TornadoCreator

I have a really positive opinion of my family. I'm extremely close to my siblings and parents, they've supported me and continue to support me to this day despite my growith disability issues and needs. I genuinely look forward to Christmas with just my family every year. I agree with the sentiment; you choose your friends, but not your family... that said, I love my family immensely and feel very lucky to have them. I realise that's not very "Angry Dome" of me, but it's the truth.

I've honestly never heard of it, I bought it entirely on a whim because it was a PS3 game with a "buy it now" of less than £2. Here's hoping it's something I'll enjoy.

My copies of 'Jade Empire' and 'GTA: San Andreas' arrived today. Also went a little eBay mad and bought 'Dark Angel' on Xbox and 'Eat Lead: The Return Of Matt Hazard' as they where each only £1.69 with free postage... not bad for a punt. Lastly though, and I'm quite pleased with this one 'Spot Goes To Hollywood' on Sega Saturn for £12.49. Quite a rare find so I snapped it up. An Isometric Platformer, so most people hated it but I loved it. Glad to have it in my collection sure but I'm actually excited to get to replay this gem. Will need to drag out the Saturn at some point though, which means five consoles set up and active.... that feels too many.

Bought 'Jade Empire' and 'GTA: San Andreas' for the Xbox, £5.70 and £9.37 respectively; not bad I say.

The current system isn't perfect but there's a reason why it is the way it is. Games are mechanics before anything else. Why do you think so many games had shit stories for the longest time? Because their developers made the game part first and only brought in a writer at the last minute, almost as an afterthought. That writer had no involvement or effect on development whatsoever. That situation has been changing for the best but I still think that says a lot. If mechanics aren't the most important, then how do you explain a game like Minecraft being such a massive hit? It has no story and its aesthetics aren't particularly appealing. It's nothing but a set of mechanics to play with. And the same is true for a lot of games. SimCity is basically a toy box and most 4X games have no story, just a set of rules and systems to play with. There was a time when games didn't even have stories. What's the most important part of Space Invaders and Pac-Man if not the mechanics? Or are they not real games, for some reason? And because you think about games in terms of mechanics, naturally they're most important and you look for confirmation bias examples. What about Beyond: Two Souls, Heavy Rain, Metal Gear Solid 4, Lost Odyssey, The Walking Dead, Gone Home, Alice: Madness Returns, or Spec Ops: The Line... all games from the generation we've just concluded that clearly put there story and theme over their gameplay. Entire sections of the industry, like JRPGs for example, are almost entirely focused on the story with everything being there just to break it up and keep the pacing. You claim there was a time when games didn't even have a story... no there wasn't. 'Adventure' 1979 on Atari 2600, 'Akalabeth' 1979, 'Ultima' 1981, and 'Wizardry' 1981 all on the Apple Ii Computer, later ported to the Commodore 64. 'Zork' 1980 on Commodore 64. As soon as computers even came close to being able to be used for interactive narratives they where. Hell, this hardly stopped, 'Ultima' and 'Wizardry' became big franchises. Games like 'Baldur's Gate', 'Fallout', 'Icewind Dale', 'Planescape: Torment', and so many more littered the 90s. On consoles we had the 'Final Fantasy' series make a mark, and games like 'Shadowrun', 'Terranigma', and 'Chrono Trigger' all hit the consoles shortly after... I can quite conclusively show that storytelling has been an integral part of this industry from it's incarnation in the 70's... You claim games are mechanics before anything else; I disagree entirely and I have some of the best examples of the medium standing as evidence as to why.

I think the problem here is there's a big assumption... that mechanics are most important, and that's simply not true. I will pass over entire games just because they're first person, I have one friend who specifically dislikes Fantasy so didn't like Skyrim or Dragon Age, despite Fallout 3 and Mass Effect being amongst his favourite games. Perspective can make a strong difference to play style. I love Isometric Platformers, but it seems the rest of the world lacks spacial awareness because they're notoriously unpopular and I'm forever hearing people complain that they can't tell where they're jumping. As for publishers claiming their games are in special genres... they do that now, so what. Honestly, I'm sure there's a better system than what I'm suggesting but no-ones putting it forward, and mines certainly better than the non-system crapshoot we use now. PS: Music genres are just needless pretension to encourage exclusion, it's sad. I may have strict guides on who I consider a gamer, but at least it's not me purposly being obtuse just to exclude people.

It is admittedly broad terms, but fine-tuning the focus too much and you end up with genres that are too specific and that games only fit into some of the time. Yes, Halo has a military theme but I feel it's primary theme is sci-fi. Admittedly it's a judgement call, but thats how I see it. Likewise Killzone and Resistance both feel more Military than Sci-Fi but I'd not object to either label. Using this system you could call Killzone a 'First Person Sci-Fi/Military Shooter' and that could work, maybe even being a good compromise if you feel the genre is equal parts Sci-Fi and Military. You ask if setting matters in a TV show... less so, because the interactive nature of video games though there are multiple aesthetic approaches. You can't judge a TV show by gameplay, or control method. That said, a horror film set in space for example; Event Horizon, can reasonable be called a Horror/Sci-Fi, and as above with Killzone that can work for games. Personally though I think most shows, films, and games have a fundamental genre/theme. For example 'Shawn Of The Dead' is a comedy, sure it's a zombie film and technically a horror, but comedy is it's primary focus so I'd simply call it a comedy. For your last examples, I'd label everything there Third Person Alternative History Shooter. Remember categories are meant to be broad, if they're so specialised to only contain one game you may as well just use the game title. It's only meant to facilitate discussion and while the system isn't perfect; it's certainly better than the current system where Portal is a First Person Shooter and more than 50% of games are put in the "I couldn't give a fuck" genre 'Action-Adventure', which tells you precisely nothing about the game. Thanks for the critique though, it's good to fix any holes in the system.

Video game genres are screwed up, even mainstream publications agree with this now... I think I however, have a solution. Most agree the main problem is that genres don't fit. Call Of Duty, Fallout 3, Portal, Bioshock, Doom 3 and Halo are not all the same genre; yet they're all "First Person Shooters". We know this doesn't fit but what's the alternative? Doing what music fans do and inventing a million bullshit sub-genres that no-one agrees on. I mean seriously, I'm a metal music fan but even I can't tell the difference between 'death metal', 'black metal', 'gothic metal', 'doom metal', 'industrial metal', and god only knows what other crap '[adjective] metal' genres they'll come up with next. Seriously, what the hell is 'viking metal'? Worse still, some people combine them so we end up with 'viking death metal'. It's bullshit. I don't want that pretentious crap for gaming... so how do we avoid that? Well here's my solution; we expand descriptors. 'Shooter' and 'Platformer' aren't genres, they're mechanics. 'Horror', 'Comedy', 'Action', 'Drama'... these are genres. We also seem to categorise by perspective; 'First Person', 'Third Person', '3D', 'Side-Scrolling' and 'Isometric' are all examples of this. Hell, my method is already being used unofficially because it makes sense. All games should be described as follows [Perspective][Genre][Mechanic]. Hyphens can be used for games that have multiple core mechanics, a split focus genre, or variable perspectives; but this should be avoided. Under this system the following games that where all just 'First Person Shooters' would now be... Call Of Duty - First Person Military Shooter Fallout 3 - First Person Post Apocalyptic RPG Portal - First Person Sci-Fi Puzzle Bioshock - First Person Steampunk Shooter Doom 3 - First Person Horror Shooter Halo - First Person Sci-Fi Shooter As you can see, this is a far better system and I think I could do this for every game I own. Admittedly, some conventions would be changed; for example Silent Hill would chang from 'Survival Horror' to 'Third Person Horror Survival' which may seem counter-intuitive but keeping the [Perspective][Genre][Mechanic] system consistent is, I feel, important for reasonable understanding in discussion. By knowing it's always this way we don't have people wondering what the classification system means, like I do with 'viking death metal'. It seems people just added what they consider vaguely "cool" sounding words... after all, what's "death" about this music? So yeah, that's my suggestion. What do people think? Here are some more examples to help people decide based on what springs to mind. Vanquish - Third Person Sci-Fi Shooter Alice: Madness Returns - Third Person Horror Platformer Baldur's Gate - Isometric Fantasy RPG Hitman: Blood Money - Third Person Action Stealth GTA IV - Third Person Action Sandbox Final Fantasy VII - Turn Based Cyberpunk RPG Civilization IV - Turn Based Alternative History Strategy DmC: Devil May Cry - Third Person Action Brawler Super Mario 3D World - Third Person Cartoon Platformer Deus Ex: Human Revolution - First/Third Person Cyberpunk RPG Rayman Origins - Side-Scrolling Cartoon Platformer Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - Top Down Adventure Puzzle Diablo 2: LOD - Isometric Fantasy Hack 'n Slash (I decided "turn based" made sense as a 'perspective' descriptor, because that's the perspective you take in the main gameplay sections of the games, although the actual words 'turn based' are perhaps not ideal they'll do for now). So there's more than a dozen examples. Hopefully the range is enough to give a good idea of what I'm thinking. What do you guys think?

I can't say I disagree there Vecha; but I'm allowing for reasonable progression and streamlining... if only for my own sanity. Sure DA:O is laughably restricted when compared to the likes of 'Baldur's Gate' or 'Planescape: Torment', but we'll only be massively dissapointed if we compare modern games to those titles. For all the mechanics advancement, (and there is loads), storytelling in video games is going backwards. There are few games that can be as chilling as 'I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream' and I've yet to see a game more nuanced and deep than 'Ultima IV' and 'Ultima V', and they're Commodore 64 games for fuck sake. Hopefully games can be daring, thought provoking, and truly encapsulate the art of storytelling once more... but sadly those things don't sell. Maybe my line is seemingly arbitrary but Dragon Age: Origins felt like reasonable compromising to make an epic and engaging game; Bioshock felt like oversimplification incarnate. System Shock 2 deserved a better follow up than that; and to think some people have the nerve to call Bioshock an FPS-RPG... RPG?! How exactly is Bioshock an RPG? So yeah Vecha, I guess we can lament the direction of gaming together. We had no idea how good we had it in the late 90s did we?

The main reason I compared with 2008, 2009, and 2010 is; I feel they better match this year. The PS3 wasn't released worldwide until March 2007 with the European/Australian release and even Xbox 360 didn't have a true worldwide release till February 2007 with the Russian/Eastern European release. I didn't want years with misleading statistics because they matched up with the PAL launch date or something. Sure the generation may start in 2005 in USA or Japan, but this gen is the first time a largely worldwide release happened all at the same time (and even then the PS4 was delayed in Japan for no clear reason). That said, I can look at July 2007: Xbox 360 was struggling at this time with only 67,000 sales but other systems where doing fine; PS3 was at 97,000 but this picked up by August to well over 110,000 (likewise the 360 started to reliably sell over 125,000 per week by the end of August). The top three systems though where all selling well, PSP was at 180,000, the Nintendo Wii despite being out less than a year was on 300,000 weekly sales, and the DS was at a sickening 462,000 sales that week. Puts this gen to shame really when the DS in 2007 can outsell eveything combined in 2014. PS4 actually needs 3.7 million sales to reach a golden ratio; what that means is with annother 3.7 million units, the PS4 will have a large enough userbase that less than half of them need to adopt new software for it to be successful; but even then that's not really enough. Sure PS4 not far from 10 million sales, and hell the Dreamcast only managed lifetime sales of 10.4 million units... but times have changed. Back in 1999-2001, games needed on average around 600,000-800,000 sales to break even. Back then massive runaway successes rarely topped 3 million sales. Sonic Adventure sold only 2.42 million for example. Games today need 6 million sales to break even and 20+ million sales to be considered modern runaway successes. Some like Call Of Duty and GTA V even manage that... but on PS4 (or any 8th gen systems, or even all combined), there's simply not enough of a userbase for the modern bloated budget games to be successful; which is likely why the indie game scene has exploded so much. With current budgets, PS4 needs 40 million units out before games can reliably expect to be profitable as an exclusive... but without the exclusives, how will PS4 sell anything close to that. Either game publishers like EA, Square Enix, Activision, and Ubisoft need to fundamentally change how they publish games, or this industry is going to completely collapse; and that's not taking into account the imminent FPS bubble burst, which will take the entire industry down with it regardless. Mark my words, this generation will see more than half the industry bankrupt much like the crash of '83. 30 years on and history repeats itself.

You don't scare us Cowboy, *spits into spitoon*. We have plumbers... who plumb!

I agree Gerbil, I said much the same thing in a previous post quoted below: When it comes down to it, by January we'll have a solid picture of how the industry is doing; but honestly this industry is arrogant. It thinks it's recession-proof, and "too big to fail", yet the industry at large doesn't seem to see how quckly and across-the-board this industry collapse is happening.

Cool, I'm both a fellow RPG fan and a Wii U owner, so hopefully we'll have plenty to talk about.

Cool, welcome to the forum. What kind of games do you play?

I never really followed Game Grumps, what exactly is the deal with them then... as far as we know at least?

Oh yeah I'm sure it is Alex, there's just some things where nostalgia takes over. For me it's 'Alex Kidd in Miracle World' for the Master System... I'm fairly sure it's not even close to being as good as I remember it. As far as I remember it was one of the best most vibrant platformers ever made. Sometimes I wonder if I should leave it alone and never replay it, to preserve the 5 year olds memory of the first game he ever beat, and how it was an awesome game.

Fair enough, I wonder if the statistics are much different here in UK... I'm not sure where I'd find such statistics but I'll have a look.

I'm not sure it is actually... Sure the Wii U should have sold far better with a years head start; but right now it's matching the Xbox One for weekly sales and has a larger install base. It has more exposure on it's exclusives, and with Titanfall being far less significant than Microsoft had hoped; there's far more reason to expect Wii U to be second place this year. Combine that with third party delays being commonplace; and few multi-plat releases over this year for the two "next gen" systems and it's hard to claim the Wii U is in any way the distant third the internet makes it out to be... if PS4 slumps any further, this could easily be a three horse race.

It's been years since I played the first Toejam & Earl, but I remember it being a rather boring scavenger hunt game with very little actually to it... I think it's aged very poorly, still I'll need to look at it again to really decide.

W00t, just beat Super Mario 3D World today... great game, may try to 100% it as I'm still really enjoying it.

My mum is 53 and she has an extensive 3DS/DS library, though she heavily favours puzzle games there are some platformers and RPGs. She also plays the smaller niche MMOs, and horror games on PC like Slender, Amnesia etc. and naturally she loves Minecraft. Recently she discovered Surgeon Simulator and finds it hilarious... she's a theatre nurse. I know four married couples in their mid 30s who play Xbox 360 casually, largely because they have full time jobs and kids under 5. Red Dead Redemption, Bioshock Infinite, GTA V, Gears Of War, Halo, Skyrim, Mass Effect, Fallout 3 and Batman: Arkham City are games they pretty much all regularly play. The women all seem to enjoy Fable 2 for some reason... now they don't all play every game listed; but they're the ones I've seen/heard them talk about. I know two men in their 40s both of whom are hardcore PC gamers, and one of which also owns a PS3 that he uses only for exclusives and blu ray. I know one couple in their early 30s who are both avid retro gamers but don't play modern games. It's all Mega Drive, N64, and SNES at their place... though they both make an exception for handhelds and each have 3DS's. Everyone else I know is pretty much a hardcore gamer except for my sister, who's more casual... but all her friend that I've met so far are hardcore gamers.

You can get pretty accurate sales figures for consoles from VGChartz. Their PC figures are terribly innacurate but for consoles they're good. There are more detailed and reliable sources, but VGC is the most convenient in a pinch. Sorry, I assumed everyone was familiar with that site; my mistake.

It took PS2 one weekend to surpass the Dreamcasts lifetime sales... sixth months is hardly a death knell... similarly, the PS3 was considered dead in the water and had similar sales figures to the Wii U in its first year; now it's arguably the most successful console of the last generation. We can never really tell what will happen, but currently, like I said in my long post earlier; everything except the 3DS is struggling at the moment and even that's only managing 'adequate' sales. I'd say this entire generation is still up for grabs. Hell if Microsoft bought out Capcom (and they really actually could do this), and announced exclusive games for 2015/16; like new games in the Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Monster Hunter, Mega Man, Onimusha, Breath Of Fire or Street Fighter franchises, or even sequels to Okami or Remember Me... even if only half of these IP where used I'd expect Xbox One to pretty much hurtle into first place.