Jimquisition: Damn Fine Coffee

[Trishbot]

It hurts. It hurts so much.

This is like a reverse-Borderlands; a generic, realistic, dirt-brown shooter that was turned into a quirky, bizarre, stylized loot-a-thon. Only this went from a quirky, stylized, interesting-looing game into a dull, generic, forgettable flop.

The thing is, we KNOW Insomniac is better then this. They've proven it over the past decade and a half. "Overstrike" looked like a breath of fresh air in a sea of lifeless, violent, gritty, dull shooters, and it instead became one itself.

Shame.

 

[nodlimax]

I always love to name Dark Souls in this perspective (even though I haven't played it....yet). The Lead Designer made decisions based on what he would love to see in the game and look what it got them.....SUCCESS! Who would've imagined?

 

[Ishigami]

I don't like coffee... consequential I crossed ?Overstrike? from my ?that could be interesting? list when it became Fuse.

 

[TheNarrator]

I think, in a certain sense, the online community circlejerk also has it's own social desirability demands.

What do *you* want from games? "Innovation" seems to be a popular demand, that makes us all sound refined and knowledgeable, but it's one of those cases where the word ounds good on paper, but in practice, most of us would rather play a comfortably familiar genre with nicely fine-tuned mechanics, and slightly curious setting, than something with no familiarity at all.

I can only speak for myself, but I know I mean it when I say I want innovation in games. Some of my favourite games of all times are (in no particular order) Magicka, Hammerfight, Hotline Miami, Mount&Blade, Portal, Braid, ... What all these have in common is that their core mechanics were different from other games, and exploring these mechanics was half the fun. And it's really about these different game mechanics for me. I didn't care much for Braid's "artsiness", if that's a word, but I loved the game beneath it. And I enjoyed the humour in the Portal games, but that wasn't the most important reason why I enjoyed it. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy a well made game in a more classic genre, by the way, but usually (not always) they're more forgettable.

As I said, I can only speak for myself, but I'm not sure you're right. In my perception, there are more people on the internet complaining about poor graphical fidelity or bad storylines than about gameplay stagnation (though I'm not sure, this may be biased). There may be people who, after playing a poorly made CoD clone like MoH, claim that they want innovation without actually meaning it; but I think that, for every such person, there's three people that just say "lol, not as good as CoD", without pretending they want anything else.

 

[RTR]

As part of my studies in computer technology, one of my classes was about designing interfaces. A good chunk of my final project consisted in putting together a study of an app I designed which involved putting together a focus group. This consisted of running a survey with general questions about their use of mobile apps and the current situation that I was looking to solve with an app. It also included a test where the user gets to try the app. However, instead of telling the user what to do, we would let him/her use it freely for a few minutes. The purpose of this was to study the manner in which the user used the interface and his reactions to it. Was the user frustrated? Bored? Did he notice any problems?

Of course, the purpose of the test was to make the interface as simple and straightforward as possible to use without compromising its functions, which is what any user would want. The only way this test can be done with a game is to test the controls and functionalities. However, when it comes to subject manner of a game, it's very counter-intuitive to assume that data and charts can determine the tastes of people. In an ideal world, developers and auters would be able to express their vision in a game without having to resort to catering to the industry's current common denominator (the COD audience) and combine that with an intuitive and functional interface, which is what focus groups in the game industry should be focusing on.

 

[Lurklen]

I remember being so excited about Overstrike (though the name was crap) when I saw it at E3. I'm not normally excited about new shooters coming out, but this game looked fun. It had a sort of saturday morning cartoon for adults vibe, with a tongue in cheek sense about itself. Plus it was designed with co-op in mind, it looked like the kind of game you want to play with your friends so you could spend the whole afternoon laughing your ass off and blowing shit up.

Then it became Fuse and lost all it's character and all of my interest.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I think, in a certain sense, the online community circlejerk also has it's own social desirability demands.

What do *you* want from games? "Innovation" seems to be a popular demand, that makes us all sound refined and knowledgeable, but it's one of those cases where the word ounds good on paper, but in practice, most of us would rather play a comfortably familiar genre with nicely fine-tuned mechanics, and slightly curious setting, than something with no familiarity at all.

I'd say that's right enough. We all want "innovation", but what innovations do we actually want?

Listen to those crickets, man. They be chirpin' pretty hard.

Innovation is a vague concept to most gamers, like the concept of "more" in Disney movies, as dreamt of by the incumbent Disney Princess of the moment. We want innovation because like it or not, there's a certain amount of habituation to our hobby, and we don't want to be essentially replaying the same old shit over and over. The thing is, most gamers know about jack shit in terms of game theory or narratology, so they're stuck hoping and being unable to formulate coherent wants and needs.

So what do you do to try and fit in, during a focus group? You blindly agree. Oh yeah, a cover system. Oh yeah, make it gritty; I'm maybe sure I'll possibly like that, but I can't voice my lack of certainty because we're all here for the donuts and coffee and easy 200$! Yes, make the protagonist a brown-haired male! I mean, uh, Call of Duty, right? Wanting a game to be like CoD is good, right?

Right?

Nope. Focus groups aren't the problem, the problem is that people who participate in focus groups are afraid to speak their minds. As soon as you're stuck in a group of people, fear of ridicule becomes a factor. If there's a *single* Brown FPS player in the room, you can be absolutely fucking certain that everyone else in the group will try and pander to his tastes, because *he* embodies the statistical hardcore gamer. *He* is the one guy who needs to be sold on the premise at all costs.

There's a science to making things fun to play with, and ideally, if the gaming industry wants to keep expanding, it'll have to create a generation of educated gamers who are far less passive. I'm not saying we all need to be NeoGAF or GamesIndustry fanatics, but staying in the realm of casual interest means you won't be able to contribute to any serious games-related debate. Playing does naturally impart some basic game theory tidbits, but the end result is still a gaggle of neophytes who can't really design coherent mechanics for shits and giggles.

That, I think, is the real problem. Gamers need to be educated. That way, our preferences and what we'll mention as advantageous aspects in focus groups will expand.

 

[Toilet]

Speaking of people doing the same thing over and over I would like Jim to Jimquire about something different (or positive) instead of the same "Publishers are the problem." episode I have been watching for the past few weeks.

To be fair in regards to "Remember Me," the publishers probably just saw it as a mediocre game and didn't want to bother.

Either way Remember Me won't sell and the dudes at the top will blame the use of a female protagonist instead of the game being shit and the fact it had very little advertising. I didn't even know it came out this week until I saw Jim on Twitter say his review for it was was out.

 

[Callate]

Perhaps a side point is that video game companies (and undoubtedly, many other companies) have stopped treating focus testing like a science experiment that has to be evaluated for biases and flaws, then refined. Instead they treat it like a tool that came out of the toolbox perfected for purpose regardless of how it's set up or used. There are ways to lessen the likelihood that players will pick what they feel to be "socially correct" rather than what they actually want; failing that, there are ways to glean what they actually want that in some instances may be more accurate than simply asking them. (If you offer people a stack of games and let them play what they want for as long as they want, and they say they're mad for Call of Duty but actually spend all their time playing Bejeweled...) Events like the aforementioned "frat boy" testing and the "Last of Us" testing that failed to include any female gamers seem like such contemptibly obvious mistakes that one had to wonder if any thought went to the process at all- or was it simply that they handed the process off sight unseen to someone unqualified and ticked off the "focus testing" check box?

Jim's gesticulating and melting into his podium in the first minute-and-a-half was wonderfully expressive.

 

[Wolle]

As an athiest who am I to thank for Jim when he descends from the mountain to deliver his truth?

Thank Jim for Jim.

 

[Ashoten]

I like my coffee super saturated to the point where there are always sugar and coffee crystals floating at the bottom. 2 healthy scoops of instant coffee, 3 large spoons of sugar, and about 1/4 cream if I can get it. I want to be puckering my lips when I drink my coffee.

 

[Snazzymathematics]

"Like a priest with his pants down..." I love you Jim.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

Speaking of people doing the same thing over and over I would like Jim to Jimquire about something different (or positive) instead of the same "Publishers are the problem." episode I have been watching for the past few weeks.

To be fair in regards to "Remember Me," the publishers probably just saw it as a mediocre game and didn't want to bother.

Either way Remember Me won't sell and the dudes at the top will blame the use of a female protagonist instead of the game being shit and the fact it had very little advertising. I didn't even know it came out this week until I saw Jim on Twitter say his review for it was was out.

That's unfortunate, but seems to be the likely outcome. I feel like all this behind the scenes stuff and backdoor politics is one of the worst things to happen to games and movies. Can't judge anything by the actual content. Now I have to worry about what kind of person is making it and if they said some out of context remark on twitter and what impact the game has on society.

 

[LetalisK]

by the end all I could think of was


and yeah, I'd noticed this very thing that you were talking about. Back when the Wii came out I was part of a few focus groups, and discovered that most of the people in them were a bunch of idiots who clearly had no idea what they wanted. I felt like the only person there who actually had an opinion on the system, and everyone else was just kind of following the interviewers lead.

I've never heard that song in full. I never realized how good that song was, I just always got put off by the repeated and auto-tuned "Ma-ma-ma".

Muse has a fetish for riot scenes though, don't they? >.>

That said, I'm now curious about Remember Me, but after looking at its metacritic, I'm worried it's very mediocre. Also looking at the metacritic, I realized there is a population of shitty little trolls that just rate games for god knows why despite never having played it.

 

[nevarran]

The sad fucking truth, Chancellor Sutler, there's nothing else to add.

 

[UNHchabo]

Funny thing about Coke, and focus-testing, actually.

In April 1985 the company briefly replaced the familiar Coca-Cola formula with one called "the new taste of Coke". This new formulation was not well received and after a few years was withdrawn from the market, replaced with a slight variation of the old recipe (the primary difference was that cane sugar was replaced with high-fructose corn syrup), briefly identified as "Classic Coke" before returning to its identity as simply "Coke"

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula, skip down to "New Coke" )

This was a pretty deliberate switch, though, driven by money. The short of it was that "New Coke" was designed to fail so Coke could win points / free publicity by pretending to cater to fans when it switched back to 'Original Coke', while disguising the change in taste that came from shifting from cane sugar to HFC. Coke needed to make that change because sugar was two to three times as expensive as HFC. Apparently the initial focus testing showed that without the intermediary, and deliberately foul, New Coke, customers would not endorse the new taste.

FWIW, the New Coke wikipedia entry lists this as a conspiracy theory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke#cite_ref-Oliver183_41-1 ), which for some reason amuses me. The one or two people still reading this post may be interested in "The Real Coke, the Real Story" by Thomas Oliver ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Real-Coke-Story/dp/0140104089/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370278175&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Real+Coke%2C+The+Real+Story )

Some bottlers were already using HFCS instead of cane sugar before taking the original off the market, so I doubt that was the reason. I'm willing to believe that it's possible they introduced New Coke in order to get people passionate about "Old Coke", but I doubt it. I'm a big fan of the phrase "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

One of the primary motivations behind creating New Coke was to make it sweeter. Pepsi had always won taste tests against coke because it's sweeter, but the problem is that focus group taste tests only use a couple ounces at a time. When drinking that small amount, most people will prefer the sweeter drink. However, when drinking 12 or 20 ounces at a time, Pepsi is too sweet for many people, so they prefer Coke. So there's some more evidence that focus groups need to be handled carefully...

 

[LordMonty]

Don't like coffee but like Jim, thank god.

Also I'm an english tea drinker nuff said. To expand, I see games as art, true art is an impusle at the start not even an idea, a feeling, a mood, a half remebered memory that may or may not have ever been. I write badly but enjoy it I wouldn't write a book to sell the most books, I will write a story that moves my heart and soul, where or not i can convey what i feel is down to skill in said writting(or in any form of art). This all saddens me at my core.

 

[Invadergray]

This series is getting more and more camp with each episode. And I love it.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Damn Fine Coffee

How do you like your coffee? Blacker than midnight on a moonless night? Or is that just what you want people to think?

Watch Video

Brilliant episode, Jim. One question, however.

As you talked about developers, publishers, the games industry at large...and then added coffee to both the title and the discussion...

Spoiler: HOW THE FETHING FETH DID YOU MISS ADDING THIS?

I would've thought this would've been a given, all things considered.

OT: Developers need to grow a collective pair and tell publishers to fuck off as it concerns making the games.

 

[Dragonbums]

Wow. Overstrike looked really cool, and in the back of my head I said "I wanna get this game NOW" Fuse however...I am very sad. Just another dull bloody game. And here I thought we would get another shooter like TF2. Then again...EA.

And to answer your question Jim- I am a pump with milk and douse with sugar/cream coffee gal(on the rare occasions I drink coffee anyway)
Now excuse me while I go back to the shame shack with all the other unsophisticated coffee enthusiasts.