Headdrivehardscrew said:
mfeff said:
Oh, wow. You came here with a heart full of emotions and a brain full of words, it seems.
Awesome post, though. So awesome I found myself just skipping over and stop autocorrecting the spelling mistakes, instantly feeling stupid for being a part-time grammar nazi.
Unfortunately, I get that A LOT! When I was going through uni as an undergraduate I hired people from time to time to edit my writing submissions that where to be peer reviewed. My background for better or for worse, has very little to do with "writing".
hahaha Tree ware! Working on stuff from time to time I still find some sympathy for the poor schmuck who gets stuck with the job of scenery. Load up skyrim tool box sometime and just count the number of wall textures. It's a thankless job. =D
The whole Alien conundrum is, methinks, not easily wrapped up, but I believe I see certain similarities of the 'horse meat scandal' that seems to have a firm grip over major European countries and big-name, big-money food companies and the 'utterly shite games non-scandal' state of affairs. We're bound to (want to) trust big names (Findus, Aldi, EA, Activision), but the bigger they get, the more important streamlined everything gets for them, to keep a tab on costs and TCO and ROI and whatnot.
Well, to be fair I expected this to happen sooner or later and A:CM was a perfect storm. Sega like Paradox not to long back gets taken for a ride. Remember Sword of the Stars 2? Paradox changed part of their development strategy thanks to that which included more progress reports from the studios as to the state of the products. Sega for better or for worse does publish the Total War series, which I find to be excellent. I can't pretend to know what the state of the union is with the studios or publishers, I imagine they are quite well aware of what it is they do.
I just don't think it goes much further than "awareness". Like smoking.
When I was working in box retail (distribution) the larger companies had very little knowledge of "games", but an exceptional knowledge of markets. Publishers today are filled to the brim with marketing and management staff. There is a massive bureaucratic infrastructure with these projects. To put that in perspective if Acti-Blizzard looses I think about 25 percent of it's player base in WoW, the company goes immediately into the red from cost overhead.
They cheated and lied, and the crap they sold us is not worth any real time or money from average gamers, and it's bound to emotionally impact fans of the series in a very negative way. Aliens: Colonial Marines is cancer, ADD, depression and smallpox all rolled into one. It's a bad one.
As obvious as it is, I think it would still be quite difficult to prove and nearly impossible to liable. The FPS in my book pretty much hit it's stride as a game "phenotype" (to borrow a bio word), with the Rainbow 6 Raven Shield series. I think the ARMA development has been interesting, and while the COD and BF franchises have created some breathtaking games, have really crippled "what could have been" in a rush to find that "market penetration" of Mario party with guns.
Essentially the genre has been in a wack' a mole mode for some years now. Maybe it took A:CM to make the point? It certainly makes it better than anything I could of ever written about. Though with Day Z and other mods I do find that there has been somewhat of a Renascence with the notion of what these products "used" to be like.
Sitting around with some friendlies we discussed what one would do with the Aliens license, and again, in all fairness; it was somewhat destined to suck ass. Could probably do a video blog on the subject detailing the challenges presented to a "games" designer.
Now I am not talking about lighting, and texture maps, or stuff like that... simply as objects in a 3d space, how would one go about making the alien aggressor interesting in the context of the firepower of the marines. How does one take that and craft ones levels and streamline behavior with scripts to keep it engaging. Then again when I work out a game I start with a big piece of cardboard, plastic figures, and a ruler. Always keeping in mind the limitations of the video and mainboard ram states... as well as thinking, "if i put a 90 degree turn here, I can drop out all the previous stage from the z buffer, and load an interesting scene here". This is heavily done in Dead Space 3. It's impressive what they get away with considering the limitations of the hardware it has to run on.
Stuff like having the hud pop up, a flash interface in a 3d space, has patents on it. It's sometimes surprising the sheer amount of technical know how it takes to do something that seems as simple as that.
Don't even get me started on A.I. man o' man. "smart" systems are thesis for master's and Ph.D of computational mathematics.
If you can't get it off a shelf, or google the script for it, your hiring for it... and those people do not come cheap, if they are even available at all. It's beyond the scope of most game studios.
Yeah Horde mode!
With aliens I want to really get a sense of 3d and speed; so much so it is disorienting. The original AVP would of been a good place to start, but I may of tried to take it further. As it stands no amount of polishing will make A:CM anything more than a turd... polished up. It was fundamentally broken before it ever started and no amount of crummy writing and half baked ret-conning was going to save it.
It had to be "at it's core" an interesting game. We know the world, the weapons, the sound effects; to capture those hearts and minds it had to deliver some outstanding "game play". Good luck with that... nowadays... (to many "art" people, not enough math people).
Pure tech hurdles... destructible terrain, smart AI, working with the environment as the marines to hold a defense. Like stuff... I dunno... in a game? It's the ire I have for the genre.
Keep in mind one can play through Aliens, and the hardest of difficulties... by "running" through the scenes. I mean... c'mon. Rly?
Alas it is a very uninspired game dressed up and peddled on the merit of the license.
Reminds me of Homefront, when they got the "writer" from Red Dawn to scribble some junk for it. Marketing.
I like your little bit about the Bushmaster M98B. I like the story, genesis, history of how it came to be. It took inspiration and dedication and significant risk taking to get this thing made, not just dreamed about.
Yucky bushmaster! Barrett M98B is in a league all it's own. Personally I wouldn't own a bushmaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_M98B
Bushmaster has gained some notoriety for their .223 XM series which is a clone of sorts of the AR-15 5.56mm cartridge. To go a little off topic the Batman shooter utilized one and I think it jammed 5 rounds in. Does not inspire a lot of confidence.
However, consider this: Currently, I don't believe important technological bits like Betamax or Laserdisc could happen in our current economical climate. Sony must prevail, one way or another, but I must admit that I haven't even bought so much as Sony TV for at least a decade, after pretty much twenty years of brand loyalty. I love my PS3, but from the top of my head, I can't think of a Sony developed or Sony funded title that really blew my mind lately. Was Journey funded by Sony? If yes, that's the one. The Sony party brawl thing - I haven't even played it once up to this point in time, and that can't possibly be a good sign.
Depends I think on what technology we are discussing. The Cry Engine as an example is used by military, as well as a heavily modified version of the ARMA engines. Many of the game engines have commercial avenues outside of game development usually in the form of well, military, and sometimes commercial products for simulations.
To my knowledge Journey was supported by Sony. I think it is an interesting product, although I little light on "game". I am not exactly sure how those fiscals are written up, although I imagine there was a considerable amount of support by Sony internal development staff.
Sony like many Japanese companies really need a western market presence, they simply do not have the population in their own country to remain viable. Blu-Ray is here to stay for the moment as well as digital distribution. I expect all the newer consoles to carry a little more ram, a little more of a video solution, and certainly more storage to facilitate the distribution mechanisms. The Sony system is designed around utilizing cloud technology, and I expect that they will continue to drive towards that (Dust 514 comes to mind). They build a good system, just never have been particularly impressed with their software or pipeline. Havok engine has made a killing off Sony products. Ni No Kuni, Demons Souls, many many other games all use it.
Plug n' Chug.
I got a heavy disconnect with EA going on, I ignore most of the shit Activision cranks out. From ten to twenty games bought per year I went down to... three to four titles a year. Everything else just makes me happier with less money, and most of the additional time I spend outside, with or without other people, seems so much more important and precious to me. Driving a car, skinning deer, burying a dog and teaching a new puppy new tricks and laying down the general rules of how not be an asshole seems so much more satisfying than playing crap games and even paying money for them.
That has been a pretty big change. Consoles where expected to sell 6-8 new titles during the life of a system by a household, if your dropping your purchases down, others are as well. Several big box stores have taken a pounding. Lot's of reasons for this, probably write a treatise on the subject.
I have consoles though I tend to stick to PC for my game entertainment. Like you said though, my interest in the rehash and crippling of the product has severely upset my purchasing decisions. I just don't think one gets one's money out of these products. My interest have also changed as well. So it's not all industry fault.
Yeah, I like Ni No Kuni. But I just can't be arsed to spend weekend after weekend dumping hours into it. I'll finish it, but I am much more likely to dump another hundred or so hours into Dark Souls, over the course of the months to come.
We have enjoyed it, but I have a few nit picks with the title. Dark Souls is good stuff, very much enjoyed that as well. Although again, that is something of a rebrand of a previous From Soft. library... so I consider it to be the 7th or 8th game of a series. Very smart design decisions. I am happy with From Soft although I expect round 3 to be crippled looking for that market penetration.
Man, really enjoyed chatting with you!
