trylks

Title question.

Other games, e.g. symphony, allow to do that.

It seems more complex for Aaero, but it would also be cooler, and after all time passes and technology advances. I hope that's possible.

Thank you.

StarCraft has been for long an important RTS game, maybe the most important, for the multiplayer, the competitive nature (including professional competitions), and even the research for the brain ageing, expertise, artificial intelligence, and science in general. So I hope we get some StarCraft III at some point in the future, because otherwise that would be a significant loss.

Are there any MOBAs that would be playable with a controller in a reasonable way?

So far I have seen:

• Super Monday Night Combat
• Smite
• Fable Legends (maybe not a MOBA as it is asymmetric due to "the villain")

It looks like the genre is not particularly crowded and the fierce competition is at playing with a mouse and a keyboard where most of the strongest contenders are:

• League of Legends
• DOTA 2
• Heroes of the Storm

Do you know about any other game that I should be considering? (Especially in the first list)

@wraithtek: point 1 and 2 would be part of the trend I mention. Point 3 has a good example, debatable, but interesting, and it may be part of this trend, or it may not, time will tell with the next round of games in the genre. Point 4 is very interesting because the regression may be just temporary, i.e. mobile platforms may support more demanding games, and they will probably do. I doubt there is much interest about going into a deep gameplay for hours on a mobile phone screen, but there may be peripherals, again time will tell.

@believer258: same reply as to giantlizardking.

Well, yes, kind of, indie games prove a lot of creativity, but we see less in the games that have a big budget and that could push the state of the art. That creativity is nice, but I miss the kind of creativity that goes along with a big budget.

Let's stay in the technological sector. On one side we have the innovation that Google can do, they can afford something difficult, long term goals, like self-driving cars. On the other side we have the innovation of startups, which are small and risky and try new things, sometimes with a sizable investment due to angel investors, very often with smaller budgets (like crowdfunding). IMHO, Google can do more and faster than startups due to sheer size, if a small startup tried to compete with Google in the self-driving cars race (sorry for the pun) they would be out of it in a very early stage. I don't see this happening with games.

Imagine a new console, which at the same time is a PC with Linux, and everything is "open" including the new and revolutionary controller, with Half-Life 3 as a launch exclusive. That would be something big, the kind of innovation that only a big company can do with a lot of money, that may be a revolution, a game changer, or "something big" (perhaps a big flop, but big nonetheless). But Valve seems to keep people waiting and I don't know if this will ever be a reality, I mean, I'm not holding my breath, but that would be something.

So yes, we see a lot of creativity, but in small projects. That is cool and good. I would like to see that creativity into something big, because then it would have the potential to be more than cool and good, it would be "revolutionary".

It is again the same, lack of progress on a sector (plateau maybe) while the creation of a new huge one that is back in time (mobile phones with 90s like games) sums up regression to me.

I would say that it is a trend that has started already. If there are "repercussions" and the trend changes it may be the start of a new epoch for games, perhaps a better one, or perhaps the golden age is in the past already.

Everyone else, I think I agree with you and I have nothing to clarify wrt what I said and you said.

If the game is mind-numbing and they are putting that much time into something that does not help to "expand" their minds but to "atrophy" them I would say that is horrible, not great by any means.

We would have to consider which games are positive for the cognitive and cultural development and which ones are too simple or repetitive to be any positive and are actually negative, which is a very complex (and different) topic.

So I would conclude with:

• such a thing is not necessarily great and it may possibly be horrible.
• checking whether it is one or the opposite is hard.
• it is also offtopic, yet the conclusion (if possible) would be interesting for the current topic. I mean, if games are improving (cognitive) health for people then that's great, if they are making something bad to people then they are evolving in an evil way (and this topic would be irrelevant when compared with that, although I would say they would be connected).

Related: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/21/books-interview-david-graeber-the-utopia-of-rules?CMP=fb_gu

Related: https://www.facebook.com/The.Daily.Nietzsche/posts/693327780700084

(Funny how I found that precisely on Facebook...)

Well, that's the point. Consider the case for music. Big orchestras and resources are mostly (nearly only) available for old symphonies, operas, etc. We do not see many operas being done lately, they are not that mainstream.

Now, music can do pretty well because of technology. Perhaps I don't have a full orchestra of people playing the soundtrack of the new games or my favourite music, but there is technology that does something new (perhaps simulating an orchestra) and that works for me (maybe because I am not an expert in music) and it may work for more people.

Finally, consider games. Games have been so far enabled by new technology. Now we may argue about how technology is good enough, graphics don't matter anymore, other aspects of the gameplay enabled by technology are good enough as well, and all the good games have already been done, just like classical music. We have pop music, which is mainstream, like Justing Bieber, Lady Gaga, and so many more, and we have pop (popular) games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds, and so many more. There are still games like The Witcher (@brandondryrock) but they are less and less mainstream, more niche and a rarity, less innovative (neo-classical), they get less attention, less proportional ROI, less of them are done, and nobody is pushing the boundaries of them anymore (e.g. technological boundaries). While we can agree that some boundaries are better when not pushed (e.g. castrati) I think it is sad that this is not the case for games, and in turn the "Moore's Law" will probably not hold anymore, etc.

So it may be plateau, stability and lack of evolution, if we only consider big games, which is already sad, because I would expect that when so much money is put into something we (as a society) get something revolutionary for it. Furthermore, if we consider how many 90s games are released additionally to that plateau, both things at the same time, I would say that is an evolution to the past (on average), i.e. regression.

I don't have much time, hence I only play a few games and I am very selective. I do not discuss them with anyone, as I am always way behind current games (I am now playing Halo ODST). I am also uninterested in discussing games. For me, games are meant to be played, not discussed.

For some reason I don't feel very excited about new games. I have noticed that in the fact that it's been a while since the last time I added a game to my wishlist, where I keep track of games that are interesting until they are released and I can find some time to play them. This is good to catch up with it, and at the same time a bit worrying. Maybe I am getting too old for this.

Therefore, definitively, I am not feeling the same way, but I hope that this gives you some perspective about why other people why decide to behave in ways that may be annoying to you. Annoying stuff usually becomes a bit less annoying when it is understood, IMHO.

Nice examples that I liked are Gears of War and Mass Effect. In the latter there are two modes for the camera, third person and over the shoulder, depending on whether you are (not) holding a weapon. Then also first person when using the sniper riffle.

I think those two games are quite different from the example of Arma 3 (which does not seem to have the usual cover based gameplay), however, the point that @haytmakes about multiplayer holds in the sense that I didn't consider that adding options could bother anyone but it may, for example someone who uses to play in FPS and doesn't like the third person view, but someone else uses that for their advantage. That has the a great potential to suck, so that's something to consider.

Another point to consider is that it is not completely true that "if I can see you, then you can see me", there are parts of the body (including the head) that can be exposed without a clear reciprocal line of sight. But fair enough, we can understand that not-first-person perspectives take this to "unrealistic" situations.

Finally: @hone_mcbone: you know, freedom to choose is freedom to pay and to not pay for what other people want, so I thought it made sense (or it made more sense to add it than to not add it), especially since I think that there are many people in this forum who have spent their whole lives in the country of freedom. Freedom is probably something we all should value more, but I'm going offtopic...

If they improve conversation technology (a lot) you could speak yourselves with the game characters using kinect (or whatever is used in 2050).

Another point for MMO games.

@gamefreak9: Model thinking: it's not about the knowledge but the assumptions. There are many assumptions here about why "several things could not be possible", because "there is no market", etc. If you are not sure, as you mention now, then maybe those possibilities could be discussed, which is the only thing I've been saying form the start.

Market design: efficiency applies to everything. For example: digital distribution implies smaller costs than physical distribution, AFAIK, (i.e. more efficient), hence indie games have the possibility to use digital distribution, marketing works on a different way, etc. WRT markets, you can consider the regulated markets in XBL and PSN, or how stuff works on Steam and HumbleBundle and what not. Why is that important? Because games that would otherwise not be profitable may be profitable now, and games that are "risky" (e.g. Portal) are also possible, and maybe we (as customers, or as a society) should be promoting more risky games and pursuing higher quality standards (among much other stuff).

So that's efficiency, but there's more, for example tax reductions for games that are something more than mere entertainment, empty of any value. I don't know about the specific case of USA, in many countries VAT (or their equivalent) is applied in different ways (a different percentage) depending on the type of the product, e.g. basic food and health related items, luxury items, culture and education, those have different percentages. That's market design.

This is being done with the food, and it's being done the wrong way. Market design is not only about efficiency, as you seem to imply, it's also about equilibrium points, this kind of actions change the equilibrium points to better or worse ones, and we should care on both our body and our mind health, with food having a strong impact on the former and games having a debatable impact on the latter (IMHO a strong one, again that's debatable). So yeah, it could be worse, we are not talking about people dying of hunger to cultivate drugs, but we should strive for the better, not for the "not-as-bad-as-others", again IMHO.

Distributions: I think many indie games can be done with a budget below 100K and I don't remember the context for this point, but I would like to point two things:

1. We would need actual numbers to continue in that direction.
2. That direction doesn't really interest me. I'm more concerned with what should be done and what could be done than one specific way in which it could or could not be done. Kickstarter could be another, and there are surely many other, but finding ways to do "something" is irrelevant if we don't agree first that there is something that should be done, IMHO.

Precautionary principle: that's the main point of all my participation in the thread. We should study better and try to know the effects of games, and different types of games, and different elements of games (graphic depictions, story, etc.) on people, their behaviour (specially criminal behaviour), wellbeing, motivation, etc. Really, if you choose to understand one single thing of all that I have written, choose this paragraph. "Robust organic systems" fall into local maxima very easily, exactly for the reason that you point, "small tinkering" does not allow to jump those valleys. We are in 2015, we can do better, we have science and research, that insight, with intellect and intelligence should allow us to find greater maxima, across the valleys. You say we have "no knowledge" on some stuff, that's arguable, but more in my favor, because what I'm pointing from the very beginning is that: we should have more knowledge, we should discuss certain topics and we should study (rigorously, scientifically) those topics. The impact and the motivation should be clear by now, but let me know if I should elaborate more.

Microeconomics and macroeconomics: sorry, what's the point here?