nintendo is probably older than some of those commenters.
The PS2 which every 13 year old and his dog owns while claiming its the most difficult thing to figure out next to figuring out where the bread goes after toast comes out of the toaster.
And the Xbox which every bitches about just because its by Microsoft. That and its current lack of selection unless you have Xbox Live (face it, a good number of Xbox games have little replay value without Xbox Live).
I think it'd be amusing to have a hidden game blantently hidden behind a crowd of teenage kids which you have to get through by playing another mini-game.
'One time, I shocked 14 people before being kicked off!'
Saying that id software usually doesn't innovate the gameplay area is like saying the Ford Motor company doesn't usually innovate the assembly line everytime they build a new factory. Theres a reason why innovation sometimes comes far and between.
Natural Selection is also in the independent stages right now, but considering how much acclaim/complaints its getting, it could be the next mod Valve buys.
Course this will probably mean 'we need 2000 people for this one guys' for some MMO gamers..
Best case scenario : A modder creates some kind of paratrooping features/maps/missions thats so badass that the U.S. government reinstates the draft just to hire him.
Worst case scenario : Some jackass retard fanatic makes a mod using the U.S. Army models and skins along side maps/missions where the objective is to kill the President/blow up a school/kill unarmed children, with the opposing side appearing to be civilians who are simply defending themselves.
As much as I hate to say it, the fact that there are mods and skins/models where you can kill President Bush is pretty morbid without the fact that those same players go around spewing crap outta their mouth online.
Because of shovelware (both ways) and warez (the countless copies of Doom floating around the net).
What I'd like to see is a game where you're a U.S. soldier during the early stages of the WWII Battle of the Bulge and you're actually running away from tank divisions rather than cutting through hundreds of mindless, deaf guards. I wanna play as a German soldier during WWII trying to get to the western front to avoid being captured by the Russians. I think games like this would be a nice change of pace from the standard "one-man army" type of games we've been seeing for a while (yes Call of Duty featured a large number of allies to help you but you ended up doing most of the work anyway.)
From The Matrix we got : in the future, one way or another humans will all be connected to computers with no free will of their own. They will exist, at least outside of the Matrix, to simply fuel the computers. End result : Computer > Human
The movie Terminator. SkyNet. Nuff said.
From the early stages of computers and certainly of the internet : The government has always been in the lead when it comes to computer hardware and software. If they're the ones who developed it, its like the Windows->Microsoft->Hate system people have.
Considering gaming has only really hit the mass market in the past 10 years and most high ranking clans/squads/players are in their 20's and 30's, age doesn't seem to be much of a matter. I know people who've been playing gaming longer than I've lived and I can still beat them in Starcraft, Quake 3, and the occasional game of Chess. If experience isTHAT much of an importance in gaming as a sport, then why the hell do players seem to average the age of 25 and then quit in their late 30's?
Transformers anyone?
Japanese players tend to like heavy storyline based games. (See : Entire FF series 4 and up, Dragon Quest/Warrior series, and Zenosaga)
Americans generally "go it alone" when it comes to games with or without teamplay. (See : A random public server of CounterStrike and Metroid Prime)
Japanese/Asian players tend to like heavy teamplay when applicable. (See : Lineage 1/2 and FFXI)
Until both sides are able to create a game that can successfully balance the differences in gaming preferance, both Japanese and American games/systems will always find a lack of preferance in the other's country. I think Square (not Square-Enix) tried to do this with Final Fantasy The Spirits Within but screwed up in the process. Why? Love based main characters (American favorite) , an "evil" leader (that military guy, both Japanese and American) , and the overly wrapped storyline and explanation (Japanese style). Either way you look at it, there has been almost no game that satisfies both cultures' style of gameplay. I think Square got lucky with FF7 and thats why people have been bitching about the series doing badly since then.
Well in that case, comparing the number of subscribers Everquest has to FFXI isn't fair either. FFXI has a consumer market of both Japan and the USA, while Everquest is largely in the USA only. Not only that, FFXI has the PS2 Japanese consumer base as well. To top it all off, Everquest is/was not a big hit name that would get 10,000 subscribers instantly even if it was a text-only game.
Yeah really! What were people thinking when they bought a PS2 when it first came out?! They went and frikin bought PS1 games to play on their PS2 for like 6 months!! What absolute n00bs!!! They shoulda bought Dreamcasts!!!!!
Oh, we're talking about the Xbox?
I mean, comon the game was out for over a year and got an expansion pack for crying out loud. By testing the game out in an area where they would almost be guaranteed consumer feedback (Final Fantasy name + Japan = fanboyism) they can fix and tweak the game around with relatively few losses. Its a simple marketing technique :
Try a product out on the largest possible group of people and gather feedback on the product over along people of time before releasing it to the public. The only reason this doesn't happen too often (ever) is that businesses don't have the money to fund this sort of work and because Square-Enix has legions of fanboys who would PAY to participate in this. (Its like paying to be a beta test. If you could be in the beta test of Half-Life 2/Doom 3 by paying $5 a month, would you do it?)
Lemme get this straight.. out of ALL the things in the game that could be complained about, IGN goes and complains about the removal of the HOP?! Wtf? What are they going to give Half-Life 2 a bad rating if the crowbar is not in the game? Will they shun the Metal Gear series if they don't use boxes anymore? Jeez, talk about nitpicking.
1. There is no safety net when it comes to open source. With closed source products, you can sue someone for cold hard cash if they try to steal your work in any way shape or form.
2. Comparies are in the business to make money, not to be "different" and program only for Linux since its not an open source OS.
3. (Some) Governments are in place to help stimulate economic growth. If open source products become more widespread, it'll be cheaper for the consumer and it will help lower the costs for the courts since they're already fighting a neverending war from spam to P2P to Microsoft's monopolistic empire.
So... thats what for the USA? Spring 2005 shortly before the announcement of FFXII-2?