Jimquisition: Damn Fine Coffee

Loop Stricken

Covered in bees!
Jun 17, 2009
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Dewrah said:
I couldn't help but think of Team Fortress 2 while watching the over strike video (similar art style), which immediately made me excited, then crushed by the Fuse video. Dammit Jim!!
I couldn't help but think "what fool wouldn't want to play as this [http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/screenshots/Overstrike/os_izzy.jpg] cute asskicking redhead?"
 

badgersprite

[--SYSTEM ERROR--]
Sep 22, 2009
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Focus testing is riddled with problems. Ever hear the phrase, "A cow is a horse designed by committee?" That's what you get when you try and make a game that pleases everyone by adding one element and taking away another. You please nobody at all.
 
Jun 23, 2008
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I am a girly-girl and gay and full of cooties![footnote]And you can quote me on that.[/footnote]

That is to say, I am more inclined to play a female protagonist than yet another grizzled space marine in boxy armor.

And I drink mochas. With whip. Blended if it's a warm day.

238U
 

Baresark

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Dec 19, 2010
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I'll expand on what Jim was talking about further with my good old friends, Kahneman and Tverski. Their work revealed that peoples tastes are NOT constant. People by their nature are irrational. That means that when people said they wanted those things in the focus groups, they may have actually wanted to see those things. But people's taste are not constant. Everyone's tastes actually change from situation to situation in completely unpredictable ways. It's the irrational mind of the average person they are trying to design a game for, and that will always lead to failure.

Edit: I do take my coffee black. But I have never met anyone like me, who actually likes to take their coffee black. That said, if you take your coffee black, you probably prefer a lighter roast, not a rich dark roast. When you add cream and sugar to your coffee, you need typically need to have a darker richer roast to even have a discernibly noticeable flavor of coffee. Focus groups are twats.
 

Jewpacabra

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Dec 25, 2008
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Just a thing about new Coke... didn't Coke make massive amount of cash re-releasing "traditional" coke back into the wild? And the people went nuts over this old thing they had loved, released as new again, at a massive mark-up, because when the new thing came out all trace of what we loved was...well not scorched from the earth, but my point is the console market now is like the soda market of the mid to late 80's
 

Breywood

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Jun 22, 2011
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I do like my coffee dark roasted, but it's because I can get away with using less grounds to make a good flavored coffee. I also don't drink it with milk or sugar, but I usually have something to go with it like a muffin. I find black coffee helps when I've got the flu because it seems that I can starve the virus of sugar and kick it within 4 days, if not sooner.
 

Reyold

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Jun 18, 2012
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All I want to know is how Overstrike became... that thing. 'Tis a sad day indeed.
Zeles said:
I think that developers and publishers should sit down together and ask eachother: What would be fun?

What will make this game more enjoyable to play?
That's a good question to ask. Unfortunately, the publishers are more interested in making money rather than making a quality game. And that's because:
geizr said:
Game publishers are looking for a magic silver-bullet that will magically make massive profits as a result of no, or, at best, extremely minimal, effort on their part. Unfortunately for them, not just bullet exists.
Exactly. Quality requires effort, plain and simple. If you don't pour your heart and soul into a game, chances are good it's gonna suffer for it.
 

Atmos Duality

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Mar 3, 2010
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I actually do prefer a dark roast...But then coat the beans in chocolate and freeze them for later.
Mmm...delicious.

Of course the biggest publishers are going to lean heavily on bias focus groups; they're all chasing that magic demographic that buys the same bloody game every bloody year without fail. Why? Because Activision's competitors are starting to fail; they're panicking and in their panic the most logical thing to do is to find out whatever is working for the guy in first, and copy it relentlessly.

By far, Activision-Blizzard is at the top of the AAA totem pole, with the most healthy revenue. Revenue that is generated almost entirely from just TWO mega cash cows. TWO.
Outside of Skylanders, I literally cannot think of another Activision title apart from CoD4.x.

What does this tell the other publishers?
"Well, if Activision-Blizzard can make megabucks on two Golden Geese, we can too!"

Failing to realize that in a creative information-based medium, DISTINCTION has more value. EA can copy CoD4.x down to the polished animations, but they cannot ever distinguish themselves by doing so, and thus, it can never hit the same marks as CoD4.x.

Same thing happened in the MMO genre. How many games blatantly copied World of Warcraft? From the stupid quest givers with glowing punctuation marks over their heads, to the toon-cel graphics to the arrangement of the interface?
You know how many of those clones knocked WoW off its perch and poached all of that sweet effortless subscription money?
NONE. NOT A SINGLE FUCKING ONE.

The AAA Publishers are lost and confused; they have known so many years of effortless success that they just don't know what to do anymore, so the suits fall back to copying whatever is most popular to the exclusion of everything else.
And because of this, I don't really care if I miss out on the majority of titles they release because chances are good that I've seen it all before.

Reyold said:
All I want to know is how Overstrike became... that thing. 'Tis a sad day indeed.
EA happened.
 

CardinalPiggles

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Jun 24, 2010
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My hot drinks are always milky, with one sugar, I couldn't drink them any other way.

This episode really opened my eyes too. Publishers still actually use focus groups? They're insane. That's like holding an election but only letting 30 random people vote. What is the fucking point?
 

uhohimdead

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Apr 24, 2011
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anyone know the specific song used in the background as jim talks? i tried looking for it via the artist but to no avail
 

CyberMachinist

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Oct 8, 2012
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Atmos Duality said:
Failing to realize that in a creative information-based medium, DISTINCTION has more value. EA can copy CoD4.x down to the polished animations, but they cannot ever distinguish themselves by doing so, and thus, it can never hit the same marks as CoD4.x.

Same thing happened in the MMO genre. How many games blatantly copied World of Warcraft? From the stupid quest givers with glowing punctuation marks over their heads, to the toon-cel graphics to the arrangement of the interface?
You know how many of those clones knocked WoW off its perch and poached all of that sweet effortless subscription money?
NONE. NOT A SINGLE FUCKING ONE.
If there is one thing I've learned about trying to work for this industry, from what I've been observing, it's that being both a rational (as well as clever and astute) businessman and a gamer (or have good gamer knowledge) is a fundamental requirement to survive in this industry, with a chance of actually succeeding. Doesn't hurt to throw in some psychological knowledge to help your chances considerably.

Maybe that's the reason publishers are so dependent on things like focus tests, cause that's all they really know how to do, handle business, and even then they're bad at it, especially in gaming with the way they "control" the variables in their own tests.
 

Nowhere Man

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Mar 10, 2013
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I find it odd how gamers are stuck in the position of dealing with publishers that rely too much on focus groups while those that make the consoles don't listen to a lick of what we say at all.
 

Zer0Saber

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Aug 20, 2008
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I like my coffee like I like my women.

Ground up and in the freezer.

Lets hope greenlight and kickstarter can help alleviate the problem of publishers wasting tons of money on some mediocre vanilla broad appeal game, then spending tons more money telling us how awesome their mediocre vanilla broad appeal game is, then are shocked when their mediocre vanilla broad appeal game is received by us as a mediocre vanilla broad appeal game, and the reviews are ,"Meh."
 

Atmos Duality

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Mar 3, 2010
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CyberMachinist said:
If there is one thing I've learned about trying to work for this industry, from what I've been observing, it's that being both a rational (as well as clever and astute) businessman and a gamer (or have good gamer knowledge) is a fundamental requirement to survive in this industry, with a chance of actually succeeding. Doesn't hurt to throw in some psychological knowledge to help your chances considerably.

Maybe that's the reason publishers are so dependent on things like focus tests, cause that's all they really know how to do, handle business, and even then they're bad at it, especially in gaming with the way they "control" the variables in their own tests.
Maybe they are stuck in their ways; I mean, this latest console generation was the most profitable of all in gaming history; that's pretty solid reinforcement for behaviors that worked before.

Of course, things change, and they don't know what to do except blindly chase what still seems to work.

To use a (bad) analogy:
Instead of planting a variety of crops, they are instead tilling and retilling the same fields in the hopes that their bland grain will somehow stand out among all the other bland grains because one particular kind of bland grain always manages to sell well. And when their bland grain yields fail to meet their sales expectations, they try again, and again. And again.

All the while, failing to realize that they can work a particular field with a particular crop only so many times before its yields fail entirely.
 

Mylinkay Asdara

Waiting watcher
Nov 28, 2010
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Entitled said:
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.
Yes. Y'know what I want in a game? The same things I've liked all along. I like to talk to npcs and read flavor text and be given free reign at some point (though don't over do it and get me lost or give me 7,000 things to do - all opposite ends of the map all the time - before breakfast) characters I can relate to, laugh at, become entirely too attached to, or genuinely hate. Fantasy setting preferred over Sci-Fi. but a well done entry in the second category is better than a poorly done offering from the first. A new thing I like is: let me play a girl because I am one and that's way cool for me when I get to be one digitally too - but not if it's going to botch up the whole thing you already have going or something, if you've got a good enough vision I'll take a walk with you in my dude strut. Don't ever make me do anything with the controller other than push the buttons (and we know where the right places are for what by now, so use those - don't get fancy and reverse them for giggles on me without letting me control that setting to put it right!). I like DLC - I like content that extends my gameplay and makes the game worth another play to enjoy, more specifically. Yes, I will shell out $5 for your extra baubles and outfits and trinkets, but you better have something more than the fluff incoming to keep me putting your disc into my console so that actually happens and I don't miss all that by totally not caring anymore. Stop trying to take away my ability to make a hard save - autosave is nice and well and good, as a complement to - not a replacement for - the hard save in my book.

Most importantly - if you're going to make a game I don't like: good for you! I don't have to like every single game ever published, including yours. Sell to the people who want to buy what you wanted to make. If that's me, super! If that's some other Escapist, also super! Sometimes it will be both of us, but it doesn't and shouldn't have to be every time. Stop homogenizing the things I like into things I don't like - the average that results is me liking the things less overall and that's a bummer for me. And a bummer for the people who really love the games I hate, who are stuck with stuff I like now in their games - which they no doubt hate.

Also: Coffee is for flavoring the milk that is for delivering sugar when I drink of cup of that stuff.
 

MB202

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Sep 14, 2008
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It's so weird, I hear people complaining that they want oneline multiplayer for all KINDS of games, but I have to wonder, how many of them are going to use it? I never use online multiplayer, so I don't pretend that a game should have it.

So once again, Jim speaks the truth! Thank God for Jim!
 

uncanny474

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Jan 20, 2011
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Is it just me, or is anyone else having trouble with the video refusing to load after about 56 seconds? I have FiOS, and every other site (including other escapist videos) is working fine. It's just this video. I tried CTRL-F5ing, too, to no avail.