I noticed that one group of people was not represented among the top 50 at all - people connected to video gaming. Don't tell me that companies like Sony are less important for the future of technology as virus writers or even 15-minutes of fame people like Dimitri Sklarov.
...but I personally have three reasons why I prefer western games over Japanese ones:
1. Complexity. I find Japanese games to be very simplistic and repetitive. If I want to lean back and watch what's happening on the screen I rent a video. If I want to control what's happening on the screen, I play western games.
2. Game style. I prefer either low-action games or full-action, not the combinations with all those minigames that Japanese titles are known for.
3. Graphics. While graphics don't play a major role in my decision-making, I still prefer to control a character that doesn't wield a 8-foot sword and has eyes larger than his hands.
I'm getting sick of all these top-down view RPGs. There's way too many of them - Baldur's Gate with all its expansions, Icewind Dale, Temple of Elemental Evil, Diablo, Harbinger, Pool of Radiance and many others. On the other hand, those of us who prefer first-person roleplaying are limited to Morrowind and older titles like Wizardry and Might and Magic, and the promise of Devil's Whiskey. And now Fargo is taking yet another classic first-person RPG series and putting it into a 3rd person view, for the sake of console players. I'm not planing on buying this title.
I wish it was so simple. However, recently I noticed an increase in games that don't work, even though the demos work fine. In most cases, this is being caused by the excessive copy protection included in the game. Here's my two most recent examples:
Temple of Elemental Evil (Troika Studios/Infogrames). Infogrames is notorios for its copy protection (using SecuROM), which prevented plenty of players to enjoy games like Neverwinter Nights. ToEE doesn't fare much better; if I didn't have two computers, I wouldn't be able to play it as the CD doesn't like my CD-RW drive.
Homeworld 2 (Sierra). Upon contacting Sierra tech support, I was told that it was my responsibility to get a compatible CD drive. All the hardware requirements on the box mention is a 16x CD-ROM, and not even the readme file mentions any other CD-ROM requirements. So how am I supposed to know whether my CD-ROM is compatible without opening the box and trying to install the game?
I have pretty much stopped buying new games, limiting myself to independent titles downloadable from the Internet and the occassional adventure from The Adventure Comnpany. As such, I can talk only about these two recent examples. However, there are many more instances when a game doesn't run at the stated hardware requirements. That is something one can find out only by opening the box and installing the game. In such a case, your solution would simply lock gamers into an endless cycle where they are unable to return a game that doesn't work.
It's all about the cost for convenience. If I see a $13 CD were I'm reasonably sure I'll like most of the songs (such as the latest Sting album), it's easier for me to buy it than to hunt down all the songs and burn them on a CD. Of course, the price in that case is close to $1 per song; something the article is proposing.
On the other hand, if I like only one song, I'll download and burn it instead of buying the CD for $13. However, as the price drops, it will be more convenient for me to buy the CD instead of downloading the song. At $10, I'm willing to experiment with musicians I don't know. At $5 (in used CD stores), I'm willing to buy a CD where I like a single song.
As a low-key worker, I value my time at $20/hour. By my estimates, it takes 15 minutes or more for me to crank up Kazaa, find a song, download it, test to see whether it's of acceptable quality and burn it onto a CD. Thus, $5 is the break-even rate for me. For $3 per CD, I'd buy all that's available.
(I just spent roughly $4 of my time writing this response.)
I'm sorry, but it's not me who played it at such low settings. I got this information from a friend of mine in a discussion about the demo. (I'm sure you get lots of feedback on the game, and the link I posted offers precious little in the terms of technicalities and is more about gameplay issues, but be aware if you check it out that these guys are not fanboys of the new game, and they don't expect the development team to read it, so it may be a little less biased than the feedback you receive.)
Actually, I'm still playing the original BG games, so I know very well how the graphics look like;). Still, I'm one of the weird people who'd gladly sacrifice graphics for low hardware requirements and faster loading times. I must admit I was impressed with the graphics, especially the progression of time (the changing shadows on trees outside was a nice touch), but being able to put it on a floppy or two and take it to my home computer would make me much happier.
(And for your information: as far as I know, the game is playable at 233MHz/64MB RAM, with some difficulty.)
I played the demo for two days and I liked very much what I saw. There were some minor balancing issues (the demo is much easier than the Bard's Tale games), but I guess that's because it's only a demo.
What I really don't understand is why a game that tries to be a sequel to Bard's Tale (a game that ran on my 386-33) requires a Pentium III and 256MB of RAM?
This move just shows what a low self-esteem SoE has. They are aware that the forums are full of complaints, yet instead of dealing with these complaints they decide to hide them from people who consider buying the game. With this move, SOE simply admits that SW:G is being sold on the basis of positive propaganda, not the qualities of the game.
As a game reviewer, I always check message boards dealing with a game I'm reviewing, mainly for reports on technical difficulties. So far I've been lucky, and most of the games I've played were very stable. However, sometimes (most recently with Republic: The Revolution), there is a widespread technical problem that's significant enough for me to take notice and mention it in my review. Over the course of my reviewing career I've nocised some interesting patterns:
1. The smaller the company the more positive the board. While this is not always the case, very often games from small publishers receive more praise. In addition, the developers tend to follow these boards more closely and are ready to answer any question or solve problems. Especially the Dramcatcher/Adventure Company and JoWooD boards are great examples of how game forums can have positive spin. In fact, as long as the developers sound helpful, I tend to buy games with known technical problems, because I'm confident that I'll be helped.
2. Scam and deception works, too. Remember Command & Conquer: Renegade? It was not a perfect game. In fact, it was piss-poor, deserving a fraction of sales it ultimatelly achieved. The reason for such high sales was that EA was censoring out all posts that mentioned technical and gameplay problems. Those who recognized this practice were booted off the forums, and those who came to check other players' reactions found only positive posts. SW:G falls into this category. While not as deceptive as EA, SOE is still trying to create the impression that the game is better than it really is. Most likely, the strategy will work.
I keep my passwords on small post-its, stuck to the edges of the monitor. Even though I must admit that recently I had to upgrade to a larger monitor because I ran out of space...
I'd like to point out that according a recent UBS Warburg investment report, Nintendo is expected to slash GameCube prices to $99 as of October 1, and Microsoft is expected to came with a new two-game bundle with its X-Box for $179 by mid-September. Sony is not expected to lower the prices for PS 2, and UBS is sceptical whether they'll make their year-end sales numbers.
If they want to keep their demo exclusive to a site, more power to them; they'll need it. As long as it's not one of the sites I download my demos from, I'll ignore their demo, and won't get the chance to try the game. Without trying it, I won't buy it. If everybody did the same, companies like Activision would pay sites to host their demos.
Yup, I have a nice, shrink-wrapped WinXP CD. I also have another nice CD with the drivers. The only time I installed an OS was when I downgraded to Win98, and completelly messed up with the drivers, and had graphics problems until I called someone who knows more about computers, who told me that I didn't install them in proper order. Since then, I prefer paying those who know more about PCs, while I stick to what I do best. Keeps my PC running, and the economy going;)
It's pretty much a matter of what I expect from a computer. For me, it's still just a tool, serving the sole purpose of gathering information (the Internet) and processing it (office programs). As such, I don't really want a new operating system. However, I don't really have the choice: every new computer I buy comes with the newest operating system, which I don't need, but which I accept as long as the OS looks and feels like the one I'm used to. If that's not the case, I've got this nifty Win98 CD with a couple of icons, one of which says "format and install", and which takes care of the rest.
Basically, what I'm complaining about is the fact that for me, a PC is about as important as a screw driver. If the manufacturers can keep the screw driver looking and handling the same all the time, why do I have to get accustomed to a new interface on my PC just because the manufacturer is unable to sell me a product that lasts more than five years?
I just pointed out what I already did, some months ago. I'm thankful for the advice I've been given, and I'd use it had I still WinXP installed. However, being back on Win98 as we speak, I see no reason to spend more money for someone coming and installing WinXP back on my machine.
That may be so, but I'm not one of the "technically competent Windows users". I'm just the average Joe who does everything the only way he knows how to do (after reading the manual, which, arguably, is grossly defficient in Microsoft's case). The article writes about attracting people like us to Linux, and the only way to do so is to give us a CD, which installs a Linux distribution so that I don't have to lift a finger to see a relatively familiar GUI.
And this is exactly why I got rid of WinXP within days and installed Win98 back on my system. I was willing to sacrifice additional stability for a more user-friendly interface (by "user-friendly" I mean an interface I am already used to). Now if by default Linux came with something similar, I may consider switching.
Does this mean it's still close to the original? If so, is the new name enough to keep Blizzard at bay?
I'm no legal expert, but I think Blizzard doesn't have a case here. Defining what's "too close to original" is very hard, and can easily backfire. For example, if I compare Diablo to Gauntlet (or Rogue for that matter), I see the same game only with different graphics. So as long as the new projects keep to their own graphics, they should be as safe as Blizzard was when it decided to release Diablo.
However, that doesn't mean that Blizzard doesn't try to sue them, and you know how such lawsuits go: the big guy sues the small guy who doesn't have the money for a defense, and even though the small guy is wully within his rights, he rather settles.
Unfortunatelly, the article that compares the crarcity of diamonds and new music uses a very flawed argumentation.
The author claims that P2P hels to reduce the scarcity of new music. That is not true, though. It may help to improve the availability of existing music (as in "this CD is sold out; let's download it", which is a quite unlikely scenario), but the vast majority of P2P users still download the music that's published by the Big 5. Thus, new music is no less scarce, it's only more readily available. Only if P2P signifficanly improved the current music catalogue (plenty of new high-quality artists), he'd have a point.
That's an excellent idea! I'm not familiar with NWN (mainly because I'm not fond of 3rd person RPGs), but I'm an avid Morrowind player. Even now, after 15 months of having the game, I keep playing new adventures, coutresy of the role-playing community. In fact, with the exception of the two Morrowind expansions and Arx Fatalis I didn't play any RPG since June of 2002, and I don't need to. In a sense, Morrowind is more a community-based game than the current MMORPGs can ever be (especially if you consider a new island where every mod maker can build his own house). You are right - those games may be very well on the forefront of a new evolutionary step. That said, however, there's one problem: once sold, they don't bring any additional revenue for the publishers, and this may very well be the main reason why they'll get ignored in the future.
...on how you define the main purpose of a MMORPG. Lately, I have found that many prople think that playing MMORPG is work. They labor hard to get to a certain point - either reputation-wise, or to get to a certain level, kill the key monster or complete a key quest.
However, I argue that the main purpose of those games is still to have fun. Back in the days of MUDs, we were really roleplaying. I really was Ishap, the bastard son of a knight and on my way to become an evil paladin (my orcish half didn't allow me otherwise). However, those were times when only the truly dedicated people played on-line roleplaying games. Now you have all those casual gamers who are more interested talking about the Palestinian conflict or the newest comic hero hitting the big screen than playing the game, and most MMORPGs became glorified chat rooms.
I personally feel that there is no way to rescue MMORPGs. They will never become engaging enough for people to keep playing. Hardcore gamers will still use MUDs for their out-of-this-world experience, and the rest will keep chatting in Everquest and other games. Game designers may make these games more engrossing by creating a linear storyline on a mass scale. Sony had the chance to do so with Star Wars Galaxies - they could've written a script for the next three real-time years of the game, which would include plenty of hard-coded events that would push the gamer forward. For example, an attack on a planet would send all gamers from there to other planets, as refugees, forcing them to start from scratch (but with more experience already, making it easier to work themselves up in the new society). Or a rising status of a planet (new spaceport, for example) would increase job opportunities, tourism, etc. Players could vote to join the Republic or the Trade Federation or choose a despotic planet where the game designers would choose for them. To make a long story short, players would keep being entertained if there was a dynamic world. Instead, all you get are very static worlds, where all the players can do is to join the queue to kill another monster or clean 100 bowls to achieve a higher level as a potential cook.
First, let me confess that I broke all the rules and read the article in its entirety. (And whoever mods this as funny just proves that they are real Slashdotters; not even reading replies.
The article is right in many points, but there are a few I'd like to criticize:
1. "When we review, we review games as product. As a channel for discussion, we've become a weird mix of free PR and advertising, and the latest issue of consumer reports. Videogames are objects. The people behind them are their manufacturers, both in a literal and a figurative sense.
Our major challenge is to make the leap from understanding videogames as things to viewing them as ideas."
Sorry, guys, but games ceased to be ideas in the mid 1990s, when managers took over game design. Right now, the question is not anymore "How do I make a great game?", but more like "What game features would appeal to the largest audience?" Games you see today are the distillation of market research, and not an inventive mind that comes with a new idea. Thus, game journalists are fully justified to view games as consumer products and not as unique works of art.
2. "You lazily separate your reviews into huge sections with bold, generic headings."
I must confess I'm one of the people who do so. And you know why? Because I'm writing in order to help people make up the minds whether to buy a game or not, and not to receive a Nobel Prize for literature. The average reader knows which feature is crucial to him, and can jump very fast to the proper section. In addition, this consistency allows the reader to compare games. Reviews that are very funny, insightful or artistic may be interesting to read, but they'll never tell the reader whether to buy the game or not.
3. "You can write a thousand-word feature without saying anything original or unique."
I'm writing between 2000 and 2500 words reviews, without saying anything original or unique. And guess what: the number of thank-you letters from both satisfied customers and occassionally the game designers (it's not often that I praise a game, after all) far outweigh the number of flames I'm getting. In fact, I have yet to get an e-mail where someone complains that part of my review was not understandable or that I forgot to mention a key feature. Once again, it's about consistency and the ability to articulate the key facts to the reader.
Just take a look at the long article. I must admit that it has some artistic value. In fact, at several points, it played with my emotions; a sign that the article is really well wrtitten. There is only one problem: 99% of readers will never finish it, and even those who do will never fully understand it unless they are game joyrnalists and take notes along with reading. Sorry, but I don't want to end up writing for scientific journals dealing with games. I want to write reviews that are understandable to people who read them while eating their BigMac. I just don't feel arrogant enough to think that unless you have a PhD you don't deserve to read my reviews.
I'd like to point out that the moment the deal was anounced, I sent an e-mail to the UBI Soft customer support, asking for help with Might and Magic VI (the two locked doors issue) and Might and Magic IX (which had so many bugs that 3DO abandoned their support). If you are right, I should expect a resolution of these problems in short time;)
The average game by 3DO sold 40,000 units worldwide (source: an investment report by Wedbush Morgan Securities). Let's be generous and say that the Heroes of Might and Magic game sold 50,000 units. Let's be generous again and say that 3DO got $20 per game in revenues. As a consequence, the Heroes game brought revenue of $1 million.
According to the report I mentioned and a couple of other reports, the break-even point (a point where 3DO would not show any losses) is $85 million. As a consequence, they'd either have to sell 85 such games or jack up the sales of their exising titles. At $50 million in 2002, however, their costs were almost twice as high. So we can safely assume that developing an average game costs 3DO around $2 million.
UBI Soft paid $1.3 million for something that generates $1 million in sales and $1 million in net losses per game (not counting expansions). Considering UBI's public relations department, they probably expect to loose most of their fan base, which was the driving force behind the sales. As a result, them buying the Might and Magic franchise actually sounds like a really bad deal. I'm not surprised 3DO has gotten so little for its assets; in fact, I expected less.
If last year's game was Golden Axe meets Lord of the Rings, then this year's game is Gauntlet meets Lord of the Rings.
If I want Golden Axe, I play Golden Axe. If I want Gauntlet, I play Gauntlet. In neither case I feel like I need to spend an additional $50 only to play a game I already have, with the LotR logo on the box. What happened to originality? How about at least pretending that the games are unique?
Slashdot Mirror
I noticed that one group of people was not represented among the top 50 at all - people connected to video gaming. Don't tell me that companies like Sony are less important for the future of technology as virus writers or even 15-minutes of fame people like Dimitri Sklarov.
1. Complexity. I find Japanese games to be very simplistic and repetitive. If I want to lean back and watch what's happening on the screen I rent a video. If I want to control what's happening on the screen, I play western games.
2. Game style. I prefer either low-action games or full-action, not the combinations with all those minigames that Japanese titles are known for.
3. Graphics. While graphics don't play a major role in my decision-making, I still prefer to control a character that doesn't wield a 8-foot sword and has eyes larger than his hands.
I'm getting sick of all these top-down view RPGs. There's way too many of them - Baldur's Gate with all its expansions, Icewind Dale, Temple of Elemental Evil, Diablo, Harbinger, Pool of Radiance and many others. On the other hand, those of us who prefer first-person roleplaying are limited to Morrowind and older titles like Wizardry and Might and Magic, and the promise of Devil's Whiskey. And now Fargo is taking yet another classic first-person RPG series and putting it into a 3rd person view, for the sake of console players. I'm not planing on buying this title.
Temple of Elemental Evil (Troika Studios/Infogrames). Infogrames is notorios for its copy protection (using SecuROM), which prevented plenty of players to enjoy games like Neverwinter Nights. ToEE doesn't fare much better; if I didn't have two computers, I wouldn't be able to play it as the CD doesn't like my CD-RW drive.
Homeworld 2 (Sierra). Upon contacting Sierra tech support, I was told that it was my responsibility to get a compatible CD drive. All the hardware requirements on the box mention is a 16x CD-ROM, and not even the readme file mentions any other CD-ROM requirements. So how am I supposed to know whether my CD-ROM is compatible without opening the box and trying to install the game?
I have pretty much stopped buying new games, limiting myself to independent titles downloadable from the Internet and the occassional adventure from The Adventure Comnpany. As such, I can talk only about these two recent examples. However, there are many more instances when a game doesn't run at the stated hardware requirements. That is something one can find out only by opening the box and installing the game. In such a case, your solution would simply lock gamers into an endless cycle where they are unable to return a game that doesn't work.
On the other hand, if I like only one song, I'll download and burn it instead of buying the CD for $13. However, as the price drops, it will be more convenient for me to buy the CD instead of downloading the song. At $10, I'm willing to experiment with musicians I don't know. At $5 (in used CD stores), I'm willing to buy a CD where I like a single song.
As a low-key worker, I value my time at $20/hour. By my estimates, it takes 15 minutes or more for me to crank up Kazaa, find a song, download it, test to see whether it's of acceptable quality and burn it onto a CD. Thus, $5 is the break-even rate for me. For $3 per CD, I'd buy all that's available.
(I just spent roughly $4 of my time writing this response.)
I'm sorry, but it's not me who played it at such low settings. I got this information from a friend of mine in a discussion about the demo. (I'm sure you get lots of feedback on the game, and the link I posted offers precious little in the terms of technicalities and is more about gameplay issues, but be aware if you check it out that these guys are not fanboys of the new game, and they don't expect the development team to read it, so it may be a little less biased than the feedback you receive.)
Actually, I'm still playing the original BG games, so I know very well how the graphics look like ;). Still, I'm one of the weird people who'd gladly sacrifice graphics for low hardware requirements and faster loading times. I must admit I was impressed with the graphics, especially the progression of time (the changing shadows on trees outside was a nice touch), but being able to put it on a floppy or two and take it to my home computer would make me much happier.
(And for your information: as far as I know, the game is playable at 233MHz/64MB RAM, with some difficulty.)
What I really don't understand is why a game that tries to be a sequel to Bard's Tale (a game that ran on my 386-33) requires a Pentium III and 256MB of RAM?
As a game reviewer, I always check message boards dealing with a game I'm reviewing, mainly for reports on technical difficulties. So far I've been lucky, and most of the games I've played were very stable. However, sometimes (most recently with Republic: The Revolution), there is a widespread technical problem that's significant enough for me to take notice and mention it in my review. Over the course of my reviewing career I've nocised some interesting patterns:
1. The smaller the company the more positive the board. While this is not always the case, very often games from small publishers receive more praise. In addition, the developers tend to follow these boards more closely and are ready to answer any question or solve problems. Especially the Dramcatcher/Adventure Company and JoWooD boards are great examples of how game forums can have positive spin. In fact, as long as the developers sound helpful, I tend to buy games with known technical problems, because I'm confident that I'll be helped.
2. Scam and deception works, too. Remember Command & Conquer: Renegade? It was not a perfect game. In fact, it was piss-poor, deserving a fraction of sales it ultimatelly achieved. The reason for such high sales was that EA was censoring out all posts that mentioned technical and gameplay problems. Those who recognized this practice were booted off the forums, and those who came to check other players' reactions found only positive posts. SW:G falls into this category. While not as deceptive as EA, SOE is still trying to create the impression that the game is better than it really is. Most likely, the strategy will work.
I keep my passwords on small post-its, stuck to the edges of the monitor. Even though I must admit that recently I had to upgrade to a larger monitor because I ran out of space...
I'd like to point out that according a recent UBS Warburg investment report, Nintendo is expected to slash GameCube prices to $99 as of October 1, and Microsoft is expected to came with a new two-game bundle with its X-Box for $179 by mid-September. Sony is not expected to lower the prices for PS 2, and UBS is sceptical whether they'll make their year-end sales numbers.
If they want to keep their demo exclusive to a site, more power to them; they'll need it. As long as it's not one of the sites I download my demos from, I'll ignore their demo, and won't get the chance to try the game. Without trying it, I won't buy it. If everybody did the same, companies like Activision would pay sites to host their demos.
Yup, I have a nice, shrink-wrapped WinXP CD. I also have another nice CD with the drivers. The only time I installed an OS was when I downgraded to Win98, and completelly messed up with the drivers, and had graphics problems until I called someone who knows more about computers, who told me that I didn't install them in proper order. Since then, I prefer paying those who know more about PCs, while I stick to what I do best. Keeps my PC running, and the economy going ;)
Basically, what I'm complaining about is the fact that for me, a PC is about as important as a screw driver. If the manufacturers can keep the screw driver looking and handling the same all the time, why do I have to get accustomed to a new interface on my PC just because the manufacturer is unable to sell me a product that lasts more than five years?
I just pointed out what I already did, some months ago. I'm thankful for the advice I've been given, and I'd use it had I still WinXP installed. However, being back on Win98 as we speak, I see no reason to spend more money for someone coming and installing WinXP back on my machine.
That may be so, but I'm not one of the "technically competent Windows users". I'm just the average Joe who does everything the only way he knows how to do (after reading the manual, which, arguably, is grossly defficient in Microsoft's case). The article writes about attracting people like us to Linux, and the only way to do so is to give us a CD, which installs a Linux distribution so that I don't have to lift a finger to see a relatively familiar GUI.
And this is exactly why I got rid of WinXP within days and installed Win98 back on my system. I was willing to sacrifice additional stability for a more user-friendly interface (by "user-friendly" I mean an interface I am already used to). Now if by default Linux came with something similar, I may consider switching.
I'm no legal expert, but I think Blizzard doesn't have a case here. Defining what's "too close to original" is very hard, and can easily backfire. For example, if I compare Diablo to Gauntlet (or Rogue for that matter), I see the same game only with different graphics. So as long as the new projects keep to their own graphics, they should be as safe as Blizzard was when it decided to release Diablo.
However, that doesn't mean that Blizzard doesn't try to sue them, and you know how such lawsuits go: the big guy sues the small guy who doesn't have the money for a defense, and even though the small guy is wully within his rights, he rather settles.
The author claims that P2P hels to reduce the scarcity of new music. That is not true, though. It may help to improve the availability of existing music (as in "this CD is sold out; let's download it", which is a quite unlikely scenario), but the vast majority of P2P users still download the music that's published by the Big 5. Thus, new music is no less scarce, it's only more readily available. Only if P2P signifficanly improved the current music catalogue (plenty of new high-quality artists), he'd have a point.
That's an excellent idea! I'm not familiar with NWN (mainly because I'm not fond of 3rd person RPGs), but I'm an avid Morrowind player. Even now, after 15 months of having the game, I keep playing new adventures, coutresy of the role-playing community. In fact, with the exception of the two Morrowind expansions and Arx Fatalis I didn't play any RPG since June of 2002, and I don't need to. In a sense, Morrowind is more a community-based game than the current MMORPGs can ever be (especially if you consider a new island where every mod maker can build his own house). You are right - those games may be very well on the forefront of a new evolutionary step. That said, however, there's one problem: once sold, they don't bring any additional revenue for the publishers, and this may very well be the main reason why they'll get ignored in the future.
However, I argue that the main purpose of those games is still to have fun. Back in the days of MUDs, we were really roleplaying. I really was Ishap, the bastard son of a knight and on my way to become an evil paladin (my orcish half didn't allow me otherwise). However, those were times when only the truly dedicated people played on-line roleplaying games. Now you have all those casual gamers who are more interested talking about the Palestinian conflict or the newest comic hero hitting the big screen than playing the game, and most MMORPGs became glorified chat rooms.
I personally feel that there is no way to rescue MMORPGs. They will never become engaging enough for people to keep playing. Hardcore gamers will still use MUDs for their out-of-this-world experience, and the rest will keep chatting in Everquest and other games. Game designers may make these games more engrossing by creating a linear storyline on a mass scale. Sony had the chance to do so with Star Wars Galaxies - they could've written a script for the next three real-time years of the game, which would include plenty of hard-coded events that would push the gamer forward. For example, an attack on a planet would send all gamers from there to other planets, as refugees, forcing them to start from scratch (but with more experience already, making it easier to work themselves up in the new society). Or a rising status of a planet (new spaceport, for example) would increase job opportunities, tourism, etc. Players could vote to join the Republic or the Trade Federation or choose a despotic planet where the game designers would choose for them. To make a long story short, players would keep being entertained if there was a dynamic world. Instead, all you get are very static worlds, where all the players can do is to join the queue to kill another monster or clean 100 bowls to achieve a higher level as a potential cook.
The article is right in many points, but there are a few I'd like to criticize:
1. "When we review, we review games as product. As a channel for discussion, we've become a weird mix of free PR and advertising, and the latest issue of consumer reports. Videogames are objects. The people behind them are their manufacturers, both in a literal and a figurative sense.
Our major challenge is to make the leap from understanding videogames as things to viewing them as ideas."
Sorry, guys, but games ceased to be ideas in the mid 1990s, when managers took over game design. Right now, the question is not anymore "How do I make a great game?", but more like "What game features would appeal to the largest audience?" Games you see today are the distillation of market research, and not an inventive mind that comes with a new idea. Thus, game journalists are fully justified to view games as consumer products and not as unique works of art.
2. "You lazily separate your reviews into huge sections with bold, generic headings."
I must confess I'm one of the people who do so. And you know why? Because I'm writing in order to help people make up the minds whether to buy a game or not, and not to receive a Nobel Prize for literature. The average reader knows which feature is crucial to him, and can jump very fast to the proper section. In addition, this consistency allows the reader to compare games. Reviews that are very funny, insightful or artistic may be interesting to read, but they'll never tell the reader whether to buy the game or not.
3. "You can write a thousand-word feature without saying anything original or unique."
I'm writing between 2000 and 2500 words reviews, without saying anything original or unique. And guess what: the number of thank-you letters from both satisfied customers and occassionally the game designers (it's not often that I praise a game, after all) far outweigh the number of flames I'm getting. In fact, I have yet to get an e-mail where someone complains that part of my review was not understandable or that I forgot to mention a key feature. Once again, it's about consistency and the ability to articulate the key facts to the reader.
Just take a look at the long article. I must admit that it has some artistic value. In fact, at several points, it played with my emotions; a sign that the article is really well wrtitten. There is only one problem: 99% of readers will never finish it, and even those who do will never fully understand it unless they are game joyrnalists and take notes along with reading. Sorry, but I don't want to end up writing for scientific journals dealing with games. I want to write reviews that are understandable to people who read them while eating their BigMac. I just don't feel arrogant enough to think that unless you have a PhD you don't deserve to read my reviews.
I'd like to point out that the moment the deal was anounced, I sent an e-mail to the UBI Soft customer support, asking for help with Might and Magic VI (the two locked doors issue) and Might and Magic IX (which had so many bugs that 3DO abandoned their support). If you are right, I should expect a resolution of these problems in short time ;)
According to the report I mentioned and a couple of other reports, the break-even point (a point where 3DO would not show any losses) is $85 million. As a consequence, they'd either have to sell 85 such games or jack up the sales of their exising titles. At $50 million in 2002, however, their costs were almost twice as high. So we can safely assume that developing an average game costs 3DO around $2 million.
UBI Soft paid $1.3 million for something that generates $1 million in sales and $1 million in net losses per game (not counting expansions). Considering UBI's public relations department, they probably expect to loose most of their fan base, which was the driving force behind the sales. As a result, them buying the Might and Magic franchise actually sounds like a really bad deal. I'm not surprised 3DO has gotten so little for its assets; in fact, I expected less.
If I want Golden Axe, I play Golden Axe. If I want Gauntlet, I play Gauntlet. In neither case I feel like I need to spend an additional $50 only to play a game I already have, with the LotR logo on the box. What happened to originality? How about at least pretending that the games are unique?