The State of the Art

[FullAuto]

It's interesting times in the games industry. Here in the UK, the biggest specialist games retailer is about to go down the toilet, we're on the cusp of a new console generation (the handhelds have either gone there already or are merely having a hardware iteration, depending upon who you talk to), and PC seems to be reinvigorated thanks to indie projects.

 

Publishers

EA's Origin seems to be a bizarre decision, a publisher-specific digital distribution service. If that isn't pure greed I don't know what is. Their attempt to have a microwave-ready brand with Dead Space was kind of off-putting, despite the games being decent. Even their new games I'm interested in are remakes (SSX) and some of their re-imagined titles could not interest me less (Syndicate). Probably the top studio-killer going?

 

Ubisoft are really no better, with their Uplay rubbish, online DRM and are probably the most-pathetically-behind-a-single-series publisher going (Assassin's Creed, eight games in four years, I think?). Despite this, they're still making some decent games (Driver San Francisco, I Am Alive).

 

Activision (I didn't know they were owned by Vivendi, remember them?) are firmly reliant on COD, with nothing else anywhere near it, despite some of them being decent (Blur, Singularity).

 

The world-spanning Square Enix has absorbed Eidos and they are putting out some interesting games (Deus Ex HR, Just Cause 2, Tactics Ogre) but are also responsible for some right old shit (Final Fantasy).

 

THQ are still plugging along, despite not having a single top-flight title, they've got plenty of other stuff (Saint's Row, Red Faction, Darksiders) and some stuff I don't get, but seems popular (Warhammer 40K).

 

Sega have been the best for me over the past few years, (The Club, Vanquish, Yakuza, Bayonetta, Resonance of Fate, Valkyria Chronicles, Alpha Protocol, Binary Domain), with little scummy activity as far as I know.

 

Platforms

Sony's approach has been a disturbing mix of risk-taking with very different games (Journey and Flower, for instance), copying the Wii with their Move system, and general stupidity. They've released some great stuff on the PSN, making some truly classic games available, but they've also released a torrent of shit (remember WWII: Soldier? No? No-one does because it's shite!). They've buggered up God-knows how many releases on the PSN, with many titles being delayed without explanation, yet released games which are otherwise unavailable in the UK (admittedly sometimes for a steep price).

 

Nintendo have had to suffer the Wii being basically ignored, with their motion controls being either twisted to suit pad controls or just denigrated, with virtually no devs making the effort to think about them. It's also strange to see the releases slowly tail off into three really big RPG releases (Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, Zelda: Skyward Sword) which is pretty strange for a 'kiddy' console when there's no real competition on other consoles. Some really different hardware, with what I'd consider a healthier approach, resolutely ignored. Their digital service has been horrific, the WiiWare service is terrible, their titles are mainly shit, with really old crappy games uploaded alongside genuine classics, and a firm attitude not to bring previously-unreleased games to these shores. Releasing products to suit shareholders (the 3DS, f'instance) has backfired for them, with it actually negatively impacting their share prices because the products aren't ready to be released.

 

The PC seems to me to be the haven for the most niche and most different gaming experiences, with the widest range of games. Indie is back in a big way, with Kickstarter funding projects, and the best stuff deservedly finding its way to consoles (Braid, Trine). Steam, Desura, Good Old Games and plenty of other services are providing a way for gamers to get their hands on a massive range of games, and OnLive and others are providing an interesting (if flawed) new way to get games. Games like Dear Esther and To The Moon interest me far more than the massive titles like Skyrim, and yet the return of old games looks hearty (X-Com, Panzer Corps).

 

It disappoints me hugely to see how little we have advanced. I used to think I came from a fairly nice society, relatively speaking, but looking at the medium of games, the attitudes are much the same, the sexism, racism and general bigotry remain unchallenged, the politics tend to be extremely dodgy, the behaviour of gamers tends to be disgusting on average, and the viewpoints extremely narrow-minded and hardware-centric. I'm not happy with the move away from physical media to cloud computing, where you seem to own nothing and can be kept out at will. I'm not happy with the lack of innovation, driven by gamers moaning about the lack of innovation and then buying the same old games again. The partisan infighting over essentially nothing is some of the most pathetic I've ever seen, (PC versus consoles, Nintendo versus Sony versus Microsoft).

 

Roll on 2012.

[Thorondor]

It disappoints me hugely to see how little we have advanced.(...)

Most trends you bring up will remain unchanged (all-out digital for certain) a good helping of shiny worthlessness and progress in terms of innovation largely lukewarm.

 

In my view the PC remains the most open and most promising platform in terms of moving forward, what with it being where the strength of indy efforts, modding, et al, reside and about the lowest barrier for entry as self-publishing goes.

 

In a way it's almost like we're back in the days of shareware, and game pricing is staying accessible (name your own price even) which are hearty developments.

 

Also:

According to a report from the non-profit PC Gaming Alliance, global revenue generated by PC gaming set a new record of $18.6 billion in 2011. China led the way with an amazing 27 percent increase over the previous year, followed by the US, Germany, the UK, Japan and Korea, whose numbers grew by 11 percent each. PCGA

[Sunflash]

BUT I THOUGHT THE PC MARKET WAS DYING!

 

./lametrollbaitislame.

 

 

In all seriousness, I'm not overly concerned. Consoles still seem kinda silly to me, doubly now that PC games are finally able to match them in regards to the ability to do decent action/platformy stuff.

 

I was somewhat concerned for a while that perhaps companies were ignoring the whole modding community, but what with Skyrim still doing the construction set; I suspect my fears were unfounded.

[silencer_pl]

PC market is far from dying and strangely so Capcom begins to make their products for PC (Racoon City, RES 6) - though later than console versions but It will be an excellent conversion.

 

My only biggest gripe is that textures for PC are just plain copies from consoles and everyone knows that PCs can handle much more detailed textures than consoles. And don't start on DLCs..... sometimes I wish that a lightning would strike EA, Activision and Ubisoft.

[FullAuto]

I remember when I snapped up Ubisoft's games. I bought Prince of Persia, Beyond Good and Evil, and one of the Rainbow Six titles, I think, in a matter of days.

 

I don't think DLC is a bad thing, any more than expansions were a bad thing years ago, it's the new attitude to it, where devs hold back content. They try to excuse it, "It wasn't developed at the same time as the game." but that doesn't mean anything, they still planned to do it, and so still planned to hold back content from the game (see also putting the content on the game disc, but only allowing you to access it with a purchase, extremely scummy). Fair enough if you have a brilliant idea after release, or it's part of another dev cycle, but outright milking is pretty stupid and more to the point, pretty impossible to disguise.

 

Forgot to mention Capcom actually. Past masters at game iterations (look at the Streetfighter games), they've turned that up to maximum and I've lost interest. I liked the RE Chronicles games on the Wii, kudos for giving Okami another chance, but RE ORC and such don't interest me, along with the action-oriented RE games. Got all the Ace Attorney games for DS, though, they're amazing.

[silencer_pl]

I don't think DLC is a bad thing, any more than expansions were a bad thing years ago, it's the new attitude to it, where devs hold back content. They try to excuse it, "It wasn't developed at the same time as the game." but that doesn't mean anything, they still planned to do it, and so still planned to hold back content from the game (see also putting the content on the game disc, but only allowing you to access it with a purchase, extremely scummy). Fair enough if you have a brilliant idea after release, or it's part of another dev cycle, but outright milking is pretty stupid and more to the point, pretty impossible to disguise.

 

I think someone said it here or I've read it somewhere else....

 

Unlockables and expansions. (Ok I know Shank has unlockable constumes - also last game that I saw it was Wolverine). But try forcing that idea to Ubi or EA.

[Azrael Strife]

I don't think DLC is a bad thing, any more than expansions were a bad thing years ago, it's the new attitude to it, where devs hold back content. They try to excuse it, "It wasn't developed at the same time as the game." but that doesn't mean anything, they still planned to do it, and so still planned to hold back content from the game (see also putting the content on the game disc, but only allowing you to access it with a purchase, extremely scummy). Fair enough if you have a brilliant idea after release, or it's part of another dev cycle, but outright milking is pretty stupid and more to the point, pretty impossible to disguise.

[FullAuto]

What is it about people who talk with their hands? I don't mean signing, either, before anyone inhales in shock thinking I'm picking on the deaf.

 

That game has some kind of curse on it too, it made that Aris Bakhtanians chap act like an utter twat.

[Bomb Bloke]

Can't say I much like the concept of DLC. On the surface, it makes enough sense; pay for product, get product, and you can typically expect a method to back it up securely. There's nothing really unfair about that if you put aside the "lock and key" examples, where all the DLC does is enable content that was already there to begin with.

 

However, it still rubs me the wrong way because of presentation. You've typically got to sign up for an account somewhere and hand over extra money for something you suspect you should've gotten to begin with... A lot of this perception hinges on how big the DLC is, really. Some are really small and insignificant features that are so trivial you probably should get them free, whereas larger packs (like expansions) don't quite feel like such a rip off even if the price is the same relative to the content.

 

And sometimes you sit and stare at a given DLC for a while before realising that your game will be worse off if you buy it. Seems there's a lot of stuff out there that's sole purpose is to make a game easier.

 

I've decided that games are going the way TV's long since gone. Once upon a time, I was a kid and watched TV shows. Times changed, I looked at the TV of the time and thought to myself that the old stuff was better. Now I look at it, and realise that it's all been the same the whole time; just the same concepts recycled over and over again with different wrappers. TVTropes.org would have me believe that its behind this revelation, and is probably quite right; but another part of it has to be that I've played a lot of games.

 

I used to think there's been no innovation since the mid-'90s, and while I may well be right about that, that's probably only because that's about the time when 3D graphics started to become viable - the gaming innovation was directly tied to the near-constant surges in hardware capabilities. Pretty much nothing has changed since then, at least, not in terms of how games are played. I'm not sure how much of that has to do with systems not really getting much more powerful (we just keep throwing in more cores), and how much of that has to do with the fact that games "need" to be compatible with the current generation of consoles (which are now over six years old).

 

So what would be enough to provoke another true revolution? True VR, I reckon - systems that can read your thought patterns and feed a fake world back into them. And even then, there'll be a quick rush of "innovation" followed by the same cycle of repetition.

 

... Either that or another Xbox.

[FullAuto]

I usually balk at DLC if the price for it exceeds that of the main game. This has made buying DLC for me pretty difficult, because I'm a tight-fisted bargain hunter. Buying a DLC pack for

[silencer_pl]

Capitalism at its best.

 

I hate DLC's but I buy the story progression ones, though I hate them because they are priced way too much.

[Azrael Strife]

You hate it yet you buy it. Enough gamers do that and "story progression" DLCs become lucrative enough to maintain the practice.

 

Edit: BioWare now joins the ranks of companies lying about DLCs, having players pay for content already on the disc and installed.

https://angryjoeshow.com/2012/03/uh-oh-mass...ct-dlc-on-disc/

[silencer_pl]

Because if pirating them wasn't taking a risk with account ban I would just get it for free. And I am in the very small minority that dosen't hate Bioware for its story driven games - even when they fail at other aspects. Sure I am able to point their failures but trolling on the net about it is not my style and it doesn't do good. So many people are up they ass nowdays that I wish I have the power to punch them right in the face through my screen.

 

Plus everyone is hating Bioware for this and that but they all forget that EA pulls the strings here.

 

Capcom is independent from any publisher.

[Space Voyager]

I'll try to add some provocation to this debate...

 

Is it really that important if the code is already on your comp? What difference does it make? You were content to pay the full price for the game without this additional content so it must have been worth it to you. Why be angry if the additional content was already downloaded? Is the anger directed at the unnecessary internet traffic that was created by the people that didn't buy so called DLC but still have the dormant data? Or is it because of the place it eats unnecessarily on your disc even when you don't require or want it?

[silencer_pl]

Imagine buying a book but there was a magic lock in few pages and you must buy a key to open it. Or you bough a hoover but you need to buy the option to operate it.

[Bomb Bloke]

@SV: A mixture of those points, plus the one where publishers/developers tend to lie about it (that one always goes down well).

 

It mostly comes down to "principle" - if what you've payed for includes the data from the DLC, why should you have to pay more to use that DLC?

 

The answer to that is, of course, media licensing. DLC or not, we're not really paying for the data (which, let's face it, is so cheaply distributed that just about every file has a million online sources these days), we pay to use it. This is nothing new, but people don't resent it so much when their money also gets them a cool case and manual and so on.

 

Should licensing laws be respected? Well, yes, they should, at least in the case of games and movies and so on (patents are a somewhat different matter, and then there's the matter of life-saving medicinal formulas...). Work was put into making the content, so publishers should have the right to control their sale in whatever way they like. It's not like games are remotely required to survive or anything like that, and we've already established that they're all the same these days anyways.

 

But deep down, no one really likes paying for a "right", and when you pay to use stuff you already have a right is all you are paying for.

[Space Voyager]

Imagine buying a book but there was a magic lock in few pages and you must buy a key to open it. Or you bough a hoover but you need to buy the option to operate it.

The hoover analogy is IMO wrong, as the game operates and does everything that was promised it would. Nothing is missing, it is feature-complete.

Book analogy is ok and if those pages are not a part of the book itself but are an addition, one needs to buy the key.

 

It mostly comes down to "principle" - if what you've payed for includes the data from the DLC, why should you have to pay more to use that DLC?

 

The answer to that is, of course, media licensing. DLC or not, we're not really paying for the data (which, let's face it, is so cheaply distributed that just about every file has a million online sources these days), we pay to use it.

I can't agree. You never paid for DLC data. As I wrote above, you paid a feature-complete game and that is what you got. And you can use it freely.

 

Would it make any difference if the data you already downloaded was another game that you never paid for?

 

If anything bothers me here is that I would have redundant data on my comp, eating the place on my disc needlessly.

[silencer_pl]

In case of ME3 this 1 DLC changes the whole aspect of the game. Though you don't need it to finish still it brings quite an information in the lore. I myself bought CE version so I am not in position to complain but I feel the pain of others. If it were additional weapons or shop like in DA2 this wouldn't be an issue as it doesn't change the game.

 

So regarding book scenario you are paying for a chapter that changes the meaning of whole book but the ending remains the same.

[Bomb Bloke]

I can't agree. You never paid for DLC data. As I wrote above, you paid a feature-complete game and that is what you got. And you can use it freely.

You paid for a "feature-complete" game, but you're not getting all the features the developers produced? Huh? The publishers have voluntarily and intentionally given you all features already, they're right there on the disc. But no, you cannot use them "freely" (legally at least), not until you have payed extra for a toggle that activates some of them. You therefore have not initially payed for a "feature-complete" game if it comes with on-disc DLC, as the full set of features will not be available to you.

 

You could argue that the features locked out are not a part of the "full game", but given that they were obviously developed at the same time and released as part of the original package, that's patently false.

 

Do the publishers have the right to sell you a "partial" game? Well, yes, they do. My point is we don't have to like it, especially when they lie about the subject. They sell you the DLC on the premise that it's something "extra", when in reality, it was there from the start. On-disc DLC is a simple paradox.

[FullAuto]

Up until very recently, here in the UK at least, when you bought something, whatever it was, you owned it. If you bought a television, it was yours. If you bought a music cassette, it was yours. You could copy any facet of either for your personal use and no-one could do a damn thing about it.

 

So you go from buying a game, to now, according to the EULAs, "You have bought the right to play our game, you don't own it, LOL." (paraphrasing). And the thing is, they can try and force us to accept these terms but basically it's a separate legal contract and not legally enforcible (how could it be, across so many different countries with so many different approaches to law?). No-one likes this. If I bought a disc, ten years ago, the game was mine, no argument. Now they're holding back content on something I own. Certainly, the rules may have changed a little, but the game industry exists because we buy games, no other reason. So if we're a little miffed about it, it's only because they've tried to change the rules very decisively to their advantage, without even telling us. They exacerbate this when they blatantly lie when we can see the content is on the disc.

 

Some DLC is great, totally worth the money whether it's expensive or cheap, it can be just as good as the game. Some of it is awful filler and should never be bought.

 

HD is another bugbear of mine. I like HD, I like playing games in HD and watching Blu-Rays, but the mania behind it is silly. I'm seeing not just a lot of people still using SD, but a lot of clueless people using HD TVs and SD inputs and expecting/believing the visuals to be better. Even when they've got a proper HD set up working, HD is credited with making games better, which is insane.