End of the videogame industry?

[Major Havoc 2049]

I HOPE it's appeal isn't solely T&A, because I have a sister who likes DOA2.

 

My wife enjoys DOAX. She enjoys it for the collecting, fashion, relationship and casino aspects though. My wife can really rack up some big bucks in the Casino. BTW, most of the provocative swimsuits, including the Venus, were designed by the female members of Team Ninja.

[RCmodeler]

If the women at Ninja are like the women at my company, they can only *dream* of wearing those tiny swimsuits. (i.e. they are thuge ladies)

 

 

 

And then there's the actual Dead or Alive fighting series (1,2,3).  This fighter SUCKS from start to finish.  So why does it sell so well?  One reason and one reason only: Tits & Ass.  In other words, customers are buying the games for the LOOKS rather than the fun/gameplay.

I HOPE it's appeal isn't solely T&A, because I have a sister who likes DOA2.

 

Perhaps your sister is like me? I thought DOA2 was good, but then I upgraded to Tekken Tag and Virtua Fighter, and then I realized what a piece of crap DOA2 truly was. Sure it looks good, but it plays terribly.

 

 

 

Another example of a great game ignored by the customers: ICO

 

Result: No Ico 2. :-(

[sku_u]

 

Another example of a great game ignored by the customers: ICO

 

Result: No Ico 2.  :-(

 

How do you figure? ICO is one of the most overhyped games for PS2.

[RCmodeler]

 

Another example of a great game ignored by the customers: ICO

 

Result: No Ico 2.  :-(

 

How do you figure? ICO is one of the most overhyped games for PS2.

 

 

Since when? The mainstream gamers I meet at the store have never even heard of it!

[Raijin Z]

Ico is butt, plain and simple. So is every Final Fantasy after 7 (and 7 was barely as good as 5).

 

Yeah, the video game industry will die because there is most certainly no such thing as a homebrew scene, and there are DEFINITELY no teams of programmers and modders working on games that are out now, much less working on their own games.

[+kisrael]

Another example of a great game ignored by the customers: ICO

Result: No Ico 2.  :-(

How do you figure? ICO is one of the most overhyped games for PS2.

Since when? The mainstream gamers I meet at the store have never even heard of it!

I think Ico is a one of those "critic's darling" kind of games.

 

I keep meaning to pick it up and at least give it a whirl.

[Raijin Z]

Pick it up at Bob's Video Corral or something first. Preferrably with a free rental coupon.

[sku_u]

 

Another example of a great game ignored by the customers: ICO

 

Result: No Ico 2.  :-(

 

How do you figure? ICO is one of the most overhyped games for PS2.

 

 

Since when? The mainstream gamers I meet at the store have never even heard of it!

 

Since just about every gaming site and messageboard touts it as one of the best games ever made.

[Video]

I've been saying for years that if new fresh stuff doesn't start coming out, the game market will once again become what it was in 83-84. A crater within which nothing comes, and what little is attempted, no matter how good is simply lost through time.

 

GTA3, yeah, sure it's such a revolutionary game. You wouldn't know from it's name that it's a seqel to an earlier game that played the same, except being in a 2d prespective rather than 3D. Sorry, I don't count goning to 3D from 2D as 'revolutionary advancements' as any game can technically be made into a 3D game. There's reasons many aren't. The only revolutionary thing at all about it is nonlinear gameplay. They took a game that honestly wasn't that good and said "Ok, your free to do anything in any order, see you...suckers *pocketing money*"

 

Doa, the fighting series is indeed about TnA (or in a girls case, Abbs and Ass) The fact of the matter, the fighting engine is mediocre at best. It's barely even up to Mortal Kombat standards, and I don't consider that a very good game either. The game is sold, and it's a fact like it or lump it, for the graphics and um...physics. "Hey dude, this room is suspended over water right? Throw the dude through the floor and see if he/she gets eaten by sharks!!" What can be destroyed vs what can't be destroyed in these games is weird. You can throw someone through a stone wall, or a tree, but not through a plate glass window/floor...Huh??

 

DOA XBV again, it's about TnA. It's technically a friendship sim (buy a chick a scantaly clad bikini and see if she'll join your side) But it's called Volyball, and the volyball aspect isn't really very good. If it was supposde to be a friendship sim, then it should have said DOA friendship sim with some volyball. Outlaw Volyball is better in terms of gameplay. DOAXBV's success boils down to a bunch of horney guys (and a few curious girls) buying a game to see T&A flopping around. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

Sure, weird game Ideas may flop. Or you could end up with the next Big Thing. If chances are taken, the companys stand to loose some money. That's why you don't spend all your money in one place. Anybody remember their moms saying "don't spend it all in one place" The reason is if something sucks, you still got money for other stuff. A company no smarter than to spend all it's money on just one, or two games truthfully deserves what's coming to them. If chances aren't taken, the market gets stagnant, people don't buy your crap, and you stand to loose your jobs and nobody will miss you. Again, a company not willing to spread lots of money onto lots of games rather than just a few, desirves what's coming to them.

 

It's like this. Buy the big budget pile of crap cause of graphics, that company spends more on that one game, or type of game, and does less to earn anything on it. In the end, consumers suffer. Buy the low budget pile of crap, and the graphics aren't quiet as good as the big budget game, but you may be surprised by excelent gameplay. Or a truely unique game experiance.

 

BTW, Sports games, football, etc.. Ever wonder why it's so 'popular', and yet, you see the 2004 versions of the game are already in the bargin bin for $10? It's because other than updated rosters, escentually your buying the same game you did last year. Sure, some may work on gameplay elements, but it's useually tweeking that uses the same game engine. Game costs nothing to make, other than licensing. They sell it to the stores for $5, and make a killing on morons who buy it at the original $50 price point, and continue to make money on bargin bin games.

 

Good thing is, I've noticed more and more games are being released with a SRP of $20 rather than rediculous $50 that others are going for. Think about this. The reason developers wanted CD instead of cart based games, isn't room, graphics, anything like that. It's cost. $10-$20 cart, or $0.01-$0.10 CD's. I never had a problem with that. I had a problem with everything going to disks, and the consumers (that's me, and you) never see any of the savings.

[+kisrael]

GTA3, yeah, sure it's such a revolutionary game.  You wouldn't know from it's name that it's a seqel to an earlier game that played the same, except being in a 2d prespective rather than 3D.  Sorry, I don't count goning to 3D from 2D as 'revolutionary advancements' as any game can technically be made into a 3D game.  There's reasons many aren't.  The only revolutionary thing at all about it is nonlinear gameplay.  They took a game that honestly wasn't that good and said "Ok, your free to do anything in any order, see you...suckers *pocketing money*"

Have you actuallyed played GTA3 much?

 

It's not as if you can do "anything in any order", though you can sometimes pick one of several mission threads.

 

For starters, 3D made the driving parts--a big component--playable (it's nice to be able to see ahead further than one screen) and made the combat a lot more interesting, from sniping to just better illustrating basic gun play and brawling, the overhead view just wasn't as visceral.

 

More importantly, they made a really good physics model. For driving, it finds the sweet spot of fun versus realism. It also lets them throw in a lot of other cool ideas, from toy helicopters to motocross and stunt tracks.

 

I think the game really works because it has a well-scripted set of missions that seem to exist in a 'real world'. Every world that Nintendo makes--Metroid's, Zelda's, Mario's...it's all too obvious that almost every element in the game is there to give the player something to do. But GTA3 feels like a complete environment. Citizens seem to go about their business, traffic flows, gangs fight wars...it's not so blatantly obvious that it's a world made for gaming, but it's still a very fun game on top of all of that. It's not like a Maxis SIM game with a virtual economy, and lack of RAM in the original means stuff isn't nearly as persistent as it could be (turn around, that one car that was following you is gone) but it's still convincing in a fundamental way.

 

Good thing is, I've noticed more and more games are being released with a SRP of $20 rather than rediculous $50 that others are going for.  Think about this.  The reason developers wanted CD instead of cart based games, isn't room, graphics, anything like that.  It's cost.  $10-$20 cart, or $0.01-$0.10 CD's.  I never had a problem with that.  I had a problem with everything going to disks, and the consumers (that's me, and you) never see any of the savings.

The cost of the media is small compared to paying the programmers, artists, and other staff. Big games need lots of art and scripting in a way small, one-or-two-idea games don't.

 

Though media is kind of funny...it's almost always been cheaper to press a CD than record audio tapes, but CDs always commanded the higher price, because of perceived quality.

[SteveW]

Getting back on topic, I think hardware's going to get so advanced that it'll be too difficult to program a game for it and still make a profit. I remember looking in a Dreamcast instruction manual and seeing something like 30 employees listed in the credits. These people are all drawing decent salaries, and paychecks for 30 employees add up every month. Then pay them for three years. Very few game publishers will be able to foot those kind of bills. What the new videogame hardware makers are going to have to do is hire a hell of a lot of programmers and hardware hackers and build an operating system/programming environment that's ultra, ultra easy to program on. They'll have to create a programming language where all the polygon routines and graphics effects are already worked out, and the game designers just have to string them together. Or a pre-designed graphics engine optimised for the new hardware built-in, and game designers would just reorganize it into the game they need. The hardware company would put most of the effort out so developers could design games with less programmers.

 

Of course, what they'll probably do instead is slowly push up the unwritten top price of games to $50 to $60. Then about two or three years later, go to $70 for high end games. Slowly break people out of the mindset that $50 is the most they'll ever pay for a video game. That sounds more realistic.

[RCmodeler]

Sure, why not? In the late 70's/early 80's games were $30 new. The release of the Nintendo ES re-conditioned people to think $50 was "normal". It wouldn't surprise me to see the price jump again to $70.

 

Gaming is actually pretty inexpensive. You pay $50 to get a 40-50 hour game... just over $1 per hour. Movies cost ~$4 an hour at the theater & ~$7 an hour on DVD.

 

Another thing developers might try is creating simple budget games. Like R/C Copter or Mr. Mosquito that rely on gameplay and ignore the graphics demo.

[Video]

Have you actuallyed played GTA3 much?

 

If by much, you mean over, and over, and over, 'oh I've beaten it 30 or 40 times', then no. I played through it once, well, once through and a few startups which quickly grew to boredom. I don't know, maybe I did something different the first time. Or maybe It's the game.

 

It's not as if you can do "anything in any order", though you can sometimes pick one of several mission threads.

 

When you start, you can pretty much go anywhere and do anything....well, that your money and power allowed for. My experiance with it was once you did something, it may squeeze you down to certain set of tasks to do. Kind of like, if Warioland 4 had all the levels unlocked, but you didn't have your powers. You could go anywhere and do anything, available for your status. You of course have to pick up cash, heavy weapons, etc to do every single little thing in the game, but you have to look for the stuff that requires that.

 

For starters, 3D made the driving parts--a big component--playable (it's nice to be able to see ahead further than one screen) and made the combat a lot more interesting, from sniping to just better illustrating basic gun play and brawling, the overhead view just wasn't as visceral.

 

What?... you had problems with GTA? You do mean on GameBoy right, but that's due to the 8 bit hardware simply not being able to handle the game, not original game design. But on Playstation everything was perfectly playable. You could see about a block or so either way. About what is relevant for you to see from ground level in the 3d game. The old game simply sucked. (I can't make the same claim to beating the originals)

 

Have you ever seen anobody complain that when Pac-Man leaves out the side of the screen, he doesn't talk to the barkeep, shoot up the place, go outside and jack a car, whatever? No, that would be kind of stupid.

 

The fact of the matter is, they took a few great gaming elements, slapped them together, and dumbed them down so they all worked together, and made a game that for some reason, took off. But hey, so did the Matrix. So did blair Witch project..so did eminem. Number of sales has little to do with quality, it has to do with being able to trick stupid people into thinking it's quality.

 

Fact is, any good driving game will blow away GTA3's driving parts. Any good FPS will kill the FPS aspects of the game. They had a potentially great game, that was killed because other games on the market that focused on certain gaming aspects were simply better.

 

I'm not in the mood for doing everything. That's what real life is for. If you don't have one, I pity you for that. I'm in the mood for certain things. Maybe it's just driving around aimlessly? Most any driving game has freerun modes (most good ones anyways) Maybe I want to seriously race, only a few driving games don't do that. Maybe I'm in the mood for blowing necks loose, That's probably why I got FPS games. Or maybe more detailed shooters, like Hitman (actually, that pissed me off cause I suck at sniping LOL ) but it was kinda cool otherwise. In all honesty, I've never been in the mood when I'm playing a game to go through the same crap I do anyways (well, maybe not shooting the place up, but anyhow)

 

It's a great gaming Idea, that has previously failed when it was tried. I dunno, maybe I'm just to oldschool for this crap. If so, why did I like any of the new systems games?

[+kisrael]

If by much, you mean over, and over, and over, 'oh I've beaten it 30 or 40 times', then no.  I played through it once, well, once through and a few startups which quickly grew to boredom.  I don't know, maybe I did something different the first time.  Or maybe It's the game.

I think more people like it then don't, so it's probably not the game, then.

 

It's not as if you can do "anything in any order", though you can sometimes pick one of several mission threads.

 

When you start, you can pretty much go anywhere and do anything....well, that your money and power allowed for.

That's so not true. One of the big appeals of the game for me was that there was no leveling up. Over the course of the game, I got some better weapons, and played some minigames so that my default armor and health levels went up...but in a terrific way, there was no qualitative difference, just quanitative, in what I can do in the game world. Ok, not quite true, half of Vice City was shut down, but again, there was plenty to do on my half of the island, and relatively few things that I couldn't do on both.

For starters, 3D made the driving parts--a big component--playable (it's nice to be able to see ahead further than one screen) and made the combat a lot more interesting, from sniping to just better illustrating basic gun play and brawling, the overhead view just wasn't as visceral.

What?... you had problems with GTA? You do mean on GameBoy right, but that's due to the 8 bit hardware simply not being able to handle the game, not original game design. But on Playstation everything was perfectly playable.

No, it was the PSX version I'd play. Driving at high speeds was really hit or miss, so to speak...they'd try to zoom the camera out a bit, but the driving was maybe 1/6 as much fun as in a decent 3D world.

Have you ever seen anobody complain that when Pac-Man leaves out the side of the screen, he doesn't talk to the barkeep, shoot up the place, go outside and jack a car, whatever?  No, that would be kind of stupid.

Yeah, that argument was kind of stupid.

The fact of the matter is, they took a few great gaming elements, slapped them together, and dumbed them down so they all worked together, and made a game that for some reason, took off.  But hey, so did the Matrix.  So did blair Witch project..so did eminem.  Number of sales has little to do with quality, it has to do with being able to trick stupid people into thinking it's quality.  

No, this game came together in a way the other ones didn't. Part of it is the appeal of criminal mayhem, part of it is an environment that isn't totally obviously scripted, despite having an adventure on top of it. (I haven't seen the driving in Matrix, so I don't know if its nearly as free ranging or not...)

Fact is, any good driving game will blow away GTA3's driving parts.  Any good FPS will kill the FPS aspects of the game.  They had a potentially great game, that was killed because other games on the market that focused on certain gaming aspects were simply better.  

But the appeal is the balance. Most driving games are just race games. Hell, the pinnacle of the genre doesn't even let you damage your car, because the car makers wouldn't allow their cars to be used, then. Not that I've looked too hard, but I don't remember seeing a 3D driving game that encouraged such "what stunts can I do with *this*" thinking, or the chaotic fun of cars that you can treat as disposable items...

 

Most FPS are different too. They're essentially dungeon crawls, with a dungeon (or its scifi equivalent) stocked to the brim with badguys, just waiting for you to come along and blow them away. Their entire raison d'etre is for you to kill them, and there entire game universe seems dedicated to that dungeon crawl. No stores, no traffic, no normal non-badguy-people. GTAs really do not fit the FPS mode at all; they both involve shooting, but the combat is very different.

 

I'm not in the mood for doing everything.  That's what real life is for.  If you don't have one, I pity you for that.  

Why the hell are you making this argument in the form of a personal attack?

 

I'm in the mood for certain things.  Maybe it's just driving around aimlessly?  Most any driving game has freerun modes (most good ones anyways)  Maybe I want to seriously race, only a few driving games don't do that.  

I haven't seen many freerun driving games. Most are racing games that are highly track based. Fewer have jumps that are fun to use, just ones that provide shortcuts for the tracks.

 

Maybe I'm in the mood for blowing necks loose, That's probably why I got FPS games.  Or maybe more detailed shooters, like Hitman (actually, that pissed me off cause I suck at sniping LOL ) but it was kinda cool otherwise.  In all honesty, I've never been in the mood when I'm playing a game to go through the same crap I do anyways (well, maybe not shooting the place up, but anyhow)

Heh, if you do in real life what most people enjoy doing in the GTAs...well, I don't pity you, but I worry for your neighbors! (And yes, the chaotic lawlessness is a big part of the appeal, doing things with a casual disregard for virtual life...)

It's a great gaming Idea, that has previously failed when it was tried.  I dunno, maybe I'm just to oldschool for this crap.  If so, why did I like any of the new systems games?

Who knows, or cares? (Saying 'oh I like modern games but not this one' isn't a compelling argument.) It's a great game that is deservedly enormously popular. I've seen entire FAQs (or big sections of FAQs) dedicated to ideas of amusing stuff to try in the game, like banging up motorcycles, putting them in the back of a beaten/shot up pickup truck, firing a rocket launcher, then watching the fireworks as the truck explodes, sending the cycles flying, then the cycles explode a few seconds later. Very few other games have a combination of A. a powerful engine that cand handle stuff like that, that the game designers probably didn't think of and B. guts enough to put in such a casual disregard for life and property, which a lot of people find refreshing, frankly.