BioWare: Too many good computer games out there

[hurrdurr]

I absolutely despise "modern video gaming", with short and shallow games directed towards easy mainstream appeal (i.e. the console effect) and the concept of DLC.

[SamHughe]

I feel for the poor guy. He has to play all those games all the time. What a ty job! We should all be thankful for what we have. I mean think about it we could've ended up like this loser!

[DeltZ]

I feel for the poor guy. He has to play all those games all the time. What a ty job! We should all be thankful for what we have. I mean think about it we could've ended up like this loser!

right. He was talking about how there are too many good games and that as you get older you have less time to play them. Nothing to do with hating his job and that all games he plays are rubbish.

I think everyone must have just seen the single word "moaning" by the articles editor (fud) and took an emotive response.

[MrMojoZ]

I think everyone must have just seen the single word "moaning" by the articles editor (fud) and took an emotive response.

I think everyone just likes to whine and moan about video games. If I felt the same way a lot of the people on this forum do about the game industry I'd find a new hobby.

[XSAlliN]

Could someone point me to "the part where this is suppose to be a news"?!

[trinibwoy]

In the cold harsh light of reality, yes you can. If a game sells millions of copies, it's clearly catering to what people want in a game. The developers are tapping the "right" market and doing their jobs well.

Exactly. Whether or not a game is good is completely subjective. If millions of people think it is then it is. A few others looking down their noses at it doesn't change that.

[iddqd]

Sales say otherwise and that's all that matters in the end to a publisher. PC snobs saying a game is crap when it's selling hundreds of millions of copies doesn't change that fact.

Using the very same logic, one might be able to argue that Justin Bieber is a talented musician.

[hurrdurr]

Using the very same logic, one might be able to argue that Justin Bieber is a talented musician.

There can be no "definition" of a "good" game. However, if someone insists on a definition, it can only be how much people like it and how many copies it has sold; because everything else would be completely subjective.

You can't say "the best game is the one that takes the world from under your feet the most" or something like that.

[iddqd]

There can be no "definition" of a "good" game.

warm...

However, if someone insists on a definition, it can only be how much people like it and how many copies it has sold;

getting colder...

because everything else would be completely subjective.

HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT

You can't say "the best game is the one that takes the world from under your feet the most" or something like that.

getting colder again

[Dahmer]

Using the very same logic, one might be able to argue that Justin Bieber is a talented musician.

And that the ipad is awesome.

[Manicdan]

marketing dictates sales,
user reviews dictates quality,
imho

[El Mano]

In the cold harsh light of reality, yes you can. If a game sells millions of copies, it's clearly catering to what people want in a game. The developers are tapping the "right" market and doing their jobs well.

Same in pop music. If you tick the boxes of the majority, it is a success. Both in demographic and financial terms.

For anything to change, tell millions of people to expect more & better.

Doesn't mean I think it's *right*... but it is *true*

I guess what you mean is that Coke is a much better drink than a 20 yo Scotch or than a good Bourbon.

Brainless games for brainless people, MW2 for example.
You can't compare MW2 ty story (and graphics) to Metro 2033 or Call of Pripyat, to name just a pair.

[crash5s]

I absolutely despise "modern video gaming", with short and shallow games directed towards easy mainstream appeal (i.e. the console effect) and the concept of DLC.

This isn't the "console effect" this is just where games are heading. As someone that has owned consoles since being a kid, and until rather recently also played PC games, all platforms have the same problem.

The blame can be placed entirely on hardware makers, people who love graphics, and people who want games that can show off high end systems. Those are the reasons games suck today.

As a result making games is extremely expensive. So unless it's going to sell a ton of copies, it's not worth the effort. And once that initial investment is made to develop things it makes sense to milk those assets as long as possible to recoup the most amount of money.

If you took a risk and made a game that was new, deep, and wouldn't sell gangbusters you'd be a moron. And so would anybody who would give you money for that buisness.

As a result there are "good games", and they haven't been dumbed down, but don't expect any sort of ground breaking GFX or other tricks because there isn't the money behind it.

You can sell a game that isn't made for the mainstream, but if you don't want to lose a ton of cash on it you aren't going to have any sort of visuals, physics, great sound, behind it, that's where the $$$ is.

[ripken204]

The blame can be placed entirely on hardware makers, people who love graphics, and people who want games that can show off high end systems. Those are the reasons games suck today.

you do know what forum this is...right?
hardware is at a certain point, software should be designed to use the hardware that we have.

since computers have existed, the limit has been hardware.
we could always program things to use the hardware, we wanted more/faster memory,hdd,Hz, we could always find a use for more.

within the last couple of years that seems to have stopped..
sure there are exceptions in research fields and such, but as far as it applies to us it has stopped. hardware is now beyond what software demands, the blame must be put on the programmers who won't make use of it.

[zanzabar]

It's not entirely what I meant to say.

The idea is that if you pay money for a bad game there's a congitive dissonance: 'I spend money' and 'this game is bad'. To reduce the dissonance, you force yourself to believe the game wasn't that bad after all (!= "it was great"). In order to do that, you try to find the positive aspects of the game and are more balanced in your discussions about the game. It doesn't mean you liked the game more.

It's the same with people who will try to defend the hardware they bought as being the best choice simply because they don't want to face the fact that there was a better choice.

Because there's an easy access to games to be downloaded, there is no cognitive dissonance. As there's no justification required, they can just be as negative as possible about it.

i dont see that as valid, if a game is bad its bad there are vary few times that i can remember that paying for something made me feel better about it being bad; if anything if i buy a bad a game im pissed off and trudge through the game but if i acquire a game for free or cheap (borrowed, steam, frys bin,"downloaded") then i dont get pissed and will just not finish it or go oh well it was worth $5 or whatever it was. but the topic is not about this and piracy is not that prevalent in the US for people who would buy the games but instead pirate so it dose not really have an affect on the market.

This isn't the "console effect" this is just where games are heading. As someone that has owned consoles since being a kid, and until rather recently also played PC games, all platforms have the same problem.

The blame can be placed entirely on hardware makers, people who love graphics, and people who want games that can show off high end systems. Those are the reasons games suck today.

As a result making games is extremely expensive. So unless it's going to sell a ton of copies, it's not worth the effort. And once that initial investment is made to develop things it makes sense to milk those assets as long as possible to recoup the most amount of money.

If you took a risk and made a game that was new, deep, and wouldn't sell gangbusters you'd be a moron. And so would anybody who would give you money for that buisness.

As a result there are "good games", and they haven't been dumbed down, but don't expect any sort of ground breaking GFX or other tricks because there isn't the money behind it.

You can sell a game that isn't made for the mainstream, but if you don't want to lose a ton of cash on it you aren't going to have any sort of visuals, physics, great sound, behind it, that's where the $$$ is.

it dose not cost more to make a standard HD quality texture/model for the environment or characters than it dose to make a sub HD console one if they are in 3d and while effects do cost money since they take time its not that much time if u have a proper SDK/engine to work from. so if anything UT3 and the consoles that have no power or ram and came out rather weak on the graphics and memory side (and the 360 underpowered in all things and still on dvds) are holding it back since to make a game work on that and look good multiplatform it would take alot more work since u have to lower the quality of the textures to work in a 560 mesh instead of even the basic 720 lvl of HD. and the graphics are mostly from art direction u dont need photo or hyper realism to make it look good if anything those cost the most but make it look worse than most other art styles.

and there were cheap to normal costing games that looked and were good from the last few years, bioshock, boarderlands, fallouts, batman AA, trine, torchlight, WOG, dragon age, mafia2, brutal legend, maybe bc2 sicne it was not the cost of the previous shooters at that lvl. and there was a bunch of expensive bad games like MW2, COD:BO, dirt2, prince of persia, HAWX2 (or anything ubi except AC), fable2/3.

edit look at last weeks soap box on g4 its exactly what i was thinking http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/70...s-Soapbox.html

[K404]

I guess what you mean is that Coke is a much better drink than a 20 yo Scotch or than a good Bourbon.

For the respective companies... yes.

Niche market will be more satisfying, but you'll be a smaller company with smaller profits.

Production costs of Bourbon, Single Malt etc are lunatic multiples of that of Coke. Then theres the niche market you sell to, before you even take age restrictions and dry states into account.

From a purely financial point of view, whiskey is lunacy

Aston Martin or Pagoni Vs... hmmmmmmm Smart?

[SoF]

oh the ut99 vs. quake 3 debates.

Too old, BF 1942 FTW!

Can't agree with him - most of the current game are just the 20.000nd shooter or 30.000nd racing game...there is not so much new in there...prefer to go for good indie-games currently. They offer a lot more fun to me...

[BababooeyHTJ]

I've been enjoying Divinity 2 DKS recently. I found New Vegas to be fun. I've been hearing good things about Two Worlds 2. I liked Civ V (Civ IV at launch is not the Civ IV that we know today). Thats just games that have been released in the past couple of months. To say that there is nothing but crap out there you must have a pretty closed mind or just that typical elitist attitude which isn't exactly uncommon here..

[XSAlliN]

I've been enjoying Divinity 2 DKS recently. I found New Vegas to be fun. I've been hearing good things about Two Worlds 2. I liked Civ V (Civ IV at launch is not the Civ IV that we know today). Thats just games that have been released in the past couple of months. To say that there is nothing but crap out there you must have a pretty closed mind or just that typical elitist attitude which isn't exactly uncommon here..

+1 QFT!

Some of this guys talk as if they have an "age crisis"... The truth is (a possible truth) - they got older (or "old") and can't have the same satisfaction as they did when younger (which doesn't necessarily mean - 12 years old, your still young even at 20 - others feel the same even at 40+...). So no, the games or not the problem... YOU GUYS ARE!

[mk-ultra]

Sales say otherwise and that's all that matters in the end to a publisher. PC snobs saying a game is crap when it's selling hundreds of millions of copies doesn't change that fact.

i bought it and regret it what does it makes of your statistic?

diablo 3 and portal 2 is all i care for now on

[DilTech]

You know, in some ways he's correct... Just people aren't looking at this correctly.

PC games, unlike console games, KEEP their community of players for quite awhile. A console shooter, for example, becomes practically a ghost town as soon as "the next big thing" comes around. PC titles, on the other hand, have a more faithful community. The community create new maps, mods, and even upgrade the graphics for the games they love. I mean, look how many dedicated players are still on CS 1.6/CS:S/BF2/BF2141/Quake 3/UT99!

Looking at it in this light, there's a LOT of good games on the PC.

[nn_step]

actually I would argue, we have exceptionally few Good games.

And then there are the games I like to call " storms" which tend to include two or more of the following:
1) DRM
2) Bad Game play
3) Poor Multiplier
4) Bad interfaces
5) Side channel installations
6) Breaking already working programs that are in no way connected to the game.

[XSAlliN]

You know, in some ways he's correct... Just people aren't looking at this correctly.

PC games, unlike console games, KEEP their community of players for quite awhile. A console shooter, for example, becomes practically a ghost town as soon as "the next big thing" comes around. PC titles, on the other hand, have a more faithful community. The community create new maps, mods, and even upgrade the graphics for the games they love. I mean, look how many dedicated players are still on CS 1.6/CS:S/BF2/BF2141/Quake 3/UT99!

Looking at it in this light, there's a LOT of good games on the PC.

You're wrong regarding the bolded text, mainly for two reasons:

1.Shooters as in FPS come from PC arsenal... even the famous Halo which does have his own community (dedicated fans) is not a true console shooter (pretty common to any PC shooter), yet Gears of War is another story.

- check Halo, MW2, GW... and see if it's a ghost town...

2.If we're talking about consoles - their hardcore community is based on Arcades fans like Tekken, StreetFigther, Mortal Kombat, KoF, Twisted Metal, Vigilante and so on...

The moving along to next thing part is just as valid for consoles as it is for PC's. Same dedication for PC titles can be valid for consoles as well... I still have fun playing Tekken or Vigilante with friends, yet we were also hardcore Quake 2, UT, CS 1.6, SC, AoE 2 players but that doesn't seem fun anymore.

What you did with your post has name and it's called: PREJUDICE! - everybody's doing it this days...

[Carfax]

All this console bashing is ridiculous. There are so many excellent console games out there that I wish would be ported to PC..

[prava]

It's not entirely what I meant to say.

The idea is that if you pay money for a bad game there's a congitive dissonance: 'I spend money' and 'this game is bad'. To reduce the dissonance, you force yourself to believe the game wasn't that bad after all (!= "it was great"). In order to do that, you try to find the positive aspects of the game and are more balanced in your discussions about the game. It doesn't mean you liked the game more.

It's the same with people who will try to defend the hardware they bought as being the best choice simply because they don't want to face the fact that there was a better choice.

Because there's an easy access to games to be downloaded, there is no cognitive dissonance. As there's no justification required, they can just be as negative as possible about it.

You imply the opposite you say. Lets dissect your position:

a) I spend money
b) This game is bad
c) You force yourself to believe the game wasn't that bad after all

So, instead of:
a) I spend money
b) This game is crap
c) I'm an idiot (I've been screwed..whatever)

You try to feel better with yourself because I spend money and, as such, the game needs is better.

All this together means exactly the opposite: when somebody pays for a game he will not be objective because he has to justify the spending. If, on the other hand, you try a game for free, there is no pressure inside you nor any need to justify your acquisition...and as such you will be able to make a more free critique.

With that said, there are people who do not care wether they paid or not when making a critique. I buy all the games I do play yet I'm not always satisfied with them. Bioshock, for example: I read so many good reviews about it, so many good things that I thought It would be awesome...and it wasn't. Controls were sluggish (being an FPS that's not acceptable) and I could never even end it. I swear I felt so bad about such a waste of money I started pirating all the games I wanted so to be sure I wanted them (and then I bought them). Nowadays I just don't hurry that much and I let others be the "lab rats" so I can enjoy the games fully without getting so pissed about a spending not working at all (this means that If I have to buy a game more than a year later of its publishin so that I can enjoy it nearly 100%...so be it. Like Stalker, at the beginning it was so bugged you couldn't bear it...).