Video Games: Join us... It is your Destiny

[Rhom]

Huh. Titan is cancelled. Not a great move, but as we've not seen anything for it not really that horrible.

Eh, Blizz has a history of cancelling games that don't work. I still yearn for StarCraft: Ghost. :crying:

Of course, the true object of my Blizzard based ire is still the fact that StarCraft 2 has been nothing like what they promised from the get-go. I want my Protoss campaign!

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Anyone checked out the new Gauntlet yet? Looking for something to break my Diablo 3 addiction, if even for just a little bit.

[Shryke]

Huh. Titan is cancelled. Not a great move, but as we've not seen anything for it not really that horrible.

Seems a good move to me if it wasn't coming together right.

I really want to see what it was all about though. What were the ideas and the setting and all that.

[Clueless Northman]

Titan has been called vaporware by some since a long time; I've seen people doing it here, iirc.

And they just wasted a few tens of millions, I suppose.

Thankfully, there's the WOW cow to milk next month, and Hearthstone probably is pretty good at the moment.

[The Anti-Targ]

My nephew has just entered a national Hearthstone tournament, runs this weekend. Prize money is pretty piddly at just $300 for the winner, but still, pretty exciting to potentially have a national champion in the family. Would be awesome if he won and was then invited to Blizzcon.

Speaking of, we have Hearthstone on our desktop PC (Windows 7), but when we tried to download it on our laptop (Windows 8) it came up with an error message suggesting our internet connection was unstable so the download failed. I tried to do the same with WoW to see if it was just Hearthstone. And then I tried downloading onto the laptop with the ethernet cable plugged in and still came up with the same sort of error. I haven't tried downloading any non-Blizzard games on the laptop for ages. I have Smite on it but I got that months and months ago. The generic fix suggestions are to turn of anti-virus software, which I did (I only run Windows Defender) and that did nothing.

I have successfully downloaded a few PS4 games quite recently (onto the PS4 of course) and there were no problems.

Anyone got any suggestions?

[karaddin]

I had mine freak out and refuse to play nice after I connected to my work VPN one day. Check your proxy settings and try setting to either explicitly no proxy or automatically detect, depending on which it is set to. That seemed to be what did the trick for me, but it's a long shot.

Networking on my Win8 laptop just utterly broke itself after windows patching to the point I couldn't connect to steam, I ended up restoring to a fresh install to fix that one.

[The Anti-Targ]

Well, I successfully installed Steam on my laptop, and downloaded and played a tutorial of DOTA2. The tried and failed again to download anything from Blizzard. So there's something fishy going on.

[The Drunkard]

The Canyon of Titan is pretty amazing. Massive map, lots of quests, lots of hidden areas, an interesting faction conflict, funny occurrences... I expect I'll be playing through this area a lot just redoing all the different possibilities.

'Killing' the ICBM in Silo 7 was pretty satisfying, too. Hearing the monks lose faith in their nuke-god on the radio was a surprise, I hope the place is in chaos when I return. :devil:

I found Damonta really boring though. It was definitely atmospheric, but a bit tedious after a while.

[fuem]

I have just found LoL good bye life.

[Fez]

An issue I'm having with Wasteland 2 is the incredibly heavy combat focus. I didn't know what to expect going in, but I was hoping something like Fallout 2/Baldur's Gate/Planescape Torment, and instead its basically Icewind Dale; i.e the party characters are interchangable ciphers, there isn't much interaction with NPCs, and combat is the main focus of the game.

Its fun, albeit brutally hard combat, but I wish there was party banter, more non-combat gameplay (and the various simple skill checks on lockpicking, etc. aren't nearly enough). Hopefully Pillars of Eternity comes closer to what I'm looking for.

[The Anti-Targ]

An issue I'm having with Wasteland 2 is the incredibly heavy combat focus. I didn't know what to expect going in, but I was hoping something like Fallout 2/Baldur's Gate/Planescape Torment, and instead its basically Icewind Dale; i.e the party characters are interchangable ciphers, there isn't much interaction with NPCs, and combat is the main focus of the game.

Its fun, albeit brutally hard combat, but I wish there was party banter, more non-combat gameplay (and the various simple skill checks on lockpicking, etc. aren't nearly enough). Hopefully Pillars of Eternity comes closer to what I'm looking for.

I like both the Baldur's gate approach and the Icewind Dale approach, so it sounds like Wasteland 2 might be something for me to look at.

[Clueless Northman]

I don't think this deserves its own thread, and it's probably been discussed a couple of times before, so I put it here:

I occasionally ponder the future and the sustainability of current video games market and industry.

What I mean is simple. Most gamers are 30 years old or even older. On one hand, it means they have money to spend as they like, but on the other hand, it also means they have far lesser time to play games than when they were 18. And we often see people (me included) complaining that they have a buckload of unplayed games on Steam and elsewhere.

So, despite having plenty of money to spend, will it come that, sooner or later, many people will just have gaming fatigue, or at least buying fatigue, and will just stop buying, or barely buying, new games because they can see they have 5-10 years worth of games in reserve and buying 10 more games at each sale only causes more frustration?

Is there a risk that, one day, a significant portion of gaming community just opts out and people stick with playing the games they already hasve? With ensuing hardships for gaming studios who would lose billions.

Or could such an evolution be countered by other factors?

[Derfel Cadarn]

Beandog (or whatever theyre called) who did the Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 re-releases are offering pre-orders for an Icewind Dale EE :)

[fuseprime]

Clueless Northman,

There are a lot of games that I want to play, but I know that there will be lulls in releases of the big games (summer months or after Christmas). That's when I dip into the games I haven't played. I usually don't buy games on release unless I absolutely know that I want to play it, and then I also make sure that I'm not in the middle of something else.

I'm also the type of person that stops playing a game after I beat it. Tomb Raider and Last of Us were awesome games, but I haven't played them since I beat them. To me, they're like interactive movies.

I also don't play many "grinding" type games. Sure, I've had my fun with Skyrim, but 60 hours were enough for me. I think Destiny will be the same type of deal for me. I like playing with my friends and co-workers, but once they move on, I think my time with Destiny will be over.

You're right though, there are a lot of games, and as much as I consider myself to be a gamer, I haven't had the chance to play everything that I wanted to. But, I also think there are different games that appeal to different audiences. I bought Destiny, and enjoy, but I will probably be skipping The Master Chief Collection. I'm sure there's going to be someone else who will be doing the opposite.

I'm also not a PC gamer, so my choices are "limited". Also, I find PC gamers get their games much cheaper.

[The Anti-Targ]

Gaming is heading towards a streaming future, with no hardware platforms as walled gardens. Microsoft has already signalled this to the point where I think they are only 50/50 to release another Xbox console. And Sony already have in place a streaming service including streaming through non-Sony devices. So a PS5 is probably a 50/50 prospect right now too, depending on whether they can get the content/price balance right in the next couple of years.

Development costs should go down, because there will no longer be a need to develop and optimise for multiple platforms and the potential audience will be massive because every tablet, lots of TVs, many phones and a host of other devices will be able to stream the games.

[Jabronius Maximus]

At least in north america, the giant stumbling block is the telecom industry. Streaming games would require an unprecedented amount of bandwidth, and so far ISPs over here only regulate, assign blame and gouge out our wallets instead of expanding to accommodate the increasingly online world. It's a shame, really.

[Proudfeet]

Um, if its about the size of the market, shrinking populations aside, for every disillusioned 30 year old stopping, there will be an enthusiastic 18 year old replacement.

Besides, I'm sure all of us here have book bought but not yet read. It doesn't stop us from buying more books does it? There will inevitably be a slow down in buying for the older crowd, but I think big titles will still get their sales. To be honest, I think that if you have a big pile of games in reserve, you will probably not be playing most of these games.

[Sivin]

So I just smoked a bunch of weed and decided to watch the Resident Evil movie. I really have a soft spot in my heart for this film, as I find it very entertaining.

So I'd like to take a moment and lament the awful shittyness of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.

It was such a GOOD idea for a game! But alas, the execution was just terrible.

[Shryke]

Gaming is heading towards a streaming future, with no hardware platforms as walled gardens. Microsoft has already signalled this to the point where I think they are only 50/50 to release another Xbox console. And Sony already have in place a streaming service including streaming through non-Sony devices. So a PS5 is probably a 50/50 prospect right now too, depending on whether they can get the content/price balance right in the next couple of years.

Development costs should go down, because there will no longer be a need to develop and optimise for multiple platforms and the potential audience will be massive because every tablet, lots of TVs, many phones and a host of other devices will be able to stream the games.

The console makers are hedging their bets and testing the waters on streaming but there are ALOT of technical issues in the way of that.

[Clueless Northman]

Besides, I'm sure all of us here have book bought but not yet read. It doesn't stop us from buying more books does it? There will inevitably be a slow down in buying for the older crowd, but I think big titles will still get their sales. To be honest, I think that if you have a big pile of games in reserve, you will probably not be playing most of these games.

Looking at my shelves, I'm acutely aware of how many books I haven't yet read.

Thing is, I'll be able to read all my books when I'm retired, because they're good old paper books, not kindle stuff that will be obsolete by then. Only limiting thing will be my eyesight, so let's hope I don't get blind.

With games, no one can be sure to be able to actually play them 10/15 years from now. Heck, I had trouble re-installing the remake of Pirates (2004 game) on my Windows-7 PC 2 years ago, install-CD just didn't work at all; I eventually re-bought it from Gamersgate or GOG, where the install was optimised.

Pressure to play games because the medium might soon not allow it is by far the strongest I can see; DVD/BluRay or music format might go obsolete, but it's longer term (30 years rather than 10), same for ebooks probably, but real physical books are here to stay for a lifetime, at least.

That said, you're probably right that the constant flux of new young gamers might probably offset the drifting older gamers, who might be tempted to buy less and less. Though the market will peak sooner or later, because everyone who might be loosely interested in playing will actually play.