Game musings and news
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21331
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: Game musings and news
There's more on the guy's twitter. This blew up into a whole thing about this dude's dad trying various games. It goes some pretty good places.
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21331
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: Game musings and news
A Blacksad game!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Re: Game musings and news
EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP, THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT
Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem
- beatbandito
- Posts: 4305
- Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:04 am
Re: Game musings and news
Yeah, that's certainly still a real thing.
I'm not trying to be blown away by early development gameplay reveal demos at this point. But I did take away that it seems like they're staying ambitious, and rarely do I not have some level of fun with an ambitious new RPG property.
I'm not trying to be blown away by early development gameplay reveal demos at this point. But I did take away that it seems like they're staying ambitious, and rarely do I not have some level of fun with an ambitious new RPG property.
Re: Game musings and news
Is the working title just going to stick forever now? We've been calling it 'Dickhead Goose' here but that probably won't fly on the Switch.
It's interesting that Valve refusing to do any official curation on Steam has effectively led to Nintendo taking the job.
It's interesting that Valve refusing to do any official curation on Steam has effectively led to Nintendo taking the job.
Re: Game musings and news
I mean, Nintendo allows untranslated fetish model games to show up on the US Switch shop so the bar for Nintendo is only a notch or two above "I am publishing this rpgmaker porn game without the creators permission (and I probably snatched a translation patch somewhere along the way too)."
Re: Game musings and news
mharr wrote:Is the working title just going to stick forever now? We've been calling it 'Dickhead Goose' here but that probably won't fly on the Switch.
I'm hoping not, especially since it's a pretty easy part of the game to change.
If memory serves, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak went through two name changes before release: Hardware: Shipbreakers and Homeworld: Shipbreakers before settling on DoK. And good fucking thing, since "Hardware" would've been one of the least googlable titles ever.
: Mention something from KPCC or Rachel Maddow
: Go on about Homeworld for X posts
: Go on about Homeworld for X posts
Re: Game musings and news
...so what's the deal with that robot arm in Death Stranding? Let's google a bit while we wait for kiddo to mellow out.
...wait, wh- man, of course some crazy Japanese guy has already built one.
...wait, wh- man, of course some crazy Japanese guy has already built one.
: Mention something from KPCC or Rachel Maddow
: Go on about Homeworld for X posts
: Go on about Homeworld for X posts
Re: Game musings and news
I'm pre-programmed to blindly trust Double Damage games, but this is my favourite game teaser in quite some time:
Re: Game musings and news
Telltale is done. It appears The Walking Dead: Final Season won't be completed.
The Verge had an article in March called Toxic management cost an award-winning game studio its best developers.
It looks a lot like what you'd expect: a niche studio got too big too fast, fell into the usual industry traps of overwork and churn, overrelied on licensed properties, and mistakenly thought that The Walking Dead was an indicator of future successes instead of representing the upper limit of what Telltale's style of game was ever going to sell.
And as for that style...well.
The point-and-click adventure genre has been passe for decades. Telltale did a good job of making it more attractive to casual gamers by de-emphasizing (frequently obtuse) puzzles and emphasizing choices and consequences.
And the first time you play something like The Walking Dead, it really feels like your decisions matter.
But play a couple of Telltale games (or the same one a couple times) and it becomes clear just how shallow the decision tree is. (Shallow...tree? Okay, mixing metaphors here, but you know what I mean.) For games that rely so heavily on the premise that what you do matters, the realization that what you do really doesn't matter is...well, it's gonna make repeat business hard.
I thought The Walking Dead: Season One was brilliant. And I'm disappointed that we're never going to see The Wolf Among Us: Season Two.
Telltale had some really talented people, and did a fantastic job with writing, atmosphere, and tension, and they cast great VAs, too. In a nutshell, they were great at doing what it said on the tin: telling tales.
They weren't so good at making games that made me want to buy more games from them. And apparently they really weren't very good at running a business.
The Verge had an article in March called Toxic management cost an award-winning game studio its best developers.
It looks a lot like what you'd expect: a niche studio got too big too fast, fell into the usual industry traps of overwork and churn, overrelied on licensed properties, and mistakenly thought that The Walking Dead was an indicator of future successes instead of representing the upper limit of what Telltale's style of game was ever going to sell.
And as for that style...well.
The point-and-click adventure genre has been passe for decades. Telltale did a good job of making it more attractive to casual gamers by de-emphasizing (frequently obtuse) puzzles and emphasizing choices and consequences.
And the first time you play something like The Walking Dead, it really feels like your decisions matter.
But play a couple of Telltale games (or the same one a couple times) and it becomes clear just how shallow the decision tree is. (Shallow...tree? Okay, mixing metaphors here, but you know what I mean.) For games that rely so heavily on the premise that what you do matters, the realization that what you do really doesn't matter is...well, it's gonna make repeat business hard.
I thought The Walking Dead: Season One was brilliant. And I'm disappointed that we're never going to see The Wolf Among Us: Season Two.
Telltale had some really talented people, and did a fantastic job with writing, atmosphere, and tension, and they cast great VAs, too. In a nutshell, they were great at doing what it said on the tin: telling tales.
They weren't so good at making games that made me want to buy more games from them. And apparently they really weren't very good at running a business.
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- Joined: Thu May 26, 2016 8:07 pm
Re: Game musings and news
I have a source who was with the company. This is the result of changes made by shifting leadership a few years ago. The way it was described to me is that "With big licences like these, we cannot fail."
From the stories I got to hear, their dev team was expected to perform wizardry with less than ideal tools. Significant change in the engine didn't happen until around Wolf Among Us / Batman. The tools team was understaffed by the descriptions I was given, and the only real concern seemed to be 'when do we ship' from higher up. Management seemed happy to fire people raising concerns or asking sensitive questions rather than address the growing problems.
From the stories I got to hear, their dev team was expected to perform wizardry with less than ideal tools. Significant change in the engine didn't happen until around Wolf Among Us / Batman. The tools team was understaffed by the descriptions I was given, and the only real concern seemed to be 'when do we ship' from higher up. Management seemed happy to fire people raising concerns or asking sensitive questions rather than address the growing problems.
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21331
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: Game musings and news
So, most companies I've worked at.
- beatbandito
- Posts: 4305
- Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:04 am
Re: Game musings and news
madmaxjr wrote:"With big licences like these, we cannot fail."
The mindset that leads to a pit full of copies of E.T.
Re: Game musings and news
madmaxjr wrote:Significant change in the engine didn't happen until around Wolf Among Us / Batman.
I don't think you mean Wolf Among Us, as it was 3 years between the last episode of WAU and the first episode of Batman.
But yeah, I've definitely heard the criticism that they were just slapping hack after hack on an increasingly buggy and geriatric engine.
They're apparently trying to work out a way to finish The Walking Dead, seemingly by outsourcing to a third party. People are rightfully pissed that this would even be on the table after laying off a bunch of employees without severance.
- zaratustra
- Posts: 1665
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:45 pm
Re: Game musings and news
my opinion: In addition to everything else, they completely ditched their core demographic of youngsters and LucasArts nostalgics.
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- Joined: Thu May 26, 2016 8:07 pm
Re: Game musings and news
They had a series of terminations occur early on after Walking Dead, because they kept trying to make adventure games and not Walking Dead format games. Apparently they did it one at a time, like they were assuming people would get the idea.
- Brantly B.
- Woah Dangsaurus
- Posts: 3679
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 2:40 pm
Re: Game musings and news
"Nobody was left but the Walking Dead people" seems a pretty apt description.
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