The Flock Is A Horror Game With An Expiration Date

[RicoADF]

Fuck off is all I can say. It's bad enough that some games will die when servers turn off as it is i won't encourage such stupid behavior.

 

[Vigormortis]

An excerpt from their website describing their company:
"...We create entertainment games that we want people to play because of their novelty factor."

You don't say? I never would have guessed that, given the 'selling point' of this game.

I guess we know what sort of game to expect from them from now on.

[sub]Assuming the company stays afloat.[/sub]

 

[MoltenSilver]

Oh God this is just what we needed right now, another step into the alligator-infested waters of 'Games are a service. No really, please believe us!'

Unless you're offering it at rental-prices, you damn well better not be selling what basically amounts to a prolonged (if that) rental.

And that's not even touching on gaming's already mortifying set-up for preservation. If the Lourve declared they were destroying all the works of art inside its doors because maintaining them had gotten too expensive there would be a riot. Sure, gaming largely hasn't quite reached the level worthy of being compared to masterpieces yet, but a lack of preservation is one of the major factors holding it back in the first place.

 

[Nazulu]

All I can think about is people planning to hack and leave it online, if they can.

Then after that thought I was thinking :I better snatch it up", but that only lasted for a second as I realised this maybe a great way to get people to get it before it's too late, which is shit. I'll read some reviews on it and judge if it's worth a damn like normal.

Also, I miss the old Lineage 2. I miss it so much. Summing it up as an event is right.

 

[infohippie]

That sounds like an interesting experiment, and I will be curious to see how it works out. I rather hope this idea takes off, actually, it might help convince studios not to shoe-horn unnecessary multiplayer into otherwise single player games, which all too frequently ruins the single player experience in the first place.

 

[Strazdas]

sounds interesting on surface and horrible once you start thinking how its actually going to play out. i wont be participating in this "Experiment".

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

That's an interesting concept. It could be applied to encourage cooperation. Take a typical post apocalypse and fill it with a finite amount of required resources food, drink etc. which when gone the players can no longer survive, once all dead game over forever. More resources can only be generated by the players themselves on farms for example. Yeah there will be those looking to just blow stuff up, but then others might band together to protect resource generating areas so the life span of the game increases.

Hitting the right price point will be difficult though.

I'd agree with this. One of the biggest problems with all of the survival games and all that claiming to create a player run universe is the fact that nothing sticks. The towns never stick around, the moment you log off everyone dies in their sleep, and if you die you just go hit the unlimited rock a bunch more to rebuild your things.

I would be really intrested to see this, simply because of how many great stories could come out of people trying to get in the destroy a well built farm or whatever. Witch-hunts are likely.

That game would literally be based around people trying to ruin other people's fun, and the people having fun will band together to try and stop them thereby having fun and the people who try to ruin their fun will be having fun doing so so everyone will be the having of the funs.

...English.

 

[Sonicron]

Hrm. Cool idea, granted, but only appealing if the price is right (read: no more than 20 Euros).
Also, I'm kind of worried that if this thing succeeds at what it sets out to do, the concept might be snatched up and horribly warped by the AAA industry in order to justify even more anti-consumer bullshit.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Here's the problem.

Assholes exist.

you ever play a game of Halo? Where one member of the team kills himself and 'griefs'? And his response is "I bought this game, I'll play it however I want.

I easily see just three to five of these people getting together, laughing their asses off, and killing themselves over and over to deny everyone the chance to play the game right.

 

[Akytalusia]

worst idea ever. for two reasons.
1. griefers. this game will reach the point of stopping sales on the day it releases. the griefers will make damn sure of that.
2. some people might buy into the whole 'event' idea. but an equal if not greater portion of people want a product. this gives physical form to planned obsolescence and every consumer is already against that in concept form.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

Seems an interesting experiment and I look forward to seeing how it inevitably goes completely tits up.

I shan't participate but I'll happily watch to see how it goes... Just give me some time to get out of the blast radius and to make some popcorn.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

An excerpt from their website describing their company:
"...We create entertainment games that we want people to play because of their novelty factor."

You don't say? I never would have guessed that, given the 'selling point' of this game.

I guess we know what sort of game to expect from them from now on.

[sub]Assuming the company stays afloat.[/sub]

I can't think of anything more quintessentially hipster. It's made so that people can play it and say "oh yes, I was one of the few people who got to play the game" and brag on about something that god damn meaningless while sipping their wine. I hope to god this fails; both out of spite, and so that nothing this idiotic ever happens again.

 

[owbu]

So its like the average Ea game, just that they announced that you cant play it anymore at some point then :>?

Deending on the livepool and how much it costs, I guess I would be okay with that. Seems like a game with limited replayability anyways^^

 

[Lightknight]

Wait... so they're imposing a time limit on the game to motivate players to buy the game early which in turn will mean that the game disappears faster?

So the more popular the game is, the faster your money is wasted? haha.

The idea is creative but the result is sleazy.

 

[lacktheknack]

I don't see anything that could possibly go wrong with this, it being on the internet and all.

There's no way anyone would spend 10 bucks or whatever the price is just to die over and over and over again to ruin this for other people, right?

It doesn't matter if they do, the death limit is likely in the millions.

OT: It's an interesting concept, but I'll never be on board. I like replaying games I used to play years ago.

 

[Seishisha]

I can see the potential in the concept, a unique gameworld that is only available for a limited time. If said game had some kind of hard reset feature, where everything the playerbase does would eventualy get erased, a new world is then created for them to continue playing, if that was the case i could have gotten behind it.

As it stands though the idea of spending money on a product that will intentionally break after a certain time is just bloody stupid, anyone who pays money for that is quite frankly daft. A kettle that only boils one hundred times wouldnt sell in an electronics shop, this game should fail for having such an anti-consumer design.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

An excerpt from their website describing their company:
"...We create entertainment games that we want people to play because of their novelty factor."

You don't say? I never would have guessed that, given the 'selling point' of this game.

I guess we know what sort of game to expect from them from now on.

[sub]Assuming the company stays afloat.[/sub]

I can't think of anything more quintessentially hipster. It's made so that people can play it and say "oh yes, I was one of the few people who got to play the game" and brag on about something that god damn meaningless while sipping their wine. I hope to god this fails; both out of spite, and so that nothing this idiotic ever happens again.

To be honest, the thing that infuriates me the most about it is that I'm almost certain it will be a massive success just because people hate the idea of missing out. I really don't quite know why I detest this so much; perhaps it's due to my loathing of the steadily solidifying idea of "games as a service" that can be taken away at any moment, or perhaps it's due to how transparent and cynical this gimmick is and how obvious it is that they're basically selling us the idea that that having something we've paid for being taken away from us is actually a feature.