SiN

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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About SiN

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  1. Project Godus: Don't believe his lies

    I *really* didn't want to say anything more here, but whatever: Twig, my position is clearly more naunced than you make it out to be, and if you took a few moments to actually read everything I put down (or heck, even the paragraph below the one you quoted) that would be very plainly obvious. I'm not bothered to explain it all over, but for the record: I don't think Molyneux is a liar or a conman, but I do think he's an incredibly irresponsible project manager. I'm normally a staunch defender of developers [1], but the handling of Godus goes *well* beyond what I'd consider common pitfalls of software development. Maybe that kind of thing was okay when publishers were involved, I don't know, that would be between Molyneux and his publishers. But taking money from the public, where there are zero checks-and-bounds in place, requires a different level of responsibility that Molyneux clearly did not consider seriously. Anyway, with that said, peace out. [1]: You can look up some old threads, like the Binfinite one, if you'd like.
  2. Project Godus: Don't believe his lies

    Therein concludes another excellent discussion with twig.
  3. Project Godus: Don't believe his lies

    .... yes? I mean, I really can't think of a fuck-up bigger than being pitched "The Next God Game by Peter Molyneux" and being delivered a click-fest F2P game by DeNA. I have never, ever minded Molyneux hyping bits of his game. "And then you zoom into the apple, and there's a worm coming out of it" was and is charming as hell. I love it. But this isn't that. This is taking peoples money based on a pitch, and then delivering basically the opposite of that. How much money would 22cans have raised if they pitched "A Mobile-First, F2P God game by Peter Molyneux"?
  4. Project Godus: Don't believe his lies

    My feelings on Molyneux are super complicated. I've been a fan for the longest time. I've played almost all his games, from Bullfrog to Lionhead and (less so) to Microsoft. Almost every one of them I adore. The last few year though, starting from the Microsoft buy-out era, things have been different. The thing is, he used to dream big and miss the mark and that was totally cool. But now? Fable 3 (and even 2) were not these crazy out-there ideas. Curiosity (which I enjoyed conceptually!) was not either. And Godus is the biggest disappointment of them all, because it's clearly just a crap game. Godus wasn't a matter of being *so ambitious* that something had to go wrong. It was not very ambitious, poorly executed, and well behind schedule. As a Kickstarter it gets even worse. The DF reference is really interesting, because Broken Age is really *the* way to run a Kickstarter. I'd call it a perfect Kickstarter precisely because things went wrong. Because yes, things go wrong in game development all the damn time. But they documented it all and kept the backers in on every step of the way. They didn't mince words. And most importantly, they figured out well ahead of time that things weren't going to work out and DID SOMETHING about it. This is the bit that The Internet gets so wrong about the BA Kickstarter: that things went "wrong" with BA is not a bad thing, it's an entirely natural aspect of game development. The important part is that DF caught it (relatively) early on and did some course correction. Godus is how you do it wrong: schedule aggressively, ignore the clear signs that things are amiss, and continue on as if everything is fine. And of course, "this kinda thing" used to be okay back in his Lionhead days... playing with publisher monies is fine. But these are people, normal people who were pitched one thing, and got something entirely different. Note, I'm not saying that 22cans failed to deliver, or the game was delayed or whatever. I'm saying that the end product, even if it was on-time and bug-free was not "The Next God Game from Peter Molyneux", it's a F2P clickfest by DeNA. Finally, about that RPS interview. Definitely a painful read, especially as a game developer. And I want to feel scummy about the whole thing, but then reading his interview on The Guardian reminded me why it had to be this way. Because with the latter he just did his usual paper-over-all-the-problems-as-if-they're-minor-issues-or-not-issues-at-all thing. And you'll note, HE'S PROMISED EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE BY EASTER. Spoiler alert: things will not be fine by Easter. I feel shitty about this entire thing.
  5. What you're doing sounds interesting, but I think you're getting caught up in the classic mistake of building something ambitious in your head without having much to show for it. There are two problems here: 1) you work yourself up over all the little details of a project and overwhelm yourself before you even get started. You alluded to this a little, I believe. 2) concepts are perfect, tangible things are flawed. Once you get some of this stuff working, you'll understand your project a lot better, and may want to make changes in the concept. I've personally dealt with both these issues a lot. I've found that the best plan is to just start building things. Building out smaller components of the bigger idea will give you greater insight into what you're building. Getting user feedback will answer the "will anyone use this thing?" question, and may help build a community over time. Specifically for tools, there's a clear delineation between "editor" and "runtime". I build a lot of little tools for the games I make, and I *always* start on the runtime. The first thing I do is define the overall data structure, just a json thing or whatever. Then I work on the runtime part... loading the file into the game/app/whatever and seeing it actually work. Right here, I can already create a bunch of cool stuff by manually editing the files without getting bogged down in designing/coding an editor. Then I alternate between creating stuff and working on the tools to interact with the data files. As you design more levels/comics/whatever you get a better understanding of what the editor should look like, etc. The most important thing is that you have a tangible piece of software, and it instantly makes the whole project a lot less scary, a lot easier for you to understand, and a lot easier to actually plan/scope. Plus, people can interact with it, give you feedback, and maybe even get excited about it?
  6. I think leaving Metacritic has been a significant motivating factor for every outlet that has dropped review scores, but it's nice to see Eurogamer call it out and detail their reasoning against it very specifically.
  7. Best trophy: https://twitter.com/brandonnn/status/559488849294802944
  8. Idle Digging - Shovel Knight

    My idea of "reimagine" goes well beyond adding checkpoints, multiple save slots, and not making you restart large portions of a game for fairly arbitrary reasons. Those are like, the minimum requirements I'd expect for a game made in the last 10 years. I agree with what you're saying, but from what I've read/watched re SK, I'm either not seeing the new direction bits at all, or they just aren't being pushed far enough for my tastes. Are they interesting though? I actually agree, but then I challenge you to find another thread on the forum where we've discussed something like a DX11 shader advancement in a game as much as we've discussed the innards of the NES on this thread. [edit] This was kinda flippant, but the point I was originally making is that a game who's major selling point is "retro aesthetic and gameplay!" [1] is about as interesting to me as a game who's MSP is "very technically advanced graphics!" Both are interesting for sure, but not enough to make we want to actually buy and play the game. [1] and just to be sure I wasn't missing something, I checked out the SK website and the first sentence contains both "classic" and "8-bit retro aesthetic".
  9. Idle Digging - Shovel Knight

    (I was unable to parse your second sentence and assumed it was a joke.) When I read about Shovel Knight, it's always "this game emulates the NES with love, oh and and also it's a pretty good game" whereas VVVVVV was always "this is an incredible game and also it's a great homage to the Speccy". Intent matters, sure, but the final product is far more important. And history matters too, but then emulators (and the massive amount of game literature) do a perfectly good job at that. With modern work I'm much more interested in how creators can take the older work they love and reimagine it in a modern context. IMO the best work comes from there, not slavish recreations. Also, a lot of the "this game emulates an 8-bit system with a lot of care" talk sounds *exactly* like "this game has very technically advanced graphics" talk to me.
  10. Idle Digging - Shovel Knight

    But actually, why does it matter? I'd understand if this was a novel concept (like dart brought up with The Artist), but the retro aesthetic has been done to death, especially with platformers around the same era. Does the game do anything interesting with the aesthetic? Does it challenge some assumption, or give us a fresh perspective, on NES era games? And digging deeper into the game itself: why does the jumping look so stiff? Why does the game pause-and-scroll between screens? Why doesn't the game let you resume from mid-level checkpoints? (as Griddlelol asks) I suspect the answer is simply "because that's how it worked on the NES". And I just can't bring myself to care about nostalgia for the sake of it. Which is not to say "old things are bad" or something. But I think a game like VVVVVV does a much more interesting job of taking an old game and re-imagining it for the modern era.
  11. Idle Digging - Shovel Knight

    lol, that "young" "kid" is Simon Parkin. It's not that he doesn't know his history (look him up), it's that he doesn't care. Why does it even matter whether it's a faux 8- or 16-bit game? It's irrelevant to a reviewer telling you their opinion of a game.
  12. The rather excellent Startopia http://www.gog.com/game/startopia
  13. Hatred: The Most Despicable Game of All Time?

    I don't think it's unreasonable of Valve. If I were running a store I wouldn't stock this game. Valve should have the right to not stock any game they choose, even if it is for arbitrary reasons. People point out that Postal, Manhunt, etc, are on Steam, but keep in mind those games were vetted by ESRB and PEGI. Rockstar (very publicly) toned down Manhunt 2 for the European release because PEGI refused to rate it at all. For this game, the burden of regulation would be entirely on Valve. The biggest danger would be that bad press could attract more regulation in the digital space. Currently, games don't need to be rated to get on Steam. I'm going through the ESRB/PEGI stuff now for my console title... it's expensive and time consuming for small developers like me. If more regulation is pushed onto Steam, expect fewer quirkly/small titles, and slower update/release schedules. Nobody wins.
  14. STREET FIGHTER 5 (PS4/PC exclusive)

    Am I the only one who totally loves the meters UI? I really hope it's not placeholder because they're really clear to read, and are well designed (in a minimalist kinda way). Oh and yeah, the rest of it looks good too. I'm interested in hearing the "official" breakdown of the new mechanics. I liked the focus mechanic from SFIV, I'd love to see a refined (less arbitrary) version return. Parries are cool to pull off, but I feel they would just slow the game down. And the demo matches definitely looked super fast paced (especially those meters!) A faster SFIV with a greater emphasis on offensive play would make me very happy.
  15. The DS is ten years old.

    My favourite thing about the PSP was how the "low battery" LED was placed in *exactly* underneath your right thumb. I had many "Surprise! your battery died when you weren't looking" moments.