Slashman wrote on Apr 20, 2020, 18:32:

Cutter wrote on Apr 20, 2020, 18:03:
People forget - or didn't know to begin with - that WC games got made in spite of CR, not because of him. He was a shitty producer from day one. Anyone can come up with wild ideas, it's another thing to deliver them on scope, on time, and on budget. He's never been able to do that and he still can't.

This is actually true. I have heard several developers say this. Ideas aren't in short supply in the game industry...but they are not where the real work begins.

There's a difference between creative, boundary pushing, easy to market ideas and ideas that are those things while also being reasonably doable. If the latter aren't in short supply in the games industry, then it's the only entertainment industry that can say that, and devs should spend their days appreciating what an amazing time it is to be making games.

Many years ago, I would visit gonegold.com for my gaming news aggregator, but it eventually shut down, and somehow I came upon Bluesnews and never left. I like that it covers not just gaming but also gaming-adjacent news, and unlike sites run by corporations with newly hired management that feel the need to justify themselves by making change for the sake of change, the things about its format that work really well never change, and thus continue to work really well.

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 16, 2019, 16:59:

selection7 wrote on Nov 16, 2019, 14:59:

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 16, 2019, 04:22:

Acleacius wrote on Nov 15, 2019, 21:09:
Don't think I've ever played any of this series, but if it's free might check it out.

Anyone who has played this know what this review comment means?

It says its free, but its not , you have to pay to play it.

Thanks

It means nearly everything aside from the most mundane base game is behind a paywall.

The game has a lot of DLC. Of course that's not free. But can you play the entire single player campaign for free? There are Steam reviews making it sound like this is some kind of scam, and I can't tell from your reply if there's any truth to that. The "mundane base" game is the most important part.

The SP campaign is free and that's literally the only thing you can access without paying. Well, at least now you can, because when I wrote that you couldn't because of a "bug" that locked your savefiles of the campaign behind a paywall. And no, that is not a joke.

Okay, thanks for the info. The savefile bug, hopefully fixed now, explains the complaints. Otherwise, it sounds like it's exactly what you'd get if you bought just the base game.

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 16, 2019, 04:22:

Acleacius wrote on Nov 15, 2019, 21:09:
Don't think I've ever played any of this series, but if it's free might check it out.

Anyone who has played this know what this review comment means?

It says its free, but its not , you have to pay to play it.

Thanks

It means nearly everything aside from the most mundane base game is behind a paywall.

The game has a lot of DLC. Of course that's not free. But can you play the entire single player campaign for free? There are Steam reviews making it sound like this is some kind of scam, and I can't tell from your reply if there's any truth to that. The "mundane base" game is the most important part.

I'd heard some good things about Joseph Gordon Levitt's interpretation of Snowden in that movie he did. Unless Snowden's personality and speaking patterns have changed significantly in 6 years, I'd say Joseph wasn't particularly convincing. However, I'd bet Matt Barton, of Matt Chat fame, could do a killer impersonation. The vocal timbre, accent, and speech patterns are the same naturally, so if Matt actually put some effort into it, it'd be scarily similar.

I find it hard to believe 30% is any higher than what the publishers take in the modern digital music industry...especially relative to the artists (as opposed to non-publishing record labels).
Not to mention, the current business model was invented and made enormous by Valve to the extent that PC gaming is now bigger than console gaming and almost as big as Hollywood (without any help from mobile or consoles). 15 years ago it was conventional wisdom that PC gaming was becoming more niche and stagnant. Enter...Valve.
Now, obviously, their stranglehold on the industry is worth concern, but through all this, Valve has avoided anti-competitive practices to maybe an unprecedented extent for a company in their position.

Been waiting a long time for publishers to figure out that the nfl license is not what determines if a football game is any good. Brownie point because Joe Montana football was great game.

A simple snuffing of a candle certainly doesn't sound like the way you market an overly consolized action game version of Thief. So there's some hope.

The Chinese were the outsource. Maybe that was the joke, IDK. Funcom is European, so the only way it wouldn't be outsourcing is if it were in their home country.

It's appropriate that it was the never-got-launched MMO that did them in. Only a few titles can make it in that arena, and jumping right into that market as a startup was akin to putting all your money on horse #6.

Verno wrote on Apr 3, 2012, 08:43:

selection7 wrote on Apr 3, 2012, 02:12:
Here's the thing...

This is a really silly and dismissive post. First off, you're a Bluesnews reader smart guy. Second, "You'll do it because you'll do it" isn't logical. You're assuming that the gaming industry itself will just uniformly adopt whatever the big companies do when history has shown that is NOT the case. In fact right now there is a massive independent resurgence on digital platforms, the likes of which we haven't seen before. People won't just adopt whatever the industry tells them to, particularly when its inconvenient and detrimental to a platform that is supposed to be all about making things easy and convenient.

Finally, people are ok with internet functionality as it provides them benefits. Using that functionality to restrict you with no upside is a whole different matter. People will not be fine with functionality that is solely for the benefit of Microsoft that has little to no upside for the user. I have no idea why you thought mp3s were a good example either, they were widely adopted because of convenience and that industries inability to accept change and give people what they want.

You're fighting a losing war, just like the record companies of the late 90's and early new millenium were. Now even music and movies are trying to move towards no-physical media so they can make resales, rentals, and piracy obsolete. Throwing around all the tough talk about how you're not going to accept it and you'll go indpendent only underscores your denial.

Don't do like the music industry did. It's going to happen; you want to be part of the process, not on the sideline getting left behind. And don't shoot the messenger. I'm only trying to ease the transition for some of you. One thing we can be sure of, the games industry will continue to charge what gamers are willing to pay.

Here's the thing. If Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all go the way of the constant online connection, regardless of how much posturing and whining bluesnews forum readers do, the games industry will continue to thrive. It's already bigger than the movie business and it's not even a mature industry (I'm using "mature" here in the business lingo sense). Saying otherwise is to be just as in denial as the record companies were 15 years ago about mp3s. It's going to happen eventually, and you're going to buy it. You're gamers. The new generation won't even know any better. At least you can tell your grandkids stories about the good ol' days.

No shocker here. People buy the games, the suits will be excited about the PC platform. People don't, they won't. That's not going to change, I guarantee it.

It's good that PC consumers stood up for their platform as viable on launch day, and also good that the publisher honestly revealed they made their money back first weekend, which means basically admitting they should have considered the PC more favorably from the beginning. That's going in the right direction for both parties.

Dades wrote on Dec 14, 2011, 07:09:
Microsoft made it one of their little exclusives as they have done with many other games, it was completely unnecessary. Saying I didn't buy Alan Wake PC because his facial animations are dumb is no less emotional and arbitrary than not buying it because it was out on the consoles first. Of course people should threaten not to buy it if something upset them, that's a big part of how the consumer and corporation feedback process works. Were they supposed to fill out surveys and send flowers instead with a little card saying oh poor Remedy, you took a sack full of microsoft money to not release the game but we understand! Maybe in your world everyone is a robot who doesn't let anything affect their incredibly objective world view but the rest of us live somewhere else.

It is not true that just because something about a game is upsetting, we should boycott...or anything close to that. Maybe there are times when that is actually true, but to say that means it is always true (and is true in this case) is fallacy. And sending thank you notes or whatever you said has nothing to do with it. What I said originally is still true. Even if a boycott was done to hypothetically excercise consumer rights (ridiculously, as I pointed out before since that would only make execs say "see, I knew PC gamers would never buy it"), it would still be stupid to make such a decision based on emotions, which is my point...much more so than anything about excercising consumer rights. Also, don't get hung up on the excusivity thing. Microsoft has never had a problem with releasing games on Windows and 360. They aren't really competing, plus Microsoft makes money when fanboys upgrade their PCs to play new games.

What worries me is that babies like you will dig us all into a hole. You cannot intimidate companies who aren't sure they want your money anyway into always releasing on PC too. Supporting the platform, however, will get their attention. It's not rocket science.

This comment was edited on Dec 14, 2011, 21:34.

In response to my post #21, I got replies that the no PC decision was arbitrary and that by originally planning and marketing the game as PC, the company wronged PC gamers in a way that warrants threats of not buying the game out of spite.

I can't believe the decision was arbitrary, and regardless of how it was marketed, when the PC title was pulled it wasn't done to piss you off. My point still stands to not take it personally. Of course, if you ran an AlanWake PC fansite, that's something else, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that's not the case here.

These are just business decisions. I'm sure they didn't like the idea of not making a PC version either, and probably only a small handful of people were behind the decision (the rest would've been happy with extra employment).

If it's good, buy it, if not, don't. Don't be dramatic. In fact, people not buying PC games in certain situations is what led them to make the decision in the first place. The idea of refusing to buy it now on principle would only serve to prove that original decision right (in the minds of industry decision makers).

What I'm trying to say is, don't be a baby. When a company doensn't release a game on PC, they're not making that decision just to piss you off. I was looking forward to the game and I still am...if it's good.

Regardless of everyone's salient points, you still have to accept that they don't want your money. We know this because they're refusing to sell it to you. Stating "well I wouldn't buy from you anyway" is like saying you can't fire me, I quit. Meaningless to the company who's firing you, 'cause either way you're gone.

Also, can people stop stating for 5 millionth time that 1 pirated game doesn't equal 1 lost sale. You're not educating anyone. At least not on this website. The game company knew this full well and still chose not to make a single-player PC game. Faulty reasoning may have led to the decision, but it wasn't done simply to annoy you, it was a money decision. That this guy's frank dialog made him seem irritated is not one of the more important things to take away from this news posting, yet it's what 80% of these replies want to comment on.

Cool. This comic is perfectly suited for action/adventure. I've always liked that genre but competition has been sparse in recent years...in other words, not many games period, much less good ones. And we didn't really need another mediocre shooter that's only saving grace is its unique presentation.

Three things:
I can't believe they didn't start doing this sooner. Part of the reason DRM doesn't do much good is because they've consistently only done it one way, or variations on it. Even with this new way (an early form of cloud gaming is it?) there's still the possibility for pirates. They just have to figure out how to intercept the withheld data and how to integrate it. But that's gonna make it much, much harder, if not impossible for pirates in the near future.

This will make me less likely to buy a game, and they know that, and that's fine. But if the game is really well made and taken care of, having a net connection is not that big a deal to the average joe. Most are always connected anyway and in the future that will be more and more true for everyone. Thre real issue is implementing it. Can they implement it without bloat and bugs and hassle (I'm looking at you Game for Windows Live)? THAT's what I hate.

Also, make the full game available in 1 to 4 years (as a patch) so we know what we bought won't require an internet connection to a non-existent company for the rest of time. This makes a big difference to me and it will cost them next to nothing in piracy. After all, how many copies does anyone buy 3 years after release? Sure, hardcore gamers like us do, but not average Joes.

I wouldn't even play it if it were MMO. Just like I don't play any other MMO games. I agree coop would be tough, but that's why an earlier post suggeted a "low level" coop. Even if there's a ton of restrictions, just to have any coop at all is always cool. At least that's what I think for most games I play...for this game, who has time and matching schedules to play coop through a game as big as this?