Posts by FMPONE

  • THQ... Next Crytek?

    Quote from FrieChamp

    Shawn's dream game:

    • has broad appeal
    • is of excellent quality (AAA)
    • not too innovative!
    • no marketing budget needed because it will be viral
    • no sequels allowed
    • Steam (and/or Origin) only
    • $60

    Sounds good, bro! Maybe I'll pick it up in a sale~

    Dark Souls 1 ftw

  • THQ... Next Crytek?

    Quote from Furyo

    Nintendo may have been in this business the longest, but year over year they've now lost big on two separate fiscal years. The WiiU is picking up some steam now that Mario Kart has come out, but if there is one company that is so inherently dependent on its big 1st party franchises, it's them.


    That's what they can control. The first party franchises are by them, they can ensure they're excellent. This is talking about their console business vs. their development business, but I think it's the same principle, they're not going to compromise the quality of their system (to a fault) if it means introducing junkware or trying to have the biggest graphics e-peen.


    And the ups and downs are part of a sustainable model IMO, Nintendo still has an absurd, absolutely absurd stockpile of cash to weather the hard times. I think the fact that they can always rely on the quality of the product differentiates them from the parasitic publishers, whose primary interest is to take a good franchise and milk it for every last drop. It's a focus on quality of product as a way to sustain long-term profits, versus a profit-focused approach which views franchises as commodities to be rotated in and out. You need a ying and yang of both obviously, if you relied too heavily on one you'd be in trouble, but it's the fact that Nintendo's ideas make them powerful, versus the money of the publishers, that makes me partial to their approach. If a publisher came along with a bigger budget, then all of the sudden all of the power of your marketing dollar loses out to their marketing dollar, but if you focused on building a great game, that's there no matter what. Nintendo has done that with a lot of success over the years.


    ...


    Just realized what a tangent we're on


    I think it's useful to explore all of this shit whenever a big studio takes a hit though.

  • THQ... Next Crytek?

    The problem I have with looking at things from purely the publishers perspective is that they inflate these franchises to such exorbitant levels, chasing that one big game you mentioned, that although it seems less risky on paper, eventually those games can and will fail catastrophically. It's a bubble. The Call of Duty yearly bubble is not sustainable, nor is the Assassins Creed bubble, the reliance on epic mega huge yearly installments is going to wear thin on consumers. It's not entirely the wrong idea but the big guys are fucking the chicken pretty hard right now, and taking plenty of risks in doing so.

    I'm glad those companies exist, it's good, but I wouldn't feel secure working for one when I know that other shoe is about to drop. Thats the downside of reliance on marketing so heavily, if it fails you're in deep shit. The emphasis on yearly yearly yearly needs to be replaced with a steadfast focus on quality, in order for the bubble to turn into a sustainable growth. Nintendo does a good job of that, no surprise they've been in industry for so long, they know the ups and downs by now. They focus on quality of product first and foremost.

    When you need to ship a Franchise X game every single year, I don't think quality is your top priority anymore, and to me that's what makes it a bubble and what creates industry-wide fatigue, contraction, and malaise.

  • THQ... Next Crytek?

    Quote from e-freak

    i'm sorry if i sound really burned here, but the formula to making a game that has broad appeal is spending 3 times the development money on marketing budgets. You can develop a great AAA game and ten people will hear about it on Steam or Reddit, but you only start making money when random kids want their moms to buy it from gamestop. And even then it's still not a guaranteed to break even.

    We live in the Internet era, the viral marketing era. Are you really so convinced that you need a huge budget to make your game a known commodity? I don't agree. I'm with Spronyvan, it's a lack of creativity, a lack of efficiency, it's making AAA games poorly and not the actual act of making AAA games, which has clouded the issue for the industry.

    See: Dark Souls. I'm not an expert, but I don't think it had like the biggest marketing budget by any means. If anything a game like that could only find success with the new opportunities afforded by the web for marketing and word of mouth

  • THQ... Next Crytek?

    Quote from e-freak

    Because 60$ AAA makes fuck no money. Wolfenstein is a positive example in a market that's been declining for years. Or rather than declining it's more and more polarized. You got the big winners like CoD (Activision), Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft) and Battlefield (EA), you got a few good titles (like Wolfenstein) in the midground and then you have a ton of titles that are really good, but they aren't making their money back.


    The last Bioshock, Tomb Raider, etc were all considered flops for the publisher (even when they sold really, really well). I mean, there's even a reddit thread on this topic http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/commen…ccessful_games/


    Neither consoles nor F2P is the enemy. The truth is that it's really fucking difficult to be your own game studio outside of a massive publishing house that can market your game like crazy. And it's even more difficult trying to break out of these traditional patterns and trying to become a self-functioning developer that can both develop and publish. You get high rewards when it works, but you're also shouldering years of financial burden and all the risk.


    I don't think we've heard the full story about Bioshock. I'm not saying you're wrong, obviously it's hard to make great AAA games that also sell well. But the idea that developers should stop trying and jump onto some random bandwagon is not the strategy.


    The challenge of it actually isn't understanding what to do, for me the formula is still the really simple $60 a pop game, the challenge is how to make a game that has broad appeal and has quality... as usual

  • THQ... Next Crytek?

    Just make high quality AAA games at a $60 price point and release on Steam (or Origin if you want to be cheeky). Why is this so complicated? Why chase your dick trying to make a F2P MOBA etc etc.?


    I don't get it, never really have. Look at Wolfenstein. That's the kind of game you want to be making, just do that and you'll be fine as an industry. Out of the ashes of Crytek what happens? What do people ultimately care about? Homefront; that becomes the big focus of attention. It's almost as if they had it backwards to begin with. As for Ryse, there's another good example of trying to be too clever, at least IMO, what with all that motion sensor gimmick stuff that it was born out of.


    They should have put more eggs into the Crysis basket, and made the games themselves more of a draw. That franchise sort of petered out, after a very strong start, it could have been different.

  • SAMPA // A near-future sci-fi city in Unreal 4


    As epic as this is, I agree with Steppen, the intimate, darker style in your first screenshots was probably cooler than these epics in terms of what they're doing. Add some rainy vibes to those first shots and dial back the focus, and I think stuff will pop big time

  • Mapcore Challenge - Engine Preference

    Quote from Pampers

    Or you know, maybe be put in a portfolio and help get a job This can be discussed forever when we don't know what the challenge is.

    My suspicion is that most of our very talented UE4 devs aren't unemployed. Not that I'm against a UE4 challenge for that reason, I want to see what people do with the engine as much as anybody else, and I wouldn't mind learning a thing or two about it as well. But a Source challenge would be far more inclusive and practical right now.

  • Mapcore Challenge - Engine Preference

    Quote from Vilham

    That would be great, if anyone was actually playing anything other than source games.


    I think this is a real consideration. Can anyone name any game other than UT4 (not even released) which uses UE4? Whatever you make isn't going to be played in all likelihood, and that's hardly ideal IMO. Levels are meant to be played, not hung up on a wall somewhere.

  • [CS:GO] de_piazza (WIP)

    That's getting to be really polished and great. If working slower is what allowed you to achieve those results, then don't rush yourself


    I think the buildings in the background of the last show could use some more variety, though.