The Video Game thread

[LOCOPELAND]

Playstation randomly sent me a $10 voucher the other day. I picked up Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain & Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on PS3 with a couple bucks to spare!

[Andrew]

Ugh. Steam sale. Too many games, not enough time. I have to really focus on things I really want to play and that will not eat too much of my time.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Every game i'd like, i'd likely already have and played with my spare time.

Give me some of your spare time, please

Honestly, I typically just blitz through games on easy. That and there aren't a whole of games that are genuinely interesting, mostly due to not liking Ubisoft games - which cuts roughly 70% of the AAA game market.

I just wish that there were more games with a more modest budget. They all have a decently sized budget with a big vision to make a profit on a smaller scale. A majority of indie games are retro platformers or survival sims and every AAA game has watch towers and Batman combat.

[oscillateur]

Are you calling Dishonored and Dead Space mid-tier ? They're definitely not, in terms of team size and production cost they're pretty big.
Making games like this with lots of content requires many people and lots of time.

I see what you mean though (well, I think), and there are more an more games with a smaller scope but still high production values being made now. You do usually need people with some experience in the industry (and more of them) to pull that out properly, which is one of the reasons why there are many more 2D games/etc.

[UglyCasanova]

I really want to play Shadow of Memories (Shadow of Destiny in North America) again. I freaking loved that game to bits when I was younger. Wonder if it holds up. Probably not.

[Andrew]

Are you calling Dishonored and Dead Space mid-tier ? They're definitely not, in terms of team size and production cost they're pretty big.
Making games like this with lots of content requires many people and lots of time.

I see what you mean though (well, I think), and there are more an more games with a smaller scope but still high production values being made now. You do usually need people with some experience in the industry (and more of them) to pull that out properly, which is one of the reasons why there are many more 2D games/etc.

Sorry, I worded that poorly.

Highend game development just appears to be over inflated and surely requiring 4+ million copies to reach the estimated benchmark can't be a good long term business plan. Considering the predicted sales of Battlefront, it doesn't seem to be getting reasonable. Then again, I don't want to be a douchebag on the internet complaining about videogames.

[waltdogg]

I'd love to just once play a video game that I actually like that's been finished.

[oscillateur]

What do you mean by that ?

[Hyphen Nation]

Are you calling Dishonored and Dead Space mid-tier ? They're definitely not, in terms of team size and production cost they're pretty big.
Making games like this with lots of content requires many people and lots of time.

I see what you mean though (well, I think), and there are more an more games with a smaller scope but still high production values being made now. You do usually need people with some experience in the industry (and more of them) to pull that out properly, which is one of the reasons why there are many more 2D games/etc.

Sorry, I worded that poorly.

Highend game development just appears to be over inflated and surely requiring 4+ million copies to reach the estimated benchmark can't be a good long term business plan. Considering the predicted sales of Battlefront, it doesn't seem to be getting reasonable. Then again, I don't want to be a douchebag on the internet complaining about videogames.

I dunno. I am glad there is no shovel ware any more. I see less bloat and more art. There are smaller indies, crowdsourced mid-tier, successful mid-tier [look at how great a game Shadow of Mordor was, which was made by an incredibly small team], and there are huge marquis titles like COD, Battlefront, Halo, etc that galvanize us to play together, or games like Last of Us, Bioshock and Fallout that transport us to a fiction. I would prefer to spend my $60 on a game I will fall in love with because it's a great game where either I am having fun with my friends, or exploring a new world in an imaginative way. I have plenty of room for other types of gaming, but I am thrilled to not see the bloat of shovel ware that we all saw 10 -15 years ago.

[oscillateur]

successful mid-tier [look at how great a game Shadow of Mordor was, which was made by an incredibly small team]

That's not what I'd call mid-tier, and it was not an incredibly small team, not at all. I just checked the credits, there are at least 100 production people in there (not including any publisher staff). Even if not all were present during the whole project that's still what anyone in the industry would call a big team.

I agree with most of the points you guys make but your conception of what is a small or a big game development team is warped at best...

[Andrew]

successful mid-tier [look at how great a game Shadow of Mordor was, which was made by an incredibly small team]

That's not what I'd call mid-tier, and it was not an incredibly small team, not at all. I just checked the credits, there are at least 100 production people in there (not including any publisher staff). Even if not all were present during the whole project that's still what anyone in the industry would call a big team.

I agree with most of the points you guys make but your conception of what is a small or a big game development team is warped at best...

As far as I know, SoM was in development for a long time and under different titles so it's probably difficult to pin down.

I think the problem is that there really isn't such a thing as 'mid-tier/AA' games anymore, the lines have blurred - maybe you could throw Indies and Handheld development in that bracket or even F2P games. But as for the console and PC platforms, 10-25 Million is a very modest budget and neither Mordor or Wolfenstein were marketed anywhere near the level of GTA or Destiny. It's not hard to understand that there's just more costs and manpower required to make good games now, it just made smaller published games irrelevant. Then again, you also have a staggering amount of PS4 games that are actually just ports of Vita games which makes the waters even more cloudy. Most of my gaming is just replaying classics on a Vita/3DS so I really don't know.

On the other hand, there's a group of scumbags nerd raging about Fallout 4's graphics and how it isn't up to their high standard, the same people complaining about Witcher 3's 'downgrade'. So maybe I totally understand why Ken Levine ditched AAA - hopefully Kojima follows the trend. I'm not a fan of most Telltale games, but they're effective at what they do - narrative driven games with less of an emphasis on high textured graphics and programming enemy AI.

I get that most of us aren't into game development and all have day dreams about making an ideal game. It's just at the very least, I just want confidence in buying an $80au+ game without worrying that i'll have to install a 20gb patch, the game not working, getting hassled to pay for more content or worst of all - it sucking. Even if there's a market of people that can't handle Assassins Creed bland bullshit.

I think that my point is, I just don't want Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to suck. HR had it's issues, but no other game was able to squeeze that much detail and ideas in such a weird, tightly budgeted, heartfelt game aimed directly at a cult fanbase.

/Douchebagrant

[oscillateur]

10-25M is not a very modest budget. I have no idea where you guys get your numbers but they don't fit with my experience at all.

[Andrew]

I'd assume that the marketing, promotions, licencing and cooperate b/s probably covers the bulk of the overall budget, but a lot of it is guesstimations and nothing is ever clear to the public. It's just usually really clear when Titles get way more commercial attention than smaller ones.


Still playing MGO3, poorly. Want to level my Infiltrator up then i'll probably stop. It's just a fun game to play while watching something on the other screen.

[UglyCasanova]

Activision/Blizzard bought King (makers of Candy Crush) for 5.9 billion dollars. Disney bought Star Wars for 4 billion dollars. Just let that sink in for a while...you feel your faith in humanity fading...? yeah.

[waltdogg]

Activision/Blizzard bought King (makers of Candy Crush) for 5.9 billion dollars. Disney bought Star Wars for 4 billion dollars. Just let that sink in for a while...you feel your faith in humanity fading...? yeah.

More people play mobile games than care about Star Wars? Maybe not before the prequels.

[oscillateur]

Yeah, I read an article on Gamasutra the other day with reactions from a bunch of game industry analysts, not everybody's sure that it's a super wise move (King being a bit beyond their prime) but Activision has an history of business decisions that end up making sense financially, it seems.

Personally, I just wish companies like King slowly died but that's not the way the world works, sadly...