EGM's April fool's jokes really suck...

Don't be so hard on GTA. GTA 3 was pretty much revolutionary, in my opinion. That kind of vastness and freedom was never seen before in a 3D game... except maybe Elite ^_^.

The sequals were good too - OK, they didn't offer much better in terms of storyline and the missions in San Andreas can get pretty awful, but they did add a lot - the size of the map in SA is something I thought would have been impossible to do on the PS2, but they did it somehow...

They were by no means without their flaws, though, and they did just seem like christmas cash-ins for Rockstar. If they spent more than one year between the sequals they probably could have done *much* better...

 

What about Mech theft auto? Oh yeah, I forgot thats Lone wolf. :smt082

 

well the GTA games are an example of the little differences between trading high end graphics for gameplay. The San Andreas map was probably 3 times as big as Vice City and yet there were no loading screens anywhere. Hell, even many xbox games cant do that.

 

This discussion is ridiculous. You guys are acting like "the casual gamers are stupid" or something. Is one only a hardcore gamer if they play obscure Japanese games or games that sell 10 copies? Oh noes, I like the GTA and teh Galoes 2, that makes me a very casual gamer, stupid, and I'm obviously causing the death of the industry.

Not.

 

I don't know how you're managing it, but you're still missing the point. I will try one last time: I hate the stylistic choices that are being made in games today. Not only are the appearances and audio difficult to stomach and invasive, but I find the gameplay of the offending titles bland, boring and derivative. I also hate the lack of innovation shown by developers as a result of cautious investors. The thing that bothers me about San Andreas the most is not the game itself, which I'm sure is adequate if you can look past the pathetic gangster shit (apologies that I don't feel inclined to), but that it is going to inspire many other companies to pull the same trick - hence "fiddy" games etc. For every one of these embarrasing cash-ins we have one less decent game on the shelves, and for every success of these titles we get less chance of it in the future. THAT is why I think these games will be the death of the industry - at least, the death of any games that I actually want to pay money for.

 

Indeed. Hell, games are games and we can all play them if they're good. The bad part is the "me too" mentality of the industry that tries to pander to "hip" consumers by rehashing the same succesful formula - even if said formula was really cool. Thus, instead of doing things the hard way and actually innovating (perhaps the way said formula did in the beginning), they just copy. What do we get? The same game, different names, different companies, several million times. Try something different? There isn't, because it won't sell. Until the copy games themselves become so derivative they don't sell either. Then the retailers have several hundred million unsold copies of "Mack Dady Xtreme In-Line Pimp My ho Redux Supa Bling-Bling edition, Muthafuckaz!", by EA(tm), and the industry as a whole takes the damage. When every game was either absolute utter tripe or a generic space invaders or pacman rehash, there was only so much that the industry could take until it collapsed into itself. Now that innovation does not sell, I wonder how many times we will get the "same" thing until the industry drowns itself in its repulsive derivative franchised vomit.
Neither Alchy nor myself are saying anything against your taste in gaming. Hell, if what you like is what's available, more power to you, dude.
Thing is, when that's the ONLY thing available and little by little the industry becomes stagnant, ALL gamers suffer. Casual gamers are what this "trendy" gaming style panders to. Casual gamers, however, play because it's cool. Once the fad is over... well, everybody is fucked. The industry might be very sorry of letting innovation, what brought forth most of the true gamer crowd, slip by to make a quick and easy buck.
By then, it'll probably be too late, and we'll have Industry Crash V2.0 on our heels.

 

do you people understand basic economics? Companies see that a certain formula succeeds right now. Why waste an opportunity to jump on a cash cow and release a product with unknown potential. You can use the GTA example..sure, but a few years ago it was all the extreme sports getting games after the tony hawks hit really big. Companies go for the money.

Every industry has these trends of one product being copied by others while the getting is hot. It's not as bad as you are making it. consumers can tell which are quality and which suck ass.

 

It's always been that way. Why would it change?

 

Yeah, there's pretty much always been crap games, sequals that never stop, and dull product placement games. I'm not sure if it is really getting any worse - there is the fact that more people than ever before are buying video games - but I'm by no means trying to deny there's a problem here.

I have bought *FIVE* PS2 games since I got the system for christmas 2002. There's not really any other games on the system I want, besides GT4 (which only came out last week) and Gradius V (which is a pain in the arse to find here!). Besides those, there's really not much that stands out to me. Not really saying much about the quality of games these days, is it? I dunno, maybe I've just got too picky in my old age (OK, I'm only 19 ^_^), maybe it's just apathy towards new video games in general, or maybe there is just too much shit.

 

i vote for too much shit.

now back on topic!

 

I don't really undestand the arguing entirely, since there has always been crap games. Just check your local bargain bin for games you didnt even know existed.
Besides, the Bungie guys made an FPS, and most of you hardcore guys probably liked it, until it got popular. Is that it? If a game is "popular" is it casual? What I would consider casual would be Killzone, which is such a Halo rip off, its not even funny. I see the points of both sides, and you guys made some good points, but I think companies copying other money making games was and is very common. I don't think the Industry will die, tho. Just think about it, will GTA ish games in Really infest the whole market? No. Someone else will make a different stylish game (good or bad) somewhere down the line, and everyone will like it, then it will get popular, and all the companies will copy it, too. It could be a good or bad thing, it just depends on the game made, I guess, but thats what I think will happen. Besides, who in their right mind would be dumb enough to buy shitty rehashes of games in the first place?! Those are probably the games from the bargain bin you guys forgot or didnt even know about. My Wal-mart still has copies of Legend of Dragoon for Christ's Sake!!!

 

lol, I saw the bargain bin at walmart the other day and it had like 50 copies of the simpsons hit and run game and some other lame shit they couldnt sell at $9.99

 

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that Hit and run game! That SO demolished the market with its GTA-ness. :smt043 :smt042 :smt082

 

I have to disagree with you Alchy. Some Developer will create a new and innovative game and the other developers will run with it. Sometimes they will improve on the original idea and sometimes they won't and this goes on until someone creates the next new big idea. It has been like this since the beginning of the arcade era if you think about it and for every genre of game.

Pac Man spawned clones like Lock n' Chase and Ladybug in the early eighties while Final Fight spawned tons of similar side scrollers in the late eighties. Do I even need to mention Street Fighter II? This was just quickly off the top of my head and applies to consoles just the same. One developer leads and the rest follow. The industry works in cycles but it does move forward (I hope that makes sense). Maybe at this point you don't like the direction that games are going but it will change eventually to something you like again.

I think the fact that games like Katamari Damacy and XX/XY Feel The Magic were released here show the opposite of what you're worried about Greatsaintlouis. Could you imagine a game like Katamari Damacy being released here five or six years ago. They would never have brought a game like that out here and on the off chance they did it would have been changed so much that you would have barely recognized it.

If anything I think we will see more distinctly Japanese games in the future. The fight for market share is so intense that developers will port games they never would have dreamed of before to get a piece of it and hopefully find the next big thing for the US market in the process.

 

Actually, quite a lot of games in the U.S. are slowly turning to anime style games. You can't open a mag, (which is what this topic was about in the first place, ironically . ) without seeing anime characters. I also like Working Desings as the last developers to be brave enough to bring obscure Japanese games ashore. @Einbebop, rare obscure japanese games can be fun! I didnt know what Tales of Phantasia was until I read a review for it on I-mockery.
Translation nation is a good site for this type of stuff.
http://www.fantasyanime.com/garden/translations.htm
But there are SOOOO much more that I want to know about.

 

Working Designs was definitely a forerunner when it came to obscure Japanese titles. They are not the only ones anymore though and not to knock them any but they also tended to localize only the safer titles. Companies like Sega, Namco, and Eidos (One thing I'll give them credit for) have taken much riskier ventures with games like Seaman, Taiko Drum Master, and Mad Maestro. When it comes to special editions though no one can come close to Working Designs.

 

Yes, crappy games have always existed. The crucial thing that's changing is that games are getting far, far more expensive to make - so before where an investor only had a small amount to lose, they now have tens of millions. That's why we inarguably are going to see less risk-taking. You're not going to see situations like "Some Developer will create a new and innovative game and the other developers will run with it" for very much longer, because developer A will never get the cash to make the innovative game in the first place. Again I remind you of the case of American McGee, a well respected game maker with a history of high-quality big-budget titles. He couldn't even get funding for Oz without making a film to tie in with it. If he can't get funding for such a low-risk investment, how likely is it that an interesting game like Rez would get it these days, or in the next generation of consoles? Does this not worry you at all?

 

.I'll admit that it's always in the back of my mind but it doesn’t worry me too much. I look at the game industry much like the movie industry. Sure you have the big studios pumping out the big summer blockbusters but that doesn't stop them form making the smaller independent films either.

 

Agreed, I've thought of that analysis myself. The trouble is that films aren't getting more expensive to make at the rates games are. Middleware is a possibility to counteract the expense of developing an entire game, but licensing fees will probably end up prohibitively expensive - the cost of devlopment is just slightly distributed. Not to mention the cost of producing art/models/animations/sounds/environments will always be present.

 

Working Designs often gets badmouthed by the more 'hardcore' gamers as having less-than-perfect translations, edited difficulty, etc., but the simple truth is that if not for them, the Japanese localization scene might be far, far smaller than what it is today. They definately deserve recognition for doing what they do well longer than almost anyone out there, barring first-party publishers of course.