Jimquisition: Fun & Priorities

madstork

New member
Jul 16, 2013
7
0
0
I wish I could agree that "the Lone Ranger" failed because it was a cynically made piece of shit, but "The Amazing Spiderman" made a ton of money.

The problem with Lone Ranger is that nobody under 50 or outside America gave a toss. The lesson: ONLY comic book IP that EVERYONE has heard of can be a blockbuster film. The film industry's only going to get worse.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
canadamus_prime said:
And there in lies the problem.
That and it seems to be working. Though not as much as they seem to expect, if a 6mil game can be a failure.

madstork said:
I wish I could agree that "the Lone Ranger" failed because it was a cynically made piece of shit, but "The Amazing Spiderman" made a ton of money.
And yet, it was still a better Spider-Man movie than anything Raimi did. Then again, that's not saying much.

The problem with Lone Ranger is that nobody under 50 or outside America gave a toss. The lesson: ONLY comic book IP that EVERYONE has heard of can be a blockbuster film. The film industry's only going to get worse.
They should have at least tried it a few years ago when Westerns were the new thing to copy.

It's sad that this was predicted by Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back of all things.
 

ShadowHamster

New member
Mar 17, 2008
64
0
0
Nah Jim, SOME of us are smart enough to not fall for this shit, but some of us are just the opposite.

Just go look at moviebob's review of Lone Ranger. I couldn't have agreed with him more, he tore down a soulless trill of a movie for being a soulless trill of a movie, yet in the comments there are PAGES of people defending it as "getting the job done". How did it get the job done?? Did people go see it? NO! Did people generally enjoy it? NO! Did it capture the original feel of the Lone Ranger in a fresh new light? HELL NO! It didn't do the job, and that isn't even bringing up the racism in the movie that is there mostly as an after thought and not as actual racism, basically headlining "we don't care but we do want your money!"

I'm really tired of this large mass of cows in human suits stinking up my media by accepting every thing that comes to their doorstep! STOP IT!
 

Callate

New member
Dec 5, 2008
5,118
0
0
Nicely said. You can't really fake fun. You can imitate the best selling brown-and-gray shooter feature-for-feature, but most of the time fun seems to come from designers making the kinds of games that they enjoy playing.

And I have to say- hearing about Sterling's awkward interaction with the proselytizer at his door was pretty enjoyable. It's nice to see the real Jim Sterling isn't desperate to beat people over the head with his views face-to-face. I tend to think that's a good thing.
 

jebara

New member
Nov 19, 2009
246
0
0
I think it has more to do with GTAIV.
A lot of people were turned off by how boring and repetitive that game was (especially me), so when the trailer was filled with the words "fun" and "variety", it feels like "were not like the other game".
 

Mark B

New member
Nov 5, 2007
84
0
0
Vivi22 said:
Well done Jim. You've now given publishers a detailed guide on how to PR speak their way into making people think they give a shit about us.

And none of them save the ones who mean it will ever use it ever.
Its a load better than last weeks pail implementation of sarcasm/satire or whatever that was.
 

viranimus

Thread killer
Nov 20, 2009
4,952
0
0
Oooh, lets check with the judges.....


NO, Im sorry. The correct answer for why did rockstar keep using the word fun is because they can already tell GTAV is filled with even more repetition than all the GTA3s and GTA 4 combined and they are giving you advanced warning now so you cant get pissed when it is released because they warned you. That and so they can begin duping the gullible ones into believing it now because they know how much of an uphill battle it is going to be.

Sorry Jim... I think with just how horrendous the mainstream industry has treated its customers just over the last 12 months not to mention the last decade, that you are almost grasping at straws to find some sort of silver lining to try to be positive about because continually talking about the black clouds from the shit storms the industry has been brewing is enough to make life long gamers give up in utter disgust. Its great to try to keep a positive outlook, but never at the expense of blatant and glaring reality. Especially when you give gamers credit they absolutely do not warrant like saying they can tell. If that were really true, you would not have needed to do an episode on Sim City as no one would have bought it to have been complaining about it in the first place.
 

Lieju

New member
Jan 4, 2009
3,044
0
0
Yeah, I thought they were trying to assure us the game will be fun, unlike GTA IV.

I didn't have fun with it. The world was too realistic to enjoy being a jerk, but I couldn't get invested in the drama either because I felt the game wanted me to enjoy being a horrible person.
 

MeChaNiZ3D

New member
Aug 30, 2011
3,104
0
0
I think one of the core things the industry doesn't understand is that no matter how broad you make your games, people are probably not going to buy that many more. Personally, I get every game I'm really interested in eventually, and I'll always be far more likely to buy a niche game that I like than a game from a different genre that tries to hit a few of my checkboxes to appeal to me. Large parts of the market saturated, basically, and those are the parts large companies try to emulate. Instead of being different, they try to be the same. There are plenty of excellent games to buy for whatever you're a fan of, especially if that's action shooters, and going for a wider audience at the expense of some of your core fanbase is not a clever thing to do, because the people you're appealing to are already be appealed to directly by games that are unashamedly exactly what that audience wants. Dark Souls was a massive success because it appealed to a niche that was going unexploited - really hard, attention-demanding, deep, explorative RPG. Resident Evil 6 was not, because generic shooters are a dime a dozen, and swapping some of your zombie survival playerbase (who, incidentally, are now being appealed to by games that get it, like DayZ) to be part of a growing pool of shooters doesn't necessarily result in more sales. As always, I've got no stats to back me up, but that's my intuition. The more typical shooters there are, the less well typical shooters are going to do. It's not a matter of every typical shooter will be bought by people who buy typical shooters, they only have a limited budget. At some point, and I believe we've passed it, you'll do better catering to the people who don't buy typical shooters because that's what every large game is trying to be.
 

mdqp

New member
Oct 21, 2011
190
0
0
Was I the only one who thought the intro was almost too interesting? Jim should make a new series of videos called "Jim's bizarre adventures" where he just talks about weird anecdotes from his daily life. It would be the best series ever made. Ever.

On topic: I guess Rockstar at least realized the serious aspects of GTA4 were more a problem than an asset, given the nature of their game, but I am not going to praise them, just for acknowledging that on some level, and I can't say if they actually did their homework until I see the new game, so, I'll just sit and wait.
 

Vivi22

New member
Aug 22, 2010
2,300
0
0
Mark B said:
Vivi22 said:
Well done Jim. You've now given publishers a detailed guide on how to PR speak their way into making people think they give a shit about us.

And none of them save the ones who mean it will ever use it ever.
Its a load better than last weeks pail implementation of sarcasm/satire or whatever that was.
I think you may have misunderstood the point I was getting at. That or some hubub was created by last weeks episode that I'm not aware of leading me to misunderstand your point.
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
8,407
0
0
very well done, one of the best videos you made. also the story at the begining remind me of podtoid so its a bonus.


Jimothy Sterling said:
Agayek said:
Jimothy Sterling said:
Fun & Priorities

Grand Theft Auto V is designed to be fun, says Rockstar. Sounds like a no-brainer, but that little bit of PR buzztalk says a lot more than you may think.

Watch Video
So I can't stop myself from asking any longer:

What is it with the shrimp you put in every video? I can't make any kind of sense out of it, save that, from the audio context, it's some kind of "THIS SHIT IS BAD" visual flag. Is there anything more to it, or did you just decide one day that prawns were evil and would be used to represent evil forevermore?
The what in my videos?
Shrimp. you know, this:
 

Lightknight

Mugwamp Supreme
Nov 26, 2008
4,860
0
0
Jimothy Sterling said:
Agayek said:
Jimothy Sterling said:
The what in my videos?
The shrimp [http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/6484/9mj.png].

Though judging by your initial response, it's probably a safe conclusion I'll never get an answer. Ah well, making shit up is generally more fun anyway.
Seriously, I don't recall editing that into the video. Rewatched, couldn't see it.
Hah, that's hilarious.

3:26 in this video if anyone is interested in it.

Carnagath said:
I've always wondered what the shrimp represents as well, and finally someone asked, and you're just trolling him. FUCKING ANSWER HIM FOR GOD'S SAKE. Yes, I'm upset. No, I don't know why. PS, I like you <3.
Oh, you clearly know how to motivate people. I usually just shout, "Dance Monkey, dance" when people don't meet my expectations. That can have unusual concequences in bed but I find that consistency across all areas of life are necessary to maintain the appropriate amount of sardonic atmosphere.
 

Arnoxthe1

Elite Member
Dec 25, 2010
3,391
2
43
Enough about all this "fun" business. You know what the rule of thumb is for designing a game? Design a game that you would want to play.

Yeah, it's more complicated than that but you get what I'm saying.
 

=Doc=

New member
Jan 18, 2011
12
0
0
Ending the video by literally kissing Kirbys ass..
Grace, style, panache..

Sir, I am simply speechless!
 

CoronaryThrombosis

New member
Apr 15, 2009
55
0
0
Some video game companies that are trying to "appeal to a wider audience" are doing so because they need the money. EA, for example, has a corporate structure that is bloated and top heavy and the company is so overextended that they have decided to compensate everyone (in part) with stock options instead of cash. This was done this year after EA posted a massive 4th quarter loss. EA depends on huge amounts of cash constantly coming in. It's a business model that isn't sustainable. Big companies are beholden to their stockholders for financing (full disclosure: I own EA stock) and it's tough to attract new shareholders to a gaming company unless the corporation can say "We sold 10 million copies of X game and generated $X million dollars". Investors don't care about how "fun" a game is: Investors care about numbers. It's not just EA either. It's Take-Two, Activision, THQ; really any publicly traded company.