Posts by Furyo

To commemorate the start of WWI, Ubi released Valiant Hearts yesterday on Steam, to coincide with the murder of Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo 100 years ago.

For a vastly underrepresented part of history in games, I felt this was a good effort on the part of Ubi Montpellier, if a little repetitive in gameplay and with a bit too much backtracking in puzzles for my liking.

History buff, and genealogist, it was still fun to revisit this period in history. If you've lost family in the Great War, it's safe to say where they died will be represented in this game (western front). The Battle of the Labyrinth, in Neuville Saint Vaast was where my great grand father was wounded for instance.

Clement, si tu as besoin d'aide, tu demandes Je suis a peine plus pres de toi que ta famille, mais si tu as besoin d'un coup de main sur le gros oeuvre

Nothing in the way this is written should be taken seriously.

Take away the free games I've amassed over the years (all Valve, all Take Two, All Rockstar, some Ubisoft) and I've played or tried 90% of the ones I bought....

I'll start, just picked DmC for 12.49 (flash sale)

Death to our wallets, please post about your good finds in this thread

So I just got this in the past weekend deal, and Jobye wanted my thoughts after what I posted in the Thief thread, so here goes.

I'm very positively impressed by the game. Just finished the first mission (Benghazi) and outside of a few gamey quirks in the intro section (Guam), only high praise from me. It's the perfect example of what I was describing in the Thief thread, of an evolution in a seminal game mechanic. The stealth here is barely an afterthought, but that's just fine, as all the mechanics that were designed on top of the gunplay (by years of evolution, not just on Blacklist) just complement each other perfectly. Splinter Cell now is a "design your own action sequence" game, and the good news is it's the only TPS to do it.

Now if it wasn't for license fatigue, this game might even have been successful. There are enough well implemented features in there to start a new franchise, but the way it stands, these games are just not hot items anymore. That's Splinter Cell in a nutshell, the past two games should have come out 5 years before they did to have been relevant then and invigorate the genre.

The main difference is that I've seen Thief guards blatantly not see me as I'm right in front of them because I'm in full shadow. So I'm assuming (mother of all fuck ups) that shadow/light takes precedence in code to actual visibility, and it shouldn't to me. Particularly since shade/light is a "shade of grey" mechanic and not a clear black and white setting.

Well I'm not sure anyone from the 2007-2008 era stuck through to the end of the project. I know many leads changed twice over the course of the project.

Jobye, Chaos Theory is the worst selling one of the original 3, the franchise has done worse since

Just because a mechanic is attached to a franchise doesn't mean it can't evolve in the next installments. I am fully aware it's a Thief mechanic just as much as a Splinter Cell one, but the way this was done in this game is the SC way. As in, the game doesn't revolve around it, and it therefore becomes a hindrance more than a tool the player can use. I don't believe you could achieve mass market appeal making that mechanic actually useful. That's the problem with stealth games, the people who actually want to play stealthily are not enough a target group to justify making a AAA game based on that. A large portion of players who play them don't mind feeling like they're stealthy, but want to keep going as in an action game. So give Garrett the tools to be stealthy, while keeping on the move, the same way Dishonored and Deus Ex are made. Actually Splinter Cell follows the same trend too, with Chaos Theory being the most critically acclaimed game and the only one that gave you the tools to play stealthily without going too much down the action route.

Speaking of which, downloading Blacklist now.

I just got the game on Steam at something like 15 bucks. I'm sorry guys, but even then it's not worth my time. I know you guys worked really hard to ship this, and I am more than well aware of the rocky dev history on the title, 6 years in the making. It would have passed as an ok game with a few good ideas back before Deus Ex and Dishonored, but this feels like an alpha build. Everywhere I look, there's the start of a good idea that never got pushed further, and was just left at a "look, I can do it too" level. So much potential with that franchise too, if only....

How to fix it:

- Revamp stealing mechanic to actually make it meaningful (consequence for each item stolen, actual economy to each item)

- Remap controls and allow throwing of items/shooting while peeking

- Scrap Splinter Cell like shadow/light stealth mechanic, implement actual visibility cones a la Dishonored

- Huge task, turn it open world. The best recipe to be found for a new Thief game is on an Assassin's Creed 2 scale (not more)

C3 wasn't??? Cause we had done it on C2!

The greatest thing about you being a novice to this is she won't remember a thing. So don't stress too much about doing things "right", she has no concept of that just yet.

Congrats again

Imagine what Grin might have been like if it had been traded. At least now there's a market to act as a counter power to the running of the company.

Ok I'll bite, but fair warning, this is a much more complicated topic than just your original question.

First off, the finances. Know how much you can gather BEFORE going on about a game. Its design, the size of the team, the art style depend on the money you can collect, not just your vision of what the game should be.

What's your ROI plan? Distribution channels? Marketing? Platforms targeted? Again, know all of this before you set out on your adventure, or it's likely all going to be for naught. When considering closed platforms (consoles), expect a fair bit more investment before having your game playable (dev kits, TCR internal testing at Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo)

With that out of the way, plan for the game you want to make. Divide the money you have over a milestone plan, and see how much you can spend per month of work. That will tell you how many people you can hire (by far biggest overhead) and for how long. THAT, more than anything else will tell you what game you're making. I'm going to assume you're not looking to set up a studio, but have people work remotely. If not, then you need to plan 6 months ahead for finding a lease, and equipping your space so your new team can hit the ground running (again, they're the biggest overhead, so make sure they can work from day one)

Third point: the game. Given you don't make games yourself, please hire the good people that will keep your schedule and production in check, otherwise you're going to be bleeding money fast. Making a game is not a hard science, and it's not a chain production until after you've "found the fun". Finding that fun will be a long and expensive prospect, unless you once again have the right people and right processes in place, and don't shoot for the moon. In case you don't find the fun before you have to move on and produce the game, your chances of ever breaking even are diminished right off the bat, but can still be done with heavy marketing. Which is another way of bleeding money fast.

There is a reason most games that get funded have a proven demo build. Starting a game fund before having one is suicidal. By the way, that's exactly how the rest of the software industry works.

Done Kacper, congrats again

I was just out in London earlier this week, and noticed large ads for the game in the subway. Regardless of which side of the fence you sit on with this game, there's no denying they're banking a lot on its success.

It's a gigantic bubble. Shark investors came flocking to mobile hoping for magnificent returns once a few breakaway hits were created, never understanding why or how these games boomed and copying everything that had a modicum of success. Now we're in the age of player acquisition costs 4 to 5 times higher than the average in game spending with no end in sight, making this market a continuous race for an uncertain future 3 months ahead that requires constant cash flow from completely uncertain games.

Welcome to the age of games supermarket distribution. Yet another market that was doomed by every actor outbidding each other towards cheapness.

Congrats Liam, can't wait to see more Mapcorians working on VR

You guys are still thinking about this the old way ie build it, ship it retail, put a 60 dollars price tag on it. This is Activision entering the games as a service era. Away from the CoD every year at 60 dollars and into the continuous life of a single large gaming platform. Essentially taking what they do best (shooters) with what Blizzard does best (online gaming and services).

CoD has a yearly 200 million+ dollar budget (production + marketing). If they want to replace that franchise (and honestly, they've every reason to fear that franchise dying over the next few years), why not spend 500 million on a single game that's going to last them 5 times as long as any CoD?