Morning Discussion

by Alice O'Connor, Jan 05, 2011 5:00am PST

I'm still catching up on my RSS feeds from November and December. I haven't the foggiest what I was doing then but it apparently resulted on me getting very behind on reading things I very much enjoy. Hey! Let's go on a magical mystery tour together!

Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional Games wrote a splendid lengthy piece on 'How the player becomes the protagonist' in its spook-o-rama.

'Costumes: the Wearable Dialog' is a bit of an illustrated crash course in costume design. While its focus is on comics, the principles absolutely apply to video games too.

Inspired by the book Destroy All Movies: The Complete Guide To Punks On Film, Everything Is Terrible! produced a seventeen-minute, four-part compilation of 'punks' in movies--parts one, two, three and four. Movie punks are such strange and wonderful creatures, absurd caricatures of caricatures, that I find them delightful. As you well know, movie punks are not workplace-friendly so do not invite them to yours.

Do your part for society and make dolls--action figures, if you will--poseable so they can ride dinosaurs and do other things unbecoming of girls, lasses, women or ladies.

That's enough links for today. Do you like links? Of course you do. Did you already see these on Digg or Reddit or Clickit or Punchit or Rockit or Sockit? Good for you, sunshine.

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Daily Filter: January 4, 2011

See All Comments | 261 Threads | 6,476 Comments

#5986

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By: locater16 x Show Full Post

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What happened to ambitious games?

Every Triple A game this year except Red Dead Redemption was mostly "same ol same ol, we got this, video games = teh business". As if you churned out video games like cars. Even Starcraft 2 just felt like a highly polished "New model Mercedes" that was still "give the players what they want instead of trying something new."

There was a great, candid quote from a game developer, where I can't remember. But it was "All fans can basically think of is a mashup of what's already done." Which is what a lot of this years games felt like. Where's the Steve Jobs of the gaming industry? The guy that says "Consumers can't say what they want in a visual computing system, because they've never seen one before." I want a game I've never seen before, something crazy and ambitious and new that I can get excited about. If the second highest market cap company in the world can get to the top by taking risks then why the hell is the world's newest entertainment industry controlled by assholes who only ever approve "slightly different sequel #5,000,000,000"?

New video game crash here we come. Assuming that this trend continues for long enough. Even Hollywood takes more risks than a lot of expensive video games did this year.

Jan 05, 2011 4:03pm PST

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What happened to ambitious games? Every Triple A game this year except Red Dead Redemption was mostly ... : locater16
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- I don't care, I want Diablo 3 and so do you. :D : DM7
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  I'd toss RDR in there too, it was basically GTA on a horse with a few minor innovations to make the empty... : pyide
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    Different setting than we're used to? : DM7
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      Westerns games have been done before but yeah, that's about all there is to it to set it apart Rockstar's... : pyide
      
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      The "conspiracy sci-fi story thing" Assassin's Creed is doing is pretty novel by video game standards. I : Arcanum
      
      Bizarre indeed, and that's a good point and while I do want to see what happens next, at the same time I ... : pyide
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    Huge world (something like 32 square miles) tons of sidegames, just things like getting on and off the tr... : locater16
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    Not really : justwr!ght
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      No, he's right. It's essentially GTA in the old west. That's not a bad thing. : Arcanum
      
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      By: Happy Doodle Muffin x Show Full Post
      
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      It's GTA with great restraint, made by people who understand how important that is to keeping the story and characters believable and giving them power. Even for that alone it's a noteworthy game.
      
      Jan 05, 2011 4:43pm PST
      
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      It's GTA with great restraint, made by people who understand how important that is to keeping the story a... : Happy Doodle Muffin
      
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      Such restraint like mowing down dozens and dozens of soldiers with a gatling gun from a moving train for ... : pyide
      
      The very first story mission in Mexico was completely retarded. "You just killed some local peasants for : Arcanum
      
      Sorry, I meant to include EXCEPT EVERYTHING IN MEXICO in big bold letters. The first and last big section... : Happy Doodle Muffin
      
      And as Arcanum and others have said, it's Grand Theft Horse. Well executed Grand Theft Horse. Fun game, w... : daVinci1980
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  Ambition usually isn't profitable. Ambition involves risk; risk is bad. : the archvile
  - You must be a CEO : BeowolfSchaefer
  - Sweet, I didn't know Steve Ballmer was a shacker. How's that "The iphone will never catch on" thing going... : locater16
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    Risk is risk. You take risk to achieve, knowing fully you could fail. Both outcomes are possible. : silent prophet
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      failure is generally the more likely outcome : derelict515
      
      True. I think that's a price you have to pay to innovate. A larger probability of error and failure. In r... : silent prophet
  - No guts, no glory. : IHATEDUST
  - Yeah and it fucking blows. :( : Godhatesfatpeople
- what happened is that budgets for AAA games ballooned to tens of millions which makes publishers incredib... : derelict515
- Try http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/. Yes its mechwarrior which isn't exactly original, but I guarant... : Toth21
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  You must have never played Game Dev Story. : bling1bling
  - why can't we get an english localization of the PC game? :( : roushimsx
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  You're gonna wanna be checking out random european and russian stuff. : roushimsx
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    Seems like strategic games is dead in the US. meanwhile euro & russia make some great strategy games. : loke662
    - unfort. US loves the 3-D FPS ... i just like a little more diversity. : loke662
- i know this was last year, but i really feel like demon's souls did a good job with this. in a lot of way... : mindmann
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  Because apple has something that game companies with new ideas don't have. A man that represents the com... : Lucy Labia
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    We can't rest the future of the entire industry on Indiana Jones games, especially after that last movie. : Brian Leahy
    - I don't see why not, licensed refridgerator DLC is a completely untapped market. And for the sequel they ... : Hemtroll
  - lol no. : freakynipples69
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    http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_leftk562o31qf8yek.gif : Godhatesfatpeople
    - Fap fap fap fap fap : freakynipples69
- i must be a stupid idiot because i think there are ridiculous amounts of great games coming out all the t... : EvilDolemite
- I feel late 90s early 20s were some kind of golden age were tech was advanced enough to do interesting st... : tcs
- budgets got too big. also the game industry is more mainstream, it used to be that only rich people could... : Chandler55
- What happened is these games are now made by russians/ukranians/etc. I have come to the point where I wil... : Tchest
- Making games is expensive. Making ambitious games is risky. Risky games may not make money. : freakynipples69
- Heavy Rain was amazing : uglysad
- There were a lot of innovative indie games though. Minecraft is one of them. : Fpsnut

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