Remember when we used to say, the s--t will come, just give it time

[quote name='Wolfkin']
well clearly this thread has gone off the deep end with that initial rant but I'll go ahead and throw in my two cents.
You're sorta thinking what would happen if everyone shut down the trash titles. You're not thinking if they never 'were' in the first place. If the industry never had a slushage of stupid idiotic titles. Capcom would be making money off titles like Viewtiful Joe and Zack and Wiki. Would the industry be as big or as mainstream as it is now. Probably not but a)it wouldn't be completely dead b) there would be more diverse and/or fun titles and c)we wouldn't be in a tech rat race on the bleeding edge of technology. (the fact that a game console is a major player in a new video format is idiotic) Would there be a rat race.. probably but nothing as severe as what we're seeing now.[/QUOTE]


I'd have to disagree with this and agree with Appossum. Stuff like Halo, Bioshock, Lost Planet , Madden, etc. gives developers huge budgets as these types of games expanded the market over the years.

Seems to me that we get more games like Viewtiful Joe, Zak and Wiki, Phoenix Wright etc. that we did in the NES/SNES genre. Back then we just got tons of platformers, some RPGS, fighting games etc., with still just the occasional weird, quirky, niche game.

I think the past couple of gens have been a great time for gaming. The Halos, Bioshocks, Metroid Primes etc. of the world are great traditional mainstream games, and I spend most of my time playing them. But there have been plenty of great niche games to give the console libraries some variety. And without the mainstream million sellers, we likely wouldn't see so many niche games.

But I guess for those of you that hate anything mainstream, and only want to play the niche games (if any of you fit that bill) then maybe there aren't enough nice games to keep you busy.
 
The Wii Sixty FTMFW, you can get the best of both worlds. With the games I've been playing lately, I think its a great time to be a gamer. Some may be happy with less, but why settle for less when you can get more?

One person on the retail end of gaming probably isn't going to propel or hold back the progression of gaming so that discussion is silly.

As far as wanting better graphics, call me lame but I do. Which is why I play non-exclusives on the 360. What I really want though is gameplay, which is why I own a Wii. It is for games like Mario Galaxy, Zelda TP, Super Paper Mario, RE4:Wii, Smash Bros Brawl, Mario Kart, and Metroid that I own a Wii.

Anybody interested in this stuff, that is the issues of gaming as an art form, new Intelectual Property vs. another Halo, another mario, another GTA, another COD, another metroid etc. should really read November's copy of Game informer. The editor has a great note in his opening comments where he defends giving Halo 3 a 9.75 even though the story and narrative sucks and it is an unoriginal formulaic re-hashing, because hey, its a fun game w/ great mulitplayer that looks so good it makes ya want to cum all over your TV.

Read the sig bitches.
 
[quote name='pittpizza']
As far as wanting better graphics, call me lame but I do. Which is why I play non-exclusives on the 360. What I really want though is gameplay, which is why I own a Wii. It is for games like Mario Galaxy, Zelda TP, Super Paper Mario, RE4:Wii, Smash Bros Brawl, Mario Kart, and Metroid that I own a Wii.
[/QUOTE]

Same here. I love me some fancy HD graphics, but gameplay is king and Nintendo's big franchises always deliver.

Do I wish they were in 720p and that the console had a more robust GPU? Most definitely. But their big games are still a shit ton of fun to play regardless of jaggies etc.

Thus I have the Wii to play them, and the 360 for HD graphics, it's great exclusives and any multiplatform games (as I'll take graphics over Waggle 99% of the time.
 
The problem that I've voiced has nothing to do with the tech race, though the effects thereof (increased costs implies increased risk, period) may have contributed to the issue.

A couple of years ago Penny Arcade have written up an excellent bit regarding the fact that the video games market has grown out to include a lot of people who people my age were afraid of in Middle School. I had my share of PC games that I played over the blissful childhood, I learned English through these games - TAKE KEYCARD are the first two words that I've learned in this marvelous language. (I moved onto PRESS OPEN BAY DOOR rather quickly, as well).

I suppose my rant is guilty of implying sensationalism, though in this case it was the good kind - games that people thought of as "dead" are making a return, which colors me happy - that's the jist of everything that I wrote. However, as Penny Arcade have stated, the increased market means "more meat" for the industry and that will eventually come around to "better games." You can not argue with Penny Arcade's claim when looking at something like Wii Sports, which is about as far away from "unpopular" as it is from "cliche."

I most certainly understand and support huge money-milking franchises. Blizzard's output is a prime example that top-notch sellers can be solid and interesting games. Nintendo's roster of re-imagined series and game mechanics is another. But in my "yay adventure games" spiel I only meant to poke fun at other things - not to diminish their importance completely.

The sad truth is - those (generally awful) movie-lisence games sell like hotcakes, even when their development cost is low. You make enough of these silly things, and all of a sudden you are looking at a budget that can be used for other things as well. And Vivendi Universal is funding Schafer's latest (assumed to be as brilliant as everything else the man has made) exactly due to excess revenue from those "bullshit" titles. It's not just Halos and Bioshocks (read: expensive and richly produced) titles that give the developers money, but all the Barbie Bestiality Adventures, BRATZ:THEMOVIE:THEGAME:THEHOES, and other stuff that most of us would consider "trash."

I'll mention a few things why I believe that Nintendo game deverlopers are on top with this.

First, they make titles like Nintendogs, Wii Sports, Wii Play, and many others. Those cheap ass titles still come in packed with gameplay that is rewarding in its own right - as in, the games don't depend on a movie character's recognition. With this, Nintendo is able to move shitloads of units of cheap-to-make toys. The market, however, isn't diluted as much as it "enriched" even in their "fundraiser" selections.

They also consistently push "new ideas" into "old franchises." They don't do it with every single iteration of the game, no. But titles like Majora's Mask (which I think is either tied to be, or IS on top of my list as "my favorite Zelda game ever") most certainly exist. Despite its age, Majora's mask still feels like "nothing else you've ever played" and is comparable in that sense to the highly acclaimed "Shadow of the Colossus" - neither "really" steers too far away from "dude with a sword killing things in a magical land" - but both do so much with that simplistic formula, that one can not help but marvel at the spectacular execution, and elements of gameplay that are not found elsewhere.

Last but not least, it's important to note that JollyDwarf's point about the Wii being a system of mini-games and cheap-shit sold to "non-gamers" _could_ in theory be valid. There's much similarity between what Jollydwarf has said and my rant, except I'm praising the system for giving me weird things to play with, while he is cursing it for almost the very same thing. But I think if this year is an indicator (even in light of WiiFit) Nintendo's catalog is rich as shit with some really fun, large-budget, and extremely diverse games. Thanks to Resident Evil, Godfather, and Scarface we still have the good old "classic" run of the mill action titles. Mario, Metroid, and Link got the lock-down on Nintendo classics being just as relevant and exciting as ever. But more importantly, with titles like Trauma Center, ExciteTruck, and Mario Strikers Charged, the Wii gets its share of games that only a certain subset of people go bonkers for.

And as The Crotch and I have been saying for the past month or so - Fire Emblem and Zack & Wiki are our answers (respectively) as to what makes the Earth a better place to live on. We also happen to agree with each other's choice for our Civil War stance.
 
[quote name='Wolfkin']
well clearly this thread has gone off the deep end with that initial rant but I'll go ahead and throw in my two cents.
You're sorta thinking what would happen if everyone shut down the trash titles. You're not thinking if they never 'were' in the first place. If the industry never had a slushage of stupid idiotic titles. Capcom would be making money off titles like Viewtiful Joe and Zack and Wiki. Would the industry be as big or as mainstream as it is now. Probably not but a)it wouldn't be completely dead b) there would be more diverse and/or fun titles and c)we wouldn't be in a tech rat race on the bleeding edge of technology. (the fact that a game console is a major player in a new video format is idiotic) Would there be a rat race.. probably but nothing as severe as what we're seeing now.[/QUOTE]


well, I didn't think that way because it's fruitless for this argument, as it is for pretty much every argument. You don't know what would happen if big budget games never were.


[quote name='dmaul1114']

But I guess for those of you that hate anything mainstream, and only want to play the niche games (if any of you fit that bill) then maybe there aren't enough nice games to keep you busy.[/QUOTE]


as a fan of niche games, I have to disagree :) The release flow isn't anything close to the big budget games, but there are still too many of them to get around to.
 
Originally Posted by Al Lowe
No line for me; Sam Suede was a true disappointment. I figured, if action comedy works in movies, it might work in games. And it did. We hired a great team, good programmers, creative artists, excellent level designers. The game design was strong and different, we had funny characters, it ran well and looked good, with next-gen 3D graphics and good music and voiceover talent.

Then we took it to every major publisher. They seemed excited to meet us. Most of them said things like, "I love your games" and "I grew up laughing at you" even "I'm in games because of you." They started laughing when they saw the title. When we showed them what we had finished, they said things like "This is the first game I've seen in months that I actually might play" and "This is most original game we've seen in years."

So what happened? Every one of them asked us to show them "comparables," industry-speak for "other games that are enough like yours so we can predict if yours will sell." Since we had none, they didn't know what to do, so they opted out.

We laid off our staff and shut down the company.

And you wonder why video games have lost their creativity!?
Click to expand...

This made me cry
 
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