Which is why you never see Kickstarter campaigns relying on 90s titles or concepts or gameplay or even IP to sell games, right?Originally Posted by NathanH
...right?
Which is why you never see Kickstarter campaigns relying on 90s titles or concepts or gameplay or even IP to sell games, right?
...right?
Both games have a nice learning curve. By newcomers I meant someone between the ages 15-25 not familiar with games. I can give that person a gamepad and let them play Journey for an hour and I'll be sure it will have some kind of an impact. Zelda or Diablo? That person will just focus on the fact that both games have too much colour and monsters (kids' stuff).
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Yeah I thought I'd reiterate this, not that there is a US intellectual bias at all. But yeah here in the UK and most of Europe students tend to go through a more socialist phase and Ayn Rand is just unheard of, apart from around people with an interest in politics or philosophy and they mostly laugh at her.
Oh and trickle down economics does not work. We toyed with it for a good 30 years, which is plenty of time, all the signs are that the economic gap between the poor and wealthy has just gotten larger and social mobility has slowed down.
I'll try a summary of the discussion:
The big players aren't trying hard enough to push boundaries. They proabably have good reasons such as that each game is a product that has to earn money but new ideas take a couple of iterations to refine. Best you can hope for is that they realize the potential in some indie game (Narbacular Drop) and pick the idea up for a AAA game (Portal).
The indies aren't trying hard enough to push boundaries. Their resources are limitted. They try to fit into niches and mostly pickup game ideas that the big players have discarded - call it nostalgia or not - because they too have to make a product that sells. As a pitch on KS or as a product on the market. Just because Indies are small doesn't mean they don't make games to earn a living.
What's the conclusion? That videogame evolution is constrained because they are a commodity not art?
And here's something to get those rather discussing US politics back on topic:
Isn't a competitive market considered the best environment to promote innovation? What about the idea that successful competitors don't copy but originate? Could the defenders of capitalsim please explain why, when it comes to games, capitalism doesn't seem to provide what capitalists always point out as it's biggest strength?
You are blowing this issue way out of proportion.
It's not like Hollywood blockbusters, YA novels and pop music are pushing the boundaries of their respective art forms. They're all pushed by corporations who's general attitude was an always is "this shit sells so lets make more of it!"
Games are actually the best example out of this bunch where big ass corporations will take a chance from time to time. When was the last time a Hollywood studio made a step that was not the safest option possible?
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That's sort of a fair statement to make - the general conception seems to be that "AAA = CoD" while "indie = SUPER INNOVATION SIMULATOR 2013" when the truth is that there are AAA groups that try to innovate or push the boundary while there are indies which copy retro platformers or Minecraft or whatever else apparently sells.
Again invention or originality isn't always great, and iteration isn't always bad. Lots of devs like to play it safe, even the indies who look at AAAs or other indies and go "Hey that thing sold copies, we should make something like that!" and away they go.
But if we break the various genres down far enough we'll find that core gameplay mechanics generally aren't changing all that much - probably the most significant change is that opaque mechanisms have (thankfully!) been depreciated, and health is being treated differently in FPS games. Otherwise any "originality" for the most part is through new IP or art, or different goals, and not through core gameplay. There are exceptions (like Portal and Minecraft) but otherwise innovations barely count or are just needless iterations without a core effect on gameplay, like Valve making us solve the same see-saw physics puzzle in almost every game.
I guess the thought has never drifted into your mind that perhaps people genuinely like some of the things in the 90s that for whatever reason drifted out of fashion?
Irrelevant on further examination of the rest of the thread.
I genuinely liked my childhood. That doesn't mean I want to see a feature film starring Calvin and Hobbes.
You'll note that I wrote "like" rather than "liked".
Irrelevant on further examination of the rest of the thread.
How does that even compare? If you said "that doesn't mean I want to see more Calvin and Hobbes comics" it would be way more apt, and made way less sense...
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I don't want to see more Calvin and Hobbes comics, either, because Watterson retired. He retired for a good reason - He had no more ideas - and thus to rehash the series would mean zombifying it like Jim Davis' unholy creation.
Likewise, when I hear "spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper..." I think "aping the gameplay of Dungeon Keeper, only without the charm, humor or creativity, effectively exhuming a fetid corpse and asking us to dance with it."
I was pointing out the blatant flaw in your argument, not arguing weather more Calvin and Hobbes is good or not.
Aping the gameplay, sure, I'll give you that. But if you're arguing that the charm/humor/creativity of Dungeon Keeper is some unattainable ideal then I have to laugh in your face. In fact why would anyone even go for that again? Why not a dk-like game set on a space station? Or some other wild setting, where the tone and mood is nothing like dk. Maybe a horror dk-like. I'd like to see that. Why wouldn't you?
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but Nalano, surely you've seen what brilliance can be achieved by resurrecting childhood favorites. Remember those incredible Star Wars prequels? How about Indiana Jones? The Transformers?
Okay, I'll type real slow then, so it soaks in.
Let's take Tintin, which did have a feature film made of it, as well as an animated TV series. While it made a half-decent amount of money, it was basically an attempt to rake the coals of an IP that was at best dated and at worst a laughably unreconstructed curio of a bygone era. Except in a purely financial sense, worthwhile it was not, and I'd like to believe that you rate things on more than a pure financial sense.
It'll be a hollow laugh indeed, for all you do is display your own ignorance.
Dungeon Keeper's humor was not an unattainable ideal. It was, however, an original effort, and this very much informs why it was so compelling in the first place. We already have too much referential humor to need a circle-jerk of "oh hey, remember this? We were born in the 80s, too!" If you're capable of creativity, make something new. If all you're doing is cashing in on another IP, what makes you think we care about what goes on in that head of yours?
Again, you are comparing comic books being adapted in to movies (not only is it an adaptation of a pre-existing franchise but it is adapter ACROSS MEDIUMS) with old games getting "spiritual successors" today (which stay in the same medium, and they're a NEW IP). If your argument was ending with "a new Tintin comic" then maybe this would be an apt comparison. A truly apt comparison would be a new comic book that's a spiritual successor to Tintin.
Right now your comparison just doesn't make sense because you're comparing apples and oranges. Slow enough?
There is nothing original about DK beyond the gameplay, do not kid yourself. Maybe games did not have that darkly comedic tone before but it was all over other mediums. In fact a lot of DK's designs are straight ripoffs from other properties, like this guy:
Hollow indeed...
And thank you for ignoring this part of my reply-
"Why not a dk-like game set on a space station? Or some other wild setting, where the tone and mood is nothing like dk. Maybe a horror dk-like. I'd like to see that. Why wouldn't you?"
- and proceeding with your tunnel-vision arguments. For me this is a broader thing than just games that ape old franchises. What about Project Eternity? It sure got all you Torment fans all hot and sweaty, didn't it? Is it also now the spawn of Satan because it is a "spiritual successor", even though it has very little to do with the old game? What about Planetary Annihilation? What about Star Citizen? None of them should exist because... why exactly?
Edit: replaced broken image
Last edited by ado; 19-02-2013 at 02:48 PM.
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http://dailycelluloid.blogspot.com/- where I write about movies.
DK on a space station is Startopia, surely.
Was thinking that myself
It earned $10 million less than Star Trek 2009 and was $15 million cheaper. I'm sure it did worse that ST in the home market. A good profit anyway. I don't think anyone expected it to cross 50 million in the US. It's a strange property, very Eurocentric.
The movie was made only because Spielberg, Kennedy and PJ are rich as fuck and have their own production facilities. I don't think we have an equivalent in gaming, some rich dude that can fund a big budget game with a 95% bomb chance in the US just because.
It's Spielberg's most fun movie since Raiders of the Lost Ark. Can't wait for the glorious 48 fps sequel.
Last edited by SirKicksalot; 19-02-2013 at 09:13 PM.
Journey--good example. Very interesting game even for me. I can say I'm now a seasoned gamer. I've been playing amny different genres across almost all gaming platforms but Journey still stuck me as something original, and a very interesting one at that.
Oh, it did. But you might notice that I also stated that devs are rehasing the 90s because people demand it. Not always for nostalgic purposes, but as you say people liked those games... or at least thought that they did. "The Golden Age of PC Gaming" in the 90s does have nostalgic overtones, for sure, but you're right that people do genuinely like some of the things in the 90s which allegedly don't exist today (arguably most still do, and we're just rewriting history, like with the constant misuse of "non-linear design" arguments). Also I didn't specifically state that it was entirely due to nostalgia; it definitely does play a part but I didn't say it was the definitive cause.
My point was that rehasing the 90s isn't innovative, it's iterative, and since a lot of indies seem to be pitching their ideas based on "Well, this is how it was in the 90s so we're just going to do that!" the idea that they're going to save us from the allegedly repetitive AAA industry is nonsense.
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