Newly Saudi-owned EA shuts down Bioware

[SpuriusMaximus]

Sort of related -- Sony is really shooting themselves in the foot by making the PS6 $1000, and not including a disc drive so we can buy physical media. They're Betamaxxing all over again. My PS5 will probably be the last one I ever bought. Most likely because I don't buy new versions until they've been out a year or two anyway, and it's likely to outlast me.

About the price, I wonder how much choice did they have. Memory prices have exploded, and SSD prices have exploded.

 

[theprestige]

AI sludge games aren't the fault of Steam.
It just makes 'real' games hard to see. Some indie developers are reluctant to put games on to steam as they know they will be lost in a sea of copies within a couple short time.

An update on the Steam AI flood problem:

Apparently Valve is doing something about it. tl;dr - developers and the platform each have a part to play. Indie devs need to focus on making good games and giving customers a good game experience. And Valve needs to work on making sure the good games - the indie games, not the AI knockoffs - are the ones that end up in your curated feed.

 

[theprestige]

Thinking about it some more, it seems to me that video games must be much like stage magic: There's a well-understood catalog of basic gimmicks, and most of the work is about finding an engaging way to dress them up for the audience.

Behind the scenes a magic trick is pretty boring - disappointing, even when you learn how lame and obvious the actual gimmick is.The show succeeds because the magician hides the gimmick behind story, behind patter and misdirection and recontextualization. A lot of Penn & Teller's show is stock illusions you can find anywhere on the Las Vegas strip, but with their own story around those illusions. A couple years ago I was at loose ends in Vegas, and ended up going to two different magic shows on consecutive nights. The two shows had almost exactly the same illusions, in almost exactly the same order. And I realized I'd seen a lot of the same illusions from Penn & Teller as well. "Audience member's personal item was locked in this box since before the show started" is a popular one these days.

So I figure it must be much the same for videogames. A videogame is basically just problem-solving with immediate gratification. I figure there must be an established catalog of gameplay loops and reward structures. Racing game, fighting game, 4X, extraction shooter, etc. Most of the ways to make a gameplay loop that works have to be pretty well established by now.

From this I figure that much like a magic show, a videogame succeeds on two things: How well the maker understands and commits to the basic gimmick, and how well they write the story that dresses it up. So. When a videogame like Anthem or Veilguard (or Wolverine, or Gears E-Day) fails, what went wrong? Did the devs just not properly understand (or not properly commit to) implementing the underlying gameplay loops their game embodied? Was the gameplay fine, but the writing was ass? A little bit of both?

Highguard was pretty much a gameplay failure. The game started out as an open-world exploration/building game. Those large maps were totally wrong for a raid-based hero shooter like Overwatch, which is the game they actually shipped. Veilguard, on the other hand, seems to have been almost entirely a writing failure.

Anyway, that's all I've got for right now.

 

[Joe Random]

I can only speak for myself, but I never bought Veilguard because their own trailers made it look like a flashy hero shooter, not a Dragon Age game. I wanted something like a newer Origins, or an Inquisition without some of the more tedious bits, but instead they appeared to go with something that could take place in the Marvel universe.

Game might not have been that exactly, but since they were at least trying to appeal to people wanting something like that I doubted I was going to be happy with whatever it turned out to be. And none of the reviews I read said anything like "totally misleading trailer", so wallet stayed closed.

With Andromeda, while I somehow never got hit with the bugs and glitches that were affecting many I had a huge problem with the writing. General plotting and timing issues, a couple of really poorly written characters, etc. The mechanics were ... meh, apart from that scanning thing you had to do which was annoying as hell.

So over time as a company they kept taking both franchises in directions that I just didn't want to go. Which makes sense given that it wasn't the same team as from the start.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Thinking about it some more, it seems to me that video games must be much like stage magic: There's a well-understood catalog of basic gimmicks, and most of the work is about finding an engaging way to dress them up for the audience.

Behind the scenes a magic trick is pretty boring - disappointing, even when you learn how lame and obvious the actual gimmick is.The show succeeds because the magician hides the gimmick behind story, behind patter and misdirection and recontextualization. A lot of Penn & Teller's show is stock illusions you can find anywhere on the Las Vegas strip, but with their own story around those illusions. A couple years ago I was at loose ends in Vegas, and ended up going to two different magic shows on consecutive nights. The two shows had almost exactly the same illusions, in almost exactly the same order. And I realized I'd seen a lot of the same illusions from Penn & Teller as well. "Audience member's personal item was locked in this box since before the show started" is a popular one these days.

So I figure it must be much the same for videogames. A videogame is basically just problem-solving with immediate gratification. I figure there must be an established catalog of gameplay loops and reward structures. Racing game, fighting game, 4X, extraction shooter, etc. Most of the ways to make a gameplay loop that works have to be pretty well established by now.

From this I figure that much like a magic show, a videogame succeeds on two things: How well the maker understands and commits to the basic gimmick, and how well they write the story that dresses it up. So. When a videogame like Anthem or Veilguard (or Wolverine, or Gears E-Day) fails, what went wrong? Did the devs just not properly understand (or not properly commit to) implementing the underlying gameplay loops their game embodied? Was the gameplay fine, but the writing was ass? A little bit of both?

Highguard was pretty much a gameplay failure. The game started out as an open-world exploration/building game. Those large maps were totally wrong for a raid-based hero shooter like Overwatch, which is the game they actually shipped. Veilguard, on the other hand, seems to have been almost entirely a writing failure.

Anyway, that's all I've got for right now.

Magic tricks you say?

 

[theprestige]

View attachment 77492

Apparently the debs proactively removed a flag that looked similar to (but was not) an LGBTQ flag, in anticipation of feedback.

This supports both my hypothesis that the media is not your friend, and my hypothesis that it's the creatives that are calling the shots at the AAA game studios, not the execs.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Thinking about it some more, it seems to me that video games must be much like stage magic: There's a well-understood catalog of basic gimmicks, and most of the work is about finding an engaging way to dress them up for the audience.

Behind the scenes a magic trick is pretty boring - disappointing, even when you learn how lame and obvious the actual gimmick is.The show succeeds because the magician hides the gimmick behind story, behind patter and misdirection and recontextualization.

I'm not entirely convinced. Everyone was perfectly content with experiencing the same tricks, over and over again, for decades. Sure, with better graphics, sounds, voiceovers, etc, but there is nothing fundamentally different between a fetch quest in TES: Arena (1994) and TES: Skyrim. It's still the same "go there, do that, get paid, be told you're special." But it worked. Even when you knew the trick.

And it STILL does. Remakes like Oblivion Remastered prove that. And is why everyone is doing remasters and remakes lately. The exact same old magic still works.

Then recently the game studios tried doing new tricks, or the same in a different way, for different audiences. Which, tbh, I understand the thought behind. But it fell flat, and both the old audience AND the intended new audience thought it was lame. Or at least the press praised you for catering to the latter, but crucially those still didn't buy your game. They just liked complaining that someone else likes them. Someone who hates football (as many Gamergate figures actually SAID OUT LOUD about games) ain't gonna buy a ticket just because you kick a cubic ball out this time. They only liked to complain about why other people watch football.

And I know that first hand, because I hate football myself. I just didn't feel a need to belittle anyone over liking it, other than some jokes. I know I wouldn't buy a ticket if they kicked a different ball, or if the teams were dressed in furry costumes, or even had 3 teams and 3 goalposts on the field instead of 2.

And it's not even about woke vs anti-woke. For example, many years ago, Tabula Rasa tried to wipe the board clean and reinvent MMO gaming from scratch. (Hence the name.) It flopped horribly. There was nothing woke or anti-woke about it by the standards of the time. Just, the new magic was bad.

So, I guess, the moral of the story is: there is an inherent risk in trying to invent a new trick. It would be great if it was a spectacular success, to be sure. But make sure you study your potential market first, for some clues. There is a reason why tropes are tropes: BECAUSE THEY WORK. And even then it might flop. Don't bet the farm on a miracle.