AteBit Posted April 17, 2012 My Metagame cards finally came in, and I thought maybe it could make for an interesting thread. So lets see how this plays out. Shuffled and drawn at random... Which is more commercial? Desktop Dungeons (2011, PC & Mac, Dev. QCF Design, Pub. QCF Design) vs America's Army (2002, PC & XBox, Dev. USArmy & Secret Level, Pub. USArmy & Ubisoft) Indie darling versus free-to-play propaganda-ware. Not a bad start. (At first I was thinking it might not work so well with just 2 game cards, since the pair ups can be one sided. Plus people discussing it here aren't forced to defend a particular card, but then if I draw more cards the odds of a clear winner increase. Catch 22ish. Any suggestions for "forum-play" rules are welcome. If this works, might start a new discussion each week.) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sno Posted April 18, 2012 Looking at those options, i'm not really sure what this conversation should be. Still, I love this topic as an idea, and i hope this is something you continue to do. Hmmm... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AteBit Posted April 18, 2012 On one hand you can compare two, a Free-to-Play game to a Pay-to-Play game. In that case Desktop Dungeons would be "most commercial", but is that right? What if I say America's Army is the most commercial of the two since it is a triple A title. It's a big budget game (33M funded by the American government), made using high end graphic middleware (Unreal), by a large professional studio (Secret Level [now Sega Studios San Francisco] 150+ employees [now ~200]) to be competitive with the other triple A FPS games at the time. As for Desktop Dungeons, it's a self funded effort of 3 guys (Quarter Circle Forward + Design) in Cape Town South Africa. Hardly the most commercial of the two productions. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sno Posted April 18, 2012 It kind of breaks down though, when you realize that there have been versions of America's Army that have been sold at retail. I think there is no questioning that America's Army is the more commercial game, it is a product of mainstream development and publishing culture with tons of money behind it, and it is not exclusively a free-to-play thing. It has at varying times been a product consumers have exchanged money for. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AteBit Posted April 18, 2012 It kind of breaks down though, when you realize that there have been versions of America's Army that have been sold at retail.I think there is no questioning that America's Army is the more commercial game, it is a product of mainstream development and publishing culture with tons of money behind it, and it is not exclusively a free-to-play thing. It has at varying times been a product consumers have exchanged money for. Really! As you can tell I always thought it was F2P propaganda-ware. So the Xbox version (ubi published) was retail I'm guessing. To be honest I didn't even know there was an Xbox version until i saw it on the card. Now that I looked it up, there was also an AA game for mobile (Gameloft/Ubi), 360 (RedStorm/Ubi), and an arcade (GlobalVR). Should have looked it more. Well shit. That's the problem I feared would happened, figured I'd re-draw if was to clear cut for any discussion. When I drew the those cards I figured big budget F2P vs no budget retail game could get interesting. Take F2P out and it falls apart. I'll try again with more game cards, not sure how else it could be done. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
