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“The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

grumpygamer.com

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Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#81

Post by regentbowerbird »

stuckinhell wrote: post #36

A lot of creatives have a hard time understanding the product side of art. Games are far more products like movies than they are "art". There have been a bunch of recent examples lately that showcases the minds of masses. Spiderman No Way Home did supremely well by giving the masses what they wanted, and not straying too far from the marvel formula. Sonic the Hedgehog Movie had a awful original art direction. The fan…

> Games are far more products like movies than they are "art"

Says whom? You demonstrate your points by showing that blockbusters make money, which says nothing about whether they are art. They're entirely different dimensions of the same work, and hard to compare. Obviously the accounting department will have a different point of view than the creative director.

You're also arguing that people making new films on an existing franchise should stick to giving the fans what they want. But who's to say the fans even know what they want? They might not care, they might be mistaken, they might misremember things. For example, people clamoring for World of Warcraft Classic or a back-to-the-roots Sonic game back in the day weren't really hoping for a product per se, but rather to go back to a time when the product was more culturally relevant (and they were younger).

A new direction can also capture a new audience, which might make fans negligible. For instance the Star Wars prequel are still divisive but a large, younger portion of the fandom likes them very much.

And what fans are we talking about anyway? You give Spider-man as an example. But there have been thousand of pieces of Spider-man media, with wildly different art styles and tones. Which one is "what the fans want"? Disney went with the Marvel formula precisely because it's a lowest-common denominator style of film, accessible to non-fans.

And finally another obvious problem with your thesis is that nothing new can be made if it is required to give to the masses what they want for sure. Almost by definition, it is unknown whether any new concept, style, tone, or property are what people want. At the same time it is known that the public at least somewhat values originality, so companies take risks and release films such as Pirates of the Caribbean or games like Assassin's Creed.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#82

Post by stuckinhell »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #80
stuckinhell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.gamedesigngazette.com/2018/01/the-legend-of-zelda... year platform title sales 2002 GC Wind Waker 4,430,000 2013 Wii U The Wind Waker HD 2,310,000 2006 Wii/GC Twilight Princess 8,850,000 2016 Wii U Twilight Princess HD 1,130,000 Twilight princess is still more popular if you look at sales.

I don't see how this contradicts what I'm saying: it sold more because it had a (significantly) larger user base to sell to in the first place. If Twilight Princess is so much more popular, why did its HD remake sell less than half of Wind Waker's?

Because most people who wanted to play it, already played it.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#83

Post by legitster »

chomp wrote: post #14

Gamers are the most entitled consumer group I've ever seen. It's astounding. Someone wants to create something, and there's just so much hate and negativity on something that people didn't even pay for. I've seen it on HN also. Someone creates a thing, and then people pour out of the woodwork to lump horrible criticism. No one is asking for blind praise for what they create, but surely there's a middle ground between…

I'm not sure I believe this. There is an entire industry that revolves around video essays of how George Lucas personally ruined childhoods. The difference is that George Lucas lives behind a wall between creator and audience.

The difference with video games is that developers themselves build parasocial communities for their games. Playtesting and marketing are so interlinked.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#84

Post by rideontime »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #30
the_only_law wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if it's even an exclusively nostalgia thing. Over the past few years I've seen a lot of complaining around art style changes. Notably the Civ V -> Civ VI art style change pissed a lot of people off. Personally I loved the game, but a lot of series veterans didn't even bother to try it.

In the other thread about this, someone brought up the colloquially named "Zelda Effect". It is most evident when reviewing Wind Waker, which used cartoony cell-shaded graphics: contemporary comments featured quite a lot of vitriol over that decision, but the game is now fondly remembered as one of the best entrants in the series.

Fun, if barely relevant, fact: Miyamoto himself wanted to change the art style during development, according to recently-translated interviews. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwUBIjbYYNg

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#85

Post by WBrentWilliams »

Going meta (note the lack of capitalization and insert your own joke here) I would say that the stress of running comments on your own blog, in any form, costs more most of the time as compared to sending the comments to places like HN, Reddit, and the like. I can see where size of concern means that you engage and host comments on your own site. However, it also seems to be that running a comment space in service of sharing something made and/or selling a product is the equivalent of painting a wall a nice, pristine white in a highly visible and accessible place and then getting mad at that same wall getting tagged with graffiti.

In other words, I am sorry that the Ron Glibert got burned, and I sympathize, but it seems to me that YouTube (where the video is hosted) runs a perfectly serviceable comments site that you can turn on and off. No need to run your own (unless you want to).

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#86

Post by dgb23 »

vasco wrote: post #59
chomp wrote: post #14

Gamers are the most entitled consumer group I've ever seen. It's astounding. Someone wants to create something, and there's just so much hate and negativity on something that people didn't even pay for. I've seen it on HN also. Someone creates a thing, and then people pour out of the woodwork to lump horrible criticism. No one is asking for blind praise for what they create, but surely there's a middle ground between…

Most hours gamed are by kids, of course they're gonna be nasty, have you ever seen an unsupervised kid without threat of physical violence for being shitty to other kids? The fact that people care about an insult or attack in a comment section of a random site they read about a game is what surprises me. What lives some people must live for this to be something that even registers as an annoyance.

I don't think most of these types of comments come from kids. "Entitled gamer culture" seems to be similar to any kind of culture around fandom, escapism, entertainment and sports. Some people just love to obsess about things and take their opinions super seriously, especially if they don't know what they are talking about.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#87

Post by bob1029 »

kabdib wrote: post #76
bob1029 wrote: post #34

I feel even in gaming, the customer is always right at the end of the day. Unless we are talking about making games just for the sake of it & then throwing them away, but I suspect not. That said, most of the time it is better to not interact with the customer until you are certain it is the right time. Transparency seems like more of a liability than anything here. I strongly prefer the stealth mode development patt…

> I feel even in gaming, the customer is always right at the end of the day. There are customers who are most definitely not right. The kind that cheat in online games, lie about it, dox you when you catch them. The kind of customer that tries to break into your systems or DDOS you. The kind that try to steal from you and your partners, or that harass other players, or that post pornography to your forums. The kind t…

> Then you have not dealt with real customers.

This is a very bold assumption. Do you want to try some nuance here?

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#88

Post by lhorie »

atwood22 wrote: post #8

I don't understand the outrage at this art style. Granted, I've never played any of the Monkey Island games, and have no emotional attachment to the content. To me, the art style seems very similar to a Cartoon Network cartoon, and that may have broad appeal to kids today. Like I kind of understand why people are upset: this thing you loved 32 years ago is being vandalized in your eyes. However, you're really old now…

Personally, as a consumer who could care less about who produced which game, the original Secret of Monkey Island - with all its pixel art glory - was a relatively hard game, like many of the games of the era, and was comparatively less enjoyable to me as a 80s/90s kid than the later Curse of Monkey Island, which had a more modern art style and much more interesting mechanics (IMHO) than just aimlessly clicking everywhere until you eventually found out the only way to move forward was to precisely time giving the bad guy a wedgie or whatever. I've also played other games with various degrees of pixelatedness, with later ones like Sam & Max and Indiana Jones being more enjoyable to me than older ones like the original Maniac Mansion, so I generally associate art style modernization in this particular genre as a good thing.

But ironically, I feel the opposite way about the Pokemon franchise, which has gone through a similar progression, with a change in art style towards a more slick art style along with a barrage of new game mechanics that I personally didn't really care so much for.

I think that ultimately people just want to consume more content that is similar to what they are already used to. It's why, I also think, bands w/ distinctly recognizable style like the Red Hot Chili Peppers did so well. The vitriol does seem completely unnecessary, though, I agree.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#89

Post by dgb23 »

michaelgrafl wrote: post #60
chomp wrote: post #14

Gamers are the most entitled consumer group I've ever seen. It's astounding. Someone wants to create something, and there's just so much hate and negativity on something that people didn't even pay for. I've seen it on HN also. Someone creates a thing, and then people pour out of the woodwork to lump horrible criticism. No one is asking for blind praise for what they create, but surely there's a middle ground between…

Well, they're gamers. Not that anything's wrong with playing video games, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're on average less mature than the general population. I think I'll play through the first two parts with my children and if they're interesed I'll get this one as well.

You see the same kind of stuff from book/movie/sports fans.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#90

Post by djur »

stuckinhell wrote: post #75
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That analysis discounts that the GameCube[0], on which WW was released exclusively until the Wii U[1] HD remake, had vastly lower user count than the incredibly popular Wii[2], which had a Twilight Princess release simultaneously with the GCN. [0] 21.4M units sold [1] Even lower, only 13.5M units [2] 101.6M units

http://www.gamedesigngazette.com/2018/01/the-legend-of-zelda... year platform title sales 2002 GC Wind Waker 4,430,000 2013 Wii U The Wind Waker HD 2,310,000 2006 Wii/GC Twilight Princess 8,850,000 2016 Wii U Twilight Princess HD 1,130,000 Twilight princess is still more popular if you look at sales.

Your list shows Wind Waker selling twice as many units when released on the same platform as Twilight Princess. There are confounding factors here (the Wind Waker re-release may have had a larger "missed it the first time" audience, and there were probably fewer active Wii U users in 2016 than 2013) but it's the closest thing to an apples to apples comparison here.
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