Games and Realism: Part 2.1 - Profitability
First off, I would like to give a hearty welcome to all those who have visited this blog page in the past couple of days (and a special shout-out to Maj, for pointing people my way).
Secondly, I would like to say that, thanks to NBA Finals just starting and the Roland Garros French Open Tennis heading towards their finals, I haven't had as much free time of late. So I will resume my series on Games and Realism next week. But since I don't have as much time today, I would like to address a comment made about my last post instead.
For those who did not notice, Omar Kendall (who's excellent blog was one of the three, alongside Derek Daniel's and Eric Williams's, that inspired me to start my own blog) posted that my quest for games with artistically styled graphics has little logic, given the history of sales from games that did try to stray from the norm. Quite frankly, he is absolutely correct: there is very little profitability with games that try harder to be graphically daring. As others have also pointed out, America is far more drawn to realistic games, and games that attempt to innovate graphically have all tended to fail in sales. I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if Okami sells very poorly in the States. Since the only measure of success for games out there right now is sales, Omar's point is almost unarguable. What is a company's motivation to fund an artistic game?
It does make it difficult, as a result, to sit here and preach that games should try harder to show me things I've never seen before when I know full well those games won't sell. So it's apparent that my complaints and pleas to game makers is a plea for increasing video gaming's artistry, not its profitability. That may give my arguments little credibility telling people to favor artistry over profitability, but I think there is enough justification to start getting people to think about making artistic games. I think we're nearing that point where games can start having a home for both the blockbuster games and the artistic games.
I hate comparing games to movies, because it's always an unfair comparison for gaming. It's like calling every new great young basketball player "The Next Jordan." The usual response from the basketball player in question is that they want to be the first of who they are, not the next of someone else. And that's how games should be. They are their own medium and not some bastard child of movies.
And yet, in the face of saying that, I do have to make a comparison. The movie industry already has the structure in place to make room for blockbusters and independent/artistic films. In fact, it's very seasonal. Summer has the blockbuster action films with high budgets and flashy effects. And the winter has all of the awards-worthy artistic films. And because of the existence of competent awards organizations and a healthy dose of people willing to talk intelligently about movies, there actually turns out to be room for both the blockbusters and the art films.
I think games can approach the same level. I may expand on this concept in a future post, but if video games can also be criticized from an artistic standpoint by creating their own competent awards organizations, games can start being recognized for their technical and artistic merit rather than purely by their sales numbers. And once we have different criteria to judge games by, I think game makers will start to be more daring since their efforts can be properly recognized. And then, like movies, games can create their own seasons within a year. Games should have their official awards in the summer time. That way, very early winter can be the blockbuster season where they release the big sellers (to coincide with Christmas). Then, spring can be the independent/artistic gaming season, since spring is typically the slowest time of the year for games. Then, in the beginning of summer, right after the artistic games are released, we can acknowledge the accomplishments of gaming from the past full gaming year (a gaming year that starts in July, much like how a television year starts in September).
And then maybe we can start seeing a reason to create artistic games. This next generation proves to have a lot of potential. The likes of the Virtual Console on the Wii and XBox Live Arcade on the XBox 360 will provide many developers a simple environment to create new games without too much production and distribution costs. But it's still tough for them. I said in my last post that I was hoping that the next-gen consoles would provide developers with the ability to finally have the muscle to make some truly interesting visuals, but games for XBox Live Arcade and the Virtual Console probably won't be able to take advantage of that muscle. So we've still got a ways to go, but I think the starting potential is there for true console-based independent gaming.
But for now, sales numbers are the only thing that can drive the way a game is made. Once we can start establishing a proper means by which we can acknowledge artistic merit, games can have another driving force to properly make a home for artistic games as well. So for now, we can only hope one of two things happen: games find their own version of the movie industry's Pauline Kael to promote gaming as a true artistic form of entertainment or some developer out there is daring enough to try something creative and it turns out to be a smash hit. Until then, I'll keep trying to fight the good fight.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend, and please feel free to peruse past articles. Thanks again for stopping by.
- James
Secondly, I would like to say that, thanks to NBA Finals just starting and the Roland Garros French Open Tennis heading towards their finals, I haven't had as much free time of late. So I will resume my series on Games and Realism next week. But since I don't have as much time today, I would like to address a comment made about my last post instead.
For those who did not notice, Omar Kendall (who's excellent blog was one of the three, alongside Derek Daniel's and Eric Williams's, that inspired me to start my own blog) posted that my quest for games with artistically styled graphics has little logic, given the history of sales from games that did try to stray from the norm. Quite frankly, he is absolutely correct: there is very little profitability with games that try harder to be graphically daring. As others have also pointed out, America is far more drawn to realistic games, and games that attempt to innovate graphically have all tended to fail in sales. I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if Okami sells very poorly in the States. Since the only measure of success for games out there right now is sales, Omar's point is almost unarguable. What is a company's motivation to fund an artistic game?
It does make it difficult, as a result, to sit here and preach that games should try harder to show me things I've never seen before when I know full well those games won't sell. So it's apparent that my complaints and pleas to game makers is a plea for increasing video gaming's artistry, not its profitability. That may give my arguments little credibility telling people to favor artistry over profitability, but I think there is enough justification to start getting people to think about making artistic games. I think we're nearing that point where games can start having a home for both the blockbuster games and the artistic games.I hate comparing games to movies, because it's always an unfair comparison for gaming. It's like calling every new great young basketball player "The Next Jordan." The usual response from the basketball player in question is that they want to be the first of who they are, not the next of someone else. And that's how games should be. They are their own medium and not some bastard child of movies.
And yet, in the face of saying that, I do have to make a comparison. The movie industry already has the structure in place to make room for blockbusters and independent/artistic films. In fact, it's very seasonal. Summer has the blockbuster action films with high budgets and flashy effects. And the winter has all of the awards-worthy artistic films. And because of the existence of competent awards organizations and a healthy dose of people willing to talk intelligently about movies, there actually turns out to be room for both the blockbusters and the art films.
I think games can approach the same level. I may expand on this concept in a future post, but if video games can also be criticized from an artistic standpoint by creating their own competent awards organizations, games can start being recognized for their technical and artistic merit rather than purely by their sales numbers. And once we have different criteria to judge games by, I think game makers will start to be more daring since their efforts can be properly recognized. And then, like movies, games can create their own seasons within a year. Games should have their official awards in the summer time. That way, very early winter can be the blockbuster season where they release the big sellers (to coincide with Christmas). Then, spring can be the independent/artistic gaming season, since spring is typically the slowest time of the year for games. Then, in the beginning of summer, right after the artistic games are released, we can acknowledge the accomplishments of gaming from the past full gaming year (a gaming year that starts in July, much like how a television year starts in September).
And then maybe we can start seeing a reason to create artistic games. This next generation proves to have a lot of potential. The likes of the Virtual Console on the Wii and XBox Live Arcade on the XBox 360 will provide many developers a simple environment to create new games without too much production and distribution costs. But it's still tough for them. I said in my last post that I was hoping that the next-gen consoles would provide developers with the ability to finally have the muscle to make some truly interesting visuals, but games for XBox Live Arcade and the Virtual Console probably won't be able to take advantage of that muscle. So we've still got a ways to go, but I think the starting potential is there for true console-based independent gaming.
But for now, sales numbers are the only thing that can drive the way a game is made. Once we can start establishing a proper means by which we can acknowledge artistic merit, games can have another driving force to properly make a home for artistic games as well. So for now, we can only hope one of two things happen: games find their own version of the movie industry's Pauline Kael to promote gaming as a true artistic form of entertainment or some developer out there is daring enough to try something creative and it turns out to be a smash hit. Until then, I'll keep trying to fight the good fight.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend, and please feel free to peruse past articles. Thanks again for stopping by.
- James
posted by jchensor at
2:21 AM
14 Comments:
You're hitting tricky territory here because whatever qualifies as "artistry" in video games has yet to be defined. There was a raging debate over it at rogerebert.com a while ago, sparked by Ebert's dismissal of games as an art form, which, of course, generated a whole variety of replies. His editor, Jim Emerson, fielded the debate and continues to comment on it occasionally on his Scanners blog.
I think one conclusion we could take away from the debate was that video games are still very young and haven't reached a position yet where they can be consistently evaluated artistically. Are aesthetics (looks, sound, mood) the qualifications? Those fit most people's "normal" definition of art. But with games, mechanics and gameplay are inevitably measurable qualities, and are often the most important when evaluating a game. Would they be incorporated in an artistic evaluation of games?
It's too blurry right now to determine something like this. Video games are still in an early stage of evolution, and right now the qualifiers for what makes a good game need to be defined first before talking about their artistic values. The "good game" argument often comes down to playability, but what else should count? Graphics? Environment? Innovation? Originality? Once it's clear what we're looking for, self-enforcing standards for quality will appear (maybe they're already set?), and then the next step may be to talk about artistry. We're at the cusp of it, perhaps -- the fact that there was a raging debate anywhere in the first place means the ball is probably starting to roll.
By
LVJeff, at 12:50 PM
There is a segment of the industry where art and innovation can really flourish: the homebrew and mod communities.
People making and modifying games as a hobby, because they want to, not for money. A lot of the work there is not necessarily original, or even very good, but the great mods can really be something special. One that comes to mind is "Natural Selection", a netplay Half-life 1 mod inspired by Aliens, where the human side has one player hop into a command console, and for that one player, it's a RTS game. He manages build queues, dispenses upgrades for other players, and gives move and attack orders. For all the other players, it's a FPS, with the orders appearing on the HUD. They're free to ignore them, but then the "Commander" player will not give them upgrades, and as a team, they're not likely to fare well. It's a very different game that may not have made it commercially (though from what I've heard of the "Tribes" games, there may be something similar in them.
In any event, I think greater accessibility to dev kits for consoles would be extremely good for the creation of original games. And maybe someone would finally create a decent sequel to Herzog Zwei.
By
Anonymous, at 4:01 PM
I disagree with what you are stating as a "given."
Viewtiful Joe sold decently. Wind Waker sold well. 2 out of your 5 examples sold well, which is much better than average for the game industry.
Sure, Halo sells well. Then again, tons and tons of "realistic" looking games sell horribly.
The fact is, most games do not sell a lot. It is insane to compare a set of 5 or 10 games to the asbolute best sellers.
That said, the Sims does not have realistic graphics at all and it's the top seller of the last decade or so no. WoW is not realistic and it is far and away the best selling MMORPG.
I think your entire premise is incorrect.
Yoshi's Island sold well. Paper Mario did ok.
I don't see the evidence that America is drawn to realistic looking games. Again, The Sims and WoW.
That is what most developers put out, but that doesn't mean that's what the public is buying.
James M
By
Anonymous, at 8:02 PM
Well, I never meant to imply that realistic games sell well automatically. I was mostly commenting that games that try to do something different graphically, in general, do NOT sell well.
And a lot of the points you brought up were discussed a bit in the comments of my last post. Omar qualifies that, while Wind Waker sold well, it did not approach the numbers that Ocarina did.
And I did bring up The Sims in my comment reply to Omar as well. I did mention it as an example of a game that has done exceedingly well despite being created with a very abstract design. But rather than inspiring more creative game-making, it just inspired a bunch of Sims clones. ^_^
I guess the best way to sum up my point better than I probably did in the post: games that try something different visually usually catch everyone's eye and get a lot of talk, but they usually don't sell particularly well. And I think that people who are making games should taken the time to think a little more outside the box and just consider trying something a little more daring from time to time.
- James
By
jchensor, at 11:00 PM
James M you're basically saying one argument is flawed because it doesn't offer enough examples to support the claim, yet you defend it by offering examples for only a handful games - kind of ironic, no?
I think if you looked at the industry as a whole, you would see that there is a definite trend towards realism in graphics. The public - in NA and abroad - in general shy away from non-traditional looking games (there is no huge distinction between the visual preferences between NA and Japan, as has been incorrectly stated here; Ico, Katamari Damacy, Killer 7, and many other games with non-realistic art styles sell about the same number of copies in NA as they do in Japan - many sell better in Europe than in either territory). I really have to stress again that if there was a huge cry from the public for more non-traditional art styles, that these games would indeed exist with much larger representation than they do now. You can't go to a developer and say, "Well, The Sims is the best-selling game of all time, so we should make our games look like The Sims." Publishers don't bank on every game being a cultural phenomenon, they bank on them making a worthwhile return on their investment. That reliability is consistently seen through realism.
Yes, I've written on exactly what you say - The Sims succeeds not in spite of, but because of the happy visual balance it has struck, as have most of best-selling games of all time. But these games are few and far between. The overwhelming number of AAA games released by the big publishers, east and west, are going to be pushing the limits of graphical realism. Look no further than the shiny new Xbox 360 and pending PS3 for evidence of that.
I had the opportunity to sit in on a focus test for an upcomping next-generation game. This game is one that has shocked me in its visual excellence on more than one occaison. When one of the testers was asked what they thought about the graphics, they replied that they thought it was pretty, "cartoony," and that they could be better. The developer asked this tester if he thought "cartoony" was a bad thing, the tester replied, "Yeah, you should always try to be more real."
Statistically, this guy was smack-dab in the middle of the average game buying audience.
By
omar kendall, at 10:25 AM
"I was mostly commenting that games that try to do something different graphically, in general, do NOT sell well."
Most games do not sell well. That's the problem with your analysis.
I would tend to believe that Viewtiful Joe and Killer 7 both sold better because of their art styles. If Killer 7 had a very plain art style it would not have gotten nearly the attention it did. Same with Viewtiful Joe.
There aren't enough heavily stylized games to draw any real conclusions. But again the problem here is that your baseline is off. Not selling well is the norm.
If you pick 5 games at random and pit them against your 5 stylized games your stylized games sold better most likely.
For stylized games the data is just not there to say anything conclusively, there aren't enough of them to draw any conclusions.
Realistic vs. not realistic is another matter. I can't think of a Nintendo game made in the past 5 years (or really ever) that was realistic looking.
A lot of games today are based on real things, so the realistic art style makes some sense. A game based on NCAA football or racing with real cars or WWE wrestling, kind of makes sense they would tend to be realistic. These games have representational (rather than abstract) art styles because they are representing real object.
However I don't see realistic games selling better. That's not an argument you guys have made convincingly. Again, neither WoW or the Sims are realistic looking, and they have sold huge amounts. I wouldn't say that Ocarina of Time was realistic looking. Mario Kart? Animal Crossing? Smash Brothers? Any Sonic game ever made? Pokemon?
I don't think anyone (even your focus group morons Omar) thinks that Smash Brothers would be a lot better if it was super realistic looking.
The success of FFX might make you think that people prefer realistic-looking console-RPGs, but then DQ8 comes along.
I am sure that there are many people in the industry that believe that realistic graphics are a safer choice - but those people are not all rocket scientists. The industry is full of people who have no real clue, and the higher up the ladder you go the more true that becomes.
From come.to/magicbox, best selling console games in Japan this week:
New Super Mario Bros
Something Training
Another something training (the brain-training games?)
Metroid Prime: Hunters
World Soccer Winning 11
Tetris
Animal Crossing DS
ANOTHER TRAINING GAME (seriously)
Jikkyou Powerful Major League
DQ and FF Portable for PSP
How many of those are realistic? Maybe 2?
From Gamespot, top PC sales:
1 - Guild Wars Factions
2 - World of Warcraft
3 - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
4 - The Sims 2
5 - Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends
6 - The Sims 2 Family Fun Stuff Expansion Pack
7 - Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
8 - The Sims 2 Open for Business
9 - Age of Empires III
10 - Battlefield 2
11 - Civilization IV
12 - Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth II
13 - Star Wars: Empire at War
14 - Heroes of Might & Magic V
15 - Call of Duty 2
16 - Guild Wars
17 - Warcraft III Battle Chest
18 - Guild Wars Factions: Collector's Edition
19 - The Sims 2 Nightlife Expansion Pack
20 - The Sims Complete Collection
And console, also from Gamespot:
1 - New Super Mario Bros. (DS)
2 - Kingdom Hearts II (PS2)
3 - Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes a Day (DS)
4 - God of War (PS2)
5 - Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (Xbox 360)
6 - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Xbox 360)
7 - MLB '06: The Show (PS2)
8 - Guitar Hero (with Guitar) (PS2)
9 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2)
10 - Kingdom Hearts (PS2)
11 - X-Men: The Official Game (PS2)
12 - Over the Hedge (PS2)
13 - Fight Night Round 3 (Xbox 360)
14 - FIFA World Cup 2006 (PS2)
15 - The Godfather: The Game (PS2)
16 - Gran Turismo 4 (PS2)
17 - Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (Xbox 360)
18 - Midnight Club 3: Dub Ed Remix (PS2)
19 - Major League Baseball 2K6 (PS2)
20 - Major League Baseball 2K6 (Xbox 360)
To me that doesn't scream that games with realistic graphics are the way to go. It depends a lot on whether or not you see something like Civ4 as being realistic or not. To me it's neither here nor there.
Now, I will agree 100% that companies today MARKET realistic graphics a lot. They have done that for years. Since 3D cards started to catch on we have been inundated with things like "now with 32-bit voxel shadowing technology! Bump mapping and specular highlights!!! Pixel shaded reflections!!!!"
By
Anonymous, at 12:27 PM
I'm not sure why you sight Killer 7 as some sort of success, because it tanked; the thing didn't sell more than fifty thousand copies in North America. And the Japanese market is really a hard thing to look at right now, considering that it is dominated by a portable handheld, where technological limitations could be cited as the reason why graphics aren't really a consideration in purchasing decisions.
However, 12 of the 20 PC games you mention I would consider to not have a non-traditional art style (compared to say, Killer 7), and 6 of the remaining 8 are either a Sims or World of Warcraft property, and I've already established that an exception does not make the rule. From your console list, I would say at least 13-15 of them also fall into the traditional art category.
Now, you can call focus testers and people in publishing "idiots" all you want, but ultimately one is the largest group of people buying games, and the other is the group that decides which games to make. Either way, they're more important than the minority of people who might appreciate, and maybe even buy, something different.
I'm not making judgements about which one is better or worse, but you are totally mistaken if you think there isn't conclusive evidence about what sells consistently and what doesn't.
By
omar kendall, at 12:45 PM
Hmm my response magically evaporated.
Anyway, you say you have "conclusive evidence" but you've given basically zero actual evidence. (As in, any sort of quantitative analysis)
On your own blog you say "The fact of the matter is that a very specific type of game maker is making a very specific type of game for a very specific type of game player."
The Sims and WoW represent two games that broke out of the mold at least somewhat, and graphics are at least part of that equation.
If you compare EQ2 marketing to WoW marketing, EQ2 went on and on about the cool shaders they had and the realistic characters and such. WoW is aimed at a different crowd. They spend their resources on something other than textures and shaders, it runs on low spec computers, etc.
James Chen asks about financial incentive. A game like WoW has much lower art production costs. (At least per asset) That's money you can save or put back into other areas of the game.
If The Sims had super-realistic graphics it probably would not have made the light of day at all, given that it was very short-staffed during initial development.
WoW cost a ton of money to make, but each art asset is pretty modest. That means that money went into things like more assets, more quests, more random bits, better design, etc.
The realistic graphics market are going for a very specific type of gamer. Look at all the WW2 or special-ops themed FPS games. Or all the sports games based on real athletes. Racing games based on real cars.
Those games are aimed a very specific market segment. Then you look at a game like Animal Crossing. It's not a realistic depiction of anything, either in subject matter or graphics. The target audience is very different as well.
it's silly to discount The Sims and WoW when evaluating how graphics relate to sales. You are discounting them because THEY SOLD TOO WELL. That makes no sense.
---
There is a huge disconnect in general between what actually sells and what people THINK sells. Because people do what you do and discount certain games as outliers. Games like WoW sell well.Games like The Sims sell well. Roller Coaster Tycoon sells well. Roller Coaster Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon costs 1/100th of a lot of games to make and sell the same or better.
From a financial perspective it makes a lot more sense to try to make the next Zoo Tycoon or Sims than the next CounterStrike or Halo or Gran Tourismo.
Hell even GTA has pretty cartoony graphics and was built on a second-rate licensed engine. I certainly wouldn't say the GTA people strove for realism.
The US market has always, for whatever reason (probably dating back to the first-gen 3d cards) chosen to emphasize technology in marketing. It's not rare to read about bump mapping and pixel shaders and volume smoke and all that.
However I don't see the evidence that that actually moves copies. If you have the evidence, please share it.
By
Anonymous, at 3:44 PM
No, I think you're not choosing to see the evidence. Mentioning World of Warcraft and The Sims repeatedly - two games whose success is wholly attributed to appealing to people outside of the traditional gaming audience - is just flawed. The casual games market, the market that drove these two games into mega-success, only gravitates towards the top 1-2 games released every year. While they are a huge buying group, they don't buy often enough to steer the entire industry, and that's what I'm trying to get you to understand. However, the hardcore audience, while much smaller, is easier to polarize (meaning it's easier to get more of them to all buy the same games), and buys 3-4 times as many games per year, at least. It is this group that publishers try to satiate, as it's simply easier to get them to the stores to buy their games. It is this audience that buys the God of Wars, the Resident Evil 4s, the Raindow 6s, the Ghost Recons, the Oblivions, etc. Please, you're really oversimplifying things by trying to imply that publishers are just too dumb to see that everyone wants all of their games to be like The Sims and WoW.
It is absolutely faulty logic to say that it makes more financial sense to chase the best-in-genre games. Just look at any Sims clone and you'll see that none of them come close to performing as well. But, take a look at the first-person shooter genre, the sports genre, or the racing genre. These genres are jam-packed with really consistent, successful games.
I comb over sales data every day; I obsess over it. I am privvy to marketing data and audience polls, and I get to read about what they like. But also, I'm not an advocate for any one style over the other - I simply want to give the public what they want. If you rationally look at the bulk of games that consistently produce good numbers - and not just the more extreme cases - you will see that traditional graphics styles that lean towards realism perform well, and games that attempt highly stylized visuals do not. GTA - another game that stands alone in its genre in terms of sales - does not try for pixel perfect photoreality (take a look at a competing game like True Crime: New York City, and you will see that a much more realistic look is possible in that style of game), but they do go for a close enough approximation as to remain culturally relevant. It's the exact same thing that The Sims does. Trying to draw parallels between a game like The Sims and World of Warcraft is a bit misleading, grouping them into the same group and saying, "the public likes wild and crazy visual styles" is a bit misleading as well, I think - particularly considering that World of Warcraft doesn't reach anywhere near the audience that The Sims does.
By
omar kendall, at 4:26 PM
I'm beginning to think I may be not stating what I mean thoroughly because I've sort of painted myself into a corner. I talk about "realism" and why I don't think games that don't have realistic graphics sell well.
While "realism" is the word I want to use, I think I can properly convey my opinion a bit more by using the word "expected" instead. Yes, you are right: WoW doesn't have realistic graphics. But for what WoW is trying to present, a fantasy world with all sorts of monsters and non-human races, it presents it in the way you would expect it to be presented. There's nothing IN the graphics, just a visual that clues you in to what you are supposed to see. In other words, the graphics aren't an aide to any sort of "vision" outside of providing people what they expect to see the most.
Viewtiful Joe could have easily been made with realistic looking people. Killer 7 could have been made with realistic people models as well. Wind Waker could have tried to look like Twilight Princess will soon look like. But the makers of these games made conscious decisions to convey them in a "not-expected" way. And thery were all done for a conscious artistic reason. It's hard for me to call these styles "non-realistic," but that's the best way to do so for now. I guess my definition of realism even spans into the world of fantasy, it being how it would look in the minds of 85% of the population.
So what games like Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto and even WoW are doing is catering to what people expect to see in these games. So in my definition, WoW can't even count as a game that breaks from the norm. The Sims, and I'm not trying to discount it because it "sold too well," was a different monster. It's a game that tapped into some aspect of the minds of everyone, and became a smash (that aspect being the voyeur and wannabe-God in all of us).
I'm still waiting for the game that deliberately picks a "not-expected" visual style for the purpose of conveying more than just what people expect to really get some critical recognition (this will be a while because I don't think we have a proper body of judges capable ofmaking such a decision yet). I am not expecting financial success. A movie like "Good Night and Good Luck" will never be more popular than "Batman Begins," so it's hard to expect it to happen in other forms of media either.
By
jchensor, at 9:28 PM
Hi, sorry to bring up the topic of Save systems now but I didn't want to post a comment back in the old entries and not have it get read.
While I agree with nearly all your points, I think I can go even one step further than you: if you should be able to have the option to save the game at any time but to have continue points, why not just save *automatically* after an important item is obtained? for instance, in Metroid Prime, the fact that you obtained a bonus item would just be saved automatically.
And in fact, there are some rather obvious examples of exactly what I am talking about. Nearly all games in the "collecting" (most call it the 3d platforming genre) genre, e.g. Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Kameo, all save automatically whenever you obtain an important item.
Also, I think another important example of a genre that benefits from saving only at save points are (Japanese style) RPGs. In those games, the save point is a beacon of safety. When wandering into a tough dungeon, if you could keep all the items (including important ones) that you got but didn't have to fear death, it would destroy the difficulty, and you wouldn't have to worry about playing tactically. One might be tempted to argue "well, you'd have to be tough enough to get the items anyways," but it is one thing to simply want to survive a battle to get a tough item, and another to have to survive a whole stretch of a dungeon. Furthermore, if you are someone who is really worried about dying and losing your obtained items (which I am), then the game system allows for that, by letting me stock up on healing items and defensive equipment. These games would probably still benefit from the "nonpermanent" save system you mentioned, however, but they would have to save your exact location rather than let you warp back to the save point.
By
Anonymous, at 9:30 PM
Sorry, I suppose I should at least leave some thoughts on the thread's actual topic to be polite. I agree that there should be more games that dare to be stylistic and that it would be great if they could make more money. However, despite your acknowledgement of them, I think you are severely understating the potential of XBLA and Wii's Virtual Console.
Already, I see great looking games on XBLA (e.g. Wik and the Fable of Souls, Kaloki Outpost). As for the 50 meg limit: 1, MS has stated it is considerign allowing some exceptions to this rule if the game proves exceptional. 2, there are some games in the works which are using the Unreal Engine 3(!) and *are* staying within the 50 meg limit somehow, which should mean they'll have graphics muscle aplenty. and 3, 50 megs is PLENTY for 2D games! (discounting FMV)
Also, I don't like the graphics in Feel the Magic :P ahahah but I loved all the other examples mentioned.
By
Anonymous, at 9:38 PM
James, I think many people would disagree that WoW gives people what they expect. If you look at other fantasy MMORPGs they all look quite different from WoW, it is without a doubt a departure from the norm.
A lot of people will call Wow "Disney-like" or say that it has a cartoony look. Now of course you and I know that Wind Waker captured a Disney look far far better than WoW, but that is how a lot of people see it.
Many people say that the graphics in WoW are part of the appeal, the fact that it does (to them) appear highly stylized. I see this a lot and to me it's puzzling - to me the graphics in WoW just look like typical PC-game graphics with simpler models and textures. To each his own.
To me (and you I guess) it's nothing special, but for PC gamers used to "WW2 the game 5: now with another type of rifle!" I guess it's a refreshing change.
WoW is getting critical recognition as well as sales, and it is certainly seen as stylized by many people.
Wind Waker sold well and was rated well. Same with VJ. Same with Yoshi's Island. (The first good example of a highly stylized art style in a console game?)DQ8?
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Anonymous, at 10:00 PM
Just a quick note to Shin Duckmaster: Feel free to post on the actual comment portion of the older topics. I do get notified when I get comments, so I won't miss anything commented on the older posts. ^_^ But definitely thanks for the comments!
- James
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jchensor, at 12:21 AM
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