Posts by Taylor

Taking over this thread as a place to post amusing stuff. Like all of this.

True, but we're hardly the average punter KoKo5oVaR. I'd say the majority of "hardcore" gamers are easily captivated by a games presentation, take them as a measure of how awesome the game is going to be and therefore how much money it is worth. I have done it, I like to think I'm more open than most, but I'll still find myself making an opinion about an entire game based on what the manufactured trailer or teaser shots look like.

I've seen so many people, even in the industry, be dismissive of things that haven't got the brown and bloom next-gen touches all over them. You play something like Progear or Mushihimesama and people are confused: a shoot 'em up with sprites where you can actually see a Game Over screen? Who is this renegade hippie? And how can I get away from him? Surprisingly few people seem to fill the niches.

Contrary to us, your lowest common denominator punter wants to play a game so similar to previous titles he suffers déjà vu throughout, only with better graphics, and when he’s finished it’ll go on a shelf and collect dust.

I imagine the $30 price tag is because of the expected sales from the fans that’ve been following it for two years, once they drop I’m sure the price will lower too. Indie developers can have business strategy too.

Somebody needs to subscribe to DevBump

Not enough bloom.

Most people can't actually run Crysis or UT3 properly, so they’re not going to sell as much as “normal” games anyway.

Though I don't doubt if catering to the elite does end up profitable they’ll milk it for all they can.

Two years, according to the artist.

I use iTunes because I have an iPod and can't be arsed to set my library up with two players. I know there's other software that people have made but I don't really want to mess about.

So the main library has a crapton of stuff in it, but I operate using playlists and filters. Luckily I seem to operate on a cycle of obsessing over a few bands until I hate listening to them anymore, so I don't have to make a load of lists.

It’s basically a big Japanese nerdfest held twice a year where they all stockpile into some giant rooms and go around buying stuff. I’m not going to lie though; the manga and cosplay side of it is much bigger. I mainly know about it because I follow and play a lot of the indie shooters and many of them showcase and sell at these events.

I did mean “hardcore” gamers, I’m aware most people playing games don’t even have dedicated PC’s or Consoles for that purpose. The context was (intended to be) a regular convention for pushing and peddling independent games, like the Japanese Comiket where there’s a whole section devoted to Dōjinsoft – obviously your average “casual” isn’t going to attend one of those. I appreciate it was a bit of a mangled post though (mine usually are).

As for the rapid decline in sales after the hyped AAA titles, there was a link on Devbump by Ralph Koster doom saying again much better than I could. The stores only really devote themselves to the top, new releases and don’t really stock anything below that so they don’t get much exposure and slip through the net. This is exclusively within your “hardcore,” of course.

So yeah, just getting our wires crossed.

Though I must say I really hate these hardcore and casual labels, they’re horribly black and white for such a diverse thing and that’s why I threw inverted commas all over the shop. Your casual seems to imply people who don’t own dedicated games machines and just stick to stuff like Pop Cap, whereas ‘hardcore’ basically encompasses all else – which makes sense. But then you’ve got games like World of Warcraft who are known as being “casual friendly,” often attributing to their success, despite still being far apart from the likes of Peggle and requiring dedicated game rigs, broadband internet and monthly subscriptions.

To me it’s much more about the design philosophy of the game rather than the playerbase and would mark most AAA titles as being ‘casual.’ A hardcore game to my mind are things like

who have the older game design approach where, for example, the reward from the game is a sense of accomplishment. Whereas casual games are the ones where the designer has decided seeing a game over screen will make he player cry and instead the rewards are more material or staged things like character feedback, vistas or cinematics.But since these labels vary drastically through all the ranks of gamers they seem pretty arbitrary.

Edit: This seems too thought provoking for a topic called "Tonguing another mans balls."

I do notice in Japan they are a lot more open to independent developers than over here, and the quality of the games isn’t by any means superior. I think most of this is thanks to events like Comiket, and their prevailing arcade culture. Though the really successful ones (like, say, Team Shanghai Alice (which is one guy)) really owe a lot to unpredictable crazed fan snowball effects.

But even if there was an equivalent to the gaming side of Comiket here in the west I’m not sure how well it would do. Western gamers (speaking generaly here) like the triple A massive titles and little else, the sales drop dramatically after the top few.

It's something I hope would've changed with distribution methods like Steam, though they're still very much out of the limelight.

Edit: And I have my own little project going But I really can't code to save my life. There's more chance I'll accidently turn my computer into a killing machine that first takes vengence on its master than actually finish it.

Quote from Izuno

Would you say that about all games/franchises that have great sales? If you worked at Bungie would you tell people "don't buy Halo 3 because our franchise has already been successful enough" ? Or is there something about Guitar Hero you just don't like? ...or don't like anymore?I don't mean to single you out, because a lot of us have had these thoughts about publishers "milking it." Would you feel the same way about a publisher milking what you've developed? What if you work at Infinity Ward? Would you complain about strong CoD4 sales?

I'm serious, btw. We're all here because we work in the industry or with the industry or are modders etc... In general, don't we want gaming to be successful and growing? Maybe we don't?

True, but we’re also creative types who like to see the industry grow creatively instead of rehashing generic shooter #536 again because it appeals to the lowest common denominator with record breaking sales.

I think we all know that the games industry is not unique from the other various industries in the quest to make as much money as possible by expending the least. And though us “games are art” hippie types exist who muse and stroke our tiny, well groomed beards (sometimes these are metaphorical beards, a beard on the soul if you will), when inside the industry we’re are still very much at the beg and call of the publishers/studios.

It’s all very well saying this is making the industry grow, and saying “I don’t want it to grow!” sounds elitist and foolish, but it is growing in a kind of horrible direction. Longer production times and higher product budgets are eventually going to lock down anything that even attempts to put a hairline fracture in the cashcow mould if this keeps up.

Quote from Sentura

wow. deranged way of putting forth a message.

This is how Greenpeace generally do things.

Yeah, that's over-hyped mainstream scat; you guys got to go to the underground and find the real scat.

Quote

Though the screenshot doesn't answer this question outright, we can confirm that the game's graphics are polygonal but the gameplay is strictly 2D. There will be new moves, locations, and gameplay features, while the standard six button control scheme remains. Ryu and Ken return along with Chun-Li and Dhalsim, but beyond that the character roster is a mystery.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3164756

Meh.

I don't think 3D 'ruins' a fighter, but it certainly is a completely different kettle of fish, and Street Fighter is the 2D fighter. I hope they try to include the previous mechanics instead of just conforming to the 3D model – twitch, specials, supers, no hardcoded combos, etc.

Nice Boat == Aperture Science == Portals!

I don't quite understand where this is going, but to get on the bandwagon ahead of time: Are we for or against threats and deceit?

I don't think I've posted in this thread yet, but I've been watching this come along and it's most awesome.