Useless gaming news & chatter

[Rendakor]

I did it for the FFXIV beta, so I just attributed any sucking to FFXIV and assumed the controller had worked fine.

[Mosesandstick]

Damn, my 360 just red ringed after a system update.

[Malakili]

Not really sure where to put this so maybe someone will find it here:  Fallout 1 and 2 are on sale at gog.com for 3 bucks a piece right now.

[Quinton]

Not really sure where to put this so maybe someone will find it here:  Fallout 1 and 2 are on sale at gog.com for 3 bucks a piece right now.

Oooh.  I've never played the original fallout. For $3, how can I not?

[Yegolev]

It's worth more than that, for sure.

[Quinton]

Fallout Tip: If the game is slow/laggy, try moving or deleting ddraw.dll from the game folder.  Made an enormous difference on my win7 box.

[Malakili]

Incidentally, Fallout 2 doesn't feel "old" like a lot of games I go back and play, holds up surprisingly well.  Enjoying that.

[rk47]

If you need more reason not to buy the latest XCOM FPS iteration by these degenerates, here's why:

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/interview-christophhartmann-2kgames/082216

He explains: “The ‘90s generation of gamers all love Xcom and we own the IP, so we thought OK, what do we do with it? Every studio we had wanted to do it and each one had its own spin on it. But the problem was that turn-based strategy games were no longer the hottest thing on planet Earth. But this is not just a commercial thing – strategy games are just not contemporary.

“I use the example of music artists. Look at someone old school like Ray Charles, if he would make music today it would still be Ray Charles but he would probably do it more in the style of Kanye West. Bringing Ray Charles back is all fine and good, but it just needs to move on, although the core essence will still be the same."

Urge. To kill. Rising.

[jakonovski]

Game designers are shallow as fuck. I honestly hadn't considered that as an explanation, but it fits so many things.

[Kail]

He explains: “The ‘90s generation of gamers all love Xcom and we own the IP, so we thought OK, what do we do with it? Every studio we had wanted to do it and each one had its own spin on it. But the problem was that turn-based strategy games were no longer the hottest thing on planet Earth. But this is not just a commercial thing – strategy games are just not contemporary.

“I use the example of-.

[rk47]

Are you thinking of Divinity 2?

No, it's the game with nipple tipped sorceress showing up to save the hero at the start right? With orcs cast helping him out?
I fought all the way till the end, just desperate to end the game...but the final boss turret fight turned me off. :(

[tgr]

That's an ... interesting take on "we're going to take an IP, rip all of it out, probably make a shit shooter in the normal shooter style of 2011, and swim in money because people are dumb".

[Paelos]

The similarities between game development and real estate development seem eerily similar. A niche gets popular, everyone starts to build in it, even when the market is starting to get saturated. Then people with no business building in it start building in it, and eventually the demand tanks and everyone's left holding their dicks.

[Malakili]

Well Civ is certainly popular, but he is kind of right.  This forum is full of old gamers.  Turn based strategy isn't going to bring home the bacon, especially not if you intend to release on consoles.  Granted, I don't expect much from the game, but from a business standpoint I can't say anything he said is particularly wrong.  People want to shoot shit in the face, or stab stuff in the face, and they want to do it in real time and literally any game where you don't do some variation on that theme isn't going to be particularly popular.  Please don't bring up facebook games, its a different story.  Name a turn based game that has even released in the last decade that was popular that wasn't a Civ game?  I'm sure there are some, and certainly there are successful niche games out there, but I'm talking big budget AAA type titles.

Edit: I wrote off the new game the moment I heard it was going to be a shooter, so I'm well over the rage part, which might be influencing this.

[Sky]

Chicken, egg. People aren't putting money into TBS, not a lot of high quality TBS coming out.

There's room for success in all genres, but obviously if you're some pointy-headed moron who only aims to outsell everyone on earth to stoke your ego as an amazing suittard and receive the mighty accolades of the shareholders, then yes, you're making a shooter.

What really surprises me is that it's not a facebook game at this point. Shooters are so aughts.

[Paelos]

My point is that the FPS market is dominated by a few franchises, but otherwise it's getting oversaturated to the point that it's waning as a viable development option.

In the PC Market the best selling games (not counting sequals) are dominated by strategy and role-playing. On the consoles, they are FPS, racing, and sports.

However, even though there was an increase in spending in Q1 of 2011 on video games, FPS games are not taking the top spots. They won't be the it thing for much longer when consumers get tired of the same derivative crap. There will be loyalty to the franchises they know and love (CoD, Halo, etc.) but new adopters shouldn't try to be hitting that market. They need to be thinking ahead, and a good way is to see if they can make the crossover strategy game.

[KallDrexx]

Game developers (for the most part) aren't business people.  They don't strategically think ahead like that.

[Paelos]

Game developers (for the most part) aren't business people.  They don't strategically think ahead like that.

TBH, only the people that are most successful at what they do think strategically ahead. The rest try to cash in on proven success. Innovation is rare; homogonization is the norm.

[Malakili]

In the PC Market the best selling games (not counting sequals) are dominated by strategy and role-playing. On the consoles, they are FPS, racing, and sports.

Is that true though?  I don't know how it relates to overall sales, but in the top 10 of played Steam games 7 are shooters.  The others being Civ 5 (Strategy), Terraria (RPG? I don't really know how to define it), and Football Manager 2011 which I guess is a sim?

I guess my point is, if you are going to pitch reviving the XCOM series, I don't really feel like TBS is going to seem like the first option.  Even something which got across the board great reviews like Frozen Synapse isn't even on the top 100 on Steam right now.

[Sky]

And my point is if you gauge your business success by whether or not you dominate the sales charts, you're a fucking moron.

While that's certainly nice, what happened to making a good profit on a solid game?

[Paelos]

Is that true though?  I don't know how it relates to overall sales, but in the top 10 of played Steam games 7 are shooters.  The others being Civ 5 (Strategy), Terraria (RPG? I don't really know how to define it), and Football Manager 2011 which I guess is a sim?

I guess my point is, if you are going to pitch reviving the XCOM series, I don't really feel like TBS is going to seem like the first option.  Even something which got across the board great reviews like Frozen Synapse isn't even on the top 100 on Steam right now.

I was referring to historically and current. Sims games, Civ games, WoW, Diablo, the Tycoon franchise, Half-Life, Doom series, Command and Conquer series, Age of Empires, Anno, Crysis, Counterstrike, Baldur's Gate.

Those are the types of games that sold the most on the PC.

[Malakili]

And my point is if you gauge your business success by whether or not you dominate the sales charts, you're a fucking moron.

While that's certainly nice, what happened to making a good profit on a solid game?

It still happens, Paradox comes to mind for example.  In a world where quarterly profits are all that matter (video games aren't at all unique in this regard), that doesn't sound appealing to someone funding your development though.

[HaemishM]

That Ray Charles bit makes me want to stab that guy in the fucking face.

Look, you fucking assclown. Ray Charles made music til the day he died, and it sold, you fucking monkey. He wouldn't make music like Kayne Fucking West, you ignorant crotchpheasant, because Ray Charles had fucking talent and Kayne is a media spinning self-promoting whore with one decent song. If what you make isn't a shit sandwich (like all the other attempts to make an X-Com game that was nothing like the original), people will likely buy it. You essentially just said you didn't want to make a TBS game because it's not "the new hotness." Enjoy your mediocre sales.

[Amaron]

 Turn based strategy isn't going to bring home the bacon, especially not if you intend to release on consoles.  

So don't release it to consoles.   Release it to handhelds/PCs where turn based = making bank.   The real problem here is they think the IP is worth something separated from it's gameplay.   Nobody is going to go into this FPS thinking they are going to get a nostalgia kick.   At least when they fucked over Fallout it still had appeal due to the story/lore/whatever.

[Rasix]

This isn't the thread for this conversation.  We have a thread specifically titled for this kind of discussion.  

BAD, RK, BAD.  

edit: split and merged. 

[Malakili]

Turn based strategy isn't going to bring home the bacon, especially not if you intend to release on consoles.  

So don't release it to consoles.   Release it to handhelds/PCs where turn based = making bank.   The real problem here is they think the IP is worth something separated from it's gameplay.   Nobody is going to go into this FPS thinking they are going to get a nostalgia kick.   At least when they fucked over Fallout it still had appeal due to the story/lore/whatever.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all.   I WANT this to be a TBS game.  I also understand why it isn't is all I'm saying.  I think Fallout 3 actually turned out OK, and New Vegas (which I'm just now getting to) seems a reasonable successor.  A big difference is that Fallout basically got switched over to a proven model (Bethesda's RPGs ala Morrowind and Oblivion).  I think you are on point about the IP though.  Anyone they are going to get by switching over to a shooter probably isn't going to know a damn thing about the IP anyway.  You probably could have said the same thing about Fallout, but Bethesda was a big enough name at the time to make up for it in terms of marketing, and had a built in RPG fanbase that was going to probably buy the game.  I don't know that 2k can really say the same thing.

[rk47]

Fuck turn based. You're so right Hartman, even idiots agree with you on how to remake a classic turn based IP is to make it Real Time.

Lads & Gents...I present you...JAGGED ALLIANCE 2 Reloaded.

Not sure if this video has been posted yet, but it reveals some more info about the map sectors, the merc recruitment system, and the UI in general. Oh yeah, and the merc portraits are every bit as horrible as expected.



The above is SO MUCH better than the original isn't it?

 

[Malakili]

Usually I don't think this kind of thing is particularly interesting, but this was:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-crucial-lessons-learned-by-watching-kids-play-video-games/

In short, those 5 things are:

1) They Don't Tolerate Losing, So Modern Games Just Let Them Win

2) They Have No Tolerance for "Grinding"

3)If They Want to Read, They'll Buy a Fucking Book

4) They Press "Y" to Skip, as Fast as They Can

5) Don't Like it? Break It.


I'm not really sure how much I agree with everything he notices/says in the article, but I wonder if this is a generational thing or a hardcore/casual thing.   The ultimate conclusion he comes to is that the kids just enjoy the entertainment and anything they view as not immediately entertaining isn't worth their time.  The bigger question is whether or not this is a good thing.

[Paelos]

A big problem I have in games is that by the end it's so ridiculously easy, but at the beginning it was difficult. I think you should have the reverse. The game should throw bigger obstacles at you as you go, not just the same thing where you now overpower the hell out of it.

And I don't mean scaling here, I mean a static mountain to climb.

[Amaron]

Those bullet points are just labeled in a way to be controversial.   You could easily label it with his own arguments as:

1)  Old school punch you in the nuts difficulty is not popular and probably wasn't ever popular.
2)  Kids not dumb enough to grind stupid shit like we did.
3)  Nobody reads WoW style quest text.   Voice acting is expected.
4)  Some people still don't like cutscenes in their action games.
5)  I've no clue wtf he's trying to say here.  Mods are cool?

It's not very alarming to me.   Games being too easy is more of a design problem I think.   Plenty of people would put up with difficulty if it was less punch you in the nuts and more "making 3 point shots is hard".   People bitch about cutscenes and story all the time but it's not going anywhere.

There are far more alarming things going on in the industry than the above.

[Paelos]

I don't disagree with getting rid of nut-punching stuff, or reading text, or stupid grinds. Having gone back and tried to play games like Gothic and you go, wow that's messed up.

[cironian]

It simply comes down to the huge development budgets the big publishers demand to be invested into presentation (it's not like the game mechanics themselves are getting more expensive). The "few" TBS fans aren't really enough to justify that kind of money, so anyone rich enough to buy a classic brand will always turn it into something unrecognizable.

All the big players getting out of the TBS pool is exactly why I'm currently building my own little thing there. I figure without the big publishers cornering the market, a (mostly) one-man project in the genre might earn me enough to pay my bills. Let's see how that bright idea works out.

[Paelos]

Just build Alpha Centauri 2. Anyone.

[Ingmar]

Just build Alpha Centauri 2. Anyone.

No matter how wrong you might be about stuff in the baseball thread, we can always share this.

[Amaron]

Just build Alpha Centauri 2. Anyone.

This x1000.   There's tons of big seller game types that have been flat out abandoned.   Instead we see and endless progression of rythym games, shooter acid trips, and punt a gnome games.   Mother fuckers need to get off the drugs and go copy Silent Storm, Alpha Centauri, XCOM, Master of Orion, etc.   Don't even try to bring in some whacky ass shit.  Just carbon copy that shit and fix the hotkeys/interface.