Video Games, Quality thereof and You

[Mercer]

How old is the CoD audience and how much attention is given to them buying your game?  

 

In what Warren quoted me, he mentioned near the end about 10 year olds not buying the new hotness every year, I agree their parents are.  I don't have much outside of opinion for this, but I imagine kids are more susceptible to the "gotta have" new stuff than older for a variety of reasons but most predominantly because they want to play with their peers who will also be on it.

 

Back to my original point to reinforce, I think the CoD audience is what most publishers and developers go after, I think the CoD audience definitely does not average 31, and I think the CoD audience has the most free-flowing money swirling around it due to people in that bracket not only buying the CoD for themselves, but because their children want it - and they are content with Same Game.

 

I also don't see a problem with a bulk of game revenues and profits being made off of that, if that's the case.  

 

We can also squarely and unequivocally blame rising production costs on games to the graphics (or visuals) arms-race.  People demand hyper-realism or HD, spend thousands of dollars for a machine capable of it, and wonder why costs went up.  However, I wonder what the average cost of production was for 2013 and especially 2014 since those years have seen explosive growth in the 'indie' market, games that typically retail for sub $20 and show it.  Those production costs are way down, especially for the 8/16-bit renaissance we are having (which I fucking hate personally).

 

Rambling now, but that's all I have to add for now.

 

My question to you Otto is: What proof do you have? So far we've been sourcing numbers and facts about the decline of the series as well as the average age of gamers. In fact, before 2013 the average age was 38, because the ESA was not using mobile gamers as part of their equation. Children are a small minority of gamers, nothing I've referenced was on who buys the games but actually plays them. 

 

Do you have any proof or evidence that is not hearsay? I want to be clear that I am just curious on where you are getting your information.

[Xavieraux Reinardes]

I actually have a very positive view of the future of games, but I think it's not in (most) triple A studios.

 

Examples being the rebirth of the mid-high range studio as exemplified in CDProjekt, CCP, and Paradox, as well as the rise of indies/rebirth of "garage video game development" as seen in Limbo, Titan Souls, Bastion/Transistor, and of course the occasional kickstarter game such as Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2.

 

Tools will continue to get better and easier for independent teams, now many game engines and toolkits such as Unreal Engine 4 are making cheaper models for indie developers to use the engine.

 

AAA gaming development will always exist just as AAA movies will always exist, but 90% of the time the better/more meaningful stuff is going to come from lesser known studios, or games with much smaller budgets than the triple-A games. Just like how most of the best movies every year tend to be independent films, or artistic directors given a budget and free range with that budget.

I do have to note however one thing. Not always the Dev/Artistic Director is right.

 

 

Shaylaman, John Karmack, and George Lucas were given full liberty to his movies/daikatana/starwars prequels. And we all know what happened.

 

Not everyone is a Kojima.

Right, and as you mention, you also have your Quentin Tarantino, your Kojima your Christopher Nolan. Of course the director/dev won't always be right.

 

I guess I just feel very differently about video games. I think the industry overall is getting much much better, it still has a long ways to go but change is happening.

 

Again, yes there are tons of trash indie games, but there are tons of classics as well.

I would actually argue that as a medium, more "quality video games" (games that for one reason or another someone will really love or enjoy) are made annually than a decade ago.

 

You have a lot of sexists coming out of the woodwork and harassing female gamedevs and anyone that complains about sexism in the industry, but at least people are starting to complain and make these criticisms of the industry now, and change is happening in response to them.

 

Gone Home, easily one of my favorite games of the decade, would not have existed ten years ago for a number of reasons.

[Warren Castille]

I do have to note however one thing. Not always the Dev/Artistic Director is right.

 

 

Shaylaman, John Karmack, and George Lucas were given full liberty to his movies/daikatana/starwars prequels. And we all know what happened.

 

Not everyone is a Kojima.

 

The one that bugs me the most: Dennis fucking Dydack.

[Melkire]

I saw mentions of Metacritic and such earlier in the thread.

 

One very important thing to note is that word-of-mouth is still the best review format for any given video game. Attempts to quantify quality are always prone to error, given how enterprising hatred can result in folks bombing Metacritic's User Scores (4chan's /v/ used to do this quite often back before that board went downhill) and so on. There's also the inherent bias in a 10-point scale: rarely does anyone give an honest score of anything between a 2 and a 6. 7s, 8s, 9s, and 10s are common scores, as are 0s and 1s. This naturally skews matters, especially when many user reviews are coming from young adolescents.

 

Don't get me started on aggregate reviews, either: video game reviewers, as extensions of video game journalism which was more or less morally bankrupt and lacking integrity from the word "go", are prone to the usual politicking from marketing and Big Business, and those practices are allowed to continue due to ignorance on the part of a large portion of the consumer base (video gaming as a hobby blew up in the mid 00's, population wise, and many casual "gamers" as we now refer to them are still playing catch-up; just ask around and find out how many of them still think IGN is a good video games news site).

 

Nothing will ever be as useful as turning to a friend and asking, "hey, did you play Game X? Did you like it? Why or why not? What sort of games do you usually like that your tastes and preferences might have affected your opinion on Game X?"

 

tl;dr: quit being sheeple, video games have yet to mature enough as an industry for reliable ratings systems to have emerged.

[Desu Nee]

I do have to note however one thing. Not always the Dev/Artistic Director is right.

 

 

Shaylaman, John Karmack, and George Lucas were given full liberty to his movies/daikatana/starwars prequels. And we all know what happened.

 

Not everyone is a Kojima.

 

The one that bugs me the most: Dennis fucking Dydack.

The name ain't very familiar, what he did again? Googled, still not a clue.

[Xavieraux Reinardes]

I do have to note however one thing. Not always the Dev/Artistic Director is right.

 

 

Shaylaman, John Karmack, and George Lucas were given full liberty to his movies/daikatana/starwars prequels. And we all know what happened.

 

Not everyone is a Kojima.

 

The one that bugs me the most: Dennis fucking Dydack.

The name ain't very familiar, what he did again? Googled, still not a clue.

Too Human, also in the making of that game he used Unreal Engine 3 without paying royalties.

Later on he sued Epic Games for "Failure to provide a working game engine" and was counter-sued for the reason above.

[Desu Nee]

 

tl;dr: quit being sheeple, video games have yet to mature enough as an industry for reliable ratings systems to have emerged.

I don't think any type of rating system will be truly be able to quantify the quality of a game. It's a really personal experience in many cases. I don't see the appeal of games like Gone Home or Dear Ester, but I know people like them, and they're not blatantly bad like Ride to Hell.

 

Word of mouth helps yeah, but only if you do share a common liking of the genre.

[Desu Nee]

I do have to note however one thing. Not always the Dev/Artistic Director is right.

 

 

Shaylaman, John Karmack, and George Lucas were given full liberty to his movies/daikatana/starwars prequels. And we all know what happened.

 

Not everyone is a Kojima.

 

The one that bugs me the most: Dennis fucking Dydack.

The name ain't very familiar, what he did again? Googled, still not a clue.

Too Human, also in the making of that game he used Unreal Engine 3 without paying royalties.

Later on he sued Epic Games for "Failure to provide a working game engine" and was counter-sued for the reason above.

Well, I was needing a laugh, dear god what a tool.

[Melkire]

 

tl;dr: quit being sheeple, video games have yet to mature enough as an industry for reliable ratings systems to have emerged.

I don't think any type of rating system will be truly be able to quantify the quality of a game. It's a really personal experience in many cases. I don't see the appeal of games like Gone Home or Dear Ester, but I know people like them, and they're not blatantly bad like Ride to Hell.

 

Word of mouth helps yeah, but only if you do share a common liking of the genre.

 

Well, when I say word of mouth, I mean identifying individuals, whether they be friends or online reviewers, that share your tastes and/or have a common liking for games you find entertaining and enjoyable, and then keeping an ear turned to those sources.

 

"I give Game Y an 8.8" doesn't tell me as much as "I like Game Y because I'm a fan of Mario Kart and Game Y is a kart racer in a similar vein except with hoverboats and planes and cute animal characters."

 

I love you, Wacky Wheels and Diddy Kong Racing. ; ;

[Warren Castille]

Fuck Too Human. The man was head of the team that made Eternal Darkness, one of the best games of the PS2/Xbox/GC generation. Was supposed to get sequels. Dydack ran the studio into the ground, killed it, and we'll never get another one.

 

I will not forgive him.

[Desu Nee]

Fuck Too Human. The man was head of the team that made Eternal Darkness, one of the best games of the PS2/Xbox/GC generation. Was supposed to get sequels. Dydack ran the studio into the ground, killed it, and we'll never get another one.

 

I will not forgive him.

This just makes me miss Timesplitters even more.

[Kellach Woods]

Bastion

 

Bastion was published by WBIE. Transistor was Supergiant only.

 

* * *

 

About Dyack, I'd just like to mention X-Men : Destiny here. Probably the only time gamerzzzzz ever rooted for Activision.

[Desu Nee]

Bastion

 

Bastion was published by WBIE. Transistor was Supergiant only.

Was Transistor good? Never played it...

[Warren Castille]

This is the only time you'll ever see me link to Kotaku, because this article is excellent.

 

Seriously, give it a read when you have the time.

[Kellach Woods]

Bastion

 

Bastion was published by WBIE. Transistor was Supergiant only.

Was Transistor good? Never played it...

 

Me either. I didn't like Bastion - Played it to the end, felt I'd go back to it, found it kind of lacking when arriving at that moment.

 

Skipped Transistor completely.

[Warren Castille]

I own Transistor but never booted it. I can't explain it, because I adored Bastion so much.

[Xavieraux Reinardes]

Bastion

 

Bastion was published by WBIE. Transistor was Supergiant only.

 

* * *

I never said it wasn't.

[Mercer]

Good morning folks, today I'd like to retread a topic form earlier this week that has compounded further. A topic that many are passionate for as it's one of the cornerstone reasons to play a PC game over a console game. 

 

I'm of course talking about Mods.

 

This last week has been turbulent for the Skyrim/Bethesda mod scene to say the least. After a heavy handed implementation of paid mods on Steam, Valve and Bethesda backed off and reverted the changes citing that they implemented it in the worst way. It's plain to see that they took the blame for this mistake, something that has redeemed them in a small way.

 

The controversy hasn't ended, however. The vitriol against mod authors that wished to be paid for their work has lead to the same kind of anger from the authors themselves. Many are spitting acid back at their users, citing some damning statistics about how little their work is paid or even appreciated.

 

 Sir Edhelsereg made a post detailing exactly how much recognition and pay he's received for his free mods on steam:

 

 

I started publishing mods two years ago. Since my first mod was released on the Skyrim Workshop my mods have recieved over 200,000 individual downloads and two donations.

 

 

That means 0.001% of users donated.

 

...

 

My most popular mod has been downloaded by over 70,000 people of which less than 1.5k of them have rated it. That means 98% of users didn't take the time to rate the mod (and that is above the average for most mods on the Workshop), an act which takes one click, and costs nothing to do.

 

The team behind the popular SkyUI, a mod that makes a more user friendly PC UI, are backing away from the scene they just re-entered. The lead developer, Madoxx, noted that for over 5 years of the addon's deployment his team earned less than $500 in donations. He goes on to say that there never was a community.

 

Other modders have called gamers 'fairweather friends'. More are calling for the end of free modding at all. What was left of the Skyrim mod community has descended into infighting, chaos and disdain that poisons the relationship between developer and user.

 

Why do I bring this up in this thread instead of the old Valve thread? Because this kind of controversy has a damning effect on a single game company: Bethesda.

 

Bethesda is a game development company notorious for wanting to tell a story but not having the talent or resources to tell it reliably. Their games are as notorious as Obsidian's in that both companies tend to make buggy messes of games that require a modding community to stabilize it. In the last week some have even speculated that by allowing mods to be paid and Bethesda taking a cut of those sales that they are promoting the sloppy work and profiting from it for years to come.

 

So the effect on Bethesda is three fold. First, gamers have lost more faith in the company after what some see as a blatant cash grab. Two, one of the biggest communities of their games is imploding in an explosion of venomous attacks between developers and users. Three, the truth of the matter is that Bethesda games do require a strong modding scene to reach their full potential. This scene is shrinking and vanishing before our eyes.

 

This implosion is good evidence on why not to piss off a consumer base that you rely on. So many game companies have been nickle and diming their consumers this last past decade and it seems that this was the breaking point for some. Others have been toiling away in a literally thankless money pit trying to repair broken games while trying to help other players have as much fun as possible. Both sides are fed up with the trigger being the very developer and publisher for that game.