Timewaster's Guide Archive
Games => Video Games => Topic started by: JP Dogberry on September 09, 2004, 05:06:40 AM
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What happened?
A few years ago, I was the worlds biggest gamer. I owned a few consoles, played games in ALL my free time, and every cent of my money went to videogames or videogame magazines. I was limited to a $10 week pocket money, but owned about sixteen cartridges and four crates of mags.
I walked into an EB the other day, and found that nothing interested me. I have the cahs now to have walked out with any game I wanted and not even cared. Thing is, if they had been free, I wouldn't have bothered. None of those games seemed worth my time, letalone my money,
I'm currently playing Painkiller, which is kidna fun, an ok shooter. The Tribes Vengence demo is also cool, and I liked the demo of Evil Genius, but I wouldn't buy either of those games. I play my Gamecube occasionlly, but more for virtual tourism and relaxation and nostalgia than actual games. Also, I play old SNES games. And Nethack.
Furthermore, while I was in the store, I felt the odd one out. When I walk into my comic store, I feel I've entered a nerd sanctuary, a place where I can let it be known I am a nerd and not be thought less of for it. In this game store, I felt like hiding it. It was full of popular type people. The guy behind the counter talked as though casual gamign was the norm.
When did Gaming die, and why? What have these people done to my precious hobby?
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Madden, my friend. Madden.
EA Sports made casual gaming "cool", for which they should be burned at the stake for. And not just any stake. This one will have rusty nails sticking out of it.
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I don't see what's wrong with casual gaming. Enforcing a separation between casual and absorbing gaming only enforces stereotypes that "nerds" are the victims of. Casual gaming gives you common ground with new people and allows connections and, though it sounds excessively idealist and utopian for such a small thing, is a beginning of the destruction of social barriers that cause some of the worst things about society, particularly teen culture.
And JP, this isn't the traumatic crisis you think it is. Sometimes there just aren't any good new games. Don't grow up to be like Gabe and Tycho. Or at the very least, don't make them your only role models.
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IMO, gaming 'died' back in the early 90s when real arcades started being replaced by fighting/shooting/driving/dancing games and skeeball. But that's not really the gaming your talking about. :) I don't own any consoles and maybe buy 2-3 pc games a year. I never go into EB, always Best Buy. Can't stand the EB stores, they're too small and poorly organized.
On the flip side, a local toy store got in a Dragon's Lair Special Edition arcade machine (has DL, DL2 and Space Ace!) so I have a new place to watse my lunch hour :)
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Yes SE. That is exactly what I was trying to tell JP over the messenger dealy. Plus I think he's this way because he is much like a wine connensuier. He has a taste for things that are much more elaborate and exquisite than most people (gamers).
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There's nothing wrong with playing games casually. The problem is that people who play games casually end up spending more on gaming overall, and thus dictating the market of what games are produced. The problem with that is that the most populer games charts look like this:
The Sims
The Sims
The Sims
The Sims
Tony Hawk 48
John Smith Generic Extreme sport
Juan Smith Obscure Extreme SPort
The Sims.
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and we care what the most popular games are why?
Ok, yes, it does help dictate what types of games will be made in the future, but as long as there's a place to sell other games, they'll be made too. And the other option is that we have fewer games at all because the industry isn't profitable enough.
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You have to remember that while the market may cater to the casual gamer (Sims and Sports) crowd, the games themselves are made by hard core gamers (everything else). As long as the nerds at BioWare and Blizzard and Irrational and so on have jobs, there will be games for gamers.
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Or maybe you just don't like PC/console games as much anymore. It happened to me, and I feel fine.
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Are therestill games for gamers? As I said, I went through the stores, and found nothing of interest.
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I stopped even havin gmy consul hooked up before I even bought it, I only game with friends. It's not that there isn't anything good, it's just that you have drifted from the hobby and don't need it anymore.
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same here, I only play games when freinds are over, like crystal chronicles or tales of symphonia or super smash melee... otherwise I go outside and hit stuff with sticks...
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I walked into an EB the other day, and found that nothing interested me.
JP, I think there's something here that others haven't quite picked up on yet. Have you considered that you're just getting older?
I'm not implying that video games aren't for adults. However, I've noticed that as I've aged, games have stopped holding the power over me that they once did. I can't just sit and play games for hours on end like I did back in high school.
Perhaps I've played so many that the others just don't feel original. I don't think this is a problem with the game designers--I just think that people change, and as we do, so do our interests.
The last game I can remember playing--REALLY playing--was FF7. Ever since then, gaming has been a fun hobby, but far less of an obsession--and time drain--than it once was.
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I actually considered getting older, I just didnt mention it cuz I thought it was a given, I mean two or three years ago I played games like crazy... my freind kevin and I once played a game for 22 hours...non-stop. I mean zero braks. but now I cant play for more than like tswo hoursa tops.
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Zero Braks.
Ah, that's what Space Ghost always wished for....
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In fact, I did notice I was getting older. It's my Birthday today, and I wish it was further away. I'm not happy enough with my life at the moment to have a birthday.
That said, I bought myself the Illuminati card game as a Birthday present to myself. Can't wait to play it.
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That's a pretty cool game. We play it every so often in my RPG group.
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Yes, Entropy would be proud. Last time i played that game I was the Cthulu faction and I won.
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This kid in EB tried to sell me a magazine that would detail everything I would need to know, plus more!, about STAR WARS: Empire at War. Stupidly, he who knows more than any text ever produced to compliment a STAR WARS game for PC, bought it. I lost the receipt.
Point is: the lowest common denominator in the gaming community rules, and rules fiercely. They are illiterate, with the attention span of a flea, no,.. a dead flea, and where gaming was beginning to offer sophisticated methods of warfare, (for example), we got swamped by loads of generic crap, games with the life-span of a flea, a starving flea at that. And all delivered to gaming stores, because these brainless, these orc-ish and lowest common denominators have too much pocket-money. I say we start mugging these kids in the park before they can get to a game store. If crap games don't sell, maybe I won't waste so much time looking for a new, good game.
I mean, Thank God! Gamers connect online, and that reviewers are generally of the school of old, and that neither pull a punch when giving a game the thumbs-down-don't-bother-with-this-one. And thank God, developers listen, and seem to be telling producers what is the next move.
But bad game development isn't all bad in RTS: sooner or later someone produces a fine game, it goes gold quickly, and a new bench-mark is set. I think this more or less happened considering everything that came out post Dune 2 to (in my opinion) the advent of games like Cossacks, Shogun and Homeworld, a point from which some excellent games have emerged. I mean, look at Medieval II: TW. Cor blimey!
RTS gaming is a last bastion of Corp Gamers, and should never succumb to the exploits of greed, unless they know what RTS gamers want.
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Cry me a river formed from your mis-informed and uninteresting diatribe.
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That post hurt my brain.
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Way to start out in the middle of a story that nobody has any knowledge of, so that everything you say is way out of context. Way to also throw around figurative language to defend a point that you say is the moral of a story that nobody understands. Also, make sure that you don't use any examples of what you are talking about, only vague references that aren't relevant to your main point. Also, way to resurrect a long forsaken thread. Keep up the good work.
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I have to disagree with the E
The death of the Video game WAS brought on by it's own success.
When the big companies started to see it as a billion dollar business the EAs and Vivendis of the world steped in and took over. Their goal was to produce games that appeal to the largest market share. Instead of the old idea to make games that the developers thought were fun.
Studios like looking Glass were absorbed and killed. Companies you used to trust were preasured by their publishers to get to market by X date so they started putting out incomplete product (See KOTORII)
Meanwhile the publishers started using media Focus groups to determine what players wanted (the decision for SWGs NGE came out of this)
The Game was taken from the Nerd Niches and given to the people that used to beat up the Nerds.
Madden- This is the worst example. EA now owns Exclusive rights to the NFL... 0 Competition... 0 reason to improve.
And EA is trying to push the Maden style yearly "Update" into other areas too. UT, UT2k2, UT2K3, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Battlifield 2142,
Innovation is something the little guy dues... But it is getting harder and harder to be a littleguy.
I see the peak of PC games at 1998. After that its been a downward slide that is gaining momentum.
No I almost hope for an implosion so the game will be a project for the small-time enthusiast again instead of the mega-companies
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I don't see this gloom and doom you speak of. Are we still gettign games we like?
Yes
Do we think htey're the best thing every on the face of the planet suprassing in coolness allthings up to and including sliced bread?
No
But then, when I was a kid, Strech Armstrong was the coolest thing ever. your perception is colored by the horizons you can see.
I see game improvement all the time, not just in graphics but alterations to game play, controls, and story.
Yeah, so a lot of people like Madden. A lot of people like Britney Spears too. That doesn't mean that Rush is going to stop selling albums that make Atlantic more than enough money to keep paying for their studio time, CD design costs, and tours.
Disney puts out a lot of crap, but that doesn't keep them from distributing Miyazaki films.
You guys make it sound like some sort of cultural invasion. "The jocks like games! Now they suck!" Give me a break. A jock can like something you do and it doesn't change the nature of the thing. If you allow that to color your vision, you're at *least* as bad as they are in terms of hating things different than you.
Even if the "popular games" are crap, I've seen no evidence that small time gamers are disappearing completely. Even if they're pushed out of the mass market, as you apocalyptically prophecy, they'll find other means. Much like indie music has. It's already started. A lot of fun games and social forums are available online.
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Babylon 5 - Into The Fire
Star Wars Galaxies: NGE
Halo to the Console
Looking Glass Software
Duke Nukem Forever
Any Lucas Arts product in the past 3 years
Any non-Valve Sierra Project in the last 5 years
Doom3
Where we used to have good stuff comming out every few weeks, Now I only see a few islands in the desolation
I used to trust Sierra - Not anymore
I used to trust LA - Not Anymore
Activision?
Acclaim?
Microprose?
Origin?
Who do I trust now?
Valve is ok 50/50
Blizzard makes their customers happy, but none of their stuff appeals to me
Raven can put together a short but compotent FPS
Bioware is good for RPGs
Islands in the desolation
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so... this is based entirely on your tastes.
also, I'm confused by the structure of your statements. could you clarify?
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The ratio of good/crappy games has remained pretty much the same over the years. Here are a few I've played that I've found excellent and were NOT made by developers on your "good list":
Far Cry.
Freedom Fighters
Grand Theft Auto: San andreas.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
Galactic Civilizations 2.
Guild Wars
Point is the EA's and Vivendis have been around for a long time and the hits keep coming in spite of them. You may long for the days of the Original Half-Life and Baulder's Gate but in 5 years you'll long for today.
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I don't think that video games are dead. I do, however, think that a lot of them seem to be stuck in some extended adolescence.
Casual gaming, as I see it, isn't a death knell for the industry, any more than indy comics killed the superhero genre. (They haven't, I mean.) If anything, it brought more gamers in, people who considered themselves gamers despite their obvious lack of nerdhood. When I attended the Women in Gaming* conference this spring in San Francisco, the statistics on women who gamed casually were pretty interesting. (I wish I could find my notebook from that. Linden Labs and some other companies were running numbers off right and left.) A fair number of college-educated, professional women considered themselves casual gamers. They were attracted to games that allowed them to game in small chunks of time, and which would also allow them to feel that they were being educated while they were being entertained. It's not your sweaty, t-shirted, teenaged male that a lot of people view as the gaming demographic--but that's a lot of people who don't necessarily pick up a first person shooter or an RTS, but consider themselves gamers.
Ditto for Madden. Much as I dislike the Madden titles, and EA for putting out what seem to be essentially next years expansion pack as a new game, they bring a lot of people into the gaming fold. A guy might pick up Madden for the Xbox, and then pick up UC2 or Halo or some other game when he gets bored of his football. (Or he might not. It might not be to his taste.)
(BTW, when exactly did we have good stuff coming out every few weeks? Is it possible you are conflating all the great games from your childhood into a period of a few months?)
Yeah, the mega corporations CAN BE part of the problem. I've seen what happens when design by commitee occurs. It ain't pretty. Design by focus group? Ditto. You end up with some bland stuff.
But then too the mega corporations still need the smaller companies to produce games for their platforms. And occasionally new platforms come along. (And sometimes when they do, they fall flat on their face. Did anybody see the horror that was the N-Gage?) In short, the industry is always changing. Sure, it's not the blissful summer when you first discovered Diablo or Quake or Civilization (hey, I have my favourites too!) but new games with new twists on old good ideas are often coming out. And sometimes, if we're really lucky, an amazing brand new idea emerges from the ether and generates a whole new genre.
* conference link http://www.womeningamesinternational.org/past_events/feb06.html
** Someday very soon, I will figure out the BB code you guys have here.
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The BB tag code we use is what 90% of all forums use, in fact I can't remember the last time I visited a forum that didn't use these.
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Yeah, I was just looking about for the handy guide and somehow missing it. There's usually a pop-up link next to the reply panel somewhere, but I'm am not finding it.
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Hah! There would be one if we weren't using a horribly outdated forum (this was done in 2001 I think)! We do this too weed out the weaker specimens.
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Am I weaker if I never bothered to learn BBCode because I like HTML betteR?
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yes. Yes you are.
BBCode, consisting of an extremely limited set of tags that are pretty intuitive, and all of which have buttons above for them, doesn't distract from your ability to learn HTML
For a link, click on that picture of the world with a file in front of it. if you hover over them and look at the info field at the very bottom of the browser window, it will tell you what each does (though most are obvious).
This has been my official "holier than thou" post for the day. Glad to get it done so much sooner.
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Also most BBtags are related to HTML 3 or below just with [] instead of <>.
As for your HTML skills....Well ok, I'm not going to be mean since I hate snobby web design people, I'd be happy to help you optimize your website and make it load about 3x faster by getting rid of those horrible tables and unnecessary Java script. Â We could probably cut the file size down in half too. Â I'd also lighten the link text (and other graphical text) they're too hard to read. Â It may look ok on your screen, but your a Graphic Designer, most people don't have expensive monitors.
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yes. Yes you are.
BBCode, consisting of an extremely limited set of tags that are pretty intuitive, and all of which have buttons above for them, doesn't distract from your ability to learn HTML
For a link, click on that picture of the world with a file in front of it. if you hover over them and look at the info field at the very bottom of the browser window, it will tell you what each does (though most are obvious).
This has been my official "holier than thou" post for the day. Glad to get it done so much sooner.
Ah...I was expecting alt text from the button images. I should have checked the bottom as well. Thanks for the tip.
As for the other, I've been involved with various boards over the years and since almost all of them had the HTML enabled to a limited extent, I never bothered much with the BBCode myself. I'm sure I can figure it out if I apply myself though.
Spriggan: Hehe. Thanks for the offer. I am appropriately shamed by my tabled layout. The truth is, I threw it up super quick, over a year or so back, and then never bothered to relay it out in CSS. I actually play with CSS every day, and I keep thinking that I should fix the things you've mentioned, but my current job has kept me busy enough that sometimes I just shudder at the idea of coming home and working on web design.
(The problem with the colours is.....well, it's not that I have an awesome monitor. Quite the opposite. I designed it on the only computer I had at the time. A two year old laptop. The colour is scheiss. On my work computer, I can tell that the colours are too dark. I'm saving up, hoping to get a new computer soon and better monitors.)
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Ya, again why we don't allow HTML is the age of the forum and the lack of protection against malicious code. The new forum can allow it if we want but I'll have to check to see what protections it's got against stuff. Last thing I want is for someone to insert a virus or malware because we allowed unfettered HTML.
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That's pretty understandable. :)
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Hey, an article that outrights everything I said.
In the intrest of being Fair and Balanced I will provide a link
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2009492,00.asp
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Uh, actually that article is saying the opposite of what you were saying.
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I think that's what he was saying, ent. "In the interest of being fair and balanced" means he was going to post the article even though it disagreed with him. Probably the first sentence means "disagrees with me outright."
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Ah. I was reading the word 'outrights' to mean 'backs up'. My bad.
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Brain faster than fingers.
Sorry.
E is correct