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Bad waves surrounding Harmonix. Via Eurogamer, turns out some employees were posting 5-star reviews of the game to Amazon. The company admitted to it, saying these employees acted on their own. As small as the effort was I would believe the story; I'm sure some people out there are going, "IT WAS A DIRECTIVE TO BOOST REVIEWS" but if that were the case there would be all sorts of dummy accounts involved.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-10-22-harmonix-admits-to-employees-posting-positive-rock-band-4-amazon-reviews

 

I'm not sure if I particularly care if an employee who made something posts a review of it, provided they disclose they helped make the item in question, and the review isn't max-stars or least-stars (it'd be more believable if someone was noting drawbacks, for example).

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Couple things via Gamasutra as I'm going to bed.

 

1) Single-player games that had authentication required to play but the servers are now dead are DMCA exempt, rules a court.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/257502/Singleplayer_games_with_dead_authentication_servers_ruled_DMCA_exempt.php

 

2) A UK board is giving mobile devs (proper) shit for advertising to children so heavily to buy bullshit in their apps.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/257531/UKs_advertising_standards_body_sanctions_freetoplay_kids_game_devs.php

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Paradox Interactive just bought White Wolf Publishing from CCP. It's an all-cash buy, but the amount hasn't been disclosed.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/257682/Paradox_pays_cash_to_take_White_Wolf_Publishing_off_CCPs_hands.php

 

The deal includes World of Darkness, which was canned this past April. It's possible now that Paradox Interactive will revive the project. But for now, the White Wolf brand is in good hands and won't merely be sat upon.

 

Edit - Oh yeah, and Paradox is going to let White Wolf Publishing operate independently.

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I really wonder how King's direction is going to change after this. King has been more notorious than Activision in recent years. Activision has been really quiet and hasn't done anything really hostile to consumers, and Bobby Kotick has been quiet from his usual "I want money" shtick. But King? Remember when they were trying to patent "Candy" and "Crush" and oh my god WHAT is our legal system even!?

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There's more Activision Blizzard news. Via Gamespot: Blizzard just reported World of Warcraft subscriber counts for the last time.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/blizzard-will-no-longer-report-world-of-warcraft-s/1100-6431943/

 

3 months ago the count was at 5.6 million, and it is now at 5.5 million. It's one of the smaller drops to happen but they're back at the end of their launch year at this point. And don't get me wrong, it's still multi-millions of players. It's not like this ship is a financial failure. If anyone out there is going, "WoW is doomed," just remember that people have been saying that ever since the Cataclysm expansion, when subscriber counts actually started to fall; though that was back in 2010. And it was literally like 12 million to 10 or 9 million. STILL A LOT OF PEOPLE.

 

But it does make me wonder what's motivating this. Famous posted on Twitter last night a graph of Activision Blizzard's stock. It's dropped significantly since 2012 but I think that's when they bought themselves out from Vivendi. I bring this up because I'm convinced this news of changing how Blizzard reports its success metric is meant for stock investors, who typically ruin the video game business in my humble view. I think a lot of people just expect WoW's titanic subscriber count to be the norm for games, not understanding what a rare freak of nature it was to begin with, and with AB's stock running low they want to preserve what they can. I can't blame them in that regard - as I said, I blame investors. But at the same time, it side steps the responsibility of explaining to investors and educating them on what things are actually like.

 

From here on out Blizzard is going to be reporting "engagement" metrics on their games, and so far they haven't elaborated on whatever the hell that means. It reminds me of how Sony shifted its business reporting during the PS3 era when they were taking serious lumps though. Rather than report on PS3 units sold, Sony started to talk about the "Playstation family," which included the PSP, PS3, PS2, and for a while the PSX. It was an obvious mask and pathetic as hell. But business investors are hyper-reactionary these days because the culture changed over the course of the 80s and 90s to expect some immediate "rich as fuck" return.

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The Fall and Winter Steam sales are almost upon us, but they're going to be a bit different this year.  There won't be any Flash or Daily sales this time around.  Instead, Valve is asking that discounts be maintained throughout the sale at their most competitive prices.  This means no more waiting on prices to see if they get lower later in the sale.  What you see day one is what you'll see for the rest of the sale.  On the one hand I'm glad that I won't have to play the waiting game to see if a game will get a better price later on.  On the other hand I'm worried that it means the discounts won't be as big this time since they now have to last the entire sale instead of a few hours.

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I think certainty is a better motivator than the sort of gamble angle they'd been working on. I mean I know the gambling angle works, just saying that certainty pays off more potentially. I actually prefer it that way; I hate playing "what ifs" when it comes to my finances - including the finances I set aside for leisure.

 

Anyway, here's something else today:

 

Good news Playstation 4 owners and Playstation 2 fans; Sony is working on an emulator to deploy onto the PS4 to let people play PS2 games. No info yet on whether it's gonna be something like what Nintendo has where you have to digitally buy the games or if your physical copies will be read. Gives me something to look forward to.

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/259988/Sony_bringing_PlayStation_2_titles_to_PS4_using_emulator.php

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The Fall and Winter Steam sales are almost upon us, but they're going to be a bit different this year.  There won't be any Flash or Daily sales this time around.  Instead, Valve is asking that discounts be maintained throughout the sale at their most competitive prices.  This means no more waiting on prices to see if they get lower later in the sale.  What you see day one is what you'll see for the rest of the sale.  On the one hand I'm glad that I won't have to play the waiting game to see if a game will get a better price later on.  On the other hand I'm worried that it means the discounts won't be as big this time since they now have to last the entire sale instead of a few hours.

 

That sounds like less fun, but then I don't engage in Steam sales the way I used to either.

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I'm sure they'll still have some dumb meta game going on.

 

The meta games are way too much work, but I did enjoy popping up the store each morning to see what was new. A little anticipation every day.

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I kinda like the meta games, they're (usually) fun to mess around with.  The monster clicker one over the summer was dumb though, mostly from having nothing to really do.  The auction one is still my favorite. 

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I'm hopeful that finally getting to the end of my backlog has taught me to never participate in any Steam sales ever again.

 

But as that thought leaves my brain I realize I am building a new computer and I will need some new graphically intensive games to push everything to the limit. So in a sense I need to buy as many games as I can during the Steam sale to justify this new PC. Such a vicious cycle. I've learned nothing.

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You know nothing, Zeus Cat. 

 

 

 

 

Edited to add: High quality top o' the page post here.

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So if anyone is a fan of Sega, things are still getting bad for them. Sega Sammy announced they are scaling down their projected income 90%, which is some 154 million dollars down to 16 million. Sega said that while pachinko machine sales have been down, they're not the source for the huge drop - they are specifically citing a drop in video game sales performance.

 

A lot of people are saying that Sega needs to go into overdrive to put their backlog onto Steam. The titles that they have put on don't shatter sales records but it can help them out a lot. I agree with them; digitally distribute already existing but hard, if not impossible, to obtain titles.

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Well kids, the other shoe has dropped on Final Fantasy 7 Remake. The game is going to be developed and sold in episodic pieces. This is a game that already exists, at least as a blue-print.

 

I feel like this is the punch-line we've all been waiting for after 20 years of wondering if AAA video game development could survive.

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Now, I'm entirely convinced this is a cash-grab

 

but I can't help thinking about how I'd structure Final Fantasy VII as an episodic game. Its story is legendarily garbage strung together between cutscenes anyway, and with the amount of changes you'd need to make to bring the game up to par, why not do major surgery on the plot? Keep Midgar as a central location that every episode touches on - it's easily the most interesting location in the game, and everyone resents it when you leave a third of the way through and don't come back. Make it your home base, and as you progress through the game Midgar changes to suit, both through your plot actions and through some kind of base-building mechanic.

  • Put a lot more meat in the middle ('pursue Sephiroth' can't be the driver for two thirds of the plot)
  • move Gold Saucer into Midgar
  • don't kill Aerith in the same place because the fact that she dies probably shouldn't be her most important characteristic
  • fuck with some things just to keep the shock factor up

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I too am convinced that this is a cash-grab. My immediate thought was "I bet the sum of the episode prices is greater than a AAA pricetag".
 

 

but I can't help thinking about how I'd structure Final Fantasy VII as an episodic game. Its story is legendarily garbage strung together between cutscenes anyway, and with the amount of changes you'd need to make to bring the game up to par, why not do major surgery on the plot?

 

Now I haven't been following the modern Final Fantasys too closely, but my secondhand impression is that they haven't gotten much better in the plot department. Am I mistaken, or would a rewrite just make it into different garbage?

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Episodic games are usually not very expensive, but I definitely think this is a way to make the price seem lesser. Each episode being $10 with the full set of 5 for $40 would probably seem fairer than just one $40 game that's just a remake of a decade old game. Not that it will completely prevent people complaining.

 

I never had any doubt this was about the cash though. It almost always seems to be the case for remakes except when the original is actually difficult to get a hold of/play (like Grim Fandango).

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I never had any doubt this was about the cash though. It almost always seems to be the case for remakes except when the original is actually difficult to get a hold of/play (like Grim Fandango).

 

You don't think that was about the cash? I'm sure Double Fine is happy more people are playing their game, but I really doubt their motivation was "This will make people happy" and not "This will make a net profit".

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I think his point was that remakes for the sake of accessibility, especially as it pertains to PC games, seems a more justifiable reason for producing a remake than "oh this came out last generation, let's upscale the rendering to 1080p".

 

I guess I'd agree that this is a cashgrab in a sense, Square Enix is hardly foreign to the idea of monetizing to an aggressive extent. That said, I really hope that this is episodic because they need more time to work on it because they are going to be adapting it in some way. I doubt they'd change many of the main story beats, but I think they'd need to do a lot to the writing/pacing to make the game bearable in a modern context. I mean, the gruff, stoic Cloud works at the very beginning of the game, but his interactions with other characters, stuff like the snowboarding, etc would really need to be rethought to make it work with the art style they've adapted here. It's been a while, but even that FFVII movie basically had Cloud doing his own thing 99% of the time with the rest of the characters representing something approximating human tendencies.

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You don't think that was about the cash? I'm sure Double Fine is happy more people are playing their game, but I really doubt their motivation was "This will make people happy" and not "This will make a net profit".

 

It was a big mess of licencing rights. It's easy for Square to rerelease their old FF games that they still wholly own and can just redo graphically and put on iPhones. Double Fine had to work hard to get the chance to do GF and accessibility of it was much more of an issue than the many versions of Final Fantasy 1. I'm sure it was about money too, but I feel like there's a significant difference.

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