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American McGee: Not impressed by PS4; Simcity gamers need to chill out

sunnz

Member
Something fresh isn´t that bad.

Yes but a controller is a controller, what can they do that will not make it too much like motion gaming by also keeping it within the price rage for gamers?


It's one of those things that is fine how it is, better layout and less input is the main changes which is what they have done.
 
Wondering what he meant about developers in China figuring out the piracy thing? China is generally considered the worst country for software piracy in the world, so I'm interested to see how game developers are doing it differently than software developers.

His analogy is stupid about Sim City and people will harp on that instead of the argument. I think he's right to say that it doesn't have to be World War 3... That not every issue with a videogame has to be "Gamers vs. the Man." I think that's a very good way to put it, and it's a good point about the overly dramatic game fans.
 

onQ123

Member
So he was hoping for a gimmick? That's a bit weird.

Why does innovation in controls have to = gimmick?



but on the subject his comment seems shortsighted because their is some control innovation for the PS4 the controller is going to be tracked in 3D giving the game a good idea of where you are so devs can use that for better head tracking & things like that & also the light on the controller can be used for marker-less AR & MR.
 

flippedb

Banned
From a pure gameplay perspective, it is pretty meh. I don't care about graphics, and the controller is just an old design with new aesthetics from what I've seen. So yeah.

Meh.

I'll get Sony's first party stuff and most of my fighters on it, but I'm not "excited" for it. I like the conveniences it brings me for gaming, not the new ways I will be able to game. I'd be more excited if the power used were for more impressive things outside of graphics, but we know that ain't likely.

That's just, like, my opinion though.

But you're wrong because Sony doesn't need gimmicks to put yet another Killzone out there!
 

jayu26

Member
Am I wrong in thinking that Oculus rift is just a peripheral device. It requires a pretty good PC and it might even be supported on next gen consoles. So, it just enhances the experiences on those platforms, it is not a platform in and of itself.

If this is the case, then his argument is completely invalid because what is stopping from Oculus Rift support on PS4?
 

Oersted

Member
Yes but a controller is a controller, what can they do that will not make it too much like motion gaming by also keeping it within the price rage for gamers?


It's one of those things that is fine how it is, better layout and less input is the main changes which is what they have done.

Don´t understand why motion controls must be avoided, to begin with. Think outside the box.

He went to iOS, his input is rather useless

You have to ignore more and more devs in the future.
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
Do gamers or the media think EA or Blizzard wanted things to go so badly at launch?
They certainly didn't care. They knew that could happen, that it would probably happen, and didn't do anything about it. So they may not have wanted things to go bad, but they sure didn't give a damn if they did.

Do they think all the screaming and gnashing of teeth actually helped resolve those issues more quickly?
Actually, yes I do. The gaming media had no option but write articles about it, and EA had to listen and offer free games, in a futile attempt to gain consumers' trust back.

There’s got to be a balance to the relationship. Just because you’ve given a restaurant your business doesn’t entitle you to throwing molten cheese fries in your waiter’s face if your margarita comes out frozen instead of on the rocks.
Nope, but when the restaurant owners have been lying to your face about the quality and ingredients of the food, and the methods of cooking the meat, you are entitled to the advertised meal. And if that's not the case, a refund.

Throwing food at the waiter's face would be a disrespect to him, while in the SimCity debacle it was exactly the opposite: the company disrespected its customers by delivering a non-working game. So nice analogy you have there, it's a shame it doesn't work at all.


People need to relax a little and stop turning everything into World War III – Gamers vs. The Man. There are no winners in that scenario.
Don't worry, the customer can't win in any scenario nowadays. Either they skip the game and don't get to play it (and sometimes they are even called "entitled" and "whiny fanboys", like what happened with DmC, as if devs were... ehem, entitled to that money), or they suck it up and put up with whatever devious DRM scheme the publisher came up with, risking paying for a game that doesn't even work, or will only install X times before running out of activations.
 
Those are some strange opinions. I want to play something I paid for. And maybe someone can innovate further in the control space, but I just don't see motion gaming as optimal for every single game: it's good to have options, however.
 

abadguy

Banned
He will be happy with the next xbox and all the kinect hula hula.

He said fuck all about Kinect or the nextbox, but i see that people here are in full console war mode an anyone who isn't blown away by the PS4 is obviously rooting for Durango.
 

sunnz

Member
Don´t understand why motion controls must be avoided, to begin with. Think outside the box.



You have to ignore more and more devs in the future.

Because it limits how a game will play and how much control you have, like touchscreen does...
 
Why does innovation in controls have to = gimmick?
can you think of something that wouldn't be one? I'm actually asking. I personally can't imagine one, which is why I say that. Like someone already said, the console supports MANY forms of input. I just don't agree with the notion that every generation everything has to be re-invented.
 
EA botched an extremely profitable launch (highest selling sims on launch) and he is saying gamers need to "chill out?"

Hah, ok.

Sure he might not be impressed with the PS4, that's his opinion, but the fuck up that EA did with Sim City is not a "chill out" matter. You paid for the damn game you should be able to fucking play it.
 

lemonade

Member
i really don't understand what people are looking for in videogames. sit the fuck down! please! make the console with better graphics, sturdy, fun, and entertaining. you want innovation? get a magic wand! its like people are expecting magical rainbows to appear before them...
 

Vee_One

Member
What if I didn't get the fries until 48 hours later?

They would be cold and unappetizing and would not bother the waiter if they were thrown at him (apart from being a little grubby). You could tell all your friends not to eat there but they might tell you "it was a one off, unfortunate experience".
 
But you're wrong because Sony doesn't need gimmicks to put yet another Killzone out there!

Haha, dang it flippedb, yes they do! The only difference is that instead of using new gimmicks, they use extremely old familiar ones! What were those old gimmicks called again?

Oh yeah. Features!
 

gabbo

Member
He and I disagree on a few things as per that article, but I'd still give him a chance if he made Oz after all this time.
 
Nah, I'm not interested in a work in progress gimmick in a control input, stick with what's been working wonderfully for decades please.

And wouldn't it be publishers making the war on gamers? Because it sure isn't on pirates.
 

Ponn

Banned
I'm not implying that iOS devs have no credibility but this guy hasn't really marched in the forefront of innovation this gen or the last.

This is my problem with high profile names in the business crying about innovation and hitting current hot topic words yet where were they with new inputs like Wii or Kinect? Its like they try to put on this facade of being edgy then run to ios for cheap quick cash ins. Whatever, just shut up till you make something relevant again then maybe i will give a crap about what you have to say.

I know he gets his share of being made fun of on here but i feel molyneux is one of the few developers who has any right talking about innovation and controls. His output might have been questionable but at least he actually made attempts at new control methods, gameplay and innovation.
 
Posting opinions on the internet is totally the same thing as showing up at someone's work and throwing hot food in their face.
 

Yoda

Member
I find this guy's analogy lacking. Let me start with SimCity as that is more recent than Diablo 3. Simcity received always on DRM similar to Diablo 3. In return, (because always on isn't mainstream nor mandatory to post a profit) we were promised a new level of simulation that could only happen server-side, and regional communities where you could expand the depth of the game more than possible in a pure single player experience.

There’s got to be a balance to the relationship.

Lets take a look at the two points I cited, the first was a flat out lie, the second wasn't available to people who paid $59.99 USD and more in other countries for weeks after launch. The 2nd issue can be written off as their inexperience in launching games w/always online DRM, (not really though they are a multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporation) but how do you remedy the first? They lied to make more money and falsy justify a system which is anti-consumer in nature... were not suppose to be upset over that?

To boil it down the difference between SimCity and Diablo 3 is the former was literally not released in a playable state, while the other was a watered down disservice to one of the most popular PC-gaming franchises.

What impact do you feel the advancing gaming power of tablets will have on the games business moving forward, even as next gen consoles enter the market?

We’re seeing a lot of blurring between categories as tablets become more like consoles and consoles began to flaunt more and more always-connected and social features. The distinction between “tablet” and “phone” is also blurring as we’re seeing mini-tablets and mega-phones gaining in popularity simultaneously. Ultimately, people are going to choose based on power, size and convenience – and I think we’re going to see devices emerging which change their form, function and interface depending on where or for what they’re being used. More than anything it’s interface that’s going to drive the most significant change – things like Oculus Rift will radically change people’s demands and expectations – that’s where the real revolution is going to start.

Mark Picus (Creater of Zynga) was spinning the same line literally ever week on CNBC last year.

N37WvzK.png


$12billion down in the course of a year. As there isn't anyone purely focuses on social games to the extent ZYNGA was, its safe to say they are a force in the industry, not the future of the industry.
 
Not really. I bought Alice on PC (via Steam) on a sale because I was expecting a really good game, but it was... meh... I played it a few hours and quit.
American "Meh"Gee

I get what he is saying about the EA/Sim City fiasco and I get there could be some growing pains with new DRM types but there was never anyway that this DRM (always online)would be without some level of inconvenience let alone the disaster it was. Find a way that doesn't run the risk of telling the consumer "not right now" (I don't see how people put up with this in paid MMOs as it is).
 

Derrick01

Banned
I was hoping for innovation in control input.

Oh so he's one of those people. People who think innovation has to come from input gimmicks that don't actually benefit games at all, when we have so much room to improve AI, level design and enemy design. Not to mention other possible areas like using dynamic weather to affect gameplay or better stealth systems.

Nope fuck all that. Need my waggle or touch pad.
 
Terrible margarita analogy.

I do think he's right about the new consoles unless they can find a way to change the game. But it's not because of mobile/social/etc. it's because second first same as the first is boring, and if games aren't exciting to the larger mass market, the mass market will find something else to do. It's a big world out there. With budgets that can't survive a market non-expansion, much less a retraction, this would be bad news for everyone involved.
 

Jac_Solar

Member
Aren't TV shows at the absolute top of pirated stuff, yet it's the most thriving business in the movie/TV entertainment business? Big name actors are crossing over into the TV-show medium quite often nowadays.

And there's no evidence to suggest that gamers who pirate games would purchase games without the choice of pirating. Sure, there are probably a couple of games they might have bought, but the ratio is nowhere near 1:1. Maybe like 1:100, 1:500 or more. And doubtfully on release.

And these pirates are also responsible for a lot of word of mouth. Pirates might tell their friends if the game is great, or bad, which might result in the friend purchasing it, or not. The pirates might also talk about it on forums. Obviously not a 1:1 either. It's a complicated situation.

Just an example to highlight that there *could* also be some additional sales from the word of mouth;

100 copies pirated, 100 pirates. 50 tell their friends, 25 friends buy a copy. Actual customers upset by the DRM.

Former pirates; 10 copies bought, 10 new customers. 5 tell their friends, 1 friend buys. Former pirates upset by the DRM.

The big question is, would the publishers/developers get more sales if pirated copies weren't available? Since only a few pirates would actually buy, and since the word of mouth would be reduced in general, I'm not sure. Since they would have to implement even worse DRM than now to actually prevent it, or make the games much cheaper, I think the situation isn't as dire as some may suggest.

Skyrim is a single player game with few DRM restrictions, yet sold around 6 million at launch. Why are publishers still blaming pirates after this? The market is clearly out there.

The general situation of the focus on pirates seems to work out like this; publisher releases extremely expensive, mediocre game with little marketing, and sales only reflect the mediocrity and the effort put into the marketing. The publisher thinks that if it couldn't be pirated, more people would buy it. Does this mediocre game even deserve more sales? No.

What does the publisher do? He devises a plan to prevent pirates from pirating it -- a plan that also punishes the paying customers. Does the publisher even know how many copies they lost to pirates? No, but he probably would have done it even if it only resulted in one more copy sold, it seems.

How many pirates even play through all the games they download? I think pirated games practically function more like demos.

There seem to be very few cases where a truly great game has completely failed. The developers responsible for such games also get recognition in the industry at large, which probably leads to much more options as well.

Also, I think most pirates only have a passing interest in games. Playing a copy you didn't pay for is simply a different, lesser experience.

Anyhow, I thought this guy would be much more reasonable than what those statements seem to suggest.
 

MoxManiac

Member
Steam DRM (or DRM on that level, if on a different platform) should be enough, honestly. I really don't think piracy on the PC is anywhere near as bad as it used to be.
 

Roto13

Member
While it's true that there are people acting like the servers being down is/was actually an act of malice and not incompetence, people still have the right to be upset that a game that bought doesn't/didn't work.
 

Desty

Banned
It seems strange to me that a game designer is not excited at least by the extra memory in the new consoles. It is 10x the old memory so your worlds / characters / etc. can all be scaled up tremendously.
 

Wiktor

Member
Him being in china might be heavily coloring his perception. The only games they have are MMOs. In west that would never work.
 

MormaPope

Banned
Someone should tell him EA won't publish another Alice sequel, or better yet, let EA publish it but make it so you have to be online to play it, along with there being deathmatch and team deathmatch multiplayer.
 
The restaurant analogy doesn't really work. It's more like trying to get takeaway pizza and the owner not letting you leave, so you have to sit at a tiny table and wolf down your delicious pizza even though you'd rather eat it at home. And come to think of it, the pizza's not even that delicious. He said there'd be anchovies on it, and there aren't any. Then he keeps telling you that this is the future of takeaway food, and you're like, "No, no it isn't."

But I really want some molten cheese fries thrown in my mouth right now.
 

Dead Man

Member
Someone should tell him EA won't publish another Alice sequel, or better yet, let EA publish it but make it so you have to be online to play it, along with there being deathmatch and team deathmatch multiplayer.

Only if it has some new control system. Because you know, new controls, or something.
 

noobasuar

Banned
Do you have a gaming pc? If yes then you are blind, if not then please be quiet. There is plenty of room for better graphics in every way possible.

I'm just saying I don't see console sales even being a fraction of what they were this generation.

The masses already have their dvd/blu-ray/HD/Netflix/Call of Duty box. None of the innovations in these new consoles can come even close to what has been put on the last box.
 
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