Computer Games

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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Since I'm up, I may as well bloviate some more:

Noddy brings up a good point about the 'meh' factor. For all the money, dedication and technique needed for these big games, the industry depends on a consumer class which is ambivalent to the medium, even the most ardent game players can be very fickle. How many companies can count on any sort of unquestioning, long lasting, brand loyalties. A handful? EA Sports division, Nintendo Mario/Smash Brothers/Pokemon/(to a much lesser level) Zelda series, Grand Theft Auto? Who else? Only a few years ago you could've counted on War of Worldcraft, but they [and Blizzard] seemed to have peaked and are in a pretty dismal decline. Halo is on the wane- the multiplayer numbers for Halo 4 dropped off the map in less than two months- the game before? Was a top multiplayer game on the 360 for something like 16 months. CoD is produced with the knowledge that the fad will die out. Computer-only gaming may be more dedicated but whose audience can and will dissipate for reasons far beyond my primitive mind.

It's a format that requires a mass market, made for niches, and with the growing expectations of the game being high art, technologically on the cutting edge, a challenging game, a cinematic experience, a world class novel, and filled with a million secrets and easter eggs.

That's pretty crazy stuff. And the whole market is around 80 billion dollars; with no recent signs of growth. So everyone is fighting over the same nickels and dimes.

And boy are they fighting- all these "next-gen" games seem to be adopting free-to-play playing models while skipping the free part. I read about one of the new racing game where after purchasing the game, you can either grind for hours for a paltry sum of virtual money (to buy virtual car models) or you can pay a gradation of fees for that immediate satisfaction of realizing you just spent 60 dollars to have the opportunity at only spending three hundred more for a virtual Lamborghini.

To me, that's not a sign of a healthy industry.
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YMix
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

The industry part is one of the worst things that happened to games, at least in the West. Japan is a different story.

The story, as I see it, and I may be very wrong, revolves around the turn of the century, which is the time when computer games became popular enough and lucrative enough to be turned into an industry. From five guys making the first UFO (X-Com) game on their own to 200-man teams working on AAA blockbusters, "the dumb blondes" of games. Money changed everything.
How many companies can count on any sort of unquestioning, long lasting, brand loyalties.
They can't and shouldn't. Before the year 2000 or so, games were still made by intelligent people for (relatively) intelligent people. And brand loyalty is not, from my point of view, a sign of intelligence. And the were still games, which is to say a form of entertainment that requires the participant to learn and perform. You don't learn, you don't win.

But the successful games attracted the corporations and with the corporations came the Shitty Trinity in charge of the games industry: CEOs (who don't play games), marketing people (who don't play games) and financiers (who don't play games). They are the people who tell the actual developers what to do and yet not one of them would demean him/herself by playing one of the games they make. Since they know a lot about games as products (well, some of them do), but virtually nothing about playing one, the only games that can be pitched to these people, are those that resemble dumb movies. Flashy graphics and cheesy cinematic moments are something even they can understand.

And that brings us to the Great Divide of the early 2000s, when the companies looking for massive profits started making dumb games for dumb people, also known as "the casuals". The people who complain about games being too hard, the people who don't want to learn anything, those who require constant hand-holding and quest compasses. Those who play games for the graphics and the dumbed-down stories and <shudder> the romances.

The older crowd, the people who liked their games challenging, got pushed aside because what they wanted was too demanding. Whatever brand loyalty existed died in those years because dumbed-down games are not fun and being told that you're "entitled" because you disagree with design decisions is insulting.
It's a format that requires a mass market, made for niches, and with the growing expectations of the game being high art, technologically on the cutting edge, a challenging game, a cinematic experience, a world class novel, and filled with a million secrets and easter eggs.
Not quite accurate. There are all kinds of players out there, but you can usually split the vocal part of the crowd into: high art-cinematic experience vs. decent art-challenging game. The Bioshocks, for instance, are representative of the great graphics-average shooter AAA games, compared to their challenging but graphically-dated predecessors, System Shock 1 & 2. Fallout 1 & 2 had decent stories that I could go through without feeling insulted. Fallout 3 is made for 12-year-olds.

The novel status, while not really world class, was reached somewhat by Planescape: Torment, back in the late '90s. Let's hope that its kickstarted successor, will live to my rather high expectations.

Also:

Image

Image
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Ibrahim
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Ibrahim »

YMix wrote:Image
This change was just happening when I stopped playing games regularly. It seems like the original idea was that levels would be a maze. Now they are a rollercoaster. I can see the advantages of both but obviously the market has spoken.


Speaking of the market, the demand for games is clearly there and its not going anywhere, but perhaps the current game production model of large teams spending years/millions making "AAA" titles for consoles is over. Of the little gaming of done in the past few years, by far the best experiences were from "indie" developers who made games alone or with a small team for free.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

YMix wrote:They can't and shouldn't. Before the year 2000 or so, games were still made by intelligent people for (relatively) intelligent people. And brand loyalty is not, from my point of view, a sign of intelligence. And the were still games, which is to say a form of entertainment that requires the participant to learn and perform. You don't learn, you don't win.


I can see your point but I want to suss something out here: are you speaking about computer games alone, as in games which ran on PCs, Macs, etc; or computer games in general, including the arcades, home consoles, and handhelds? I think you may be right about PC-type gaming. The high threshold for entrance in those 80s, 90s computer games, where you had to have a certain proficiencies lacking in the general public [at least around my neck of the woods] precluded a lot of people from even being considered potential players. In this latter, more general sense though, while I don't question that intelligence of anyone making them; how mentally taxing can you consider games like Altered Beast from Sega? It was push the direction pad to the right and respond when necessary with the punch and kick buttons. [Don't forget to occasionally duck.]

I have no opinion on brand loyalty and its correlation to intelligence; but I do know that if I were in charge of several computer games being produced, I'd be willing to take a lot more risks with Game X if I were secure in knowing that my flagship game series will pull around its usual numbers and keep my company afloat. Of course, the brand loyalty goes beyond that (at least if we are talking about console/handheld gaming) where I cannot even be comfortable in the market while making a game for the current popular hardware when half the audience may switch to a completely different company within development time.

Enki posted about using Unity3d- which seems like the way to go for a small company and it seems like an attractive software to use- and just for the licenses (last I checked) it was 1,000+ dollars for each device I may want to place my game. But all this business-y stuff sort of goes into the next point....
But the successful games attracted the corporations and with the corporations came the Shitty Trinity in charge of the games industry: CEOs (who don't play games), marketing people (who don't play games) and financiers (who don't play games). They are the people who tell the actual developers what to do and yet not one of them would demean him/herself by playing one of the games they make. Since they know a lot about games as products (well, some of them do), but virtually nothing about playing one, the only games that can be pitched to these people, are those that resemble dumb movies. Flashy graphics and cheesy cinematic moments are something even they can understand.


I can see your point about the non-players understanding cinema more than video games. But when were these companies and corporations not involved? It is my understanding that by the early 90s, all these big shot-type were already in place. The only real difference I can see is that everything was newer and the businesses were in constant expansion (experimentation) and most games and companies were not in direct competition for the dollars of a finite amount of players. I guess it personally doesn't bother me whether the CEO, marketing people and financiers really care about games or play them (in most scenarios.) A good CEO will trust his talent and the talent will trust him when he squashes something. I'm also wary about a passionate group of people having full control of their work. There is a danger of them becoming myopic and maladaptive by making things too specialized and niche. I know enough programming enthusiasts of a certain age who have a tendency to alienate themselves and their products so that the "masses" don't get it. I think it's stupid, antisocial and elitist. Of course, nowadays (from my own experiences) that character has morphed into a "indie-kid" hipster who will alienate you because he thinks he's marrying retro nostalgia to his silent-era film vision for gaming. Of the two characters, I'd rather associate with the first; but I wouldn't want them in charge of anything that is supposed to be fun or engaging.

I mean, I know people who would take a game like Chess and try to make it more specialized so that people couldn't approach it casually, as if there was something inherently wrong with not being an expert in something. Which leads to...
And that brings us to the Great Divide of the early 2000s, when the companies looking for massive profits started making dumb games for dumb people, also known as "the casuals". The people who complain about games being too hard, the people who don't want to learn anything, those who require constant hand-holding and quest compasses. Those who play games for the graphics and the dumbed-down stories and <shudder> the romances.


Yeah...the romances have sorta killed my interest in a lot of Japanese games.

But I guess if we're going by categorizations (as I've been informed) I'd be somewhere between the "filthy casual" and the "ignominious dudebro". I'm not going to say I'm smart but I know I'm not the dumbest doll in the dollhouse. I also don't remember ever whining about games being too hard or wanting constant hand-holding either. From the way I see it, instead of having rather clear distinctions between arcade, consoles and computer games; all our devices play almost everything and anything, so that everything and anything has to be made accordingly.

It used to be when you wanted to play something more complex, (whether in terms of gameplay or cinematics) something I had to invest time in to acquire serious skills to compete- you used a computer. No longer. I guess what I'm saying is, "dude, you got your Wolfenstein in my Mario!"

Of course, the Mario games have gone from mildly challenging to impossible to lose. I recently tried out Mario Galaxy for the first time, after hearing how great it was, and it was great in terms of art direction and music; but I couldn't die. I breezed through the main requirements of beating the game like it was nothing- and I'm not a great platform player or anything. It killed any real fun I might have had in trying to 100% complete it. Why bother?

We have different tastes in games, but my favorite "simpler" games were completely devastated by the big dumb blondes too. [Which is quite a feat when you think about it. Big dumb blondes ruined the whole landscape of computer gaming, yet they still can't seem to screw in a lightbulb.] ;)

The older crowd, the people who liked their games challenging, got pushed aside because what they wanted was too demanding. Whatever brand loyalty existed died in those years because dumbed-down games are not fun and being told that you're "entitled" because you disagree with design decisions is insulting.
yeah, I can see that.
Not quite accurate. There are all kinds of players out there, but you can usually split the vocal part of the crowd into: high art-cinematic experience vs. decent art-challenging game. The Bioshocks, for instance, are representative of the great graphics-average shooter AAA games, compared to their challenging but graphically-dated predecessors, System Shock 1 & 2. Fallout 1 & 2 had decent stories that I could go through without feeling insulted. Fallout 3 is made for 12-year-olds.


That may be a better way to separate it and make it more intelligible than my impression.
Last edited by NapLajoieonSteroids on Mon Dec 09, 2013 10:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Ibrahim wrote:
YMix wrote:Image
This change was just happening when I stopped playing games regularly. It seems like the original idea was that levels would be a maze. Now they are a rollercoaster. I can see the advantages of both but obviously the market has spoken.


Speaking of the market, the demand for games is clearly there and its not going anywhere, but perhaps the current game production model of large teams spending years/millions making "AAA" titles for consoles is over. Of the little gaming of done in the past few years, by far the best experiences were from "indie" developers who made games alone or with a small team for free.
yeah, the mid-size market is what has disappeared. I'm rooting for (and enjoying) some of these indie teams because they may be able to fill the void one day; but the underbelly of indie is that it is filled with people outside the major players for a reason.

How many more games are we going to see that is advertised with "NOSTALGIA!" [in big neon letters] as if this makes the games inherently good. There is a lot in the indie game culture that seems like arrested development being played out by people who aren't all there.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

:)

I admit all this talk of computer games has been a welcome distraction. It also has me jonesing to play one of the Age of Empire games again.

q_MEFt7KrxQ

I don't know if Age of Kings is my favorite in the series. What I do know is that this series is my favorite.

I even enjoyed the splendid and underrated turn-based versions on the Nintendo DS.

OaSwd2WSg1g

(the Age of Kings DS game was probably better in this case.)

And it was a crime that these games bombed in the United States. I'd love to have more handheld versions of turn based games built like these games.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

Meh, I shouldn't have ranted about games.
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:I can see your point but I want to suss something out here: are you speaking about computer games alone, as in games which ran on PCs, Macs, etc; or computer games in general, including the arcades, home consoles, and handhelds?
Computer games and sorry for not mentioning it. I never owned any kind of console.
I have no opinion on brand loyalty and its correlation to intelligence; but I do know that if I were in charge of several computer games being produced, I'd be willing to take a lot more risks with Game X if I were secure in knowing that my flagship game series will pull around its usual numbers and keep my company afloat.


I can see your point, but the business side is something I'm only marginally interested in. Frankly, I would recommend making games for the hardcore crowd, because such people tend to be more loyal, as long as you give them good games. Keep the quality up and... that's your brand loyalty. For example, Paradox Entertainment is doing really well in the strategy market, even though it games are usually buggy as hell upon release. :)
Of course, the brand loyalty goes beyond that (at least if we are talking about console/handheld gaming) where I cannot even be comfortable in the market while making a game for the current popular hardware when half the audience may switch to a completely different company within development time.
Didn't I post something about this? I thought I did. Anyway, the CEO of Square Enix had the same complaint.
I can see your point about the non-players understanding cinema more than video games. But when were these companies and corporations not involved? It is my understanding that by the early 90s, all these big shot-type were already in place. The only real difference I can see is that everything was newer and the businesses were in constant expansion (experimentation) and most games and companies were not in direct competition for the dollars of a finite amount of players.
Some of them may have been, but how many studios from the '90s are still in business? Most of them were taken over by the big entertainment corporations and destroyed. EA alone has run into the ground both Bullfrog and Westwood.
I'm also wary about a passionate group of people having full control of their work. There is a danger of them becoming myopic and maladaptive by making things too specialized and niche. I know enough programming enthusiasts of a certain age who have a tendency to alienate themselves and their products so that the "masses" don't get it. I think it's stupid, antisocial and elitist. Of course, nowadays (from my own experiences) that character has morphed into a "indie-kid" hipster who will alienate you because he thinks he's marrying retro nostalgia to his silent-era film vision for gaming. Of the two characters, I'd rather associate with the first; but I wouldn't want them in charge of anything that is supposed to be fun or engaging.

I mean, I know people who would take a game like Chess and try to make it more specialized so that people couldn't approach it casually, as if there was something inherently wrong with not being an expert in something. Which leads to...
True.
But I guess if we're going by categorizations (as I've been informed) I'd be somewhere between the "filthy casual" and the "ignominious dudebro". I'm not going to say I'm smart but I know I'm not the dumbest doll in the dollhouse. I also don't remember ever whining about games being too hard or wanting constant hand-holding either. From the way I see it, instead of having rather clear distinctions between arcade, consoles and computer games; all our devices play almost everything and anything, so that everything and anything has to be made accordingly.
You still have genre specialization. Or had. Shooters are being called RPGs nowadays, so it's kind of dicey.
It used to be when you wanted to play something more complex, (whether in terms of gameplay or cinematics) something I had to invest time in to acquire serious skills to compete- you used a computer. No longer. I guess what I'm saying is, "dude, you got your Wolfenstein in my Mario!"
Let's hope that complexity can keep the consoles in business when the "awesome graphics" selling point stops working.
Of course, the Mario games have gone from mildly challenging to impossible to lose. I recently tried out Mario Galaxy for the first time, after hearing how great it was, and it was great in terms of art direction and music; but I couldn't die. I breezed through the main requirements of beating the game like it was nothing- and I'm not a great platform player or anything. It killed any real fun I might have had in trying to 100% complete it. Why bother?
Exactly.
We have different tastes in games, but my favorite "simpler" games were completely devastated by the big dumb blondes too. [Which is quite a feat when you think about it. Big dumb blondes ruined the whole landscape of computer gaming, yet they still can't seem to screw in a lightbulb.] ;)
;)
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Ibrahim
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Ibrahim »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:
YMix wrote:Image
This change was just happening when I stopped playing games regularly. It seems like the original idea was that levels would be a maze. Now they are a rollercoaster. I can see the advantages of both but obviously the market has spoken.


Speaking of the market, the demand for games is clearly there and its not going anywhere, but perhaps the current game production model of large teams spending years/millions making "AAA" titles for consoles is over. Of the little gaming of done in the past few years, by far the best experiences were from "indie" developers who made games alone or with a small team for free.
yeah, the mid-size market is what has disappeared. I'm rooting for (and enjoying) some of these indie teams because they may be able to fill the void one day; but the underbelly of indie is that it is filled with people outside the major players for a reason.

How many more games are we going to see that is advertised with "NOSTALGIA!" [in big neon letters] as if this makes the games inherently good. There is a lot in the indie game culture that seems like arrested development being played out by people who aren't all there.
There is junk everywhere, in fact %90 of anything is junk and indie games might be more like %98, its just a question of finding what you want. I'm a niche market of one, as it everybody, and there are a million indie developers out there so you just need to find the one making games that appeal to you, even if its only to you.

Retro for the sake of retro doesn't bother me any more than new for the sake of new. As long as the devs aren't pretending they're the first people to think of 8-bit graphics.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

im a completely casual gamer, once or twice a year i hit the bargain bins for a couple of games that cost less than $20 bucks each and if i can get a couple of afternoons out of them i consider it a win versus the same amount of money spent on a movie which only lasts an hour or so.

the trick is that it has to be a game and i cannot stand those interactive movies with the quicktime events, they are like the worst kind of movie that pauses all the time and then chooses a random button to unpause, its such a waste of time i cant fathom who would actually enjoy them.

i dare say i have a higher tolerance for the mindless shooters than anyone else here but thats only if they are well crafted, which is pretty much none of them except the original ID ones, sadly they are responsible for all the brown on brown artwork clones with no story aswell :)

i cant play any of the war shooters or realistic ones, they are quite disgusting to me - borderlands is the only modern franchise one ive played and enjoyed.

their is some tricky nuance between a game that is difficult and needs to be learnt versus a game with some easy to pick up basics that then presents you with lots of challenges you need to overcome.

this is what sets the good platformers and good shooters apart from the masses of tedious unplayable ones and its hard to put into words.

little big planet hit the mark aswell now that i think about it, even better because it did coop well and the missus enjoyed it.

i appreciate that some people enjoy the war games and rpgs with the complex mechanics and learning curves but im not young enough or bored enough to even consider throwing so much effort at it, i have never played a sport game and i cant imagine i ever would.

i havent used a PC for gaming for a long time and like many people i only ended up with a playstation because it cost the same as a bluray player/pvr combo anyway so why not :)

ibrahim got it right in terms of the commerical/indie thing, its much like movies or music on those levels, 99% of both sides is boring to me and every now and then someone gets it right for my tastes.

the hardest part for indie games is the artwork, good 3d models require so much investment in time and skill.
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Re: Computer Games

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I like well-done 2D artwork, and some of the retro games have truly amazing 2D sprites, but oftentimes the themes are anime-related, and that's not something I'm interested in. But at least the option is open to a patient and talented indie developer. High-end 3D takes a fortune.



i cant play any of the war shooters or realistic ones, they are quite disgusting to me - borderlands is the only modern franchise one ive played and enjoyed.
Borderlands sticks out because at least they bothered to be just a little different in the ultimate derivative genre. I've actually played and enjoyed some of the Call of Duty franchise, but obviously those games and their imitators are fraught with artistic, aesthetic, political and moral problems. Still I just can't get worked up enough over a game to be as outraged as I normally am, even if the games are sloppy and transparent propaganda for US foreign policy. I haven't played the new one but apparently you slaughter scores of random South Americans instead of Russians and Muslims.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

yeh, i dont think its morality or race politics, its more the mood of it .. lame and shallow yet all so earnest and serious, it repulses me.

my precious moments of entertainment should be light hearted or the story has to be excellent and keep me interested.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

noddy wrote:i dare say i have a higher tolerance for the mindless shooters than anyone else here but thats only if they are well crafted, which is pretty much none of them except the original ID ones, sadly they are responsible for all the brown on brown artwork clones with no story aswell :)
Got no problem with mindless shooters per se. I played a lot of Battlefield 2. I played Duke Nukem 3D and Quake 2 back in the day.
Ibrahim wrote:I like well-done 2D artwork, and some of the retro games have truly amazing 2D sprites, but oftentimes the themes are anime-related, and that's not something I'm interested in. But at least the option is open to a patient and talented indie developer. High-end 3D takes a fortune.
Same here. I think Baldur's Gate 2 and Icewind Dale 2 looked great. They still do. And speaking of great 2D graphics, check this out.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

some of the indie vector graphics stuff looks cool too, the cartoony stuff with good physics, and their is plenty of potential for excellent gaming in that so thats the path ive been mucking around with when i can.

my main shooter was quake 1, i loved how unbalanced and unfair it was and no game since has been as tricky or forced so much strategy or hard thinking, deathmatch in quakeworld was on another level of difficulty to anything that followed, they all turned into mindless spawn and kill nonsense.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

the other thing i think might be interesting and hasnt been exploited much yet is using the myriad of real world data to build a game.

google did some nonsense with it but from racing games to adventure games i think their is alot of territory to exploit in that space and the cool part for indie development is that alot of the content provides itself and just requires a clever idea or hook on top.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

YMix wrote:Meh, I shouldn't have ranted about games.


Yes, it's much more contentious than the same old geo-political religious strife arguments we get into around here. ;)
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
YMix wrote:Meh, I shouldn't have ranted about games.


Yes, it's much more contentious than the same old geo-political religious strife arguments we get into around here. ;)
ymix is just upset that ea sports hasnt released spenglerzone 4 with the romanian expansion pack yet, the curse of the infertile vampire.
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Re: Computer Games

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noddy wrote:ymix is just upset that ea sports hasnt released spenglerzone 4 with the romanian expansion pack yet, the curse of the infertile vampire.
I'd play that. :D
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

vlad falls into a deep dark nihilistic funk after too much exposure to wagner and german philosophy, he rejects his heritage and kicks all the brides out and replaces them with persian rent boys.

fade.

milla jovovich (one of the brides) wakes up in a bath, nekkid but for a tactfully placed fragment of white cloth and monica belluci (the other bride) is leaning across her, bosoms falling out, trying to wake her with sultry breathing.

after that, its lots of reading old books and trying to get clothes on milla, it failed miserably in early user testing.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Ibrahim »

VLAD uses TORAH to combat CULTURE OF DEATH. BIRTHRATE has increased by 0.7 percent.
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Re: Computer Games

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He moves to Israel, the happiest nation in the world, but finds out that the locals are better bloodsuckers. He is attacked my mummies coming in through a tunnel from Egypt.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Ibrahim »

ALL YOUR HOLY LAND ARE BELONG TO US!


Image
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

How 'The Walking Dead' turned Telltale into the HBO of gaming

It would be impossible to have guessed Telltale Games' trajectory from the studio's first title, a poker game called Telltale Texas Hold 'Em. But soon after that, Telltale started tackling projects that would hint at its future aspirations. There were games based on the comic series Bones, and episodic series covering everything from Monkey Island to Wallace & Gromit to Jurassic Park. Over the years, the studio was slowly perfecting a formula that would turn gaming into something closely resembling television, both in terms of structure and distribution. But it wasn't until last year that Telltale finally managed to bring that dream of TV-like gaming to a mass audience.
Yeah...
Early series like Sam & Max Save the World and Tales of Monkey Island felt a lot like those classic adventure games, humorous adventures with lots of puzzles to solve and witty dialogue to navigate. As Dennis Lenart, director for season two of The Walking Dead puts it, they were often aiming to stimulate the player's brain with challenging puzzles. That finally changed in 2012 with the first season of The Walking Dead. "With The Walking Dead, one of the reasons it’s been so successful is because we focus less on the head and just aim straight for people’s hearts," Lenart explains.
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noddy
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

buahaa, a point n click soap opera, take my money!!
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

:lol:

People really like their tv. :?

Sometimes I wonder if it's easier for these companies to protect the IPs of these things if it's more movie-like.

Anyone can make Space Invaders over and over again by just changing the Space+Invader part. How much of a game rules can you actually get away with owning?
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

My brother and I will be giving this:

Image

to our mother for Christmas. We got a good deal on the bundle+a free zelda download for an older game (which seems to have skyrocketed on ebay right now- we should have purchased two, and the thing would have paid for itself.)

We know she really would like to play A Link Between Worlds, with the original one being her favorite of all time. At first we were just going to get the game and let her borrow a 3ds to play it. But as anyone who has tried to use the original 3ds system, it is terrible to hold for any period of time with adult hands.

Throw in that my mother is developing arthritic problems in her hands and that the small screen may not be the best for her eyes- so we thought the xl version may allow her to play the game in relative comfort.

Now the problem is justifying the purchase beyond the one game. I was saying to my brother that I don't mind paying more so she can enjoy the game but even if the game is the greatest thing ever, it's hard to justify the price paid to the value. I'd be more comfortable with the decision if I can figure out a few other games she would enjoy. It'd be more money upfront but there is a big difference (to me) between buying something she may get 40 to 60 hours of use versus 200 hours over its lifetime. Search isn't going great so far.
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