Jimquisition: How Skyrim Proves The Industry Wrong

[Sporge]

Biggest problem with your argument is how much time got put into that game. Is it selling well? yes. Is it a great game. From reviews I suppose so, I don't have it currently. But to make a game like that is a rare gem given how many people need to be paid over many hours of work to make it all come together properly. Devs are not cheap.

Many companies make just as much by pumping out half done junk without pushing boundaries of anything. Is it right for them to do that, probably not, but it can be effective businesswise sadly.

 

[Treefingers]

This guy annoys me so fucking much, but he always has something valuable to say. Nice.

 

[NoaNeumann]

Well 'someone' watches the Regular Show, lol!

 

[Agayek]

you can't fly dragons. why?

Because they haven't released the mod tools yet. Once they do, I plan on making a "You can use Odahviing like a flying horse" mod.

 

[Agayek]

I don't get Skyrim.
It has no atmosphere. It has no interesting characters. It has no important overarching goals (well, there are dragons, but you kinda lose belief that they can actually cause damage after slaughtering dozen of them without any effort). It is ugly and lacks any color besides grey. It's buggy to the point of not being able to finish some quests. And despite all of that I've been playing it for 55 hours and want more.

To be fair, Paarthurnax and Odahviing are rather awesome characters. Those two + the Jarl of Whiterun were the only characters in the whole game I actually sympathized with.

Spoiler

The latter enough so that when the Stormcloaks I had sided with attacked Whiterun, I immediately loaded a save from before the faction choice and sided with the Imperials.

 

[miso2002]

This was a terrible example game to prove his point. Skyrim is a great game but most games aren't meant to last 50-infinite hours nor do we want them to. When he made the point that skyrim was great because it was true to itself, it's important to remember that for most games to be true to themselves aiming at 60+ hours detracts from a quality game. The reason for DLC and online passes is because the company made a great game but don't want to lose money because of the used game market. I don't like forced multiplayer, online passes, or demanded DLC but this argument holds no water for the game industry.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

This only makes me sad because, Skyrim, although massively successful, is but one giant in a field of many that are pulling the shit that Jim (and many other members of the industy) have condemned. I just hope the others follow suit that Witcher 2 and Skyrim have set.

And I'm getting fucking sick of this online pass shit, I don't care about Catwoman, and I don't give a shit about redeeming codes for Dirt 3, my Xbox isn't even online, so can you stop putting that shit in my face every DAMN TIME I turn my machine on? I mean really, pulling that bullshit is bad enough, but putting it up there before I even get to the game menu is a real pain in the ass, seriously.

 

[DTWolfwood]

to play devil's advocate. Skyrim had the legacy and pedigree of its predecessors to fall back on. Kinda like how the Final Fantasy franchise always does well, even when later version start to suck ass.

For every skyrim out there are probably dozens of games that are great single player games that get shafted because they have no name recognition, i.e. Psychonauts, Black&White, etc.

Also helps the game released on Steam. Had EA been smart and kept BF3 on Steam, its sales would be greater than what it is right now. I dare say equal that of MW3 or greater.

Spoiler: rant about online passes

While i fucking hate online passes with a passion, its existence is destined to happen because the games industry refuses to acknowledges the RETAILERS who sell off PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER intellectual property without giving anything in return. The crux of the issue is we don't own the IPs to games when we buy it on disc from the store (otherwise there wouldnt be a piracy issue.) So if they want to play that card same should be true for the fucking retailers. They have to adhere to that same logic that neither do they; they should not be able to profit from used games without giving royalties to those that own the IP.

Any excuse a retailer comes up with will also apply to the individual customer. So exactly y should i feel bad about buying used games when the store that sells it to me doesn't get shafted? y is it only me that has to "feel bad" about what i've done to simply save a few dollars when the seller makes millions without repercussion?

just saying, one exception does not break the rule

 

[FinalHeart95]

I think it's worth mentioning that none of my favorite games have multiplayer components to them. (Outside of Burnout Paradise... but yeah). Just finished inFamous 2, and that game was balls-awesome. The only multiplayer in it was User-Generated Content, which I have yet to even touch.

Also, getting Skyrim, Skyward Sword, Arkham City, and the ICO Collection for Christmas. Lolgoodbyelife.

NOTE: ALL OF THOSE ARE SINGLE PLAYER.

 

[Agayek]

Fus Ro dah Fus Ro Dah


What is it with you people and your unrelenting force

Give Su Grah Dun a chance!

Troof. Dual-wielding 300+ damage Daedric Swords with Berserker Rage and Su Grah Dun, there is literally nothing that lives more than 3 seconds.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

So basically... spend some time making the damn thing!

I believe we all mostly agree that shoving out a new game every year is a bad idea because it allows less time for experimentation and new ideas, something that in turn makes the game feel rushed and DLC-ish.

And yeah... with Nathan Drake being posterboy for Subway you'd think Naughty Dog would at least have the decency to sell their whole game on the flippin' disk (something i recall them doing with the first 2 games, and it worked out just fine).

 

[rsvp42]

Weren't we already fellating Skyrim all over the internet? Eh, who am I to play devil's advocate; proceed.

 

[Mozza444]

I don't like this guy.
However... he made some excellent points and the ending was pure epicness.
Maybe.. just maybe he has gained a viewer back.

 

[BrotherRool]

So Skyrim has no multiplayer and no online pass and this proves the people claiming that running multiplayer on online servers costs money wrong? So not being able to pay for something that doesn't exist means anything?

Everything else was fair enough. Skyrim was is just another place and another type of game though. It does cool things but it's not always the sort of game I want to play.

What Jim is saying is that you can make a game with very little planned DLC, no multiplayer or any sort of online features BUT still manages to sell millions and millions of copies

I'm afraid you've interpreted what I said wrong and made it sound a little funny. I agree that Skyrim shows that no multiplayer is needed to sell a game. As for DLC, well they have said they're probably going to do some and it's going to be huge by what they do, but yeah that's fair enough (although I don't think the point of DLC is a selling feature but rather a way of making money, I've never met anyone whose advised me to buy a game because it's got great DLC)

No what I was saying was, since it's got no multiplayer how the heck can it have an online pass? Jim was saying it proves Naughty Dog wrong when Naughty Dog said online multiplayer is expensive and they need to charge people for it who didn't buy the game.

But if you don't provide multiplayer then not providing multiplayer isn't expensive and you don't need to charge for it? Proof about online passes would be a game that doesn't have online passes where the developer doesn't lose much money supporting online features. Naughty Dog aren't saying it's a feature 'check it, you have to pay for second hand multiplayer!' and the fact that Skyrim didn't charge people money to play a multiplayer it doesn't have ad yet people still bought the game!!, doesn't prove the idea that online passes don't work and are stupid.

I hope you can see the logical flaw with me

 

[Reallink]

I would probably agree with this episode more if this was a new IP, but being part of a significantly popular franchise, just like Modern Warfare and Battlefield are, it is not as significant. The points about multiplayer/online passes do carry more weight, though to be fair a purely single player game and a (effectively) purely multiplayer game have somewhat different positions in this matter.

 

[miso2002]

Does anyone think it ironic that he talks about elder scrolls being smart with DLC when they started DLC with horse armor?

 

[irishda]

He misspoke. Instead of "if you want people to buy a game, just make a good game", I believe what he should have said was "if you want people to buy a game, start a long-running series that slowly grows a dedicated fan base by having each successive title becoming larger and utilizing more marketing, until the series has such a large fan base it can't possibly fail". Goddamn, Skyrim is not some mystical dark horse that exploded onto the scene and surprised everyone. It didn't "beat the market without being the market" because IT ALREADY WAS A PORTION OF THE MARKET. Games with multiplayer or shooter games like CoD and BF3 command a large portion of the video game market because they appeal to people who don't like locking themselves away on a game for 50+ hours. The audience for these games is so wide because it appeals to a wider base. But it will never be THE market because there'll always be the RPGers, the RTSers, and everything in between that'll clamor for more specialized games.

Look at the sales figures for it's predecessor. Oblivion took around six months to sell 3 million copies, but it didn't release a PS3 version until a year later. It's hard to tell what those figures would look like had a PS3 version been released at the same time, but a comparable equation is not what we're looking for. We looking at the fact that at least 3 million people played essentially the same game. If we assume that a great majority of those 3 million were such fans that they decided they were going to buy Skyrim when that came out, (remember we're not even counting the number of people that picked up the game in the last three other years between the two games or the PS3 customers that were included in 2007), then the fact that the game sold that many in the opening days isn't so remarkable.

TL;DR: Resounding sales figures for Skyrim is just the slow culmination of almost a decade of a growing fan base. This is not a new or original game that spat in the face of industry standards. In fact, congratulations RPGers, you've essentially become the CoD fanboys you despise so much, since this game is pretty much the RPG version of Modern Warfare 2.