CantFaketheFunk said:
Nurb said:
Yea we lost DRM, but got DLC in spades, including day-one releases and webstores... other people may like being nickle and dimed, but not me.
And I wouldn't personally think motion controllers are a good thing, they're a gimmick and already used to maximum potential on the Wii and that forcing companies to include motion control portions in games only ends up making a piss-poor final product that is dragged down by the gimmick.
"people don't want to unwind by waving their arms around in front of the screen"
-Yahtzee
The vast majority of DLC doesn't work the way you think it does. They aren't cutting things from the retail game for the most part, they're simply putting content designers to work after they would (in other cases) either A.) be put to work on a new game or B.) be fired.
And if you're against motion control so much - where do you think games have to evolve to once every game has photorealistic graphics? Can we just get higher definition, better textures and more polygons? Is that the only place we can aspire to?
Well, for example, you had dragon age, who were developing content like the warden's keep, which was developed at the same time as the game, witheld, and released as DLC for a full priced game. Not to mention the armor and item pack, and any in the future that basicly make a lot of loot worthless because they have to make super-items to justify paying real money for small digital content. Or EA, who witheld items and towns from their full priced game to fill their online store with. It's being too greedy.
As for the second part, you ask "how do you expect games to evolve?", well until we find away to get holodecks, or at least some sesnory feedback for motion control, they won't, and it doesn't need to for the same ways movies haven't evolved since sound was first used (before you mention CG, that falls under visual effects which have been in movies since silent film).
Video games can't evolve beyond improving visuals because it's basicly telling a story, and there is nothing new that can be done with story telling, all subjects have been done (man vs man, man vs nature, man vs himself etc.), so all you can do is change the set pieces, change the setting and subject and it can seem fresh when done well.
-good story
-good writing/dialogue
-good characters with personality and motivation
-good balance between fun and challenging
Games have a hard enough time getting just those four things right, and most fail horribly at one or all, so I don't know why folks would want to force games to evolve when publishers and developers ignore the basics.
I also think you might be confusing "evolution" with "gimmickry"; Movies had sensurround, smell-o-vision, and still have 3D, where studios had to make parts of their movie play to the gimmick, which tends to be rather obvious, such as seeing objects or characters swoosh at the screen and make you say "oh, this was made for 3D" while you watch it... polar express is a prime example. They are gimmicks because they don't make the movie any better, they just change the way you look at it, and in the end a lame movie is a lame movie no matter how much it reaches out at you.
For games, it's the same way; they had things like the power glove, VR goggles, and now motion control, which games on the wii MUST have implement into them at some point, but a lot of things require physical feedback and finesse, which of course it can't deliver and you end up in a lot of action heavy parts of a game, swinging the thing around like crazy. So it's a gimmick that's got a better fit for the casual end of things... motion control doesn't make the games better, more often more frustrating, just as the power glove was more or less a joke.
Great games, like great movies don't need all that gimmick stuff, so long as you pay attention to the basics of what makes them good to begin with, and realize waving your hands around like an idiot will go the way of the Power Glove as time goes on.