The Official "WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU PLAYING!!!?" Thread

[ThisIsTheYear 241]

That was good.

 

There's a bunch of them lol

[Berto 338]

There's a bunch of them lol

 

"I'll take...I'll have a Fresca"

 

LOL. I watched them all. Twas funny.

[jec 427]

this is probably the worst thing ever

 

 

 

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

[Berto 338]

this is probably the worst thing ever

 

 

 

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

 

While watching that, I couldn't help but think of the people I know that would like that. It's a sad, sad world.

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

Does anyone have an opinion on the whole new wave of crowd-sourced game making?

 

I mean, few people will be happier than I am that the Kickstarter page for Wasteland 2 has made 3x what they asked for, and counting. I'm just not sure that this sort of thing can be sustainable long term, and I don't know what will happen when the bubble on funding like this bursts.

 

I mean sure, Brian Fargo(Fallout! Fallout 2! Wasteland! Planescape Torment! Baldur's Gate!) and Tim Schafer(Monkey Island! Pyschonauts! Day of the Tentacle! Full Throttle! Grim Fandango!) can get away with it because they made old school games with die-hard fan bases, but who else could get AA funding levels for a game? John Romero burned through his goodwill years ago with Daikatana. Chris Avellone could probably do it, but then again: he worked with Fargo, so what would he be making that wouldn't be a joint project with Fargo? They're both working on Wasteland 2 for *****'s sake.

 

But yeah: does anyone have an opinion on this phenomena?

 

PS: I need you guys to give me $5,000 so that I can have a statue of me put into Wasteland 2. Thanks.

[Captain Hi-Top 791]

I think it's a great idea, and if they can create games with the freedom of being fan funded, pump out quality work and complete games on their own self imposed timeline, then I don't see why it wouldn't gain traction and either become a normal avenue of game production, or lead to some new design studios cropping up or maybe both.

[Cactus 83]

I think it's a great idea, and if they can create games with the freedom of being fan funded, pump out quality work and complete games on their own self imposed timeline, then I don't see why it wouldn't gain traction and either become a normal avenue of game production, or lead to some new design studios cropping up or maybe both.

 

To me it seems like the modding craze, Great ideas and projects that never get released (IE Black Mesa Source). Only time will tell however

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

There seems to be an awful lot of "not giving DOM $5,000" right now. We need to fix that, guys.

[TheREALBrooksThompson 157]

Does anyone have an opinion on the whole new wave of crowd-sourced game making?

 

I mean, few people will be happier than I am that the Kickstarter page for Wasteland 2 has made 3x what they asked for, and counting. I'm just not sure that this sort of thing can be sustainable long term, and I don't know what will happen when the bubble on funding like this bursts.

 

I mean sure, Brian Fargo(Fallout! Fallout 2! Wasteland! Planescape Torment! Baldur's Gate!) and Tim Schafer(Monkey Island! Pyschonauts! Day of the Tentacle! Full Throttle! Grim Fandango!) can get away with it because they made old school games with die-hard fan bases, but who else could get AA funding levels for a game? John Romero burned through his goodwill years ago with Daikatana. Chris Avellone could probably do it, but then again: he worked with Fargo, so what would he be making that wouldn't be a joint project with Fargo? They're both working on Wasteland 2 for *****'s sake.

 

But yeah: does anyone have an opinion on this phenomena?

 

PS: I need you guys to give me $5,000 so that I can have a statue of me put into Wasteland 2. Thanks.

 

Even if it ultimately fails, it's a good thing any time innovation is happening. If it ends up not being sustainable, there will still be lessons learned both in what works and what does not work. That's good for the industry.

 

The worst thing the gaming industry can do is do what the recording industry has attempted to do, which is to ignore emerging technologies and paradigms and try to preserve pre-existing business models as much as possible. Fortunately, the gaming industry has been better about that kind of thing than the recording industry has, and things like this are part of that. It's a positive for sure.

[Cactus 83]

The worst thing the gaming industry can do is do what the recording industry has attempted to do, which is to ignore emerging technologies and paradigms and try to preserve pre-existing business models as much as possible. Fortunately, the gaming industry has been better about that kind of thing than the recording industry has, and things like this are part of that. It's a positive for sure.

 

Can't disagree more. Extended console life, rehash of engines/ideas and nickle-and-diming are going to be the ultimate downfall of the industry. Games in the past 5 years have declined dramatically in creativity and content value seems to be heading in the wrong direction.

 

I may just be a cynical bastard, but Im starting to see this in all forms of american media. Movies have become mindless drivel (was there even a good movie that came out last year?), Games are getting increasingly dull, and don't get me started on this era of modern music. It seems as all forms are moving down a continuum of what is exciting, fast, and quick and appealing in short bursts while void of any challenge or intellectual thinking.

 

Hopefully valve as something interesting up their sleeve with the rumors and happenings being reported. Lets just hope its not a steam branded laptop

[TheREALBrooksThompson 157]

Can't disagree more. Extended console life, rehash of engines/ideas and nickle-and-diming are going to be the ultimate downfall of the industry. Games in the past 5 years have declined dramatically in creativity and content value seems to be heading in the wrong direction.

 

I may just be a cynical bastard, but Im starting to see this in all forms of american media. Movies have become mindless drivel (was there even a good movie that came out last year?), Games are getting increasingly dull, and don't get me started on this era of modern music. It seems as all forms are moving down a continuum of what is exciting, fast, and quick and appealing in short bursts while void of any challenge or intellectual thinking.

 

Hopefully valve as something interesting up their sleeve with the rumors and happenings being reported. Lets just hope its not a steam branded laptop

 

That view is almost always complete bull****, and it's because you only remember the good things about the past and ignore the bad things. The gaming industry is in a much better place now than it ever has been.

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

Can't disagree more. Extended console life, rehash of engines/ideas and nickle-and-diming are going to be the ultimate downfall of the industry. Games in the past 5 years have declined dramatically in creativity and content value seems to be heading in the wrong direction.

 

I may just be a cynical bastard, but Im starting to see this in all forms of american media. Movies have become mindless drivel (was there even a good movie that came out last year?), Games are getting increasingly dull, and don't get me started on this era of modern music. It seems as all forms are moving down a continuum of what is exciting, fast, and quick and appealing in short bursts while void of any challenge or intellectual thinking.

 

Hopefully valve as something interesting up their sleeve with the rumors and happenings being reported. Lets just hope its not a steam branded laptop

 

First of all, I'm having a real difficult time grasping the "nickel-and-diming" argument when there are games that now cost over 100 million dollars to make, and an average AAA title costs at least 15 to 20 million. Fifteen years ago, games that cost 10 million were exceedingly rare, and games that cost 20 million were imaginary.

 

Second, the idea of extended console life has nothing to do with bad industry decisions; just the opposite, it's probably the only thing keeping the industry from bankrupting itself.

 

Launching a new console is fantastically expensive, on a scale that's hard to imagine. When the PS3 launched, Sony's game division lost 3.3 billion dollars over a two year period just from costing the PS3 at significantly less than it took to produce them. And they had to do that, because it was the only feasible way to compete with the cheaper Xbox 360, which had launched earlier and had already obtained some level of market share, and the substantially cheaper and more family friendly Wii. And despite operating at that loss, they still finished 3rd in this generation's console wars.

 

And that doesn't even include the damage done by things like smartphones and Ipads to the handheld market. Both Nintendo and Sony lost a gargantuan amount of money last year; it's why Nintendo is desperate to get the WiiU on the market before the end of the year.

 

Because gamers are a bunch of entitled *****es, who think they're owed a new console generation every 5 years, even as the cost of producing a new console generation has increased exponentially with each generation. The year the Xbox720 and the PS4 launch, both Microsoft and Sony will lose billions upon billions of dollars, and there is no guarantee their consoles will ever be profitable. Expecting them to repeatedly produce new consoles every five years at a loss is ludicrous; companies have a right to try to profit, and if that means extending console life past the typical 5 years, that's their right.

 

As for the "stuff was better in earlier times" argument, popular entertainment is almost always hot garbage. We remember stuff as being better from those eras, because the stuff that's still around from those eras was the awesome stuff.

 

For instance: in 1969, The Beatles released Abbey Road. Led Zeppelin released Led Zeppelin 1 and 2. The Who released Tommy. The Rolling Stones released Let It Bleed. CCR released Green River, Willy and the Poor Boys AND Bayou Country. King Crimson released In The Court Of The Crimson King. Neil Young released Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The Band and The Stooges both released their self-titled albums. It was a *****ING AMAZING year for music.

 

You know what the #1 song on the Billboard charts for 1969 was? This piece of ****:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9nE2spOw_o

 

 

If you watched that video, and were waiting for the amazing to happen, you'll notice that it never did. It's because that song is a piece of absolute hot garbage, sung by a band of annoying cartoon characters.

 

So yeah: looking back through rose-tinted glasses is something you of which you always have to be wary. Relative to its era, Wasteland might be my pick for the best RPG of all time, but as a game, it's grossly inferior to even the first Fallout, which came out a decade later, and for obvious reasons: purely from a technical standpoint, Fallout had thousands of advantages that Wasteland couldn't match.