Video Games: Thread Simulator 2016

[Kalbear]

Yep. Was thinking on this more on the drive into the hospital. Limiting games to storytelling is like limiting books to only romances. Games are not just about story - they're about experiences. Minecraft might be the most popular game on the planet and it has no storytelling at all, but it is incredibly rich in experience.

Games do the best when they can make you feel - feel like someone else, feel for someone, feel something new. And that can be done via story - but it can also be done in so many other ways. And right now gaming is more diverse and experiential than it has ever been.

[Fez]

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think games are bad storytelling mediums because of their interactivity, and selling them as that limits their scope astoundingly. There are plenty of good story games - but there are plenty of puzzle games that are amazing, and games like dishonored which are both and neither, and games like overwatch which are really nothing like it, and civ which has no story to speak of.

I think it depends. Some games take advantage of their interactivity to tell stories that aren't possible in other mediums, like the original Bioshock or Spec Op: The Line. Because of their interactivity, they make you, the player, complicit in what's happening. That's a new and unique thing that really only games have (I guess choose-your-own-adventure books can be similar; but they usually have such poor writing).

Many story-driven games do have poor pacing problems, because the story is getting stretched over so much gameplay. But there's also starting to be many more games that are cutting a lot of that gameplay out and focusing on short, driven experiences; like Firewatch or Gone Home. These games are telling stories that could also be told in other mediums, but because the player can spend as much or as little time as they want in any given area, the environment can show the story in a much more detailed way than other visual mediums.

Meanwhile, while the main narratives of more open-world games are usually not-great compared to other mediums; their vastness allows world-building and side narratives on a scale that only books can compare with. And some people really enjoy that kind of story-telling.

[Werthead]

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While there are fewer AAA games coming out and most are pretty bland, this is by far the best pc gaming time ever. It's easier than ever to make indy games that do well, that get word of mouth and can actually be bought. 15 years ago That Dragon, Cancer could not be imagined much less made. 

AAA isn't so much the problem (although the increasing blandness of them is), and neither is the indie scene. The problem is that absolutely everything inbetween has disappeared. Games which still cost millions to make, but not tens or hundreds of millions and which needed to only sell a couple of hundred thousand copies to break even. Games in that sweet spot could still have a good budget and production quality behind them but could also afford to be experimental. That's exactly where Deus Ex and the original Thief came from, which basically gave us the more recent Mankind Divided and Dishonored, and that's where BioWare and Bethesda started. The second their games became popular enough to cross over from the mid-leagues to AAA, we saw the experimentation and greater focus on gameplay dry up in favour of cut scenes, 100% voice acting (which has actually hurt the writing in games very badly, because it requires the script to be locked far too early in development and discourages rewrites because it costs too much to re-record the voices) and a focus on making things easily accessible.

It's the disappearance of that entire massive mid-range of games (and it's really a disappearance: EA published 60+ games in 2001 and about 14 last year, and that disappearing mid-list is responsible for that) that has really caused issues for the medium. Kickstarter tried to bring it back but people burned out on that approach after a few years so it's a less certain way forwards.

OTOH, brilliant indie and low-budget games abound: Gone Home, the Banner Saga games, FTL, Dear Esther etc. But they haven't really made up for the lack of movement in the bigger league.

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Here's an example of how things are so good - even the marquee games are great. Dxmd and dishonored 2 are the kind of games that used to be just critically acclaimed also-rans, and instead they are huge powerhouses and massive hits. Both feature massive nonlinear play, lots of story choice and consequence, and both promote player interacting. The idea that the awesome but not hugely popular deus ex would spawn two separate awesome franchises is incredible by itself.

Mankind Divided's sales are apparently questionable at the moment. First month sales were way down on Human Revolution's and the game has to sell 3 million copies at full price to break even and justify the sequel (although that's already 18+ months into development, so I'm not sure if Square would can it even if Mankind Divided bombed). We won't know if it's done that for a few months but it's looking like it's going to be close. I would not call it a "massive powerhouse" and I think it'll struggle to be in the Top 10-selling games of the year. Dishonored 2 is likely to be in the same bracket. Of course, sales will be lower because they're next-gen games launching relatively early in the life cycle of the new consoles, whilst their predecessors launched late in the cycle of the previous consoles when audiences were much bigger.

As I said above, both games also come from less-than-AAA origins. They're not AAA games being experimental and crazy off the bat, and arguably neither game is anywhere near as reactive, open-ended or crazy as their forebears.

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If people think we've already seen the best there will be from video games, aside from better graphics, then I am very sad for this medium.

I think the potential is there for greatness, but it is held back by money. In film, you can make a low-budget movie which has a cast of twelve people, and it can still make insane amounts of money and become a huge hit (like The Usual Suspects, Seven or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). In gaming, that happens very, very rarely (Minecraft being the only real mega-example) and it can't really happen for story-based games. They require 3D graphics, lots of art assets, writers and stuff that costs lots of money. You can make great, cheap platform games or puzzle games with awesome mechanics and interesting gameplay, but the second you start trying to tell a story you run into monetary limitations.

The only way to break out from that is to achieve some way of creating a game with the size, dialogue and assets of say Fallout 4, but to do it with maybe a tenth of the number of people and for $5 million rather than $90 million, and I can't say that becoming possible.

[Kalbear]

Dishonored 2, I'd argue, is more open-ended than Dishonored by a large margin, especially since you can do the entire thing without any powers at all. But eh.

I get your point about the midlist titles disappearing, but even that seems like a stretch to me. EA doesn't publish that any more because that's what they do, but other companies do - Ori and the Blind Forest is a good example of a midlist title that came out and did well, for instance. What I've seen is that in order to be successful you don't have to be midlist any more and don't have to have even a good but not great budget. 

And even then, we've got things like Pillars of Eternity or Wasteland 2 or Furi or Endless Space/Legend or Master of Orion. Or XCom, for that matter. 

Ultimately I'd say this - even if the midlist titles aren't in abundance like they were, it appears that this is largely because you don't need a publisher to actually sell games like you used to, and most of what would be a midlist title has gone full independent. And as a result, the industry has become far more experimental and bold in their ability to do things.

[Jasta11]

I'm not sure about midlist title vanishing; they just don't come from the biggest publishers anymore. Firaxis is a good example of a publisher that deals in this sort of game, the XCOM and Civilizations of this world are fairly big, but don't have the budget of a GTA. You could also cite studios such as Relic, Creative Assembly (albeit I'm less sure for them), Paradox, Larian, Obsidian, and probably many others in genres I don't dabble in. Sure, some have bigger studios over them, and they don't have as much success as Minecraft, but that game is almost literally one in a million

[Werthead]

Firaxis have a worldwide mega-selling legacy series, Civilization. To make the first of the new XCOMs, they subsidised it with profits from Civ IV and V, and even then not by a massive amount (you can tell from the reused assets it was a cheap game that very cleverly hid just how cheap it was). Firaxis took a punt with it and it turned out well. Also, they had 2K backing them which is quite important.

Relic and Creative Assembly are wholly owned by Sega and also base their success on legacy series (Dawn of War/Company of Heroes and Total War). They keep churning out new games in those series to keep themselves afloat and occasionally venture out into doing something experimental, which either works well (with Alien: Isolation for CA) or don't (Space Marine for Relic). In the cases of all three companies, they rose from the midlist when the midlist was still a thing, carved out a niche and have stayed there.

Larian and Obsidian have both come to rely on Kickstarter, which was my point earlier: the midlist has vanished so they have to go to crowdfunding to make those games. Both companies are also pretty old now. Paradox and CDPR are rare examples of European publishers which have become highly successful, often by leveraging the PC format's dominance in Europe (and Eastern Europe in particular).

[Rhom]

Lots of teases from BioWare about the Andromeda Initiative and a big announcement coming on N7 day.

[Jace, Extat]

7 hours ago, Rhom said:

Lots of teases from BioWare about the Andromeda Initiative and a big announcement coming on N7 day.

Wow

Can't believe it's been a whole year

[Fez]

10 hours ago, Rhom said:

Lots of teases from BioWare about the Andromeda Initiative and a big announcement coming on N7 day.

There better be. The game's supposed to be out in just a few months and we've seen almost nothing yet. If there's not a big, splashy trailer on Nov. 7, than I'd bet anything the game's going to be delayed out of Q1.

[l2 0 5 5]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

There better be. The game's supposed to be out in just a few months and we've seen almost nothing yet. If there's not a big, splashy trailer on Nov. 7, than I'd bet anything the game's going to be delayed out of Q1.

Yeah and I'm already seeing articles that say they would delay the game in a heartbeat if they feel it necessary.  That's common sense, sure, but certainly not comforting to hear.

Honk

[KiDisaster]

Picked up Owlboy after hearing all the rave reviews. It's pretty. Music is great. 

Haven't played enough yet to have any more substantive thoughts but it's cool enough so far. 

[Ferrum Aeternum]

17 hours ago, Rhom said:

Lots of teases from BioWare about the Andromeda Initiative and a big announcement coming on N7 day.

My body is ready.    I can't help it, even with EA's shady recent history I am stupendously excited about this.

[AndrewJ]

10 hours ago, Fez said:

There better be. The game's supposed to be out in just a few months and we've seen almost nothing yet. If there's not a big, splashy trailer on Nov. 7, than I'd bet anything the game's going to be delayed out of Q1.

It's supposed to be released late March, right? Which is almost 5 months away.

In which case, now would be the absolute earliest I'd expect to see detailed info/trailers. I think ideally big reveals should be about 3 months out. But as people tend to be pre-occupied with other things in December, it makes sense to have their reveal in November (with N7 day being the most obvious day to do it). I certainly wouldn't have expected to hear too much before now, though. And I think it's a mistake when game companies release too much info too early.

 

[Jasta11]

4 hours ago, AndrewJ said:

It's supposed to be released late March, right? Which is almost 5 months away.

In which case, now would be the absolute earliest I'd expect to see detailed info/trailers. I think ideally big reveals should be about 3 months out. But as people tend to be pre-occupied with other things in December, it makes sense to have their reveal in November (with N7 day being the most obvious day to do it). I certainly wouldn't have expected to hear too much before now, though. And I think it's a mistake when game companies release too much info too early.

 

Inquisition did get slammed for that a bit. They had some systems demoed in a leaked video that didn't make it in the final game, and also gave a lot of story details (especially regarding companions) quite long before release. I don't mind that they keep their cards closer to their chests.

Still, it's been something like 2 years since we know Andromeda is a thing, and we still barely know anything about it beyond the premise. November 7 can't come soon enough; I needs an info dump and trailer.

[KiDisaster]

Wouldn't it be cool if they just Beyonce'd the damn game and released it without telling anyone?

Yes, yes I know this would never work for a video game (especially a AAA one) for a million different reasons. 

[Fez]

13 hours ago, AndrewJ said:

It's supposed to be released late March, right? Which is almost 5 months away.

In which case, now would be the absolute earliest I'd expect to see detailed info/trailers. I think ideally big reveals should be about 3 months out. But as people tend to be pre-occupied with other things in December, it makes sense to have their reveal in November (with N7 day being the most obvious day to do it). I certainly wouldn't have expected to hear too much before now, though. And I think it's a mistake when game companies release too much info too early.

 

I wouldn't. Fallout 4's big reveal (and official announcement I guess, though everyone knew it was coming) was only 5 months before its release and everyone was shocked at how late that was. Most major titles (except the annualized ones like CoD) get their first big trailer, even if its CGI only, over a year in advance. ME4 has got a couple screenshots and a single tech demo that was showing off lighting effects.

Its been a shockingly little amount of info for a big game like this.

[Rhom]

9 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

Inquisition did get slammed for that a bit. They had some systems demoed in a leaked video that didn't make it in the final game, and also gave a lot of story details (especially regarding companions) quite long before release.

 

52 minutes ago, Fez said:

I wouldn't. Fallout 4's big reveal (and official announcement I guess, though everyone knew it was coming) was only 5 months before its release and everyone was shocked at how late that was. Most major titles (except the annualized ones like CoD) get their first big trailer, even if its CGI only, over a year in advance. ME4 has got a couple screenshots and a single tech demo that was showing off lighting effects.

Its been a shockingly little amount of info for a big game like this.

With @Jasta11's comment about Inquisition and the huge blow up over No Man's Sky... I wouldn't be surprised to start seeing less info on games early.  Why tease things that may not work later?  Especially with an established franchise like ME that will have fans lined up at the doors regardless of the product, just release a few screenshots to whet our appetite and then move on until closer to release.

[Werthead]

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Yes, yes I know this would never work for a video game (especially a AAA one) for a million different reasons. 

I think Valve could do it. If they dropped Half-Life 3 one day without any warning whatsoever, it'd still sell millions and millions of copies near-instantly.

I suspect they're the only company capable of doing such a thing though.

There does seem to be less space between a game announcement and release now. It's not uncommon to see games announced one year before release, and then detailed information only 4-5 months out. Deus Ex also did that. The thing of the game being announced 3 years earlier and regular previews being published (like we saw for Oblivion) is clearly gone into dust by now.

I think publishers are very concerned about delays or the development build looking extremely different to the final game build.

[AndrewJ]

10 hours ago, Fez said:

I wouldn't. Fallout 4's big reveal (and official announcement I guess, though everyone knew it was coming) was only 5 months before its release and everyone was shocked at how late that was. Most major titles (except the annualized ones like CoD) get their first big trailer, even if its CGI only, over a year in advance. ME4 has got a couple screenshots and a single tech demo that was showing off lighting effects.

Its been a shockingly little amount of info for a big game like this.

People weren't shocked they revealed detailed info for Fallout only 5 months out. They were shocked they revealed/announced the game only 5 months out.

12 months out is normally the domain of teasers, which is pretty much what we've had with ME:A.

[Fez]

We don't even know all the crew that Ryder will have yet. I wouldn't expect to necessarily see gameplay trailers, since that kind of stuff can change, but I'm really surprised EA/Bioware haven't put out even some CGI or cutscene trailers (or still images with lots of voice over). The kind of stuff that gives a feel for a game's tone, and maybe a hint of the narrative.

The fact we haven't seen any of that even suggests to me that the original delay of the game wasn't just gameplay related, and that they were also still figuring out the writing.