[johnnythewolf]

Zaxx, on 09 April 2019 - 04:25 PM, said:

Back in the day we played games that looked like shit but had excellent gameplay

E.T. on Atari 2600 both looked and played like shit so much that it was instrumental in causing the video game industry of the time to crash...

Heck, people got so fed up with video games that Nintendo had to market its console as an "Entertainment System".

[MusicallyInspired]

I don't think anyone's saying that all old games had better gameplay.

[PokeThePower]

johnnythewolf, on 09 April 2019 - 05:24 PM, said:

E.T. Atari 2600
instrumental in causing

Forge, on 09 April 2019 - 11:48 AM, said:

Casual Gamer is the lowest common denominator in the gaming industry.

This is no casual sanitation facilitator... she's beating Psycho Mantis.

johnnythewolf, on 09 April 2019 - 10:18 AM, said:

I see. I do not use "normie" as a word either.

Most casual normie wizards don't.

Spoiler

[Forge]

JaccuseJuneJaccuse, on 09 April 2019 - 07:53 PM, said:

This is no casual sanitation facilitator... she's beating Psycho Mantis.

She's Ultimecia's second form

[----]

Regarding Forge's post about games then and now:

I really enjoy Titanfall 2's campaign. Gunplay feels tight and it has a lot variety and is short and sweet overall .... but ... as much I enjoy the campaign I immediately thought what a game like this had played back in the day.

(Spoilers for T2's campaign ahead).

Let's take the time swapping level where you can swap between two time periods. It is all fine and they also introduce new ideas throughout the level and you even have to think a bit. But only a very little bit. Every "puzzle" is solved after looking 2 seconds at the problem.
There is so much unused potential in that gameplay mechanic that I thought what would (for example) the old Valve have done with that idea? Why not destroy a small tree in the past/present that is grown and blocks the path in the future. Or let the gravity gun take objects from the future to the present (like a corpse for a needed DNA scan). It would be much more rewarding with interesting puzzles ... and the latter is what nowadays isn't wanted anmore. The "filthy casuals" don't want to think anymore they want instant reward and they need their ingame character become stronger (with perks or whatever) whereas the gamer in older days was happy when he himself became better and more skilled by playing a game.



Coincidentally I watched a tech talk with Carmack on VR last night. And he started with examples of the latency on a console where the push of a button on the controller can have a latency of up to 100 ms until the result is seen on screen ... he compared the casual gamer who doesn't mind the latency so much to a "connoisseur" (Carmack's words) who will hate such a high latency.

And I think (well, I KNOW) that the percentage of these "connoisseurs" among people that play games was much higher in the earlier days than it is today where gaming has become mainstream. And to reach the "filthy casuals" you need to make the game simple or make games as a service, so that they are constantly fed a stream of new events that will keep them entertained because they can't be entertained by putting depth into a game that would require them to find and explore the depth of a game themselves (which would be more rewarding ... but would also require effort from the gamer).


Bloody millenials, they ruin everything.

[Aristotle Gumball]

I think the indie gaming scene still has the potential to reach the heights of the 90s/early 2000s and develop those ideas into something new and different. I mean, what's next after games like Ion Maiden and Wrath? I doubt people will want to just make straight rehashes of oldschool shooters and inevitably we'll end up with some interesting mutations of tried and tested formulas.

Saw this last night:

It's mainly talking about the Thief games, but also goes into the difference between old vs modern game design principles (and motivations) and how those classic games that we all love aren't even the ultimate expression of their genres, since the quest for profits and visual spectacles took over a long time ago.

[Zaxx]

thricecursed, on 09 April 2019 - 04:40 PM, said:

Depends on what you mean by nice. I hate that high contrast look with the orange/cyan tint to everything like in modern action movies and all the exaggerated muzzle flash/screen flashing. Feels like there's much more scene detail, but also too much going on at times. I remember getting raging headaches while playing Quake 4 and pretty much stopped bothering with modern shooters at that point. Since then I've only played a handful and usually never complete them, but that's due to other reasons as well (like the games being shit).

Yeah, I find graphics to be a problem more and more too when it comes to the general readability of a game. For example I'm replaying Arkham Knight now (one of the very few examples of an excellently designed, not dumbed down modern game) and compared to Arkham City and Arkham Origins the combat can be harder to read. The Arkham series was never a "clean" game so to speak, they always went for a presentation that's heavy on effects and post-processing but in AK it's a bit too busy (and since the PC port is quite shit you can't really turn off stuff without ruining other parts or scenes).

Even when I play Quake Champions where the aim is clearly to be readable I like turning off the graphics to medium because the high res stuff can be distracting. On medium you get lower resolution world textures but the game keeps the characters high res and that alone helps you a lot in focusing your attention.

[Kathy]

MusicallyInspired, on 03 April 2019 - 04:44 PM, said:

Epic currently has (to the best of my knowledge) the best developer profit split of any platform. Certainly better than Steam's.

Best publisher profit split. Some developers don't even know their game is about to get Epic Stored. Plus it's not why they choose to become exclusive on Epic Store.

[Sledgehammer]

Remember that sweet huge cut for developers? I'm sure people with a common sense understood even before that big cut means nothing if there is no one to buy your game except for Chinese from Tencent themselves, but it's still worth posting anyway.

SATISFACTORY GAME ONLY SOLD 9 COPIES ON EPIC GAMES STORE LEADING DEV TO TWITTER TANTRUM

Quote

While Epic has been heavily promoting their store as being developer friendly, they’ve been also heavily promoting their store as anti-consumer as well. There aren’t a lot of consumer-convenient features in place, which has created lots of negative word of mouth among gamers who feel safer making purchases on Steam, GOG.com, and even EA’s Origin. Customer reluctance is so high that sales for Coffee Stain Studios’ Satisfactory was only in the single digits… after refunds.
The developer brashly lamented their sales figures in a Twitter thread posted on April 24th, 2019.


People began mocking the developer for not releasing on the Steam store, where they likely would have had a lot more than just nine sales. This rings especially true since according to Steam Spy, most of Coffee Stain’s games sell upwards of at least 1 million copies. So there’s a huge drop-off going from 1 – 2 million copies down to just nine.

Coffee Stain also gained a lot of positive press when they originally released the meme game Goat Simulator, which went on to move millions of copies across both PC and home consoles. So they went from being a mid-sized player down to being a back-alley peddler that no one wanted to buy their wares from. It was so bad even they had to acknowledge that the sales were not… satisfactory.


Coffee Stains then begin to go after the people joking about pirating Satisfactory as a way to stick it to Epic Games.
This caused an irascible response from the indie developer, lecturing people about piracy and how hard the 30 of them had been working over the course of three years on the first-person factory-based simulator only to sell nine copies on the Epic Games Store.

It didn’t stop gamers from peppering Coffee Stain Studios with some iconic quotes with which Valve has used over the years to shape what people believe to be a pro-consumer stance on delivering software to gamers.



Don’t be surprised if more developers start to react negatively to their nonexistent sales on the Epic Games Store in the coming months. Because at the end of the day, Epic can talk a big game about putting developers first, but if you don’t have customers then you won’t have much volume for your sales.

The full article here: Source

However, it's worth keeping in mind that the devs later said that it was all a joke. Though honestly I doubt many people bought their game either way and it rather sounds like typical damage control to me.

[----]

For those having the Epic Store installed because they need it (UT4, for example):

During the EPIC Megasale you get a free game each week with no need to give them your payment details (I in fact only have free games on their store (and Metro Exodus which I bought at a key reseller)).


And for those who buy there:
"During the Epic Mega Sale, developers and publishers are discounting a ton of great games up to 75% off. Also, for every game purchase $14.99 and above, Epic Games provides an additional $10 off to you at no cost to the publisher or developer."

Here is the websitelink:
https://www.epicgame.../epic-mega-sale

EDIT:
The last statement is the first time I think that they do something that is in the interest of the devs AND the consumer ... but until they fix their store and use a few of their billion dollars to start UT4-development again they won't see a penny from me.

[Sledgehammer]

fuegerstef, on 16 May 2019 - 09:02 AM, said:

in the interest of the devs AND the consumer

You have no idea.

[NightFright]

This is exactly the development we all saw coming. For devs it looks great at first, costs directly covered with exclusive deals, you can lean back. Or wait. Without a player base, all you have is a dead game with non-existing or bad PR and, most importantly, none or just a low/sub-par amount of gamers actually playing the game for which you have been working your ass off.

I'm curious to see the outcome: Will Epic adapt (i.e. end of exclusive deals) or will they try to "sit it out", assuming that players eventually will stop boycotting their crappy platform? I just know I won't ever install this garbage on my system, regardless which titles are bound to it.

[Sledgehammer]

This is exactly how it goes with Chinese in general. Dealing with them is a high risk no matter how big you are, though they can easily kill small or mid foreign business.

[----]

Sledgehammer, on 18 May 2019 - 03:47 AM, said:

You have no idea.

Well, that's not EPIC's fault, this time.

"As Emma Kent wrote in our coverage of yesterday's dramatic Epic Games store events, for newly-released games (and pre-order titles in particular), a price drop this steep has the potential to devalue a game too early".

[----]

Sledgehammer, on 18 May 2019 - 03:47 AM, said:

You have no idea.

Well, the intention was good. Unfortunately the publishers who pulled the games don't want their games cheaper for the consumers as "it devalues the games too soon". In this case you can blame the publishers.

[jkas789]

Jesus Christ, 4 pages in and I struggled to find the Epic Store thread lol. Anyways Epic Games lost almost $181 million & $273 million on EGS in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

[Kristian Joensen]

Well spending alot of money on exclusives and free games while having a much lower revenue share is not a sure fire strategy to earn alot of money quickly.

[William Beavis]

Good god, are they nuts?

[jkas789]

Well they are playing the long game. I'm not so sure if the plan to coax people with exclusives will work as well as they hope. For all that FOMO warps gamer's minds, we (I guess) can be pretty fucking stubborn and a bunch of cheapstakes.