I'd second the motion that people interested in games with very strong narratives that don't necessarily exist to provide 'fun' should check out Spec Ops: The Line. I mean, the gameplay is fun but the narrative is specifically tuned to rob you of any satisfaction in having played it. It's way more in line with what Cage wants to do without all of the flaws narrative-wise that his games seem to come with.
After reading Cages quote and people's reactions to it here, I've realized there are a lot of you who have not played Spec Ops: The Line. You all should get on that.
Based on what I've heard, that one's absolutely on my list. Though I'm expecting it to sell horribly.
While we're talking about games that are meaningful for discussion, I finally fired up The Gunstringer last week. It's fantastic! It controls very well, it's got an extremely creative game world, and it's hilarious. It absolutely stands as proud proof that the Kinect can be used to create good "core" games.
Yet aside from Gunstringer, there's really only Child of Eden that stands up as a core Kinect game that's worth a damn, and that one's arguable since you can play it with a controller. There's precisely fuck-all else out there other than Steel Battalion, and the less said about that one the better.
My question is: why? What happened? Is it the technology? We've gotten indications that Microsoft is sticking with and upgrading Kinect for the next generation. Will better capabilities help, or will it just be more of the same? Is it the attitude of the publishers? After all, precious few of them made core games for the Wii, even though it could be argued that the Wii's motion technology is more robust than Kinect's. Is it due to Microsoft not providing good examples of Kinect use? The only Microsoft-published core game for Kinect was The Gunstringer, and that one was born out of an epic act of bullshittery*, not out of Microsoft's mandate. Sony's actually done a better job of coming out with a few games for Move that go beyond minigames, though they sell horribly.
At any rate, since it's been almost a year since Gunstringer came out and Steel Battalion was an epic bust, I think it's safe to give up on core games for Kinect.
Well somebody needs to start convincing film makers, screenplay writers, broadway producers, and novelists that interactive media can be a means of telling a story or producing an art. I applaud anyone that wants to try, but David Cage already made his impression as not being the guy to be able to do that. Him trying again doesn't mean a lot. If he somehow turns around and produces something incredible, then fair enough, but he or his supporters can't begrudge people for being skeptical. Being among the forefront of video game story tellers is like...
... I was going to make a Special Olympics joke there and really shouldn't.
To be fair, I would say that video gaming storytelling has been coming along at a decent rate.
Hell, 10 years ago the only games that even had something resembling a story were RPGs.
Half-Life and Starcraft came out like 14 years ago.
And just because there are always exceptions to the rule doesn't make a statement any less true.
Actually, a single exception makes your statement untrue. But I'm guessing you really didn't mean to use the term "only" instead of, say, "most" or "nearly all."
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
So the STALKER thing isn't that Bethesda owns it, it's that they have permission to add to what exists.
Oh, that's pretty ok. Where did you read that at?
I actually inferred it from your last post on the issue. It makes sense right? They can't alter the existing universe, but they've been given the go to make a STALKER game. So... yeah?
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
"Don't own but have permission to add to what exists"
That sounds weird.
Not really. Think of it on the same level of franchises like Star Wars or Warcraft where authors can add content as they please, as long as that permission is given.
Well somebody needs to start convincing film makers, screenplay writers, broadway producers, and novelists that interactive media can be a means of telling a story or producing an art. I applaud anyone that wants to try, but David Cage already made his impression as not being the guy to be able to do that. Him trying again doesn't mean a lot. If he somehow turns around and produces something incredible, then fair enough, but he or his supporters can't begrudge people for being skeptical. Being among the forefront of video game story tellers is like...
... I was going to make a Special Olympics joke there and really shouldn't.
To be fair, I would say that video gaming storytelling has been coming along at a decent rate.
Hell, 10 years ago the only games that even had something resembling a story were RPGs.
Half-Life and Starcraft came out like 14 years ago.
And just because there are always exceptions to the rule doesn't make a statement any less true.
Actually, a single exception makes your statement untrue. But I'm guessing you really didn't mean to use the term "only" instead of, say, "most" or "nearly all."
Then why bring it up in the first place...since all it does is waste time with an exchange that didn't need to occur? Other than to be snarky I assume.
After reading Cages quote and people's reactions to it here, I've realized there are a lot of you who have not played Spec Ops: The Line. You all should get on that.
Is that the one where
the game forces you to commit a war crime then abuses you for committing said war crime?
Games with false "moral" choices annoy the hell out of me; either I do whatever stupid thing you make me do to progress or I'm out however much I spent on the game. It's a shame there aren't more out there with fully diverging paths rather than a last minute decision that, if you're lucky, will be based on your actions up til that point.
After reading Cages quote and people's reactions to it here, I've realized there are a lot of you who have not played Spec Ops: The Line. You all should get on that.
Is that the one where
Are we talking about a game where we don't mark possible spoilers? 'cause that sounds like a fun game that I want to be a part of.
Well, I think that has a lot to do with game's origin like I said, games started with things like pong and arcades.
Basically, they were made in a way to be quickly satisfying and easily consumed. Heck, people complain about game length these days but in the Nintendo/Sega does it wasn't that unusual or that surprising to have games that were only a few hours long.
Either way, back to my point, since games started off as this easily consumable thing they evolved from that and if anything all this stuff about story-first and all these different ways of looking at games have started to come up in spite of gaming's origins.
Really, one of my biggest problems these days is how narrow-minded the industry gets at times. I feel that developers undersell the consumers want for something different(and sadly it tends to be reinforced by a lot of "hardcore" gamers).
That is also why I believe a lot of the more "artsy" games we see these days also tend to be from small developers who probably don't have much financial backing.
Not to derail too hard, but it relates to the industry's direction:
Honestly, gaming's origins are no more frivolous than those of film. The earliest movies, Lumiere and Edison stuff, were all about the, "Gee golly, look at what we can do with this technology!" I can't remember the name of it, but one of the first big crowd pleasers literally ended with a guy pointing a gun at the camera and shooting at the audience. It served no plot function, it was merely about entertainment. The Lumiere stuff was a little different, focusing on showing other parts of the world to people who couldn't travel and catching glimpses of day to day life, but even then, the day to day stuff was marketed heavily on, "See yourself in a movie!" as they'd film a place and then turn around and show it in the same place.
Pong was the equivalent of this. I think that gameplay stayed as a focus in video games (obviously) for longer than the wow-factor stayed as the primary focus in film, but a lot of that has to do with the accessibility of creating in a medium. The earliest cameras weren't user-friendly, but they were nowhere near the barrier to entry that learning to program is. With a low barrier to entry you get a lot of crap, but you also get a tremendous amount of variety.
That barrier is much lower now that the tools are more accessible, and you've also got a healthy generation that grew up playing games, and are now reflecting on what they experienced themselves. It's often pretentious and meta as all hell, but that's absolutely necessary. This is a tremendously exciting time in the evolution of games. I'd drifted away from really spending a lot of time with gaming as it seemed like derivative after derivative was driving the market, but I'm absolutely back in now.
And the small developers comment is right on, and again, it mirrors film. You'll occasionally see some high-brow interesting experimental film out of a major studio, but most of the really weird stuff comes out of the arthouses or smaller subsidiaries of the main studios.
Even more exciting to me is that game-makers finally seem to be realizing that despite the similarities between film and video games, they aren't the same medium, and stories don't have to be told in the same way (Bastion is my go-to example here). Cutscene after cutscene is going to be viewed as the stilted, over-melodramatic acting of games in a couple of decades; just something that early games cribbed from the most similar artform available because they didn't know what else to do.
Sorry, video game narrative is my hobby horse.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Wait, I'm seeing things about "Bethesda", "STALKER", and "new game". Think I need to do some catching up.
In the meantime, I just want everybody to think about the potential ramifications of Bethesda making a STALKER game. I dunno if cross-breeding bugs can cause a PC to undergo complete protonic reversal, but I'm willing to bet that Bethesda will give it the old college try.
But hey, I'd take that risk if it means more STALKER.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
After reading Cages quote and people's reactions to it here, I've realized there are a lot of you who have not played Spec Ops: The Line. You all should get on that.
Is that the one where the game forces you to commit a war crime then abuses you for committing said war crime? Games with false "moral" choices annoy the hell out of me; either I do whatever stupid thing you make me do to progress or I'm out however much I spent on the game. It's a shame there aren't more out there with fully diverging paths rather than a last minute decision that, if you're lucky, will be based on your actions up til that point.
Really, I think the problem with forcing moral choices in a game is two-fold.
1) Gamers always want a way out. If they're forced into a bad situation, that'll always ask why this and that didn't happen instead of looking at why the situation doesn't allow.
2) Its difficult to make gamers feel what the character is suppose to feel. What might be a serious dilemma to the character could more than likely be just another roadblock to the player.
It kind of like when I was talking to a fellow employee once. I think we were talking about a game where on a level terrorist take hostages and you could either try to save the hostages or just shoot them and kill the terrorist at the same time. My co-worker told me how he just shot all the hostages because it made the level go faster. Really, getting people to feel the heaviness of a scene is the hardest things games have going for them and I feel that's because
3 (I know I said 2 things but I remembered something else) ) Very few games actually have serious consequence for the actions that you perform. For many reasons, both externally and internally. Basically, games have moral choices but there are never moral consequences. Not to mention most games reinforce the what I like to call "Chosen One" complex that not only do most players dislike negative consequence but being forced to feel powerless to change a situation actively pisses them off.
Also...there the other problem that most of the time games just throw moral choices in to throw them in and it is generally half-assed. And sometimes you are forced into situations that could have been easily avoided(Fallout 3's default ending).
Wait, I'm seeing things about "Bethesda", "STALKER", and "new game". Think I need to do some catching up.
In the meantime, I just want everybody to think about the potential ramifications of Bethesda making a STALKER game. I dunno if cross-breeding bugs can cause a PC to undergo complete protonic reversal, but I'm willing to bet that Bethesda will give it the old college try.
But hey, I'd take that risk if it means more STALKER.
If they do anything with it, I think it's probably a guarantee that it's going to end up all "You got some Skyrim in my STALKER!"
Though they have published plenty of games(most of which are markedly terrible though), they haven't really tried to break that mold under their own power since Terminator: Skynet. (unless you count IHRA Drag Racing as something that exists.)
So it does become a good looking glass as to what ramifications you could expect for the IP.
Zynga has been hit with the first of five expected lawsuits alleging a handful of top executives and investors engaged in insider trading – including CEO Marc Pincus and Google. Following Zynga's IPO in December, employees and investors were "locked up," unable to sell their shares until May 28. Technically. A group of top executives and shareholders hired underwriters to manage the sale of their shares, creating a loophole that allowed them to sell their stock at $12.
By May 28, when initial investors were legally allowed to sell their shares, Zynga stock had fallen to $6. Yesterday, it struck $3. Locked up investors had no opportunity to sell their shares at the same price as the top brass, and the insiders that did "cashed out at exactly the right time," Business Insider's Henry Blodget writes.
Zynga executives paid the underwriters – which include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and other high-profile Wall Street companies – roughly $15 million to arrange the early sales, and Zynga the company spent $1 million on legal fees, private jet rentals and other expenses to help the process along. The insiders took $516 million. And then Zynga's stock crashed.
During the artificial sale period, Pincus sold 16.5 million shares and made out with $200 million, Google sold 4 million for $48 million, and Zynga COO John Schappert sold 322,000 shares for $3.9 million, along with other large names and numbers.
Newman Ferrara is the first law firm to file a suit against Zynga and its executives, with Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe and others investigating the claims as well.
Blodget has a personal perspective on the matter, and he writes, "I know many of these folks personally, including at the company's underwriters, and like and respect them. I think the last thing they would intentionally do is unload stock when they thought it was about to crash - especially when the amount they made in the sale, though huge, is still relative chicken feed for them. Also, all of these folks only sold a fraction of their holdings, so they've been hammered along with the rest of Zynga shareholders by the subsequent collapse.
3 (I know I said 2 things but I remembered something else) ) Very few games actually have serious consequence for the actions that you perform. For many reasons, both externally and internally. Basically, games have moral choices but there are never moral consequences. Not to mention most games reinforce the what I like to call "Chosen One" persona that not only do most players dislike negative consequence but being forced to feel powerless to change a situation actively pisses them off.
Also...there the other problem that most of the time games just throw moral choices in to throw them in and it is generally half-assed. And sometimes you are forced into situations that could have been easily avoided(Fallout 3's default ending).
Most players seem to be wholly at odds with the idea that something bad could be happening to them in a game with regard to their choices. Usually they're spoon fed golden child hero complex scenarios where they become the diamond god of the cosmos, or they run around inflicting untold horrors on some poor hapless NPCs(and still end up diamond god of the cosmos). This, ironically, is the illusion of 'choice' that people talk about when they talk about wanting to have choice in a game.
At worst, one could normally expect some sobby backstory about the main character's parents already dead before the story begins, or you don't defend some random mission NPC and the game attempts to guilt trip you with some cheesy narrative while the whole mood is mitigated by the mission NPC flopping around in the background comically due to rag doll physics. And then you reload a save.
Zynga has been hit with the first of five expected lawsuits alleging a handful of top executives and investors engaged in insider trading – including CEO Marc Pincus and Google. Following Zynga's IPO in December, employees and investors were "locked up," unable to sell their shares until May 28. Technically. A group of top executives and shareholders hired underwriters to manage the sale of their shares, creating a loophole that allowed them to sell their stock at $12.
By May 28, when initial investors were legally allowed to sell their shares, Zynga stock had fallen to $6. Yesterday, it struck $3. Locked up investors had no opportunity to sell their shares at the same price as the top brass, and the insiders that did "cashed out at exactly the right time," Business Insider's Henry Blodget writes.
Zynga executives paid the underwriters – which include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and other high-profile Wall Street companies – roughly $15 million to arrange the early sales, and Zynga the company spent $1 million on legal fees, private jet rentals and other expenses to help the process along. The insiders took $516 million. And then Zynga's stock crashed.
During the artificial sale period, Pincus sold 16.5 million shares and made out with $200 million, Google sold 4 million for $48 million, and Zynga COO John Schappert sold 322,000 shares for $3.9 million, along with other large names and numbers.
Newman Ferrara is the first law firm to file a suit against Zynga and its executives, with Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe and others investigating the claims as well.
Blodget has a personal perspective on the matter, and he writes, "I know many of these folks personally, including at the company's underwriters, and like and respect them. I think the last thing they would intentionally do is unload stock when they thought it was about to crash - especially when the amount they made in the sale, though huge, is still relative chicken feed for them. Also, all of these folks only sold a fraction of their holdings, so they've been hammered along with the rest of Zynga shareholders by the subsequent collapse.
"But, all that said, wow."
Is anyone crying over this?
Well, I feel awful for the lower-tier investors who were stuck watching their investment crash and burn with nothing they could do about it.
But given how Pincus allegedly snorked all the cash he could out of his last company as it burned, this is no surprise.
Actually, thats a fair point... I haven't played any of the STALKER games, so what makes them different from Fallout 3/NV?
STALKER doesn't have any RPG leveling, it's a straight FPS. Gunplay is far more realistic than most games, iron sights and standing still when firing are almost required. The atmosphere of the games is different, too. Fallout's had some creepy moments but STALKER is set entirely in the Exclusion Zone where the Chernobyl Disaster took place. It takes place in real life Silent Hill, man.
After reading Cages quote and people's reactions to it here, I've realized there are a lot of you who have not played Spec Ops: The Line. You all should get on that.
Is that the one where
the game forces you to commit a war crime then abuses you for committing said war crime?
Games with false "moral" choices annoy the hell out of me; either I do whatever stupid thing you make me do to progress or I'm out however much I spent on the game. It's a shame there aren't more out there with fully diverging paths rather than a last minute decision that, if you're lucky, will be based on your actions up til that point.
Not to derail, but check out The Walking Dead game by TellTale. It does the whole moral choice thing very well... and you're on a timer who's length depends on the situation. If you're in a do or die situation you have very little time to make a choice. If you don't make a choice in that time, you get stuck with the indecisive option which isn't always a bad option either.
It's fantastic and there's very rarely, if ever, a blatantly "right" choice. The timer makes such a huge difference in the decision making process that I hope future games with moral choices start using it.
After reading Cages quote and people's reactions to it here, I've realized there are a lot of you who have not played Spec Ops: The Line. You all should get on that.
Is that the one where
the game forces you to commit a war crime then abuses you for committing said war crime
? Games with false "moral" choices annoy the hell out of me; either I do whatever stupid thing you make me do to progress or I'm out however much I spent on the game. It's a shame there aren't more out there with fully diverging paths rather than a last minute decision that, if you're lucky, will be based on your actions up til that point.
Really, I think the problem with forcing moral choices in a game is two-fold.
1) Gamers always want a way out. If they're forced into a bad situation, that'll always ask why this and that didn't happen instead of looking at why the situation doesn't allow.
2) Its difficult to make gamers feel what the character is suppose to feel. What might be a serious dilemma to the character could more than likely be just another roadblock to the player.
It kind of like when I was talking to a fellow employee once. I think we were talking about a game where on a level terrorist take hostages and you could either try to save the hostages or just shoot them and kill the terrorist at the same time. My co-worker told me how he just shot all the hostages because it made the level go faster. Really, getting people to feel the heaviness of a scene is the hardest things games have going for them and I feel that's because
3 (I know I said 2 things but I remembered something else) ) Very few games actually have serious consequence for the actions that you perform. For many reasons, both externally and internally. Basically, games have moral choices but there are never moral consequences. Not to mention most games reinforce the what I like to call "Chosen One" persona that not only do most players dislike negative consequence but being forced to feel powerless to change a situation actively pisses them off.
Also...there the other problem that most of the time games just throw moral choices in to throw them in and it is generally half-assed. And sometimes you are forced into situations that could have been easily avoided(Fallout 3's default ending).
Regarding your first point, I think it's true that scenarios with only a negative solution can be particularly thought provoking to gamers who are so inclined - Demon's Souls has a particularly good one. I think it's important that the game itself doesn't pick a side though; no one likes being preached at.
Lack of moral consequences is also an interesting one. A game that I'd generally praise for its approach to moral decisions is last year's Tactics Ogre on the PSP; at one point early on, you're given the choice of killing a village of innocents under the enemy's banner to increase support for your resistance.
If you refuse, one of your allies defects and his portrait goes all evil; if you agree then he still defects and his portrait goes all noble. Disappointingly you're presented as the hero either way, rather than your character paralleling your former ally's villainous arc (though it's interesting that actually choosing to support the massacre "for the greater good" is in many ways the superior route through the game).
Star Wars: The Old Republic will be going free to play this fall, publisher EA announced this afternoon.
All eight character storylines up to level 50 will be accessible with restricted access to new content and advanced features. Some of these restrictions can be removed by "purchasing" access with Cartel Coins, the new virtual currency to be introduced in the fall. Unlimited access including higher-level content and new features will be available through subscription options.
"Players want flexibility and choice. The subscription-only model presented a major barrier for a lot of people who wanted to become part of The Old Republic universe," said GM of BioWare Matthew Bromberg in a press release.
Beginning in the fall, players will have free-to-play and subscription options. Players can purchase on going subscriptions or play advanced content by redeeming Game Time Cards. Subscribers will receive monthly allowances of Cartel Coins, which can be used to purchase in-game items, gear, and convenience features.
"Since launch, we've been listening to feedback from our fans and adding new content and refining The Old Republic at a breakneck pace," said executive producer Jeff Hickman. "We believe we are in a position to help improve the service even more, not only by continuing to add new content, but also by expanding the game to many more Star Wars fans, increasing the populations on worlds and the vibrancy of the community."
Gamestop got an interview with Gamestop CEO Paul Raines in their Texas refurbishment center. Here's a few interesting bits:
GS: Why has GameStop been able to crack the used game market where others have failed?
PR: Refurb is a huge part of it. I think…strategically, we are absolutely committed to video gaming. One of the things that people don’t talk enough about is that we are, at our core, a video game company. And I say this to our employees and to our colleagues all the time: don’t forget we are authentic about video games. I play about 4 hours of video games per week. We are all into it. Our founders are into it. What that means is that we are strategically committed to [games], so when I see that Take-Two wants to do a launch of a game with us, and it’s going to require an investment of X, Y, Z, this isn’t a situation where a buyer who runs the video game category in a huge conglomerate has to go fight with the appliance guy. I’m into it. I’m talking to the Take-Two CEO directly. This facility is a huge weapon for us. No. 2 is we’ve been at it a long time. We know how consumers think; how to get them to bring trades in. No. 3: PowerUp Rewards now is a massive, massive relationship driver with consumers. And [No. 4]: we understand pawn shop legislation and all the rules around the country and how to run it. [No. 5], the pricing. It’s extremely complicated and we manage it far better than anyone else. Most, if not all, of our competitors are outsourcing this operation to a third-party.
...
GS: What do you make of the rumors that next-gen consoles may block, or in some way curb, used games?
PR: Well, they’re rumors. I guess we’ve said we don’t think it makes business sense. The $1.2 billion trade credits are funding growth of the industry. If you look at our PowerUp Rewards community, just in the United States, not including Europe, Australia, and Canada, there’s 24 million consoles in people’s homes. That 24 million consoles at current trade prices is about $1.8 billion of trade credits that we can use to drive the launch of Wii U, PS4, and Xbox next. So our console makers know that and they don’t want to miss the opportunity to use that to drive the market. And it doesn’t make economic sense. It’s a consumer problem. There are a lot of people who love pre-owned games. But if it were to happen, it’s like anything else in the business. You react accordingly. The preowned business will not go away any time soon. Even if new consoles don’t play preowned games, people are going to be playing PS3 games, and we still have a ton of people playing PS2. That’s a huge part of our pre-owned business.
GS: Have you seen that GameFly commercial that skewers GameStop’s trade-in prices? Do you think there’s any truth to the thought that your trade-in prices are not where they should be?
PR: Well, we do two things around that. One is we spend a lot of time talking to consumers about how they feel about our value. We have great feedback from consumers about our value. Second is that we look at our competitors and where they stand. Those are main two things driving it. On a title-by-title basis, you can always find examples. As far as GameFly, it’s a small business. They’re going to run ads. We looked hard at rental; we think pre-owned is a better customer proposition that rental.
...
GS: Another thing that strikes me as interesting is GameStop's perception among hardcore gamers. If you only read message boards and comments section of stories, you'd get the idea that they hate GameStop, and yet they react with disgust at the idea of used games being done away with. What's your reaction to this?
PR: Hardcore gamers love GameStop. We measure customer service a hundred different ways. Remember, we have the PowerUp Rewards community, with a membership around 18 million, and they represent 35-40 percent of all video game consumption in the United States. They’re not the most active bloggers, maybe (laughs), but our position with consumers is very, very strong. Far stronger than any of our competitors, so we feel really good about that. We’re always trying to do better and resolve issues, but I think the pre-owned business is a very important business to people. You try to take it away and you see what people do. Our customers tell us that every day. The lifestyle of the gamer requires pre-owned business, because I’m buying a lot of new titles, I have to have a place to dispose of them so I can go and buy more new titles. That’s absolutely what we’re trying to do.
...
GS: How much more complicated has it become to deal with publishers now that they have new ways to seemingly combat used games like online passes and DLC tickets?
PR: I think our relationship with publishers is better than it’s ever been. Online passes are an interesting thing. The media loves to talk about it; it’s an interesting thing. We’re selling online passes in the store, and I think some consumers want that. I think digital content is a far better way to sell consumers more of what they want. But it’s another wrinkle in the process. We’ve not seen a lot of impact from it. I think publishers today working with GameStop have a much broader set of tools at their disposal. Think about the PowerUp Rewards; our marketshare is at an all-time high. The reason is, PowerUp Rewards have given us new ways to connect with customers. Digital content is offering new ways to offer consumers a bigger experience. Instead of giving them a T-shirt, now you can give them digital content, levels, et cetera. And then lastly, we are far more integrated around the world than we have ever been. When we launch a title now, it’s more and more a global launch. And that helps. People like EA, our good partners at Activision, and some of the other companies, they need us to be more integrated globally with what we’re trying to do.
Ahhh I was beat to posting EA's announcement that TOR is going FTP. Darnit. Oh well. In just a few hours we'll have their financials.
Really? Wow. The timing can't be a coincidence.
Haha, their stockholders conference call was after market close too. A pattern I'm noticing is that before a big announcement their stock fluctuates pretty wildly.
Wait, I'm seeing things about "Bethesda", "STALKER", and "new game". Think I need to do some catching up.
In the meantime, I just want everybody to think about the potential ramifications of Bethesda making a STALKER game. I dunno if cross-breeding bugs can cause a PC to undergo complete protonic reversal, but I'm willing to bet that Bethesda will give it the old college try.
But hey, I'd take that risk if it means more STALKER.
I thought nerds were supposed to be good at math.
When you multiply two negatives, they become a positive.
Star Wars: The Old Republic will be going free to play this fall, publisher EA announced this afternoon.
All eight character storylines up to level 50 will be accessible with restricted access to new content and advanced features. Some of these restrictions can be removed by "purchasing" access with Cartel Coins, the new virtual currency to be introduced in the fall. Unlimited access including higher-level content and new features will be available through subscription options.
"Players want flexibility and choice. The subscription-only model presented a major barrier for a lot of people who wanted to become part of The Old Republic universe," said GM of BioWare Matthew Bromberg in a press release.
Beginning in the fall, players will have free-to-play and subscription options. Players can purchase on going subscriptions or play advanced content by redeeming Game Time Cards. Subscribers will receive monthly allowances of Cartel Coins, which can be used to purchase in-game items, gear, and convenience features.
"Since launch, we've been listening to feedback from our fans and adding new content and refining The Old Republic at a breakneck pace," said executive producer Jeff Hickman. "We believe we are in a position to help improve the service even more, not only by continuing to add new content, but also by expanding the game to many more Star Wars fans, increasing the populations on worlds and the vibrancy of the community."
Fuck, I think I made a "eat my own cock" bet about this and I'm pretty sure I lost. I'm disappointed but excited at the same time. Again, I'm a sucker for some F2P games. Hopefully their optional offerings are worth the money.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Ahhh I was beat to posting EA's announcement that TOR is going FTP. Darnit. Oh well. In just a few hours we'll have their financials.
Really? Wow. The timing can't be a coincidence.
Haha, their stockholders conference call was after market close too. A pattern I'm noticing is that before a big announcement their stock fluctuates pretty wildly.
Tyrannus I love you because of all your stock know-how and observations.
Ahhh I was beat to posting EA's announcement that TOR is going FTP. Darnit. Oh well. In just a few hours we'll have their financials.
Really? Wow. The timing can't be a coincidence.
Haha, their stockholders conference call was after market close too. A pattern I'm noticing is that before a big announcement their stock fluctuates pretty wildly.
Tyrannus I love you because of all your stock know-how and observations.
Also that's super dubious of EA.
I wouldn't call minimizing knee-jerk reactions "super dubious." Just good(?) business strategy.
Ahhh I was beat to posting EA's announcement that TOR is going FTP. Darnit. Oh well. In just a few hours we'll have their financials.
Really? Wow. The timing can't be a coincidence.
Haha, their stockholders conference call was after market close too. A pattern I'm noticing is that before a big announcement their stock fluctuates pretty wildly.
Tyrannus I love you because of all your stock know-how and observations.
Also that's super dubious of EA.
It's depressingly common for companies that are having troubles to announce sweeping changes/job cuts right before announcing earnings, and saving the earnings announcement for after the stock market closes.
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Based on what I've heard, that one's absolutely on my list. Though I'm expecting it to sell horribly.
While we're talking about games that are meaningful for discussion, I finally fired up The Gunstringer last week. It's fantastic! It controls very well, it's got an extremely creative game world, and it's hilarious. It absolutely stands as proud proof that the Kinect can be used to create good "core" games.
Yet aside from Gunstringer, there's really only Child of Eden that stands up as a core Kinect game that's worth a damn, and that one's arguable since you can play it with a controller. There's precisely fuck-all else out there other than Steel Battalion, and the less said about that one the better.
My question is: why? What happened? Is it the technology? We've gotten indications that Microsoft is sticking with and upgrading Kinect for the next generation. Will better capabilities help, or will it just be more of the same? Is it the attitude of the publishers? After all, precious few of them made core games for the Wii, even though it could be argued that the Wii's motion technology is more robust than Kinect's. Is it due to Microsoft not providing good examples of Kinect use? The only Microsoft-published core game for Kinect was The Gunstringer, and that one was born out of an epic act of bullshittery*, not out of Microsoft's mandate. Sony's actually done a better job of coming out with a few games for Move that go beyond minigames, though they sell horribly.
At any rate, since it's been almost a year since Gunstringer came out and Steel Battalion was an epic bust, I think it's safe to give up on core games for Kinect.
*If you haven't heard the story, it really is the most wonderful case of bullshitting under pressure ever, and you need to read it here: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/09/26/the-three-terrifying-minutes-that-created-the-gunstringer/
Oh, that's pretty ok. Where did you read that at?
That sounds weird.
Actually, a single exception makes your statement untrue. But I'm guessing you really didn't mean to use the term "only" instead of, say, "most" or "nearly all."
I actually inferred it from your last post on the issue. It makes sense right? They can't alter the existing universe, but they've been given the go to make a STALKER game. So... yeah?
Not really. Think of it on the same level of franchises like Star Wars or Warcraft where authors can add content as they please, as long as that permission is given.
Then why bring it up in the first place...since all it does is waste time with an exchange that didn't need to occur? Other than to be snarky I assume.
Is that the one where
Are we talking about a game where we don't mark possible spoilers? 'cause that sounds like a fun game that I want to be a part of.
Not to derail too hard, but it relates to the industry's direction:
Honestly, gaming's origins are no more frivolous than those of film. The earliest movies, Lumiere and Edison stuff, were all about the, "Gee golly, look at what we can do with this technology!" I can't remember the name of it, but one of the first big crowd pleasers literally ended with a guy pointing a gun at the camera and shooting at the audience. It served no plot function, it was merely about entertainment. The Lumiere stuff was a little different, focusing on showing other parts of the world to people who couldn't travel and catching glimpses of day to day life, but even then, the day to day stuff was marketed heavily on, "See yourself in a movie!" as they'd film a place and then turn around and show it in the same place.
Pong was the equivalent of this. I think that gameplay stayed as a focus in video games (obviously) for longer than the wow-factor stayed as the primary focus in film, but a lot of that has to do with the accessibility of creating in a medium. The earliest cameras weren't user-friendly, but they were nowhere near the barrier to entry that learning to program is. With a low barrier to entry you get a lot of crap, but you also get a tremendous amount of variety.
That barrier is much lower now that the tools are more accessible, and you've also got a healthy generation that grew up playing games, and are now reflecting on what they experienced themselves. It's often pretentious and meta as all hell, but that's absolutely necessary. This is a tremendously exciting time in the evolution of games. I'd drifted away from really spending a lot of time with gaming as it seemed like derivative after derivative was driving the market, but I'm absolutely back in now.
And the small developers comment is right on, and again, it mirrors film. You'll occasionally see some high-brow interesting experimental film out of a major studio, but most of the really weird stuff comes out of the arthouses or smaller subsidiaries of the main studios.
Even more exciting to me is that game-makers finally seem to be realizing that despite the similarities between film and video games, they aren't the same medium, and stories don't have to be told in the same way (Bastion is my go-to example here). Cutscene after cutscene is going to be viewed as the stilted, over-melodramatic acting of games in a couple of decades; just something that early games cribbed from the most similar artform available because they didn't know what else to do.
Sorry, video game narrative is my hobby horse.
In the meantime, I just want everybody to think about the potential ramifications of Bethesda making a STALKER game. I dunno if cross-breeding bugs can cause a PC to undergo complete protonic reversal, but I'm willing to bet that Bethesda will give it the old college try.
But hey, I'd take that risk if it means more STALKER.
Really, I think the problem with forcing moral choices in a game is two-fold.
1) Gamers always want a way out. If they're forced into a bad situation, that'll always ask why this and that didn't happen instead of looking at why the situation doesn't allow.
2) Its difficult to make gamers feel what the character is suppose to feel. What might be a serious dilemma to the character could more than likely be just another roadblock to the player.
It kind of like when I was talking to a fellow employee once. I think we were talking about a game where on a level terrorist take hostages and you could either try to save the hostages or just shoot them and kill the terrorist at the same time. My co-worker told me how he just shot all the hostages because it made the level go faster. Really, getting people to feel the heaviness of a scene is the hardest things games have going for them and I feel that's because
3 (I know I said 2 things but I remembered something else) ) Very few games actually have serious consequence for the actions that you perform. For many reasons, both externally and internally. Basically, games have moral choices but there are never moral consequences. Not to mention most games reinforce the what I like to call "Chosen One" complex that not only do most players dislike negative consequence but being forced to feel powerless to change a situation actively pisses them off.
Also...there the other problem that most of the time games just throw moral choices in to throw them in and it is generally half-assed. And sometimes you are forced into situations that could have been easily avoided(Fallout 3's default ending).
If they do anything with it, I think it's probably a guarantee that it's going to end up all "You got some Skyrim in my STALKER!"
Though they have published plenty of games(most of which are markedly terrible though), they haven't really tried to break that mold under their own power since Terminator: Skynet. (unless you count IHRA Drag Racing as something that exists.)
So it does become a good looking glass as to what ramifications you could expect for the IP.
Is anyone crying over this?
Most players seem to be wholly at odds with the idea that something bad could be happening to them in a game with regard to their choices. Usually they're spoon fed golden child hero complex scenarios where they become the diamond god of the cosmos, or they run around inflicting untold horrors on some poor hapless NPCs(and still end up diamond god of the cosmos). This, ironically, is the illusion of 'choice' that people talk about when they talk about wanting to have choice in a game.
At worst, one could normally expect some sobby backstory about the main character's parents already dead before the story begins, or you don't defend some random mission NPC and the game attempts to guilt trip you with some cheesy narrative while the whole mood is mitigated by the mission NPC flopping around in the background comically due to rag doll physics. And then you reload a save.
Well, I feel awful for the lower-tier investors who were stuck watching their investment crash and burn with nothing they could do about it.
But given how Pincus allegedly snorked all the cash he could out of his last company as it burned, this is no surprise.
STALKER doesn't have any RPG leveling, it's a straight FPS. Gunplay is far more realistic than most games, iron sights and standing still when firing are almost required. The atmosphere of the games is different, too. Fallout's had some creepy moments but STALKER is set entirely in the Exclusion Zone where the Chernobyl Disaster took place. It takes place in real life Silent Hill, man.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Not to derail, but check out The Walking Dead game by TellTale. It does the whole moral choice thing very well... and you're on a timer who's length depends on the situation. If you're in a do or die situation you have very little time to make a choice. If you don't make a choice in that time, you get stuck with the indecisive option which isn't always a bad option either.
It's fantastic and there's very rarely, if ever, a blatantly "right" choice. The timer makes such a huge difference in the decision making process that I hope future games with moral choices start using it.
Regarding your first point, I think it's true that scenarios with only a negative solution can be particularly thought provoking to gamers who are so inclined - Demon's Souls has a particularly good one. I think it's important that the game itself doesn't pick a side though; no one likes being preached at.
Lack of moral consequences is also an interesting one. A game that I'd generally praise for its approach to moral decisions is last year's Tactics Ogre on the PSP; at one point early on, you're given the choice of killing a village of innocents under the enemy's banner to increase support for your resistance.
http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/7/31/3207160/star-wars-the-old-republic-going-free-to-play-this-fall
http://www.gamespot.com/news/hardcore-gamers-love-gamestop-ceo-paul-raines-6389133
Much, much more at the link.
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Really? Wow. The timing can't be a coincidence.
Haha, their stockholders conference call was after market close too. A pattern I'm noticing is that before a big announcement their stock fluctuates pretty wildly.
No, this fall will be the time to reinstall TOR.
I thought nerds were supposed to be good at math.
When you multiply two negatives, they become a positive.
Time to queue up "Another one bites the dust" on the playlist.
Fuck, I think I made a "eat my own cock" bet about this and I'm pretty sure I lost. I'm disappointed but excited at the same time. Again, I'm a sucker for some F2P games. Hopefully their optional offerings are worth the money.
Tyrannus I love you because of all your stock know-how and observations.
Also that's super dubious of EA.
I wouldn't call minimizing knee-jerk reactions "super dubious." Just good(?) business strategy.
It's depressingly common for companies that are having troubles to announce sweeping changes/job cuts right before announcing earnings, and saving the earnings announcement for after the stock market closes.
Also Couscous, yeah. At least it didn't shut down within two months.