Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Rick James on January 10, 2009, 12:09:54 am
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Wow. Just wow. (http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html)
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How about a summary? I'm not going to read all that. :p
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You should. :p This is one of the smartest things I've read in a long while.
You know, if this article is on the money, it might explain why Nintendo disappointed so many "hardcore" gamers at the last GDC (or whatever event it was). Nintendo had to know that, with their ramped-up production, they stood to generate killer sales numbers on the Wii this past holiday season (which they did). So what do you do with all of those new "downscale" gamers? Create a few new big "downscale" games like Wii Fit to get them excited. Meanwhile, you already have massive sellers like Mario Galaxy and Brawl waiting in the wings for people moving up the scale, and there are some more "hardcore" first- and third-party titles slated for release this year. I don't know if that's how everything went, but it'd be ingenious if it was.
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I got about halfway through before I was positive that it was bread.
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Sorry, I couldn't help myself. :P
I read through that whole thing, and I must say, I think it more accurately describes the gaming market of today than it was back when games actually meant something. It's like Malstrom has it all figured out. I haven't really noticed that game developers of today are making more casual games to "bring people into the gaming world" but I certainly have noticed that games today are taking a different direction than what direction they took back in the good ol' days.
(CENSORED)
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Very long but it was very, very clever analysis of the gaming market.
Bookmarked.
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Ditto.
This guy seems to have a better explanation for things than anybody else I've yet seen. And I absolutely loved his demolition of the "hardcore vs casual" idea. Pure genius right there.
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missing on teir-picture:
Flight games, beyond MMO's, or just under.
to hardcore to be made nowadays
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Flight sims are a lion's share, actually. The amount of money spent on follow-ups and equipment can be astonishing. Other than that, I think he's discrediting sandbox games too much. Games like Sim____, SimCity, The Sims, and onwards are unique because they gave the user control over their game with relatively few glitches. It brought new players into the market, entertained hardcore gamers, and is still a major marketing point. That's the only franchise that EA really has done well on--they let Maxis play, and have sold some ridiculous 110 million units total or something. Anyways--I'm sure we all know a few people who only play free games, flash games, puzzles, and the like. And quite often sandbox games, too. There's only so much you can do simulating reality, but the imagination is what'll keep people around and having fun.
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This is my hatred of the current game industry put into words.
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What I find most interesting about this is that, even though I consider myself a "hardcore" gamer (whatever that term means), I've all but completely ignored the top two or three tiers of the "upscale" ladder. I generally find anything more "hardcore" than a first-person shooter to be too complex for me to bother with. As a rule, I've avoided RPGs of most sorts like the plague, since I'm of the opinion that they'd feel more like work than the escapism that I look for in games; it doesn't help that the whole idea of anything turn-based seems dreadfully dull to me. (I am trying to bite the bullet with the DS port of Chrono Trigger; we'll see how that goes.) Considering the first game I remember playing was the original Sonic the Hedgehog, I feel like the scale argument has a lot of merit to it.
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Damnnn
That guy's gonna b a rich man
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well written and mostly true. Good one.
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Keep in mind it was written mostly for consoles.
I guess a PC tier would look a bit different.
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At this point, a PC tier would consist of Popcap to Blizzard to little else. :p
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pretty good article, it keped me from hitting the code for most of my "morning"
my views of gamin is that pc gaming is a different animal from the rest of gaming. when i play something like far cry 2 or crysis/warhead or quake4/prey to name some slightly older games. what im doing is playing games with pretty graphics. i know when i buy an fps game im pretty much in for the same kind of gameplay ive been enjoying since quake (i really didnt play doom at all before i beat quake). i play those games for the art. but thats not where pc games shine. pc games shine in the indie gaming arena, mods, revamped old engines like fs2, of course multiplayer, and simulations. pc is the best platform if your gaming intrests go beyond just playing games.
if i was just in it to play games, id probibly own a wii. i look at the top console gamers staring down the wii gamers with much amusement knowing that neither one knows how to do matrix math, code, or model a space ship. the wii intrests me in the same way it has intrested alot of geek gamers. that it has its own section on hack a day is a testament to that. what i like about wii is its bringing motion track technology into the mainstream. when you look at a wiimote you got what is in essence a sensor brick. it has the same 6 axis motion tracking technology you find in the trackir (i think it only does 3 axis via infra red on the wii, but freetrack can double that :D ). its also got its gyroscope chip if thats not enough. my neice plays nitendogs on the ds, and she had this other game with cats. i thought they were sorta cute. then theres all the guitar hero crap. i cant really say im into that since i just play my guitar. but the kids like it. alot of people are getting into games because of the wii and if that improves the customer base and then profit margins go up across the board and its more likely il see something cool down the line.
one think that i wish would receive more attention is stereoscopy. now that its possible to compute depth of field and eye convergence and per pixel lighting, alll the curs needed to trick the brain into thinking its in 3d. shudder glasses and hmds have been around for years. now its possible to do dual projector polarized stereoscopy on a budget. nvidia came out with its new stereo glasses (though im still waiting on better driver support before i get em). you still have the problem that your eyes don't interact with the game well enough. seen some stuff on the military channel where it was possible to track the eyes with some technology, so you can determine where they're looking and pupil dilation ect. you can determine what theyre looking at and how their focust. plug that into dof rendering and camera data with better motion tracking these subtle cues can be used to greatly improve the eye tricks so that stereoscopy can be attained with less nausea.. i hope that through the mainstream these technologies will come out more and be developed further. of course i think i went on a tangent there.
but i can agree, other than more advanced input/output gadgetry that thecnology really doesnt matter as much as it did. even cheap computers these days have game power. gpus have gotten cheap. i have more gadgetry for flight sims, joysticks, stereoscopy, and motion track, yet ive not been able to get all that stuff working in one game. whats lacking is purely software.
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I've seen that article before. It's quite fascinating, really. I just hope Nintendo swims back upstream a little faster, as the wii homebrew scene is more interesting than many future games for the Wii.
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Well I had to stifle a yawn there - most of that was just fluff around a thinly veiled concept which is merely the epidemic of unoriginality and commercial risk-aversity that plagues all forms of entertainment. The author isn't wrong (much - if Ninty has more 'passionate' customers then why so many PS3 vs 360 flamewars?) but I don't see anything particularly new or penetrating in his analysis. The reason 'casual' games are having a renaissance is because the big players have created a saturated market of clones and people are crying out for new and recently revisited genres.
However it did have the gem that higher production values often make things worse: for example the interpolative mental process that goes on in reading between events in a book makes reading a book more exciting than seeing and hearing exactly what a director wants you to see in an equivalent film. Now one could argue that this only applies to a smaller subset of people, i.e. those who read. Sadly most people don't. However in games this isn't an issue because the entry requirements for playing a game depend only on the difficulty prescribed by the developer.
His take on the development lifecycle of games was interesting but, I think, unfounded as of yet. The only software houses I can think of that have *potentially* reaped the rewards from agile development models are the MMORPG makers, yet the times are so short between (often weekly) point releases that it's hard to tell if it makes any difference. Furthermore, beyond charging for patches the most any developer of a non-subscription game can expect to make of the post-release lifecycle is to maintain interest in the game and enhance brand loyalty.
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On my own will, i've completely hard-wired myself to turn down almost anything that's popular. So I haven't played Guitar Hero, or Rockband. And it's the second reason I don't play FPS's. I don't mind being mocked at school. (on a side note, i still very much enjoy playing super manic guitarman maniac deluxe 2. I shove a screenshot of it at anyone who says I suck because i don't play guitarhero or rockband)
Anyways, the computer is, and in the forseable future, always will be, the best gaming machine out there. Why? because any person that learns how to code can make their own games. And as long as you have an internet connection, you can play just about anything, FOR FREE. You don't pay 50 dollars for every game. You can just PLAY.
The downside of computers: They seem to change faster than consoles. While a console will last a good 5 years before you need to buy the next one, a computer will be outdated and unable to run the newest games after about a year (As i sit here crying because i can't see the pretty graphics of SupCom FA)
My 14 yen.
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The author isn't wrong (much - if Ninty has more 'passionate' customers then why so many PS3 vs 360 flamewars?) but I don't see anything particularly new or penetrating in his analysis.
I'd have to disagree with your assessment in general; while much of what the author wrote may not necessarily be new ideas, I think the way in which he gathers together these ideas to create a cogent argument is worth something in and of itself. I've certainly never seen anyone tie together Nintendo's public statements and release practices with a general scale philosophy of gaming...and considering that Nintendo is the only console manufacturer that's managed to turn a profit on hardware over the past two cycles, perhaps more people should have been paying attention. As for the question of passion, I think what you see in most of those 360/PS3 arguments is so much of the "hardcore" fanbase that the article mentions arguing over minutiae while completely missing the big picture. This time around, Nintendo didn't target those sorts of gamers at all, at least not right off the bat, though it seems as though their intended end result may be to swell their ranks with potential new customers.
On my own will, i've completely hard-wired myself to turn down almost anything that's popular. So I haven't played Guitar Hero, or Rockband. And it's the second reason I don't play FPS's. I don't mind being mocked at school. (on a side note, i still very much enjoy playing super manic guitarman maniac deluxe 2. I shove a screenshot of it at anyone who says I suck because i don't play guitarhero or rockband)
At least from where I'm sitting, that's as much of a conformist viewpoint as is only playing what's popular. Decide for yourself what you enjoy, popular opinion be damned.
Anyways, the computer is, and in the forseable future, always will be, the best gaming machine out there. Why? because any person that learns how to code can make their own games. And as long as you have an internet connection, you can play just about anything, FOR FREE. You don't pay 50 dollars for every game. You can just PLAY.
...you feel like explaining to me how buying a $50 PC game and the necessary RAM and video card updates it entails, and playing it on your existing home Internet connection, is any more "free" than buying a $60 console game and the necessary console it entails, and playing it on your existing home Internet connection? :p No one's going to argue that mod creation (if not always mod use) is exclusively in the PC realm, but each side entails its own base costs. (And given the expected lifespan of the current generation of consoles, one could easily argue that the PC cost could be significantly more this time around.) And the worst possible argument you could make against consoles is the ability to "just play," since that's been their main positive attribute since the very beginning. There's no mucking about with driver incompatibilities, or bugs induced by specific pieces of hardware, or flaws inherent in the operating system. If I buy a game for a specific console, I know it's always going to work in said console just by putting the disk in.
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Anyways, the computer is, and in the forseable future, always will be, the best gaming machine out there. Why? because any person that learns how to code can make their own games. And as long as you have an internet connection, you can play just about anything, FOR FREE. You don't pay 50 dollars for every game. You can just PLAY.
...you feel like explaining to me how buying a $50 PC game and the necessary RAM and video card updates it entails, and playing it on your existing home Internet connection, is any more "free" than buying a $60 console game and the necessary console it entails, and playing it on your existing home Internet connection? :p
:wtf:
It's called freeware.
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...you feel like explaining to me how buying a $50 PC game and the necessary RAM and video card updates it entails, and playing it on your existing home Internet connection, is any more "free" than buying a $60 console game and the necessary console it entails, and playing it on your existing home Internet connection?
:arrr:
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You can do that with consoles as well. You don't even have to use a modchip to do it with the Wii.
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Which would be highly relevant, if there were wii games worth pirating.
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There are, but the entire line of conversation is beside the point. :p
And with the possible exception of this community, I've yet to see freeware that can hold a candle to any of my favorite retail games.
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A few of the freeware games that beat the Hell out of most commercial games:
Cave Story
Eversion
LA-MULANA
Survival Crisis Z
Walkover
Transcendence
Nethack (or Falcon's Eye, if you prefer isometrics)
Iter Vehemens ad Necem
Fedora Spade: Ep. 1
Fedora Spade: Ep. 2
Red Valkyrie
Five Days a Stranger*
Seven Days a Skeptic*
*Note: the other games in this series are worthless.
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Never heard of any of them other than Eversion, and that was more of a proof-of-concept tech demo, or at best a temporarily amusing diversion, than a full-fledged game. In any case, I sincerely doubt that the vast majority of freeware projects out there could hold my attention nearly as long as any of the retail games I've loved over the years.