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Author Topic: SPAWN MORE TORTILLA CHIPS  (Read 57995 times)
Azuredream
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Reply #35 on: March 29, 2013, 09:49:05 AM

NEPHALEM
NEPHALEM
NEPHALEM

Intriguing. Tell me more.

The Lord of the Land approaches..
pxib
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Reply #36 on: March 29, 2013, 10:15:24 AM

I imagine the same problems happen during the production of Hollywood blockbusters. Some jackass producer or director is always sitting there while the latest dailies produce puzzled grimaces saying: "We can redub that, we can delete this scene, we can edit that character out, and besides... we've still got a lot of material in post. It'll all make more sense and flow better once that's on the screen." No, you probably can't. You have probably fucked it up beyond recognition. Things like narrative and tone depend on an overall audience impression of the entire film. If the mismatched work you've already produced is just a bad line, a bad scene, a stupid prop, or a crappy background then you might be able to fix it with movie magic. No? It's the flow of the plot? You're doomed.

Like I implied before, gameplay works the same way. If it's not fun as a whole, your players are going to be varying degrees of upset. Like with stories there are familiar frameworks that tend to create positive results, and players aren't too upset if you reuse them judiciously. Like with stories, if you try to just add features without considering the whole you will get yourself in trouble. BUT, when you get yourself in trouble with gameplay, portions of the game are rendered unplayable. Either they're too dull to enjoy, too challenging to complete, or it becomes too easy crash the game by trying some unanticipated combination. The game is obviously broken.

Applying the lessons you have learned perfecting gameplay to story will still kill the story. You can test gameplay piece by piece because "This part was fun" is still something players will remember the same way testers do. "This particular piece of foreshadowing was great" and "this character's motivation was strong at this moment" are not going to overwhelm the sense that at the end of the game the whole mess didn't hang together. We love listening to one event after the other, but every narrative contains an implicit promise that the story we are being told is worth telling. It's why shaggy dog stories and overlong jokes exist: Surely, the audience thinks, all these details and oddities will be explained at the end. Surely this person I like to consider my friend wouldn't just have been talking for fifteen minutes solely in order to piss me off. Maybe this suddenly gets good.

Nope.

I'm not just arguing that storytelling is hard. Anybody can make nachos, and most can even make nachos worth eating. The trouble is that a story developed via accretion by a committee will tend to be more cliched and make less sense than one developed by a single writer and left sacrosanct. For the same reasons, only the whole story can be focus group tested because the individual parts of that story are fundamentally less important than the whole. The fact that testers don't understand exactly what's going on partway through can be -- in many cases should be -- part of the grand design. The fact that the committee has screwed up the whole story by futzing with a piece of it isn't immediately obvious because the way a story feels is something you realize when the story is done. At which point the people who spent tens of millions of dollars getting the game produced aren't going to want to hear, "Nope. Shit sucks. Gotta scrap the whole thing and start over."

if at last you do succeed, never try again
Sir T
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Reply #37 on: March 29, 2013, 03:22:13 PM

Nachos made by comittee and a focus groups




Hic sunt dracones.
UnSub
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Reply #38 on: March 31, 2013, 11:22:07 PM

The trouble is that a story developed via accretion by a committee will tend to be more cliched and make less sense than one developed by a single writer and left sacrosanct.

On that point, who are the actual writers of HotS? A short googling only turns up Chris Metzen.

Sidenote: I went into a cheap food place on the weekend and they had nachos on the menu and all I then wanted was nachos so I ordered the nachos and they were ordinary. Nacho sales worldwide have exploded thanks to Samprimary.


Simond
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Reply #39 on: April 01, 2013, 09:03:00 AM

Anyone else find it funny that "Blizzard has unoriginal, poorly-written scripts" makes it to the frontpage while Bioware shitting the bed on three separate, consecutive occasions goes by with nary a whisper?

"You're really a good person, aren't you? So, there's no path for you to take here. Go home. This isn't a place for someone like you."
Rendakor
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Reply #40 on: April 01, 2013, 09:15:12 AM

That just shows that Blizzard has more (angry, former) fanbois than Bioware.

"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
schild
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Reply #41 on: April 01, 2013, 09:17:42 AM

Whoa whoa whoa.

Bioware isn't Bioware anymore. Working up hate for them would require increasing the already seething disgust everyone has with EA. Hating EA is just a big 'ol waste of time at this point. By proxy, the same goes for Bioware. As such, why would we write about Bioware? That entire corporation is officially no the "any news is good news" plan since they're so crap.

Edit: I'm aware Blizzard is part of Activision, but they've still managed to operate mostly independently compared to say, Infinity Ward. Also, Activision isn't trying to compete with Steam in a fight they'll never ever be able to win. Whereas EA has both the hubris and stupidity to jump into an arena they don't even understand.
Simond
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Reply #42 on: April 01, 2013, 09:38:40 AM

Does that mean I'm allowed to post in Bioware threads again?

"You're really a good person, aren't you? So, there's no path for you to take here. Go home. This isn't a place for someone like you."
Rasix
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Reply #43 on: April 01, 2013, 09:44:17 AM

Does that mean I'm allowed to post in Bioware threads again?




-Rasix
Merusk
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Reply #44 on: April 01, 2013, 09:57:19 AM

Oh come-on the debate between Simond and the Anti-Simond of our new poster, Nayr, would be good for a laugh until you had to ban them both.

The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
Paelos
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Error 404: Title not found.


Reply #45 on: April 01, 2013, 10:52:56 AM

Save time, ban them both now.  awesome, for real

CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
Samprimary
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Reply #46 on: April 01, 2013, 12:37:59 PM

Would this like, be a potential energy source like akin to matter-antimatter reactions

like, if I write a future sci-fi world can F13 be the name of the world's source of cheap and plentiful energy?
calapine
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Reply #47 on: April 01, 2013, 02:36:19 PM

To go back to the topic at hand, I think in Blizzards case it's really just Metzen.

After all the stories aren't as big to need an entire team to do it. I have no idea on how game production works, but can it be that Metzen sits in his office, just following is own dreams/ideas and what he writes goes into production straight away? I don't think he has an editor or even someone who'd face up to him and say 'That entire storyline is crap to the core'.

Reminds me a bit of the Plinket Star Wars Reviews, that have outtakes of Lucas rambling unchecked with a bunch of scared underlings standing by and nodding wisely.

'And again, it's like poetry, it's sort of, they rhyme. Every stanza kind of rhymes with the last one.'

And we know where that lead us... Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
Paelos
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Error 404: Title not found.


Reply #48 on: April 01, 2013, 02:51:20 PM

I think for the most part they let Metzen be Metzen because they determined in the past that storylines have next to no effect on their sales. Plus nobody can follow his nonsense.

We'll see how Heart of the Swarm sells in regards to conversions from the original game. It posted good 2 day numbers, but that's still only 20-25% of users who bought the original. If it doesn't get a 50% adoption rate, I think you can blame the bad press about the storylines.

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Fordel
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Reply #49 on: April 02, 2013, 02:00:48 AM

I think I said this already in another thread, but Metzen is drinking buddies with whoever runs Blizzard.

Blizzard needed some lolore for their first game or two and their buddy Metzen is a "good enough" artist and isn't afraid of writing out his fanfictions for everyone to read and will do it for a case of beer.




and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
WayAbvPar
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Reply #50 on: April 02, 2013, 12:26:04 PM

Does that mean I'm allowed to post in Bioware threads again?





Goddamn it...stuck on a conference call and this made me laugh out loud. Thankfully I managed to mute myself before it got too loud and interrupt-y  awesome, for real

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Samprimary
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Reply #51 on: April 05, 2013, 12:05:49 AM

I tried to make a comic that started with kerrig ..

no, i can't do it, i can't spoil it. I gotta just man up and get me a computer with photoshop and a mouse and do this.
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Reply #52 on: April 05, 2013, 07:05:27 AM

Polygon has an article up about what HOTS lead writer Brian Kindregan has to say about cinematics:

Quote
Cinematics help pull players into a story, bringing players "down to eye-level" and connecting them to event in the in-game world, according to Brian Kindregan, lead writer on StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm and co-writer for Wings of Liberty.

Yegolev
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Reply #53 on: April 05, 2013, 07:56:23 AM

I'm probably the only person on this board that doesn't want to be pulled out of my gameplay to watch a clip of a shitty TV show.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
apocrypha
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Reply #54 on: April 05, 2013, 08:38:24 AM

I'm probably the only person on this board that doesn't want to be pulled out of my gameplay to watch a clip of a shitty TV show.

Really, really not the only person who feels that. I'm currently playing Borderlands 2 DLC since I got gifted a season pass, and the unskippable cutscenes annoy the everliving shitty fuck out of me.

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.
Rendakor
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Reply #55 on: April 05, 2013, 09:13:46 AM

I'm probably the only person on this board that doesn't want to be pulled out of my gameplay to watch a clip of a shitty TV show.
It's not just you. If I wanted to watch stupid cutscenes all day I would have finished Metal Gear Rising.

"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
Rasix
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Reply #56 on: April 05, 2013, 09:35:09 AM

I'm probably the only person on this board that doesn't want to be pulled out of my gameplay to watch a clip of a shitty TV show.

Eh, that actually seems to be the prevailing sentiment around here.  I like a good cut scene, but it's hard to argue that they haven't become a bit bothersome in their current implementation in most games.

-Rasix
Yegolev
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Reply #57 on: April 05, 2013, 09:40:47 AM

The alternative seems to be along the lines of "Angel talks to you and takes up your screen while you are trying not to die to a Super Badass Goliath", so I can't fucking win when it comes to story in games these days.  Except in games like Path of Exile where talky-talky is relegated to non-combat areas.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Rendakor
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Reply #58 on: April 05, 2013, 09:54:13 AM

I thought Borderlands 2 was pretty much the perfect way to tell story: give me the dialog while allowing me to continue to PLAY THE FUCKING GAME. The cutscenes in BL2 were both short, relatively few (basically one per NPC), and all skippable.

"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
Yegolev
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Reply #59 on: April 05, 2013, 10:03:04 AM

I agree, actually, but I can't listen to her and Jack and everyone else while I'm in a firefight.  Butt Stallion can't say HELLO if I'm dead. Ohhhhh, I see.

The problem really manifests in MP when I have other jackholes triggering things while I'm occupied elsewhere.  In SP I can mostly manage to understand what the shit is going on.  Now with the new update, I can go ahead and talk to Marcus and Zed so that I don't see their cutscenes every time I interact with them.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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