deanb

Yeah, all it needs is a new plot, new places to go, maybe spice up the city a bit. If they start messing with the gameplay then it'll end up with a bit more shooting (cos shooting games make lots of money) and everything will be mapped to a couple of buttons to do everything.

@Johnny I don't think he was inferring all games are to be like that. In fact just the post above I reinforced it's more a case of seeing more "games" like Heavy Rain, not all games to be Heavy Rain. I'm pretty bummed that some genres are seemingly dying out so I'd never suggest for all games to become like Game Type X. @HotChops_01: I think part of the issue lies in mixing together "casual" and "non-gamers" together in the same bag. Or assuming that "non-gamers" can be coaxed into gaming by making the process simpler. I'm a casual gamer when the time suits. I'll whip out casual games, play for a bit, pop it back away few minutes later. I'd imagine many of you do too. But yeah, I think that developers need to respect the "non-gamer" and their general skill level. It's like someone saying they don't watch TV, so to start them out you show them Barney. @StrangeLove: Spot on @WTF: Yeah I think games atm are very heavily focused on the technical elements. Like adding sound and colour to film. Being able to zoom. Avatar n Crysis for example are the same thing in their respective mediums. Avatar had fancy 3D and some pretty advanced vfx work, Crysis has an advanced engine. And it's those things that are talked about on the film/game than the actual film/game itself. The games industry is ripe for a few writers and such to jump in and shake things up, it just takes a studio somewhere to take the leap and do that. And yeah I think it'll take a decade or two for that transition to happen. For one I think academic course need to drastically change. On folks finding their voice, I think that's partly related to most games coming from a studio, rather than like a film where it's "Tim Burtons A Nightmare Before Christmas". Which Cage did with heavy Rain, went Alpha male and said "you do what I say you do". There's a few more well known guys out there, but I still think even with then the games are design by committee. And that just blurs the focus of the game if you try to appease to everyone on the dev team. I'm pretty much well aware I'm just a trained monkey because the director has better things to do than learn Maya n Nuke. And I do as he tells me (or his mouthpiece does at least). You'd struggle to make a film on your own. Whereas a game, especially these days and in past days, is pretty simple, and many folks do that. So game designers can be very independent and not so up for just doing as their told. Want to have some kind of creative input on it. If you have a strong lead who knows exactly what they want to do, then it's not as much of an issue. And yeah I read the CliffyB stuff. This years GDC has been pretty kick ass. I think the "middle Class" game needs to get cheaper. That's the main issue for it. They try to sell for the same amount AAA titles with huge budgets in development and marketing, and just get squashed under it. But if they were cheaper, like £25 a pop, they'd fill a great niche in a game with a experience studio behind it, some retail space, and then they sell them in-between the gaps in the AA title release. Folks are aware for £25 it won't be the best experience, but it's an easier gamble than £20 on some indie title. It's there to pick up n play for a few weeks.

Ahhhhh. From the image it looked like the Fungus had grown into the ant's neck to control it like Matrix style of sorts. Not that the fungus started from the Ant and grew out.

From my understanding Mirrors Edge was actually pretty cheap to make. It's not like it had heavy modelling, huge budget voice cast (or much a VA at all) And it made it's cah back and then some I imagine, since it sold over 2million copies. I'm with Rocky. Just make the game pretty much as it was first time around, fix up the controls a bit (they were laid out fine, just the contextual awareness of some of the actions wasn't up to par) and make it a tad longer. They don't need to do much at all to it. Just make another.

Wow. That's pretty cool. I don't understand how it's possible though. From my understanding fungi aren't intelligent in any way, no brains at all. So how would it control an ant, or even know what the hell it was doing or why. I guess I'll go hunt down some explanation. Why'd the mushroom get invited to all the parties?

Phone? No idea. Skype however can get much easier. There's a couple of plug-ins that'll record it. Or Audacity should do the trick too. (Just give it a test out first, worst thing would be technical issues on the day)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108243-Hugo-Weaving-Looks-Amazing-as-Captain-America-Villain

They may hide their ages from the general populace of the forum, but they need to add an Admin viewable one upon joining. Hence why I know the general age range

Actually from what I can tell most of the forum is actually about 25+. The common age seemingly being 27. There's only a few folks under 18.

Anyone at all interested in that Steam Guard? It seems good, but I think the folks it'll primarily help won't be using it. And it's reliance on Sandy Bridge is going to really slow down adoption at the start. Still there's at least one man who thinks it's a really good idea: gaben@valvesoftware.com moolyFTW (If you want to test it)

Looks kinda like Kick-Ass. Just not as slick. It might be good, and having Ellen Page in it increases the chances I'll go see it.

Hola!

My point was that there should be games that don't have any difficulty at all. I guess my point didn't come across to well. If a game has a difficulty, then it implies it's skill based. And that locks people out if they're not at the right skill, or it means developers attempt to push the overall skill requirements down in order to gain a larger audience, with the side effect of not creating a satisfying experience for those who can play the game at a higher skill level. Too many games try to be for everyone, rather than realising the market has different types of gamers. I strongly believe video games can be for everyone, but I don't think there's a cat in hells chance that there will ever be one game that appeals to everyone's tastes. And I don't think people should try. But I do believe these "interactive Experience" type games like heavy rain, that don't test how quick you are to aim n shoot, how good your tactics are, etc are something developers should be looking into making more of. It's a pretty open market atm.

I can move it, don't think it'll change anything since folks tend to dip into all parts of the forum or use the portal/new/active content views. If he doesn't want Twisted Metal questions or bland things, I think asking him stuff that's kinda gamer relevant, but a bit off the beaten path. Make the interview enjoyable for him as much as the answers will be to the readers. http://criminalcrackdown.blogspot.com/ - this is his blog, it would be best to start here. It shows you've researched of sorts, which he should appreciate, and you an go "you've mentioned in the past that blah balh blah" (Though he seems to have stopped updating as of October, which err, last time I read it was Oct 13th . I assume that's to do with TM) I know I'd ask him how he's enjoying Twitter. Him and Blesinzki are two of the developers that have really dug in with it. So just how he's liking directly connecting with fans, if he'd recommend other devs do so. The common joke would be how he works on any games when he's tweeting so much (srsly, I'd love to follow him and he can be really insightful, but he tweets way too damn much) He also clashes a bit with the games press. That may be something weird to ask about coming from games press to ask n probe upon and may be out of bounds not by him but your EiC as essentially it's digging up dirt on other outlets. But if you can phrase it in some way that's interesting it'd be good to ask about. Maybe tie it into the twitter stuff on the "connecting to the community" sort of vein. http://www.1up.com/news/david-jaffe-thinks-sony-sue - this kind of stuff sets him off. Oh yeah, that also means if you interview him do it in full and do not take anything he says out of context. He kinda hates that the most. Simple questions: Games he likes to play What he's looking forward to this year Favourite TM character What he does outside of gaming, personal hobbies, anything at all. How long does he think he'll be making games Any ambitions to make something not so car or Grrr angry man related Should set neurons firing. It's somewhat limited since you can't ask on the TM stuff, but there's enough of him out there that there should be things you can pick apart. Just obviously the big part is knowing a bit more on your subject. Scan through his blog n twitter feed for any topics you' want to expand upon.

So to point out first I've not played Heavy Rain, but I've done the demo and watched my housemate through some of it. I think whether there's a few exceptions to the rule, he is pretty spot on, most games are based on running about, from a to b, or shooting things that aren't you? And I don't think he's so much suggesting that all games suddenly become Heavy Rain, just that a few more Heavy Ran like games pop up. And I wouldn't mind. A game that isn't based on getting from a to b, shooting along the way no questions asked. Something without a winner or loser, goals, etc. Something that's no so much a game as interactive experience. Also games shouldn't so much be skill based*, it locks people out of the experience. You can't lose are reading a book or watching a film. If publishers want to make games more accessible, then don't go "dumbing down" the skill based games, but make games that don't require skill in the first place. Which clearly works, Heavy Rain sold much more than expected. I also think the publishers need to shoot more for the mature audiences too. Stop assuming everyone is a teenager. Adults have an income, normally paying for the teenager, and if they're buying n playing games for the consoles they'd be more inclined to pick a console up for themselves n the kid. Mature doesn't have to mean it has sex or violence in it just because that's what the rating says. Just deal with more grown-up circumstances, better dialogue less adrenaline pumping pacing. It's not like at the moment the games industry has much written work that'd net it any awards. Essentially the stuff at the bottom is kind of what I'd like from a few games: It's maybe a bit pretentious, but I can't think of any game that's moved me in a particular way. Never felt too strongly for any characters or situations I'm in. Like that PC gamer thing I threw up the other day about gamers being dicks to games cos we play them "wrong", and it mentioned how you start bulletstorm by shooting an unarmed man. And I kinda clicked I hadn't thought two seconds on it. In reality I would be a bit iffy on the situation, but there it was just the game, you do the motions, get to the end. Dragon Age I had this cat/girl/demon thing and I fucked up and the demon jumped from the cat to the girl and I had to kill the girl. And I felt sucky about it, but only cause I reckon I lost out on some good loot. I want a "matrix moment". Where I finish a game and then start to question what I know. Add new colours to the palette of my life. Games haven't done that to me. It's been books that add to my character, make me think on things in new ways. tl;dr: Games are great but empty. I wouldn't go to them for a bit of cerebral stimulation. *Heavy Rain did have one fatal flaw in that while not so much skill based, it did require prior knowledge of the game pad

Doesn't mean it's cool or okay. Can't just go "that was then, this is now, lump it or leave it". Maybe I'm just a fan of the old days where expansion packs were expansion packs, almost an entire game in their own right. £25 netted you the Dark Crusade expansions, which was the first "Expandalone" I'd seen. That came out just 5 years ago. It came with a brand new campaign, bunch of new maps, and 2 new races (could play all races in the Single player). What sucks is 7th gen consoles have hard drives, they can do expansions. And instead it's these small snippets shaved off as the game was worked on. Games are made modular with hooks added on. DLC is planned in from the get go. Used to be you'd make your game, complete, and if it sold well then you'd make an expansion for 8 months or so down the line. If people aren't holding onto games now then either developers need to make games that last more than a day, and that folks want to keep for future playthroughs, or stop making games so expensive that folks have to trade in the game to afford the next one. Still what's fucking hilarious is as a tactic to keep folks playing their games longer, it works. Bites publishers in the arse though when folks play the game longer, thus not buying another full game. Sales on console games dropped last year. Main cause? Folks are playing their games for longer periods. DLC and such sales went up too. Folks were also playing the bolted on MP components too, artificially expanding the life of a game. And regarding DA2 they really expect people to beat and trade in the game within a week of launch? And in significant enough numbers to course a dint that needs to be bolstered up by early DLC? DA:O showed the game will be supported by a steady flow of DLC (and maybe an expansion) so it's not like folks will assume that the initial launch is all there is or will be to the game. Though of course if the game wasn't a stripped down shadow of it's former self (which you can also see how folks would assume segments are things removed from the game mid-development when theres less to the game than DA:O), then maybe it might of lasted longer. Then when you're done you can go to the start pick another hawke n play through the same story again. :/

That analogy would work more for micro transactions. A hotel analogy with on-disc DLC would be that none of your cupboards open unless you pay more.

You look like a younger Moot(Christopher Poole)

See the on-disc DLC is utter bullshit. It's clearly stuff that has been made before the game went gold or it wouldn't be on the disc. And no other industry (I'm 99% sure, I ran through a fair few in my head last night) does anything similar. You don't buy a car, then open your boot to find a pin machine over the spare do you? Or buy a house and need to pay extra to get access to the upstairs room 2nd on the right? What you buy when you pick up a DVD or book is what you get. Only in games is it a semi-accepted practice. As for pre-order DLC, also bullshit since most likely folks pre-ordering the game are big fans. These fans however are then further divided up by the publishers into what store they're a fan of, cos if they like game store A they get the mystical belt of levelling up, Game store b more they get dwarven beer cup of health regeneration, or online store c they get tattered robes of the wraith. Excellent way to treat pretty loyal fans if you ask me. Not in anyway another messed up tactic.

Well the links used were g4TV and kotaku, you can see how it'd be irrelevant *badum-tish* Anyway from what I can tell this is a transcript: http://www.computera...mes-so-immature Anyway I've just woken up, I'll add more thoughts later.

Contact.

Well yeah regarding that, and specificlaly Epic, but I'm pretty sure the graphical bugs in Bulletstorm were an ATi (fuck it) thing. There's only two GPU manufacturers, Nvidia and ATi. I get you can't test every system, but not bothering to see what happens when you play the game on an ATi card is a bit iffy. It's not that much variety. DirectX is actually meant to massively minimize any difference's between hardware. Especially Dx10 onwards, it just sees the GPU as a particular amount of RAM n pipes, and Dx10 cards are very conformed between the two unlike back in the pre-DX10 days where there was physical differences in how the cards worked. But yeah, saying about how PC is hard to dev for n such is all for naught when the kid on the other side of the class is doing it perfectly fine. It's just another lazy excuse on the part of developers. Pretty much the reason is, they didn't give two shits. If it booted up the game and 50% of folks could run it okay and reach the end without having to touch the ini files too often, then the port is a success. http://www.next-gen....ers-bill-rights (which btw is getting a new version this year as Stardocks consumer report thingy mentioned)