Re:It's to focus on thier core business model
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Clover Studios Closed
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· Score: 2, Informative
There hasn't been a street fighter sequel from Capcom since 1999 with Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, and there hasn't been a street fighter sequel from other developers since 2000 (Street Fighter EX3)
There have been plenty of re-releases of previous games but no new sequels in 6 years. To be honest I really wish they would truly go and make another street fighter sequel.
Honestly I am a huge Final Fantasy fan and Final Fantasy 7 is actually my favorite out of the series, but I agree that 7 should not have been put on the list.
This list was talking about quantum leaps in the genera, recognizing games from breaking the mold and jumping into the unknown. Final fantasy 7 did not do that. It was a very polished game, the story was detailed and with enough plot twists to keep it entertaining, it had excellent mechanics and is one of my and many other's favorite games of all time.
But the vast majority of the game was pretty derivative of the genera. The character progressions were pretty close to pervious jRPGs, the game mechanics were classic final fantasy and nothing revolutionary. FF7 didn't change the RPG genera, it made it popular get recognition and is high on the list of quality RPGs but the general it self wasn't changed by it.
I don't think it is quite as simple as it may seem with people being comfortable with the familiar idea.
Yes the consumer may feel more inclined to by sequels but that is really only true for sequels of good games. A Bad game will cause the sequels to sell worse regardless of the quality of the sequel. This works in the reverse as well. When you see a sequel to a good game there is the general idea that the sequel will be around the same quality of its predecessor. How many people bought Tomorrow Never Dies just because the loved GoldenEye 007. So I don't think it is the sequel that people love so much as trying to recapture the original that causes a lot of purchases
With that in mind you have to look at marketing a bit as well. Original IP is considered a risk by publishers and marketing and because of this, in general sequels get way more marketing dollars spent on it then originals ever would. There could be an amazing new game on the market but people never hear about it because the marketing for it was to low budget. I know this has happened to me at least, where by the time I heard of a great game the production of it has already been stopped (I'm thinking gitaroo man).
In my opinion the reason sequels sell so well is because people actually know about them before they are on the shelves.
I agree with you. I do not like the rumble feature, I initially forget to turn the rumble off on the games that I play and generally later go back to do it.
Rumble is used effectively so rarely that I would prefer if it defaulted to off. It's used to give feedback on things that it has no business giving feedback for (like getting shot or punched), the timing is so off on many games that it kills me, and it is used far too frequently (Oh I was hit... 3, 2, 1 (buzz) Oh wasn't that immersive, I got shot and it felt like I was holding a moth in my hands a moment later.)
I don't think that rumble has ever really helped wit the immersion for me. In fact usually the rumbling in my hand just goes to ruin the immersion that I had (I am snake, I am snake, (buzz) I am a guy on my couch with a vibrating toy in my hand, oh god dammit).
And honestly it annoys me to no end when I put the controller down on my coffee table to go get a drink or something and then moments later come back to the loud obnoxious noise of hard plastic colliding with hard wood 30 times a second.
Now don't get me wrong. I love force feedback. I never play racing games but if I'm at an arcade or at a friends house and they have a good force feedback wheel I'll play and enjoy it very much. But rumble is far from force feedback.
Well that's not true, plenty of Full Sail/Digipen/etc coders are getting jobs and doing relatively well in the industry. However there are still people who keep the stigma alive anyway.
(Leaving the debate behind and resorting to name calling does not help the argument. Debate using facts, not insults)
"No interns come from the so-called gaming trade schools like Full Sail and Digipen, because McCreary and her team prefer the depth of education offered at more established colleges."
That is a convenient explanation but it has no basis in fact. There was no way to get a summer internship from a Full Sail student because Full Sail does not have a classic summer break (months of downtime between last and first semester). Full Sails summer break lasts from July 2nd to July 10th. You can't have a summer internship without having a classic summer break.
That sentence wreaks of personal bias and distain for "so-called gaming trade schools"(a bias that much of the industry does not agree with), saying that they didn't take Full Sail students because of their "depth of education" is twisting the situation to fit the writers personal bias, and was just added to slander the school (I know it should be liable because it is writing but slander sounds better in the sentence).
That was sort of my first thought about it as well. But more then being an unacceptable bug it defiantly shows the focus of the xbox360 platform and their developers.
For this but to make its way through QA and not be caught, or more likely get caught by QA and deemed a shippable bug by the production, it means that there is very little value put on the market of gamers that do not have a HD television. It shows a dedication to supporting the hardcore gamer market (the people who will actually buy a $1000> television for games) and leaving casual gamers to fend for themselves.
I personally know quite a few gamers that do not have HD televisions yet. The market has not been upgrading their hard ware fast enough to keep up with the software. This has always been a problem with pc games forever now, but apparently upgrading hardware in order to play the newest games is now coming to console games as well. I feel that this is just another casualty of forcing the consumers to upgrade when there is no real need.
Didn't you see the halftime brought to you by Pontiac where they have a car skid across the center field logo in NCAA football? Part of me died every time I saw that.
Huh, And here I thought it was going to be an article on top schools to learn how to make games. This article just seems silly when you are expecting something like that.
Well that article will have to show up eventually.
If there is no phone there why did you tell them to call you to pick them up? Why didn't you just say "I'll be back to pick you up in an hour" (or whatever amount of time you agree on)?
Honestly when I was a kid I very rarely had to use a phone. I always had a time agreed upon with my parents that they would pick me up or I was within walking/biking distance from home. Needing to call to be picked up was a very rare event. I think I only had to call home on a cell phone around 2-3 times.
Yes public phones are getting more rare but they should still be in most public places that a teenager would have to call from. The mall, school, movies, there should still be a public phone at those, and even if there is not one available, if they need a ride, there should be a set up time to pick them up from there anyway.
I have no problem with a kid getting a cell phone for themselves if they wish to and they can pay for it themselves. That is not the issue. I just don't think kids Have to be provided with a cell phone, it is not a necessity, it's a privilege.
When the start driving and the car can break down in the middle of nowhere, and when you start letting the kid have more freedom to go places without you knowing their every move then yeah a cell phone is a good thing.
It's not treating them like a second class citizen; it's treating them like normal person. It is not an ineffable right of a human being to have a cell phone. They don't have to have their own cell phone to call a friend. There is a phone at home that they can use to call their friends.
I'm not that old, I only moved out of my parent's house 6 years ago, but I didn't get a cell phone until just earlier this years, and the only reason I did that is because it ended up being cheaper then getting a lan line for the house. Having a cell phone just isn't all the important in the great scheme of things.
When will your teen be stranded somewhere without a phone already available to them? The mall friend's house, school, concert, movies... there is a public phone or a phone available to them at all of these. So if they have pocket change, they are not stranded.
But hey if she wants to buy one for herself, I'm fine with that.
Yeah I think those phones are fine. Like the firefly, where the only people the kid can call are mom dad and the police. That is just an extra security for your child. Although I don't think it is a necessary one most of the time.
However I don't think that children should have their own cell phones (the full ones). In fact I don't think young teens should have their own cell phones either. Until you can drive a car and have the possibility of being stranded somewhere, I don't think it is necessary to have a phone.
Hmm.... Yeah I'm gona end up fighting with my daughter over this...
There is a fundamental difference between training simulations, games, and the real world.
Training simulation try to keep as close to the original deal as possible in content and control. You will have cockpits set up to resemble or sometimes explicitly copy the cockpit of the actually vehicle, all the controls will be in the same place, the controls will have force feedback to simulate the true to life vehicles resistance, many time the simulation will even have hydraulics to simulate the vehicles roll pitch and yaw. This is all there so when you get in the actual vehicle there is little change.
There are some parallels to this in video games. Games can teach you how to sneak up to someone, the correct maneuvers to use in certain situations; it may help in some skill sets. However not nearly to the level of simulators. Games are not designed to teach how to shoot a gun or drive a vehicle; they are set up to be entertainment. The vast majority of the things you would learn in a simulation, you will not learn from a video game because they are not represented in the content of a video game. For example, go ahead and ask a counter strike player if they know where the safety latch is on a Maverick M4A1 Carbine, if they know it sure as hell isn't from playing counterstrike.
Simulations and game can make something feel familiar. However gaining skills in maneuvers and controls is not what this is about. The reason that videogames are under fire is because people believe that it will make children violent, it changes into killers. This just isn't true, and if you ask anyone who trains people on these simulation trainers they will say the same thing.
Video game and even military simulation can not teach killing intent, it can not remove moral and ethical values from the user and it can not make the user feel more inclined to use violence. They might make it easier to know where the trigger is, but they do not make it easier to pull the trigger
Wait... how can you bring someone to court for something before they didn't do it? He is saying that rockstar has practiced fraud in the games advertising and be brought up with the "Florida nuisance law" and his evidence in this is that they haven't sent him a copy.
You don't want to use the free service because you are paying for a pay service? Why not drop the pay service so you don't feel obligated and can play games on the free service without the thought in the back of you mind that you are wasting money.
Of course I guess that is why I don't play MMOs or the Xbox Arcade/Live games. I don't like having to subscribe to things to be able to play when I can just pay once and play it forever with their competitors.
Wow, about 2or 3 of those are Xbox360 exclusive, and the ones that are I wouldn't say are all that mom friendly (I'm sure moms will love the soft body dynamics of DOA).
You can easily find the majority of that list in much cheaper mediums, heck in many times free (legaly).
The more I look into this the less of a killer feature I see it as.
From the XNA FAQ:
XNA Game Studio Express is a new offering, targeted at students and hobbyists for game development. XNA Game Studio is based on Visual C# Express 2005
Although C# is good for application development, in many cases it is not optimized and fast enough for serious game development. But I guess if this is targeted at hobbyists that this might not be too much of the problem
There is currently no supported way to share binaries on the Xbox 360. Currently, there are four requirements that must be met in order to share a game targeting Xbox 360 which is developed with XNA Game Studio Express.
1. The individual you are planning to share the game with must be logged in to Xbox Live and have an active subscription to the XNA Creators Club
2. The receiving user must have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for the Xbox 360
3. The receiving user must have XNA Game Studio Express installed on their own development PC
4. The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.
1 You have to stumble across the game yourself through some other medium (like finding the developers webpage) you have to request the game from the person who made it, then you both have to be on at the same time to transfer it.
2&3 so the only people who can play the games are other developers. There is no available means for regular gamers or casual gamers to play games developed by this.
4 there are no means of installation for the games. All games must be recompiled by the recipient before they can play them.
The XNA Framework runtime environment for Xbox 360 requires that a physical hard drive be present on your Xbox 360 retail console.
This one is a little bit more minor. But it does mean that anyone who bought the Core System is out of luck with this.
In the context of the article what makes a game highbrow vs. lowbrow in my opinion is what the people making it intended to do with the game. He kept using merchant ivory as an example through out the article, those films were made more to present an idea to the audience, and they were made to be artistic.
I'll use my own example. Recently I saw Grave of the Fireflies. I would consider this a highbrow anime. The thing that the creators were trying to put across were their opinions on war and the way it affects the people not directly involved. Everything in the movie was to amplify that idea.
Games very rarely do this. The vast majority of games are made with the idea that we want the player to have fun. How many games can you think of that were created with the purpose of portraying an ideal or making the player feel a certain way or take a specific message away from the game. I really can't think of many.
Total Annihilation or Rise of Nations what was the message in those? What was the purpose of the game? Even though the games have difficult mechanics and perhaps some purposeful undertones, but the over all purpose of the game was still just to give the user game mechanics so they can have fun.
Even Shadow of the Colossus, which is a very artistically styled game, is very light in meaningful expression. There is an undertone of how blind devotion to a cause, no mater how noble, can create suffering. But this was only an undertone. The vast majority of the game was focused on figuring out puzzles and combat.
And I actually agree with him that this is a big reason why there is so much of a challenge to fight against game censorship. Since the purpose of the vast majority of games is just to give the player mechanics to have fun. There is generally a lack of meaningful expression in games, when there doesn't have to be.
But he was in the process of selling the product. He was trying to sell his idea to the other companies. Having the product on the market does not necessarily mean just to the consumers selling it to manufacturer should count as well.
If after they refused to buy he just threw in the towel and never tried to get in the market again, then it should be fair game.
I think the image he is talking about is the image that is making Xzibit put an Xbox 360 and a plasma screen tv in over half the cars he "pimps" and such.
Look at any of that type of show right now you see the Xbox 360 showing up everywhere. MTV and the like have grabbed it as one of the new in things and has blown it up into a status item.
This is an idea that is brought up in the industry quite a bit. There is a view that people in the game industry can't be good writers and can't fit a story together and that if we hire pro writers the problem will go away.
There is a problem with that though people who write book scripts and screenplays have no idea how to write for a game. In books and screenplays the writer has complete control, the writer has complete control of the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the story, character in the story, and setting of the story. The writer has complete control over all of these things.
All of those factors can be taken away from the designer through games. Game designers do not have that luxury where and when, those aspects are completely up to the player because they have direct control over the characters actions. The what, and how is only partially in the designers control, you may know they have to do a certain action but you don't know what item or skill they are going to use to do it. The who and why can even be taken out of the designers hands at times, in the care of games where the player gets to make a custom character you can't make and references back to who the character is or why he wants anything.
Games are a unique medium where you have to try and tell a story without forcing a the player down it. Every time you define a who what where when why or how in a game the player feels like they are in less control over it. There is a balance you have to keep in games between what is defined and what is not. You have to give the player control over things at times and at other times you have to take it way. This is a balancing challenge that takes a lot of practice and understanding of the medium to work out. Just hiring a professional writer will not solve the problem telling stories in games correctly in fact it may make it harder to overcome. Games need designers who can write compelling stories. Designers have to be able to think like a programmer see like an artist and write like a professional writer while keeping in mind that they will not be in control over the final product. This is very hard to come by hence why stories in games is such a challenge.
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There hasn't been a street fighter sequel from Capcom since 1999 with Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, and there hasn't been a street fighter sequel from other developers since 2000 (Street Fighter EX3)
There have been plenty of re-releases of previous games but no new sequels in 6 years. To be honest I really wish they would truly go and make another street fighter sequel.
Honestly I am a huge Final Fantasy fan and Final Fantasy 7 is actually my favorite out of the series, but I agree that 7 should not have been put on the list.
This list was talking about quantum leaps in the genera, recognizing games from breaking the mold and jumping into the unknown. Final fantasy 7 did not do that. It was a very polished game, the story was detailed and with enough plot twists to keep it entertaining, it had excellent mechanics and is one of my and many other's favorite games of all time.
But the vast majority of the game was pretty derivative of the genera. The character progressions were pretty close to pervious jRPGs, the game mechanics were classic final fantasy and nothing revolutionary. FF7 didn't change the RPG genera, it made it popular get recognition and is high on the list of quality RPGs but the general it self wasn't changed by it.
I don't think it is quite as simple as it may seem with people being comfortable with the familiar idea.
Yes the consumer may feel more inclined to by sequels but that is really only true for sequels of good games. A Bad game will cause the sequels to sell worse regardless of the quality of the sequel. This works in the reverse as well. When you see a sequel to a good game there is the general idea that the sequel will be around the same quality of its predecessor. How many people bought Tomorrow Never Dies just because the loved GoldenEye 007. So I don't think it is the sequel that people love so much as trying to recapture the original that causes a lot of purchases
With that in mind you have to look at marketing a bit as well. Original IP is considered a risk by publishers and marketing and because of this, in general sequels get way more marketing dollars spent on it then originals ever would. There could be an amazing new game on the market but people never hear about it because the marketing for it was to low budget. I know this has happened to me at least, where by the time I heard of a great game the production of it has already been stopped (I'm thinking gitaroo man).
In my opinion the reason sequels sell so well is because people actually know about them before they are on the shelves.
I agree with you. I do not like the rumble feature, I initially forget to turn the rumble off on the games that I play and generally later go back to do it.
Rumble is used effectively so rarely that I would prefer if it defaulted to off. It's used to give feedback on things that it has no business giving feedback for (like getting shot or punched), the timing is so off on many games that it kills me, and it is used far too frequently (Oh I was hit... 3, 2, 1 (buzz) Oh wasn't that immersive, I got shot and it felt like I was holding a moth in my hands a moment later.)
I don't think that rumble has ever really helped wit the immersion for me. In fact usually the rumbling in my hand just goes to ruin the immersion that I had (I am snake, I am snake, (buzz) I am a guy on my couch with a vibrating toy in my hand, oh god dammit).
And honestly it annoys me to no end when I put the controller down on my coffee table to go get a drink or something and then moments later come back to the loud obnoxious noise of hard plastic colliding with hard wood 30 times a second.
Now don't get me wrong. I love force feedback. I never play racing games but if I'm at an arcade or at a friends house and they have a good force feedback wheel I'll play and enjoy it very much. But rumble is far from force feedback.
Well that's not true, plenty of Full Sail/Digipen/etc coders are getting jobs and doing relatively well in the industry. However there are still people who keep the stigma alive anyway.
(Leaving the debate behind and resorting to name calling does not help the argument. Debate using facts, not insults)
"No interns come from the so-called gaming trade schools like Full Sail and Digipen, because McCreary and her team prefer the depth of education offered at more established colleges."
That is a convenient explanation but it has no basis in fact. There was no way to get a summer internship from a Full Sail student because Full Sail does not have a classic summer break (months of downtime between last and first semester). Full Sails summer break lasts from July 2nd to July 10th. You can't have a summer internship without having a classic summer break.
That sentence wreaks of personal bias and distain for "so-called gaming trade schools"(a bias that much of the industry does not agree with), saying that they didn't take Full Sail students because of their "depth of education" is twisting the situation to fit the writers personal bias, and was just added to slander the school (I know it should be liable because it is writing but slander sounds better in the sentence).
That was sort of my first thought about it as well. But more then being an unacceptable bug it defiantly shows the focus of the xbox360 platform and their developers.
For this but to make its way through QA and not be caught, or more likely get caught by QA and deemed a shippable bug by the production, it means that there is very little value put on the market of gamers that do not have a HD television. It shows a dedication to supporting the hardcore gamer market (the people who will actually buy a $1000> television for games) and leaving casual gamers to fend for themselves.
I personally know quite a few gamers that do not have HD televisions yet. The market has not been upgrading their hard ware fast enough to keep up with the software. This has always been a problem with pc games forever now, but apparently upgrading hardware in order to play the newest games is now coming to console games as well. I feel that this is just another casualty of forcing the consumers to upgrade when there is no real need.
They have already done it.
Didn't you see the halftime brought to you by Pontiac where they have a car skid across the center field logo in NCAA football? Part of me died every time I saw that.
I can't remember what year that was in though.
Huh, And here I thought it was going to be an article on top schools to learn how to make games. This article just seems silly when you are expecting something like that.
Well that article will have to show up eventually.
Man will I laugh when we start getting tech support calls because people can't figure out how to use their toilet.
"He doesn't know how to use the three seashells! (clears throught) umm I could see how that would be a problem"
Man you are just ridiculous it is a waste of time to talk to you
If there is no phone there why did you tell them to call you to pick them up? Why didn't you just say "I'll be back to pick you up in an hour" (or whatever amount of time you agree on)?
Honestly when I was a kid I very rarely had to use a phone. I always had a time agreed upon with my parents that they would pick me up or I was within walking/biking distance from home. Needing to call to be picked up was a very rare event. I think I only had to call home on a cell phone around 2-3 times.
Yes public phones are getting more rare but they should still be in most public places that a teenager would have to call from. The mall, school, movies, there should still be a public phone at those, and even if there is not one available, if they need a ride, there should be a set up time to pick them up from there anyway.
I have no problem with a kid getting a cell phone for themselves if they wish to and they can pay for it themselves. That is not the issue. I just don't think kids Have to be provided with a cell phone, it is not a necessity, it's a privilege.
When the start driving and the car can break down in the middle of nowhere, and when you start letting the kid have more freedom to go places without you knowing their every move then yeah a cell phone is a good thing.
It's not treating them like a second class citizen; it's treating them like normal person. It is not an ineffable right of a human being to have a cell phone. They don't have to have their own cell phone to call a friend. There is a phone at home that they can use to call their friends.
I'm not that old, I only moved out of my parent's house 6 years ago, but I didn't get a cell phone until just earlier this years, and the only reason I did that is because it ended up being cheaper then getting a lan line for the house. Having a cell phone just isn't all the important in the great scheme of things.
When will your teen be stranded somewhere without a phone already available to them? The mall friend's house, school, concert, movies... there is a public phone or a phone available to them at all of these. So if they have pocket change, they are not stranded.
But hey if she wants to buy one for herself, I'm fine with that.
Yeah I think those phones are fine. Like the firefly, where the only people the kid can call are mom dad and the police. That is just an extra security for your child. Although I don't think it is a necessary one most of the time.
However I don't think that children should have their own cell phones (the full ones). In fact I don't think young teens should have their own cell phones either. Until you can drive a car and have the possibility of being stranded somewhere, I don't think it is necessary to have a phone.
Hmm.... Yeah I'm gona end up fighting with my daughter over this...
There is a fundamental difference between training simulations, games, and the real world.
Training simulation try to keep as close to the original deal as possible in content and control. You will have cockpits set up to resemble or sometimes explicitly copy the cockpit of the actually vehicle, all the controls will be in the same place, the controls will have force feedback to simulate the true to life vehicles resistance, many time the simulation will even have hydraulics to simulate the vehicles roll pitch and yaw. This is all there so when you get in the actual vehicle there is little change.
There are some parallels to this in video games. Games can teach you how to sneak up to someone, the correct maneuvers to use in certain situations; it may help in some skill sets. However not nearly to the level of simulators. Games are not designed to teach how to shoot a gun or drive a vehicle; they are set up to be entertainment. The vast majority of the things you would learn in a simulation, you will not learn from a video game because they are not represented in the content of a video game. For example, go ahead and ask a counter strike player if they know where the safety latch is on a Maverick M4A1 Carbine, if they know it sure as hell isn't from playing counterstrike.
Simulations and game can make something feel familiar. However gaining skills in maneuvers and controls is not what this is about. The reason that videogames are under fire is because people believe that it will make children violent, it changes into killers. This just isn't true, and if you ask anyone who trains people on these simulation trainers they will say the same thing.
Video game and even military simulation can not teach killing intent, it can not remove moral and ethical values from the user and it can not make the user feel more inclined to use violence. They might make it easier to know where the trigger is, but they do not make it easier to pull the trigger
Wait... how can you bring someone to court for something before they didn't do it? He is saying that rockstar has practiced fraud in the games advertising and be brought up with the "Florida nuisance law" and his evidence in this is that they haven't sent him a copy.
This has to be thrown out of court.
You don't want to use the free service because you are paying for a pay service? Why not drop the pay service so you don't feel obligated and can play games on the free service without the thought in the back of you mind that you are wasting money.
Of course I guess that is why I don't play MMOs or the Xbox Arcade/Live games. I don't like having to subscribe to things to be able to play when I can just pay once and play it forever with their competitors.
Wow, about 2or 3 of those are Xbox360 exclusive, and the ones that are I wouldn't say are all that mom friendly (I'm sure moms will love the soft body dynamics of DOA). You can easily find the majority of that list in much cheaper mediums, heck in many times free (legaly).
well... there isnt a sims for the Xbox360 as of yet.
From the XNA FAQ:
Although C# is good for application development, in many cases it is not optimized and fast enough for serious game development. But I guess if this is targeted at hobbyists that this might not be too much of the problem1 You have to stumble across the game yourself through some other medium (like finding the developers webpage) you have to request the game from the person who made it, then you both have to be on at the same time to transfer it.
2&3 so the only people who can play the games are other developers. There is no available means for regular gamers or casual gamers to play games developed by this.
4 there are no means of installation for the games. All games must be recompiled by the recipient before they can play them.
This one is a little bit more minor. But it does mean that anyone who bought the Core System is out of luck with this.But even those are intended to be fun.
In the context of the article what makes a game highbrow vs. lowbrow in my opinion is what the people making it intended to do with the game. He kept using merchant ivory as an example through out the article, those films were made more to present an idea to the audience, and they were made to be artistic.
I'll use my own example. Recently I saw Grave of the Fireflies. I would consider this a highbrow anime. The thing that the creators were trying to put across were their opinions on war and the way it affects the people not directly involved. Everything in the movie was to amplify that idea.
Games very rarely do this. The vast majority of games are made with the idea that we want the player to have fun. How many games can you think of that were created with the purpose of portraying an ideal or making the player feel a certain way or take a specific message away from the game. I really can't think of many.
Total Annihilation or Rise of Nations what was the message in those? What was the purpose of the game? Even though the games have difficult mechanics and perhaps some purposeful undertones, but the over all purpose of the game was still just to give the user game mechanics so they can have fun.
Even Shadow of the Colossus, which is a very artistically styled game, is very light in meaningful expression. There is an undertone of how blind devotion to a cause, no mater how noble, can create suffering. But this was only an undertone. The vast majority of the game was focused on figuring out puzzles and combat.
And I actually agree with him that this is a big reason why there is so much of a challenge to fight against game censorship. Since the purpose of the vast majority of games is just to give the player mechanics to have fun. There is generally a lack of meaningful expression in games, when there doesn't have to be.
But he was in the process of selling the product. He was trying to sell his idea to the other companies. Having the product on the market does not necessarily mean just to the consumers selling it to manufacturer should count as well.
If after they refused to buy he just threw in the towel and never tried to get in the market again, then it should be fair game.
I think the image he is talking about is the image that is making Xzibit put an Xbox 360 and a plasma screen tv in over half the cars he "pimps" and such.
Look at any of that type of show right now you see the Xbox 360 showing up everywhere. MTV and the like have grabbed it as one of the new in things and has blown it up into a status item.
This is an idea that is brought up in the industry quite a bit. There is a view that people in the game industry can't be good writers and can't fit a story together and that if we hire pro writers the problem will go away.
There is a problem with that though people who write book scripts and screenplays have no idea how to write for a game. In books and screenplays the writer has complete control, the writer has complete control of the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the story, character in the story, and setting of the story. The writer has complete control over all of these things.
All of those factors can be taken away from the designer through games. Game designers do not have that luxury where and when, those aspects are completely up to the player because they have direct control over the characters actions. The what, and how is only partially in the designers control, you may know they have to do a certain action but you don't know what item or skill they are going to use to do it. The who and why can even be taken out of the designers hands at times, in the care of games where the player gets to make a custom character you can't make and references back to who the character is or why he wants anything.
Games are a unique medium where you have to try and tell a story without forcing a the player down it. Every time you define a who what where when why or how in a game the player feels like they are in less control over it. There is a balance you have to keep in games between what is defined and what is not. You have to give the player control over things at times and at other times you have to take it way. This is a balancing challenge that takes a lot of practice and understanding of the medium to work out. Just hiring a professional writer will not solve the problem telling stories in games correctly in fact it may make it harder to overcome. Games need designers who can write compelling stories. Designers have to be able to think like a programmer see like an artist and write like a professional writer while keeping in mind that they will not be in control over the final product. This is very hard to come by hence why stories in games is such a challenge.