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ForumsDiscussion Forum → Anything games
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Anything games
2019-01-12, 7:44 AM #601
Originally posted by Reid:
No idea either. It was a seriously weird idea. Bethesda has no experience in this area too, I think they licensed out Elder Scrolls for ESO, right?
Internal studio comprised of Mythic/Dark Age of Camelot alum. It wasn't licensed out, but it was a different team inside Zenimax.

Quote:
There's no way most people haven't quit and this game is probably hemorrhaging cash.
Quit the studio? I mean, I know what you meant, but unless there was a strong message from upper management that they understand why FO76 failed and didn't intend to repeat the mistake again, I know I might be looking for a different job. I've quit jobs over less.

I have this creeping feeling that FO76 went exactly as planned though. It was ultimately just a hacked together Fallout 4 asset flip with added multiplayer. Like, Fallout 76 is their online services prototype, a proof of concept and technical demonstration that their engine/tooling can be adapted for making them, and they only released it in order to recoup some of those development costs in the short term. Like Fallout 76 was supposed to be garbage, so there's no surprise on the business end that people think it is garbage: there's no deeper lesson to be learned here about what customers want. Full steam ahead, multiplayer-only Elder Scrolls 6.

Quote:
Huh. Not sure what that signals. Maybe there won't actually be a VI.
Skyrim made so much freaking money there is guaranteed to be a VI, even if they hire someone else to make it. That is a ****load of money to leave on the table.

They would have started developing it years earlier if they hadn't been trying to convert players to the on-paper much more lucrative Elder Scrolls Online in the meantime. But, again, that isn't the kind of game Elder Scrolls fans want to play. Anecdotally, I was really into MMOs before Morrowind came out. Morrowind was the kind of game that I always wanted. I've never paid a monthly subscription since.
2019-01-12, 9:09 AM #602
Jon, in your previous post I was thinking of other titles before I got to the bottom and realized you were talking about Elder Scrolls, which was off my radar. I figured you were talking about Anthem, or maybe Destiny.
I suppose it is always happening these days, and has been for a while. At large I've really given up on AAA and mostly play Indie games now, unless a AAA game does really well I'll try it 5 years after release.
My blawgh.
2019-01-12, 10:00 AM #603
Originally posted by Phantom-Seraph:
I figured you were talking about Anthem, or maybe Destiny.


Right down to firing their composer.
2019-01-12, 10:56 AM #604
Huh, and all this time I thought this was the last we heard of Cliff B.

[Unable to find specified attachment]
Star Wars: TODOA | DXN - Deus Ex: Nihilum
2019-01-12, 11:12 AM #605
Boy I sure wish I know the context of that PA cartoon, but they redesigned their site and dropped the news link so I have no idea what they’re talking about 100% of the time!
2019-01-12, 11:27 AM #606
Here's the newspost and an archived version of the original article, I guess

https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2008/02/27/the-alien-the-mutant-the-heretic
https://web.archive.org/web/20080215095134/http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/02/13/gears-of-war-creator-update/
Star Wars: TODOA | DXN - Deus Ex: Nihilum
2019-01-12, 6:51 PM #607
Originally posted by Jon`C:
So Epic “won” in the sense that fortnite is currently a popular meme among the childs with their stolen credit cards and whatnot. That audience is fickle though and I’m not sure I’d bet on Epic being able to recapture it once Fortnite dies down. Given its development history I’m not sure Epic understands why Fortnite was successful; it wasn’t because of fad chasing but I’m sure that will be their main takeaway, since doing that “worked”. Their most valuable non-Fortnite properties are probably degraded beyond usefulness, since the people who made Gears magical are gone and they don’t even have the rights to it, the next UT has been shelved indefinitely and even if they started it back up today the last time Unreal was relevant would have been before the average gamer was born. Their engine tech is getting pushed down-market as AAA developers become more consolidated and pursue in-house engine development again, still huge but the prospects are AA prospects (not good). Lastly, on a more personal note, I wouldn’t want to work for either company but I’d much rather work on games like Doom 2016 than Fortnite. Wouldn’t even hesitate.


Btw what made Fortnite successful, if not making battle royale family friendly?
2019-01-13, 5:02 AM #608
Originally posted by Reid:
Btw what made Fortnite successful, if not making battle royale family friendly?


What made pogs successful when we were kids?
2019-01-13, 5:47 AM #609
Originally posted by Jon`C:
What made pogs successful when we were kids?




Does Epic Games have some kind of corporate deal going on, though?
2019-01-13, 5:49 AM #610
Quote:
In another branded push by the game, Fortnite successfully integrated the character Thanos, to help promote Avengers: Infinity War. The avatar became part of the game, creating a crossover that didn’t negatively impact game play or make players feel they were being marketed to, which is key, explained Wisnefski.


Oh they got Disney, GG.

Living in a world of no television and adblock, I do unfortunately tend to have no idea what's being advertised to people and how.
2019-01-13, 6:27 AM #611
Fortnite was popular before that tie-in.

It's not deliberate marketing either. It's a fat load of luck, basically. You can't force something to become successful. There are things Epic did that increased their odds, most of them fortuitous mistakes, but at the end of the day building a good product is neither necessary nor sufficient for success. They caught a fad on the up-swing by blind luck of having an existing flop product that was already 99% of the way there, leveraged their existing middleware business to make it cheap, accessible and portable, and then made it memey as **** to resonate with the childrens (which I'm not sure is a product of a dialogue between Epic and its fans, feels authentic, or is being embraced ironically):



[https://i.imgur.com/3m353g6.jpg]


Pogs didn't crack this formula and Epic hasn't either. Nobody has. I'm not saying you can time the market, but sooner or later Fortnite will fade away (just like pogs did) and sure enough you'll discover that Epic has no way of replicating its success. And depending on how well Epic understands the fact that they had no real control here, they could hurt themselves pretty badly trying to do it.
2019-01-13, 7:27 AM #612
True. Releasing a competing IP right now would probably be a failure. Fortnite, I suppose, was also timed pretty well to absorb children away from Minecraft and other kid-friendly alternatives. And trying to divine exactly what clicks is basically tea leaf reading.
2019-01-13, 8:00 AM #613
Should we talk about dead games? We should. Let's talk about Duelyst. Duelyst is the story of developers killing a working title through sheer incompetence.

A brief history: Duelyst went into open beta in the latter half of 2015, through Kickstarter funding and led by Keith Lee, a Blizzard alum. The premise is straightforward. Much of the game is a carbon copy of Hearthstone. You have a deck of cards. You get more cards by buying packs. You have three currencies. One is gold, the free currency you earn from playing, doing dailies or whatever. There is a premium currency, which works as expected. These both purchase packs of cards and other cosmetics. There's also Spirit, which is what you get from destroying cards and can only be used to create specific cards. So, exactly Hearthstone so far. Okay? Okay.

The hook to keep it distinct was interesting, though. You didn't just plop down cards into an unsorted row. Instead, you had a 5x9 grid to place minions on:

[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/duelyst/images/c/c4/6ec586a775f1326b09b066cdc24f91c4_large.gif]

There was an added layer of having to place your minions and move everyone into strategic positions. Pretty cool, yeah? I and friends picked this game up some time in 2016, and we all enjoyed it. It seemed to do pretty well, too.

Now take a peak at the sullygnome data for streaming, my favorite "interest proxy":

[https://i.imgur.com/ocpO8xi.png]

See it? Hmph, nope. Let's add a bit of information about the game's major set releases:

[https://i.imgur.com/sUnLbSC.png]

A-ha, now it looks like we're getting somewhere. So the game had a solid release, and for nearly a year seems to have had a consistent fanbase. Then..



Or, more accurately, the second set was released. Now I wasn't playing at this time, so I had to track down people who were and find out: why did the game take a massive hit after the second set?

Turns out, there are two ways the developers took a working game and threw it straight into the garbage.

First, purchasing options for packs changed:

Quote:
Players can collect all the new cards from Rise of the Bloodborn by purchasing expansion specific orbs. Unlike regular orbs that cost 100g and contain 5 cards, Rise of the Bloodborn orbs will cost 300g and contain 9 cards, 3 unique cards with 2 extra copies of each. Also unlike other regular orbs, Rise of the Bloodborn orbs will never provide players a duplicate of a card already in a player’s collection. Once a player receives a new card, that card will no longer appear in future orbs in order to ensure players are always receiving new cards from the expansion.


This also fails to mention that these cards specifically could not be crafted by spirit. So all of those long-term players who saved up? Well, **** them. You also spend 3x as much for less than 2/3rds the amount of cards. From what people have said, most people who played competitively just bought enough packs to complete the entire set, as daily grinding to unlock what you needed could take a month if you were unlucky.

Second, you have terrible, awful game balancing choices. Turns out the new cards ended up making a few decks massively better than others, and what's worse those decks weren't even fun to play against.

These two made people feel coerced into paying to win in a game that had diverted from what made it fun to begin with. According to a developer, in this period the game hemorrhaged over half of its active player base. At this point there was zero advertisement whatsoever. As a result, no new players joined to replace anyone. The fate of the game was practically sealed then.

So TL;DR, if you're going to make a game don't randomly change your monetization scheme. Also don't fail to playtest your game. Doing so will make sure you aren't adding crap which players will hate.
2019-01-13, 8:07 AM #614
Originally posted by Reid:
Should we talk about dead games?


man dat JK and Dork Farces yo

Also, I remember Duelyst only from (obv.) a PA strip https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2017/02/17/gtfooh
Star Wars: TODOA | DXN - Deus Ex: Nihilum
2019-01-13, 1:30 PM #615
reminds me, I'd been meaning to go to the mall to go get some more pogs
2019-01-13, 1:46 PM #616
The first time I played pogs it was with neighbor kids who only played for keeps. They were teaching me how to play as they were winning all of the pogs I'd gotten for my birthday. They cleaned me out and even got my slammer. I'm pretty sure it is the reason I avoided Pokemon like the plague when it became a thing a few years later.
My blawgh.
2019-01-13, 9:26 PM #617
Originally posted by Phantom-Seraph:
The first time I played pogs it was with neighbor kids who only played for keeps. They were teaching me how to play as they were winning all of the pogs I'd gotten for my birthday. They cleaned me out and even got my slammer. I'm pretty sure it is the reason I avoided Pokemon like the plague when it became a thing a few years later.


H U S T L E D

Originally posted by Nikumubeki:
man dat JK and Dork Farces yo

Also, I remember Duelyst only from (obv.) a PA strip https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2017/02/17/gtfooh


Did JK sell well? I wonder how many copies were sold before it was added to digital services.
2019-01-14, 9:05 AM #618
That one hit too close to home:

[https://photos.smugmug.com/Comics/Pa-comics/n-xmQS5/i-pCv5qCS/0/2100x20000/i-pCv5qCS-2100x20000.jpg]
Sorry for the lousy German
2019-01-14, 9:40 PM #619
Originally posted by Reid:


Does Epic Games have some kind of corporate deal going on, though?


what the **** did i just watch
Epstein didn't kill himself.
2019-01-14, 9:59 PM #620
A clip from a bad Sony comedy movie making fun of cringy product tie-ins despite itself being a tie in.
2019-01-14, 10:11 PM #621
a rare bad movie from Happy Madison Productions
2019-01-16, 6:58 AM #622
Penny Arcade still exists?

[why?]
nope.
2019-01-16, 7:13 AM #623
Originally posted by Baconfish:
Penny Arcade still exists?

[why?]


It is the will of FastGamerr and GBK.
Star Wars: TODOA | DXN - Deus Ex: Nihilum
2019-01-16, 7:32 AM #624
Originally posted by Baconfish:
Penny Arcade still exists?

[why?]


because, y'know, gamer, uh
2019-01-16, 12:03 PM #625
Originally posted by Nikumubeki:
It is the will of FastGamerr and GBK.


It's true.
And when the moment is right, I'm gonna fly a kite.
2019-01-19, 7:09 AM #626
Like, I genuinely can't remember it ever being funny and the whole "gamer" discourse is the ****ing pits.
nope.
2019-01-27, 3:48 PM #627
https://www.christcenteredgamer.com/index.php/reviews/pc-mac/5810-huniepop-pc

Don't ask questions.
2019-01-27, 4:28 PM #628
Wow, that was a really well-written and objective review. I'm pretty impressed.
2019-01-27, 4:47 PM #629
I haven't read the full review, but I find it extremely offensive to spell "money" like that with a 'u'. >:-(
2019-01-27, 4:51 PM #630
Originally posted by Steven:
Wow, that was a really well-written and objective review. I'm pretty impressed.


Yeah, well, though on the one hand she is all for promoting "divine games", she is married to an anime character.
2019-01-27, 5:08 PM #631
Originally posted by Reverend Jones:
I haven't read the full review, but I find it extremely offensive to spell "money" like that with a 'u'. >:-(


Is it like that in other reviews? I thought maybe it was just this weird game in particular that spelled it "munie."
2019-01-27, 5:12 PM #632
Yeah, pretty sure the spelling is part of the game. The dialog also uses bad grammar ("how's things?") >:|
2019-01-27, 5:14 PM #633
Have you guys heard of the "Intimacy Mode" of some 2018 game called Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal? It's censored in the Western version of the game. In the original, apparently you get a pair of virtual hands that you use to grope some bikini idol, and you "win" when she finally gives into your advances. :wtf:
2019-01-27, 8:14 PM #634
Originally posted by Steven:
Wow, that was a really well-written and objective review. I'm pretty impressed.


Seriously the best Christian review of an anime dating porn game ever. I go to Christ Centered Gaming for all of my top notch anime porn reviews.

No joke though it was a surprisingly in depth and comprehensive review. For someone married to an anime husband too, apparently.

I love discovering new kinds of people. So interesting and bizarre.
2019-01-27, 8:50 PM #635
I just watched a clip of some of the dialog of this game. If only I had known the trick to getting laid was to ask women

a) their cup size

b) their last name
2019-01-27, 9:00 PM #636
If you're physically attractive enough
2019-01-27, 9:20 PM #637
.
2019-01-27, 9:23 PM #638
I lost it at "young love"
2019-01-28, 6:51 AM #639
While I'm a fan of anime, I don't watch "those" kind.
2019-01-28, 8:37 AM #640
Originally posted by saberopus:
While I'm a fan of anime, I don't watch "those" kind.


Uh huh.
Just be you, sab
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