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Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

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Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

#91

Post by supercanuck »

CydeWeys wrote: post #23
mipmap04 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why Everquest was so great for me. Leveling took a long time and you really got to explore the world. It would take teaming up with people just to make perilous journeys - this is something I don't think exists anymore in games. Additionally, gear lasted much longer. You could be using the same piece of armor for months potentially as you leveled in EQ. It really felt like you were building your character. No…

Some of my very favorite moments in videogaming ever occurred during the EverQuest closed beta. That game was so great. It would get dark at night, to the point where if you didn't have a torch (which cost money) you'd be bumping into the trees in Kelethin in pitch blackness, and shortly get taken down by monsters. I remember spending nearly half of my time playing that game just waiting around in the dark by the tow…

Exactly, I remember the feeling that you needed to have a certain level of situational awareness with what is going on around you.

Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

#92

Post by supercanuck »

asudosandwich wrote: post #27
mipmap04 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why Everquest was so great for me. Leveling took a long time and you really got to explore the world. It would take teaming up with people just to make perilous journeys - this is something I don't think exists anymore in games. Additionally, gear lasted much longer. You could be using the same piece of armor for months potentially as you leveled in EQ. It really felt like you were building your character. No…

I agree. In EQ things felt like an accomplishment. And having a significant penalty to death, I often experienced palpable fear in places that newer games haven’t been able to replicate. Those experiences cemented my best memories from EQ in my mind. Heck, I still have memorized the run from Freeport to Qeynos — which was quite perilous for a young level 12. Speaking of gear, my fondest memory was a 9 hour camp for m…

EQ definitely required a certain degree of situational awareness to it that I haven’t seen replicated to this day.

Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

#93

Post by fredophile »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #87
fredophile wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest Call of Duty game has a battle royale mode. I can't recall hearing anything about their BR mode after launch. Clearly, just making a BR game isn't a guaranteed path to success even when it's backed by a major brand name.

The Call of Duty BR mode is not free. It's very good, far more polished than Apex Legends.

Neither is PUBG and it was the dominant BR game for a reasonable length of time. I still hear about PUBG and it seems to get more viewers on services like twitch than CoD. This is despite the fact that it started without the kind of brand recognition CoD has and it has a history of being janky.

Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

#94

Post by jhasse »

p1necone wrote: post #83
the-pigeon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a ton of modern games that don't do this. Most of the top games your find on metacritic for Switch, PS4, PC and Xbox One don't do that. For example games like Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, and Read Dead Redemption 2 are complete games without the catch you are talking about.

Basically just stay away from EA, Activision and Ubisoft and you won't find that much of this stuff. Did I miss any?

I've played Far Cry 5 from Ubisoft and Destiny 2 from Activision and they both seemed like complete games to me.

Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

#95

Post by ok_coo »

p1necone wrote: post #83
the-pigeon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a ton of modern games that don't do this. Most of the top games your find on metacritic for Switch, PS4, PC and Xbox One don't do that. For example games like Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, and Read Dead Redemption 2 are complete games without the catch you are talking about.

Basically just stay away from EA, Activision and Ubisoft and you won't find that much of this stuff. Did I miss any?

I think you tagged the main offenders. I've been gaming since the 80s and if you look at the top games that have come out this generation on Metacritic, games and the gaming industry are hitting it out of the park. There are actually too many good games to play, you'd have a hard time playing through them all even if you were unemployed.

One just needs to stay away from some of the larger publishers who have done questionable things. Plenty of other good companies/devs doing their thing, who deserve people's money.

Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

#96

Post by p1necone »

jhasse wrote: post #94
p1necone wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically just stay away from EA, Activision and Ubisoft and you won't find that much of this stuff. Did I miss any?

I've played Far Cry 5 from Ubisoft and Destiny 2 from Activision and they both seemed like complete games to me.

Yep, even these big offenders only do it sometimes. EA released Apex Legends recently too - the key to that seems to be that Respawn owns the IP and EA didn't actually have any input in the development (allegedly).

Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

#97

Post by llukas »

Reedx wrote: post #79
llukas wrote: post #9

I'd love to spend money on games. Most games seem to be optimized for younger audience (==dumbed down) or monetized in really dumb ways. So no buy.

Here are some worth your time and money. Look to indie games, mostly. Lots of great stuff in that space. - Spelunky - Don't Starve - Factorio - Oxygen Not Included - All Zachtronic's games - Stephen's Sausage Roll - Stardew Valley - Faster than Light - Kerbal Space Program - Dungeon Warfare (if you're a TD fan) - Return of Obra Dinn - Prison Architect - Mini Metro - Cities: Skylines - Frostpunk - RimWorld - Darkest D…

Thanks for recommendation! (I already ticked off several titles from the list, will check out the rest)

Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

#98

Post by 1123581321 »

maxsilver wrote: post #78
1123581321 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best reporting on Activision I’ve seen has been from outside the games industry and games journalism (I’ve preferred writing from this link, Variety, Bloomberg, etc.) Activision is not concerned about whether they are making money now. They are concerned about whether they can continue to make money. They have profitable, mature lines but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to…

> but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch That's not really how games work though. Games are mainly emotional purchases of mass-produced art, not commodities like Corn or Oil. Games are not fungible like this. Telling Activision "you must make a battle royale game because Fortnite" is a quick way to watch them burn a lot of money on something that…

I agree with all that (I try not to think about how we’ll never get a lovingly made, non-F2P Warcraft IV.) I just think that even if their growth strategy is bad or callous, it’s still a strategy and the restructuring/layoffs aren’t only to cut costs.

Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

#99

Post by jquast »

glial wrote: post #77

While we're all complaining about the state of current games, what I really want is for games (especially RTS games, but really any game) to come with an API so I can build and test AIs. For example, I love the game Planetary Annihilation (I played its predecessor Total Annihilation a ton as a kid). But after a few dozen games, I began to think 'I wonder if I could just encode my strategy as a policy' - not even deep…

Here, here.

QuakeC enabled the community to demonstrate the possibility of good AI in 3d shooters in the late 90's. It spawned an era of popular titles being programmable. Some of those early bot authors went on to become lead programmers of further games, why did they forget their origins?

It does help a game to live beyond its years -- many previous games could become popular again with community AI improvements, and I'm not comfortable applying binary patches and they're not very portable either..

Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

#100

Post by chii »

dleslie wrote: post #58
falcolas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch This makes the assumption that if they make it, the market will obviously move to their product. The genre has a fairly fixed market, and taking away players from their previous investments (time and money) will take an exceptionally good game. Ironically, making good, interesting games is the one thing th…

> I want to take the fun out of making video games Which is just insane. Part of the compensation for game developers is the love of their trade; without that, or undermining that, then it's just a low paying, high stress, and life wrecking tech job.

Making a video game is not fun. Designing one is, but there's so much elbow grease needed to get a design to production that most people who want to make one don't ever complete.

Companies like Activision wants to reduce the risks of failure (where failure means sales don't reach target). Therefore, they cannot trust experimentation (where all the fun in game making comes from). Anyone looking for this should instead turn indie!

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