Well, my dad works at Nintendo and~: Console Wars Horseshit Megathread

[Merusk]

I have clear memories of Mario 64 where I would walk up a door that I really needed to go into, only to find I did not have enough stars, and then had to go back and find more stars.  And by find more stars, I mean they weren't always trivial to find.  It felt like an accomplishment.  The world itself was also a bit more mysterious, with interesting secrets all over the place.  The secrets in this version seem neither interesting nor important.  Even the GBA Super Mario World Whatever did ALL of these things better. 

World's changed and publishers/ developers have metrics now thanks to reporting tools and online consoles.  Those metrics have shown that the majority of people didn't finish games. It's been 4 or 5 years since I read the article about it, but something like only 10% of players ever actually completed games. 

This bothered developers enough they started changing games to make things simpler. Nintendo even included the "complete this level for me" feature in one of the Mario games because of it.  This is also where the push for on-the-fly difficulty Margalis is talking about came from.

Someone with actual experience in this field rather than article reading should chime in here as to why Devs care about completion. I assume the concern is because people who complete a game are more invested in it. Therefore they're going to buy the next iteration and not think, "Meh, I never even finished "Chasing the Dragon 1" why would I buy #2?  Clearly I'm not the market for these games." 

[UnSub]

I looked at game completion rates a few years ago - an ugly chart I made follows. Overall it seemed that on average only about 35% of gamers complete their titles (at least in the AAA space on normal difficulty). Only around 10% of gamers who started Red Dead Redemption finished it.

[Miasma]

The red dead redemption bar on that chart points to a really odd, awkward and boring epilogue type quest that is optional after you finish the main real plot line.

[KallDrexx]

While i'ts certainly valid to talk about how most gamers don't finish games, apparently Nintendo finds it worth while as almost every DK and mario game I can think of since snes days have had extra content for completionists, so they must think it's worth while.

And even so, I'd say that just because most people won't see it doesn't mean it should be left out or it's a waste of effort.  My anecdotal evidence is that it gives incentives for people to at least aim for it even if they know they will never get to it.  That's why my wife still plays mario and DK games (only games she plays) because she can jump in, play a level and try to get another star and unlock a star level she knows she won't be able to beat. 

It's there to feed off of intrinsic motivation.

[Margalis]

Someone with actual experience in this field rather than article reading should chime in here as to why Devs care about completion. I assume the concern is because people who complete a game are more invested in it. Therefore they're going to buy the next iteration and not think, "Meh, I never even finished "Chasing the Dragon 1" why would I buy #2?  Clearly I'm not the market for these games."  

Devs care because the stats started becoming widely available and people gasped because they looked low. That's it.

AFAIK nobody has ever compared game completion rate to satisfaction levels, likelihood of purchasing sequels, or things of that sort. (At least in a high-profile public way) It's just the understandable intuitive notion that people not finishing games is bad.

Personally I don't see it as a bad thing. A game isn't like a movie you can watch in 2 hours. They take a lot of time and sometimes people just drop them because something else comes out. For games that are more gameplay focused you may explore the systems to your heart's content then move on. The game may not be finished but it may be finished for you, which is fine.

I think a lot of people could list a lot of games they like and haven't actually finished.

Fixation on people beating games leads to a number of negative things. One is lower length and lower difficulty. Another is developers mailing in the back half of the game, since few people will see it anyway. Which then trains more people not to bother to finish games. Gamasutra recently ran a piece by the developers of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs where they talked about how they purposefully made the game easier based on completion percentage of the first. Probably a mistake.

And even so, I'd say that just because most people won't see it doesn't mean it should be left out or it's a waste of effort. 

I hate that sort of pseudo-rational philosophy. "Why work on something many people won't see?" I think it vastly underestimates the appeal of a game that has a lot of neat stuff, only some of which each individual player experiences.

[Lantyssa]

Anecdotally: given Mass Effect 3 was pretty awesome right up until then ending, and then the fuss that resulted, I'd say the ending is still important.

[Job601]

Fixation on people beating games leads to a number of negative things. One is lower length and lower difficulty. Another is developers mailing in the back half of the game, since few people will see it anyway. Which then trains more people not to bother to finish games. Gamasutra recently ran a piece by the developers of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs where they talked about how they purposefully made the game easier based on completion percentage of the first. Probably a mistake.

I hate that sort of pseudo-rational philosophy. "Why work on something many people won't see?" I think it vastly underestimates the appeal of a game that has a lot of neat stuff, only some of which each individual player experiences.

I agree with that, but overall I think that lower length is a good thing.  Most AAA games still feel bloated and repetitive. 

[Nija]

I didn't finish RDR because I ran into a progression-ending-bug around the 20% complete mark and I didn't feel like replaying it.

I didn't think it was really that special. Yeah, yeah, I get it - you made GTA on a horse. I felt like that was constantly being rammed down my throat.

[Ingmar]

The red dead redemption bar on that chart points to a really odd, awkward and boring epilogue type quest that is optional after you finish the main real plot line.

Yep, I'm guessing most people thought they had finished the game and didn't know that even existed. It's not a good place to measure it.

"Into The Sunset" would be the achievement to check on for 'story completion' there IMO.

[Azazel]

Fixation on people beating games leads to a number of negative things. One is lower length and lower difficulty. Another is developers mailing in the back half of the game, since few people will see it anyway. Which then trains more people not to bother to finish games. Gamasutra recently ran a piece by the developers of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs where they talked about how they purposefully made the game easier based on completion percentage of the first. Probably a mistake.

Why do you see these as intrinsically negative things? I like games that I can see myself finishing. I also like long content-rich games like GTA/RDR/DI/Fallouts, etc - and it's also nice to have something that's very finite to play as well.

[Kail]

Fixation on people beating games leads to a number of negative things. One is lower length and lower difficulty. Another is developers mailing in the back half of the game, since few people will see it anyway. Which then trains more people not to bother to finish games.

Why do you see these as intrinsically negative things? I like games that I can see myself finishing. I also like long content-rich games like GTA/RDR/DI/Fallouts, etc - and it's also nice to have something that's very finite to play as well.

If it cost less, I'd agree, but that's not always the case (looking at you, Metal Gear).  Otherwise, you're paying more for less content.  A game that entertains you for thirty hours is generally going to be a much better value than a game that entertains you for five, assuming they cost the same.

[Azazel]

That's assuming that the game has enough meaningful content to actually entertain you for thirty hours, rather than becoming stale and samey after, say, ten. I'd rather play and finish a 10-hour game than get bored 10 hours into a 30-hour game. Of course, I don't buy games on release anymore, and while I always buy new unless something is only available "preowned" my backlog is big enough I don't mind waiting to pick up a new title. Also, I'm over the DLC model, so I tend to wait for the all-inclusive GotY releases for many games.

[UnSub]

Fixation on people beating games leads to a number of negative things. One is lower length and lower difficulty.

If you're trying to tell a narrative, you want people to see the whole thing. For a long time, video games had no really narrative to speak of and existed just to extract the next few coins from your pocket, which is why they were hard.

[Margalis]

Fixation on people beating games leads to a number of negative things. One is lower length and lower difficulty. Another is developers mailing in the back half of the game, since few people will see it anyway. Which then trains more people not to bother to finish games. Gamasutra recently ran a piece by the developers of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs where they talked about how they purposefully made the game easier based on completion percentage of the first. Probably a mistake.

Why do you see these as intrinsically negative things? I like games that I can see myself finishing. I also like long content-rich games like GTA/RDR/DI/Fallouts, etc - and it's also nice to have something that's very finite to play as well.

Mailing in the back half of the game is definitely a negative.

Shorter length and lower difficulty being negative depends on what they are being compared to (shorter and less difficult than what?) and what kinds of games they are. When I wrote that I was thinking specifically of the Amnesia sequel. In general though I think AAA games tend to be too easy, although it's a little more complicated than that - some of them can be frustrating and annoying (like Ubisoft follow missions) without actually being mechanically difficult.

A lot of AAA games are made such that for much of the time you just follow a straightforward procedure to progress in the game. Some of these still are difficult in places, but generally not in ways that are interesting. Because they are "streamlined" and "accessible" and have context-sensitive controls and one-button traversal and things like that the way that they can be difficult is through things like unclear objectives, fickle scripting, etc.

If you're trying to tell a narrative, you want people to see the whole thing. For a long time, video games had no really narrative to speak of and existed just to extract the next few coins from your pocket, which is why they were hard.

The vast majority of AAA games have a merely functional narrative. It's really not that different from the start of Double Dragon where punks punch your girlfriend in the stomach then run off with her. If you enjoy a game it's natural to want to see what happens next even in poor stories, but there are very few games where the player being unable to finish robs them of some real value.

I do like plenty of shorter games and easy games. But in general I think "we need to make this game easier so that people can get to the end" is often detrimental to the game and also misses the point. Usually when people aren't finishing a game it's not because of length or difficulty but either the way they play games (as browsers) or an issue with content quality.

[Paelos]

Too many AAA games try to pretend they have a funtional narrative though, and that the story is the main reason you are playing. Meanwhile, the gameplay suffers.

That's my biggest problem with the iteration instead of innovation in the gaming model. Not that I expect innovation from AAA, but they lose money when they copy the worst of gaming decisions. Video games have traditionally shitty stories, but developers are treating them like they are making high-class cinema.

[Jeff Kelly]

Story doesn't matter when games tend to be short and focus heavily on the gameplay. Story is not that significant when you have Golden Axe, Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario, Metroid or most of the 8 bit and 16 bit era type of games where you could finish the game in 1 or 2 hours.

I guess most people would even be hard pressed to finish a Call of Duty though if it still was 15 to 20 hours of gameplay but without any story. The fact that most of the gamers don't even finish the story campaign of those type of games that are already considered to have a virtually non-existant story is indicative of that. A game like Doom or Quake wouldn't fly today.

That's also why every few years a company decides to do a multiplayer only type of game and cites exactly those experiences as proof why they should work. You know the 'most player eventually only play multiplayer in CoD anyway' type of argument. Lots of people spend 100+ hours on a Skyrim though and story driven games like Skyrim, The Last of Us and so on sell. Telltale probably sold more of their 'experience_driven' interactive stories (can you still call them games even though you do so little in them?) than Respawn did copies of Titanfall.

The medium 'shooter' is just such a bad medium to convey story in that you tend to notice it more and the games are almost always so reliant on AAA effects that they need to sell for $60+ and need to include a certain amount of 'gameplay hours' to garner sales.

I suppose that a game like Wolfenstein would be much more fun if it was only 5 to 10 hours long. You couldn't sell it for $60+ though and it wouldn't have gotten a AAA budget anyway so they need to stretch it out until the story beats are stretched thinner than butter on toast.

[Falconeer]

Video games have traditionally shitty stories, but developers are treating them like they are making high-class cinema.

Regardless of their artistic merits (but I agree with you), these cinematic games usually sell very well because they bridge a gap between a game and an interactive TV show that the non-gamers have been dreaming about for a long while. A good example is The Walking Dead game (by the way, I love it. Nothing wrong with it). There's zero "game" there and you cannot really fail no matter how bad you are. It's pretty much just an interactive media/comic/show, and maybe that's why it has been so well received in some circles.

As long as someone somewhere keeps making games for gamers, I have no problem with majors (or indies, like Telltale) throwing money into big Hollywood productions for the interactive movies of the future.

[Margalis]

TWD was just right place / right time. Before it Telltale had plenty of other similar games that didn't light the world on fire, and nobody gives a shit about TWD Season 2 - it's already fallen back into the visual novel ghetto.

Regardless of their artistic merits (but I agree with you), these cinematic games usually sell very well because they bridge a gap between a game and an interactive TV show that the non-gamers have been dreaming about for a long while.

Plenty of cinematic games sell very poorly, they're just not the games you think of when you think "cinematic games" because they flop. Murdered: Soul Suspect is going to be a good example of that.

[Fabricated]

Telltale did a Back to the Future game series with Christopher Lloyd and a dude who does a bang-on perfect version of Marty and it was kind of a dud if I recall; mostly since they made it like a old-school point-n-clicker with the clumsy controls instead of a vaguely interactive visual novel like TWD and The Wolf Among Us.

[Ingmar]

I play a fair number of their games and I skipped that one mostly because the license holds no appeal for me. Slick Fables VN interface vs. Sam and Max point-and-click is not really a factor in my decision on those sorts of games. They live or die based on the story, and I just don't think enough people give a shit about Back to the Future.

[Paelos]

It's fine if people want to make a story game with minimal gameplay and charge you $20 for it. There's a market for that.

It's when AAA shooters try to do this with ridiculous cutscenes and single hallway gameplay with a $60 price tag. That's when I basically ignore the product.

[Sir T]

The Legacy of Kain/Soul Reaver games were good games that had a fairly decent story behind them. Certainly they were games that the story enhanced the game as it was built into the encounters you went into.

Phsychonaughts was another gane that kept you playing for the story.

Neither of them were first person shooters though.

[Sir T]

How to make your conole perform 10% faster? Strip out one of it's key feature!

http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/5/5782024/kinect-less-xbox-one-microsoft-gpu-power

The upcoming Kinect-less Xbox One will receive a 10 percent boost in its performance due to the stripping out of the peripheral, Microsoft told Eurogamer.

"Yes, the additional resources allow access to up to 10 percent additional GPU performance," said a company representative. "We're committed to giving developers new tools and flexibility to make their Xbox One games even better by giving them the option to use the GPU reserve in whatever way is best for them and their games."

The company also confirms plans to release a new SDK this month, making it possible for developers to access additional GPU resources previously reserved for Kinect and system functions.

This follows last night's tweets from Xbox head Phil Spencer confirming additional GPU bandwidth will be made available. The company head did not say whether this power boost was related to Kinect in any way.

[eldaec]

Telltale did a Back to the Future game series with Christopher Lloyd and a dude who does a bang-on perfect version of Marty and it was kind of a dud if I recall; mostly since they made it like a old-school point-n-clicker with the clumsy controls instead of a vaguely interactive visual novel like TWD and The Wolf Among Us.

What?

It was a Sam and Max/Monkey Island style adventure game and it was great.

I'm not going to pretend the genre is anything other than niche, but I give no shits if other people hate it (or other telltale games). Other people are wrong about lots of things.

[Paelos]

How to make your console perform 10% faster? Strip out one of it's key feature!

The schadenfreude on this is delicious.

[Bunk]

Microsoft apparently just released drivers for the XBone controller to use on PC:

http://majornelson.com/2014/06/05/pc-drivers-for-the-xbox-one-controller-available-now/

Guess I'll have to reinstall Sleeping Dogs.

[schild]

Xbox controller sales skyrocket. I know I'm getting one now.

[Goreschach]

Is there any particular reason why this would be better than a 360 controller?

[Bunk]

My 360 controller was wireless? Never bothered buying a wired one.

The XBone controller is wireless, but has a micro usb port.

[Miasma]

Is there any particular reason why this would be better than a 360 controller?

100 MILLION REASONS!!!  But no not really.

[Fordel]

Is the directional pad any better on the Xbone one? The 360's D-pad is made of assholes and hate.

[Bunk]

Supposedly yes, but I don't know from experience, as I really can't think of any games I use it for.

[MisterNoisy]

Is the directional pad any better on the Xbone one? The 360's D-pad is made of assholes and hate.

The XB1 d-pad is probably the best one that isn't part of a Saturn controller.

[Nija]

The Luigi gifs pushed me over the edge.

Ordered a refurb'd 32gb WiiU from here: https://store.nintendo.com/ng3/us/po/browse/productDetailColorSizePicker.jsp?categoryNav=true&navAction=jump&navCount=0&atg.multisite.remap=false&productId=prod150200&categoryId=cat140077 for $200.

If you buy MK8 before the end of July you get another game for free. http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/04/mario_kart_8_club_nintendo_promotion_offers_a_free_wii_u_game

So Mario and Mario Kart for $260ish.

[Cyrrex]

It was probably in this very thread that I lamented the state of Mario 3D for Wii U.  However, I just recently got MK8 (family tradition), and can confirm that this is another solid entry in that series.  Would probably be considered the best one overall, had we not started to burn out a bit on the series.  It does a lot of things better than its predecessors.