lol

[BlackerOmegalon]

Stephan Totilo beasting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIdZhFk4Qzc

[Jon R.]

"consisting of a number of venerated writers"

We'll see about that. You know what the most telling thing about all this symposium shit is? That people who are ostensibly of a critical mind need to get their stories straight as to what, exactly, reviews and criticism are supposed to be. They will poo-poo any murmurings that the readers have about the legitimacy of the whole deal, but now that they're all on the case we can finally get some real answers.

[BlackerOmegalon]

There's a thread on this symposium on Neogaf here with some of the writers joining in the discussion, mainly Shaun Elliot. It's not so much funny as it is depressing. At one point, someone says to Shaun Elliot that he would buy a book if wrote one. There is one funny part of the whole thread, which is when the shortness of 1up's reviews are brought up, and a 1up reviewer pops up from nowhere to make excuses about his Chrono Trigger DS review, which he get's called out on, causing him to make an ass out of himself (as if his review wasn't enough). The emphasized part is the best, as it's the best advice possible for anyone thinking of reading a 1up review.

The thing does not contain any information about the game at all.

just because you keep saying this doesn't make it true.

critical points gleaned from my (already admittedly short) review:

* each era is distinct and colorful
* the soundtrack is great
* there's teamwork in battle
* fun and charm of original game is preserved
* anime cut-scenes are (re)added to the game
* script is polished and changed
* touch screen functions are inessential, but...
* dual screen helps clean up the battlefield
* new fetch-questy dungeon content didn't make an impact
* CHRONO TRIGGER IS A JAPANESE ROLE-PLAYING GAME FROM 1995 WHEREIN YOU HAVE A PARTY OF CHARACTERS WHO TAKE TURNS SELECTING BATTLE COMMANDS BASED ON A TIMER SYSTEM, AND YOU DO THIS BY PRESSING VARIOUS BUTTONS ON YOUR DS HARDWARE. FOR EXAMPLE, PRESSING THE X BUTTON WILL...

I don't write instruction manuals as reviews, nor do I regurgitate information you can easily find one or two clicks away. you're on the fucking internet, where almost any piece of information you can possibly desire is easily accessible, free of charge.

ctrl + t. christ.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread. ... st14116279

Review: http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=31 ... ec=REVIEWS

[JoshF]

The Ghost of Stuart Campbell

[Crazy Man]

http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/940/940408p1.html

For years we've all been reading complaints about sequels and companies churning out carbon copies of proven formulas without focusing on innovation or taking risks. Fans, developers and critics alike seemed ravenous for new ideas -- new IPs; major innovations -- advances in this art-tertainment (I'm trying to coin a new term here ;)) form we all love.

What surprises me is how little these high level risks seem to be noticed and appreciated as attempts to shake up the industry and push things forward. Perhaps I'm an idealist, but I think perhaps I was expecting a few more virtual pats-on-the-back for our attempts to do something new.
Whether this means we didn't totally succeed in our risk taking or whether our industry in fact has a stronger appetite for the familiar then it wants to admit remains to be seen. Honestly I hope it is the former.

God Mode=INNOVATION and pushing the industry forward.

Our gamble was that the experience of the game would be undeniable to the hardcore. We knew they would find it 'easy' but counted on them getting caught up in the scenery, the story, the poetry of movement -- the 'magic' of it all -- and draw their sense of accomplishment and joy from that rather then the more typical fail-die-frustration-fail-die-frustration-succeed-joy loop.

[Bradford]

Really more depressing than funny.

One of our ambitions from the first day with this game was to create the 'Art Game That Sells'.

I consider myself a hardcore gamer . . . . If I come up against a particularly difficult area --- one that frustrates more then entertains me -- I'm likely to shelf [sic] a game for a while thinking I'll take a break and get back to it (of course, I rarely do).

[W]e worked very hard to remove frustration from this game . . . .

And,

As I mentioned earlier, I think we could have done a better job in giving more challenge to those gamers who play a game to Accomplish and Achieve, rather then [sic] Experience.

What?! I don't have a problem with this guy just thinking it's a good idea to make an easy game, but someone should tell him that we already have a name for games that players "experience," and which contain nothing that the player can accomplish or acheive. We call them movies (in the alternative, insert MGS4 joke here).

[RemyC]

Whatever happened to the classic method of difficulty selection. Are easy, medium, and hard not good enough anymore?

[Bradford]

Obviously not. We are in an era of coddling and entitlement, and I guess games are naturally the last to succumb to the politically correct garbage that results in organized sports for kids where they don't keep score and both teams get trophies. Also, crap like this:

Bad Sport? Football Coach is Suspended for Running Up the Score,

and morons who sincerely think that this is an idea worth thinking about:

Why not punishments? (thread from COD:WW boards).

[JoshF]

Is the game longer or more involved due to being designed for a home audience, or is it faithful to the arcade style?

Overkill is definitely the longest House of the Dead so far, as it has been specifically designed for a home console.

However, we have done our utmost to ensure that it feels like playing an arcade machine -- albeit an arcade machine that is out to entertain a paying customer, instead of one that is trying to lever money out of players. Our players have already paid their money, so it's also our job to make sure they have a thrilling ride.

Basically they're going to lever money by making it easy instead. Coddling what?

[icycalm]

Here's a George Orwell quote that's probably going in my book:

"The problem with competitions is that someone wins them."

[icycalm]

"Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it. Gertrude was always right."
--Hemingway


I lolled at this. It brought to mind two people from this forum!

[icycalm]

I made a particularly witty and poignant (lol) post on Insert Credit just now, which I wouldn't want anyone here to miss:

It's sort of the two major problems with people in the field. With the podcasts and the symposium deal, as well as just the general way writers approach reviews, the assumption is that everyone's just there for them rather that what they say or do.

The other is that at every level of the videogame industry, it's like everyone desperately wishes they were something else. Devs seem to wish they were in the movie industry in particular, but one example is the G4 show Xplay where most of the people involved seemed to wish they were writing for SNL. Other shoes it's wannabe-MTV like others have said.

There are some really simple, but really powerful applications for video especially now that we have such access to streaming video, but no one's really bothered to go for it. Instead of figuring out how to actually make something out of the online format, screenshots are still just a way to leech layout wows from a completely unlikely (but strangely photogenic...) scene, and video is largely still just another avenue for PR. It's still halfway a secret that they just cut to another scene when whatever RAHBOOM scene actually results in a death, as though they feel the need to make a machinima-based marketing effort. Everyone wishes they were anything other than what they are.

Everyone wishes they were anything other than what they are.

Which is fitting if you consider the general idea behind the field they are involved with, don't you think? ;)

http://forums.insertcredit.com/viewtopi ... 554#287554

[Evo]

Nintendo patent for games that play themselves


Some commentary..

[icycalm]

From the second link:

However, if Kind Code is intended as a general solution that adds Digest Mode to all games, that might be like putting training wheels on all bicycles, including Lance Armstrong's.

That's a smart way to put it!

lolling at all of this anyway.

[BlackerOmegalon]

Nintendo patent for games that play themselves


Some commentary..

Interesting quote from the Prince of Persia producer

ie: I'm in Fallout3 and have focused energy on sneak and unarmed combat. If I'm in a particular point in the game I can't pass, and I use this system, what 'recording' could the game know to use? It can't possibly have developer walkthroughs of all possible configurations of a character and strategies to pass through each in-game challenge. More likely as not, it would have one 'right' way to pass through a particular challenge...

I think this highlights the main problem with "sand-box, or even remotely open ended" games, in that if you can't predict the possibilities of what the player will do, then are you really designing your game, or just throwing a bunch of stuff into it and hoping for the best? Perhaps making educated guesses (due to the many variables in the game) instead of careful planning.


Another interesting quote was from the Bethesda guy.

Most people stop playing a certain game because they get frustrated or confused by what the game wants them to do. It becomes work and frustration, as opposed to 'playtime.' This idea clearly tries to alleviate that. It's much like passing the controller to someone who knows the game really well, so you can move ahead or simply enjoy the story. It's the classic 'challenge or entertain' issue that designers often deal with. I think there's a lot of ways around that, and remained confused by what people are actually allowed to patent these days.

It's too bad, but this seems to be the kind of mentality big-name game developers have these days. Why is it "challenge or entertain"? Why does he say it like he has to choose one or the other? Isn't he supposed to provide both those things at the same time?

[Gnarf]

This reminds me of dynamically adjusting difficulty.

Max Payne-style adjusting AI?

Yeah, I'm fairly certain that's what will happen. We're no longer very big fans of selecting game difficulty and I think it's a solved problem as to how to make things auto adjust transparently enough so that anyone can play a game and enjoy it.

I'm sure we'd toss a Nightmare mode in there too, just for people that want a real challenge.

But generally I think that skill level selection is a bad thing in games. It would be nice if they could just play and the game took care of them.

http://www.duke4.net/page.php?13

They'll probably toss a little something in there for the gamers. That's the kind of thing you might not get around to if you have a shorter development cycle.

[icycalm]

I want to extend an apology to Brandon Sheffield regarding an earlier post in this thread:

http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=6742#6742

He called me out on it, and I replied to him thusly:

Look, I first want to apologize for my tone. It should have been more
civil, but at the time I made the post it was my gut reaction, and
since it was made in a forum thread read by few people, I never
bothered to go back and temper it once I had cooled off.

And I mean, in that thread, I go off on pretty much everybody and
anybody (the point of the entire thread), whilst I am sure that many
of those people are decent guys who would have made me feel ashamed of
my invective if I ever happened to have any dealings with them.

You can see I have zero diplomatic skills, which is one of the reasons
I don't work in this industry, or any other for that matter.
Essentially, when it comes to debating points, the last thing on my
mind are the feelings of the person(s) my diatribes are directed
against. You could have been my best friend in the whole wide word,
and I would have reacted the exact same way. The only difference is
that with complete strangers I never feel remorse later on, whilst
with people I know I often do...

As for the actual content of my disagreement, I still stand behind it.
I can't see anything else in that article apart from waffle. Lines
like "We need to present a diversity of viewpoints, themes, and
gameplay styles" are not saying anything, and therefore shouldn't be
written. I come from a school of thought which says that if you don't
have concrete proposals to make, you shouldn't be writing. But this is
the philosophical school of thought. The journalistic one, which I am
by now well acquainted with, is that our magazine/newspaper/website
needs to have so many words on its frontpage every day and someone has
to write them.

Despite all that, as far as I am concerned, and for what it's worth,
you are among the best people doing this wretched job out there. It's
just too bad that the very nature of your profession conspires against
your efforts to do your job well.


PS. I am going to post this message in my forum as an
apology/explanation, for whoever actually cares about this sort of
thing... Again, you have my apologies.

[icycalm]

I want to talk about Guilty Gear 2 Overture, because it was such a surprise. It's completely different as it's a 3D adventure game.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3 ... php?page=5

Guitly Gear 2. A 3D ADVENTURE game. Why oh why does that person still have a job!

The rest of his questions are full of this sort of inanity, though some of the replies are worth reading regardless. I think magazines should just stop asking questions. Just call up developers at random and give them space to say whatever they felt like saying. Not only would they save the money they normally give to dipshit interviewers, but they'd also get more interesting stuff in the process.

[Worm]

http://www.binarytweed.com/

Laced with political themes ... featuring many hours of gameplay and plot development, Clover promises value-for-money beyond other Xbox LIVE Community Games. The game innovates on its predecessors with modern gameplay mechanics, such as unique and forgiving alternatives to player 'health' and 'death'
...
"Clover is a game about artwork and plot."

I know it's easy to find laughable statements from indies, but this one reads as if they skimmed everything on this site and ran in the opposite direction.

[icycalm]

Sounds like the worst game ever!

[Afterburn]

I wish developers worried more about making good games as opposed to infusing their games with "political themes" and "plot development" or whatever else.

[icycalm]

Not exactly a lol link (though there ARE some lols in it) but I didn't know where else to link it:

http://forums.insertcredit.com/viewtopic.php?t=10505

A thread about sequels, basically, in which I have posted many ideas which I will eventually work into my upcoming articles.

[mees]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2waH5ONRiA

[icycalm]

http://www.insertcredit.com/archives/002608.html

[A.Wrench]

Heh, that Kaz.

...'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?

Is he trying to say the limits of a console's power are the limits of the possible quality of games produced for said console?

Anyway, I've been meaning to post this here a while.

http://games.ign.com/articles/944/944826p1.html

IGN lists "The ten trends that are destroying video games".