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Scribblenauts Preview/Impressions Thread - You will say "wow." (see post #217)

Blizzard

Banned
Banana Kid said:
After hearing the entire internet not shut up about this game since E3, I've moved from being excited to completely sick of this game. Okay, I get it, you can spawn anything and sometimes it'll fight something else. It's not going to change the world.
This is the second phase: Publicity backlash, where millions of people state that they will not get it because they've heard about it too much. It dovetails with the stage where no matter how good and/or popular a game is, there will be some who hate it. This is the counterpoint to the "Screw the haters, [possibly terrible game] is awesome" effect.

Side note, I think/hope that most of the puzzles -aren't- about spawning things to fight other things. Or, if they are, I suspect it will still be in a fashion that requires some slight thought and creativity.

In short: Puzzle game, not combat game.

*edit*
My coworker passed by and read the title as scribblenuts, then went on to ask why I was looking at child porn.
WTF, your coworker has serious issues.
 

Tobor

Member
Banana Kid said:
After hearing the entire internet not shut up about this game since E3, I've moved from being excited to completely sick of this game. Okay, I get it, you can spawn anything and sometimes it'll fight something else. It's not going to change the world.

I expect this sentiment will start gaining steam.
 
Blizzard said:
This is the second phase: Publicity backlash, where millions of people state that they will not get it because they've heard about it too much. It dovetails with the stage where no matter how good and/or popular a game is, there will be some who hate it. This is the counterpoint to the "Screw the haters, [possibly terrible game] is awesome" effect.

Side note, I think/hope that most of the puzzles -aren't- about spawning things to fight other things. Or, if they are, I suspect it will still be in a fashion that requires some slight thought and creativity.

In short: Puzzle game, not combat game.
I still think it'll be pretty cool, and I'll still buy it, I just feel like people are going batshit insane over it without it really warranting that kind of attention.

I guess I had the same issues with LittleBigPlanet. People hailed it as the second coming, I thought the underlying mechanics were way too simple and got sick of it fast. Same thing here - despite what you can do, it's still just a puzzle game. You're still just collecting stars.
 

bounchfx

Member
what's the research article that was just published recently?

the rate at which something becomes popular is the same rate it will become unpopular?

scribblenauts took off pretty freakin fast..

I'm still getting it!
 

Blizzard

Banned
Banana Kid said:
I still think it'll be pretty cool, and I'll still buy it, I just feel like people are going batshit insane over it without it really warranting that kind of attention.

I guess I had the same issues with LittleBigPlanet. People hailed it as the second coming, I thought the underlying mechanics were way too simple and got sick of it fast. Same thing here - despite what you can do, it's still just a puzzle game. You're still just collecting stars.
Fair enough. I'm trying to keep my hopes down for those sorts of reasons. It also doesn't help that we found out this much information about the game three months before it releases.

I don't know, but my guess is that Scribblenauts will outsell Little Big Planet. I'm sure there are multiple reasons why that might happen, but the big one is -obviously- that Scribblenauts doesn't feature creepy possessed demon sock puppets from hell as the main characters. :D
 

Cipherr

Member
Banana Kid said:
I still think it'll be pretty cool, and I'll still buy it, I just feel like people are going batshit insane over it without it really warranting that kind of attention.

I guess I had the same issues with LittleBigPlanet. People hailed it as the second coming, I thought the underlying mechanics were way too simple and got sick of it fast. Same thing here - despite what you can do, it's still just a puzzle game. You're still just collecting stars.


I was collecting stars in Mario 64 also, but the execution is what mattered. How it was delivered. Saying "but your still just collecting stars" is a pretty silly way of putting it.
 
Quick question for Jackson or anyone who might know:

1: I saw there's that new Drawn to Life game for the Wii... do you guys have any involvement with it, or is it another team?

2: Will there be multiple save files/slots in Scribblenauts?



I've been trying to hype this game amongst all my friends, but sadly.. practically none of them own a DS. Maybe when the game is released, I'll have them play it on my DS and that will tempt them into buying one. :D
 

Jackson

Member
RagnarokX said:
http://i42.tinypic.com/f9pm2p.png

This rocks dude! Great job!:D

Biglesworth23 said:
Quick question for Jackson or anyone who might know:

1: I saw there's that new Drawn to Life game for the Wii... do you guys have any involvement with it, or is it another team?

2: Will there be multiple save files/slots in Scribblenauts?

1 - Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter will be out for DS and Wii, 5TH Cell made the DS one, they are completely different games with separate gameplay, characters, art style, story and mechanics. The only thing they share is the name. The Wii one is being made by Planet Moon. We're very proud of our next DTL as well, it looks amazing.

2 - Can't say right now.
 
Banana Kid said:
I still think it'll be pretty cool, and I'll still buy it, I just feel like people are going batshit insane over it without it really warranting that kind of attention.

I guess I had the same issues with LittleBigPlanet. People hailed it as the second coming, I thought the underlying mechanics were way too simple and got sick of it fast. Same thing here - despite what you can do, it's still just a puzzle game. You're still just collecting stars.

I get what you mean, and I know I've personally fallen for the hype plenty of times myself.

It's just that with this game...so far, they've announced nothing that hasn't been 100% confirmed. Indeed, unlike every other dev out there they've really held back on almost every outlandish comment.

They say that they'll give you a game that can spawn many, many nouns. And that's exactly what it does. The people who are hyping this game are the people who have played it and read impressions and such. At the end of the day, this game had a couple of booths in a rather obscure publisher's section at E3. It wasn't a big budget title and 5th Cell isn't that well known in the greater scheme of things.

And yet it won Game of the Show from 3 very big websites, beating out a multitude of new IPs and sequels to AAA games.

That's huge, and that's something that can't be ignored.
 
Jackson said:
This rocks dude! Great job!:D



1 - Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter will be out for DS and Wii, 5TH Cell made the DS one, they are completely different games with separate gameplay, characters, art style, story and mechanics. The only thing they share is the name. The Wii one is being made by Planet Moon. We're very proud of our next DTL as well, it looks amazing.

2 - Can't say right now.


Wow, thanks for the super quick answers. :)

I actually picked up Drawn to Life about 3 months ago and still haven't played it yet. My backlog is massive, and it keeps falling back.. I really need to get a move on. And then today I started playing the Orange Box and Earth Defense Force 2017. Dammit.
 

Cth

Member
Another quick question for Jackson (if he doesn't mind answering)..

Is there any chance of the game stat tracking or leaderboards?

By that I mean is there a way to upload how many different solutions we've found for a level?

I think it'd could be a fun way to encourage multiple playthroughs and push players imaginations even further.

On the developer side of things, it might be interesting to see what kinds of stuff everyone is coming up with for future development of the game engine and what not.

Thanks again for a great game and being so accessible!
 

Blizzard

Banned
As a side note, though I'm sure it's too late for something like this in the game, it would be awesome if they had access to some sort of web service in the future. With that, even with limited friend code lists, they could let people upload levels and download from a central server, so you could just tell people "map #15134" or whatever.

Of course, then you'd end up with the Little Big Planet problem of maps being deleted because of content, or "copyright infringement", or whatever...though Little Big Planet had more options for level customization I assume.
 

CTLance

Member
Blizzard said:
As a side note, though I'm sure it's too late for something like this in the game, it would be awesome if they had access to some sort of web service in the future. With that, even with limited friend code lists, they could let people upload levels and download from a central server, so you could just tell people "map #15134" or whatever.
I have always wondered what kind of hoops you have to jump trough to get a web backend like Blastworks did, which is roughly what you're describing here. Nobody bothered to attain the same kind of usability ever after that, which means it's either horribly complicated or not well-liked with Nintendo I guess. It's a shame, really.
 

Blizzard

Banned
CTLance said:
I have always wondered what kind of hoops you have to jump trough to get a web backend like Blastworks did, which is roughly what you're describing here. Nobody bothered to attain the same kind of usability ever after that, which means it's either horribly complicated or not well-liked with Nintendo I guess. It's a shame, really.
Pokemon did it to with their GTS. I'm almost sure I remember some flash website where you could literally see what pokemon were being traded from where as they went flying across the internet. :p But yeah, probably unlikely, or hard to do without the possibility of people cheating with it, or something.
 

Forkball

Member
Blizzard said:
Pokemon did it to with their GTS. I'm almost sure I remember some flash website where you could literally see what pokemon were being traded from where as they went flying across the internet.

http://www.pokemon-gts.net/

It's a pretty awesome website, immensely detailed and very aesthetically impressive. I would love to see something like this with Scribblenauts, that would randomly update what items were summoned, what levels were just beaten with what items etc. They even do news reports about recent trade trends. Did you know Jigglypuff jumped up 80 spots this week? WELL NOW YOU DO.
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
RagnarokX said:
I know I've been beaten, but I had already started on it so...

f9pm2p.png
Off topic, but Me and rag have gotten into a bit of a debate, I say it looks far closer to a Black Hole Recon vehicle with a chair strapped to the top and a clock on the back, and he keeps calling me crazy saying its meant to be the classic time machine from "The Time Machine"

Well, what do you all think, my sprite work sucks, but I think it gets the point across:
all3.png
 

RagnarokX

Member
Drkirby said:
Off topic, but Me and rag have gotten into a bit of a debate, I say it looks far closer to a Black Hole Recon vehicle with a chair strapped to the top and a clock on the back, and he keeps calling me crazy saying its meant to be the classic time machine from "The Time Machine"

Well, what do you all think, my sprite work sucks, but I think it gets the point across:
Plus it's the time machine that spawned in that skateboarding god with shotgun vs Cthulhu video ;P
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
RagnarokX said:
Plus it's the time machine that spawned in that skateboarding god with shotgun vs Cthulhu video ;P
I noticed also, I find it odd the official artwork doesn't match it.
 
Blizzard said:
Fair enough. I'm trying to keep my hopes down for those sorts of reasons. It also doesn't help that we found out this much information about the game three months before it releases.
What do you mean? The important things we learned about last year with the trailer; it's just that now with hands-on impressions we're seeing how well it's living up to the promise.
 

Nicktals

Banned
So jackson, how much skill is involved in this game? Even for advanced solutions...

Basically, are there any items which require any skill to use? Or timing? Or precise placement?


I'm mostly asking just because i'm wondering if there will be much of a difference between trying to upload my own crazy solutions to youtube, or if it will always be fairly easy to recreate solutions, just with the words, actions, and general placement used?

I'm not sure which I hope it is. There are pros and cons to either design.
 
Nicktals said:
So jackson, how much skill is involved in this game? Even for advanced solutions...

Basically, are there any items which require any skill to use? Or timing? Or precise placement?


I'm mostly asking just because i'm wondering if there will be much of a difference between trying to upload my own crazy solutions to youtube, or if it will always be fairly easy to recreate solutions, just with the words, actions, and general placement used?

I'm not sure which I hope it is. There are pros and cons to either design.

I'm guessing the game is strongly based around thinking outside the box rather than timing or skill so i would say it would be the second option.

Not sure though.
 

Alphahawk

Member
Shiine said:
Jackson, u should tell us something cool each day until the release =D Just to keep up the hype ^^

Careful, or we'll end up with a Smash Bros Dojo like scenario (IE: The game comes out and we know everything.)
 

Shiine

Junior Member
AdventureRacing said:
I'm guessing the game is strongly based around thinking outside the box rather than timing or skill so i would say it would be the second option.

Not sure though.
Yeah i think so to, the only skill you need is the imagination. And maybe some creativity if you wanna build something special, with glue =D
 

Shiine

Junior Member
Alphahawk said:
Careful, or we'll end up with a Smash Bros Dojo like scenario (IE: The game comes out and we know everything.)
its over 10k things in the game, and i dont think its 10k days to the release date =D
 

Nicktals

Banned
AdventureRacing said:
I'm guessing the game is strongly based around thinking outside the box rather than timing or skill so i would say it would be the second option.

Not sure though.

Yeah, I think you're right...I haven't played the game, and haven't been totally clear on how actions are handled, such as throwing. Do you just the height? Or do you just tap the 'Throw' action icon, then tap where you want to throw, and it follows that line, taking into account hard coded variables like maximum throw distance (as in, if you try to throw at an object way up high, it will travel towards the object until reaching it's maximum height and curving back down to the ground.)

I think I might actually like if you had to control a power meter for such objects. Could allow ever more possibilities. Trying to use a hammer, but the full swing is too strong, and breaks the surface? Do a half power swing, and solve the puzzle....something along those lines. Meh, whatever...I'm just curious and anxious to play it.

Release date revealed yet? Or still speculation based on altered anticipated dates of online retailers?
 

Jme

Member
Banana Kid said:
After hearing the entire internet not shut up about this game since E3, I've moved from being excited to completely sick of this game. Okay, I get it, you can spawn anything and sometimes it'll fight something else. It's not going to change the world.

You're right, it's not going to the change the world.

But with any luck, it will change the way we are able to play games in the future. What they are doing is unprecedented. It's innovation in it's rawest form. It's revolutionary. Not just for the DS, but for gaming as a whole. The concept of "being able to do anything" has often been touted in games, especially when we hit the sandbox era. It never lives up because there are always going to be limitations. With Scribblenauts however, sure the claim isn't you can "do" anything, but you can "use" anything. And this time anything truly means, anything. By being the case study to prove that this can be done, I guarantee you are going to see more and more of this time of item use in games. Not just puzzle games, but games in general. Think about the other implications this sort of technology brings. This will snowball into bigger things. For example, imagine an action adventure where you play a wizard, and you can cast spells that summon anything. Or imagine a world creation game like The Sims where you can literally build anything not just pre-defined assets. By bringing this game to reality, 5th cell is doing the same thing as walking into every other game developers office and dumping a giant bucket of Lego's on the floor.

Also, the game deserves the hype because it looks fucking fun.
 

jepense

Member
A bit late back to this thread, but: Congratulations to 5th Cell for their success and a big thank you to Jackson for the active participation in the thread (and gifts)! :D
 

Blizzard

Banned
JoshuaJSlone said:
What do you mean? The important things we learned about last year with the trailer; it's just that now with hands-on impressions we're seeing how well it's living up to the promise.
I just meant we've gotten a lot of relatively new information from Jackson, E3 trailers, and E3 hands-on impressions, since E3.

*edit*
I'm not sure what the person meant earlier by "official". The first time machine dino picture was official, and the second one wasn't. The first one didn't match the game. Also Feep has never responded to my PM asking him the details about how it asked whether he wanted to go backwards and forwards in time, since the video we saw just automatically went backwards.
 
Gamespot First Look Game Demo

http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6212016/

No Miah this time!

Cool things from this video:

-New level! Showcases how they want to give the player many options to solve a single level
-Jetpack! Also it starts shorting out in the water
-Maxwell sinks/drowns? while underwater if he can't breath
-Matt says "early Fall" as a release, which fits the September 15th release speculation
-New music! God, I love all the music in this game already

hmm!
 

jrricky

Banned
Banana Kid said:
After hearing the entire internet not shut up about this game since E3, I've moved from being excited to completely sick of this game. Okay, I get it, you can spawn anything and sometimes it'll fight something else. It's not going to change the world.
Who cares about your personal problems and why is this post relevant to the thread at hand?

SirPenguin said:
Gamespot First Look Game Demo

http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6212016/

No Miah this time!

Cool things from this video:

-New level! Showcases how they want to give the player many options to solve a single level
-Jetpack! Also it starts shorting out in the water
-Maxwell sinks/drowns? while underwater if he can't breath
-Matt says "early Fall" as a release, which fits the September 15th release speculation
-New music! God, I love all the music in this game already

hmm!
:D
 
I was thinking about how this game is going to be tested, and then I got an idea: how about a public beta? I have no clue how this would even be possible on DS, but if anyone could do it, it would be 5th Cell.
 
cooljeanius said:
I was thinking about how this game is going to be tested, and then I got an idea: how about a public beta? I have no clue how this would even be possible on DS, but if anyone could do it, it would be 5th Cell.
But seeing as you're going to have to test every word in the game, it'd be on a DS cart, and practically giving the game away for free.
 

Ramenman

Member
Banana Kid said:
After hearing the entire internet not shut up about this game since E3, I've moved from being excited to completely sick of this game. Okay, I get it, you can spawn anything and sometimes it'll fight something else. It's not going to change the world.

Alas, that's what happens with buzz-generating games. Everyone who's not interested finds it irritating, and everyone who'll end up not liking it will say it's "overrated".

But I think I'd rather have this for Scribblenauts than having it bomb in a sea of not-knowingness.

Edit : I'm so beaten. I agree with the above posts.
 

Ramenman

Member
SirPenguin said:

Haha, when he uses the jetpack he goes near the water and almost gets electrocuted :D

Banana Kid said:
I still think it'll be pretty cool, and I'll still buy it, I just feel like people are going batshit insane over it without it really warranting that kind of attention.

I guess I had the same issues with LittleBigPlanet. People hailed it as the second coming, I thought the underlying mechanics were way too simple and got sick of it fast. Same thing here - despite what you can do, it's still just a puzzle game. You're still just collecting stars.

I think the difference for Scribblenauts is that the game comes from a little known studio. So everyone who was interested in it felt the need to spread the word as much as possible, for fear that it be overlooked. See the avatars I made for GAFvertising purposes, and the whole post 217 spreading all around the internet thing.

The number of people interested exponentially boomed during E3, so the love boomed just as much.
The counterpart is hearing about the game everywhere, and pissing some people off.

Post E3, I don't feel this need to give free avatars or "spread the word" as much. I don't check this thread as much either, because I know people know, so I can just wait for it to come out now.

With Little Big Planet, there was hype and love, but it was officially supported by Sony. Everyone knew about it from the start, so it's not really the same story.
 

Forkball

Member
Cool new video. I loved how the jetpack short circuited. When he was playing the level, I was trying to guess what he would pick, but I was surprised about how he solved it. I was just thinking about using a trampoline to jump on top, but I guess that's not creative enough. Though I was hoping he'd use a submarine instead of a dolphin.

It will be interesting to see how many things are never discovered. I'm sure 5th Cell might divulge some little quirks after the game release. Like the full moon and villain interaction, who would even think to use that?
 

Firestorm

Member
Banana Kid said:
After hearing the entire internet not shut up about this game since E3, I've moved from being excited to completely sick of this game. Okay, I get it, you can spawn anything and sometimes it'll fight something else. It's not going to change the world.
Why concentrate on the little easter egg of having them fight when the reason this game is so amazing is that tens of thousands of items can be summoned at will - all of which behave and interact in a logical manner? This is amazing game design and programming. Moreso than LittleBigPlanet which was fairly ambitious for a console game. Scribblenauts is ambitious for a video game period.
 

BorkBork

The Legend of BorkBork: BorkBorkity Borking
Forkball said:
Cool new video. I loved how the jetpack short circuited. When he was playing the level, I was trying to guess what he would pick, but I was surprised about how he solved it. I was just thinking about using a trampoline to jump on top, but I guess that's not creative enough. Though I was hoping he'd use a submarine instead of a dolphin.

It will be interesting to see how many things are never discovered. I'm sure 5th Cell might divulge some little quirks after the game release. Like the full moon and villain interaction, who would even think to use that?

I was thinking of unleashing some moles to eat through the terrain. :lol The possibilities are mind-boggling, even for such a simple level.
 

Dacvak

No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
batbeg said:
Oh my God... it says "Merit Get!" I LOVE YOU 5TH CELL!

SCRIBBLENAUTS GET!

I KNOW! I laughed so hard when I saw that.

God damn this game is incredible.
 
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