Useless gaming news & chatter

[koro]

So his team created a game that would have probably worked and sold better on a different platform, sold it at a premium price on a marketplace that has years of statistical data showing that games selling for premium prices don't, and then lashed out using a bully pulpit whose audience consists of the very people most likely to be his customers to blame them for their lack of runaway success. Not to mention not even apportioning any of the blame on Apple and Google, who encourage the existence of the shit these devs whine about, because they make boucoup bucks off of it.

Okay then.

[Hawkbit]

He's not wrong about that market. I quit looking at the App Store about a year ago because the good content simply doesn't percolate up. If I search for Games->RPG, ~7 of the first 10 apps will be "wolf simulator", or "cat simulator", or something like that. It's all shit.

Reviews can't be trusted and as far as "price of a latte" goes, I can either have a latte or a 80% chance of a shit game. In the rare 20% that are actually good, they're often too shallow for any longevity. I'd rather have the latte.

In essence, mobile games are definitely in a bad place. Not monetarily, of course. However, I would never suggest someone enter that market unless positive they were going to appeal to mass market Candy Crush or CoC style games.

[MahrinSkel]

I was initially quite enthusiastic about mobile games, just because I am a firm believer that the end point we are headed for is the always on, augmented reality, 'lifestyle' game (aka The Games That Will Replace Religion), and mobile is a critical piece of that. But I realized early on that the key differentiator for mobile games is promotion, there's not much room for depth or immersiveness in games that have to be oriented to being picked up for minutes at a time and dropped at zero notice.

Promotion = Advertising, it does not matter how much you spend making the game, you'll spend most of your money on advertisements. So it becomes a matter of raw numbers: Average revenue per player vs the cost of acquiring new players. If your game is 'mainstream', meaning that for every 100 people you advertise to, 1 becomes a customer, there is no way to make that math work unless you can milk the whales for a whole lot of money.

If it is 'niche', there's no way to make that math work at all.

--Dave

[Rendakor]

Pokemon GO is the first game I've been excited for that does what you're suggesting, Dave, and I think they have the advertising budget to pull it off.

[Nija]

The problem with his product, specifically, is that there isn't a free trial.

Why would I pay $4 for an unknown game when there are dozens of thousands of free games? I know what I'm getting when I spend $4 on coffee. I have no idea what his game does, and the sideways screenshots and videos on the app store don't help.

How does he/industry people overlook that? What the fuck is the game for $4? Let me play it first, you goddamn idiots!

[HaemishM]

To butthurt mobile dev:


It appears that they already have.

I feel his pain. I really do. I'm selling some of my novels/novellas for $.99 cents (and getting only a 35% royalty from Amazon because of it) when others are selling at $2.99 and getting the full 70% royalty. Meanwhile, established, name authors can charge as much as a paperback or more for Kindle versions of their novels.

I'm not about to be arrogant enough to tell a customer they should pay more for my work than someone they already know and are invested in. Fuck that. The market decided my stuff will sell at $.99 cents and not at a higher price point. I have to find a way to make that work or just stop doing it.

EDIT: Also, part of his problem is how the App Store and Google Play promote content. "Most popular" is most downloaded, and guess what... free games are going to be downloaded a fuckload more than paid games. So naturally, those will rise higher in the rankings and be seen by more people. When you also have games getting big time big budget commercials staring the big breasts of Kate Upton, you're going to be more looks than a niche. Fuck, being a niche mobile developer is worse than being a niche indie filmmaker. You have basically 3 distribution platforms that are heavily saturated with content that to an potential customer looks no different that what you have.

Also, not having a free trial is pants on head retarded. That's how some of these paid games get paid.

[Rendakor]

Wait...he writes this:

Throw out a game with one free episode and the rest to unlock for $5 and you will have a problem on your hands. This model — one that many old-school players find very fair, a try before you buy — is not a model that works well these days. Users see a $5 price tag for more content and they quit the game and go back to sipping their lattes.

then doesn't even have a demo? You can't complain about players not venturing beyond your paywall when it's at the fucking door.

[Yegolev]

[Nija]

Okay, i went out on a limb and spent $4 on this guys game.

It's total shit. The UI is unpolished. I was able to break the tutorial before even getting done with the first mission. If you don't move your ship exactly where you are supposed to, at the right time, it gets off course. And the movement system is basically anywhere on the screen, so the x y coords of where you press could be off a by a couple pixels.

Pinch to zoom has no indicator where you are in the zoom level.
Pinch to zoom is too twitchy - you fly way up close to your (8 bit) ship and can't see anything. It's a worthless zoom level. Or you zoom too far out which leads to the next problem.
Pinch to zoom isn't centered on where you are pinching. If you zoom out when you are in the top left of the quadrant, you have to zoom in a bit (which is hard, because it's so twitchy), then scroll up and to the left to find your ship, then pinch and zoom again.
Moving your ship is confusing. There isn't any indication that the new heading has been accepted. Your ship moves so slowly that you have to watch it for ~2 seconds before you notice any change in heading. I didn't see anywhere to set speed, or to slow down speed so I can turn faster.

After I restarted the tutorial (after I put it in an impossible to complete step in about 90 seconds) I was able to complete it, but received zero direction after completing the tutorial. Okay, so I know kind of know how to move around a combat map - but what is next? What other parts of the game are there?

This game needs a lot of work to compete with anything - free to play, paid, or otherwise.

[Paelos]

$5 games on steam seem to do well. Wrong platform butthurt guy.

[Rendakor]

Okay, i went out on a limb and spent $4 on this guys game.

It's total shit. The UI is unpolished. I was able to break the tutorial before even getting done with the first mission. If you don't move your ship exactly where you are supposed to, at the right time, it gets off course. And the movement system is basically anywhere on the screen, so the x y coords of where you press could be off a by a couple pixels.

Pinch to zoom has no indicator where you are in the zoom level.
Pinch to zoom is too twitchy - you fly way up close to your (8 bit) ship and can't see anything. It's a worthless zoom level. Or you zoom too far out which leads to the next problem.
Pinch to zoom isn't centered on where you are pinching. If you zoom out when you are in the top left of the quadrant, you have to zoom in a bit (which is hard, because it's so twitchy), then scroll up and to the left to find your ship, then pinch and zoom again.
Moving your ship is confusing. There isn't any indication that the new heading has been accepted. Your ship moves so slowly that you have to watch it for ~2 seconds before you notice any change in heading. I didn't see anywhere to set speed, or to slow down speed so I can turn faster.

After I restarted the tutorial (after I put it in an impossible to complete step in about 90 seconds) I was able to complete it, but received zero direction after completing the tutorial. Okay, so I know kind of know how to move around a combat map - but what is next? What other parts of the game are there?

This game needs a lot of work to compete with anything - free to play, paid, or otherwise.

Give him a 1 star review and demand a refund. Post results.

[Quinton]

Sony is finally releasing (well, licensing) a remote for PS4 (yay, no more using a gamepad for transport control).
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/11/9497901/ps4-univesal-media-remote-control-price-announced
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZJRHSZO

[Strazos]

I don't understand the problem using the control to control the system.

[Quinton]

It's clunky (a number of actions require multiple steps), error prone (I don't remember the button mappings), and just kinda annoying.  Certainly not the end of the world to have to use a controller, but something with actual transport controls is nicer.  I don't have any other remotes around since I use the PS4 as pretty much the only media playback device in the living room (it does Amazon Video, Netflix, Bluray, and video from the NAS, so I'm set).

[Yegolev]

You have to hold the controller during the entire movie or when you put it down you'll skip to the credits.

[Sky]

Give me a mobile game I can control with my xbox controller, isn't a paywall shithole and gives me a solid modern gaming experience. That's all I want. I'm dying for good games on my phone. I play the hell out of solitaire and laugh at mobile developer's utter failure to provide me a gaming experience.

Even getting GTA:SA on my tablet sucked because the controller I needed to use sucked and SA wasn't a great port in the first place (GTA4 was the first one I didn't need both controller and keyb/m to play well).

[Falconeer]

Duelyst is now in open beta. It's a turn based PvP game that blends some Magic the Gatrhering with any Tactical RPG out there. I haven't explored all of its intricacies but it certainly looks cool.

https://duelyst.com/


EDIT: Added trailer.

[Goreschach]

Give me a mobile game I can control with my xbox controller, isn't a paywall shithole and gives me a solid modern gaming experience. That's all I want. I'm dying for good games on my phone. I play the hell out of solitaire and laugh at mobile developer's utter failure to provide me a gaming experience.

I too would like to play games on my phone using an xbox controller. 

[Rasix]

Fuck that. Keyboard/mouse.  You can pry WASD from my cold dead hands. 

[Rendakor]

Do people really use controllers on their phones, or am I falling into the sarchasm here?

[ezrast]

For Sky, it's the next logical step after attaching a keyboard and mouse to his TV. Later he'll be putting a numeric keypad on his car, a steering wheel on his toaster, and a temperature dial on his chest hair.

[MahrinSkel]

Do people really use controllers on their phones, or am I falling into the sarchasm here?

--Dave

[Quinton]

Duelyst is now in open beta. It's a turn based PvP game that blends some Magic the Gatrhering with any Tactical RPG out there. I haven't explored all of its intricacies but it certainly looks cool.

https://duelyst.com/

If you go to https://beta.duelyst.com/ with the latest Chrome browser (including on Linux) you can play the game in-browser without needing to download a client.  I played through some of the tutorials and one random 1v1 match.  Seems potentially fun -- will depend a lot on the actual cards/spells/etc I'm sure.

There is fixed mana per turn (player Two getting a bonus) like in Hearthstone.  No colored mana.  Melee attacks across adjacent squares (including diagonal) trade attacks (units can simultaneously destroy each other).  Damage sustained persists across rounds.  Decks are 40 cards built around a General, and like Hearthstone, may use cards from that General's faction and Neutral cards, but not other factions.  Cards are spells or summons.  There are (as far as I can see) no interrupts or responses -- players take their turns, and until the turn timer runs out may mix summoning (provided they have the mana), moving units, and attacking with units.

In TCG/CCG style cards may override the base rules (side-effects on summoning, no summon sickness, flying units have no range restriction, etc, etc).

Model is pretty clearly Free-to-Play with Pay-to-Unlock-Stuff-Faster (otherwise you get cards or the ability to unlock cards as a result of playing tutorial and match games and getting in-game currency).  There's a crafting system (seems Hearthstone-ish).  Did not see any evidence of an Auction House or mechanism to trade cards.

My username is Quinton.

[ezrast]

Yeah, after a dozen or so games, this appears to be exactly Hearthstone but on a grid. Which I'm pretty sure makes it strictly better than Hearthstone. We'll see.

[Shannow]

Humble Bundle this week has a bunch of shitty Games Workshop games: Talisman, Warhammer Quest, Space Hulk, Chainsaw warrior, WH40k Kill team etc

[Quinton]

Yeah, after a dozen or so games, this appears to be exactly Hearthstone but on a grid. Which I'm pretty sure makes it strictly better than Hearthstone. We'll see.

I was pretty impressed with the level of polish in the client -- nice and solid and responsive.

I hope the HEX people can someday learn the secret of readable fonts that the Duelyst folks have discovered.

[Jeff Kelly]

So on the 20th Microsoft released the new PC wireless adapter for XBox One controllers. It's €25 stand alone or €70 as a controller bundle. Windows 10 only.

Doesn't work.

According to the manual drivers are included and already installed on Windows 10. So no driver download and no drivers included in the package. Except Windows 10 won't recognize the device. Driver detection doesn't recognize the device either. There are already a lot of threads about this issue both on the official sites and on other sites complaining about that.

The people that somehow got it to work don't have rumble support and no audio/voice through the controller (headsets don't work).

The Xbox accessories app that let's you customize settings is not listed on the MS App Store because it won't be out until the 27th.

So another great product launch by MS.

[Rendakor]

Do people really use controllers on their phones, or am I falling into the sarchasm here?

--Dave

That's rather ridiculous looking.

[Falconeer]

InXile expanding, opening a new studio and secretely working on reviving Autoduel, a game freely inspired by my most beloved tabletop game Car Wars, and also notable for being one of the very first Richard Garriott works back in 1985.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/23/inxile-autoduel/

[Shrike]

Autoduel?!?

Take my money! NOW!!

I still have my 3.5" Mac disk from...a long time ago. The Mac is long gone, but the floppy remains.

[apocrypha]

Please don't fuck it up, please don't fuck it up, please don't fuck it up!

I   ed Car Wars.

[Falconeer]

I am in the same position you two are. Still have Autoduel in its original box, still have a lot of my Car Wars books and boxes. A remake of this has been a wet dream of mine for twenty+ years (like Battletech, MechWarrior and Wasteland) so money is gonna be thrown as quickly as they can type "Kickstar..."

[Sir T]

Funcom's "The Park" is out for 9.99. I'll probably pick it up. Whatever you say about the Secret world, these guys can do creepy.

[Rasix]

Please don't fuck it up, please don't fuck it up, please don't fuck it up!

I   ed Car Wars.

It's inXille, there's a high chance they'll fuck it up. All aboard the Brian Fargo nostalgia hype train.  Choo fucking choo.

[Falconeer]

That depends if you think they fucked up Wasteland 2. Which they didn't. Soo......