All the money spent on the voice acting seems like wasted cash if you ask me. Do you know what your average player will do? Skip through everything, neither read nor hear anything about the quest, and just follow the arrow/dot on their map. And then ask in general chat when killing whatever is in that spot doesn't work.
Don't get me wrong, I loved reading all the quest text in WoW, and I would likely totally get a kick out of the VA work in TOR, but it seems like I'm one of the rare ones, if my experience in WoW is anything to go by. It annoyed the piss out of me when people would be begging non stop. "Where is X/I can't find Y/need Mankirk's wife plz". And I'm having an aneurysm because I just want to scream "It says right there in your quest notes you illiterate yokel!".
I just wonder if they'll come to the dim realization that there's no point in breaking the bank with VA work when the majority of players are going to skip it...
I'd like to see the statistics on this. To me it's a selling point.. And I'm willing to bet most people playing TOR are the same people who enjoyed KOTOR or any other Bioware game, which means most of them listen to the chatter. (There is an option where you can literally shut off all the talking... I'll never check it, so I don't know what it does in place of it)
I would too. I hope I'm wrong. And I too would love it if it converted people into listening and paying attention. But I dunno, my personal experience doesn't paint a pretty picture.
Shit, I know a bunch of people who skip through everything in a single player game! Why?! Why did you buy this game if you're just going to skip through every single story scene? It bugs the shit out of me!
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
As someone who read all the quest text the first time, I think it'll be great. For the first time. By my 6th character, fuck that. You shut the hell up and give me the quest to farm 200 goat asses from the far end of the zone so I can get to it and gtfo of here asap.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
WoW taught me to hate group play in video games. "Guys I haven't done this before, do you mind if I stop to read text when it shows up?" Two people answer it's cool, two people stay silent. And the two silent people are the ones who fuck me over on that shit. WoWhead, thankfully, listed all that shit so I could read it before doing content, but it was annoying that I had to refer to a third party. So I stick to playing in groups with people that I know well. They're the least likely to be total dickwads in any capacity.
TOR, thankfully, is built to be singleplayer possible. If I become aware of people playing who treat the game the same way as I, I'll be happy to play with them. But if someone I know invites me to a group with people I don't know, no thanks. I have my own agenda - experiencing the narrative. I can worry about the tedious shit at the end game, after the narrative stops.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
All the money spent on the voice acting seems like wasted cash if you ask me. Do you know what your average player will do? Skip through everything, neither read nor hear anything about the quest, and just follow the arrow/dot on their map. And then ask in general chat when killing whatever is in that spot doesn't work.
Don't get me wrong, I loved reading all the quest text in WoW, and I would likely totally get a kick out of the VA work in TOR, but it seems like I'm one of the rare ones, if my experience in WoW is anything to go by. It annoyed the piss out of me when people would be begging non stop. "Where is X/I can't find Y/need Mankirk's wife plz". And I'm having an aneurysm because I just want to scream "It says right there in your quest notes you illiterate yokel!".
I just wonder if they'll come to the dim realization that there's no point in breaking the bank with VA work when the majority of players are going to skip it...
I'd like to see the statistics on this. To me it's a selling point.. And I'm willing to bet most people playing TOR are the same people who enjoyed KOTOR or any other Bioware game, which means most of them listen to the chatter. (There is an option where you can literally shut off all the talking... I'll never check it, so I don't know what it does in place of it)
I would too. I hope I'm wrong. And I too would love it if it converted people into listening and paying attention. But I dunno, my personal experience doesn't paint a pretty picture.
Shit, I know a bunch of people who skip through everything in a single player game! Why?! Why did you buy this game if you're just going to skip through every single story scene? It bugs the shit out of me!
Some people like to play the gameplay and don't care about what attempts to pass for plot in 99% of games. I have to say I agree with them on the quality, but I'm highly tolerant of B movie shlock so it doesn't bother me enough to skip it. Hell the worse it is the funnier I'll probably find it.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Some people like to play the gameplay and don't care about what attempts to pass for plot in 99% of games. I have to say I agree with them on the quality, but I'm highly tolerant of B movie shlock so it doesn't bother me enough to skip it. Hell the worse it is the funnier I'll probably find it.
Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely fine. I wouldn't shit in people's cheerios over it. But I expect the same in return, and MMOs allow for people to unfortunately shit in my breakfast cereal.
(Reuters) - Zynga shares fell as much as 13 percent below their IPO price, in their second trading session, as investors worried about the online game publisher's growth prospects.
Analysts said Monday's sell-off, following the initial public offering at $10 per share on Thursday, mirrors the double-digit stock decline of Japanese game maker Nexon since it went public last Wednesday in Tokyo.
"Investors aren't interested in Zynga - not at these prices," said Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia. "The demand post-IPO is what drives the stock price and it's just not there."
With these latest losses, Zynga has a market value of $7.8 billion, down from $8.9 billion when it went public. Investors are balking at the company's heavy dependence on leading social networking website Facebook and slowing revenue growth in recent quarters, Bhatia added.
Investors had eagerly awaited the IPO as a way to get a slice of Facebook's growth before the website goes public, possibly in 2012. Zynga makes money on Facebook by selling virtual items such as jewelry and poker chips in its games such as "FarmVille" and "CityVille."
Zynga's stock performance could hurt other private companies waiting to go public, such as Yelp and even Facebook, analysts said.
Zynga fell as low as $8.75, before trading down about 5 percent at $9.04 on Nasdaq shortly after midday.
UMD failed and they are trying to screw over anyone who has a collection of those things to make up for it.
Not to harp on this, but I really am confused by the transfer fee. Yes, on the face of it it's pretty awesome that UMD owners actually get to move their stuff over. And I can't really begrudge them some compensation for a service that takes up bandwidth and needs security. $5 per game? Eh, not that bad.
But the fact that the prices are all over the place is just weird, and makes the fee more than just paying for the infrastructure. Apparently the prices are set by individual third parties (especially since there are plenty of games that aren't eligible, suggesting it's up to the third parties to put them up there), so it's not just Sony being greedy. So maybe Sony's trying to please the third parties and bow to their demands. But if the third parties really do have Sony by the balls this way, then why isn't there a transfer fee for digitally-acquired games? Why is charging $20 per UMD fine, but suddenly it's awful if it's a DD game?
Well, the variable pricing is probably to instill value where it doesn't really exist. Like how MS charged $300 for the old Core 360 and $100 if you wanted to add the HDD later. Making the full price $400, the same as the Pro. Except if you did it this way, you didn't get a wireless controller. Making it about $460+tax to 'catch up' whereas it'd have been cheaper to just buy the Pro in the first place. (Basically, MS's own attempt to get people to buy the more expensive model the way SONY did it. Except MS continues to support the HHD-less option for whatever reasons.)
With DD gaming, you've seen the arguments about how non-physical media should be cheaper because it's, well, non-physical. This makes a general sense obviously since it costs more money to make a physical thing. But the reasons why DD is so expensive varies but is usually all about not wanting to make the physical version seem like a rip off. And there may be a little bit of trying to counter anybody thinking that the cheaper version of the same thing is somehow more inferior (beyond not having a physical copy, of course). People do think that less expensive products are inherently cheaper in quality.
I think in this case, it's SONY giving publishers a chance to show that their games are more 'valuable' comparatively. Those AAA titles are obviously better. See? Higher price proves higher quality!
Not well at all. Down nearly 10 percent after two days? Yeesh.
Given the fact that the CEO has founded two other unsuccessful companies, his attitude may very well be "fuck it, let's see how much money I can squeeze from this turnip before it croaks."
In other news, we got the reason for the Vita patch:
The PlayStation Vita has just barely hit the market in Japan, and it's already off to a rocky start with consumers. Only a matter of hours after the first unit was sold, users started complaining of software bugs, unresponsive touchscreens and complete system freezes. It's actually quite normal for new consoles to have a rough first few days with their new owners, but the speed at which it went from a few folks complaining of poor performance to a firestorm of furious customers flooding Twitter was quite surprising. Strangely enough, Sony must have been aware that some of these issues still lurked inside their latest portable gaming hardware, as the company has already issued a public apology and a software update. Hopefully most of the kinks will be worked out by the time the handheld hits stateside -- we're not sure how forgiving American gamers will be when faced with the lag you can see in the video after the break.
So for the stock illiterate, what exactly happened? Zynga decided to go public, said "How awesome are we? 8-> " by pricing their shares at $10, and the rest of the stock market going "yeaaaaahhhhh no."? That the long and short of it?
Falls due to pride are the best ones.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
All the money spent on the voice acting seems like wasted cash if you ask me. Do you know what your average player will do? Skip through everything, neither read nor hear anything about the quest, and just follow the arrow/dot on their map. And then ask in general chat when killing whatever is in that spot doesn't work.
Don't get me wrong, I loved reading all the quest text in WoW, and I would likely totally get a kick out of the VA work in TOR, but it seems like I'm one of the rare ones, if my experience in WoW is anything to go by. It annoyed the piss out of me when people would be begging non stop. "Where is X/I can't find Y/need Mankirk's wife plz". And I'm having an aneurysm because I just want to scream "It says right there in your quest notes you illiterate yokel!".
I just wonder if they'll come to the dim realization that there's no point in breaking the bank with VA work when the majority of players are going to skip it...
I'd like to see the statistics on this. To me it's a selling point.. And I'm willing to bet most people playing TOR are the same people who enjoyed KOTOR or any other Bioware game, which means most of them listen to the chatter. (There is an option where you can literally shut off all the talking... I'll never check it, so I don't know what it does in place of it)
I would too. I hope I'm wrong. And I too would love it if it converted people into listening and paying attention. But I dunno, my personal experience doesn't paint a pretty picture.
Shit, I know a bunch of people who skip through everything in a single player game! Why?! Why did you buy this game if you're just going to skip through every single story scene? It bugs the shit out of me!
Some people like to play the gameplay and don't care about what attempts to pass for plot in 99% of games. I have to say I agree with them on the quality, but I'm highly tolerant of B movie shlock so it doesn't bother me enough to skip it. Hell the worse it is the funnier I'll probably find it.
The English VOs for Shenmue are hilariously terrible. And the game is awesome for it.
But I agree, quality VO helps, but isn't as big a distraction for me as is apparently is for others.
So for the stock illiterate, what exactly happened? Zynga decided to go public, said "How awesome are we? 8-> " by pricing their shares at $10, and the rest of the stock market going "yeaaaaahhhhh no."? That the long and short of it?
Falls due to pride are the best ones.
Yes. Most companies just getting started will under price themselves so they can watch the price go up and drive demand for their stock. Not Zynga!
So for the stock illiterate, what exactly happened? Zynga decided to go public, said "How awesome are we? 8-> " by pricing their shares at $10, and the rest of the stock market going "yeaaaaahhhhh no."? That the long and short of it?
Falls due to pride are the best ones.
More or less. I think the problem isn't the price. It was the decision to go public. It was something that should have waited.
So for the stock illiterate, what exactly happened? Zynga decided to go public, said "How awesome are we? 8-> " by pricing their shares at $10, and the rest of the stock market going "yeaaaaahhhhh no."? That the long and short of it?
Falls due to pride are the best ones.
More or less. That and filing an IPO right after reporting dramatically lower profits, higher expenses and much lower adoption rates for their new games.
Then again the company's been horribly run for at least the last couple of years.
Edit: But Henroid, if they didn't file their IPO right now, how could their CEO cash out for a ton of money?
cloudeagle on
Switch: 3947-4890-9293
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
So is this after they strong armed their employees into giving their stocks back to the company?
Because that would be awesome
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
So for the stock illiterate, what exactly happened? Zynga decided to go public, said "How awesome are we? 8-> " by pricing their shares at $10, and the rest of the stock market going "yeaaaaahhhhh no."? That the long and short of it?
Falls due to pride are the best ones.
Yes. Most companies just getting started will under price themselves so they can watch the price go up and drive demand for their stock. Not Zynga!
Now that you mention it, I vaguely remember learning this in highschool. That was almost 10 years ago, God knows how things are "supposed" to work now.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
So for the stock illiterate, what exactly happened? Zynga decided to go public, said "How awesome are we? 8-> " by pricing their shares at $10, and the rest of the stock market going "yeaaaaahhhhh no."? That the long and short of it?
Falls due to pride are the best ones.
Yes. Most companies just getting started will under price themselves so they can watch the price go up and drive demand for their stock. Not Zynga!
Now that you mention it, I vaguely remember learning this in highschool. That was almost 10 years ago, God knows how things are "supposed" to work now.
The 'more or less' covers it. Generally, the stock market 'self-corrects' better than people might think. But it's not a perfect system. What Zynga has done was try to force it into giving them easy PR since (like lolsony) they believed that the name along would drive people to give them money.
Going the undervalued route is nearly always successful. At least at the beginning. It would've worked out better for them right now to have generated the usual post-IPO buzz such things get rather than try and design a scheme they wanted more.
That phrase always confused me. IS IT MORE OR IS IT LESS!? I don't know!
It's the Schrodinger's Box of verbal waffling.
What's in the box?
The cat representing whether or not you know what the hell you're talking about. It can be alive, dead, or, most likely, barfing on the person you're talking to. In their lap.
That phrase always confused me. IS IT MORE OR IS IT LESS!? I don't know!
It's the Schrodinger's Box of verbal waffling.
What's in the box?
The cat representing whether or not you know what the hell you're talking about. It can be alive, dead, or, most likely, barfing on the person you're talking to. In their lap.
That phrase always confused me. IS IT MORE OR IS IT LESS!? I don't know!
It's the Schrodinger's Box of verbal waffling.
What's in the box?
The cat representing whether or not you know what the hell you're talking about. It can be alive, dead, or, most likely, barfing on the person you're talking to. In their lap.
I'm not exactly sure why Rayman Origins is on that list.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
What the fuck? GDC is going to have a panel on the localization of Starcraft 2 to different markets. That's more of a business thing, than a video game development process.
GDC has been turning into a mini-E3 for years. Why stop now?
It has, but I don't think the SC2 localization panel fits in that description. It's just... really odd. If they were talking about the production / direction side of the narrative, it would totally fit into GDC-proper, while still avoiding that "show off a new product" crap that's been going on the last few years.
Unless they manage to show new Heart of the Swarm stuff. Then that would put Blizzard into being classless chumps.
Posts
I would too. I hope I'm wrong. And I too would love it if it converted people into listening and paying attention. But I dunno, my personal experience doesn't paint a pretty picture.
Shit, I know a bunch of people who skip through everything in a single player game! Why?! Why did you buy this game if you're just going to skip through every single story scene? It bugs the shit out of me!
TOR, thankfully, is built to be singleplayer possible. If I become aware of people playing who treat the game the same way as I, I'll be happy to play with them. But if someone I know invites me to a group with people I don't know, no thanks. I have my own agenda - experiencing the narrative. I can worry about the tedious shit at the end game, after the narrative stops.
Some people like to play the gameplay and don't care about what attempts to pass for plot in 99% of games. I have to say I agree with them on the quality, but I'm highly tolerant of B movie shlock so it doesn't bother me enough to skip it. Hell the worse it is the funnier I'll probably find it.
Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely fine. I wouldn't shit in people's cheerios over it. But I expect the same in return, and MMOs allow for people to unfortunately shit in my breakfast cereal.
Well, the variable pricing is probably to instill value where it doesn't really exist. Like how MS charged $300 for the old Core 360 and $100 if you wanted to add the HDD later. Making the full price $400, the same as the Pro. Except if you did it this way, you didn't get a wireless controller. Making it about $460+tax to 'catch up' whereas it'd have been cheaper to just buy the Pro in the first place. (Basically, MS's own attempt to get people to buy the more expensive model the way SONY did it. Except MS continues to support the HHD-less option for whatever reasons.)
With DD gaming, you've seen the arguments about how non-physical media should be cheaper because it's, well, non-physical. This makes a general sense obviously since it costs more money to make a physical thing. But the reasons why DD is so expensive varies but is usually all about not wanting to make the physical version seem like a rip off. And there may be a little bit of trying to counter anybody thinking that the cheaper version of the same thing is somehow more inferior (beyond not having a physical copy, of course). People do think that less expensive products are inherently cheaper in quality.
I think in this case, it's SONY giving publishers a chance to show that their games are more 'valuable' comparatively. Those AAA titles are obviously better. See? Higher price proves higher quality!
We're a long, long way from price equitability.
Given the fact that the CEO has founded two other unsuccessful companies, his attitude may very well be "fuck it, let's see how much money I can squeeze from this turnip before it croaks."
In other news, we got the reason for the Vita patch:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/19/sony-issues-appology-and-software-update-for-first-batch-of-vita/
Yikes.
Falls due to pride are the best ones.
The English VOs for Shenmue are hilariously terrible. And the game is awesome for it.
But I agree, quality VO helps, but isn't as big a distraction for me as is apparently is for others.
Yes. Most companies just getting started will under price themselves so they can watch the price go up and drive demand for their stock. Not Zynga!
More or less. I think the problem isn't the price. It was the decision to go public. It was something that should have waited.
More or less. That and filing an IPO right after reporting dramatically lower profits, higher expenses and much lower adoption rates for their new games.
Then again the company's been horribly run for at least the last couple of years.
Edit: But Henroid, if they didn't file their IPO right now, how could their CEO cash out for a ton of money?
Because that would be awesome
Now that you mention it, I vaguely remember learning this in highschool. That was almost 10 years ago, God knows how things are "supposed" to work now.
The 'more or less' covers it. Generally, the stock market 'self-corrects' better than people might think. But it's not a perfect system. What Zynga has done was try to force it into giving them easy PR since (like lolsony) they believed that the name along would drive people to give them money.
Going the undervalued route is nearly always successful. At least at the beginning. It would've worked out better for them right now to have generated the usual post-IPO buzz such things get rather than try and design a scheme they wanted more.
It's the Schrodinger's Box of verbal waffling.
What's in the box?
Information concerning this subject falls within an unknown but relatively minor margin of error.
The cat representing whether or not you know what the hell you're talking about. It can be alive, dead, or, most likely, barfing on the person you're talking to. In their lap.
Volkswagon.
That is all.
Yeah. But what's in the box?
Trabant. It's cheap and it sucks!
Someone should have beaten me to completing the reference, really.
In industry stuffs, Gamasutra has a reprint of a blog entry on why game engines should / shouldn't be made. I've only eyed it over, but it's more or less stuff I've already heard via discussions / podcasts / John Carmack.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/39243/Opinion_Why_On_Earth_Would_We_Write_Our_Own_Game_Engine.php
They also have an article up for the top 5 overlooked games of the year. Whatever that means.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/39191/Gamasutra_Best_Of_2011_Top_5_Overlooked_Games.php
I'm not exactly sure why Rayman Origins is on that list.
Yeah? Care to elaborate on how the disc format spells doom?
It has, but I don't think the SC2 localization panel fits in that description. It's just... really odd. If they were talking about the production / direction side of the narrative, it would totally fit into GDC-proper, while still avoiding that "show off a new product" crap that's been going on the last few years.
Unless they manage to show new Heart of the Swarm stuff. Then that would put Blizzard into being classless chumps.
You can't do that with bytes