f13.net

Sleep should not be more fun than games. (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1085654859&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&)

Now that I realize it, I think the whole Jason Hall fiasco may have something to do with this. Enter the Matrix was an awful piece of shit. If every game that was released got a 7.0 or above the world would be a better place.

I guess one of the advantages of never having that much money to spend on games is that there have always been more good games on the market than I can afford to buy.  Once I grew up and actually had to start paying for my own games, I realized that video games just don't give that much entertainment compared to their cost, especially since the average cost of a game has gone up from around $30 in the early Nintendo days to $50 today.  It takes a high quality game to part me from my $50 these days.  If the industry somehow managed to bring games down to a more reasonable price, it might take the sting out of buying a mediocre game.  God knows I've knowingly picked up enough average movies on DVD just because I found them for 6-10 dollars.

That's the point, the industry can afford to charge $50 a game even if it sucks monstrous ass. We, as players, NEED to stop buying them.

Of course, I agree.  I always agree with these activist type posts... nearly every one of them.  That doesn't mean I'll stop buying games, though.  It would leave a rather large void in the enormous amount of time I spend at home, much of it alone.  When my husband comes home from work, he's tired and lucky if he even feels like going out for a coffee.  I spend most of my days playing games, reading or contemplating (some people call it daydreaming).  But mostly I sate my obsession with games.  I try just about every mmorpg offered, and the majority have been very mediocre, as you stated.  I have to have them, though.  Righ has much more control than I do.

So... while I cheer you on and admire your committment... I'll still be trying just about every mmo or non-mmo rpg.  I'm filled with good intentions, but too weak to do anything but give in to temptation.  Don't be harsh with me... I've been out of control all my life.  To stop would be against my nature and I could implode!  It's true.

Pathetic, innit?

Most gamers are barely able to control their bowel movements, much less their inbred need to buy teh new shiney the second it hits the stores.

I am lucky (relatively speaking) like Velorath in that I've not been able to afford buying most games when they are new. The only time in the last 3 years that I've bought things new off the shelf within the first week of sale is because I KNEW it was going to be worth it. Those include: Freedom Force, Neverwinter Nights, ESPN NHL2k4 for X-Box, and City of Heroes. Other things I've waited until they were a more affordable price, whether that be long after they've been played and discarded by others or used a few weeks after release. With MMOG's, I've been and will continue to be EXTREMELY discerning.

Most released MMOG's aren't mediocre; mediocrity would be a huge leap forward. Think about Horizons and describe it in five words or less. Mediocre won't be one of the words. Abysmal, shitfest, crime against humanity, maybe, but not mediocre. You better let me see an open beta that works as well as CoH's and is that fun if you are going to expect me to pay full price for your MMOG AND subscribe.

As for other games, most have given me my money's worth that I've bought.

The industry is geared towards first two weeks of release sales. Everything else is gravy. More and more, the industry is trying to achieve that success long before the game is released by encouraging pre-orders. I think pre-orders are a bad thing for the industry; a really bad thing. It's the ultimate expression of "pay for hype."

Uh, I've always had to pay ~$50 for "new" games.

1997, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II cost $49.96
1996, Deadlock cost $54.95
1986, Gunship cost $44.95 (paid $20 because it was missing a disk)


I actually am able to beat games now. I rarely beat any of the old games like Wasteland, Wizardry 6, Gunship, Dark Forces, Powermonger, Syndicate, or Planet's Edge. Played the shit out of them but rarely beat any of them.

Now, games like Jedi Outcast or Dungeon Siege after 10-20 hours of playing them I've beat em and they go on the shelf never to be played again.

Actually, a couple years ago a lot of games started to debut at $39.99 on PC, even while being $49.99 on consoles. Suck it, consolers, I guess.


tinfoil headgear

The quicker you finish them, the sooner you need another 'fix'...

/tinfoil headgear

More like "The art assets required cost a bazillion times more per hour than they used to, so we only have time for 20 hours of gameplay."

As far as computer games go, the prices have been steady or have gone down since the olden days. I distinctly remember driving all over hell's half acre to find Mail Order Monsters when I was about 16. I finally tracked it down, and it was $50 (this was circa 1986). Fast forward to last month- I picked up CoH for $39.99. Not bad considering how much less a 2004 dollar buys compared to a 1986 dollar.

I'm referring mostly to console games with that statement, as I didn't play many PC games until later.  The old Nintendo games were around $30 each.  Kung-Fu, Excitebike, Super Mario Brothers, Kid Icarus, RC Pro-Am, and various others I had were all around $30.  When games like Zelda started using save games instead of continues or passwords is when the price of console titles started to go up from what I remember.

I don't know about PC software costs at the time.  The first computer I had was a Mac probably around 12-13 years back, and mostly played the AD&D gold box games which I can't remember the cost of.  Point being that as I grew up console games got more expensive and I grew up past the point of being able to talk my mother into buying games for me fairly early on.  I had to become very picky about which games I buy because I can usually find better ways to spend $50.  Now I'm an adult with all the various expenses living in the very expensive San Francisco Bay Area and I can either spend that $50 on some groceries, or clothes, or taking my woman out to dinner, or I can buy a game that will bore me within a couple of weeks.

I still love games, and I've thought about taking a look at that netflix-style online video game rental service at gamefly.com as maybe a better value when it comes to playing games.   I'm just afraid of them going out of business right after I sign up .

I paid $80 for Ultima 5 when it came out. But the only software place in our town back then was insanely expensive anyway, may he turn in his grave.

I was such a software pirate with the C64 :(

I paid $80 for each Lunar game.  But then, us WD fans simply can't live without our Punching Puppet Ghaleon by our sides at all times.

The Lunar Remakes were only 60 bucks when I got them new.  No stupid puppet though.

I don't preorder.  Hell, this week at Gamestop they tried pimping the preorders and I didn't want to be mean, but I am sick of being asked if I want to preorder something.  I will buy it when I have the cash thanks.  Maybe I will preorder if I get some cool goodies for doing so, but normally no, no, no.

Then again mediocrity sells.  Look at Warcraft 3.  Its a fun enough game, but its about as innovative as the missionary position.  How the hell a game that doesn't have a single innovative idea can sell 7 million copies (according to the back of the Warchest Edition box) is beyond me!

At least I waited till it was in the budget racks.

Hmmm...

From what's been said, it appears that a number of you wait until reports come in to see if you will even potentially look at a game.

I'm willing to pick up a game if it looks good to me. Sure, that means that I get burnt (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was too short; as was Otogi: Myth of Demons) but also means I stumble across a few gems (Soldiers of Anarchy is a great RTS in the vein of Myth ... kinda).

See, from my perspective, gamers are pretty conservative. We go for the franchise, the sequel, the big-name-hype. That little game that is different is scary and weird and independent is left on the shelf (I'll say Project Zero aka Fatal Frame, but someone may have a better example).

It's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: we only buy recognised or big-name games, so only recognised or big-name games get sold.

Want to see more range on the shelf? Splash out, take a risk - buy an independent game that appeals to you WITHOUT looking at all the review or pirating it first. It's only then that you might see more evolution (rather than just prettier graphics on the same bones) appear on the shelves.

I remember Final Fantasy II (IV) costing $59.99 at Best Products in Richmond, VA on release day. I also remember III (VI) costing the same at Toys 'R' Us. Super Nintendo used to require you bend over when buying their newest shiny. At least they were cosinderate enough to give you something to bite down on...

Edit: BBCode is impossible.

Average gamers buy the overly hyped, easily recognizable franchise games as soon as they hit the shelves.  Problem is there is way more of them then there are hardcore gamers who do their homework and only make "good" purchases.



I am right with you in terms on buying habits, the only difference being I can afford to buy lots of games. Compared to my spending habits 10 years ago, I now only buy quality for myself which has made my purchases drop to maybe 1 a month a most.  Now for the wife and kids, that's a little different.  



Still lots of parallels with the movie industry.  Hype? Check.  Well known names riding their past success? Check.  Sheeplike consumers? Check.

I consider hardcore gamers much like jaded movie buffs (My god, we're all Siskel and Ebert!  well, the non dead one anyway...); most of what is produced by the industry we will consider drivel, but it may still make millions from the mass market.  Also like the movie biz the ability to get information from previews, reviews, betas, demos and even rentals and try before you buy programs makes it very easy to find out what will be "good" for you before you plunk down your cash.

One hope I do hold out for games compared to movies is I do beleive it will be possible to develop a high quality/higher price market segment as the business matures (more like the consumer electronics biz).  Abortive attempts like EQ Legends service notwithstanding.  I do meant "pay more get more" in terms of quality and service, NOT the recently discussed mini transactions where game companies try to wring every last cent out of the walking wallets they call customers while still providing the same crappy quality they do now...

That being said, I see no real way for the demanding minority (thats us) to force quality onto the industry.  I think most of us (except Geld :-p ) already spend our money on games wisely.  More or less.

Xilren

I agree with Xilrin.  You are preaching to the choir here.  This is the wrong crowd to be delivering your message to.

My last mistaken purchase was Prince of Persia, and I am still somewhat glad I bought it.  It was too short, but fun while it lasted.  Beyond good and evil was the same, but that was only $20 and well worth that.

Made some bad calls on older games that don't run on my system, but those were bargain bins and only $10 each.  I now have pretty and useless boxes for Tachyon the fringe and Starlancer (you can see I am desperate for a new fun space action game, maybe that operation freedom or whatever it is called will be good).

My next nobrainer purchase will be Halflife2.  I think I can find $50 of entertainment there between the single player, multiplayer, and mod community without breaking a sweat.

Warhammer 40k Dawn of War is also in the instant purchase category even if it sucks.  This is one of those games I will buy to send the message that I want games like this, and that the 40k world can sell copies.

Chaos League.  I love bloodbowl, have a friend who loves blood bowl and we can play this online together since we live a few thousand miles apart which makes the original abit challenging.

For the xbox, MechAssault 2 will be a purchaser for me, but I will even check reviews for this one before buying.

That is really it.  There are many others I am interested in, but I will cautiously purchase them after reviews and/or rentals.  In my field of view are:
Halo 2 for the multiplayer (looks like UT2004 onslaught but better)
Driv3r
Fable
Doom 3 (hey, it MIGHT not suck)
Chronicles of Riddick (demo from OXM was actually pretty damn sweet)
PsiOps (probably in the bargain bin)
Thief 3 (will check out the demo soon, if it runs like shit will rent the xbox version maybe)

I don't see myself stupidly buying any games anytime soon.  Others may agree or disagree with some of my instant purchase games, but they are decisions I will be happy with.

You can read consumer reports before you buy a car. You can squeeze the fruit at the store.

With a game - you get a couple screen shots or a few rendered shots of the game.

This leads to people buying deerhunter.

The consumer not being educated enough to make a wise purchasing decision is the real issue. Maybe instead of educated enough I mean well enough informed. (But educated probably works for deerhunter).

Return policies for games being what it is, we don't have a good avenue for expressing our distaste with games who's performance/gameplay doesn't meet our expectations.

Meh, companies should be required to release a working demo 2 weeks before retail release. If I can't test drive, I'm not buying. MMO's are lucky that an open beta is pretty much standard now. I get to play them before telling the developers I'd like to see a bucket full of lyme disease infect ticks shoved down their throat.

Yeah, prices have definately gone down a bit, especially if you take into consideration inflation.   The reason is clearly supply and demand.    The interactive entertainment field is a lot better developed and there's quite a lot of competition out there hoping to grab your customer's gaming dollars first.    

I think the general pricing model they use right now (in my part of the US) is:

• Average reasonaly good quality PC game: $35-$45 (Example: Thief: Deadly Shadows, Warcraft III, Unreal Tourney 2004)
• OMG, THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A BIG FAD GAME EVERYBODY MUST BUY: $45-$50+ (Example: Anything Zelda, Anything Soul Calibre, sequals of blockbuster games such as Viewtiful Joe or Devil May Cry (the original rocked), True Crime: Streets of LA)
• Game we don't expect to sell well at a higher price: $20-$30  (Example: Beyond Good and Evil, Serious Sam, Deer Hunter)[/list:u](Note zero bearing here between actual quality gameplay versus the price margin the developer sees it in.)
  
  GBA Game Rule: Usually about half the above price since it's basically just a shrunken down SNES game.  (Though I've found some of the best quality gameplay on a GBA.)
  
  MMORPG Rule: Initial box sales at full "big fad!" price to nail all the people who want to get a head start because they think a MMORPG is a race.   Then, about a month or two later sell the boxes at much reduced prices because you're really after the subscription money.   If box sales are going particularly poorly, offer game download for free from website and screw the retailers who are still trying to sell the boxes.
  
  Deflation Rule: Sooner or later, everything ends up in the bargain bin.  With a little patience you can pick up a big name title for $20.   Used games for about 25%-65% (depending on how aggressive the retailer is).  For example I picked up a barely used copy of Jedi Academy the other day for $25.  I could have bought it new from Amazon for less than a few dollars more.
  
  Only problem is, as Schild is telling us, there's certain developers of absolute crap who are passing off games as something more than they are.    Worse, there's gamers who pay for these games.   While it's all very good to say they're supporting the industry, the problem is that they're putting their dollar "votes" where certain economists can say, "Oh, look, people will pay for absolute crap!"

That's because companies know how to make 2d games. Particularly sidescrollers and RPGs. No one has a fucking clue how to make a 3d game - except for Team Ninja.



Correctomundo.

Best case scenario, this leads to interesting exchanges between the developer and publisher.

Developer: "You know, I don't think this game is really ready for release.  It's barely playable, but it's pretty buggy, I don't think we've got the gameplay dynamics down quite right.   We'll need another 3-4 months to develop it."

Publisher: "Heh heh heh, silly developer.  I really don't think you guys have the talent or motivation to make a good game.   Fortunately for you, a small portion of gamers will buy anything, and that leverages my profit margins just fine.    Release it now or I'll gut your company and sell your still twitching organs on ebay."

Developer: "Since you put it that way, I suppose we can always release patches.."

Worse case scenario, the developer really does suck eggs and the publisher doesn't give a damn.

Developer: "Ah hah!  I learned how to code Visual Basic the other day and I think I can actually slap together something half-way interactive that people will pay for!!"

Publisher: "Gimme gimme gimme."

You can read a game review or a dozen as well before you buy a game.  And looking at the pictures and text on the back is about as informative as squeezing a fruit.  So some poor comparisons.

The real comparison is you can TEST DRIVE that car before you buy.  And if that fruit tastes bad you are only out a very small amount of money.  The problem is the people who don't bother looking for a demo or reading a review first.  All the morons who bought Enter the Matrix basically.

The things you say aren't risks, are. Sorry, they just are. "Logic" and "easy" don't enter into it. Every game we make is a risk. You choose to discount that risk thinking that because the industry, or any one company, makes large amounts of money that we have more freedom. But that's not how it works. The games cost more every day. The bar to hit rises every day. Margins are a lot thinner than you think.

An increasing risk, in fact, because these selfsame games keep selling to increasingly hardcore picky people like you whose standards keep rising. Meanwhile, they lock out the more casual player who can't even tell what you're arguing about on this forum most of the time because it's a level of connoisseurship that is beyond them.

On top of which, most of you hardcore jaded folks actually prefer to play games that you can demonstrate mastery on, not games that offer new and unique perspectives on gaming as a whole. The current gamer is the gamer who passed up the Sims (fortunately for EA and Maxis, your girlfriends picked it up).

You guys keep writing these all-encompassing essays about "what's wrong with the MMOs." I always read them, I always enjoy them. But why do you always leave out some large chunk of reality when you do it? :)

So yes, people do buy games which wouldn't impress us one bit.   I could say that's because they don't know any better.   I could also say that this is because their level of expections isn't nearly as high as us hardcore folks.

However, this is not to say that there aren't general piles of crap out there that will turn off hardcore and newbie players alike.    You don't need low expectations to find something wrong with a game that crashes every half hour or is so poorly balanced as to be frustrating at every turn.

I like to think that games such as Deer Hunter are a specialized breed.  Stealth titles that are entertaining enough for the status quo, not possessing bugs so offensive as to turn off a casual player, but not really innovative enough to impress the hardcore players.

In defence of the hardcore players, however, I will say that there's becoming more and more of us every day.   I entertain the fantasy that there will be a day, if it is not here already, where the money coming at games from hardcore players outnumbers that from those who invest less time playing.  Oh, for the day when aiming for the "casual" market is aiming also to become a "rare niche" product.

That will never happen because people aren't born hardcore players. What happens instead is that the barrier to entry rises. Only those with the determination to master all the intricacies get to play at all.

We saw this bigtime with wargames, with sims, and again with RTSes. We see it in pretty much all fields. As it gets hardcore, jargonified, etc, it becoems a more exclusive club--and this limits the audience growth. It becomes more like a hobby.

The point where hobbyists all turn hardcore is the point where you guys become model railroaders arguing about track gauge, or grognards debating the value of per unit fatigue ratings. Fun for you, certainly, but not to the rest of the world. I am sure that there are kids out there who would find model railroading fun. But if they're going to get chased out from the get go because model railroading practically takes a degree in miniature trains and all the current hobbyists tell the poor guy to go get that degree or go cry, newb... well. You get the idea.

This is predominantly the same crowd from LtM who lambasted people who bought WW2Online and AO early.  The same sort of behavior was frowned upon five years ago.  I think it's even more telling that, here in 2004, people are still going through the same practices.

The LtM -> Waterthread people are jaded.  Many of us have suffered through crappy MM games and been burned by developer promises.  I don't think this group is really the type to preach to, as has been said before.

With my financial independence over the past couple of years, I have necessarily become much more stingy and selective.  I wait a long time to buy games.  Case in point: I just bought Shogun: Total War and Warcraft 3.  Fifteen dollars each.  A friend let me borrow Baldur's Gate II a few years ago, and I couldn't really get into it.  More recently, I picked it up again and loved it.  I wanted to buy the game and its expansion, but it's now several years after its release and Interplay's future is uncertain (plus, I'm not too happy with them).

I haven't purchsed a game for $50 in....jeez, I don't know when I ever bought a game for $50.

It just suprises me that people still preorder games and people still buy games without doing any research whatsoever.  It's part of being a smart consumer, no matter what you're buying.  Entertainment is expensive, and you want the most enjoyment out of your money and time.  Then again, fiscal responsibility isn't exactly a common American trait, but that's another point of grief for another forum post.

I suppose my point, in sum, is that the MM crowd (such as those here) say they won't buy shiny new online games.  What ends up happening is many genre fans gobble up whatever new game, play it for a short time, and feel that it's crap or they're bored.  We keep saying there's no innovation, that problems and boredom are a given, and yet it's done anyway.  Schild's point is still sound today; let's get some more people to act upon it.

I just realized I haven't bought an MM game disk since Asheron's Call (which I played for the free month).

Yes, many of those here on F13 were at one point reading LTM - don't tell me you've unlurked simply to state the obvious.    Though I suspect some of the more extremely jaded (to the point of nihilism) are currently residing on Corpnews as part of the proceedings that resulted in the renaming.   I don't really know, I wasn't here at the time, I was busy sulking.   Really, it's been a looong time since LTM days.   I wonder just what the ratio of prior LTM readers to current F13 readers there is.  I suspect about 25%.

Anywho, 'ST, it's clear that while you enjoy computer games you're not exactly what I'd call a real computer gaming addict.  It's little wonder that you're stunned that anyone could be so interested in a computer game as to *actually purchase it when the game comes out!*   Granted, I hesitate to say you're worse off as a result, as having the state of mind to hold out until a game is available at a vastly reduced price probably saves you a mint both in software and the gaming hardware you need to play it with.

You've even reached the point where apparently you've written off the entire massively multiplayer genre, judging by how you haven't tried one since Asheron's Call.  Which is a pity, in my opinion, because the genre is finally reaching the point where the gameplay is matching the scale.   Though again, you saved yourself a lot of money in the process.

Schild's point is that he's fed up with all the crap on the market and would like people to make better games now.    It's not the first time that point has been made, but once in awhile one needs to vent it.  

Raph's point is that we wouldn't think these games were crap if we weren't such hardcore game addicts.  Addicts who have so many games under our belt that trying to come up with something that could impress us is about as easy as reinventing the wheel.

My point is yes, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.  We'll complain when the square or oval wheels don't seem to work as well, sure.   However, when you come up with those nifty spherical wheels capable of levitating off the ground and turning cheese into gold, then the whole genre will have finally moved forward and the hardcore gamers will say, "about bloody time!" with a fair amount of truth in the sentiment.

To interject a new point, yes there will always be new players.  However, do not underestimate how quickly the hardcore gamer population will inflate.   The existing ones are not going anywhere - the whole computer game industry is less than 30 years old.   What's worse, new players are going to qualify as "hardcore" in a very short amount of time.   By this I mean they're not going to be starting with C-64 games and giving you a 17 year head start before they expect you to make a better one than is out today.

Maybe a better way to look at it is simple technology.  Games have to move forward, not backwards, regardless of if you're new to the hobby or have been around for decades.

-Mostly aiming this at Raph if he is who I think he is.  If not, its just some general thoughts on games.-

Isnt the logic of all games to be easy to pick up, but difficult to master?  I don't think we all want hyper complicated games.  We want FUN games that compel us to play and are full of "HOLY SH!T THAT'S AWESOME!!" moments.  Overly complicated games end up being well intentioned failures.  I would say your two main contributions to the MMORPG genre would fit that bill.  Early UO and SWG are both VERY interesting at what they try to pull off.  But, either due to players or just basic reality of what makes a fun game, neither one is particularly fun, nor was either one very easy to pick up and learn.  I spent my first week in SWG just learning how to play the damned thing.  UO was mostly spent getting ganked trying to find a bunny rabbit to kill or clicking on a combat dummy...

Look at a game like Advance Wars.  Its VERY simple to learn, but mastering it takes time.  Its the reason the early Wing Commander games kicked the ass of the X Wing titles.  They were easier to play, with no whacko power settings to toy with, and even when Prophecy added said function, you could ignore it.  Wing Commander also had a more reasonable difficulty curve and a branching storyline that also kept you playing, but those are two whole other concepts of making a good game.

A good game isn't about graphics.  As long as its smooth and pleasing to the eye, a couple extra polygons and some bumbp mapping aren't gonna do diddly squat.  

IMHO, a good game should have these basic qualities, some of which I mentioned in the spiel above.  There are more, but 5 should suffice for now.

1: Easy to learn how to play: Either phased learning within the game, or a tutorial set of levels that should take under an hour total.  I should completely comprehend at least 75% of the game's systems before the first hour of gameplay is up.  For "arcade" styled games, by the first Game Over screen.  You wanna add extra skills and abilities to learn later, ala Metroid or some other Skinner Box like thing?  Kewlies.  But the main core of gameplay should be learned quickly.

2: A reasonable level of difficulty:  Don't cheese me, or make things intentionally hard so your 10 hours of actual content takes 50.  When I lose, I should feel I f*cked up.  Not that the game is cheap and unfair.  I should go "Wow... ill get you next time you sonofabitch!", or "Oh!  How could I have been so dumb?  I know what I can do here!"

3: An easy to use interface:  This also fits in with 1.  I should become one with the game.  The interface should effectively cease to exist.  The baddies in game are what I should fight with, not remembering 30 command keystrokes, some insane multibutton combo attack. or giving my mouse hand carpal tunnel trying to do anything.  (Hello Temple of Elemental Evil!)

4: A feeling I am in control:  I should feel my skills, my in game actions, and the general gameplay is based on me, not what you the designer want of me.  If I don't want to do thing X or marry that goddamned princess (Hello Dragon Warrior!), I shouldn't have to.  Reward me for thinking outside the box like Fallout, Deus Ex, and Super Mario Brothers did.  Don't get pissed when someone finds an easier way to get through your content.  Because we WILL.  Its not just trying to take the path of least resistance.  Its because players are the work of chaos, and we are by and large creative little SOBs who will try anything, if just for spits and giggles.

5: Fun stuff to do:  Whacking the same foozles endlessly doesn't cut it after a while.  Its why Diablo 2 sucked ass.  We already whacked the same foozles in the same basic way in the original.  Making us whack more of them for longer doesn't appeal to everybody.  Mix it up.  Give us some story or nifty keen missions.  Push the game engine till it screams.  Not all of us are like the little old ladies who will spend their entire weekend pulling a lever at a slot machine.  Variety is good, unpredictability is good.  Doing the exact same thing for 50 hours?  Ungood.

I think I'll go play Golden Axe now.

I'd like to say that you base your qualification of "crap" on your gaming preferences, and then expect that everyone should have your preferences.

CoH is the biggest pile of crap in the world.  I like Deer Hunter.  I find it fun.  Why should I conform to YOUR definition of what's good and what's not?

Why do you assume that anyone who buys a game YOU consider "crap" is dumb, or making an uninformed decision?

And while this board is available for the devs to find out what the few here think, honestly the only measure of success they can use is number of boxes sold.

And finally, "we have to start voting with your wallets" sounds terribly similar to "let's all get organized and not log in on Thursday to protest whatever."   Pointless call.

I think you missed the point completely.  Nobody is telling you that you aren't allowed to find Deer Hunter fun or that you have to buy CoH.  Fuck, if even one redneck that buys Deer Hunter ends up spending less time hunting real deer and somehow fooling himself into thinking it's a fucking sport, than I'm happy for its existance.

When you buy an MMORPG on launch day though and it repeatedly charges your credit card, that's crap.  When games like Shadowbane are released with so many bugs and other problems that they are unplayable for many people that's a big fucking issue. When a lot of people bought MGS2 or Enter the Matrix on release day based on hype and ended up not liking them, that was making an uninformed decision.  When people buy a game just because it has Star Wars, Final Fantasy, or Warcraft in the title that's also being uninformed.  Or take a look at this gem (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/bigrigsotrr/review.html) and then try telling me this game is only crap based on one man's gaming preferences.

The problem is that there is a large amount of people out there who buy games almost expecting them to be crap because they fall prey to the hype, have to have all the games in the series, or because they have some odd notion that playing Lineage 2 for 200+ hours unlocks "fun mode".  These are the same kind of people that make Troy a hit at the box office despite the fact that it felt the need to butcher a story around 2,700 years old just to make it more "Hollywood".  It doesn't make any sense to be handing the people that make these games $40 or $50 bucks a game.



Great, we can all play the latest Sims expansion, while listening to Britney Spears and watching American Idol.  Then we can hang out at Starbucks and catch "The Day After Tomorrow" later on.  Yep, life will be so much better when the last bits of artistic integrity in the entertainment industry are wiped out by graphs and sales charts.

Crap is out there.  It's not just a figment of the imagination.  There are people out there who by their own admission buy a lot of crap.  I've seen them.  I've talked to them.  If I had more money I probably would have been one of them.

Fortunately for us that even though the big money may lie is sticking your product squarly in the middle of the bell curve there is only so much room in the middle and still quite a bit of profit to be made a little way out from center.

Geldonyetich,

I think I may have given off a slightly extreme impression.  I love games.  I play many of them and I download lots of demos and such, it's just that it's rare that I can justify purchasing at the time.  I'm actually having trouble, presently, because there are so many great-looking games coming out next fall (right when I get to college, go figure).  Of course, the jaded part comes in when I realize that they're not all going to be bug-free, perfect examples of gaming.

Nor have I written off the MM genre.  Far from that.  Years ago someone pointed out that many of those who speak against the genre and call out its faults really do love the genre and the promise it holds.  I've followed many MM games, and I've played quite a few.  I just have not, however, purchased a retail box for one since AC.  I'm surrently playing Dark Age of Camelot, but I took advantage of their 7-day download trial.  They've gotten one monthly payment so far.  I'm banking on the much better PvP system to come out in June - an example of being excited about something before the fact, I guess, though I talked with someone in the company about how the system was shaping up.

I've seen a lot of new ideas brought forth, and that's why I -- and, I expect, many of you -- hold such hope for MM games.  Shattered Galaxy has an RTS feel and subscriptionless pay system (you pay for extras); Guild Wars is looking for no subscription, but subsistence on expansions; it seems like several games are being designed as dynamic worlds.  The possibilities and different ways to do things are endless, yet so few of them work.

To contribute more directly:
I think DarkSpace did an excellent job at getting gamers into the game but also keeping many potential things above their head.  You can be an engineer, a fighter, a bomber, a troop transporter, a supplier, a defender/escort, and engage in those at various levels.  You can gain experience in any of those activities.  After two weeks of heavy playing, I still hadn't tried everything available yet did not feel correspondingly restricted.

DarkSpace hasn't done very well, though.  It seems to fit the formula enough that it should get a sizable number of subscribers to keep on it for a few months.  For all its accessibility and depth at the early levels, only the hardcore stay.   Jain Zar, you talk about game quality being that which gains players.  I think that, time and time again, we've seen (objectively) quality games with bad specific mechanics fail largely because of the gameplay's mechanical shortcomings rather than overt and glaring issues with the game's construction.  It's not enough to make a polished package.  I didn't play SWG, but from what I hear the main issue was your point #5.  It got 4/5 points and has a a few thousand subscribers, yet many will say it failed to provide enough content or anything other than an unfun grind.  Same with EQ: it's a fine game in presentation, just boring doing everything over and over.  400,000 subscibers, most successful MMORPG within America.

It's hard to pinpoint where a design has failed largely because those mechanics about which many people complain are being consumed by hundreds of thousands of people.[/i]

Just an addendum. I was discussing this with Soulflame the other day. MMOGs will NOT evolve until they break the restraints of Gygax. He is a pox on the roleplaying world that must be eliminated at all costs. The next 5 years of GDCs should be about a battle plan to put that fucker to rest.

Gygax or Arneson? I'm not sure which of them is to blame for the killing=exp stuff, but Gygax was still doing RPGs in the 90s when dramatic roleplaying was "in" (World of Darkness, diceless gaming etc.)

Anyway, the "whack a mob for exp" mentality in Dungeons & Dragons was somewhat mollified by the roles the PCs undertook later, e.g. care for their followers at level 9, land ownership around 18, empires at 30, and seeking godhood at 36. Whether DMs actually did make their players lead nations etc. is a different matter. And it's even less likely MMOGs (Shadowbane excepted) will pick upo that part as long as the mob-whacking powergamers pay the bills.

But I digress: The D&D "mentality" is mostly absent in ATiTD and EVE, but has that helped those games to any extent? Inquiring minds want to know.

Eve and ATiTD's systems weren't any better than D&D rules. The point is they need to be replaced with something better. Someone will eventually do it, because the current whack-a-mole system is total shite.

All Gygax and team developed was a means to keep track of the adventure, thoroughly recommending that one's imagination be used as much as possible to bridge the gap between figures and a real roleplay experience.  

For the state of modern CRPGs, don't blame the design of D&D, blame the platform.   Computers are, after all, just really big adding machines.    Naturally early game programmers felt the experience adding mechanics far easier to implement than teaching the computer how to express genuine adventure.  

Today computers are somewhat more complicated than their predecessors, but adhering to tradition is far easier.  Designing and coding mere number crunching versus genuinely entertaining gameplay is right up a programmer's alley.    Also, we've been spoiled: Players have been taught it's far easier to let some unknown artists' expert manipulation of their graphic card's capabilities produce a result than to actually attempt to use their imagination.

Ultimately, I can't blame Gygax, I can only blame the game designers who have failed to understand what he was trying to achieve.   There is no "better" RPG system, because numbers and manipulating them alone have little to do with what your trying to achieve.    

That's not to say that there aren't some exceptional products out there that have managed to make progress at creating a real *experience* as opposed to yet another "hack/slash/gain levels" exercise.   For example, look at Thief.   Though it may be a sneaker FPS, it's far closer to the kind of fantasy experience a game like D&D was trying to create with pen and paper alone.

I don't know about the DnD ruleset being that big of a problem.  I didn't really see it while playing DnD (maybe it was that we actually had a couple good DM's).

I think it became a problem when they tried to make computer games, because they had to take away all the "fluff" and come up with hard rules, and that's when the whole calculable, predictable x mobs killed = y xp equation was invented.

I don't remember getting the same xp for killing the same number of orcs in DnD.  It always varied, and was just a lump award at the end of the day, kinda like "here, we had fun."  And it was never about the grind anyway.

...

As for the discussion above, about crap, I was a bit harsh to accentuate my point.  Basically it's quite impossible for a game maker to determine whether a person buying a game is informed or uninformed.  Whether they actually like the game, or they just bought it due to the hype.  And they don't really care, as long as the game sells.

Because we live in a world of "good enough".  Hell, I'd love to baby every computer I fix, clean up the dust totally instead of just a rush vacuum job, rearrange the guy's files properly, install the latest patches, retune his OS to work better, get rid of his clutter, add some of the better utilities and teach him how to use them, get a nice screen saver and background scheme...  Do I?  No, he just wanted (and is only paying for) his noisy fan replaced.

Same with game makers.  If "good enough" sells, you'll end up pressured by time and finances to only be able to put in good enough.

When CoH launched, there was a post on the WoW boards where they were comparing CoH with WoW, and the devs said it was unfair to compare a finished product with a beta product.  True.  But at the same time, I got the distinct sense that they were regretting a little bit their decision to work on their game for "as long as it takes, to make it perfect."

Meanwhile, a game which might seem to be the anti-F13 game seems to have captured most of us for at least a month, City of Heroes. By all accounts, it should be reviled by us. It's about nothing but combat, it's not a virtual world, and it's class- and level-based.

Yet, somehow, that same old formula HAS captured us, for far longer than others of its type. It is the epitome of a game a 'casual' or 'time-starved' player can get into. It is a challenge, but it's also deceptively easy to get into.

So how did that game impress us when by all accounts our standards are rising?

EDIT: Also, just to pick nits, ATiTD should be considered a fucking monumental success. I've said this before. ATiTD had a fraction of the budget of something like SWG, and yet, it has at times had twice the number of subscribers it need to break even. 200% profit... I bet SOE would give up lots of left testicles for that.

I bought the Sims. And the first expansion. I'm also probably going to review a game I just got around to playing - Startopia. I buy *many* games that are released on the market. This month alone I've picked up four (sure, one of them was Diablo II - for the 4th time, sigh), and I plan on picking up Ribbit King next week. There's also a chance I'll pick up Riddick: Butcher Bay next week.

...I had a lot more written, but it's not worth it. Let's just say I don't leave out a large chunk of reality compared to the large chunk of reality many devs seem to dismiss when they are designing a game. Core systems that are flawed, patches that take forever to roll out, classes that are NEVER finished. These should be criminal acts - when a customer pays for a service, they should be able to expect a complete product.

Somehow the developers have managed to convince the playerbase collective of MMOGs that a game is not going to be ready until 6 months to a year after released and that somehow that's OK. Well, guess what, it's not. And when players stop buying into this half-ass attitude the developers are shopping us then maybe the developers will turn around a finish a goddamn project...I would also be content with a single developer saying, "Sorry, our publishers are assholes, here is the product as is, it will not be ready for 6 months, blame them - not us." But that won't happen, and until then it's time for the players to take a stand.

Me, I plan on picking up Front Mission 4, which is basically Front Mission 3 with better graphics and a new story, and Trackmania, which FINALLY gets a US release in the middle of June, not that EB or Gamestop is aware of its existence.

The former is a rarer type of game so playing a glorified mission/graphics patch isnt so bad when the last game came out around 4-5 years ago.  The latter is a breath of fresh air, combining a racing game with a puzzle game, while having some oldschool game feel to it.  They are different, either a rare breed of game, or a hybrid that manages to feel new.  

Both had demos I enjoyed, and hey, its better than yet another WW2 game.  Right?

Here's a hint:  badgering people to vote with their wallets is never going to work because most of them don't give a damn about your Vision(tm) for the industry and aren't the least bit interested in helping you proactively shape its future.  Sorry.

I read a version of either this rant or the "Devs are the Greed" rant every other day on sites like this one.  I've been waiting for everybody to get a clue for... Jesus, how long has it been now?  Five years?  Longer?... but it hasn't happened yet and I'm not holding my breath anymore.

There are certain people within this community for whom the suggestion that their arbitrary personal standards of quality don't amount to anything significant is tantamount to the suggestion that maybe Jesus liked it in the butt.  Hint:  If you're planning to purposely ignore what you know I mean by "quality" and respond to this with a screed on the obvious-to-anyone-with-a-pulse evils of bugginess or incompleteness, you're one of them and there's no point in arguing with you.

On the other side of the coin are the people (mostly industry folks) who believe that the success of games like EverQuest vindicates the idea that the employment of lackluster LCD development strategies and price gouging is a business model that yields sustainable growth over the long term.  Hint:  Try telling that to a music industry executive who doesn't suffer from The Grand Napster Delusion.

As always, it's the industry that's diseased and needs to wake up, not the consumers.  The consumers may suffer from delusions of grandeur, but when push comes to shove they're too diffuse a group to saddle with the responsibility of policing an industry that, frankly, isn't exactly worth policing.  I'm not about to start wasting my time enforcing subjective game-development standards even if that means I make crappy purchases every now and then.  Bad games don't really kill people and I have a life, thanks.

So here's three things that the gaming industry (especially on the PC end) needs to realize:

1)  Trying to commoditize your products by manipulating (read: stripping down) their aesthetics for mass appeal while not coming down on pricing makes no sense.  It isn't a sustainable way to generate revenue.  It produces the much maligned Everything Is Just Like Everything Else (And Way Too Expensive) syndrome that leads to consumer burnout and apathy.  Likewise, you can only strip out so much of a game's "eccentricity" before you start to negatively impact its overall quality which leads to even more consumer burnout and apathy.  The music industry tried this trick and it didn't work, what makes you think it's going to work for you?

2)  Franchise management.  This is a big killer in the PC world.  Quake, Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft, Doom, Unreal, Half-Life, Ultima and of course, the example to end all examples, Command & Conquer.  Guys, I know that its cheaper to run your franchises into the ground with expansions and sequels than it is to make new games, but you're cannibalizing yourselves here.  Half of the PC shelf space in Best Buy is taken up by those sequels, expansions, and of course the ultra-stupid Platinum Editions, etc. that contain the game and all the add-ons in one nifty package.  You can't possibly think this is a smart way to do business.  Watch Nintendo and learn.

3)  You're selling (essentially) art, not toilet paper, so blindly whoring for the bottom line doesn't always make sense.  This is just #1 taken a step farther (or is it "further?") to say that trying to commoditize your products period is a stupid thing to do.  You've got to allow yourselves to run a little wild and adopt business models that can tolerate failure if you want to have any chance at all of keeping the industry vital.  It would help too if you didn't define success quite so restrictively.  Don't smother your own creativity or you won't survive.  Seriously, it makes sense if you think about it.  Efficacy > Profit over the long-term.  You may not make as much money over, say, the next twelve quarters as a rival milking a hot property for all its worth that's destined for a blowout because it doesn't have anything new in the pipe that it can use to stay viable after the afore-mentioned hot property runs out its life-cycle, but you'll be able to continue making not-as-much-money indefinently.  A winner is you.

And that concludes my bi-monthly contribution to this site.

The best one individual can hope for with the game industry is to get his individual buying habits screwed on straight enough to not buy the new shiney unless it's worth it. It helps being broke.

Trying to change the industry from any sort of outside position isn't going to work; Lum the Mad.net was a singular instance of convergence, just like UO and EQ. It will not happen again, because the industry learned you can placate the bitches by acting like you listen to them, since they likely will continue paying you anyway.

As for:

1) We are in the Commodity Age. All thoughts, qualities and factors of a game or any other piece of work are a commodity to be bought and sold (hence the term Intellectual Property). How exactly has commoditizing the music industry NOT worked for the people who really make money in the music industry?

2) See EA. EA is the one who made money off of the raping of Westwood and Origin, not Westwood or Origin. Nintendo is a fat giant about to die a long-overdue death as a hardware manufacturer. Long-term means nothing when there's always another DICE to acquire.

3) The game industry will take a long time to see itself as an art form, a realization that will be further delayed by 1 and 2 above.

That's like asking how exactly Enron's business model DIDN'T work for Ken Lay (he pocketed millions, after all).  You can't use individual insiders who are in a unique position to make tons of money no matter what happens as proxies for the industries and companies they represent.  The music industry is in trouble.  Its woes are quite well documented, thanks.

The Commodity Age is a cute buzz-phrase that doesn't really mean anything because the model is largely untested in the markets we're talking about here.  It works great for selling stuff like wheat, iron, diapers, paper towels, soft drinks, etc. but whether or not it's going to prove viable in the land of products whose value is driven more by abstract aesthetic appeal than any particular use remains to be seen (especially in IP-land, a world that mightily resists cutting into margins to pump up sales volume; there's a reason that Wally World hasn't been able to knock anything off the prices of software and CDs).  You need more than a decade or two of hyper-consumerism to hash this stuff out.  Incedentally, the fact that this is never discussed is a travesty.



Business 101:  You cannot indefinently create earnings growth through aquisition.  It's a giant red flag when somebody goes on an aquisition binge.  Nobody except Microsoft and a few others have the raw cash on-hand to sustain that model for any reasonable period of time without incurring serious debt and sparking investor panic (both because of the outstanding debt and because earnings growth is going to fall off a cliff when you hit the point at which you can no longer raise the necessary capital to keep buying people until you clear some of that debt and therefore your growth engine gets shut off by your creditors).  There are a thousand other reasons why it doesn't work, but I'm not getting paid to lecture on business principles here.



At least we can generally agree on this, though.

It's fun watching people talk about what should happen without either knowing about, or acknowledging they understand, the business side of things.  Case in point; Trying to commoditize your products by manipulating (read: stripping down) their aesthetics for mass appeal while not coming down on pricing makes no sense.  If you can strip a product of features, which should save development cost (else why do it?), yet sell it for the same amount you otherwise would've sold it for with those same features, you're doing good.  The issue is often put to management in a different way; what does the customer really want?  The idea goes that the customer wants what they pay for.  If they're paying for it, they apparently want it.

Ok, that may not be a bullet proof argument, but the only thing that really matters here is sales.  If you can sell a product and make money, regardless of what some ranters want to cry about, you win.  If they think, based on their experience and research, adding features will not increase revenue over and above expense, they don't get added.  They may be wrong of course, and nothing bad about backseat devs (us) gleefully pointing out their errors, but I'd shy away from global, industry-wide, sweeping statements of "they're all doing it wrong".  

There's nothing unique in this industry; companies are doing everything they can to sell minimums, because minimums cost them less.  Companies don't get rich by selling what "should", pie-in-the-sky fashion, be put on shelves or in catalogues.  They get rich by making on the cheap, and selling with margins - either with high markup for "premium" items, in quantity, or do both "4 teh win!1"  

Of course, customers can all sit around pouting about how they want such and such, and the companies are doing them and the industry wrong.  Reality is still reality though, so being upset about it isn't going to change anything.  You'd have to work with the system, tossing ideas that mesh with the system, to have a hope of that, but that requires having some degree of respect toward the other side of the fence.

EA clears debt easily enough it appears by shutting down the acquisitions, laying off a bunch of people and absorbing the rest into the body politic. Now, whether or not this will continue to work will depend on how long their cash cows (EA Sports lines) keep selling. Lack of creativity has not hurt that line; hell, Madden has made them a mint off of NOT being creative in any way, shape or form beyond the first iteration. And it shows no signs of stopping. It has become a brand in and of itself, no matter what clueless fucktard development house is stuck on it.

As for the music industry, they aren't in trouble, they just like to wave that flag in an attempt to solidify their stranglehold on the distribution channel for music. The Big 5 ain't going anywhere any time soon, no matter how many of their recycled acts fade into obscurity. Will a secondary market be created/grow out of their lack of producing anything worthwhile? Sure, but in the meantime, they will continue to treat creative ventures as commodities that can be bought, sold, mass-produced and trading like pork bellies, just like the game industry, only with half a clue.

OMG how can you say that about Madden?!?! It's teh SEERIOUS foosball!

Take 2 cutting the price of ESPN NFL 2k5 to $20 and the rumor of an early release (2 weeks before Madden is the rumor) should make this an interesting year.

Visual Concepts has really put a ton of cool new stuff in the 2kx franchise this year, so I'll just cry into my beer that much more profusely when the lemmings line up and buy Madden anyway.

Sorry to sidetrack the conversation, please carry on :) I was at least tangential this time!

Really just repeating points made in prior posts, But it's slow in the office. and dammnit, I feel like ranting..

It's always appeared to me that investors in the game industry draw a direct parallel to those in the film Industry. They see a formula or business model that's succesfull and repeat it to death. Like the first succesful disaster movie which spwaned dozens after it. Maybe none succeeded as well as the original but they were profitable and lured the audience into the theater. Or something like Jaws which was a risky venture changed the face of the industry and was a catalyst for a new formula or business model for film.
Main difference in the game industry is that the "consumers" are much more intimate with the "product". Gamers spend way more hours interacting with a game as opposed to the 2 1/2 spent in a theater. So there much less tolerance for "formula" or business models of a prior game's content "shinied up".
A call to arms for the player base to boycott games that are teh suk may not be necessary. I think in the big picture games that are worth a damn will rise to the surface by maintaining sales beyond initial release. I'm all for seeing the market glutted with half baked games. All the faster trends of purchase will become apparent to the business mind.
The animal known as the "Investor" or Business mind is by nature nature pragmatic and not a big risk taker. They wanna be damn sure the big money they put in sees a profit. They sure as hell aren't gonna take any unnecessary risks that my jeopardize that.
I would imagine the question posed when investing in a game is what will make people buy it, or in the case of MMO's what will make them continue to pay monthly. That question doesn't necessarily take into account innovation and new concepts of game play. Why bother with them if a profit can be made without their inclusion.
Analysis and trends in the gaming industry need to prove to investors that what will make people pay is synonomous with innovation and new concepts.
The gaming industry is young and persistant worlds younger. There's a lot of growing pains right now for all parties -investors, developers and players.
I'm cynical as a player for the garbage I'm being fed as "next generation", "next thing". On the other hand I'm optimistc the future will bring fun and innovation for the players , more creative freedom for game makers and wiser investors who understand the game industry has a unique set of rules for profit.

There's a number of MMO's on the horizon all with big promises and alternative views of what a persistant world should be. The player base for MMO's may grow but not enough to keep all these games profitable. People will jump ship from those whose focus was on profit more than what the player community desires.

Well, then, after reading this thread:

When a good part of the customers are fucktard idiots that are too stupid to realize they are harming themselves mentally and physically in many of the current MMOPGs, and a good part of them are underage.

And when most of the industry robs said customers by consistently rolling out shitty broken products after professionally hyping them to a frenzy, giggle in front of their Vision, and refuse to discuss ethics on places like the Muddevlist.

Wouldn`t you guys in the US then call for external regulation of that fucked up market? Or have your tort lawyers give the industry a helping, at least?

I mean, the other pron is over 18, and animal sex is illegal, right?