Jimquisition: Damn Fine Coffee

Hellfireboy

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Mar 11, 2013
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"I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap."
Theodore Sturgeon

In other words, great games are the exception not the rule. The rule is to find something that has already proven successful and copy the shit out of it in hopes of the same. Innovation and creativity carry a much greater risk than imitation and, though we like to believe that games are first and foremost an art out of our own existential need for legitimacy and acceptance, they are in fact first and foremost a commodity.

Your putting the cart before the horse by assuming that if they would just stop doing this or that they would make better games. They ask the consumer what they want, the consumer lies to them, they make crap based on the lie. You're assuming that the consumer is lying because they were told what to think by the industry yet New Coke is a good example of the consumer telling the industry what to think after the focus group fed them a pack of lies. These cookie cutter games don't actually fail to sell but rather fail to make money. That's more of an issue with resource management in production that acceptance of the game. Battlefield is just a Call of Duty come lately but it still sold more than six times as many copies as Bioshock Infinite. If your going out to make a game which route do you take? Heartfelt inspiration and creativity (Bioshock Infinite, 2.22M units worldwide, all platforms) or copycat of a magnificently successful existing franchise (Battlefield 3, 15.63M units worldwide, all platforms)? As you can see it isn't just focus groups that make then churn out the same old thing over and over again. It's also market research which seems to reveal that the same old thing really does sell better than something new and creative.

(sales numbers from vgchartz.com/)
 

Rebel_Raven

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Jul 24, 2011
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OH GOD! I miss the old overstrike crew. *Sobs* I loved Izzy Sinclair initially! The team was so epic, too! And playing the Fuse Demo, while they had some humor to them, they felt watered down.

And now I know why it's no longer the quirky, awesome, kicking a guy in the balls, then smashing their skull in with a giant briefcase (My favorite scene! It's how I'd do it! Feels natural!) screaming dude going ballistic game it was.
What boggles me is how the 12 year olds didn't like it. But Jim explains that one, I guess, as social desirability bias.

Jim's reaction is very much similar to mine on the matter.

Weren't games more profitable -before- the focus groups? What happened to that? Oh, right, the ever expanding desire for more profit. Greed.

If you're going to use focus groups use diverse focus groups, and not yes-men, and don't poison the results with selecting specefic people! And don't let them dictate everything!

The gaming industry is damaged, poisoned, and toxic to some ideas thanks to stuff like what Jim points out week after week. It's destroying the market!
What's worse is that people are excusing these actions, and defending them bitterly! They refuse to see the problem. They refuse to have empathy towards the people who were turned off by these actions.

Market, and focus testing is litterally killing desire to play these games! My significant other is hard pressed to find games that truely interest her thanks to this stuff. I'm desperately clinging on to the notion that the market will more often produce games that break free from the idiotic mess that it's in now, and will, again, shine!

I really wish the game industry listened to Jim! But if they did, what would he talk about? Oh, who am I kidding. Even if they did listen to Jim, they'd find some other way to screw things up.

Ha! And just after this episode of Jimquisition, a coke commercial. Strikes me as funny!

Ah, thank GOD for Jim!

P.S. I like Remember Me a lot! Even without the pre-order DLC amazon didn't give!
P.S.S. Amazon's pre-order bonus is just delayed apparently.
 

ShirowShirow

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Oct 14, 2010
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So guys the UK sales charts are out and FUSE, the blatantly genericized shooter, debuted at 37th.

37th.

Looks like those focus testers did woooooooonders.

And so Jim is right again.
 

TheBaron87

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Jul 12, 2010
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Oh god, that's what happened to this game? I was in a focus group for this exact game when it still looked like the first clip, before they had anything playable (I think this was in 2010 or 2011). Believe me, I would NOT have told them to make something like Fuse. I just didn't care much about the game at the time because I was already very tired of shooters by then, especially console shooters, but I don't remember anybody asking for Fuse. What I do remember is saying that one of the female characters looked much worse in 3D than the 2D concept art they showed us (before the E3 2011 trailer, Isabelle looked very different. She looks much better in that trailer than she did at my focus test), and that the characterization was fun, but the story didn't have any interesting substance yet. They were taking a gameplay first approach in a genre I didn't care much about, so there wasn't much else for me to say. If you guys want to get involved in focus testing, VGMarket.com is how I got into doing focus tests. If you don't agree with what the people in these focus tests think, then get into the groups yourself, and BE HONEST. It's pretty fun, and they pay you! And if you're worried about looking like a loser, then screw those judgmental assholes, you're never going to see them again anyway.

Hellfireboy said:
Battlefield is just a Call of Duty come lately but it still sold more than six times as many copies as Bioshock Infinite. If your going out to make a game which route do you take? Heartfelt inspiration and creativity (Bioshock Infinite, 2.22M units worldwide, all platforms) or copycat of a magnificently successful existing franchise (Battlefield 3, 15.63M units worldwide, all platforms)? As you can see it isn't just focus groups that make then churn out the same old thing over and over again. It's also market research which seems to reveal that the same old thing really does sell better than something new and creative.

(sales numbers from vgchartz.com/)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_1942 Release date(s) Windows NA September 10, 2002
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_(video_game) Release date(s) Windows NA October 29, 2003

Also, Battlefield has multiplayer, Bioshock does not. You really think it's an apple to apple comparison?
 

MercurySteam

Tastes Like Chicken!
Legacy
Apr 11, 2008
4,950
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Glad to know I'm not the only one who remembers Overstrike and has lost interest due to it becoming basically another cover-based shooter. I don't mind cover-based shooters but I already have my Gears of War games. Give me something with slightly more originality and I would have maybe even bought it first day. Now I'm just waiting for a price drop, something I never used to do but I find myself in this position more and more of late.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

Alleged Feather-Rustler
Jun 5, 2013
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Maybe its me, but I don't think its fair to call the average male gamer a sexist because he won't* play a game with a female hero. As far as I can tell, focus grouping 12 year old boys, as in preteens, doesn't count as focus grouping men. The same would apply to focus grouping preteen girls and making ONLY games involving Justin Bieber and One Direction and then saying all female games love boy bands. I played Mass Effect 1-3 as a FemShep and I never felt 'gay' for romancing Kaiden. I think only preteen boys who haven't figured out what sexuality IS think playing as a woman is gay.
Can we please stop assuming that focus groups are representational of the actual gaming community?
This is the one thing Jim keeps messing up on. He rightly points out that focus grouping little boys is absurd, but then extrapolates that 20-something male gamers have the same maturity as those selfsame boys. I never played the DOA beach volleyballs games. And I never will. But I'm not going to sit here and say that I'm some sort of moral champion and claim umbrage at how women are depicted. Its a bad game so I won't be playing it. I think Jim needs to look at the target audience publishers THINK they have, and then the actual gamers. They think they're making games for preteens because that's who the test them on. But the people with the disposable income needed for a $60 game are young adults with more mature tastes in games.
 

gyrobot_v1legacy

New member
Apr 30, 2009
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Rebel_Raven said:
OH GOD! I miss the old overstrike crew. *Sobs* I loved Izzy Sinclair initially! The team was so epic, too! And playing the Fuse Demo, while they had some humor to them, they felt watered down.

And now I know why it's no longer the quirky, awesome, kicking a guy in the balls, then smashing their skull in with a giant briefcase (My favorite scene! It's how I'd do it! Feels natural!) screaming dude going ballistic game it was.
What boggles me is how the 12 year olds didn't like it. But Jim explains that one, I guess, as social desirability bias.

Jim's reaction is very much similar to mine on the matter.

Weren't games more profitable -before- the focus groups? What happened to that? Oh, right, the ever expanding desire for more profit. Greed.

If you're going to use focus groups use diverse focus groups, and not yes-men, and don't poison the results with selecting specefic people! And don't let them dictate everything!

The gaming industry is damaged, poisoned, and toxic to some ideas thanks to stuff like what Jim points out week after week. It's destroying the market!
What's worse is that people are excusing these actions, and defending them bitterly! They refuse to see the problem. They refuse to have empathy towards the people who were turned off by these actions.

Market, and focus testing is litterally killing desire to play these games! My significant other is hard pressed to find games that truely interest her thanks to this stuff. I'm desperately clinging on to the notion that the market will more often produce games that break free from the idiotic mess that it's in now, and will, again, shine!

I really wish the game industry listened to Jim! But if they did, what would he talk about? Oh, who am I kidding. Even if they did listen to Jim, they'd find some other way to screw things up.

Ha! And just after this episode of Jimquisition, a coke commercial. Strikes me as funny!

Ah, thank GOD for Jim!

P.S. I like Remember Me a lot! Even without the pre-order DLC amazon didn't give!
P.S.S. Amazon's pre-order bonus is just delayed apparently.
I think I saw one at another forum I go to that thinks your train of thinking is flawed. I support your thoughts but clearly these people don't

One user in denial:

No they wouldn't, and you know they wouldn't. They won't buy it because it came out on the 360 as well instead of being a PS3 exclusive, they won't buy it because it wasn't released on the PC, they won't buy it because it was published by EA, or they won't buy it because fighting twelve foot tall killbot acrobats and huge teleporting dudes wielding chainguns is too "generic," or they'll make some other excuse up because they're deluded enough to believe that a cinematic trailer made two years ago will look exactly like the finished product.
 

Razorback0z

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Feb 10, 2009
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Its a combination of no balls, no vision and a corporate imperative to make a profit. When faced with the prosepct of making something new and daring or churning out a clone of something that made money, the suits will opt for what they believe is the safe bet everytime.

Im actually worried that 100 hour epics like Oblivion/Skyrim, Red Dead and the like are perhaps already a thing of the past as the industry swoons over the potential of "10 hours" of gameplay in titles like Two Souls and consumers seem to not only lap it up but defend the fact that games are soon going to be as short and as crappy as most hollywood movies, but cost 5 times as much for a ticket. (sorry longest sentence ever)