21–30 of 48 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I purchased Civ V a while ago but I can't bring myself to actually play it. I think I'm too old to lose 4 hours to a game that gives me no real benefit.
"Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted."
Games scare me because of their addictiveness, especially for people who need an escape from crappy things in their lives. I enjoy them occasionally as much as the next person, but it makes me sad to see how high the play numbers are for some games. A good friend of mine in college pretty much ruined his life by using Team Fortress 2 as his "coping" mechanism for depression: he logged 2000+ hours on the game in 6 mon…
I agree that time I enjoyed is definitely not time wasted. Playing with friends is just as good as programming to me. It's 100% unproductive though.
Games scare me because of their addictiveness, especially for people who need an escape from crappy things in their lives. I enjoy them occasionally as much as the next person, but it makes me sad to see how high the play numbers are for some games. A good friend of mine in college pretty much ruined his life by using Team Fortress 2 as his "coping" mechanism for depression: he logged 2000+ hours on the game in 6 mon…
It is frightening, but I wonder about the previous generations. A hundred years ago, how did an individual self-medicate their problems? Was there more crime, suicide, etc. as a result? People don't usually "change" all that much from generation to generation, and I don't want to get into some trap of thinking about "golden days" or any of that nonsense; people have always been fitful and worried, depressive even. Ho…
Note how Football Manager 2014 dominates both the Mean/Median "number of hours played per owner" charts, but doesn't register on the "Most played games" charts. This seems to indicate this game is the most successful at hooking it's players, but not the most successful at reaching large numbers of players. Not really surprising, but I find the implications interesting: A game such as this (and perhaps this can be app…
Rather than "hooking" its players, you could read it as, this game has a devoted cult/niche following. One of those things certain people love & cannot do without, yet has narrow appeal.
Kind of like snake antivenin.
Games scare me because of their addictiveness, especially for people who need an escape from crappy things in their lives. I enjoy them occasionally as much as the next person, but it makes me sad to see how high the play numbers are for some games. A good friend of mine in college pretty much ruined his life by using Team Fortress 2 as his "coping" mechanism for depression: he logged 2000+ hours on the game in 6 mon…
It is frightening, but I wonder about the previous generations. A hundred years ago, how did an individual self-medicate their problems? Was there more crime, suicide, etc. as a result? People don't usually "change" all that much from generation to generation, and I don't want to get into some trap of thinking about "golden days" or any of that nonsense; people have always been fitful and worried, depressive even. Ho…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I purchased Civ V a while ago but I can't bring myself to actually play it. I think I'm too old to lose 4 hours to a game that gives me no real benefit.
"Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted."
Note how Football Manager 2014 dominates both the Mean/Median "number of hours played per owner" charts, but doesn't register on the "Most played games" charts. This seems to indicate this game is the most successful at hooking it's players, but not the most successful at reaching large numbers of players. Not really surprising, but I find the implications interesting: A game such as this (and perhaps this can be app…
Note the '2014' in the title; this is one of those regular sports games franchises, and it has been around since 1992 (For the first 10 years or so, it had the name 'Championship Manager', but that was changed due to legal hassle). Every year, these guys upgrade their engine, upgrade the player database, pile on some improvements and tweak stuff, and put out a new game. Some fans buy the game every year, some every two, or every three years.
It might be a niche product, but Football Manager owns that niche; it has a recognisable brand name and product (one that is well-recognised in the real-life sport itself to the extent that one Premiership Football Team - Everton - even bought early access to the player database), a large and fanatical fanbase (the company has fans in almost every football team in the world scouting players for it), and constant (if not growing) revenue stream.
Gamers aren't stupid; trying to nickel-and-dime them with those hated microtransactions is the sort of thing that would easily lead Sports Interactive down the road to an EA Dungeon Keeper-style PR nightmare. SI are already onto a very good thing; the sort of quick-buck Zynga/King style cynical disruption you're suggesting would be a total disaster.
I could never figure out what Dota is. What's the gameplay? (I've never seen it and given I'm a Linux person it's non-trivial).
I really recommend watching this http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZYMI1zB9s just make some popcorn before.