SimCity is back, gaming is dead, RIP gaming.

[Goreschach]

I feel like this is exactly where the game industry is headed when even an old school adventure game or RPG needs to collect several million dollars to reach its funding goal.

If these people have grown so fat that they can't even remember how to make an old school game for less than ten million then fuck em. Let them all go out of business so they can be replaced by people who aren't completely useless.

[tgr]

While I think the graphical polish of today's games is awesome, I've absolutely no problems with going back a few years in quality just to keep costs at a sane level. I'd much rather have a good story or great game mechanics, than great graphics with a shit story/mechanics and/or shit added to it to "protect the investment" because it's a fucktonne of money on the line.

[Sky]

This is why I'm backing several of the game KS projects. If Obsidian, InXile and Harebrained Schemes can pull off their respective projects, it throws a nice 'indie' wrench into the works.

Sure, you'll get the Romeros and Garriot trying to get in on the easy money and mucking things up.

But it might just be a way for small projects with a tight design and good accounting to flourish, and that's good for gamers.

[Mrbloodworth]

Last I looked, which admittedly was in a let's play tropico 4 deal, there weren't that many "people" in your island, so there's not that much to simulate there.

Yeah but its more then enough to feel right. And yes, Tropico does support way more than just 100. Here is one example:

A Real City with 1000+

5000 Pop Shack island

[tgr]

Last I looked, which admittedly was in a let's play tropico 4 deal, there weren't that many "people" in your island, so there's not that much to simulate there.

Yeah but its more then enough to feel right. And yes, Tropico does support way more than just 100. Here is one example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQmhGCNR_fI

1500? Better, and it does allow you to feel like there are tons of people there, without being that much to simulate.

Actually, who here knows of the game Sim Tower? That's the first game I know of where I could actually name some guy and see where he went, what he did, thought etc. And that was in 1994.

[Yoru]

Actually, who here knows of the game Sim Tower? That's the first game I know of where I could actually name some guy and see where he went, what he did, thought etc. And that was in 1994.

I played the fuck out of SimTower back in the day. It started to crawl along after 30-40 stories though, and a full 100-story tower was nigh-unplayable back then, but it did function.

There were apparently sequels by the guy who originally wrote it (the Yoot Tower series) but I never got around to trying them.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yeah, check my edit for 5k.

Anyway, even at 100. It feels right, IMO. It feels simulated, large and gives you plenty to manage. Going to lol when they add multiplayer. As this even has combat.

[Modern Angel]

I don't share your optimism.

I feel like Cassandra on this. The industry is fucked. It is unfuckable, to boot. There's not going to be an indie revolution to save it. There are still some awesome people out there but they can't turn the tide.

And the problem's not them (I mean, it is, but it's not), it's gamers. The new SimCity is a case study in just how broken gaming culture is. Just scads and scads of my friends are still flailing away on this game, insisting that it's great "when you can connect". Which, no, it doesn't sound like it is, but what sort of broken do you have to be to say that this thing which doesn't ever work is fine when it works? That's just the strangest thing to say.

By all rights, SimCity should be a final straw. I'm still seeing horrible nerds shelling out for it. I know a guy who works in the industry who posted on Facebooko the other day that he knew it was broken but he was going to buy it anyway because he couldn't help it. What?

So, on the one hand, the state of the industry is godawful. It's filled with crooks, shysters, and hucksters. It's become the embodiment of the sort of hype-driven, contentless capitalism which gives me hives. It's wildly unregulated, it fucks over its employees, and is just generally terrible.

On the other, I'm out of sympathy for gamers and gamer culture. They buy this shit. When it doesn't work, they get all het up in the most disingenuous manner possible, sperging all over the internet only to reboot and do it all over again the next time. They bitch about online DRM and then buy the next game with online DRM to come out.

The best possible thing to happen is for the whole thing to completely collapse. Completely. Salt the earth. It's not going to happen. A big enough collapse to purge it in that fashion doesn't exist.

[tgr]

I don't think they (the indie developers) need to "save" the gaming industry, at this point I'm fine with the gaming industry eating its own young for the most part. As long as the guys who are making the games I'm looking at (I've got one game I've been keeping an eye on for a short while now, I'll probably put up a thread about it soon) are able to make these games, I couldn't give less of a flying fuck what EA etc do.

[Modern Angel]

I couldn't give less of a flying fuck what EA etc do.

I'd generally agree, but the problem is that they don't exist in a vacuum. As Jeff Kelly alluded to, what the big boys do drives up the costs for everyone. Then there's the Hollywood waiter effect I described last week: the industry generally burns people out by their 30s, they're replaced by EB managers waiting to live the dream for a third less salary, and wages are depressed across the board. Which doesn't directly affect what, say, Valve is willing to pay, but it does affect who's willing to get into it in the first place.

Maybe perversely, I'm bugged way more by all this in traditional games. MMOs seem like a different beast, to me, a more honest one. I think you'd have to be fucking bananas to make an MMO right now, but they've always been more or less honest about their monetization schemes and they're maybe the last bastion of dreamers in the industry, even if the dreams invariably fall flat. I'll take a Darkfall which I'll never play over Generic Platformer Sequel Seven any day.

[tazelbain]

This is good.  The mega-factory game producers are going have to fail before the industry moves on. Sooner the better.

[tgr]

The only reason I can see "what the big boys do" driving up the costs for everyone, is gamers absolutely demands awesome graphics and polish, instead of wouldn't mind it, and will never, ever back down on that demand. And I'll agree, this is a problem, but I don't see it as an industry-ending problem. There'll always be that one guy/small developer corp who just does their own thing and caters to a niche which is large enough that they can make a living off of it.

[Mrbloodworth]

This is good.  The mega-factory game producers are going have to fail before the industry moves on. Sooner the better.

Didn't happen with Hollywood during the 20's and on when it was all about producers. I suspect it won't here.

[tazelbain]

Hollywood was never producing movies that failed to function on opening day.

[Mrbloodworth]

Hollywood was never producing movies that failed to function on opening day.

wut.

I guess you mean in the literal "Is it showing on screen" way, not the "Formulaic for nearly 2 decades" way. I'm Talking about in the 20's Film, and how its made became completely producer focused, MgM, Wb, ETC.. Not much has really changed.

The other end is the "Art film house" way. Comparable to Indies now, but indies have nostalgia to lean on, instead of being an important piece of art.

[Merusk]

The way I see it is the problem with gaming is the same problem with TV, Movies and all mass-market products.

There's always going to be enough people to shell out and shill out for the bottom of the barrel and accept garbage as great.   Gaming is mainstream culture now, this is how things are going to be until there's a crash, which isn't going to happen until there's a new content paradigm.

These "factory game producers" are the ABC, CBS and NBC of the gaming world.  They'll find revenue streams, push out the mediocre and only need to be able to capture enough to keep themselves where they are. Right on top.  

Games aren't getting cheaper even if you "go a few years back."  They're still building models on modern equipment using artists, animators, mo-cap and modelers.  They aren't just going, "Ok Ted, you're doing all this for all characters in the game."  The coder isn't wearing 4-5 hats.  We're not seeing a return to sprites.  The one man team will never create a game for mass consumption without it being a labor of love vs. a need for employment.

[Sky]

On the other, I'm out of sympathy for gamers and gamer culture. They buy this shit.

Go read http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/comments

As far as salted earth, meh. I still manage to find enough good games to play every year. And thanks to Steam, I'm able to check out some of these "AAA" games I might otherwise skip. In fact, I love the stupid mainstream gamer out there lapping up shit at $60 a pop. It allows me to spend $60 and buy a half dozen games on Steam.

[HaemishM]

I began implementing the "don't buy anything at release" procedure back around 2008/9, and that's just been reinforced time and time again as a good procedure to have. It's saved me tons of money.

Here's the thing though. It ain't always fucked up on release. I actually pre-ordered X-Com and played it on release day with no problems. Sure there were bugs and some design issues with the game but overall, it was a fantastic game that was worth the money. (Note, Firaxis hasn't always been clean - see the Civ 5 thread). So it isn't just a matter of release day launches being fucked because some developers/publishers can do it. It just takes more commitment than EA gives a shit to put into it because EA sucks monkey balls and drives every one of their dev houses into the ground. I'm dreading the day they finally kill DICE - they are trying very hard to do just that right now.

[WayAbvPar]

That is the beauty of single player games- you can pick them up whenever (and quite often at a discount).  The only games I would even dream of playing on opening day are games I plan to play multiplayer; don't want to fall behind my playmates.

[tgr]

Here's the thing though. It ain't always fucked up on release. I actually pre-ordered X-Com and played it on release day with no problems.

Yes, because it didn't have release day problems on this magnitude because they didn't do online activation (beyond steam) or always-on crap. I do make some exceptions to that rule when I'm fairly certain it won't have drm beyond steam, but on the whole I've stopped buying games pre- or at launch now because you generally never know when a publisher wants to start using drm or makes an absolute shit game.

So it isn't just a matter of release day launches being fucked because some developers/publishers can do it. It just takes more commitment than EA gives a shit to put into it because EA sucks monkey balls and drives every one of their dev houses into the ground. I'm dreading the day they finally kill DICE - they are trying very hard to do just that right now.

The absolute shit singleplayer they put into BF3 made me write off them as a company to keep an eye on. vOv

[Sir T]

I'll just throw a spanner in the works on the "Graphics don't matter" talk here because I saw all the hatred on Oblivion for having "ugly faces." I didn't care about the faces on Oblivion, they did the job just fine and the gameplay was great. People on F13 are just as vulnerable to the "SHINEY" as anyone else. Even Me. For example, I simply couldn't play Morrowind until last year when I discovered the better graphics mods.

But the fact is that if someone brings out something unigue and fun people simply will not buy it.

Examples from my own collection? Sacrifice, Psychonaughts, Battlezone (the first game, the sequel was not good at all) Brilliant unique games every one of them that no-one bought. And then people bitch that the industry is catering to the bottom line all the time. Tabula Rasa as well, people whined that they wanted a sci fi MMO but when one comes out people bitched that it wasn't like WOW and left in droves, and on this forum for over a year talked about how crap it was on launch day and sneered because of Garriot. Well I found it one of the most fun MMOs I've played. And it was something unique, and people bitched about it for that reason.

So we are where we are because people are not willing to support good and unique with cold hard cash.

[Sjofn]

Also, several of those make sense if you look at it through the lens of EA's approach to The Sims.  Release a basic product and then an x-pac that adds features every 6 months.  Bets that one of those features will be "larger city size!" along with a "Roadways and Mass Transit!" x-pac.

"The Sims approach" would not be shit like larger city size. The Sims approach would be <entirely new gameplay thing> and <butt ton of new buildings>. Shit like "larger city size" is usually patched in for free (they gave us the world editor for free, for example).

[tgr]

I didn't find the graphics in oblivion or morrowind to be terrible, particularly not to the point of morrowind being unplayable.

What's next, KOTOR's unplayable due to the graphics, too?

[Sjofn]

KOtOR's graphics hold up surprisingly well, but you can't honestly believe most people wouldn't be all BAWWWWW CARTOONY or whatever if it came out looking like that today. Because they do that. Every. Fucking. Time.


PS: Morrowind's graphics made my eyes bleed when it came out, and it has NOT aged well.

[cironian]

What's next, KOTOR's unplayable due to the graphics, too?

Nah, that one is unplayable because the engine is an incompatible piece of ass that's near impossible to run on modern systems. (Still hoping for a proper GoG release of KOTOR2 so I can finally play through that one)

[naum]

While the game was in beta, I got shouted down in Lum's forum space for stating that despite the old SC2K or SimCity3K (IIRC) sopping up more sleepless nights than I ever spent on C&C, AoE, EQ, etc.… that peering into video demos, beta AAR, forum comments, game marketing rhetoric, etc.… , SC5 had no appeal whatsoever to me. Sure, there are some nifty elements and renovated eye candy, but it struck me as an incomplete half-baked SimTown, not SimCity. And SimTown is a wonderful conception, but not in the form of a half-baked SimCity.

But you know what. Lots of people threw their coin at EA and even with the server snafus (and ridiculousness of "always on" logging in for a single player "sandbox" game) and bug riddled state, probably enough that it will still be one of the year's top grossing games.

[Ingmar]

I feel like Cassandra on this. The industry is fucked. It is unfuckable, to boot. There's not going to be an indie revolution to save it. There are still some awesome people out there but they can't turn the tide.

And the problem's not them (I mean, it is, but it's not), it's gamers. The new SimCity is a case study in just how broken gaming culture is. Just scads and scads of my friends are still flailing away on this game, insisting that it's great "when you can connect". Which, no, it doesn't sound like it is, but what sort of broken do you have to be to say that this thing which doesn't ever work is fine when it works? That's just the strangest thing to say.

By all rights, SimCity should be a final straw. I'm still seeing horrible nerds shelling out for it. I know a guy who works in the industry who posted on Facebooko the other day that he knew it was broken but he was going to buy it anyway because he couldn't help it. What?

So, on the one hand, the state of the industry is godawful. It's filled with crooks, shysters, and hucksters. It's become the embodiment of the sort of hype-driven, contentless capitalism which gives me hives. It's wildly unregulated, it fucks over its employees, and is just generally terrible.

On the other, I'm out of sympathy for gamers and gamer culture. They buy this shit. When it doesn't work, they get all het up in the most disingenuous manner possible, sperging all over the internet only to reboot and do it all over again the next time. They bitch about online DRM and then buy the next game with online DRM to come out.

The best possible thing to happen is for the whole thing to completely collapse. Completely. Salt the earth. It's not going to happen. A big enough collapse to purge it in that fashion doesn't exist.

The difference is, Cassandra was right.  

There are enough fun games installed on my computer that I have a hard time deciding what to play every night when I sit down in front of it. I don't think the industry is nearly as awful as you seem to believe.

Yes, this is the most colossal fuckup in ages. It isn't more than that, though.

[Outlawedprod]

It's not just sites of questionable reputation like Polygon.

Polygon getting called out.

[K9]

I didn't find the graphics in oblivion or morrowind to be terrible, particularly not to the point of morrowind being unplayable.

What's next, KOTOR's unplayable due to the graphics, too?

I never played KOTOR in its heyday and picked it up from a Steam Sale a year ago or so. I didn't manage to get into it because the interface and initial gameplay felt really clunky and unattractive to the point that they were a detriment. I wanted to get into it, but it just wasn't that engaging at the start.

[tgr]

KOtOR's graphics hold up surprisingly well, but you can't honestly believe most people wouldn't be all BAWWWWW CARTOONY or whatever if it came out looking like that today. Because they do that. Every. Fucking. Time.

PS: Morrowind's graphics made my eyes bleed when it came out, and it has NOT aged well.

Oh no, I do expect that most people would be bitching up a right old storm about it if they were forced to play it, because they're shallow as fuck. I don't get it though, and I don't get the morrowind bitching, because from my POV it does the job well enough that I understand what's going on, and most importantly it's quick, especially on today's hardware. vOv

[Ingmar]

I didn't find the graphics in oblivion or morrowind to be terrible, particularly not to the point of morrowind being unplayable.

What's next, KOTOR's unplayable due to the graphics, too?

I never played KOTOR in its heyday and picked it up from a Steam Sale a year ago or so. I didn't manage to get into it because the interface and initial gameplay felt really clunky and unattractive to the point that they were a detriment. I wanted to get into it, but it just wasn't that engaging at the start.

The biggest flaw with the game is probably the slow tutorial/opening stuff, yes. If you get through that first hour or two it really is a wonderful game.

[palmer_eldritch]

"The Sims approach" would not be shit like larger city size. The Sims approach would be <entirely new gameplay thing> and <butt ton of new buildings>. Shit like "larger city size" is usually patched in for free (they gave us the world editor for free, for example).

Yes, there's plenty of scope to add in new specialisms, for example. You can make a casino town now, or an industrial town or a culture town. I can easily imagine them adding in expansion packs or DLCs for movie town (ie Hollywood) or theme park town, let's say.

[Sir T]

Gameplay over graphics yo.

[Modern Angel]

Yes, this is the most colossal fuckup in ages. It isn't more than that, though.

On the contrary, I think it's a telling glimpse into the psyche of the gaming community. After the dust settles, if they'll put up with this, they'll put up with just about anything. And I think, despite the wailing, they'll put up with it. Having the Thing trumps being snookered.

[Sky]

You say they like you're not a gamer. It's "we" and "we" are cohesive as any disparate group. "They" put up with Justin Biever and pop country. But that also allows folks like Stephane Wrembel and Sharon Jones to make a good living putting out timeless classics while the mainstream fan eats what they're forcefed by the corporations.